Just Because I'm Dead Doesn't Mean that I Can't Love
Thursday again, and I have a nice big stretch of afternoon to study and get ahead for the weekend, so what am I doing? Reading food blogs, of course. And drooling over completely impractical things for me to make on my budget with my amount of free time and cooking experience. I've never even made a soufflé! But there it is. (Without the acute accent I like pronouncing it "sooful." Souffle!)
(This is just a side note, but after the quarter is over and I get back from the Germany trip, I may, um, just be starting a food blog of my very own. Whether or not it will actually be called EAT WHIPPED CREAM, however, is something that remains to be seen.)
Oh me oh my, though. Veering away from food, Mike and I went to a pretty rad show at a small cafe in Modesto last weekend. We went specifically to see Zoë Boekbinder (not to be confused with my roommate Zoë, which had Max much perplexed until the distinction was made), once of Vermillion Lies and now doing her own rad thing. When Mike and I arrived, we realized it was actually a sort of group show put on by a local program called Off the Air, so we sat through the first performers (Boy Scouts) before Zoë took the stage--and by stage, I mean the area of the cafe edged off by instrument cases and mic cords. She put on quite a good show, demonstrating her talent at using a couple of loop pedals to give the effect of twenty Zoës singing at once, which is never a bad thing. Most of the songs were from her recent solo album, "Artichoke Perfume," but she also did a killer cover of "Single Ladies" which was quite amusing. She quit the stage and sometime before or after the Albatross West performance we moseyed on over to her edge of the merch table to say hi--oh, and to buy a shirt, an album, and one of the sweet hand-sewn pairs of panties with her name stamped on the ass. I'm weak, they were a deal with the shirt, and they're in such bright sherbet colors! She was very sweet and friendly and I managed not to make an ass of myself, so we're all winners. The final act was called Judith and Holofernes, and in the grand tradition of bands, the members were three gentlemen who were none of them called Judith or Holofernes. (Yes, I know it's a Biblical reference.) This performance happened to be their last together, which is a shame because they are (were?) quite a good group, playing Portuguese fado music with nifty melancholy lyrics. Mike bought all their albums so if you're interested in a band that no longer is, you should ask him to share. Quite a good show, all in all, especially for $5 at the door plus the cheap merchandise.
Oh! Another thing. Two weekends ago Jessica and I made an effort to redye my hair, and between one thing (bleach we'd never tried before) and another (dye we'd never tried before), my hair is now black. It's not unflattering, though (like those ganky fakey-black SO GOFFIC dyejobs you see sometimes) and I've gotten pretty much used to it--even though a certain JESSICA who won't be named says I look like Hitler Youth when my hair is wet and parted from the side like I am wont to do. Whatever, man. Excuse my beauty.
I guess I should mention (should? like I have an obligation to? whatever, this is my journal, I'mma do what I want) that Dale's in the hospital after a bad fall at home. No broken bones or anything, but after the fall he was experiencing some aphasia and memory problems so they were concerned about the possibility of a stroke. So far I haven't heard any confirmations of dismissals of this, but he's been moved from Dominican to a convalescent care facility--and when I saw him on Tuesday, he was on the up and remembering most words. I do hope he gets well enough to leave soon, he gets so quickly demoralized when he's away from home. (I must admit that he's been a real trooper this time, though. He's a good old dude.)
On the reading front, I succumbed to the idea of the Five Book Challenge Tito is doing, so last night instead of doing my homework (psh) Brian and I made lists to swap. It ended up being a six book challenge because we both had too many good ideas, but the concept is the same. We each formed lists of books that the other has to read, with the idea that these would be books the other person would probably not pick up or read on their own--to be read within a year of the challenge's beginning. (There's also the condition that ONE book can be swapped out from each list if the participants are really not enjoying a particular choice, but I doubt that will happen in our case.) So, the lists.
Brian's choices for me:
+ Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character, ed. Ralph Leighton, 2005
+ A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge, 1999
+ The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss, 2007
+ Milkweed, Jerry Spinelli, 2003
+ Banewreaker, Jacqueline Carey, 2004
+ The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Aimee Bender, 1998
+ (extra credit) Where The Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak, 1963 [this was thrown in because Brian and Tito were both appalled that I've never actually read it]
My choices for Brian:
+ Pilgrimage, Zenna Henderson, 1961
+ The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman, 1998
+ The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories, Etgar Keret [trans. Miriam Shlesinger, I think], 2005
+ Faust: Part One, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [originally pub. 1808], trans. David Luke, 1987
+ Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban, 1980
+ All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot, 1975
I tried to give Brian a good variety of styles and genres: two science-fiction, one nonfiction, one short story collection, one verse drama, and one memoir. It looks like he's given me a pretty varied mix as well, and other than knowing passingly about Feynman and having read "True Names" by Vinge for the cyberpunk class last year, I'm completely unfamiliar with what he's given me--which is the point, I suppose. (In talking books, by the bye, Tito and I had this absolutely weird revelation that she is online acquaintances with Eve Forward, the author of one of my favorite YA fantasy novels, Animist. This, and Tito didn't even know that she had written books! Weird. Eerie.)
I just realized that Faust was written waaaay later than I was previously thinking (although I should really know this, haven taken a class on the text and all...), which seems like it will be a problem since I posed it as my pre-1700s text for the Translation Theory final project. Jackie okayed it with Spring Awakening as my post-1700s text when I posed the idea to her, so I don't know where I stand on that. Guess it's time to email her and figure this out...
Edit: Woohoo! Jackie says I can go ahead and work with Faust since she hadn't paid any attention to the original published date either--on the condition that we "never, ever" let Prof. Nygaard know what bad Goethe scholars we are (since she TA'd Prof. Nygaard's Faust course that I was in last year). I feel like such a rebel now.
(This is just a side note, but after the quarter is over and I get back from the Germany trip, I may, um, just be starting a food blog of my very own. Whether or not it will actually be called EAT WHIPPED CREAM, however, is something that remains to be seen.)
Oh me oh my, though. Veering away from food, Mike and I went to a pretty rad show at a small cafe in Modesto last weekend. We went specifically to see Zoë Boekbinder (not to be confused with my roommate Zoë, which had Max much perplexed until the distinction was made), once of Vermillion Lies and now doing her own rad thing. When Mike and I arrived, we realized it was actually a sort of group show put on by a local program called Off the Air, so we sat through the first performers (Boy Scouts) before Zoë took the stage--and by stage, I mean the area of the cafe edged off by instrument cases and mic cords. She put on quite a good show, demonstrating her talent at using a couple of loop pedals to give the effect of twenty Zoës singing at once, which is never a bad thing. Most of the songs were from her recent solo album, "Artichoke Perfume," but she also did a killer cover of "Single Ladies" which was quite amusing. She quit the stage and sometime before or after the Albatross West performance we moseyed on over to her edge of the merch table to say hi--oh, and to buy a shirt, an album, and one of the sweet hand-sewn pairs of panties with her name stamped on the ass. I'm weak, they were a deal with the shirt, and they're in such bright sherbet colors! She was very sweet and friendly and I managed not to make an ass of myself, so we're all winners. The final act was called Judith and Holofernes, and in the grand tradition of bands, the members were three gentlemen who were none of them called Judith or Holofernes. (Yes, I know it's a Biblical reference.) This performance happened to be their last together, which is a shame because they are (were?) quite a good group, playing Portuguese fado music with nifty melancholy lyrics. Mike bought all their albums so if you're interested in a band that no longer is, you should ask him to share. Quite a good show, all in all, especially for $5 at the door plus the cheap merchandise.
Oh! Another thing. Two weekends ago Jessica and I made an effort to redye my hair, and between one thing (bleach we'd never tried before) and another (dye we'd never tried before), my hair is now black. It's not unflattering, though (like those ganky fakey-black SO GOFFIC dyejobs you see sometimes) and I've gotten pretty much used to it--even though a certain JESSICA who won't be named says I look like Hitler Youth when my hair is wet and parted from the side like I am wont to do. Whatever, man. Excuse my beauty.
I guess I should mention (should? like I have an obligation to? whatever, this is my journal, I'mma do what I want) that Dale's in the hospital after a bad fall at home. No broken bones or anything, but after the fall he was experiencing some aphasia and memory problems so they were concerned about the possibility of a stroke. So far I haven't heard any confirmations of dismissals of this, but he's been moved from Dominican to a convalescent care facility--and when I saw him on Tuesday, he was on the up and remembering most words. I do hope he gets well enough to leave soon, he gets so quickly demoralized when he's away from home. (I must admit that he's been a real trooper this time, though. He's a good old dude.)
On the reading front, I succumbed to the idea of the Five Book Challenge Tito is doing, so last night instead of doing my homework (psh) Brian and I made lists to swap. It ended up being a six book challenge because we both had too many good ideas, but the concept is the same. We each formed lists of books that the other has to read, with the idea that these would be books the other person would probably not pick up or read on their own--to be read within a year of the challenge's beginning. (There's also the condition that ONE book can be swapped out from each list if the participants are really not enjoying a particular choice, but I doubt that will happen in our case.) So, the lists.
Brian's choices for me:
+ Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character, ed. Ralph Leighton, 2005
+ A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge, 1999
+ The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss, 2007
+ Milkweed, Jerry Spinelli, 2003
+ Banewreaker, Jacqueline Carey, 2004
+ The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Aimee Bender, 1998
+ (extra credit) Where The Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak, 1963 [this was thrown in because Brian and Tito were both appalled that I've never actually read it]
My choices for Brian:
+ Pilgrimage, Zenna Henderson, 1961
+ The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman, 1998
+ The Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God & Other Stories, Etgar Keret [trans. Miriam Shlesinger, I think], 2005
+ Faust: Part One, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [originally pub. 1808], trans. David Luke, 1987
+ Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban, 1980
+ All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot, 1975
I tried to give Brian a good variety of styles and genres: two science-fiction, one nonfiction, one short story collection, one verse drama, and one memoir. It looks like he's given me a pretty varied mix as well, and other than knowing passingly about Feynman and having read "True Names" by Vinge for the cyberpunk class last year, I'm completely unfamiliar with what he's given me--which is the point, I suppose. (In talking books, by the bye, Tito and I had this absolutely weird revelation that she is online acquaintances with Eve Forward, the author of one of my favorite YA fantasy novels, Animist. This, and Tito didn't even know that she had written books! Weird. Eerie.)
I just realized that Faust was written waaaay later than I was previously thinking (although I should really know this, haven taken a class on the text and all...), which seems like it will be a problem since I posed it as my pre-1700s text for the Translation Theory final project. Jackie okayed it with Spring Awakening as my post-1700s text when I posed the idea to her, so I don't know where I stand on that. Guess it's time to email her and figure this out...
Edit: Woohoo! Jackie says I can go ahead and work with Faust since she hadn't paid any attention to the original published date either--on the condition that we "never, ever" let Prof. Nygaard know what bad Goethe scholars we are (since she TA'd Prof. Nygaard's Faust course that I was in last year). I feel like such a rebel now.