Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: July 2010
Various & sundry
We’re coasting along at supra-100 degree weather (38 C) and the only good thing I can say about that is, in our garage it sure is easy to soften butter. Makes it much easier to prepare Lemon Squares, dontcha know.
Right now I’m baking Raspberry Squares. Instead of two tablespoons of lemon juice (and the lemon rind), I used about two tablespoons of fresh raspberry puree, maybe more than two tablespoons. I also added 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla (just because) and 1 teaspoon of Chambord (raspberry liqueur). I’ll let you know how it goes.
We were good consumers today. Yes, we did our part to bail out the flagging economy. Aside from dropping nearly three hundred dollars at CostCo, I bought a memory foam mattress and a new bed frame and head board from a local mattress store. We’ve been going without a head board ever since we left Oregon — if you think about it, it’s not exactly an essential item.
I also priced sofa beds, recliners, and bookshelves. We have a spare room which, until recently, was the inevitable (for us) junk room — boxes and boxes of books, old office papers, stuffed animals, and Jake’s old clothes. I’ve donated what I could, and I moved the “books to keep” boxes into the garage. At last, we have an empty room.
Which is striped with different shades of pastel pink.
A painter is coming early next week. I don’t have the aptitude to paint a room. I do have the aptitude to make a mess with paint and kind of paint a room. A man’s got to know his limitations.
The goal is to turn the room into a combo library/guest bedroom. Will anyone ever visit us in Bako? I don’t know! But at least now they’ll have no excuse.
I finished True Grit today. Great stuff. My edition had an interesting afterword, wherein Donna Tartt (an author who recorded the audio version of True Grit) mentions that the novel used to be favored in high school honors English classes — until the John Wayne movie came out. I suppose folks couldn’t take it seriously after that.
So I’m wondering what to read next. Little Big Man, perhaps? Hard to imagine that the book is much better than the movie. And . . . hmm. An introduction and a foreword? Does verisimilitude truly require 31 pages?
I spent last night killing Sister Miriam. Well, technically I didn’t kill her. Technically I carted her off to my interrogation chamber, and I could hear her screams as the chamber’s iron doors slammed shut. But the satisfaction is much the same.
Alpha Centauri is an oldie but a goodie. It’s brilliance lies in the fact that the various AI players each have distinctive political philosophies. Thus each human player can choose to play a faction whose philosophy matches his own; for example, I like to play as the University, which favors scientific achievement over all else. And each human player is free to go after the chief proponent of whichever political philosophy that human despises most.
Do tree-huggers make you sick? Then swear vendetta upon Lady Deirdre of the Gaians. Hate money-grubbing capitalists? Spit in the eye of the Morganites. Do communists toast your buns? Drop a planet buster on the Human Hive. And so forth. You can also victimize Che Guevara-style militants and bureaucrats. Honestly, there’s someone in this game that anyone would hate.
My pet peeve is religious fundamentalism, so I go after Sister Miriam.
Whenever I do this, I feel like I’m entering Sid Meier’s brain. Surely the creator of Alpha Centauri hates religious fundamentalism too — why else would he have handicapped The Believers with such backward research capabilities? It’s like he’s begging me to kick their asses. Their only advantage is a growth buff; yes, they breed like rabbits.
Jake watched me play last night. I was driving him crazy. See, Sister Miriam had declared an unprovoked war of aggression against my ally, Brother Lal of the Peacekeepers (the bureaucratic faction), and I had kindly agreed to defend him. First time around, Miriam kicked Lal’s faction into the dirt before I could bring over reinforcements. I rebooted to an earlier save, and this time managed to bring in reinforcements soon enough to save ONE of Lal’s cities. I used this as a base of operations to retake more of his cities — which I controlled, since I was the conquering party.
And I turned the cities back over to Brother Lal. That’s what drove Jake crazy. Why would I do something like that when I could expect nothing in return from this sorely abused AI player?
“I can’t very well kick The Believers asses if I have to leave units defending Brother Lal’s cities now, can I?”
Jake just shook his head. World domination is the only thing that makes sense to him. And, in the end, Jake’s outlook took hold. It drove me nuts when The Believers retook one of Lal’s cities. I captured it back from Miriam and renamed the city* Brother Lal? You mean Brother LOL!
Come to think of it, perhaps I should go haul Brother Lal off to my interrogation chamber. Just on general principle.
D.
*One of the many brilliant touches in Alpha Centauri: you can rename captured cities or come up with clever names for your own cities. Once I played as Miriam just so I could name her cities “Den of Iniquity,” “Satan’s Stronghold,” “The Devil’s Backbone,” and so forth. And then I let the University trounce me.
The revolutionary new undergarment whose time has come.
The Chupaca Bra*.
D.
*From Fox News, of course, where they would probably also gag on the word chihuahua (chi who-a who?)
Lemon squares
Recipe from the old gf, who used to make these back in high school, and who no doubt still makes a mean lemon square.
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup butter, softened*
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Mix flour, butter and powdered sugar. Press in ungreased square pan, 8x8x2 or 9x9x2 inches, building up 1/2 inch edges. Bake 20 minutes. Beat remaining ingredients about 3 minutes or until light and fluffy. Pour over hot crust.
Bake about 25 minutes or until no indentation remains when touched lightly in center; cool. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired.
When I made these tonight, I cut the amount of lemon peel in half but kept everything else the same. My crowd doesn’t like things that are too lemony (Jake especially).
If you’re used to making these with Crisco, you need to try the butter version. The crust is essentially short bread, and there’s plenty of custardy lemon curd on top. This is one of those desserts that I could easily nibble into extinction, so I have to force myself to cover it and stick it in the fridge. It’s that good.
It occurs to me that there’s no reason why this could not be adapted to any citrus fruit. The more interesting question is whether it would work for a strongly flavored berry, like raspberries. Would it be as good sans rind? I’ll have to try it some time, and I’ll report back to you.
D.
*One of the advantages of Bakersfield is that I can soften butter, proof yeast, and get my bread to rise in our rather poorly insulated garage.
The adult conspiracy
We’re in the gym, Jake and I, working out on the torso rotation machine. Two guys in their early 20s are working out next to us, taking turns on the preacher curl. Simultaneously, the three adults in this group of four notice a woman walking down the stairs.
Like this. Only walking. Down stairs.
One of the guys, call him Bearded Guy, says something relatively non-objectifying like “Well she’s in shape” (pretty innocent considering what guys will often say under such circumstances), and then they both noticed me watching, too. The second guy, call him Not Bearded Guy, says to me, “Yeah, you’re included in this conversation,” and we all laughed. Mind you, there were a dozen things being said without being said, without needing to be said, because when it comes to a good-looking woman, guys are psychic.
Right now, every man looking at this image is thinking the same thing.
“It never stops,” I tell them. “You could be 80.”
“Probably gets worse,” said Bearded Guy.
“Yup,” I said.
Bearded Guy: “Especially after marriage.”
Not Bearded Guy: “Oh, shut up.”
“You’re engaged?” I said.
“He’s married,” said Bearded Guy, and we all laughed.
Meanwhile, Jake was puzzled. “Why is that funny?” he asked.
“Remember the adult conspiracy in the Piers Anthony Xanth novels?” Always nice when I can make a literary reference to explain complex concepts. “We’re talking about the sex drive,” I added.
“Which is always in drive,” said Bearded Guy. “Never Park. Never Neutral.”
A little later, I watched Bearded Guy strike up a conversation with her. They were clear across the gym so I couldn’t tell what was said, but he wasn’t being rebuffed. I could tell that much.
“Amazing,” I said. “He’s picking up on her.”
“What?” said Jake.
“He’s making time.”
“Huh?”
“You know, they’re having a conversation.”
Jake shook his head a little, and I wouldn’t be at all shocked if he had rolled his eyes, too.
“It’s not often I feel naive,” he said.
D.
Am enjoying . . .
True Grit by Charles Portis. The movie with John Wayne was a faithful adaptation, although Wikipedia lists the differences, if you’re curious. Oh, and the Coen brothers are doing a remake, with Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn and Matt Damon as LaBouef (the Glenn Campbell role). Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld plays Mattie Ross (the Kim Darby role). Hard to see how they could improve or even rival the John Wayne version, but I suspect the Coen brothers might make a fair show of it.
You writers: take a look at True Grit (the novel) if you get the chance. Masterful characterization.
D.
Early morning shout-out: Big Think
This morning, I decided to check out one of my favorite writers on feminist issues, Lindsay Beyerstein (formerly of the Majikthise blog), for her thoughts on the whole dexamethasone-in-pregnancy pseudo-controversy (her take on it, which I agree with, is here: Preventing Lesbianism and “Uppity Women” in the Womb? No.). So I clicked on my “Majikthise” link and it redirected me to her new blog on Big Think. And that, of course, led me to the rest of Big Think.
Wow. Cool place. Currently, there’s a front page interview with Jere Van Dyk, a journalist who had been imprisoned by the Taliban for 45 days (What the Media Isn’t Telling Us About Afghanistan). Here’s Stephen Fry on The Importance of Unbelief, and Michio Kaku being kinda boring, really. So if I want my fix of wild science, I’ll have to read astrophysicist Katie Friese’s Life Could Continue Forever—Just Not as We Know It (what will constitute “life” once the universe nears heat death?)
Check it out. Meanwhile, my attention is divided — Karen recorded an all-day marathon of Ninja Warrior.
D.
Coins of the world
From Rhodesia and Nyasaland, I bring you
High five!
dancing elephants.
Yeah, I got nothing. But you’ll be glad to hear I finally donated six boxes of books to the local library. Kept something like ten boxes, but six is a start.
D.
A truly awesome opening
We heart Colbert.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Carell Corral | ||||
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D.
What I did this weekend
Among other things, I watched movies.
Best of the bunch was Let the Right One In, a subtitled Swedish coming-of-age vampire movie. It’s about a bullied 12-year-old named Oskar (who is a very dark child, despite being all blond and blue-eyed and Swedish) who befriends Eli, a girl (maybe) who has been 12 for the last 200 years. The cinematography is spectacular, the film is well paced, and the child actors are mesmerizing. Most fascinating thing: leaving aside the whole bleeding your victims to death thing, is Eli evil? For most of the movie, I saw her as a practiced user who victimizes the men/boys who become fond of her. Won’t spoil the ending, but it did leave my early judgment somewhat shaken.
Next up was Dead Snow, a subtitled Norwegian zombie movie. Nazi zombies. Fast Nazi zombies. Who prey upon a group of witless but attractive medical students. I know, I know, what more could you ask for? Some originality, for one thing. One of the med students is afraid of the sight of blood. Another is a horror movie aficionado, who really ought to know better than to get laid early in the movie, because of course that means he’s one of the first to die. (Movie tropes dictate that the woman gets it first, because naughty women are more intrinsically zombie food than naughty men.) I recommend you pass on this one.
Finally, we watched a Woody Harrelson movie, Zombieland, a non-subtitled American zombie flick about a neurotic young guy with irritable bowel syndrome who as the movie starts thinks he’s the last non-cannibalistic guy in America, or what’s left of America, which he has renamed Zombieland. But he soon meets up with Woody Harrelson, an actor who surprises me because I never thought the Woody from Cheers would ever amount to anything. I liked him in this, and thought he and the protagonist (Jesse Eisenberg) had great chemistry and were a hoot to watch.
A horde of flesh-eating children. What's not to love?
But then they had to bring a couple of other characters into the film: Abigail Breslin who is supposed to be twelve in the film, probably really WAS twelve, but looked about fifteen, and love interest Emma Stone. They play con artist sisters, and the trouble is, in this cut-throat world these two are just too evil to live. This was sufficiently annoying that my wife stopped watching it (shortly after yelling at the screen, “SHOOT THEM ALREADY!”) but Jake and I trudged on.
It’s all a matter of suspension of disbelief. Or perhaps a trust in male hormones; after all, there’s a good chance Emma Stone is the last eligible female in the mainland 48, so why wouldn’t the two guys put up with a seemingly endless stream of abuse? I had no problem believing that, but my Vulcan wife couldn’t buy it.
Fun movie. Not my favorite zombie movie (Dead Alive and Fido vie for that top slot), but it had enough style and humor to keep me entertained. Much better than boring old fast Nazi zombies speaking Norwegian, anyway. Aside from an annoying cameo by Bill Murray and the aforementioned “why don’t they blow them away” problem, Zombieland (not to be confused with Brad Dourif’s Zombieland, also released in 2009) was a fun ride, great fare for the Fourth of July weekend.
D.