Dear Everyone in My Office:
Exactly how long were you going to let me go around with bird poop on my head? (Not my bird's poop; on the way to work, I walked under a telephone wire upon which a pigeon was perched, while it (the weather, not the bird) was desultorily raining, with a few big drops every now and then. So when I felt some kind of drop land on my head, I wasn't sure if it was bird poop or rain; I tried to check it out with my fingers, but couldn't feel it at all for some reason. Whereas, by the time I got to work, it had dried, and become perceptable; and around 11 a.m. I was finger-combing my hair and felt, yes, dried bird poop. Feh. I washed it off with a paper towel and warm water in the bathroom, and I'll take a shower and wash my hair tonight; still, I have a certain feeling of ritual uncleanliness. Feh again, I say.)
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Don't take that to the Banks
Say it ain't so: Tyra Banks is developing a talk show. Is there any English-speaking celebrity left who hasn't tried being a talk-show host? When will it end? Stop the madness, people!
Disclaimer: Yes, I have an embarrassing fondness for "America's Next Top Model." Yes, Tyra Banks is a fine-looking woman, whom I do not mind seeing on TV. But a talk show? It's been the grave of many a career. And saying, as a network executive does, that "If there's ever a future Oprah, she could be the one"? I really don't think so. And there's never going to be a "next Oprah," any more than there'll be a next Johnny Carson. There's a combination of life story, personal charisma, and cultural phenomenon that just doesn't happen very often, and it certainly doesn't happen because somebody's wishing or hoping for it.
Disclaimer: Yes, I have an embarrassing fondness for "America's Next Top Model." Yes, Tyra Banks is a fine-looking woman, whom I do not mind seeing on TV. But a talk show? It's been the grave of many a career. And saying, as a network executive does, that "If there's ever a future Oprah, she could be the one"? I really don't think so. And there's never going to be a "next Oprah," any more than there'll be a next Johnny Carson. There's a combination of life story, personal charisma, and cultural phenomenon that just doesn't happen very often, and it certainly doesn't happen because somebody's wishing or hoping for it.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Woo-ee!
I know, there are things that an entire bottle of white wine and homemade pesto can't cure; but those are things I don't have at the moment.
Weird, if not bad, day at work; f!cking enormous amounts of rain; threat of tornadoes (of which I have a phobia, and I don't care how little sense that makes); but I managed to catch a cab that dropped off someone else right in front of my office (and tipped the driver very well); and J. baked brownies, and had a bottle of wine in the fridge; and I made liberal use of the mute button during the evening news; and I watched the Daily Show; and then there were some CSI reruns and some New York Times crossword puzzles and...well, there was drinking. And homemade pesto, from the basil plant on the windowsill. And did I mention the drinking? Um, yeah, I did. Anyway. I'm fine. Quite fine. Thank you for asking.
In case you were wondering (which you weren't, but pretend you were), here are my ideal proportions for homemade pesto, which can be multiplied according to how much basil you have:
I am, by the way, a pesto snob: as far as I'm concerned, there are exactly five ingredients in pesto, maybe six if you like walnuts. It's basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, and Romano cheese; at the very most, there's walnuts and Parmesan cheese, in addition to/instead of the pine nuts and Romano. There's no room for salt, or canola oil, or parsley, or dried essence of milk curd, or whatever the hell else grocery-store-appropriate pesto makers put in their plastic containers. (And pesto in a pasteurized glass container is to be fled from. Especially if it's gray, or gray-green, or anything the J. Crew catalogue would call "loden"; and if it's drabber than the nearest bottle of green olives, it's clearly a science experiment to discover what Whitey will fall for.)
Woo-ee! Did I mention I've been drinking? (Yeah, I know, I did.)
Oh, and I finally got my old digital camera hooked up to my new(er) computer; and even got the pictures from my cousin's 2002 baby shower off of the camera. And I took some pictures of the bird, although they're a bit blurry, since parakeets move faster than old digital cameras do. But at least now I'm able to take pictures easily, and get them on the computer almost as easily. In fact, here's a picture, taken tonight, of the bird. (Click to enlarge, and to see the annotations I added in Photoshop.)
click for bigger image and annotations
And now I'd better post this and get the bird, and me, to bed. Dobranich...
*The amount of garlic depends on a) how much you like garlic, b) how big the cloves are, and c) how good the cloves are—one small clove of good, fresh, midsummer garlic is one thing; three cloves of midwinter storage garlic that you've had to cut the brown spots and the sprouts out of is another. Anyway, think of how much garlic you personally want, and multiply that by the number of people you're serving.
Weird, if not bad, day at work; f!cking enormous amounts of rain; threat of tornadoes (of which I have a phobia, and I don't care how little sense that makes); but I managed to catch a cab that dropped off someone else right in front of my office (and tipped the driver very well); and J. baked brownies, and had a bottle of wine in the fridge; and I made liberal use of the mute button during the evening news; and I watched the Daily Show; and then there were some CSI reruns and some New York Times crossword puzzles and...well, there was drinking. And homemade pesto, from the basil plant on the windowsill. And did I mention the drinking? Um, yeah, I did. Anyway. I'm fine. Quite fine. Thank you for asking.
In case you were wondering (which you weren't, but pretend you were), here are my ideal proportions for homemade pesto, which can be multiplied according to how much basil you have:
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, stems removedThe "1/2 cup of basil" proportions will make pesto for one, or for two who aren't really hungry. And if you're better at math than I am you can figure it out from there. (Especially if you remember that there are 4 tbsp. in 1/4 cup.)
2 tbsp. pine nuts (or walnuts, or mixture)
1 large garlic clove, or two small*
1 1/2 to 2 tbsp. olive oil
2 tbsp. grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
Process basil, pine nuts, and garlic in blender or food processor. Add half of the oil while mixer is running. Add cheese and the other half of the oil and process. Voilà—you've got pesto.
I am, by the way, a pesto snob: as far as I'm concerned, there are exactly five ingredients in pesto, maybe six if you like walnuts. It's basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, and Romano cheese; at the very most, there's walnuts and Parmesan cheese, in addition to/instead of the pine nuts and Romano. There's no room for salt, or canola oil, or parsley, or dried essence of milk curd, or whatever the hell else grocery-store-appropriate pesto makers put in their plastic containers. (And pesto in a pasteurized glass container is to be fled from. Especially if it's gray, or gray-green, or anything the J. Crew catalogue would call "loden"; and if it's drabber than the nearest bottle of green olives, it's clearly a science experiment to discover what Whitey will fall for.)
Woo-ee! Did I mention I've been drinking? (Yeah, I know, I did.)
Oh, and I finally got my old digital camera hooked up to my new(er) computer; and even got the pictures from my cousin's 2002 baby shower off of the camera. And I took some pictures of the bird, although they're a bit blurry, since parakeets move faster than old digital cameras do. But at least now I'm able to take pictures easily, and get them on the computer almost as easily. In fact, here's a picture, taken tonight, of the bird. (Click to enlarge, and to see the annotations I added in Photoshop.)
click for bigger image and annotations
And now I'd better post this and get the bird, and me, to bed. Dobranich...
*The amount of garlic depends on a) how much you like garlic, b) how big the cloves are, and c) how good the cloves are—one small clove of good, fresh, midsummer garlic is one thing; three cloves of midwinter storage garlic that you've had to cut the brown spots and the sprouts out of is another. Anyway, think of how much garlic you personally want, and multiply that by the number of people you're serving.
Wee, sleekit, not very timorous
In addition to the nine spiny mice (Acomys cahirinus) in cages upstairs, we have an unsanctioned regular mouse (Mus musculus) in the house, and a very bold one, at that. I know it's a bad habit, but we've been keeping the bird food in a box on the floor near her cage, and haven't always reclosed all the bags; yes, that's basically a neon sign saying "All-Nite All-U-Can-Eat Mouse Buffet." But we haven't actually had any mice before; at least not that we could prove. So this morning I'm sitting on the couch next to the birdcage, and I hear a distinct plastic-bag-rustling noise from below; I make sure I'm sitting perfectly still, the bird's in her cage, J. is on the other couch—and there's the rustling noise again. There's definitely something in there. (Please let it be a mouse and not a giant bug.) Sure enough, as I lean over to look, a small, sleek brown mouse pokes its head out of the box, assesses the situation, and bolts for cover under the couch. Me, to J. (in a much calmer voice than the one I use to announce cockroaches): "Mouse."
J.: "What?"
"Mouse."
"And?"
"We should do something about it."
"Now?"
"Well, eventually."
(We'll set traps tonight, after the bird is securely locked in her cage; and before we left for work I sealed all the bird food bags and emptied the loose seed from the box.)
Anyway, the reason I said it's a bold mouse is that it didn't leave the box until well after we'd come downstairs, turned on the lights and the TV, uncovered the bird cage, made coffee and breakfast—usually mice disappear, like roaches, as soon as you turn on a light or your footsteps contact the floor anywhere near them. Then again, how much motivation would you need to leave an all-night all-you-can-eat buffet with food portions bigger than your entire body?
(I don't feel especially good about mousetraps, but I certainly don't want loose, unsanctioned mice roaming around the house chewing on things and pooping everywhere. And catch-and-release traps are all very well and good when you live in the suburbs or the country; but in a block of rowhouses, there's nowhere to release anything you caught in your house without looking like you're trying to visit vermin upon your neighbors. [Not that some of them couldn't use a minor plague—especially the people with those awful yappy dogs—but "live, let live, and don't get egged" is our South Philly modus vivendi.])
J.: "What?"
"Mouse."
"And?"
"We should do something about it."
"Now?"
"Well, eventually."
(We'll set traps tonight, after the bird is securely locked in her cage; and before we left for work I sealed all the bird food bags and emptied the loose seed from the box.)
Anyway, the reason I said it's a bold mouse is that it didn't leave the box until well after we'd come downstairs, turned on the lights and the TV, uncovered the bird cage, made coffee and breakfast—usually mice disappear, like roaches, as soon as you turn on a light or your footsteps contact the floor anywhere near them. Then again, how much motivation would you need to leave an all-night all-you-can-eat buffet with food portions bigger than your entire body?
(I don't feel especially good about mousetraps, but I certainly don't want loose, unsanctioned mice roaming around the house chewing on things and pooping everywhere. And catch-and-release traps are all very well and good when you live in the suburbs or the country; but in a block of rowhouses, there's nowhere to release anything you caught in your house without looking like you're trying to visit vermin upon your neighbors. [Not that some of them couldn't use a minor plague—especially the people with those awful yappy dogs—but "live, let live, and don't get egged" is our South Philly modus vivendi.])
It doesn't take a genius to...oh, wait, it does
In case you're wondering who you're not smarter than, the MacArthur genius award recipients were announced today. (The MacArthur Foundation itself uses the term "MacArthur Fellows Program," which is a little less catchy, but no one's going to quibble about nomenclature when they get an out-of-the-blue, no-strings-attached $500,000 grant for doing something they probably never expected to get paid for [or at least get paid well for].) Actually, to heck with the grant, I'd just like to be able to have their occupation descriptions: "glass technologist" (James Carpenter), "marine roboticist" (Naomi Ehrich Leonard), "technology transfer innovator" (David Green). And yes, I know that to be able to have their job descriptions I'd have to acquire the appropriate education and experience and have the requisite energy and persistence, and none of those things is going to happen; but since I don't think Crappy Book Less-Crappy-Maker or Stupid TV Show Couch-Heckler or Spiny Mouse Population-Boom Enabler is going to be on the list anytime soon, I may as well envision myself doing something useful.
Monday, September 27, 2004
Feed me
Convenient as the Sage RSS reader extension for Firefox is, some of its quirks—especially the absence of a "mark all read" option—have been getting increasingly annoying, especially on a Monday morning when I've got the weekend's accumulated posts to go through; and, with Jen at reflections waxing enthusiastic about Bloglines (most recently in an entry titled blogline goodness), I went ahead and signed up for it; and with my boss temporarily out of the office, I spent some time re-creating my feed list from my blogroll, and discovered that Bloglines was able to find feeds on sites that neither Sage nor my eye had been able to detect.* So I'm pleased to report that the "unfed blogs" blogroll is a thing of the past, and I'm also pleased that I'll be having a more user-friendly RSS reading experience in the future. And what would any browser- or blog-oriented update be without a new button to commemorate it?—yep, a Bloglines button, over next to the RSS button in the sidebar. (Those 85 x 15 pixel buttons are just so addictive...)
*I'm not sure how that sentence wound up being so long; I blame the semicolon and the emdash. On the other hand, I actually do talk like that when I get excited about something—inhaling becomes optional, and the clauses just pile up, usually with increasing rapidity.
*I'm not sure how that sentence wound up being so long; I blame the semicolon and the emdash. On the other hand, I actually do talk like that when I get excited about something—inhaling becomes optional, and the clauses just pile up, usually with increasing rapidity.
Failure foiled again
Me, reporting to J. on yesterday's Eagles game: "They tried very hard to lose in the fourth quarter, but they were so far ahead they couldn't do it."
(Yes, the eternal cynicism of a Philadelphia sports fan. Believe me, we've earned it.)
(Yes, the eternal cynicism of a Philadelphia sports fan. Believe me, we've earned it.)
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