Thirteen things I learned from Cosmo, Part … eh, whatever
If there were even 10% truth in advertising, one issue of Cosmo would make me a happy man. Think about it: June’s “75 Hot Mattress Moves” would have yielded (rounding down) seven new tricks to wow my wife. Seven!
. . . which just happens to be the exact number of “boundary-pushing moves all men secretly crave.” All men? We’ll see about that.
50 Ways to Be Closer to Him: will I find five that would work on me?
(Undoubtedly.
1. “Hey, come here.”
2. “You coming to bed, or what?”
3. “Rub this, why don’t you.”
4. (pointing)
5. “Ahem.”
Have I mentioned yet, I’m easy?)
Follow me below the fold for more Cosmolicious (their word, not mine) goodies.
Cin Cin
According to the Urban Dictionary, “Cin Cin” is Italian for “Cheers!” It “derives from the sound of the glasses clinking together.”
It also fails to transcend cultural boundaries:
Years ago I toasted my Mother not with the usual “Kampai!” but with my new uber-cool “Cin Cin” picked up from South American friends.
Mom blanched. Who knew cin cin is Japanese slang for penis?
More to the point, Cin Cin (Vancouver, BC) has a deeper meaning for me and my family because it provided ONLY THE BEST MEAL WE’VE HAD since Hoppe’s in 1996, okay?
Follow me below the fold for food, glorious food.
Of an age
A few evenings ago, I called an old friend* whom I have not spoken to since 9th grade. I changed high schools in 10th grade, and quickly drifted away from my old gang.
Right from the start, we were both struck by the fact we hadn’t spoken to one another since before puberty. In other words, we remembered one another’s pre-pubertal voices, so our adult voices sounded recognizable but eerily different.
The other remarkable thing: both of us have gone through several major upheavals, and yet we’re both the same people we were at age 14. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. As I think you all know by now, I’ve kept in touch with gf v1.0, and she’s very much the same person I first met at 15.
I remember when I met up with her again after a long absence (it took me a few years to get over the breakup). We sat together at her sister’s wedding, me by myself, she with her husband, a friend of mine from high school. Some days later, her sister told me, “They were a little worried you’d be different. Arrogant, maybe, because of med school and all of that. But they said you were the same old Doug.”
But she has changed, of course, and so have I, and so has my pal from 9th grade; as with our voices, we’re recognizable, but eerily different. We take on new abilities, new likes and dislikes, and we shed some of our old needs and tendencies. It’s like changing clothes, I suppose. The flesh remains the same, while the outer trappings come and go.
My friend wondered if this was a middle-aged thing, this desire to get back in touch with our old mates. We’re of an age now when death doesn’t seem all that improbable. We can’t take each other for granted anymore — not that we ever could, but it becomes more undeniable with each passing year.
I wonder if there is something almost literary about it. Is it the desire to leave no loose ends behind, leave nothing unsaid? Is it a repugnance for red herrings, or merely the desire to make sense out of something (a life) not obliged to make sense?
This year is the 50th anniversary of Hugh Everett’s “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics — an idea with which most SF readers have more than passing familiarity. As I get older, Everett’s ideas give me more and more satisfaction, the same sort of comfort I imagine many folks get from religion. I get older, my options flicker off like the evening lights of a metropolitan skyline, but there are worlds out there where I have explored other avenues, taken different paths. I may not be able to go back and do things differently, but I don’t have to; some of me are already living those lives. I wonder how I’m doing.
D.
*This dude, who claims he’s not ready for high traffic yet — so go visit him and it’ll really piss him off!
A quickie photo quiz
I want to share a few cool photos with you this evening. This first one is extremely cool, in fact.
1. This swimmer’s . . .
Originally uploaded by PRI’s The World.
A) erect nipples would cut glass.
B) testicles won’t descend until he obtains a notarized statement promising never, ever to do this again.
C) new best friend is a polar bear.
D) all of the above.
There’s a story in here somewhere
Even I get tired of Gogol Bordello and Nine Inch Nails after a while. Hungry for something new, I bought something old: greatest hits compilations from Peggy Lee and Billie Holiday. I listened to them back to back, and something struck me at once: both singers did covers of the song, “My Man.”
Excerpt:
He’s not much on looks
He’s no hero out of books
But I love him
Yes, I love himTwo or three girls
Has he
That he likes as well as me
But I love himI don’t know why I should
He isn’t true
He beats me, too
What can I do?
It’s an old French song from the Twenties, “Mon Homme.” Someone must have liked it well enough to translate it into English, whereupon Billie Holiday, Fanny Brice, Barbra Streisand, Alice Faye, Peggy Lee, and doubtless many more women decided to put their mark on it.
My question is, why?
Read the lyrics (linked above). If you’re wondering why she “love(s) him so,” you can go on wondering, because her man has no redeeming features whatsoever. Did the song speak to a common problem among women, the hopeless and illogical infatuation with scum? Is that why it was so popular?
Billie Holiday puts a little shame into that line, “He beats me, too.” Indeed, her voice conveys regret, disappointment, and (maybe I’m reading too much into this) self-loathing. Not so Peggy Lee, who sings with great joy and seems oblivious to the song’s intrinsic darkness. “He beats me, too,” smacks of a powder room confessional, to be followed with tittered laughter and a rejoinder of, “Well, if you think that’s bad, wait until you hear this.”
I’m perplexed. I’m intrigued. And I can find precious little about it on the ‘net.
What’s the story behind the song? Why did so many famous singers feel the need to cover it? What would happen if a woman nowadays sung it — how would that go over?
A flipside version, “My Gal,” would be fun, don’t you think?
D.
Tonight’s menu
My cousin Charlene, her husband, and their daughter came over for dinner tonight. They live in Puyallup, Washington, and while they visit Charlene’s brother (my cousin) Barry every year, they usually take the 5 south. This year, they took the 101.
Here’s the spread:
Bruschetta with a tapenade of tomatoes, shallots, basil, and a teeny bit of garlic. (Much more garlic on the bruschetta, naturally.)
Greek salad with Romaine and Red Leaf lettuces, feta, some kinda high quality olives, oil & vinegar dressing.
Ravioli. Both kinds: spinach/cheese with a tomato sauce, sweet potato with sage/butter sauce.
Focaccia. Yes, this was probably overkill, considering I made bruschetta, but what the hell. Jake likes focaccia.
Dessert: a fruit salad of ripe peaches, blueberries, and raspberries, served with warm Creme Anglaise. (That’s not the recipe I followed, but right now I’m too exhausted to go into much detail.)
Yes. Exhausted. Am I getting too old for this? I hope not — I still have to cook for all of you when you come to visit 🙂
D.
Pseudo gyros
Here’s a thumbnail of a disembodied mouth smiling at a gyro:
Sometimes I wonder how much time I waste searching Google Images for a high quality jpg to rip off. Then I shake myself all over and wonder about something else.
This time around, it struck me that if my readers don’t know what a gyro looks like, these pictures aren’t going to help. That’s why you’re only getting a thumbnail (not to mention the fact that the full size image frightens me). Anyway, in my quest for a gyro jpg, I found this dude, whom I suspect may be a kindred spirit. Here, he’s writing about French Dip with Au Jus:
Waiter at a crappy restaurant: “What can I get you?â€
Me: “I would like French dip with cheese, Swiss cheese, and fries please!â€
Waiter at a crappy restaurant: “Ummmm, ok.â€
Me: “Oh, and don’t forget the Ahhh Jooooo!â€
Hot lesbian in next booth: “Did you hear how sophisticated that man is? He makes me want to turn away from the lesbian lifestyle forever.â€
Other hot lesbian in next booth: “I agree with you, but instead of becoming heterosexual, maybe we should become bi-sexual, I think that would please him more.â€
Ah, but you’re not interested in Typical Male Fantasy #4875. You’re here for the food — specifically, how to make fast, tasty, homemade gyros. Follow me below the fold . . .
Friday Flickr babe: yowza!
yowza. originally uploaded by ashlita marie.
Dean surely has his own algorithm for finding Friday Flickr babes, and I have mine. I like to search Flickr using a suggestive key word.
This is tougher than you might think; tonight, “lusty” and “hawt” generated dozens of uninspiring Flickr Fotos. “Yowza,” however, brought me to this amazing woman.
The best shots are the ones which leave the most to the imagination, I think, and this one rocks my world. This woman’s a tigress.
More yowza photos to come, after I finish cleaning up in the kitchen 🙂
I’m back. And may I be the first person in the room to say,
Thank God It’s Friday.
hm?
Below the fold: more yowza.
Thirteen things Americans should know about British Columbia
I shall begin this Thirteen with what is fast becoming a traditional whine:
If you knew what I had been through today, you would be impressed that I managed to write anything at all.
Cue violins, then follow me below the fold.
I’m back. I know it in my bones.
And that’s the other thing. I can’t even think like a photographer. Who’s going to want to look at blurry birds? Not me.
First day back at work, I spent seven hours in the OR, two in the office (catching up on charts), and three in the Committee Meeting From Hell. I made it back from the hospital at 9:30 PM. Teh Sux0r indeed.
Back to the nature photograph. I shot this with a camera that had a lens and shit, and you know, there was lighting, too. Natural lighting. And there were these birds, the famous Yellow Finch of the North and the Red Pseudo-Finch of the Northwest, known for their mellifluous song and their ability to out-compete Bald Eagles for sunflower seeds . . .
I truly suck at this.
Fact: those birds hang out on the deck outside sxKitten‘s parents’ cabin.
Fact: said cabin is truly one of the most peaceful places on Earth. I mean, check this out:
There’s a bay in the background. Trust me on that. A bay, a gentle breeze, wildflowers, skinny-dippers, a fat orange cat who likes to kill sparrows, a pair of Bald Eagles, and plenty of wine in the fridge.
Right now, bone tired and itching (literally) for a hot shower, careworn over the work-grief I know awaits me in the days ahead, all I’m sure of is one thing:
I never should have left that cabin. SxKitten’s parents could keep me around as chief cook and bottle-washer. Waddya say, SxK?
D.