apple bottom jeans, boots with the furrrrr · 19 February 2008, 18:14
Yesterday was my birthday! All I can say in summary is “dang, I have some sweet friends.” I mean, check out what I got for presents and tell me my friends don’t know me: every flavor of Bacon Salt, a beautiful book/CD set of Victrola music, Mexican chocolate cupcakes with whiskey frosting, a bottle of Bushmills, a wee carrot cake and a baby walnut pie, Maggie Mudd deliciousness, a mix CD, five sheets of gorgeous Arches paper, and a generous contribution to the Berlin fund. Yeah, huh? I’d love to tell you that I’m enjoying it all in a dignified fashion as befits the new digit in my tens place – but I’m not, I’m tearing through all of it furiously, putting it all in my mouth at the same time. So delicious. Thanks, everybody!
Well, okay, maybe I’m not tearing through all of it at once – I’m on antibiotics, for round seventyleven of the sickness I acquired in freaking Switzerland (of all the things for that stubborn customs lady not to confiscate), so the Bushmills is getting a wee vacation for the next ten days, but I made sure it was okay on Sunday night when it was given to me. It is totally okay. In case you were worried.
Not to jinx meself, but I think I have a job again, back at the old place, which is agreeable. Did you know there’s a candy shop down that way now? A British candy shop? With rhubarb custard hard candies? Well, now you do, and if you don’t know what your very next step should be, we can’t be friends anymore. R-H-U-B-A-R-B C-U-S-T-A-R-D man seriously! I can’t have more than five on my person at any given time because I will choke myself trying to eat them all at once. I’ve been fiending for real rhubarb lately, and it’s not the kind of thing that you can get in the off-season from greenhouses in Chile or whatever, but these candies will totally hold me over til the springtime.
Venn diagram madlibs! What’s in the middle of
This Heat <-------> This Is Why I’m Hot
?
(No, seriously, I’m asking because I don’t know either. But there must be something.)
— Hannah Mae
Cupid aims for the head · 15 February 2008, 00:23
Tonight I celebrated the shootingest of holidays by going with a modest-yet-dedicated horde of the undead to the new George Romero movie, Diary of the Dead. It is amazing what problems and “problems” you can solve by going out in public dressed as a bloodsoaked punk zombie! I don’t know if you knew that. Here are some things you have to look forward to when you change your sartorial style:
+ get your own whole bus seat everywhere you go.
+ capture the riveted attention of everyone in the room, in five seconds, by gurgling a mouthful of fake blood down your chin. (The red-teeth effect is especially cool.)
+ take the 49 Mission at midnight, alone, in jeans ripped straight across the ass, without a single skeevy dude hitting on you.
+ never be ignored again.
Teenage boy at bus stop #1 (double-take): Dang, is that what y’all do for Valentine’s Day?
Teenage boy at bus stop #2 (fervently): I bet you got a boyfriend.
Bus Driver (after some thought): What happened to you?
Me: Nothing yet!
Alas, a certain way-slow party thwarted our main post-movie plan, which was to burst in on him at the Edinburgh Castle and drag him out to the sidewalk to eat him – but other than that, it was a most satisfactory evening.
FAKE BLOOD PERFECT FOR PUTTING IN YOUR MOUTH
1/4c warm water (or even a wee bit less)
1 tbsp cocoa powder
4 tbsp light corn syrup
1 tsp red food coloring
1-2 drops green food coloring
Combine the water and the cocoa powder and mix thoroughly. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix again. You can omit the green if you’re only concerned about the blood’s appearance while fresh – and if you’re going to let it dry and wear it around, you might want to go for another drop or two of green, for that authentic browned look.
To apply, take by tablespoons into your mouth and drool it all over yourself.
— Hannah Mae
don't jeopardize my arrive cos you know that's not wise · 12 February 2008, 15:51
Venn diagram of the day:
Circle Number One: Wesley Willis
Circle Number Two: Tim Dog
Overlap: Whipping Superman’s Ass
Word.
— Hannah Mae
L.H.O.O.Q. · 11 February 2008, 14:35
Holy shit, what’s happened to the Swiss? Have they gotten complacent in their prosperity? Have the long centuries of peace and stable currency slowly bled away their former fearsomeness? Last week two Picassos were stolen from a museum in Pfäffikon, and yesterday four Impressionist paintings – worth a combined $163 million – were nabbed from a museum just outside of Zürich. Bring back the mercenaries! Where is the ferocious Rudolph Brun when you need him? Wussing out in the face of armed robbers in the Emile Bührle Foundation, that’s where.
(The funniest thing about the whole affair is the note that “after the theft, the men fled in a white car, with the trunk open and the paintings visible.” Apparently even armed robbers have trouble getting a big car in Europe. Hey guys, come to the States! You don’t even have to bring your own getaway SUV, you can carjack one at the stoplight right outside the job!)
I’ve contracted a mild form of job this week – nothing too strenuous, and it’s only temporary, but it does involve sitting in front of the computer for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and spoiled as I am by long months of fat leisure, this sounds boring. (Oh, Hannah, what are you complaining about? You don’t even have to leave the house!) Please send me things to distract me! I like new songs to listen to, stories involving boats, all-expenses-paid scuba diving expeditions, time-lapse, and dog anything.
Okay, I am lying my face off. I mean, I do have a job this week, and I do seriously wish you would send me things to distract me from it, but right now I’m not working at all. I am watching Alicia Keys videos on YouTube trying to figure out whether or not I’m imagining a narrative thread: her man gets arrested in “If I Ain’t Got You,” and she visits him in the pokey in “Fallin’,” but then in “A Woman’s Worth” she’s got this businessman type guy and the whole anti-domestic-violence side story, not to mention that weird yet sort of hot lace cap thing happening, and is this supposed to be part of the storyline or what? How did she get that pink grand piano from “Karma” into the Greek amphitheatre? Someone has to piece this together! I am on the case! Don’t thank me, ma’am, just doing my job.
— Hannah Mae
no award juries, no festivals, no famous poker games · 5 February 2008, 14:34
If it’s bothering you, you can think about it this way: American abolitionism really started gathering steam in the early 1800’s; Seneca Falls happened in 1848. American civil rights movement, 1950’s-60’s; second-wave feminism, 1970’s.* First black president, 2008; first woman president, 2012? Me, I am sidestepping the whole Traitor To My Sex Or To Anti-Racism? debate and writing in Dennis Kucinich, even though I’m mad at him for withdrawing from the race already. Because why, Dennis? Because now you realize you’re not going to win? I’m irked that my protest vote – the only one I’m going to get the chance to cast, since like everybody else, I will be voting this fall for whoever can spell “D” – is going to have to be a write-in that they probably won’t even count. (Not only that, but I haven’t updated my voter registration from the old hood, so I will be voting provisionally! My ballot is going to end up as a placemat under some poll worker’s doughnut for sure.)
Actually I’m really only voting because there are local issues on the ballot, and because I’m a sucker for a free sticker. Take that, participatory democracy! You can’t make me care! But apparently you can make me walk three blocks to my polling place even when I’m a shaky, fevery snot machine. Huh.
If anybody else out there is sick, I have some recommendations:
1. Manila Oriental Market. I haven’t been so baffled-yet-delighted at the grocery store since… well, since my first week in Switzerland, actually, but M.O.M. is pretty much the exact opposite of Migros: the cheese section at M.O.M. is barely as long as my arm, and the Asian Food section is the whole rest of the store. Yesterday I came home with tom kha ingredients, new spices and enough bird’s eye chiles to incinerate a city block.
2. Launchball. Better than Snood. Better than anything. Well, maybe not better than tom kha. But it doesn’t require a trip outside, and that’s worth extra points.
3. Parsnip Parsimony – the blog of a vegan baker who is really hardcore about the baking science! Huzzah! My biggest objection to a lot of vegan cooking is that it has a weird mix of “shit is way hard” and “shit is way easy” attitude: shit is way hard, so why bother trying anything new or ambitious, but shit is way easy, so you can just throw whatever in there and it will be fine**. No! It will not be fine! But you also don’t need to resign yourself to pre-made foods and boring stir-fries! In my current state I am not capable of much baking ambition, but I love me some vicarious living, so I am chuffed as anything to read about Susie’s experimentation with vegan brioches, challah, and meringues (! please post the recipe holy crap!). Any cooking site that says “lab notes” more than twice is A-OK with me.
German for today is die Vorwahlen, “the primaries” – it was going to be “protest vote,” but German doesn’t appear to have a word for it. Parliamentary-system-havin’ jerks.
———————————————————————
+ It all goes down easier if you forget that abolitionism first bore fruit in 1808 and 1863, and woman suffrage took til 19freakin20, not to mention Civil Rights Act: 1964 but ERA: nevah. But what are presidential elections about, if not holding our noses and ignoring our misgivings? Hail to the chief!
++ The corollary to this one is “vegans will eat anything as long as it’s vegan, so who gives a care what it tastes like?” It’s pretty much true, but that’s no excuse for sloppiness in the kitchen.
— Hannah Mae