I don’t care what y’all think about Facebook
but I think it’s COOL. This week, I found an old friend that I hadn’t talked to since 9th grade (and hadn’t really been close to since elementary school) and then yet another close friend from elementary school appeared out of the blue, telling me stories about myself that I don’t remember, but sound utterly believable. For example, apparently I was the one who taught him about the birds and the bees. With full anatomical illustrations from the library. No, I don’t remember that at all. But I don’t doubt it for a moment.
It’ll be fun meeting up with those two. I tend to think I have an encyclopedic memory of my youth, but the truth is altogether different. This is not the first time that someone from my past has divulged something about me that sounds, well, like ME, and yet I don’t remember it at all.
Too bad we don’t go through life with a little documentarian perched on our shoulders, recording choice moments that we can enjoy forty, fifty years later. It would add a certain fullness to our lives, I think. A fresh perspective.
Material for blackmail, if nothing else.
D.
Különböző és különböző *
It has to be said sometime: how can someone with as big a mouth as me run out of things to say? And yet I find myself in that position day after day: speechless. Bad enough I can’t write any fiction; now I’m having a harder and harder time blogging.
Made a tasty blueberry crisp tonight. Recipe here. I won’t bother to repeat it here since I made no alterations to the recipe. I used an 8 by 8 inch Pyrex glass baking dish and I baked it about 25 minutes. Probably could have used a little more cornstarch since these were juicy berries.
What is it about cats and boxes? Ours like containers, too. Hat tip to enigma4ever on this one.
I am in need of a computer gaming addiction to replace my now raging addiction to World of Warcraft. (And I’ve got Karen hooked, too.) I wonder how many people have written their WoW characters (and gold, and gear) into their wills? “And to my niece Suzanne, I leave Douchemonger, my level 85 gnome warlock. Suzanne, if you steal all of Douchemonger’s best gear for your warlock Biohazzardz, I am so coming back to haunt you.”
Heading into call next week with my partner on vacation. I’m stealing myself for the worst and maybe with some luck it will fall short of my expectations.
Saw Hot Tub Time Machine on Netflix . . . oh, I don’t know why. Perhaps because I’ll give anything with John Cusack in it a chance? Perhaps because I figured a movie with such a stupid name had to have something going for it? Anyway, it wasn’t terrible. It made me laugh a few times, and it surprised me with a very un-Hollywood ending.
What’s everyone reading? I’m in the 700s on the latest George R R Martin installment of Game of Thrones. It’s A Mess of Monkeys or some damn thing (I can never remember the titles.)
Okay, so I managed to say a few things.
D.
* Various and sundry in Hungarian, a language that apparently lacks separate words for “various” and “sundry.”
Rooting for the apes
We all know how this ends: the humans decline to a faint shadow of their former might, while the apes take over the joint. And just in case there are any noobs in the audience who never saw the Charles Heston original (or, for that matter, the loathsome Mark Wahlberg remake), the movie is named RISE of the Planet of the Apes. Not, The Apes Make a Bit of a Splash Before Getting Themselves Snuffed. The trick, then, lies in building narrative drive when everyone in the audience knows the ending, and the challenge lies in making it an enjoyable business.
For one thing, you gotta start with a hero. Here’s Caesar (yes, he has the same name as Cornelius and Zira’s baby in movie #3 — the filmmakers stayed true to canon at least in that one detail), played by Andy Serkis (Gollum!)
A moment ago, I tried to identify for Jake a few notable characteristics of heroes. They have to be in nearly every scene (check), and the writer needs to show some care not to trash sympathy for the hero (check), lest he end up with, for lack of a better term, a creep. Finally, the hero must take a lot of abuse (check). By the way, does anyone recall the proper term for this last feature? I learned it in high school and I can’t recall the details.
And in Caesar’s heroic status he has no competitors. I guess we are supposed to like his “father,” Dr. Will Rodman (James Franco), a Gen Sys* scientist working on the cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Turns out this virus also increases the intelligence of its host, which spells $$$ for the corporate overlords of Gen Sys. But Rodman is such a dip. He calls apes “monkeys,” something no self-respecting scientist would ever do. And when he meets some initial set-backs to his quest to cure his father’s Alzheimer’s with viral-mediated gene therapy, what does he do? Create a more virulent, air-borne vector. So not a hero. More like a Bond villain, really. But he has a cute girlfriend (Freida Pinto, whom some of you may have seen in Slumdog Millionaire) so that’s okay.
I have to think that Dr. Rodman’s dweebiness is intentional. He’s a weak man, and when Caesar blames him for his (Caesar’s) misfortunes, we can’t help but blame him, too. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Here, skip this paragraph if you’re worried about some mild spoilers. In fact, maybe skip the rest of the post. Anyway: when Rodman’s earlier virus makes a test subject go berserk, he’s forced to put down all the apes in his group. But it turns out the berserker was merely protecting her baby — Caesar! Who has mommy’s green eyes, indicating that he, too, has inherited the intelligence of his mother. Rodman smuggles Caesar home and raises him like a human child, taking no precautions whatsoever even when Caesar grows up to be a big, powerful adult chimpanzee. For that matter, Rodman’s dad (John Lithgow) is not doing too well, Rodman’s guinea pigging efforts notwithstanding, and should probably be in a care facility. So when Caesar’s and Dad’s lack of proper housing leads to a violent attack on a neighbor, Rodman is really to blame here. Just sayin’. And that lands Caesar in a primate care facility which Rodman has apparently neither researched nor examined beyond the most superficial tour. This does not end well**. Man, the more I think about Franco’s character, the more he pisses me off. Monkeys. Really.
The movie’s science does not hold up to close scrutiny. There’s that whole virulent respiratory virus thing, for starters. But I don’t go to a movie like this thinking I’m gonna have a hard SF experience.
So what do we have, really? Obnoxious humans whom we are only too happy to see self-immolate. (And they do. Gloriously. But you’ll have to sit through the credits to see it.) And a rage-filled Caesar who has our every sympathy. Our attachment to Caesar and desire to see him and his fellow apes shed their chains, that’s what drives this film forward. Yeah, I loved it. And so does PETA. Okay, so PETA loved it because the filmmakers used CGI apes, not because the humans snuff it (we presume) in the end. But I’m betting more than a few PETA members loved seeing the apes get back at the research scientists.
Not a subtle movie, though. Never thought I would say this, but I think the original Planet of the Apes had a good deal more moral ambiguity than this one. Perhaps today’s audiences can’t handle moral ambiguity?
D.
*Not to be confused with GeneSys.
**Unless you’re Caesar
‘kay, this is pretty damned decadent
Wherein I improve upon the original.
STICKY. TOFFEE. PUDDING. (Only not.)
A word about how this differs from the original. The Udny Arms STP is a date muffin with a toffee topping. There’s nothing pudding-y about it, but again, I suspect this is a Brit thing, some deranged interpretation of the word “pudding.” It’s a cake. This version, if you do it as I did it, will yield a moist enough result that pudding is not an utter misnomer. If you want something more cake-like, then use diced dried apples instead of fresh apples, and follow the original recipe (but add the spices, too).
Adding pie spices (I used cinnamon, ginger, and clove; nutmeg or allspice would have been good, too) did great things for the flavor. The original? Might as well be angel food cake — no flavor at all, save for the dates.
. . . And off we go!
Pudding
1/2 cup butter, softened, plus an additional tablespoon of butter to saute your apples
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground clove
2 Granny Smith apples, diced into 3/4 to 1 inch chunks
1/3 cup golden raisins
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups water
Sauce . . . which I cut in half — yes, the original called for a full pint of whipping cream. And even this is too much.
1/2 cup butter
1 3/8 cups brown sugar
1 cup whipping cream
1. Peel and chop your apples, and then saute the apples and raisins together in a tablespoon of butter. I tried to brown the apples a bit, and I was consciously trying to drive off as much moisture as I could. As noted above, if you use dried apples, you’ll end up with a more cake-like pudding. Set aside the apples and allow to cool.
2. Cream together the sugars and the butter. Add the eggs and mix well.
3. Add baking powder to the flour and stir well. You can add your spices here if you like, or at the final step of making the batter.
4. Add one cup of flour, stir to combine. Then add one cup of water, stir to combine. Repeat. Finish with one cup of flour. (You’re alternating the flour additions and water additions, right? Standard stuff.)
5. Pour into a buttered 9 x 13 inch baking pan and bake at 350F (177C) for 45 minutes.
6. For the record, I again diverged from the Udny Arms recipe by letting my cake cool in the refrigerator overnight, then reheating it in a 225 degree F oven (107C). I’m not sure it makes a difference. In any case, while the cake is baking (or the next day, whatever) prepare your sauce. Combine butter, cream, and brown sugar, and bring to a boil.
7. Poke lots and lots of holes into your cake, then pour the sauce over the cake. You’ll only use about half the sauce. Now, one advantage of having cooled the cake overnight is that it shrunk a bit, pulling away from the pan. That allowed the sauce to penetrate all around the sides. Reserve whatever sauce you don’t use because if you are thoroughly committed to your heart attack, you’ll spoon some hot sauce onto your cake prior to topping it with a heap of whipped cream. But I’m jumping ahead. After putting a layer of sauce on the cake, I fussed with it for several minutes, because the sauce wanted to collect around the sides and I kept transferring it to the top with a spoon. But gravity eventually won.
8. BROIL this puppy until it’s all brown and bubbly.
9. Cut a square, top with whipped cream (unnecessary) and more sauce (really unnecessary).
Enjoy.
D.
Re sleep deprivation
I’ve gotten into this rut lately: work, eat, World of Warcraft, sleep. Repeat. My desire to write is nil, and whatever interests I have in that regard are satisfied by reading the latest Game of Thrones installment (1000+ pages is whipping by way too fast . . . and I’m sorry, but I had to skip ahead to find out what had become of Arya).
Ours is a family with a thoroughly messed up sleep cycle. My insomnia arrives whenever it will, often for no identifiable reason. By minimizing caffeine and chocolate consumption and trying to exercise regularly, I’ve improved things to the point that I am off Benadryl — finally! after years! — and am having less trouble, but less trouble does not equal no trouble. It doesn’t help when I get calls at 4 AM for things that I really, really did not need to be called about. My partner and I have the same problem, by the way: when we get these early morning calls, no matter how simple they are to resolve, it takes us an hour or two to get back to sleep. And neither of us is getting any younger, and it’s not like we did well with sleep deprivation back in training. We only told ourselves we were doing okay.
My wife doesn’t do too badly, compared to my son or me. Jake is the real hard case, though. And I think it goes way back to his toddlerhood, when we used to have trouble getting him to bed any time earlier than our bedtime (usually around midnight). I suspect he needs a completely inverted wake/sleep cycle, but that, sadly, is not compatible with attendance at high school. Or college. Perhaps he’ll get a medical degree and become a night-shift ER doc?
In other news, I’m futzing around with a variety of different desserts. I successfully reproduced a dessert we’d had at Black Cat in Cambria, which involved sauteed nectarines, homemade pound cake, and a browned butter sauce; and I made this recipe for Sticky Toffee Pudding, which is one of those British puddings that isn’t a pudding (oh, those clever Brits, when will they learn to speak English?) I’m going to try making it again, this time subbing sauteed apples for the dates and adding the usual apple spices. Ultimately, this ceases to be Sticky Toffee Pudding and becomes Apple Muffins with Sticky Toffee Pudding sauce, but I suspect my gang will like it better.
Less than two months before my 50th birthday. Maybe that’s what’s screwing with my muse.
D.
Yo, administrators
DIALOG is not a verb, and if it were a verb, it would still have two more syllables than either SPEAK or TALK.
Just dialogin’.
D.
Colbert pushes the envelope
. . . but no more of a push than the rather forceful kick that the Summer’s Eve douche people (douche-people?) gave that poor envelope. Here’s Stephen holding forth on feminine hygiene, dick scrub, and vaginal puppetry.
Various and sundry:
* I am trying to install World of Warcraft to our bedroom computer. That’s the one that I’m supposed to be using for writing. If I start using this computer for WoW, I’ll be closer to Karen but I will have less face time with my son, who hangs out on the other side of the house in that computer room. (We collect computers the way some people collect cars.) And in either circumstance, I won’t be writing.
* Jake and I went to a local Thai restaurant that aspires to the Pacific Rim fusion thing. I should have been more worried when the hostess repeated our order back, and then the sushi chef did the same, while arguing with the hostess that she always got things wrong. I told the sushi chef twice that I wanted the various items as nigiri, not sashimi (nigiri = on rice, Sis), and he still screwed it up. Worse yet was Jake’s noodle dish, which sounded Asian from the description, but had some sort of gummy cheese thing going on that made the noodles stick together. He soldiered on and ate a few mouthfuls of it. I tried it, too; I figure the dish had to have been four or five thousand calories. Flavor, not bad; texture, appalling.
* There is something deeply wrong with this new computer’s keyboard design. I’ve lost track of how many times my fingers have all shifted over one key, and then I’m typing honnrtodj/ (that’s “gibberish” in one-key-over code).
* It’s been a nice, long, pleasant nine days off from call, but tomorrow I’m back on again. And if my partner’s complaints are any way to judge the current climate, things are hopping.
* I bought a couple of hamsters today. They’re working hamsters, but scrub your mind of those dirty thoughts. To give you a clue as to their purpose, I’ve named the male Stud Muffin, and the female, Mother of All Hamsters. The male was the one getting beaten on by all the other male hamsters in the cage; I felt a wave of sympathy for him, and decided that I would answer his prayers and transport him to a world where he had ready access to food, water, and a receptive female. And how does he repay me? I put him into his new cage several hours ago, and he has remained in the same spot ever since. Yes, I somehow purchased the pet store’s only catatonic hamster.
D.
I would say their days are numbered, but they don’t have much competition. And they do have nice decor.
*
Endlessly creative at self-torment
Not to be confused with self-abuse.
Ah, the student’s dream. (Again. And again.) You would think my subconscious had run out of ideas, but no. This time, it cast me in the role of the teacher.
This one's for you, Sis.
A bit of background: my undergrad degree is in chemistry. So when I found myself in a college freshman intro chemistry class, I could be forgiven, don’t you think, for skipping the reading assignment? Oh, I had skimmed it, enough that things looked vaguely familiar. I figured I would pick up what I needed to know during the lecture.
The prof, somehow figuring out that I had a BS in chemistry, announced that I would be teaching today’s class.
“Oh, that’s okay, you go right ahead,” said I.
“No, no, I insist,” said the prof.
From my seat in the auditorium, I began working through the course reading page by page. One of the other students raised her hand and politely suggested I get up in front of the blackboard to give a more conventional lecture, since my current plan was (and I quote) boring. I obliged, and began to wipe the board clean. Except it wasn’t a blackboard at all, it was a dry-erase board, and the last lecturer had written all over it with the wrong (i.e. unerasable) pen.
The classroom was mostly filled with sympathetic and patient souls, but there were just enough unruly students to turn the whole thing into chaos. The background chatter would not stop no matter how much I begged. And to make matters worse, there was a widescreen TV next to the dry-erase board, and it was on, and it was blaring. I did not have the remote. I asked that whoever had the remote should turn it off. When that didn’t work, I tried to turn it off at the source, but every time I pushed the on/off button, the genius with the remote turned it back on again.
When finally I had their attention (and the TV was silent), I turned the page on the textbook. What, I wondered, would I be obliged to explain? Hopefully not the Nernst equation or the Henderson Hasselbalch equation. I haven’t looked at those in years. Hopefully something easy, like the concept of a mole.
But no. The next page had twelve full-color images of the monthly birth stones, and rings made from those birth stones. One of the students asked me, “Um, what is the relevance of this to our class?” and I was stumped. So I said, “These stones, see — they’re all matter!” Brilliant.
I think I woke up before the students had finished sharpening their pointed sticks.
D.
We’re back
Some thoughts on this vacation and vacations in general, in no particular order:
* If you’re in the predicament of being in San Diego on a weekday and you need to go north, past LA, then leaving mid-day (around 11 AM) and pressing up the 405 works well. I would estimate we lost only around 10 minutes to traffic, mostly from the usual 10-405 snogfest.
* It is in fact possible to see the San Diego Zoo in one day. We did not waste time with the bus tour, which looked to be more annoying than anything else (wait wait I wanted to actually LOOK at the elephants, slow down, nooooooo). We saw everything but the aviary and the pandas, and did it in about 6.5 hours.
* There was a huge line for the pandas, no line at all for the koalas. Stuffed animal manufacturers, please take note. Anyway, it was the line that put us off, adorable as pandas must surely be.
* I wonder if anyone has ever done a study to discover the best time to visit a zoo. It seems like the animals are always sleeping. We had the most fun with the grizzly bears, who were in a playful mood, chasing each other around the habitat and even to an adjacent habitat (through a communicating tunnel), forcing about two dozen humans to run thirty or forty feet to watch them in the second area, only to have to run back when the bears themselves doubled back. I’m not sure what bear laughter sounds like, but I suspect it sounds much the same as the noises they make when running after one another.
Does this tree make me look fat?
It’s not fat. It’s poor posture.
* There’s always just enough annoyance about vacations to make you glad it’s over. “Staycation” is kind of a dumb portmanteau, but the basic thought is correct: you’re likely to be happiest and most relaxed at home. But you can only play so much World of Warcraft before your mind starts to go, right? Right?
D.
My vote for most interesting creature . . .
We went to Balboa Park today and slammed through the Science museum in under two hours. It’s not the Exploratorium and ’nuff said about that. Yesterday we had a deal more fun at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. My favorite “new” critter (as in, an animal I’ve never seen before in an aquarium) was this guy.
My first reaction was (and, honest, my brain adopted a real Bill-and-Ted mode with this thought), “Whoa, dude, giant underwater pill bug!” And I was right. This is the giant marine isopod, which can grow to nearly four pounds and thirty inches in length. They are scavengers who can live for many weeks without food, and when they do find food, they promptly eat themselves into a coma.
Jake was not surprised, but then, Jake has an encyclopedic knowledge of nearly everything thanks to the dovetailed mentoring of Wikipedia, Cracked, and TV Tropes. In this case, Cracked had sown our son’s fertile mind with information. (Cool article. Read it.)
We saw nudibranchs, too, but I suspect I might have seen them before at the Steinhart Aquarium, or perhaps the aquarium in Vancouver. We took the Behind the Scenes tour as well, and the highlight of that was the archerfish:
No amazing food thus far, but we did make it to Little Saigon in Westminster yesterday after the Aquarium. Yum, banh mit.
D.