Adventures in the Pointless Forest

Some brief excerpts from Wikipedia.

It is generally agreed that the dish was first prepared for the Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph I (1830–1916). There are several stories. 

The chorus is played twice; the first time it is followed by a brief pause, the second by the closing of the song. 

Monegasque law stipulates that any non-adulterine child is legitimatized by the eventual marriage of his/her parents, thereupon obtaining the rights to which that child would have been entitled if born in lawful marriage.

As in the opening of the previous book, the group's morale has once again deteriorated, with some members suffering from lack of eating and insomnia, amongst other things. 

While "Kaiser" is literally translatable (as Emperor), the same cannot be said for "Schmarrn". 

 

(Found by searching my IM history for the phrase "Oh, Wikipedia.")

An educational experience.

The bus I ride is usually filled with grad student types, lab managers, librarians, department secretaries, and the like. Every once in a while things are enlivened by signs of bacterial vaginosis, but it is a sedate group in general. 

One day last week, though, a couple of guys swanned on and began chatting volubly about (a) killer techniques for selling cable door-to-door, and (b) the good times of being on probation for drug-related criminal activities.

They were as cheerfully gossipy as any stereotypical little old ladies. Some dude called Aldo really brings the A-game with his pitch in Spanish, I hear, but if someone answers the door and speaks English he basically just walks away, oh and did you know he was a crackhead? Yeah, he did time for that in Guatamala. 

They had some tips for passing urine tests via drinking water with baking soda in it and also for being glad you got booked back before they were taking everyone's blood so they don't have your DNA on file. 

Then one of them was talking about the more hardcore mandated counseling classes he had to take under Prop 36 back when he was busted for possession, as opposed to the relatively mellow requirements of his probation at the moment. 

"Oh, this, this is just for DWI, it's real casual. I can drink, I can leave the country, whatever I want. We can talk openly about our drug use, whatever. And man, everyone in there has a million connects." 

Other guy: "You gotta be careful though, someone in there is gonna be a rat."

"Oh yeah, sure. Everyone knows. They say like, oh yeah, don't talk to Celia, she's no good. And then you see her file and you see yep, she got charged for like nothing."  

The other guy paused, thinking about the perfidious Celia and what could be done to protect hardworking cable salesmen, just looking for a hookup, from her ilk.

"There should be a blog for that," he said.  

"There is!"

(Apparently it's pay-to-play, though, and he didn't say what the URL was. Hopes dashed.)

Musical numbers.

How to soothe a sad, teething baby: Star Trek slashfic music videos. I started there and took Jane on a tear through the suggestions in the sidebar. Catchy tunes, dancing Vulcans, plenty of light bondage, what could be more appropriate?

Travel broadens the mind.

We have been having good times with our friends in Berkeley, handing round our baby to be dandled on their knees and scampering off to eat olives and drink cocktails. Now—this very minute, even—we are in the middle of traveling back by train. It is a long ride, because there are many stops and you never do pick up all that much speed in between them. Ten hours! But I still feel it is the best way to go.

Steve is hanging out in our miniature sleeping compartment with Jane while she naps and I partake of the wifi in the parlor car. I am sitting opposite two large and affable Australians who seem to be enjoying gin and tonics. One has a single dangling cross earring à la George Michael circa 1987. 

The missing "p" key on Steve's laptop has lent a certain piquancy to the whole endeavor, and I have been relieved to find that there were not too many alarming emails piled up in my inbox. 

Later we will have lunch in the dining car, and then after a stint ambling about, we can retire to our seats for novel reading and more napping. If only all modes of travel allowed one both to walk about and to lie down whenever one wanted, how much more relaxing it all would be.

Earlier the conductor announced that the lounge car was open. Apparently this is the snack bar bit of the train. The conductor would like to head some frustrations off at the pass.

"When you get to the front of the line, please do not try to open your box," he says with the sad voice of long experience. "Please do not touch the lids. Please do not try to help. That will just make your fellow passengers have to wait in line longer. It will all go much faster if I do it all myself. Thank you."

I hope he gets his wish.

So it is all very civilized and pleasant, but the best part is the inhabitant of the sleeperette opposite ours. He is a ropy, white-haired, leathery sort of fellow who looks like he is probably from Maine (as Steve observed). His compartment door is closed, but the curtain is open, so we can see the glow of his laptop. 

What's more, he seems to have vision problems, because he has the screen set to display in quite large type. The type is so large, and the contrast so beautifully high, that it is nigh impossible to avoid seeing what he is reading—or perhaps writing? Oh, please, God, let it be what he is writing.

It is Harry Potter fanfic.

Hooray!

Mole.

This man does not like his apartment complex. There are RUDE PEOPLE in the building, and CARS TOWED JUST BECAUSE and THE MAINTENANCE people come in with no warning. But most importantly:

MOLE
I have mole growing around my bat tub, the maintenance told me it's not mole and just cocked it well it came back IT'S MOLE!

 

For the past two days, Steve has been treated to frequent faux-exasperated expostulations from my corner:

"Well, hell. IT'S MOLE."

"Take my word for it, IT'S MOLE."

"IT'S MOLE, okay, it's fucking MOLE."

Oddly, he seems to like it. Just before bed last night, I broke into his reverie. "For fuck's sake!" I said angrily. "Guess what."

He looked up, startled and concerned. I glared. He stared. Then an expression of great joy lit up his face. "It's mole!" he exclaimed. "Yes!" I said. "It's mole!"

Do you think he'll cock it?

Time capsule: MEAT!

These days, I hear, every twenty-something in Brooklyn runs his own abattoir. Everyone knows his primal cuts. One out of every six has learned at the knee of a master butcher how to "fabricate" a rib roast and disjoint a rabbit. One in ten has written a terrible memoir on the subject. But once upon a time, these were all dark mysteries.

Many years ago, in that less enlightened era, I worked as a sub-sub-contractor on a series of interactive educational CD-ROMs that ConAgra, the vast multinational food conglomerate, put out for their meat distributor clients. It was an intriguing glimpse into the middle stages of the industrial process. The primary audience for these CDs consisted of:

- the people who sell the meat to the people

- who only later cut it up into the pieces of the size that people like you actually

- take home and eat.

...all from a thoroughly agribusiness point of view, and with no expectation that the viewer would need to learn how to do anything with the meat him- or herself. He or she just had to know all about what other people had done or could do with it.

I've found a reference to the series on the website of one of the contractors much higher up the stream than I was:

D-Cypher Productions played an instrumental role in the development and success of ConAgra Beef Company's revolutionary "Beef 101" interactive CD-ROM program. Doug's video capture, editing and creative talent provided the base for the CD series, and considerably enhanced the creative concept and design of the programs. Over 20,000 copies of the 4-disc set are in circulation, and have received industry-wide acclaim.

The CDs were actually very well designed and impressive, for what they were: interactive collections of far more information than I ever imagined wanting to know about different cuts of meat, meat storage safety, serving suggestions ("This cut is suitable for roasting, grilling, and institutional use," the very deadpan and professional voiceover advised), pricing schemes, and "fabrication," which as you are no doubt aware but was, I think, less common knowledge then, is the industry term for just how a given cut of meat is removed from the dead animal as a whole.

Moo.

There were many Quicktime videos of white-coated men carving up large pieces of meat. One of my tasks on the project was QA, which involved watching each video many times. It was a strange job for a vegetarian, and I wished many times that I was a video artist, that I might steal the material and do something fascinating with it.

Little did I know that ten years later I'd think it would have been sufficiently fascinating just to "post" it on "youtube". What a missed opportunity. I apologize. Still, if you want a further window onto this particular past, you can see some pretty fantastic highlights in the screenshots here.

Just mice.

Thank you for the many fine suggestions in response to the last post. I am also gratified to learn that many of you agree that Facility has a real ring to it. Just now I realized that a fine French alternative would be Utile. Non? Ah, Marie-Utile, you are looking especially lovely today! Oh, Utile-Françoise, you flatterer.

I am currently stuck in my office, having promised someone who is both a late riser and on West Coast time that I would be available to receive a phone call. This was an error, but it is difficult to choose a better course of action when the other person's work day apparently begins right when one's own usually ends. Yes, we live in a glorious post-office world (not to be confused with a Post Office world) in which I can talk on the phone anywhere I like, ATT's dire coverage permitting, but in this case I would like to be able to take and refer to notes, sit in privacy and comfort, and so on, which selects strongly in favor of my dear old friend the office, with its desk and paper and pens and central heat and reliable reception. So here I am. Hélas.

Speaking of my office, a mouse found its way in over the holidays. It gnawed at the baseboards, chewed through the Ethernet cable, and then quietly died. Poor thing. It did perish in the most considerate possible way, from my point of view. First it made its way through to the other side of the wall so that the person in the next office over could be the one to find it, instead of me. Then it thoughtfully met its demise early enough in the winter break that the odiferous corpse period passed entirely unwitnessed by human nose. Thank you, little mouse.

My mother likes to tell a story about when I was a little girl that goes about like this: we were on a walk, and I wanted to pick some crummy little flower or other growing on the side of the road.

"Don't pick them, darling. They'll just die," she said. But I was determined, and they didn't belong to anyone, and parenthood, I've heard, involves choosing one's battles, so soon I had a few clutched in my little paw, and soon after that, of course, they were wilted and dead.

"Oh no!" I said.

"Well, I did warn you they were going to die."

Then -- or so she says, and it makes a good story -- I looked at her, stricken. "Just flowers, right? Not people?"

So: just mice, right, not people?

Sadly, no. People go around dying all the time, sometimes even before the new year has gotten started properly, and I don't like it. (I'm fine. But death is shitty and I don't approve. Happy new year!)

Winter wonderland.

Yesterday the world filled up with slithery cruel snow that kept covering the car as fast as I could clear it and made the road terrifying. Today the world is full of crusty, dirty, unpicturesque snow that has already covered everything and makes the road bleak. This is not a tremendous improvement, though it does mean that I will be able to fetch the parcel containing my new winter hat from the post office.

The hat has a giant pompom on top, which, in addition to being extremely dignified, should keep me extra warm by trapping the hot air that vents out of the top of my head. Pompoms are very practical in this way.* This is important because none of my coats will button up over old Foot Foot. A coat that did do up might come in handy now that it is really winter. But at this point, so kind-of-close-ish to the end, I am far too stubborn to buy one that will. Pompoms and voluminous scarves will have to fill in the gaps.

The weather is in fact rather frightful. Last night it sounded like a pack of injured wolves were being flung at our windows. They howled (understandably) and slammed into the rattly wooden frames, then someone dragged them off and did it all over again. It was tiring for everyone involved.

So the world outside is hideous. But inside, Steve has made his annual weblog post. Hurrah! It's much cleverer and more interesting than anything you'll find here, which is why it takes him all year to produce one. Plus their rarity makes them collectible. This year it's about dreadful Christmas movies and invasion literature. It all comes together in a lovely way. Go see!

Also I have received my beautiful and useful tea cosy.

Here's a worse photo that shows off its dashing bow more effectively.

Though I believe it was designed for a shorter, rounder teapot, it fits very nicely on our tall, pear-shaped one as well. Shite on the outside, nice hot tea on the inside -- it's a microcosm of reality. How cunning!

*No, they're not.

More cheers

Today, it is my intention to present something else malaise-dispelling, this time without any sneaky malaise-inducing discussion of death afterward. Let's see how it goes.

Several years ago, F. and I invented what I still think would be a really excellent reality program. It would be called Apartment Animal and would feature a series of apartment dwellers taking up residence with various apartment-unsuitable animals. Apartment Rhino. Apartment Goose. Apartment Minks. (The plural in the latter is critical. Oh Christ, there are fifteen deranged minks are tearing one another to pieces in the middle of my living room! Help.)

Japan, being Japan, seems to have independently invented something pretty much exactly along our proposed lines, only less about chaos and destruction and more about cuteness. Click here, as they used to say in the olden days, and see an actress spending the day in a small apartment, or a day-like stretch of time in an apartment-like soundstage, with two red pandas.

Cheering!

What happened there?

If you are suffering from Sunday malaise or something like it, let me recommend browsing through the archives of Improv Everywhere. Best known for staging mass depantsings on the NY subway, and originally given to staging events that were small in scale and a bit mean, they have over the last eight years inclined more and more towards the exuberantly bizarre and happy making. The Welcome Back stunt is a nice example, I think. I like to watch the video of the recipients being extremely puzzled but, it seems, genuinely enjoying the strangeness. It's cheering.

This small guinea pig story is also cheering.

The achy neck, scritchy throat, and strangely pressurized skull currently afflicting me are surely mere side effects of the flu shot I received on Saturday, not a sign that it came Too Late. Right? Right.

I think I had better have some tea.

While I do, let me tell you a story, or rather two proto-stories, about how my dad was very good at responding to the whims of a small child. Both took place in the car, as he was driving me from school or nursery school, probably to come hang out at his office.

He was, as I've mentioned, a secretary. Specifically, he worked in the music department of a university with quite a good music program. His office and the area just outside, which had a lovely enormous wood table to lounge on, were pleasantly full of students who found me a novelty. Taped to the door was a mystifying cartoon about something called an SAT. There were chairs with wheels on and a typewriter on which I was allowed produce pages of gibberish to my heart's content, while my father met with people and filled out forms on another typewriter, and arranged things on the phone. It was a nice place to visit.

Anyway, in the car. I was four or five. One day I announced that I would like to live in a mobile home. I had got some ideas from watching Sesame Street. It would be so much more fun, I said, to go to school in our house. 

"Oh but," said my dad, "look at that sign. It says that only vehicles of a certain weight can drive on this road. A mobile home weighs more than that. We couldn't drive you to school at all if we had one of those."

"Oh! Never mind then," said little me.

Another day I suggested that we should get a llama. (There was a bit on Sesame Street about a girl who took her pet llama to the llama dentist, apparently in a basement office somewhere in Manhattan.)

"You don't want a llama," he said. "They spit."

"Ooh, you're right, I don't! Never mind," said me.

What good parenting. No wonder I came out so well.

It was so long ago that he died. He never knew me as an adult or even as a full-fledged adolescent, and that of course goes both ways. I only ever knew him from a child's point of view. So generally, as I go through various grown-up rites of passage, I don't exactly wish he could have been there to see them, because it's so distant.

Of course I think about what it would have been like to know him that way, growing up, and how I would have liked that. It's just not "I wish he were here for this." But thinking about what life will be like with a baby in it is different. After all, I was a baby, and a little girl. I remember the latter, if not the former, and suddenly he's not distant at all.

I'm terrified of what it would be like if Steve died as young as he did. Please don't do that, Steve.

Dammit! This was not where I intended to wind up when I started writing. What was in that tea? I'd better go find a subway to take my trousers off in.