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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
baranduyn's LiveJournal:
| Saturday, November 8th, 2008 | |
| 9:09 pm | Proposition 8 and its nasty siblings I've spent the past few days in a haze of joy over the election of Barack Obama as the President of the United States. For the first time in a long time I feel, really feel he's my President instead of THE President. But I'm not naive. I know from time to time I will not find myself on the same side of an issue with President-elect Obama. The only way I will ever have a president I agree with one hundred percent of the time is if I try for the job myself and quite frankly, I think the job sucks. I think it may be one of the suckiest jobs on the planet and keep in mind I've worked in a nursing home. So, despite having wept heartfelt tears of joy the night of the election and gasped and shrieked from pure ecstacy when CNN announced the President-elect had enough votes and despite weeping and nodding happily during his acceptance speech I was also listening closely. President-elect Obama said flat out from time to time we would not agree. That's life. Therefore, after the excitement of the election, after having spent a serious amount of time writing for and about the causes I feel strongest about I find myself already on the other side from the President-elect's opinion. I am outraged about legislation aimed at stopping same-sex marriage. OUTRAGED because it has succeeded.( Read more... ) |
| Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 | |
| 3:18 pm | I think I write responses better than posts (I posted this as a response in a friend's blog but I like it. I said what I wanted to say.) When CNN projected Barack Obama as President I gasped, put my hands over my mouth and began crying from happiness and relief. Not so much when the pundits began trying to shape President-elect Obama (I'm-a type that every chance I get) into a business as usual politician. "Yeah, yeah, he ran an innovative and creative campaign, but now he's gotta start cutting deals, ya da ya da ya da." Oh dear. As a nation we have got to wake the fuck up. No President is Big Daddy who's gonna fix things all better, give us a nice sweet and a cartoon sticking plaster and fix things without the rest of us exerting one tiny molecule of ourselves. So I'll quote the e-mail I found waiting from President-elect Obama in my mail box this morning. Yes, I am a proud member of his organization: Jillian -- (Emphasis mine, everything else his) Yeah, it's a mass mailing but this is how he got elected. And there's a lot of work ahead. Proposition 8 passed in California and a lot of people woke up unsure whether or not they're still married. Other states passed referrendums banning same-sex marriage. I personally think every hypocrite who ever married for his/her image and then went to "My partner's married, I'm not" world is a bigger disgrace, but that's me. There's so much to be done. Parts of the Gulf Coast still look like a Third World nation years after Katrina hit. Our economy is literally fantasy based. We do not have national health and I personally know a woman who is quite literally dying because of this. But we have hope. |
| Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 | |
| 11:28 pm | Thank you, God (I originally wrote this as a response on Drakyndra's lj, but I doubt I'll come with anything more heart-felt and true no matter how hard I try) I'm going to be unabashedly sentimental and probably not at all funny. President Barack Obama. My heart is so full of joy and relief and thankfulness I can barely stand myself. This is the right thing. This is the way forward. I'll gloat over Libby Dole getting her ass kicked tomorrow, but just consider that the Senate seat once held (eternally) by that racist fuck Jesse Helms and warmed since his death by Elizabeth Dole is now occupied by Democrat Kay Hagan. North Carolina has a Democratic governor. McCain is conceding on my tv right now. Anything can happen. Anything is possible. God has blessed us and now we got to get to earning those blessings. I am actually crying from happiness. |
| 7:19 pm | Anonymous commenting enabled It's election day in the United States. If you like, comment on when you voted, what the polling place was like, your thoughts on the media coverage, who you voted for, whatever. If you're not American, comment anyway on what you hope will come of this election. HOWEVER, referring to someone else's vote as an example of epic failure or pure shit judgment is NOT ON. It's your opinion and that does not make you correct. ETA: Great googly moogly. Though it's early in the vote count for just this brief and shining moment both Florida and North Carolina are showing up as BLUE. Blue. **light headed now** Current Mood:  restlessCurrent Music: The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack, Sixx AM |
| Monday, September 15th, 2008 | |
| 2:10 pm | Richard Wright. 1943-2008 http://www.nme.com/news/nme/39724 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuG_316c Rest well, lovely man. Prayers and thoughts (all good) for you and your family and friends. You're already missed. Current Mood: sad |
| Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 | |
| 5:59 pm | Real live specimen of teal deer below, but I also mean it It's always good to actually realize one resolution. Really, this is a happy thing for me. What I've given up (no need to admire my steely resolve, giving it up was one of the best things I've ever done) is fandoms. First point...you know how in fandoms people will begin whining "I can do WHAT I WANT. I can look at the show/book/film/band from my own point of view." They're right. They can. What they don't get is...so can I. Just like those lovely little snowflakes who think they can cut lines at the deli, lecture clerks and shops for not having the proper (i.e. THEIR) holiday spirit and in general behave like demented little Veruca Salt-stepchildren BECAUSE I AM GOD'S CHILD AND JESUS' FRIEND, what they're not getting is...yeah, you are. So is everyone else. To the best of my knowledge Deities don't often play favorites. Oh, and do your own driving; Jesus has better things to do than make sure you don't wrack up the car and kill five people while you're adjusting your lip gloss and talking on the phone instead of, you know, driving. I'm a truly devoted fan of some bands/musicians/writers/actors etc. I'm even a member of Sixx: AM's street team, which if you don't know what that is, is a thing where the band organizes member fans who then do things like request the new single be played by local radio stations and stuff like that. I get messages from the Admiral and usually find it easy to help the band if I can. Why? I think Sixx: AM doesn't just rock harder and better than a whole lot of bands, I think the music is important. The band was founded by Nikki Sixx and the first album is based on his book The Heroin Diaries. I'm an addict...once and addict, always an addict whether using or not...and trust me these songs hit directly home. Thus I have membership in the Sixx: AM Street Team and my ticket stubs from Crue Fest ( the only way to see Sixx: AM perform live at this time; that the lineup for the fest was a palace of metal excellence is pure bonus for me) tucked inside the jewel case of my The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack CD. When I die that album will be buried with me. The list of 'music I must be buried with' is very short, just so you know. That's fandom. Writing real person fiction about the members of the band? That's fucked up. See, now we're into opinions-are-like-assholes-everyone-has-o Here's another opinion: RPF tends to be full-out crap. It has nothing to do with the names inserted into the stories. The names are interchangeable. The stories are all the same, only the names and venues are changed. And one more: the idea that "I can do what I want" means "and everyone else has to go along with it" is pure Veruca Salt. Roald Dahl did not create that character to be emulated; he created her as a horror story and a caricature of what monsters are produced by endless parental indulgence. If Dahl wasn't already dead and if he was living today his weekly encounters with real-life Verucas might cause him to at least consider opening a vein. Or writing an even stronger condemnation. Which the real-life Verucas wouldn't understand. Recently a couple of Veruca Salts made their way to the place where their favorite TV show is filmed. I've never watched the show so I can't comment on why they love it or if their judgment regarding how the stars ought to have behaved toward them is based on the characters these actors portray. All is see is a cautionary tale, the moral of which is 'do not confuse what you think with reality'. Said fans made their way to the set of said TV show. The stars did not immediately stop working, run to them, embrace them, proclaim them their Own Twu Luvs even long enough to give them the horizontal happy. In fact, the staff employed by said show seem to have done their very best to keep the fans away from the stars. Which happens, in part, to be the staff's job. In case you were wondering. They do not owe their livelihoods to a couple of half-witted fans who felt entitled to drive their asses out to see the stars up close and personal. They owe their livelihoods to the show. OH THE TRAUMA. The fantasy did not come true. Fifteen choruses of oh-how-I-hate-them got spewed all over various blog sites. And I...laughed. The stupid was so pervasive that I just had to laugh. The mantra "we're fans" entitles a person to two things: jack and shit. Lemme detail this for ya: Buying a book or an entire series of books entitles the consumer to get exactly what they paid for: the books. You got what you paid for. With the Harry Potter books, you can't argue you didn't get your money's worth because those are some really big books with lots and lots of well-put-together words contained therein. That's all you're entitled to. You are not entitled to tell Rowling what to do with HER characters and HER universe because you laid out some long green for her books. You are not entitled to stop by Chez Rowling and have lunch with her. You are not entitled to tell her how to live, what to think, what to write. You weren't there when she was a struggling single mother on the dole and even if you were you're still not entitled to guide her writing. You're entitled to read the books she wrote, end game. That's it. You get what you pay for. That millions bought those books does not mean the millions are individually allowed to run Rowling's shit. Writing file-off-the-serial-numbers fic about her characters entitles you to nothing. And a lot of fan fic is of that variety; it's little or nothing to do with the characters named within and a lot to do with the typist's own interior landscape. In some cases this interior landscape is a dreary, endlessly unimaginative place where everyone is fucking everyone else, paired off according to the typist's (some of them are not writers, I promise you) needs. They're festivals of projection. Sex means true love. Hate means true love. Everyone must be married and living in the requisite cottage-mit-picket-fence and popping out babies whenever the typist comes up with a really cool new name. What set this off was a personal mistake; I read some fic devoted to one of my fandoms. The fic comes from a popular fan fic series...I think they're up to something like chapter seventy...and while I was laughing my ass off because I was also fighting the feeling that this all felt very, very familiar. Not because the characters were so in character; I think the typist in question was more than a little pissed at the way the TV series played out and decided to 'correct' things, but because I've read nearly the same kind of fic before in any number of fandoms. I've read almost exactly the same kind of series featuring characters from CSI, The X Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Strong, somewhat complex women are reduced to wanting nothing more than a good man, a well equipped kitchen and a whole bunch of babies. Which, by the way, is cool. Personally, I LONG for a well equipped kitchen, because I am a kick-ass cook. But I reject the feminist stereotypes as strongly as I reject the idea that everyone is defined by their preferred genitalia-related pleasure. I think feminism should be women charting their own courses. If any woman really wants to be a very good mother, wife and whatever it is she does as for a living, that's very cool. If a woman wants to be a kick-ass mom and that's all that matters, that's cool too. If she doesn't, that's cool too. Incorporating kids or a male partner does not make a woman a gender traitor. I've been called a gender traitor (that's another essay related to religion) and quite honestly...that made me laugh. If someone thinks I can't practice my religion because I drive stick, well, they're entitled to their opinions. I'm entitled to not allow their opinions to change my life one jot. I really don't care what some people think. But portraying a woman who is always presented as complex as secretly wanting to release her inner 1950s housewife and nothing more is fucked up. Portraying a man who is quirky or just a whole not-like-the-rest of us as longing for nothing more than channelling his inner Ward Cleaver...again, with the fucked up. I don't care if it's two women or two men or a man and a woman or a frog and a knitting needle, when their essential selves is denied I'm calling that fucked up and suspecting that we're getting more of a glimpse into the typist's inner landscape than a close peek at the soul of the character. I don't like peeking at some typists interior landscape. The lack of real imagination and creativity in some people is just a little scary. The fic bit I read reminded me so strongly of some other series of fics I'd happened on that I almost hurt myself laughing. I have no idea if the typist is the same but I'd be almost smugly satisfied to find out this is true. Same fantasies, different faces. I just hope it's not the one who decided Sara Sidle of CSI was in fact a closet wanna-be ballerina and interior designer. I NEARLY SHIT MYSELF LAUGHING OVER THAT FIC SERIES. Before realizing that the typist was obviously getting broadcasts of some other series called CSI. I mean...c'mon. You want to know what the actually a little scary part is? The number of fans of these series. The people who proclaim the typists of said fic series BETTER THAN THE CREATOR. The number of people who, apparently, do not like the idea that humans are not all the same. Scary like whoa. So, I don't do that kind of fandom. I really don't. You could say it's all harmless and amusing but I think contained within the harmless and amusing is a strong, metallic thread of "I want what I want". Which isn't always harmless and amusing. Why did the nasty-bad-evil PAs of the series the young twatlets admire keep them from the actors? Why is this even a question rational human beings would consider? I know of people who let televison chronicle a portion of their lives who have had to move from their homes and make sure their new homes are never shown on their programs again because some fans showed up and expected to allowed into the house to hang out with these people. I'm not even going to go with worst case scenarios, like the murder of Rebecca Schaeffer or the demented woman who came to believe she was secretly married to David Letterman and moved into his house while he was away. Nope, not until the end of this piece. I know of a man who not only had to quit his job but had to move his family well away from the area he'd grown up in because of something he did on a reality based television show. He'd lashed out (admittedly unfairly, but still) at a very popular person on that show and "fans" followed this up by finding the guy's real phone number and leaving death threats towards the man and his wife and kids, who were never on the show for more than ten seconds until the guy felt he had to quit his job. I know of a relative of stars of a fairly popular reality-based series who has had to move and keep his children off the show because of "fans" approaching his very young kids. No, he does not know that you don't mean any harm. Think about how he'd find out the hard way that this fan really did mean harm, he or she had just redefined 'harm' in a very creative and terrifying way. The guy is not even a star or a featured person on the show. I think all told his oldest child and he has been on maybe fifteen minutes of the show, a show which has aired for five years now. Some 'fans' found his house when a glimpse of his mailbox was shown for about eleven seconds in one episode. How scary is that? Mad scary. Outlandish? Yeah, absolutely but let me clue some fans in on a little secret: you do NOT have a neon sign over your head to assure your idol that you're not one of the crazy ones. Furthermore, you can't tell the crazy ones just by looking. Nobody can. The fucked-up do not necessarily give off whoa-I'm-crazy-dangerous vibes at first glance. This I promise you. Sometimes you can't see the crazy-dangerous until its right on top of you. I'm probably remarkably sensitive to fans-who-cross-the-line not because I'm famous but because I have been stalked. Lasted for almost three years and this was long before the stalking laws we have now which I deem incredibly necessary. They're much better than me having to watch my cousin, who was then a Captain in our State Police, wipe away tears while telling me he knew, he knew the guy was dangerous but there was nothing he could do until the guy broke a law. That didn't happen. My stalker showed up at my house only once, likely because I literally turned my dogs loose on him. In the end he didn't get the message that I was not sublimating my passion for him until I quite literally broke his kneecap with a chunk of well-aimed wood when that miserable, insane, ugly fucker dared to touch the bare flesh of my midriff while I was working. Yes, I lost it. Yes, my friends who happened by while I had that living piece of human shit down on the bare concrete of the work floor and was raising the length of wood for what I hoped would be a death blow had to keep me from delivering said death blow. Then they took him outside and beat the shit out of him on their own terms while I finished my work and cried my fear out. Some people don't comprehend words and bluntly, the beatings didn't do anything to restore the stalker's sanity. He decided that I just 'needed some time to come around'. You look that kind of crazy in the eye and it will change your mind about a lot of things. I guarantee that. If it doesn't, send a search party out for your brain. Being stalked, for whatever reason, is not cool. The word 'fan' comes from the word 'fanatic'. Fanatics tend to be worrying. What's cute when you're twelve years old is not cute when you've added a dozen years to that age and you're right up in your favorite actor/writer/musician/TV star's face. It's scary. If someone doesn't get that then the problem is theirs, not the actor's or writer's or musician's or TV star's. Now for the ultimate cautionary tale. In the month of December in the year 1980 a young man showed up to join the gaggle of devoted fans who kept watch outside the Dakota apartment building in New York City. He seemed to be just like the rest of them. He was clutching a copy of the musician the fans were devoted to latest album and expressed the desire to get an autograph. Like the rest of the fans, he waited until the musician and his partner-wife appeared to get into their car to go mix their new album. He approached the star and got the desired autograph scrawled across his album. The other fans applauded this guy for getting the autograph and they settled down to wait for the musician to return from the recording studio. Nobody twigged. Nobody looked at this guy and thought "There's something wrong here." This doesn't mean that these fans or the security hired by the musician and his partner-wife were stupid or lazy. The truth is you can't always just look at someone and know what they're capable of. Thinking this is true, that you'd know the person was dangerous-crazy if you'd been there is a great way to ensure you will die and horribly. You can't tell just by looking. You just can't. And when the musician and his partner-wife returned from the studio, late that evening, the young man who'd kept his just-another-fan mask firmly in place pulled out a gun, stepped forward and ended John Lennon's life on a sidewalk in New York City, a city where John felt loved and safe. Is there a connection between my distaste for some (okay, a lot) of fan fic and ALL real person fiction and danger to celebrities who are really just people with more photographs and video than most of us? Sometimes. Yeah, I really think so. Because the road that led Mark Chapman to kill John Lennon and led John Bardo to murder Rebecca Schaeffer and led Nathan Gale to shoot Dimebag Darrell Abbott dead onstage started when their fannishess twisted into something else. When they decided they knew their respective objects of fanning better than those people knew themselves. When John Lennon did something that made Chapman feel his hero had feet of clay, when Bardo found out Schaeffer didn't love him as much as he thought he loved her -- I'd argue his definition of love was massively wrong, but that's me -- and when Gale realized the band Pantera was gone forever they moved into a new world where the killing seemed right and necessary. Simply, Lennon, Schaeffer and Dime didn't do what a fan wanted them to do. Sound familiar? Sure, Chapman, Bardo and Gale were clinically insane but I sometimes wonder if that determination comes about IN PART so society can sleep at night. They were crazy. They're not Like Us. We'll worry about a society in which the clinically insane can acquire handguns later. The idea that they weren't all that crazy, that some people who encountered them didn't see that mentally they were fraying around the edges must be pushed into the shadows. Granted, just about everyone who met up with Gale on a daily basis knew he was fucked up in a big way. Granted, some members of Chapman's family knew he had some deep seated problems. The thing is, it is sure that at least Chapman could pass for sane-as-anybody on a daily basis. Even while he was travelling all over the fucking country to get the gun with which he'd kill John Lennon and not incidentally deprive two boys of their father and a wife of her husband and break the hearts of millions who loved John's work. What is the line between Nathan Gale believing that somehow the members of Pantera stole a song from him and people believing that they have a better take on one of Jo Rowling's characters than JKR has? How wide is the line between calling over a perfect stranger's child simply because her name was mentioned on a few episodes of her grandfather's reality series and writing letters claiming the child is actually the child of the letter writer? I don't think the line is that wide and I don't always think people realize when they're crossing it. I do think the road begins with the idea that other people exist for no other reason than to serve your own needs. From the woman who decides her ex-husband is simply being stubborn and stalks him to the man who decides that woman loves him, doesn't really want that whole stupid independent life and will understand she belongs to him if she would only listen, the common thread is denial of the autonomy of others. Whether it's your kid, your ex or some guy you've seen around the pizza parlor, the minute someone makes up their own minds about what that person needs...well, my friends, the shit is on. And it hits fandom too. All the fucking time. The reason why you don't see constant reports about how many death threats people get for everything from daring to be Musician X's girlfriend to changing the way they dress onstage is because security experts believe reporting this publicly only encourages others in some bizarre monkey-see-monkey-do way. Fact. Why I often find fan fic and always find RPF worrying is because it gives off these mad 'other people are marionettes who must do what I want' vibes. Bottom line, there it is. If you think there aren't people who live their lives convinced that others exist only to do as THEY want, you're just not paying attention. Eastern philosophers hack away at the "I love you, therefore you must love me and give me what I want" all the time, but nobody reads them. Or, if they do, like the character Otto from the film A Fish Called Wanda was sharply reminded, they just don't understand it. It is not good to expect other people to dance to your tune, whether you consider yourself sane or not. It isn't. Not your child, not your partner, not the partner you want and sure as fuck not someone you only know from listening to their music or watching their TV show. The TV screen is one way, you know. People on TV can't see you watching and I suspect some of them are profoundly grateful for this. Jesus, that could be ugly. One more personal anecdote which does factor into why I find this projecting/expecting shit so worrying. The last one. About...oh, over twenty years ago anyway and likely closer to thirty...I hung around with some guys who happened to be really good with musical instruments and song writing and that. I miss them sometimes. They were fun. I want to emphasize the hanging-around part. Sharing an occasional beer or a pizza. Having a nice talk. No fucking. I don't have sex with musicians. In my own supremely peculiar opinion if I can easily get backstage just by conversing as opposed to having to fellate the entire security crew, road crew and techs first, then I so win. I don't fuck musicians. End game. I'd have to fall hard for one first and that has not happened. HE WAS ON TV AND MTV AND FUSE is not nearly enough for me. I need to get to know before I fall and I can't do that through the scrim of the TV screen. Ees no' possible for me. Anyway, one night the guys were dealing with some new and slightly heavy shit. I remember standing at a bar in a club the name of which I no longer remember and hearing the lead singer tell me, sadly, that he never knew how hot and handsome he was until the video achieved that magical state of Heavy Rotation on MTV. "Sadly" is probably wrong. He was mildly amused, moderately annoyed and resigned to the fact that his sudden lustablilty-factor increase had nothing to do with him as he was and everything to do with that peculiar state known as celebrity. He knew better (not that he wasn't lustable, mind, he was genuinely cute and interesting just not my type) and he knew it wasn't really personal, even if his brand-new-shiny-MTV-minted-fans didn't know that. Which put him well ahead of some people who believe their own publicity far more intently than even the most devoted of fans. A lot of those women wanted simply to fill in the square containing his name on their Groupie Bingo Card and I'm not lying when I tell you such things exist. A lot of women just succumbed to the OMGFAMOUS thing and I will warn anyone about the idea that famous is better. That notion, famous is better than anything led Bonnie Lee Bakley down a deeply weird and fucked up path in her quest to Marry A Celebrity and may actually have led to her death. Death by shallowness, in some ways. It was sad though, what happened to my boys. The long time fans of the band's music found themselves shoved aside by people who'd OMG seen the video or bought the album. Some of the guys in the band kept their heads on straight, some did not. They did not become rich overnight but they did become better known and found out celebrity is a multi-edged sword; it cuts every way there is, some positive and some most definitely not. I found myself channelling my inner seven year old child, the one who didn't understand why her classmates weren't as interested in The Beatles music as hoping to marry a Beatle someday. I've never understood that and please God, I never will. Fandom is a multi edged sword as well. The line between thinking "My God, this is great music/a great book/a great film/a great TV series and more people should know this" and "This is the only music/book/film/TV series which is any good in the history of ever and OMG if you don't agree I H8 you and if they change one little thing or do something in their personal life which rocks my much cherished preconceptions I WILL H8 THEM 4EVA" is not all that wide. When I see people incapable of modulating their fan-feelings I now walk away. Sometimes I'm laughing when I walk away and sometimes I'm quietly hoping the object of the fandom has some really high quality security. And, stupid girl children in adult bodies who went all the way to where they shoot your favorite TV series only to be disappointed when you weren't invited onto the set to correct the writers' misconceptions/play with the equipment/let the stars see you and recognize you were meant to bear their offspring? The assistants were right to keep you away. You are crazy. You're fucked up. You have too much time on your hands. And for those who disagree passionately with everything I've written...I don't care. You're the reason I only listen to Dir en Gray and avoid their fandom like the motherlovin' plague. You're the reason I don't frequent message boards. You worry me. A lot. Current Music: Pantera: "Cowboys From Hell" (RIP Dime) |
| Monday, July 21st, 2008 | |
| 1:47 am | Oh no, it's a cooking post So, today I made pizza. I love to cook. To me cooking is a deeply challenging thing. I like to work on my skills as a cook, I like to try to do things differently or better every time and I love it when I can make peoples' eyes roll back in their heads in ecstacy just by feeding them something exceedingly yummy which I made myself, fuck you Sandra Lee you waste of oxygen. Equally, I love gadgets. Oooooh, child, gadgets are the shit in my world. Granted I have my own criteria for what is a good gadget and what is a complete and utter failure as a gadget but the useful ones which I got for a song make me very, very happy. My ultimate goal I suppose is to make food which is utterly and completely handmade. I wanna grow the vegetables. I wanna grow the herbs. I wanna raise the meat, press the olives for oil and reap my own grain. I live in an apartment. No wonder I listen to so much metal; my frustration level is damn near always simmering at the boiling-over level. Never mind, I do the best I can. I know where the farmers' market is and I'm not afraid to go there, unlike some over-cosmeticed luxury-SUV-driving types who flinch when they find out some of the produce at the farmers' market still has dirt on it. Unless we're talking hydroponics, food grows in dirt. Anyone who can't deal with this gets instant contempt points from me. Back to pizza. Well, it's a chance to use the newish gadgets, yeah? It's a chance to get creative. It's a chance to try and turn out some damn fine pizza without having a fire-fueled pizza oven, a proper $10,000 baking oven or one drop of Italian blood, at least as far as I'm aware of. Personally I think its perfectly possible that I may have any kind of ancestry including the French Canadian stuff I know of, simply because my people...you could say they're open-minded but the truth is, we're kind of a horny bunch and I know full well some of my ancestors wouldn't bother checking on someone's ethnicity once they found out they were both hot as hell and willing. Hot as hell and willing rules. Okay, back to the pizza for real. Let me introduce you to gadget number one, the bread making machine. There was a time when I sneered at the bread making machine and I would right now like to apologize for this. My Mèmé could make delicious bread using a woodfired cooksove in a house that didn't even have central heating or running water. I bow before her mad skills and apologize for assuming I somehow inherited them. My bread-fu simply seemed not to exist. Until it was explained to me by a very fine baker that the problems wasn't so much my bread-fu but my oven. I have an oven provided by the apartment complex and it has seen better incarnations. The oven has cold spots, it has hot spots and I firmly believe when I set the dial to my desired temperature the oven thinks of this not so much as an instruction but as a vague wish. You need a controlled environment to make bread or scones or any dough with yeast. If the stuff has yeast and it has to rise you have to accept that air conditioning is not your friend. If your oven is not properly insulated and controlled then your bread will look pitiful when you finally pull it out of the oven. The breadmaker found me. I really believe this. Every week when I'd go grocery shopping I would practically trip over a stack of them at one local store. Every week they dropped the price a little. Every week I was assaulted by a carton or two containing what promised to give me TASTY HOMEMADE BREAD WITH NO FUSS. Eventually I caved in and I have not looked back. You can make bread with Mr Breadmaker. You can make dough with Mr Breadmaker. I love Mr Breadmaker because I can still be a handmade-food snob and sneer at the utter rubbish which is pre-mixed bread mixes, just add water. I mean, seriously, we've gone down this road before, people, and what did it get us? A world in which the use of Hamburger Helper is equated with home cooking. I make pizza dough with Mr Breadmaker from time to time. I make a full batch of dough and freeze what I'm not immediately going to use. I sometimes make strombolis or calzones with the extra dough. I am a dough wizard. I LIKE measuring and occasionally fucking with, I mean adapting, the recipe a little. But we still have the oven issue, don't we? Not anymore we don't. I now have a truly enormous...okay, it's not enormous but it is occupying a hell of a lot of space on the only tile-topped surface I own...combination toaster/broiler/oven with convection baking optional. When the lovely local sweet potatoes come into season again I shall finally be able to make up ramekins of sweet potato custard and bruleé to my heart's content since the oven will serve as a salamander oven. I paid thirty five dollars for it, yes it is brand new and I loves it hard. So onto today's pizza: Step one, make pizza dough in Mr Breadmaker. I'm using good King Arthur bread flour, sea salt, extra virgin olive oil (I would like to kick Rachael Ray right up her unnaturally cheerful ass every time she says "EVOO" as if it's a proper word, stupid bitch) and all the things I need to make nice bread dough. Yeah, I use spring water instead of tap because everything counts. I won't drink the shit that comes out of my tap, what makes you think I'd cook with it? Step two, take a little time to snort the scent of rising dough coming from Mr Breadmaker. I genuinely love that smell. Step three, make some sauce which consists of: A red sweet pepper roasted beautifully in Mr Brushed Stainless Steel Oven. Three garlic cloves roasted in Mr Brushed Stainless Steel Oven. A locally grown tomato, seeded and peeled and herbs which I did not grow myself. The sun sort of visits my patio just long enough to get my hopes up regarding container gardening then goes to hide long enough to kill my attempts at same. I can grow things, I have grown things but I need a little help from simple things like the bleedin' sun. Or one of those Aero Gardens, a thing I long for every time I see that commercial. Peel the red sweet pepper when it's fully roasted (limp) and well charred. Put the lovely, redolent roasted pepper flesh into the blender (which is a common thing in my world and therefore does not have a title) with the roasted garlic cloves, the peeled and seeded tomato. Add the seasonings (there are always seasonings and if you think there aren't...go away) and the herbs, plop on the cover of the blender and liquify. Then drizzle in a little extra-virgin olive oil (I will type that out from spite, you know) and liquify some more. A beautiful thing emerges from the blender. The fresher the vegetables are, the more beautiful that sauce is. I will vary the proportions depending on how fragrant the peppers and tomatoes are when I cut into them but this sauce can be used on anything including homemade fettucini. Or you can lick it off your hand if the sauce spatters a little when you pour it out. I like to remind myself when I do things like that of my mostly French Canadian heritage and remember that my people will snort garlic and onions if given the chance. In the past I've had a terrible time getting my pizza dough to flatten out nicely, as well-behaved pizza dough should. I've wondered if I should use a dowel instead of a rolling pin. I've propitated all the good cooking spirits because I don't much like thick, bready pizza crust. I want the middle to be wafer thin, almost cracker-like and I want to edges to be lovely, soft, bready and well browned. The other night I was watching Iron Chef Japan and there was yet another Italian cuisine battle going on. I'm not certain why I'm faintly amused when I see European cuisines in action on Iron Chef Japan, but I am. So I'm watching this Italian chef who is actually from Italy making pizza. He's spinning that pizza dough like a master, twirling and tossing it in ways that leave me nearly dead from envy. I know on some level he's using centrifigal force to stretch the dough but he's doing it so well that I'm just kind of sad until I remembered today that one component of centrifigal force can be...gravity. I cannot twirl pizza dough like a pro. You don't want to see my variation on the one-handed toss in action because it's pretty lame. Essentially, I put the lump of dough (dusted with cornmeal to keep it from sticking to my hands) between my hands and sort of tossed it vertically. I didn't work up enough speed to have a centrifigal force moment but I found out for once gravity is my friend; when I laid it out in the pan it was perfect. PERFECT. I ladled on the red pepper-tomato sauce, added sliced fresh mushrooms and shallots (remember, I'm French) and pepperoni slices. I added a nice variety of shredded cheeses...yeah, I can make cheese of the soft variety but the aged stuff is not currently in my repitoire...and loaded it into Mr Brushed Stainless Steel Oven. Did I mention he only cost me thirty-five dollars? Yeah, he was a demo model at a local store and I by-God did check to make sure he had everything he was supposed to have as well as roll him to a working electrical outlet to make sure he worked before laying out the money. He's mine now and you can't have him. I love him so much. What emerged...well, the smell emerged first and that was utterly and completely the shit. Serious business. The pizza that emerged was equally beautiful. Lovely, thin and crispy dough at the center, mildly chewy on the edges and the sauce was a complete success, serious business. I'm laughing at Papa John's and diGiornos. Oh, wait a minute, I was laughing at them anyway. Seriously, if a person can't cook or won't cook or doesn't have time to cook there are about a thousand-million Mom and Pop type pizza places on this earth. Some of them are run by people who can twirl the dough like dough-twirling rock stars. Some of them are run by people who make their own dough. These people should be supported before that mass-produced delivery crap takes over the world and we're left with legends about what pizza should taste like. THERE IS NO CORN SYRUP IN PIZZA SAUCE. There shouldn't be anyway. Then again, I have sliced raw vegetables onto the pizza dough and let it go at that. Rockin' the pizza Neapolitan style. Yes, my pizza was very, very tasty and good. No, I didn't make enough for everyone. I just left instructions and that ought to be enough. Current Music: The Who: Quadrophenia |
| Sunday, March 30th, 2008 | |
| 1:58 am | How to become a best-selling author How to become a best selling author When I pop up my myspace account and check the new blog posts I don't expect any real shocks to my system. The nice woman who runs the James Michael fan page is going to hit me with three or four new alerts. The guy who runs the blog which investigates what myspace accounts actually belong to professional wrestlers and which are set up by desperate posers is going to spam me at least once a week with half a dozen updates, which are remarkably valuable in some ways. He's how I found Mick Foley, DDP and The Rock and I love those sites. Page in particular rocks. I've told him so. I don't expect real life shocks. I have real life friends on there as well as friends currently in the process of blurring the lines between real life and web life but you just don't expect a big shock. Except on March fifteenth my friend Annie's son, Andrew Britton, died and she turned to the web to make sure her large collection of friends knew. I began crying as I read. Annie is the general manager of my favorite pub. Just maybe ten days before Andrew's death we got a chance to chat for awhile, Annie and I, and I basically sat back while she bragged on her oldest boy. I just let her run, partly because I freakin' love her accent (she's from Ireland) and partly because this was a real treat to watch. She just glowed talking about him, about how his first two novels hit the New York Times bestseller list, how the third had just been published, about how she found out he was writing when he came in to see her with the manuscript and the publishing contract in hand. No brag from Andrew; he researched and wrote his book, researched how books get published and went from there. The American was published in 2006, The Assassin in 2007 and The Invisible just weeks before Andrew's death. I know he had the fourth book plotted and mostly researched though I don't know what will happen to it now. I also know that his first two books were published in paperback after the hardcover publishing and were available on audio books. He was twenty-seven when he died. Listening to Annie talk about Andrew just made me happy. She was so proud of him, not just for having actually published but because he'd quietly set a goal, quietly worked his arse off and quietly achieved it. He was a best selling author as his beaming mum was happy to remind you but that didn't seem to be the point for him. He still lived in the same small apartment. He was still a minimalist: he had a computer, a sound system, two chairs, a table and his bed in that apartment. He hung out with his friends and his family. And he worked. Four hours a day he read or researched, four hours a day he wrote. If he was after celebrity writer status he was going about it the wrong way because he rarely discussed his job (and that's the secret kids, it was his job) preferring to leave the bragging to his mother. Somewhere along the line Andrew got the idea he was going to have to work for a living and he just got on with it. Somewhere some arsehole will probably go for the desire to achieve the immigrant boy's dream as a motivation for Andrew's drive and work ethic. It's true Andrew was born in Ireland as was most of his family but Damon Runyon got it all wrong; I'm not far from my immigrant ancestors and for the most part people come to America simply because they can survive a little more easily than they can back home. Some assimilate, becoming more American than anyone and some remain themselves. Andrew went into the military both because he felt he should serve his new country and because there are some benefits involved. The military wanted him to stay in but he left and used his benefits and mustering out pay to go to technical school. He got a good job and he joked with his friends and family, teased his siblings and he wrote. He stayed close to his roots and he was loved. He remained himself. Annie thinks he drove himself too hard and I tend to agree: three novels in three years is fucking nuts, my friends. Nevertheless, it's a hell of an achievement. I doubt at any point the idea was to be a wicked rich and famous writer. There aren't that many of those when you think about it, certainly damn few in the Rowling/King circle of rich and famous. Household name famous you have Clancy, Rowling, King, Rice and maybe Brown even if he does suck. I didn't know Andrew except through his mother so I can't tell you that this was not on his to-do list. I just don't think that kind of fame and money was the point; he was making a nice living as a novelist and that was the point. One of the very few rare books I own is a first edition of Stephen King's Danse Macabre, a book I truly adore. This was his look at the horror genre in literature, film and television and there are some good thoughts in there. Along with some wickedly funny and wrong anecdotes about Harlan Ellison. Really, anyone expecting Harlan to behave like everyone else needs there reality filter adjusted; he's been wrong all his life. And there's this bit, which I have by memory but will paraphrase. The idea that you can be anything you want to be is not correct. It is wrong. King pointed out that he'd been playing guitar since his teenage years and still hadn't managed to learn more than three chords. He just didn't have that talent; with practice he could get better but he was never going to be Eric Clapton. He does have writing talent...oh, smirk if you must, that son-of-a-bitch has created more fleshed-out and real characters only to dispose of them within two paragraphs than most people could manage in their whole lives. There are published authors who couldn't characterize their central character that well in a three hundred page novel. But as King pointed out, talent or no talent, whatever it is you want to excel at will require work. You have to practice. Clapton used to practice until his fingertips bled. Iommi lost two of his fingertips in an industrial accident, made his own prostheses, detuned his guitar and practiced. I think that Gilmour not only slept with his guitar he may have actually had relations with it, he's spent so much time working at his craft. You work at it. You work at it even when you think you suck. You work at it even when professionals tell you that you suck. You remember that The Beatles were rejected by every record label save one in England. You remember that King keeps a nice drawer full of rejection letters from when he was a fledgling writer. If you're nasty like me you keep a copy of Carrie around to remind yourself that where he began was sure as hell not where he wound up. Well, I'm not entirely nasty because I like to remember what the first Motley Crue record sounded like and remind myself that I cannot live without Sixx: AM's The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack, one of the truly important tools I am using to help fix myself. If anyone ever told me back in the 1980s that I would someday admire Nikki Sixx and think very seriously about having some of his words tattooed on my living flesh...I would've beaten the shit out of that idiot before referring them to some critical mental health services. You gotta be shittin' me. Does it matter if you're working at your kitchen table in rural Maine, worrying about how you're going to pay your bills or at a table at a cafe which will allow you to sit there without spending too much on coffee or in your barely furnished apartment in Raleigh, North Carolina? No. Does it matter if anyone ever knows you're working your arse off? No. What matters is the work. No publicists, stylists or posse required. Actually what really matters is how you touch the lives of others. I watched people white-knuckle their way through eulogies at our church here in Raleigh, decrying how hard it was to explain how funny Andrew was, how unpretentious, how unpresumptive he was. I watched his mother put her own feelings aside and invite Andrew's stepfather who'd help raise him from the age of six to the memorial and invite him to speak. That was not a pretty divorce but...he was Andrew's dad, the only dad Andrew ever knew. And I watched that man white knuckle his way through his eulogy, trying to explain that they loved him because they loved him, not because they had reason to be proud of him. I watched that big Irishman break down as he talked about his boy, pull himself together and go on. I saw musicians put aside their plans to play at his memorial. I watched people surge around for Andrew, for the family, for Annie. Had nothing to do with his books. He did well and that's a lovely thing. He worked at his craft, he achieved. That's beautiful. What's more beautiful is that he's loved. Notice I didn't put that in the past tense. He IS loved. At the after-memorial gathering at the pub I finally got a chance to wrap my arms around Annie and let her lean a little. She's a tiny thing, bird-like, constantly in motion and I worry what will happen when all the have-to-be-dones are over and the reality of his physical absence sinks in. There's no getting over some losses. Annie is strong and she'll learn to live with it, but she'll never get over it even if she did think when she first saw him that she wouldn't get to keep him for long. Nothing will ever be the same. I know this and she'll know it and I intend to be able to lend an ear or a shoulder when that hits. There came a moment when I found myself standing in front of a small table in the pub. On it were two of his books (the third is so new they couldn't find a bloody copy in time), the folded flag given for his service to this country, the photos and his urn. Now, I know he wasn't in there. His physical remains, his shell, yeah but he's not trapped in an urn. Annie and his siblings can feel him all around them. They say he pushed his brother off his bicycle and judging by Chris' face at the memorial -- those boys were known to play rough. But when I'm confronted by the traditional reminders of someone who was once here and now is somewhere else, a grave marker or an urn, I feel compelled to say something. I looked around and saw that the people there weren't ashamed to cry if need be or laugh if they could. There was a lot of hugging going on. I personally probably hugged and kissed more strangers or almost strangers that day than I have in my whole life, at least while stone cold sober. I spent more than a few minutes with Annie's brother who came over from Ireland fearing she'd be alone in her grief and found himself awed and overwhelmed by all the people who gathered around her and her children. So I brushed my fingers across the urn, a lovely thing really and said "You did well, dear boy. You're loved." If all you want to be is a best selling author then remember: eight hours a day and don't brag on it, just do it. Practice, write, work, research. If you work at it your talent will carry you as far as it can. But if you want to be a whole person you might want to consider the value of living well and being loved. According to his girlfriend's friend, who spoke at the memorial simply because his girlfriend was too shattered one of Andrew's pet phrases was "Dance even if you can't." As I understand it he was a lousy dancer but still he danced. It was fun. He wasn't worried about his lack of mad dancing skills. What was important was to join in the dancing. If his dancing made some people laugh, well, that was good too. I'm thinking of having those words put on a t-shirt. He did very well. He is loved. http://www.andrewbrittonbooks.com/conte |
| Friday, December 14th, 2007 | |
| 3:53 pm | No, I will NOT 'get over it', thank you Like any relatively insane human in the twenty-first century with computer access I get news feeds to my homepage. The feeds deal with lots of different categories, from news-news to sport (okay, the Boston Red Sox) to music. And on my newsfeed the other day comes word that one of the new inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will be... Madonna. What the fuckity fuck? Madonna? So I hied myself off to the R&R HoF site http://www.rockhall.com/inductees/alpha Um, no. This year's inductees include John Mellencamp and I call that one righteous. Mellencamp is a rocker from time to time. He can rock your arse when he feels the need. Leonard Cohen is another 2008 inductee and I can dig that too: he is a haunting artist. The Dave Clark Five and The Ventures...well, they have a place in the history of the amporphous thing called rock and roll. I'm not about to set out to define what is and isn't rock and roll right here and now basically because that's not possible. There are those who think Kansas played rock and roll, you know? But...Madonna? I say no. I really do and this isn't even personal. Personally I admire the woman. She has made a life and a career for herself and does not seem to give much of a damn what you or I or anyone thinks of this. She's even taken some artistic risks and I'm not referring to her nude photos or the sexual overtones in her videos. I'm talking about fighting for and portraying the lead role in the film Evita. For those who don't remember, Madonna was not universally hailed as the one who HAD to play Evita in the film. No, no, there are theatre denizens who to this very day lose their collective shit when they think about what Patti LuPone would've done with the role, since she originated it on Broadway and blew the minds of all who saw her. It's hard for me to say whether or not LuPone would've done the same on film since film and theatre are two very different mediums. But Madonna campaigned hard for and trained hard for the role and she got it. I think she worked hard. I think she did her best and I think what undercuts her efforts is that she had actual actors around her. Personally, despite the fact that I think Antonio Banderas can be a damn fine actor from time to time and was in that era so pretty to look at that I labelled all of my tapes of his films as personal porn, I rather wished they'd brought Mandy Patinkin in to play Che in the film. Still, Banderas was a very good Che and Jonathan Pryce was an incredibly good Peron. The problem for Madonna came when she had to play scenes with Banderas or Pryce; without breaking a sweat they just blew her off the screen. They made their portrayals look very real and almost effortless while you could SEE Madonna acting her arse off. Disconcerting. But this is neither here nor there; I just have issues with Madonna making the bleedin' Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when a number of real rockers are still waiting to be tapped, that's my issue. I think she's earned her career. Madonna's worked hard and to be blunt she's gone a lot further with the talent she has than most people thought she would back when she first debuted. She hit the public conciousness at roughly the same time as Cyndi Lauper and most of us who are real music wankers thought Lauper would be the big star; better voice, better performance presence, talented song writer. We were wrong. Lauper's had a very good career (if you can make a living doing nothing but music without having to take day jobs, that's a career) but nothing compared to Madonna. But I looked over who's been inducted already and noted some absences and got madly pissed off about it. No Iron Maiden. No Judas Priest. No Deep Purple and if you want to ignore the band...well, your business but how the hell do you ignore Ritchie Blackmore who invented the chord progression virtually every brand-new guitarist tries to master first? And personally I think Alice Cooper and Kiss have had a hell of a lot of impact on rock and roll; please remember that when VH1 did a tribute to Kiss there was nearly armed conflict amongst important rock musicians fighting for a place in the one time only tribute band. It doesn't take much for an award once considered an honor to become a joke, you know. Consider the damage the Grammys did themselves in 1989 by giving a Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance Vocal or Instrumental to Jethro Tull. So much damage they dropped the category entirely and to this very day hard rock and metal performers wince before reading the nominees in their category, hoping Celine Dion didn't cover a metal track and get herself nominated. So, think about it R&R HoF. Because, you know, there are some hard rockin' bands out there you've never noticed and some of us are mildly pissed off already. Where's the love for Iggy Pop, that's what I'd like to know? |
| Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 | |
| 7:30 pm | PSA I sometimes -- not always, but definitely sometimes -- wish Rowling had trademarked as much of the HPverse as humanly possible before book one was released and let her lawyers enforce it. Hard. Yeah, there'd be some brilliant fan fic missing but when you balance the rare good stuff against the crap...well, if Ammit could consume crap fan fic and art instead of sinful hearts he'd have feasted well. See fandom_wank for details. I almost always wish these days Rowling would calmly announce that Harry and Ginny were both virgins the first time they got in on together. This wish is born of frustration and spite on my part: one more self-centered twat comes out with a crap theory like "Ginny the whore MADE Harry have sex with her and got pregnant to trap him into marriage" and I'm going to do someone an injury. I'm so sick of so many in this fandom. |
| Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 | |
| 2:14 pm | Fandom, must you always bring the stupid to the playing field? The Dumbest Shit I've Seen This Week¹ http://www.journalfen.net/community/fan http://www.journalfen.net/community/fan Lemme lss this for ya: SVA and his publishers are dumber than dog shit. Because they could easily have published the Lexicon as a book by adding the word "Unofficial" or "Unauthorized" to the title and by excising huge chunks of quotes from Rowling's published work. In other words, with a little work they'd have a publishable piece. Others exist. Google "The Idiot's Guide to Harry Potter" for details, along with half a dozen or so unofficial guides and commentaries. Why didn't they? Simple two part answer: to do this would have required work and to do this would have limited sales. Unofficial doesn't sell worth a damn in the Rowlingverse. I really want to ask SVA and his publishers how in the hell they got so stupid but then I'd have to talk to them so...no. They COULD have edited the Lexicon into a tighter manuscript, re-written what ought to be re-written, excised essays and opinion pieces SVA didn't write (that's heinous in and of itself; we can publish what we want, JKR you meanie, but we can also publish stuff we didn't write without compensating the original contributors with actual money) and made it very, very clear this piece was a compilation of facts and definitions derived by the author from Rowling's work. Would it compete with Rowling's unpublished encyclopedia? Hell, no. She knows way more about the Potterverse and it's inhabitants than one can derive from the published books and for this reason alone that encyclopedia will be snapped up like fish food in a koi pond by...well, me at least. Just for giggles, Google companion books authorized and not, for Tolkien and Star Trek. See you tomorrow. But that requires a little thought and a little strategy and a lot of work. What SVA et al should have done is work that thing into proper shape then publicize it as a 'labor of love by the creator of the Lexicon'. Emphasize SVA's fannish devotion to Rowling's work, act all unassuming and modest and then maybe you get your book published without ten thousand cease and desist orders. But no, pissing off a woman and her corporate partners who together could fucking BUY a small country...Lichtenstein, let's say...was in their minds a better strategy. So, they lose and I laugh. Then I laugh harder when fan fic writers pile in on SVA's side because, OMG, think of the fan fic. No thank you, I'd like to keep my lunch down. Lunch was tasty. People, Rowling created the characters and universe y'all like to And if you're not smart enough to recognize where the names and places you're messing with were born then recognize this: if Rowling wished she could fuck you people over by trademarking and copyrighting certain words and names from her works. Then, every time you write about Draco Malfoy or Lucius Malfoy or Severus Snape you're in fucking violation of her trademarked and copyrighted PROPERTY and you can expect a C&D from her attorneys. Oh. Yeah. Didn't think of that, did you? You want to write endless crap without worrying about copyright violation? Invent your own universe. ________________________________________ ¹Okay, online and not including anything done by Britney Spears or people who think going to the funeral of a gay man and 'protesting' is a good thing. Really, what are they protesting? Burying the guy? Well, you can't leave bodies lying around unburied because it's unsanitary. Current Music: Faith No More: Epic |
| Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 | |
| 9:14 pm | It's time  Current Music: Van Morrison and the Chieftains |
| 3:56 pm | For those of us still riding the Red Sox high... For those of you still on the Red Sox high video of the Rolling Rally can be found here: http://www.boston.com/sports/nesn/ See Papelbon dance. See Papelbon play air guitar on a broom. See Papelbon wear a kilt and dance his arse all over Boston. I have this silly grin on my face that will not go away.... I'm sure there'll be scads of videos on youtube later, but I'm coming up blank right now. NESN will have to do. |
| Monday, October 29th, 2007 | |
| 5:24 pm | Sure, other teams have "pitchers"... ...but can they dance? |
| 4:00 pm | Red Sox fall out  What the Red Sox victory over the Rockies in four straight games has allowed me to do: 1.) Post news of said victory in forty point text on my blogs, thereby screwing up all of my friends friends lists. I took the size tag off just a few minutes ago because I'd forgotten in my excitement what screwing with the font size does to friends lists. My celebratory post is still red and still scrolling and so it shall as long as lj and jf stand. 2.) Scream "MOTHERFUCKING YES!!!!" at the top of my lungs when the Sweetest Strike Of The Year went off at the bottom of the ninth inning while jumping to my feet and pumping my fist. I scared the cats. I scared the dogs. I pissed off the other person in this flat and I don't care. Fuck that, laying around like a beached whale while the Red Sox were kicking arse and taking names. Show some love. Recognize. 3.) Make cake. Okay, I never need an excuse for that one but this was Cake With a Purpose. If by chance there was no Red Sox victory then it would be consolation cake. Because they won and won well it is celibratory cake. Which I had for breakfast and lunch. Because the Red Sox don't win the World Series every other bleedin' year so it's okay. The cake has icing which is the taste and consistency of spoon fudge. Like cake and confection all at once. I'm going to hell. No, I'm going to the work-out room. 4.) Stay up until seven o'clock in the morning watching a Japanese horror film on Turner Classic Movies. Which, you'd think one thing has nothing to do with the other, but I had a huge adrenaline rush augmented by a sugar rush (the best part about baking from scratch is licking beaters, spoons and bowls clean...why aren't I in the work-out room right now?) and simply could not sleep after all the post-game stuff was over. I need horror films at this time of year but I'm not a big fan of the slasher genre, which are more about scaring you via gross-out than suspense, for the most part. The first film I watched, Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell was...okay. I think if it wasn't for the heavy anti-war, anti-establishment message overlayed on it and hammered home with one of those massive hammers they use to drive pilings into the ocean floor I'd have liked it more. The second was bloody brilliant, though. I'm kind of really into horror and spooky stories and it's my opinion that any story featuring vengeful Japanese ghosts is made purely of win. These are not your helpful, domestic ghosts or your pathetic show-me-the-way-to-the-light ghosts, Japanese ghosts from time to time exist purely to fuck your shit up and take you with them. Kwaidan (1964) will so be added to my personal collection. Holy shit, that's one brilliant film. Stylistically, thematically it is a masterpiece. And it's not a wimpy masterpiece either because any ghost who decides to rip someone's ears off is not wimpy. This involved dragging poor Hoichi around the courtyard and grounds of the temple by his ears leaving a blood trail. Ew. Now I need to acquire my very own copy of this film because I really want to watch it again, right now. I also need to explore the works of Lafcadio Hearn, an Irish-Greek man who in 1890 found himself in Japan and assimilated so thoroughly he wound up teaching at Tokyo Imperial University, married a Japanese woman of samurai ancestry and became a naturalized Japanese subject. How did I never hear of this man in my life? I have to rectify this. As soon as I figure out how the Red Sox winning the World Series for exactly the second time in my life lead to me finding a new source of skeery love from Japan. |
| 12:24 am | WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |
| Sunday, October 28th, 2007 | |
| 3:36 pm | A pathetically boring ghost story  I deeply love this time of year. Seriously, autumn has always been my favorite season, though I couldn't tell you why. Maybe because I'm an October baby, maybe because I grew up in a part of New England where it felt to me the earth was having its last big party for settling down for a nice, long winter's rest. The trees were a riot of impossible color, the air smelled clear, crisp and good and I could feel something mystical coming up from the ground beneath me into me, right up through my feet. Or maybe it's the candy, I don't know. Anyway, this time of year between the cleaning and the cleansing (two different things), the preparation for the big holiday on both a secular and spiritual basis and the cooking and baking I find myself in the mood to tell you the most boring and tedious ghost story I've lived. ( I have better ghost stories, but that's just too much typing right now... ) Here's an early Halloween gift, though apparently no authorized video exists for it: Guns n Roses version of Sympathy For the Devil. http://youtube.com/watch?v=AQJ5pGDGvZk I still wish Leonard Cohen could be persuaded to cover this song. That'd be some bad, bad shit and I would absolutely love it. Current Music: Guns n Roses |
| Thursday, October 25th, 2007 | |
| 10:56 pm | Opinion I'm saying this once. I'm stating my opinion. If you disagree, then you disagree, but your opposing opinion changes mine not one bit. I fucking HATE RPF. I think RPF is disrespectful of the autonomy of other people. I think it's a failure to recognize people are people, not play toys or puppets or dolls who exist merely for some crap-headed bint's personal amusement. I think RPF is disgusting. Doesn't matter if there's sex involved or not; if someone thinks that using real people as bendable, poseable dolls for their own amusement is a good thing, I don't want to know that person. And that's all I have to say. |
| Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 | |
| 7:13 pm | The door's open but the ride it ain't free  Somehow or another I missed marking Bruce Springsteen's birthday, which is September 23rd. Heinous behavior on my part until I take into consideration the peculiar qualities of my personal take on Springsteen fandom. For me, it's all about the music. Yeah, yeah, I KNOW, but for me it really is all about the music. I commented jokingly on someone's blog that it was silly for someone to expect me to pick a favorite song from the brand-new and shiny Magic album when it is absolute fact that I still can't pick a favorite song from Born To Run which I've owned and loved for thirty-two years. ( Walk down this road with me, I don't think you'll be sorry ) Current Music: Springsteen and the E Street Band: 1975 Concert |
| Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 | |
| 2:48 am | Number nine...number nine...number nine    |