Cooking

Here I am cooking lunch for I don’t know how many people.  I don’t know how many because the cafeteria is closed today but there will still be people at work.  I told all my lunch buddies that I’m cooking today, but I bet they all packed lunches because, well, they’re engineering staff and they’re like that.
Anyway it’s parsnips pan fried in butter, basmati rice, an abbreviated sort of salad, and crockpot chicken thighs with basil, pepper, kashmiri red pepper, celery salt, two cloves of garlic, a bay leaf, and about a quarter teaspoon of cardamom.  The smell in here is enough to turn your salivary glands into Niagara Falls.

Now I have to figure out how to get it down the freaking hill without breaking anything.  I am not stupid, I’ll come up with something.

Heading home

I will be heading home this morning.  The break was very restful and I’m feeling a little bit more optimistic than I was when I ventured over here on Saturday.  Work will be very busy, but I’m actually looking forward to it.

I’m hoping Kopper saved me some turducken, she said there was leftovers…

Three movies.

OMG I just say On Her Majesty’s Secret Service for the first time. I didn’t realize that George Lazenby stepped in when Sean Connery bailed after the second Bond. Basically, my review equals a thumbs up and I want to see it again eventually – Diana Rigg is radiant. George just looks (inner lawyer has s-canned that comment) uh, can’t say that either. How about he’s maler than Roger Moore and less male than Timothy Dalton. Nothing, of course, outmales Sean Connery. I trust this clears things up.

Also saw Director’s Cut of Blade Runner.

The soundtrack is like an animal at bay; the colours have been refreshed and cleansed, leaving the movie still dark but with dreamlike spots of brightness. They got rid of that cornball ending, the movie makes more narrative sense and the performances are still riveting. About half an hour into the movie you stop saying – and there’s another and another and another SF / anime trope. It’s like a waterfall of tropes. It’s a visually sumptuous brainstretcher of a film.
Also saw All The Real Girls.

Picture every undereducated duckwit you ever met. Colour him ‘asshole’. Watch him struggle – usually without success – to become a better person. Nobody dies and he smartens up about one quarter of one percent. Still, it’s progress, right?

In a couple of places, this movie made me so mad, that I had to chase down the source of this unreasonable burst of biliousness. After a brief cogitation, I figured out what made me so irritable and calmed down. I’m not married any more, I’m not married any more. I never have to be mad again if I choose not to be. I’m sure I will be, especially when I’m driving, or back seat driving, but really, I don’t have to experience all the wackiness of hormones and digestion that goes with being mad. It was quite a thought provoking movie. It made me think a lot about female stupidity and male abuse.

Merry Christmas movie reviews

It’s 4 in the morning…. I napped so much yesterday that I can no longer sleep. So now I’m up, and while I’m here I might as well review Black Snake Moan.

Movie about redemption where nobody gets killed?  Yes there is some violence.   Sign me up.  Christina Ricci gives a performance somewhere between possessed and mesmeric (and she don’t wear too much clothes)  and Samuel L Jackson is great, and they do their own singing, and how can I as a Unitardarian not like a movie in which Christina Ricci sings a hymn “This Little Light of Mine”? (which is in Singing the Living Tradition, the UU hymnal).  The soundtrack is uniformly excellent.
Jeff and Andrew I also watched two fifths of Spike Lee’s She Hate Me but he turned it off when I got up and walked out the room.  Lee, in my view, doesn’t leaven his bitterness with enough humour, and when he does use humour it’s not much fun.  He keeps making peep peep noises about not hating women and being misinterpreted but I don’t f2cking buy it. The hell of it is I love Spike’s visual style and economy and pacing and music – but I can’t swallow the bile.  The best part of the movie was watching the credits and seeing SO many talented actors on the playbill – and getting hopeful.  Great opening credit sequence too.  I just can’t buy the rich gorgeous lesbians paying for sex to have a baby thing.  Any group of women that smart should be able to come up with a plan for finding babydaddies that doesn’t involve spending money.  Hell, I’m not that smart and I could do it.  If you’re going to do a movie about how the good guy always gets screwed, try not to make the motifs quite so obvious.

Merry Christmas!  May the transcendent wonder of a new life infuse your being.  And if you’re not a transcendent wonder kind of person, have a good day filled with friends, food and family.

Sundry and various

Check out the Robot Chicken video about how they make their characters…. it’s cool! The rest of the site has some, uh, good parts too.

OMG exploding pies. Well, not so much.

I don’t feel competent to explain WHY I don’t like this story, but I sure don’t.

All of the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car.”

Growing the finks of tomorrow, today.

$14 for a cup of coffee?

Yecch.

Merry Christmas everybody. 

Sun Room

It is so beautiful in the sun room here. There are birds hopping around and the gas fireplace pouring heat out onto my feet.  And pOp said, look, a network connection.

There’s a piece of customized stained glass my parents had made to symbolize their love.  Their initials are intertwined (makes me think of that piece of jewellery in Game of Kings – but EVerything reminds me of Dunnett) and the things they think are important are symbolized in the openings between the Celtic knot.  There’s a Tree and a Mortarboard and a pair of Hummingbirds and a Tesseract.

There are juncoes and flickers.

O it’s a beautiful room.

Gotta run, I have to get Keith to the ferry with mOm.

Victoria II

I am currently reading the Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt.

It’s an excellent book, and it makes me very happy to be a Unitarian.  Not because the author is, but because the ideas expressed in it are so amazingly and repeatedly Unitarian that the whole bloody book comes off as nothing so much as a strikingly amazing Unitarian sermon or group of sermons. 

Also, LTGW at work keeps saying, “You have to read Cialdini‘s Influence, you have to read Cialdini’s Influence” and now that I’m reading the Happiness Hypothesis I guess I’ll have to because Haidt cites it constantly.

The metahypothesis is that science and emotion don’t have to conflict.  This is actually the big scrap between Faith and Reason right now, or as seen by the religious types, Big Satanic Soulless Violent Freedom Hating Science and Poor Put-upon Faith, or by atheists, Rationality vs. Whiny Ass Crybaby Hyperemotional GodWalloping.

Anyway, I’m havin’ a lovely time laying about reading and hanging with the folks.  Jeff just turned up… I’m going to see if I can get him to run me out to the mall.

Victoria

Jeff come and collected me and then kidnapped me for an ninety minutes’ worth of Robot Chicken.  Scarlett Johannson as a crazy girlfriend style GPS?  Yowza.

My mom cooked us dinner.  It was tasty and nourishing too. 

 

This morning I found out about the existence of bacon brittle.

 

I’ve been told that this should be served as a side for  the next Mars Bar Cthtulhuthon… Mmmm bacon brittle.  (added later, per Kopper’s warning do not use this recipe) 

What next, haggis?  Let us preserve decorum.  Mind you I was actually thinking of renting a bagpiper for the last time, but I thought that was over the top even for me.   

Enough of that!  The meal was turkey breast and home made stuffing and yams and salad and bread and cranberry dressing and a cauliflower cheese.  AND pie.  And ice cream.  So I have to say I am very impressed with just how much slaving over a hot stove my ma did for me today, and that maybe next Christmas I should think about getting here earlier and cooking more….

I got Hep A and Hep B shots this morning and I feel weird – oh shut up, weirder than normal.  Mind you my consciousness has been a variable and vinegary brew this past few weeks, with a couple of very nice breaks….  Pause to smile and look off into the middle distance with my head tilted to one side. I did manage to make some very nice memories in the last week.

Keith is still here.  It is so good to see him.

Now know snow – must go

I am contemplating the precipitation and thinking I wish I did some form of winter sport that involved snow rather than ice.  Because, dear friends, there’s rather a lot of it.  To quote the Caleban in the Frank Herbert Jorj X McKie books, “Low temperature and much moisture”.

Unfortunately I must now pack and get out of here to go to the ferry, and first I have an appointment right downtown at 9:30.  Must… drink… coffee. And I will hope that when I get off this blessed hill, the precip is rain rather than snow, so the Vancouver drivers are just regular, rather than supercharged, idiots.

I am looking forward to seeing the folks, though, and Jeff and Granny.