2008-11-18

The Happy Loris

Oh, Jen has a theme song!



Your Theme Song is Back in Black by AC/DC



"Back in black, I hit the sack,

I've been too long, I'm glad to be back"



Things tend to get really crazy for you, and sometimes you have to get away from all the chaos.

But each time you stage your comeback, it's even better than the last!

2008-11-17

I am a feeler!

The Typealyzer

Insert your blogs url and you, too, can analyze yourself in yet another new and refreshing way. I was excited, stumbling upon after viewing the Presurfer. Couldn't wait to insert my url in the spot logically provided by the Typealyzers. My result is below and no surprise.

The analysis indicates that the author of humanunderconstruction is of the type:

ISFP - The Artists
The gentle and compassionate type. They are especially attuned their inner values and what other people need. They are not friends of many words and tend to take the worries of the world on their shoulders. They tend to follow the path of least resistance and have to look out not to be taken advantage of. 

They often prefer working quietly, behind the scene as a part of a team. They tend to value their friends and family above what they do for a living.

Years Later, She Memes in Return

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare - and I gloried in it, carnivore that I am
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush - the fragrances, the visual feast that is Indian food, makes Jen happy
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart - oh, the things we do in our youth
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes - an horrible it was
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes - I grow and eat them, take photos, collect trading cards
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche - heavenly
28. Oysters - oh, the greasy glory
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl - at a Renn Faire in the Poconos with a mug full of mead as squirrels pelted me with chestnuts
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea -
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo - seafood gumbo in Baltimore was red and mean and wonderful
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu - scorethrough not opertational. Neither is my will to die stupidly
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine -
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores - would cook them over candles in our kitchen
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers - with very odd frequency
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake 

Worth It's Weight in Gold



The beauty, the wonder, the splendor of whale shark poo.

"It is as thick as your arm, gloopy and smells disgusting - and it has just been caught on camera for what is thought to be the first time."

From BBC's The Natural World 25th Anniversary Special

Monday Can Start the Week with a Dull Roar....



From Lasse Gjertsen, my Monday hero, found on Metafilter

The Secret of Happiness is...

BFF Mullets

2008-11-16

Word for the Day: Afflatus


Afflatus (n)

An inspiration, a creative impulse

"She did not think herself a genius by any means; but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon....The divine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her "vortex," hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent."
--Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

See, the courting the muse is like making a souffle. Sometimes she rises to the occaisional and a magical feast is set for all. But sometimes she falls down on the job, leaves dirty dishes in the sink when it's her wash day you find yourself tripping over her shoes which are all over in the house in some kind of subconscious obstacle course from the depths of the Divine. Yes, she is a fierce roommate. 

No man was ever great without a touch of divine afflatus. ~ Cicero

“A phrase used to mean poetic inspiration, particularly the exalted state immediately preceding creative composition, when the poet is felt to be receiving his inspiration directly from a divine source. The doctrine of divine inspiration for poets was advocated by Plato. Although the phrase and doctrine have been used in a serious and sincere sense by such a poet as Shelley, the term is perhaps more often used now in a somewhat contemptuous sense, to imply a sort of pretensious over-valuation in a would-be poet or a bombastic spirit in an oratator, whose fervid style or manner is felt not to be justified by the actual substance of the poem or oration.” 
 - A Handbook To Literature by William Flint Thrall and Addison Hibbard.

Busy Body


Things your body can do after you are dead.


That is a crazy big picture for such a small post.

Okay, here is a link to photos of grains of sand!

Cool, yes?

Um....

I am making turkey and garbanzo bean soup right now... No idea how it will turn out except that it will be quite warm. And have things in it. Like garbanzo beans. And turkey.

Er, finally loading music on to the new lap top.

La.....

How long does soup need to cook?

That long?


Damn.

Update: it smells quite good in the house and the cats are in turkey comas all over the office.

Updated update: theme from Starsky and Hutch (the series) in my head for no reason I can fathom.

The Updatedest Update: the soup was delightful. Who knew turkey and garbanzo beans could get along so well.

He's Worse Than Dead!



His brain is gone!  (insert odd eyebrow emoting from Kirk here)
Adolfo Feragutti Visconti - Die persischen Magierinnen, 1904

A Nom After my own Heart

2008-11-15

Calvin and Hobbes

John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes

The Horror

Voted the worst cover of all time by Total Guitar: Celine Dion does AC/DC.

No lie. Seriously.

Appropriately crap copy.

Just press play, baby.



Mime No More


No, it isn't a spray for those odd areas in the city proper or something that you wish would happen after ingesting odd mushrooms.





Hi.




How have you been?





Damned long week.


 


Rules for those Who Follow rUles


“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
― Dalai Lama XIV


Rules for playing bocce.


“...and for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby  


Rules for using commas.

“Nature provides exceptions to every rule.”
― Margaret Fuller

Rules for visiting the Vatican.

"Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy."
―Joseph Campbell

2008-11-06

Hiya!

A level of insanity this week as the election (may I recommend this photolog of Obama throughout his campaign - just fantastic) and Murder and Mayhem in Muskego begins tomorrow.

My next anthology, UNCAGED, is heading down the editing pike to be born until the world next July. This means massive work now and my brain is more than a little sieve-like. 

I saw many people at Bouchercon and told them, "remind me later." Feel free to do so. I am quite interested to know where my mind was at over those frantic days.

So, hi! How are you? Let's go for a spa day together and just dish on the last few months....

Make More Money!

2008-11-03

"Writing is the most personal form of prayer."


"If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves; like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us."
- Franz Kafka

Here, Bookslut writes of a favorite book of mine, R.CRUMB'S KAFKA

My poet name is:


Gwendolyn Pifflespout.

Spezzatura (n.)

Meaning; short: rehearsed spontaneity, studied nonchalance

Meaning; exhaustive: a term that originates from Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier. It is defined as “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it.”
That is to say, it is the ability of the courtier to display “an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them.”
Sprezzatura has also been described “as a form of defensive irony: the ability to disguise what one really desires, feels, thinks, and means or intends behind a mask of apparent reticence and nonchalance.

Example: the photo to the above, right and almost all of fashion. And people breaking up by text or email. And apples.

Best usage in explosively fast online search: Ed Rants


How Dare You Sir!



From Deus Ex Malcontent 

Monday? Again?



from Nothing to with Arborath

Just Beat It Mullet