Methods of Escape

A Method of Escape: Cabin Weekend

2008-08-09T08:02:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for a political screed, you've come to the wrong blog. We're getting the hell out of here for 24 hours. Time for a visit to the cabin, take in a little lakeside air, drink some tea--we're even leaving the wine in St. Paul--and enjoy a little fireside chat.

And we're going to live like the beasts of the forest (the people, that is): we're going to grill our dinner.

Corn on the cob, bell peppers, zucchini, walleye (grilled over fennel stalks and brushed with chive/rosemary butter), and some other things, I think.

Sunday morning will bring a trip to Katty Shack, where they serve the best and biggest pancake I've ever encountered.

Super tasty weekend.

And who knows? That casino in Turtle Lake is on the way home. I've got a $20 bill in my pocket and it's calling to the Loch Ness game. See you on Millionaire's Row!
-cK

Bad Medicine

2008-08-07T08:03:00.000-07:00

Dairy Queen is donating the proceeds from all sales of its popular Blizzard product today to Children's Miracle Network. They call it Miracle Treat Day.

Yes, it's a nice idea. But isn't it a bit strange to tag a medical research donation to such an unhealthy product? "Welcome to Dairy Queen! Enjoy your diabetes." Very few of even the small Blizzards fall below 600 calories. Yes, you can survive it, but you know exactly why they want you there today: like meth, you'll be hooked.

You already are hooked. It's encoded in your DNA. Resist!

THE PAPER CHASE

I found myself in a similar dilemma yesterday when at Target to buy some printer paper. There was a green-wrapped HP pack with a 50 cents-higher price. I had thought maybe that meant some post-consumer recycled content.

Alas: no.

Target does not carry that product from HP. At least, last night it didn't. Maybe HP doesn't even manufacture that product. (I don't recall what brand I've bought at OfficeMax. All I know is I was about out and needed more.) Turns out: HP slaps on green packaging, increases the price 12.5%, but donates 20% of profit on the product to the Arbor Day Foundation.

I did not like the one post-consumer recycled content paper they had on the shelf so decided in the end to go with the wasteful product that partially funds a good organization.

I might as well load up at the DQ, it seems. Perhaps resistance is futile?
-cK

Rice = Nice

2008-08-06T05:29:00.000-07:00

I paid a visit to FreeRice.com this morning to shake awake my half-asleep brain--half-asleep for I woke up at 3:30 a.m. and just stayed awake, eventually ambulating to the low-light environment off the kitchen for a little editing work at 5:30 a.m., if only to give my open eyes something to do.

Now, coffee before me, I remembered FreeRice: a site at which you take vocabulary tests, and for each word you get right (you've a one in four chance each time), 20 more grains of rice are donated in food-starved places around the world.

No registration is needed. No fees. Just you and the words and some sponsors willing to cover the cost of the rice donations.

Best word I remembered correctly: bumbershoot (umbrella)
Best word I guessed correctly: axilla (armpit)

Give it a try.
-cK

Why I Oughta...

2008-08-05T14:42:00.001-07:00

...never make another type of pizza other than THIS.

I've written about this particular pizza before. I was right then, and I'm right now. Well, the Muse was right. She's the one who found the recipe for Pizza Bianca with Goat Cheese and Greens.

I admit, I love thinking about the many other grand pizzas made here, such as this:

and this:

and this:

But the Pizza Bianca with Goat Cheese and Greens is just SO SO GOOD. Especially the crust. We hadn't made it in months, but with our good friend Kerrey in town from Little Rock we couldn't resist the excuse to indulge.

What the hell were we thinking taking so long to make this again!?

Everyone: please, please, please take that recipe and at least make the dough yours. It's well worth it.
-cK

The Life of Us

2008-08-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

Over at the Country Mouse Tales, Claire posted an entry the other day in which she recognized some things she really likes about other blogs. That's something I ought to do more of. I'm certainly reading around enough.

Today I want to note how much of a joy it is to read The Life of Us...as much of it as I convince myself I understand. It's in Danish, and I've done a little study with the language. And there are enough similarities to the small amount of Swedish I know that I can puzzle out some things. When in doubt, and when dictionaries fail me, I turn to GramTrans for help.

The primary writer, Kathrine, used to do the Copenhagen Photo Blog and wrote in English. It was part of that photo-a-day ring from cities all over the world. She took wonderful shots. She still does, only now she uses them primarily on her family blog.

Kathrine and husband Mikkel (a musician) provide plenty of beautiful images from around the city and a number of short videos of their interactions with the real stars of the site: their young sons August and Alfred.

For my own druthers, it's rather nice to have the opportunity to listen to Danish. And Katharine's writing style is quite spirited (so far as I translate it!).

Her images of the city inspire me.

Copenhagen is one of the main cities of my heart. I've been there twice and know I'll go again. In the meantime, I've got The Life of Us to tide me over.

I recommend the images/entries here ("A Summer's Day in Copenhagen"), here ("Nyhavn," named for the neighborhood and canal) and here (because that hoodie rocks).

Randoms

2008-08-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

CAFE MARSEAU

Perhaps it was the cooled air and celing fans giving my fellow joe drinkers the fits, or perhaps they'd all consumed something...fidgety the previous evening and felt a bit of an internal draft. Or maybe they were simply very excited to see another.

But as I sat in the coffee shop on Thursday morning entering article abstracts into a database and listening to a Pixies-heavy mix on my headphones, the people around me were outrageously expressive with one another. They shifted in their seats like Tom Arnold. They used their hands the way Italians are portrayed on commercials.

It was like sitting among mimes, and since I had headphones on, they might as well have been mouthing their words.

...THAT ENDS WELL

I was upbraided by an old man for saying "All's well," for this is apparently something one is not to say in certain company.

"Maybe you say that with your white friends," he said, "but you watch out in certain neighborhoods."

(He's black. He's also a friend, so this wasn't a random berating. It's actually quite characteristic of him to abruptly give a lecture on matters you'll seldom discover the reason for.)

He demonstrated a gang-like greeting gesture that looks something like giving an indigestive chest a single rap with a fist, then fanning open the fingers.

"All's well," he said as he did this.

SCANDIS

I had thought I'd finally gained the edge on my father in reading Scandinavian mysteries; but alas, fresh from the 6-hour drive he and Mum took to visit, he walked in, saw the Håkan Nesser book I'm reading (The Return) and said, "I've read that."

"And Borkmann's Point?" I asked.

"Yep."

He went on to name a couple authors I haven't reached yet (Karin Fossum and Åsa Larsson, the latter of whom interests me for the Kiruna setting).

Back to the Scandi drawing board for me....

SUNDAY WE'RE GOING TO CIRCUS JUVENTUS

We are.

In the Company of Wolves

2008-07-30T17:08:00.000-07:00

In a former life I was editing a construction trade magazine. Our bread and butter was a particularly data-intense annual issue that we'd come to call The Human Stain in-house. (Our two other bad boy directories were known as The Dog Zoo and The Beast. The Beast was so awful that the editorial director placed outside her office a bucket labeled "Lung Bucket." It was where she made it clear she'd deposit someone's lungs if they messed up her participant forms.)

One year as I struggled through the Human Stain, a company faxed me a photocopy of another company's product data. They'd made revisions to the names, changing the names of the products to their own product names.

A weak explanation on the form indicated that they had an agreement with this other company and that this would be an okay edit.

I ignored it, much in the way it's said that the press corp, way back when, ignored the indiscretions, personal failings and discomforts of presidents and other key public officials because to talk about such things seemed too catty for "real news" and the American news diet.

THINGS THAT HAPPEN ONCE

Now I'm in another life, but one very similar to the former. It is still trade-heavy and on the construction side of things. And I'm thinking about scraping.

Scraping is the nabbing of content from one source and posting it elsewhere as if it's your own or at least yours by permission. Bloggers--including myself--are often scraped by blogs and sites set up as nothing more than a warehouse of Google Ads. The scraped content is used to attract search engines, which are used to attract readers. They arrive at the scraper site and, look at that!, they find ads. Maybe they click one. Cha-ching! Money in the bank for the scraper.

You can report these sites and get them blocked or warned, etc., but in going to these sites you open yourself up to another problem: potential malware (that is, invasive software often hidden in a "cookie"...which your browser may already be set to automatically accept because so many sites demand you accept them so you can also see the offerings of their "legitimate" sponsors, and so those sponsors and sites can track your habits).

It's sort of like electric kudzu.

All of this is in my mind today because I've sort of started the legal wheels turning against a company in my industry because of the scraping that firm has been doing on a company "blog."

A COMPANY MEET C COMPANY

I didn't necessarily intend to launch a legal matter, and maybe I haven't, maybe the resolution is more pleasant, but I just don't know. It's much too early, but something is in motion.

Because A Company took content that B Company had paid me to arrange on behalf of C Company. I learned of this through a Google News Alert (under the Blog Alert heading). An industry-specific keyword on which I receive alerts was set off by this blog entry at A Company's website.

The entry contained content I'd worked on for B and C Companies. All the links were removed and replaced with links to other pages on A Company's website. Credit for B Company's site, where I published the piece, was not given. No link to C Company was provided, even though the piece was about its products. Even with the specific products, A Company's intra-blog links stayed in the main A Company website.

So I wrote C Company and asked if it had a business relationship with A Company, in which case I was willing to turn a blind eye to things because it could spur business for C Company--who paid the people who pay me--via A Company's potential work with C's products.

Alas, there was no relationship. C Company wrote to me and CCed its legal rep within the company and asked for the context regarding how I'd discovered this. I told them. I even pointed out how A Company had done this seemingly with all its 250+ blog entries, usually by pasting a newspaper's article copy into a blog entry and filling it with A Company-promotional links (while also stripping out source and author credit).

All of the links were, in turn, tagged with further promotional material even though the content wasn't about them.

Among competitors, this could be used in rather unethical ways (though how do you determine harm?). For example, your company is Swedish Widgets and Crockery. A competitor comes along and post your same text: This is the home page of Sw edish Widgets and Crockery.

Roll your cursor over that name but do not click it. Let the cursor sit there a moment. A different name should pop up.

Essentially, that's the sort of piggybacking one could do if all this was allowed to go unchecked.

I wouldn't call it a vicious circle, but I would say it's annoying; like national politics.

THE TROUBLE WITH BLOGGING

A good deal of blogging, including my own use of it, involves some scraping, or borrowing, or whatever we're going to call it other than theft. I think there are very legitimate ways of doing so, even for people who blog for profit (I'm unfortunately not one of them, though this profitlessness gives me the lovely freedom to sort of wander off for months at a time).

Bloggers tend to use the content of other's in two essential ways:

* Pasting text, such as news, in order to share an interesting point / story or to really take issue with it

* Messing with images--such as putting devil horns on politicians--for satire or expression; or using an image in a clearly new and disassociated context for a point or theme, such as when some idiot might use an image of Klondike Kat atop an overly long blog entry about blogging ethics and actually turning someone in--even sort of accidentally--because of that person's clear violation of ethics.

I think both of these uses are perfectly acceptable, and as far as one might take our protection of writing and speech--by which I mean using it, not surpressing creative (or even lame) use--I think we should. I don't approve of a society entirely under the lock and key of corporate copyright offices. In the styles noted above, text reuse is generally with citation, such as to the New York Times or the National Review, because people who take the time to do this usually want you to know what they've been reading.

It's their way of saying (if not outright), "Can you believe this shit!?"

In the case of images, I think they are usually without citation because (a) most people don't know how to cite images [this includes many English instructors, though they usually know how to look it up in a guide] and (b) most of us online use images in a manner as we might in a collage. In a notebook. In high school.

NEXT ON THE DOCKET

I don't know what happens next. I feel bad. Sort of. I've had plenty of good conversations with the people at A Company before.

Certainly they intended to generate traffic, and traffic could lead to money. (The news articles they were scraping, by the way, were construction and engineering-oriented, usually in areas the products they work with are involved.) So while this wasn't a case like a Google Ad-mad scraper, it's a similar beast.

Have they used other companies like this? I don't know. I haven't carved through it all. I'm not going to.

I just don't understand why a legitimate, noted business would put itself out there with such liability not just for copyright infringement but clear misuse of a competitor's name, products, service and promotion. How much dumb can one claim?

Part of me thinks today's events unfolded because what A Company did with another company's name was worse than what it had been doing to news articles.

Part of me thinks they unfolded because what A Company has been doing to real news is worse. You know, it's, like, freedom of press and the sanctity of the written worth, man. What Lincoln said.

And part of me thinks these events have come to a head because what A Company did affected me. Because in all honesty I'd known their blog was out there, and I'd known they'd scraped content. But I didn't react because I hoped they'd change, or I hoped they'd run out of energy like so many bloggers, or I had run out of energy for getting torqued up on these matters because there are so many who just say screw it to ethics, especially when money may be involved.

I hoped, at any rate, that they wouldn't bother me.

But they did. They took my words, and not just my words but the words I'd written for hire. And not even my words for hire, really, but only some of them. Because, as I am so often during the work day, I was just a wet nurse for words birthed by someone else, words I'd been asked to care for and draw attention to and perhaps make even more profitable.

Congratulations, Lol!

2008-07-25T09:37:00.000-07:00

My good friend Lol gave birth to little Keegan Patrick yesterday. He's 7 lbs, 9 oz, and he's certain to be the good sort of nerd if I have any influence (and I will, Ray and Lara, I will).

Awesome.
-cK

The Future of America

2008-07-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

Now, now, now: what a silly absence that was!

Right! Back to it:

It's the little adventures that interest me most, I think. The casual exchange. The coffeeshop eavesdrop. Calling my cat's name every time the poor beast has just closed her eyes.

Yesterday, the phone rings. As I don't recognize the number, and even though it's local, I let it go to message. A woman named Jamie has left a message for someone named Deb. Jamie hopes this is the right number--it isn't--and that Deb should know it is NOT okay to come later, that if she doesn't show for the planned session she'll receive, at best, half credit.

She also hopes Deb has a good day and that she (Jamie) will see her (Deb) soon.

After about 10 minutes, I call the number, having decided it's a simple nice thing to do and it does seem like it's a message of value to someone, or at least someone's class grade.

Someone named Jenny or Lyndsey or something ending in y answers. Apparently this is a front desk, perhaps of a philosophy or English or mathematics department of one of Saint Paul's many small colleges.

I tell her I'm returning a call that was just placed to me. I'd like to speak to Jamie.

"I'm sorry," she says, "you have the wrong number. There's no Jamie here."

"I just hit the call back," I said. "It was a woman named Jamie from this number."

"There's no Jamie here."

[pause]

"She was looking for a Deb," I say.

"There's no--WAIT," she says. "Looking for Deb? Hold on."

I'm on hold. I'm holding. Now someone picks up.

"This is Jamie...."

What I should have said is, "That's impossible. There's no Jamie there." Alas, I simply told her who I was, who she left a message for on my phone, and that indeed it was the wrong number. We matched the numbers and found she'd misdialed the last one.

No worries. Problem solved.

And one hopes that in the future the desk help learns that not all instructors share the first names of "Ms." "Mr." "Mrs." or "Professor."

Updates

2008-03-25T10:14:00.000-07:00

Sunset outside my sister's house in Elk River, Minnesota

I was back in Swedish class this morning, happily so. Only two of us showed, unfortunately. It's the third tier of the beginning level course. Tier two was bruising for a few class members who seemed not to study save for class mornings. They were just frustrated, I guess, and didn't sign back up.

Otherwise, the timing was just poor. People are traveling for March or have schedule conflicts during our weekly Tuesday morning timeslot.

So we have officially 8 people in the class--I think--but it seems we'll only have 5 or 6 each session. Today we only had two. Alas, that's not so bad. I pick it up quick enough and never mind making an ass of myself by revealing how much I don't know. That's really the secret of studying a foreign language. Just accept you're going to look foolish and enjoy it.

It's a lot like living with someone.

(I'm the foolish one, in that scenario, dear Muse.)

TOO CLEVER?

* The Swedish word for married is gift, pronounced "yift."
* The Swedish word for poison is also gift.

Han är gift. So is he married? or poison? I suppose it depends on whether one asks him or his spouse.

An ornament Suzanne gave us after an
excellent Easter dinner at her place.

iPHONE IT IS

I'm getting an iPhone. I'm hoping dearly they ship it this week by Wednesday, as I'll be away next week. I don't know why I paid the extra $10 for 2 to 3-day delivery. I certainly would not have done so had I known they might not ship it for a full 10 days from the time of order. Why didn't they give some warning?

For all of Apple's vision and for all of their intuitive technologies that really help people along, the company fails to understand that most of us expect shipments for online orders to ship quickly. Like, 24 or 48 hours later.

That's really standard now. C'mon, Steve Jobs. At least tell us upfront the delay in shipment might be a week or two.

THAT REMINDS ME

I know the casual office thing is big, and I really like that. But Mr. Jobs you really should wear a suit ONCE. The black turtleneck scene is starting to get very Sprockets. True, the thought of receiving my iPhone makes me happy as a little girl, but no sir I do not want to touch your monkey.

Now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!

THE SAFETY DANCE

One of my all-time favorite lyrics misunderstandings is for the song "Safety Dance." In it, Men Without Hats sing, "And I can act like an imbecile." But someone--I won't say who, E____--heard as "...act like I'm in Brazil."

Not only is that line funny, but as 1980s' songs go, it fits. Why not act like you're in Brazil? After all, I've never once given thought to how or why "Motorin'" becomes a fitting refrain piece for a song called "Sister Christian."

Undoubtedly someone has studied all this. It just seems that the pseudo-poetics of a mid-1980s' song's narrative made sense within its time, if only that it attempted to tell a story even if it didn't make a lick of sense. Whereas, the songs of the 1990s seemed oppressively self-aware and embarrassed about it all and used mishmashes and nonsequitters as a way to destroy meaning. For example, that whole "aqua seafoam shame" in Nirvana's "All Apologies." Or anything by Pavement.

The 1990s, I think, wanted to be meaningfully unmeaning. Whereas the 1980s were unmeaningfully meaningful.

I think I just made up words. So that must be what the oughts are about: absolute, unimpeded bullshit.

How else do we explain Gwen Stefani's lyrics? How else do we explain having such a crappy president?

Awe and Agony

2008-03-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

AWE

JPMorgan has offered $236 million for Bear Stearns, a firm that a year ago traded for roughly $150/share. JP's offer was for $2/share. And it may be a good offer.

The Yankees paid $275 million for a 10-year contract with Alex Rodriguez.

AGONY

I really need a more business-oriented phone. The cost is tough to swallow, but it's necessary and is a write-off next year.

But I can't decide whether to go with the Blackberry or the iPhone, the latter of which is not only cool outside of business but is adapting to become a more competitive phone to RIM's Blackberry.

Ugh.

Sunny

2008-03-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

Man is it nice out! Sunny, about 50 degrees. The sun coming through the window is almost intolerable, it feels so warm after winter.

Still, I can't help but post this frosty clip (as have so many other bloggers) in which Dick Cheney spells out in a 1994 interview all the reasons the first President Bush's Iraq War could NOT go into Baghdad. His exact words: "It's a quagmire." Everything he predicted would happen then happened with Bush II: the Revenge.

So if Dick is the most powerful vice president in history--and it really has seemed that way--what the hell has he actually been doing if not advising the president? Or did he just lose it over time the way chess masters and scientists and sports coaches are depicted doing in the movies during their twilight years?

And because one needs release, I pass along to you the Christopher Walken stare page that Johnny G. sent to me today.

By the way, that Walken page has sound to it: Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." I highly recommend opening two windows, starting the Walken page (for the sound) then clicking back to this window and playing the Cheney clip. "Moonlight Sonata" is a brilliant soundtrack to Cheney's words.
-cK

Spring Arrives in the North

2008-03-12T06:06:00.001-07:00

The sudden arrival of both sunshine and even temperatures in the 40s lifts a great weight from us all up here in the North. Winter will eventually end. We now enter a tenuous window in which precipitation of various forms--for the temperature will fluctuate much--may color the sky a shade of wet newsprint, but it's no longer really winter. Not really.

In Halldor Laxness' sprawling masterpiece Independent People, he describes in the middle portion of the book the agony of the people living on the harsh terrain of Iceland's moors. They are waiting for winter to yield. They are losing hope.

Then, without warning, spring arrives and delivers that feeling they had all given up on. Spring is something, he writes, you never believe in until it is already upon you.

This morning I was reminded of all that not only by the weather we are having now, but by the following, glorious quote from Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac, "The Geese Return":

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring.

A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed. But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges.

Credit to Mike for sending along those paragraphs. Thanks, friend.
-cK

The Gang's All Here

2008-03-11T19:35:00.000-07:00

Over at the OMB Watch blog, where I'd gone to read a reaction to a Wall Street Journal article on potential late Bush administration plans to lessen regulations on animal waste lagoons--I'm not kidding; that's actually why I went there--I found the following quote:

"[P]eople acting in a group can accomplish things which no individual acting alone could even hope to bring about." - FDR

I need to look that quote up, if only to puzzle out the use of brackets on only the p of people. Is this to suggest that President Roosevelt uttered a different letter? Did he actually cry out "Feople"? Or did he stutter or something?

P-p-p-people...

I understand the quote and I do appreciate it. I very much like FDR's speeches. But what perhaps amazes me about that quote is its neutrality in its decontextualized presentation.

Is this to be a hopeful statement? Are we to believe that in numbers we can accomplish great things?

If that's the case, Barack Obama's campaign is proof. People eating yogurt with the pink lids and mailing in the tops for securing charity donations is proof. Hell, even the way my family and relatives get together to clean up the common property and cabins each year is proof.

But there's also a rather grim side to that quote. Mob mentality has never, to my knowledge, been used as a hopeful thing. And, as such, the actions that the many can achieve over the individual can be pretty ugly.

Examples:
* Lynchings
* The development of the nuclear bomb.
* The election of George W. Bush. TWICE.

Not long ago I reread Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle about the endlessly competing aspects of science and relgion--how they compete with one another and within themselves. Atomic energy is both awe-inspiring and horrific. Religion is both inspiring and unforgivably capricious.

More than 2000 years ago Socrates said he was smarter than everyone else because he at least knew that he knew nothing, whereas the rest of us fools went about believing we had at least real knowledge about something.

I don't think we've ever found a snappy comeback to that old dog's thought. No wonder we made him drink hemlock.
-cK

In Which I Crib Farah's Hair

2008-03-06T19:27:00.001-08:00

I don't have any comments about Farah Fawcett then or now. But when abruptly it became clear that my hair had grown too long, and, more importantly, that I'd been wearing a knit cap too long--a serious hair problem in the northern Midwest--the Muse and I discovered my hair had flipped out.

By which I mean developed a Charlie's Angels-like flip. See Farah. See me.

Unlike my fellow (female) citizens, I do not need to use hair curler trickery to achieve this look. It is simply my natural hair. Despise it, laugh at it, envy it, friends. But I found this Yahoo! Answers exchange about achieving Farah's hair to be comical. I quote without permission:

We used to get that look by taking a curling iron to the front sides of the hair. You curl holding the iron vertical, and then curl away from the face instead of toward the face. Start practicing now, because this is a look that just doesn't happen on the very first try.

Sisters, some of us are just born with the gift.

So. I did get a haircut today. The benefits of going to the same joint for many years pays off! I called this morning and got an appointment with the salon owner. She cut her grocery shopping short to take care of my shaggy head. She's a peach, that Stephanie.

But before I chopped off what was rapidly transforming itself into "hockey hair," the Muse and I had a bit of hair fun:

And because the real star of the show is Charlie's Angels, I leave you with a filched photo: Bikinis, Jodhpurs, Tennis Getups (???) and Buddhist poses. Pop culture was, I have to say, so much cooler when it could be embraced without all the self-awareness of today.

Dominoes and Bosse's Bad Day

2008-03-04T11:14:00.000-08:00

Last night I played my first hands of dominoes. I very much enjoyed it. And being that I have a terrible memory for how to play games--particularly cards--it was a welcomed scenario to find one need only match a domino to one end or the other of the numbers being played.

I had, as they say, beginner's luck. I won two of the three frames we played (each frame concluding when one player wins three hands) and overall 7 of the 15 hands.

Dominoes is now my game...until, that is, I forget how to play it; which should be somewhere around 8 pm tonight.

POOR BOSSE!

The Nya Mål textbook we use in my weekly Swedish class follows the lives of people living in the same building (Granvägan 4, Stockholm). We follow the Åberg family (Jonas, Ellen, Emil and Klara), Bosse Palmgren, Hassan and Linda, Lisa, etc.

Hassan and Linda are expecting a child but are not married, and increasingly Hassan is nervous and irritable. Jonas doesn't help enough around the house. Emil sleeps too much and is late for class. Ellen is stressed out. Lisa dreams of a real acting job; she's sick of commercials. And poor Bosse must work at night. He drives a taxi, is divorced, and lives in a small place that his three kids come to stay in every so many weekends.

Bosse wants a day job. He needs more money. He would love to be in a relationship again.

And this morning, I had Jonas run him over with a car.

We were practicing the use of the word som, which means which and who. We'd just read a conversation in which Jonas (a painter) meets up with some buddies, has a few beers, calls for a cab, and it turns out that Bosse is the driver. So they have a chat on the way home and get to know one another.

I try to turn this into my example sentence. And since I sit up next to the instructor, I'm the first to go most lessons. I lead the class into darkness:

Jonas åker sedan taxi, som kör på Bosse.

I intended that to mean, "Jonas goes by taxi, which is driven by Bosse." What it essentially means is "Jonas drives a taxi into Bosse." Poor bastard.

CORRECTED SENTENCE: Jonas åker i taxi som Bosse kör.

I wasn't too sharp today. Alas, we've a three-week break now around Easter and will resume March 25. I hope to locate my brain in the meantime.

Glad påsk!
-cK

Acts of Theft

2008-02-28T08:04:00.001-08:00

AN ACT OF THEFT

The above photo and the following note that went with it were sent to me by my friend John, a reference librarian in Illinois. The combo of image and note kills me. I'm posting it here without permission:

My new exercise regime: Run at a barbed wire fence, leap into full body flip, then chuck an axe at a target. Three sets of ten, twice daily.

MY WASHINGTON WIRE

Two matters grab me today: blogging and political insiders; and the spreading virus of celebrity endorsements in the political arena.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal's "Portals" columnist Lee Gomes published a piece about the vast availability of political news and analysis, and how bloggers decontextualize and recombine those elements to become, in essence, something of Washington insiders. He's got a fine point, though certainly those "insider" types are still few and far far between. Just try reading the crap comments on Jack Cafferty's "Cafferty Files" blog at CNN. The comments on there provide ample evidence for negative world opinions about Americans.

To judge by the obstreperous statements of those commenting on political blogs, we are as a people grossly uneducated, quite possibly illiterate, callous, self-absorbed, and reluctant to learn more of pretty much anything than just the gist. Even the gist seems exhausting for us.

(Mob mentality and mob posting are, of course, almost always to the detriment of reason.)

And in the recent election cycle we've seen an unusually high number of celebrities not just commenting on the election, and not just getting actual coverage from major media sources--and I mean news sources, not just Entertainment Tonight--but actively appearing on the campaign trail (a la Chuck Norris' "Huck & Chuck" stops and Oprah's rallies with Obama).

I love the popular interest in our politics, certainly. But I detest how it has grossly altered our media coverage.

It apparently means that newsworthy political endorsements extend everywhere. Sports Illustrated published a piece about injured rookie center Greg Oden of the Portland Trailblazers. What was this piece about? How's his rehab going? How does he plan to fit into the team's scheme next year now that they seem to have functioned well without him? Nope.

Oden has endorsed Obama.

Good on ye, Greg Oden, for a fine choice, but SI--stay out of politics. Really.

(I suppose this is where SI responds: then shouldn't Congress stay out of sports?)

Just pack it in, Senators Clinton and McCain. Oden hath spoken.

Leftovers

2008-02-27T05:46:00.001-08:00

How very strange to be living with someone who plans meals. The Muse does a lot of list-making and meal planning, but not because that's the way it has to be but because it's sort of relaxing to know that some things can be depended on. It simplifies the week, of course, to know that you don't have to run out and buy some junk for lunch every day at work, for example.

This is a lifestyle I haven't had to think about for a couple years, since I work from the apartment, which means that breakfast and lunch has, for quite some time, been a pretty quick activity. Get something in my belly and keep working.

Now there are actual meals I might have at lunch because we cook dinner with leftovers in mind. I'm eating more healthily, I'm learning to plan better, and I'm learning all the things I can do with leftovers.

Thing is: I think my leftovers are weird.

Take for example the image above. That's a leftovers lunch. I fried five quail eggs, divided them between two pieces of toast, and topped it with a warm mix of spinach, caramelized red onion, garlic, hot pepper flakes, and thin-sliced ham. I did this so I could use up the spinach, onion and ham.

True: this contrasts sharply from last week when I ate a chick pea burger every day because our recipe made so many! But still: fresh chickpea burgers. That's weird. It's just that when I think of leftovers I think of curious chicken casseroles, the contents of which have become more obscure in the refrigerator-congealed cream sauce.

PHOTO OP

The Muse's headbands are super good to keep the hair off my forehead and eyes while hunched over the keyboard. It's a dorkiness I enjoy, because it makes me feel like a European or South American tennis player.

Backhand slice pose!
-cK

Leeks, Pasta and The Draining Lake

2008-02-25T09:04:00.000-08:00

I used to photograph everything, but have since slowed considerably as I've filled a ridiculous amount of photo cards, I hesitate to put so many images on my computer, I'm ambivalent about deleting original (which is to say, large-file) images--even goofy ones--so conserve space on the camera.

But I really need to get back to photographing things, especially food.

Lord. The Muse and I like to cook, and last night she made a gem of a dish. It was a version of Jamie Oliver's "Cheat's Pappardelle with Slow-Braised Leeks." We made a number of changes, certainly. She worked from notes she took while we watched the show rather than from the recipe, and I think her version came out brilliant.

Changes:
* We ignored the porcini pangrattato.
* We used three leeks, not five.
* We used fresh (albeit store-bought) fettucini
* We used chicken broth instead of white wine (but only because we drank the rest of the white wine after glazing vegetables with it the previous night)
* We braised the leeks in butter and garlic, per the recipe, but used thin-sliced ham to create the "steam" covering rather than the cured meat Oliver recommends.

This isn't to say everyone should make those changes, but just know that's what we did in case you'd like to try this recipe. I encourage you to do so, for those of you who eat meat.

It was divine. We added to it some caramelized red onion and roasted peppers (extra from the previous night's cooking) and fresh shredded Parmesan cheese.

I just ate the leftovers--and totally without grace. It was good cold too. If you've never tried leeks and pasta, do so NOW.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION

I'm currently taking a break from the outstanding Halldor Laxness novel Independent People to read Arnaldur Indridason's The Draining Lake. Indriðason's Reykjavik mysteries are comparable to Henning Mankell's Skåne mysteries. (That's the southern most province of Sweden.) My friend Terry loaned me this British-English version (as the book is not out yet in an American translation). He picked it up while in Germany. It's a good yarn, friends. If you ever want to investigate Scandinavian mysteries, I'd recommend you try Mankell and Indriðason's works.

Of course, if you truly want a good dose of it, I'd encourage you to take it back a touch and read the 10 books by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. The married writers wrote ten mysteries to chronicle ten years of change in Swedish society. The books are set in the 1960s and 1970s. Good reads, definitely.

Min katt är trött, min svenska är sonder

2008-02-22T12:59:00.000-08:00

Where ya been!? Running about like a chicken with my head cut off. The Muse has moved in so we're living out of many boxes, taxes have been sorted out (almost), weather has been brutal, but all in all life is grand.

I must get back to the blog! Enough of this feeling overwhelmed. I've got the energy again...but the cat doesn't have it.

As the title makes known (in questionable Swedish), "My cat is tired, my Swedish is broken."
-cK

All About the Benjamins

2008-01-10T11:40:00.000-08:00

This kills me: the FBI can't pay its phone-tapping bills!

Can you script it better than that? Nope. Reality is stranger than fiction, and perhaps full of more poetic justice than poetry.

It reminds me that when I lived in southern Illinois they opened a museum to coal mining in the state. The whole region had been savaged by the closing of coal mines. Illinois coal, as I recall, was too sulfurous. It produces too much pollution, thus requiring expensive scrubbing systems at power stations that use it. When I was a freshman in college, they were either still using Illinois coal to power the campus or had recently stopped. (It was state law that state coal had to be used for state campuses.) A major faculty lot had been spit upon repeatedly by sulfurous luggies from the power station stacks. It burned the paint on their cars.

So the coal industry in southern Illinois wasn't long for the world then. It collapsed. A museum was built in an old mine to remember this once-vibrant (though rather dirty) industry.

Not long after it opened, the museum closed. It couldn't pay its power bills.
-cK

The Voyeur

2008-01-03T05:21:00.000-08:00

A voyeur has arrived on my block, and I believe I saw the moment of inception.

This was perhaps three weeks ago. I'd returned home about 7:00, which is a rather dark time of the morning here. I parked outside my building, and turning to exit the car caught sight of the naked, pink side of a body. Presumably it was a woman's. At the same moment, a bundled up and masked jogger passed, glanced into the woman's apartment, and slowed.

The building across the street has what the property manager calls "bump outs." These are French-door enclosed half-rooms that are off the living rooms of those apartments. Some people use them as sitting rooms, some as bedrooms (in which very little other than a bed might fit). The woman in the ground floor apartment directly across from my building's entrance probably uses hers as a bedroom.

She is simply someone who is comfortable--or was comfortable--with her blinds open. They are no longer that way.

The jogger was not the only person who seemed to fancy looking in on those windows, as a cabal of teenagers sometimes meets at the corner nearby. A bus picks them up. Sometimes when I've gone out to the living room and looked out I've seen one or two teens off by the doors to the now-defunct framing shop across the street, and they would on those mornings smoke a cigarette and cast furtive glances into that apartment.

In the weeks that followed this instance with the jogger, I caught sight of him stalking the block. Sometimes I saw him when I returned home at that same hour. Sometimes when I went down to fetch the paper from the foyer. Sometimes just walking out to the living room in the morning--I'm on the third floor--and looking out at the morning on my street.

That first morning I saw him, he slowed as he passed her window. It was a slowing that indicated to me he was thinking, "Did I just see that?"

I went into my building, turned my head back, and true enough he was making another pass of the window, just as slowly and this time with a bit of lift to his toes for an extra inch of viewing.

When I got up to my apartment, I looked out and saw him making repeated passes, sometimes from my side of the street, sometimes from the other.

I don't know how old he is. I suspect he's older than maybe his thinness suggests. (Life tends to have a way with us, you know.) At least I think he's thin, based upon the relative skinniness of his spandex-clad legs. His heavy coat disguises his stomach's true shape. His white scarf and tall knitted cap mask his face and hair. But there's an awkwardness to his steps that makes me think it is not so much a carefulness on the ice up here but the gimpy, balance-concerned stride of someone whose body is not as ready to be running (or walking) in the morning as it once was. Each step seems to be taken to prevent the body from going over. It's that sort of hesitant but forward-falling stride.

This morning I saw him again, as I arrived home at 7:00 am in the darkness. He was walking back and forth in front of that building and glancing in now at a new window where the blinds were up part way. The window he used to seek is lit but the blinds are firmly closed, as I believe they have been for a spell.

And seeing him makes me wonder about the human as an animal, and the way in which we attach ourselves to schedules, including the schedules of others. About the way in which we cannot help but watch and question one another. And about how writers, myself included, very much enjoy people-watching and catching glimpses of ordinary life, snippets of conversation, a note dropped upon the avenue.

And about how fine a line it is between ordinary and predatory viewing.
-cK

Three-Peat

2008-01-02T13:19:00.000-08:00

I'm am on my third pot of Winter Spice tea today. I recommend you acquire some too from the Tea Source. (The store was profiled on NPR's Splendid Table back in 2005.)

That is all.
-cK

Curious

2008-01-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

This country's homophobia is grotesque, true. But here's what's rolling about my brain:

* New Hampshire became the fourth state to allow same-sex civil unions.

* This doesn't mean it will stick, of course. It just means that NH is the fourth state to give the go ahead until an ultra-conservative judge (of which we have an unfortunate number) decides that "judge-made" law is acceptable when it reverses civil rights. How they usually say this is by establishing a moratorium so that the state may "review" the law as written.

* Obviously, same-sex civil unions are intended for homosexuals of the same sex.

* But what if two homosexuals of opposing genders sought a marriage? Would they be forced to accept the lower tier civil union simply because they are openly gay? Or would they be granted full recognition under the law simply because one partner had boy parts and the other girl parts?

* Could two gay couples, one female-female, the other male-male, inter-marry (thus becoming traditional man-woman marriages), share a house, and, through independent contracts, transfer power of attorney and such to their true partner (who is for official purposes part of the other marriage), etc.

I'm not saying anything new here, of course; I'm just amused by it all. The furious opposition to these things. It's a horse pill dose of black comedy, day after day. We're such an embarrassing country. (Arguably, we've always been this way.) The endless need for state-sponsored prejudice. All that red-faced talk radio. The Atkins diet. (Remember that? See ya later, suckas!)

We're the worlds teenagers.
-cK

Your Search Is Over

2007-12-30T12:12:00.000-08:00

That's it. It's done: your search for the perfect pizza crust. Possibly for the perfect all-around pizza too.

The Muse and I love to cook, and we try each Saturday to make something new. Often, this involves sifting through the wonderful archive of recipes and reviews at Epicurious.com, which culls various cooking magazines.

Not long ago, the Muse discovered this gorgeous pizza.

Pizza Bianca with Goat Cheese and Greens

A simple white pizza. Goat cheese, mozzarella, Swiss chard and a bit of garlic. Some flavored oil for the crust.

We've made it a number of times since discovering this recipe. The dough is particularly good, and very easy to make--though you need to budget time to let it rise. For example, six hours. But that makes for a really nice weekend pizza. You get the dough going in the morning or afternoon and you'll have an outstanding dinner.

The crust is light but not too thin, not too crispy, but certainly not doughy. It's easy peasy to work with. It looks like the sort of easy-to-work-with dough you see on cooking shows, the sort that you see and wonder what you've been doing wrong all these years.

Wonderful stuff.

And we recommend you leave an inch or two around the edge just to brush on the pepper flake and garlic-infused olive oil. The dough is just so good. Like any really good pizza, you don't need to make it edge-to-edge cheese. You want to taste the crust too.

We made this most recently on Christmas Eve while visiting my parents and grandmother in Illinois. Wonderful time, and wonderful food.

RIDICULOUS NOTE

When we grocery shop at the Rainbow in Saint Paul's sometimes dodgy Midway neighborhood, we use the self-checkout line. The chard we buy for this pizza rings up as Swiss Chardonnay.
-cK

Working in Florida This Week

2007-12-12T07:22:00.000-08:00

I'm working in Florida this week and do not link up to the Internet in the evenings, so no blog updating til the weekend.

>> insert gigantic world sigh <<

Lol, by the way, is an awesome host. Her dinners are righteously good.
-cK

Please Show Your Education

2007-12-06T08:11:00.000-08:00

My sister and her husband photographed the following signs in bathrooms in Mexico back in February. Please Show Your Education is, I think, a sign relevant for most locations!

Lovely.
-cK

Let It Snow!

2007-12-05T09:40:00.000-08:00

A few seconds of watching the first flakes of the season,
1 December 2007. Eventually, four or five inches led to our first
city snow emergency (ie, plowing, ticketing and towing).

How very strange to have snow so early! I suppose we usually have some around Thanksgiving, but it seems that snow that sticks before January is a thing of one's childhood, not something one encounters any longer.

It's a trick of memory. Yes, the world is warming. (It is. Knock it off.) But a heavy snow when you're seven is apt to make you remember copious amounts of snow blanketing your neighborhood across many years.

I thought about this recently when seeing photographs of the Muse in Arkansas as a child and teenager. And while all the winter shots next to pines with snow-sagging limbs and houses blanketed like Swiss ski lodges may have been captured in just two of 18 winters, looking at the volume of photos snapped in those years makes it seem unusual when she says, "We almost never had snow."

Would I have recognized winter without it? No. Not a bit.

So it was wonderful to see the snow falling so thickly over the past few days. It piled up December 1 and again yesterday, as evidenced by this photo snapped at 4:30 pm, Tuesday:

But today it is sunny, and that too will be welcomed. The abrupt grey and white matte skies have been difficult to adjust to. You can see how lights in all the apartments are coming on either very early or later than expected now, all of us having trouble sleeping and waking, never truly getting into either.

So thank you for the early snow, dear winter. But now let us have a bit of sun, please. My jade plant is looking awful lean.
-cK

Page Turners

2007-11-26T13:17:00.001-08:00

After too many deaths, including a good friend's, a bit of existential angst, nine weeks of Swedish classes, and copious food and drink over Thanksgiving week/weekend, I finally have gotten my butt back to blogging. Good.

No mas, drama, please.

Today, I'm thinking about books. My list of books I've read in 2007, some for a second or third time, but most for the first time:

Dan Brown

Angels and Demons

Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities
A Christmas Carol

Alexandre Dumas

The Count of Monte Cristo

Kerstin Ekman

The Forest of Hours
Witches' Ring

Knut Hamsun

In Wonderland
The Last Joy

Carl Hiiasen

Nature Girl (audio, read by Jane Curtain)
Skin Tight
Skinny Dip (audio, read by Barry Bostwick)

Arnaldur Indriðason

Silence of the Grave
Voices

PD James

A Mind to Murder
Unnatural Causes
The Black Tower
A Taste for Death
Devices and Desires
A Certain Justic
Children of Men
Death in Holy Orders
The Murder Room
The Lighthouse

Denis Johnson

Jesus' Son

Stephen King

The Dark Tower (Book 1, not the whole series)

Elizabeth Kostova

The Historian

Halldór Laxness

Under the Glacier

John Lecarre

A Murder of Quality

Lois Lowry

The Giver
Gathering Blue
The Messenger

Henning Mankell

Faceless Killers

Cormac McCarthy

No Country for Old Men
The Road

Vladimir Nabakov

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
The Eye

Theodore Roethke

The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke

JK Rowling

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

Roseanna
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke
The Man on the Balcony
The Laughing Policeman
The Fire Engine That Disappeared
Murder at the Savoy
The Abominable Man
The Locked Room
Cop Killer
The Terrorists

Gwyn Thomas

Oscar (Book I of The Dark Philosophers)

I think a couple of those I read actually last December, but the reading carried over into January. (It's not unusual for me to leave a book half-finished for a few months then return to it. In the case of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons, I took about a year off between page 280 and 281, but about a week from 281 to the end of the book (maybe 570 pages).

My eyes!
-cK

Many Happy Returns

2007-11-09T06:46:00.000-08:00

I've been ridiculously remiss in posting (and reading) the past couple weeks. Natch to that but I'll get back to it this weekend.

And, hey: It just snowed here! Lovely.
-cK

A Good Friday

2007-10-26T08:58:00.001-07:00

It's about time. Yeesh.

Approaching the City from the Air

2007-10-25T13:00:00.000-07:00

Increasingly each Netflix DVD I receive is a shiny, round, flat piece of crap about 4.5-inches in diameter. Each arrives with a 0.5-inch hole in the center. As the modern toilet is not configured to accept rigid waste of this shape, I instead opt for putting these pieces of crap in my DVD player.

True, probaby 4 out of 5 play, but that 5th disc, like the one dang dentist who refuses to approve such-and-such toothpaste, holds out.

Okay. Now: not only have I been taking Swedish classes of late but I've been revisiting the entire Ingmar Bergman oeuvre and watching the movies in order (save for 1955's Smiles of a Summer Night, which Netflix lists as "A long wait").

I'm up to 1968: Hour of the Wolf.

I've been bitten by this film before. (Ha! Pun!) My mother once tried to give it to me for Christmas but Amazon never mailed it. We were asked if we wanted to be put on a waiting list. We did. Eventually, updates about the order stopped coming.

I've seen it before, yes. And I like the film. I wanted to see it again. So I ordered from Netflix as part of this Bergman run.
Alas! No joy. It arrived, but the piece of crap (described at the outset here), refused to play beyond the opening, annoying, unavoidable growl of MGM's promotional lion. (I cannot help but recall, happily, the opening of Strange Brew. The lion roars, per usual. Then the camera takes us behind the black screen and there we find Bob and Doug Mackenzie standing behind the MGM lion, whose resting on a platform. One of the Mackenzie brothers utters, "Maybe you should crank his tail, eh.") So the DVD isn't working. Not too surprising.

Ignorantly, I held up the DVD player for inspection--as if the player was the problem, and maybe the player is the problem?--and held it at a slight angle when a little urge in me compelled me to hit the OPEN button. The door slid open, but the disc...WOOP! It slid back inside the player.

Fair enough.

First I tried to shake it free. Ape sounds: Ooo-ooo-OOO! Failure. Then I tried to retrieve it with chopsticks. (Why do I have a pack of chopsticks?) Then small butterknives. More shaking. This, friends, is what separates us from the other low beasts: tools! And: ignorant uses of them.

Finally, I put on my shoes and trudged down to the car (which, of course, I'd parked two blocks away) and retrieved the old toolbox I once made with my grandfather. (Awwww.) I found what I needed: my toyish-looking little Stanley screwdrivers with the magnetized heads.

A few minutes later I had taken out the 10 little screws that hold the cover on the player and extracted the DVD; but not before taking a few photographs of the city of circuits and cobwebs that lives on inside this thing.

To boot: It's back together and STILL WORKING! Nice. AND: the disc played!

(I liked the film less than the last time I watched it.)

Still: Viva cinema! Viva Stanley! Bring on Autumn Sonata!
-cK

Today

2007-10-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

Wool socks, long sleeves, breaks for yoga, electric blanket, and a constant steaming cup of Barry's breakfast tea acquired from my friends down at Irish on Grand. I love working from home, but this apartment is drafty!

Funny (or sad?) to think that in two or three months time a day like today will seem down right sweltering!
-cK

Hopeless

2007-10-24T06:03:00.000-07:00

Found via Laser Hands: Lyndard Skinner as
a Second Language (LSSL). This is
apparently a rather poor student.

Occasionally I find it amusing simply to type terms into Google and see where they lead. My friend John tends to do this, or says he does. One never knows how he really stumbled upon the things he stumbles upon--or maybe he searches them outright?

Either way, odd flotsam from the web arrives in my inbox with a cryptic note from him reading, for example, "I found this by typing laser hands into Google."

Today I typed hopeless into Google Images and found...

* This odd bit of fantasy art depicting a bluescape with nude woman on a seaside rock watching, with apparent irritation (to judge by the "there he goes again" position of her hand), a killer whale attempting the Fosberry flop.

* A rather clever Nat Turner-ish chess image

* A French site with a hideous band photo. Thank god the image is cropped!

* And, of course, the image that hangs on my girlfriend's bedroom wall! (As in hopeless romantic, hello.)

Escape!
-cK

Yes, But...

2007-10-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

Yes, ma'am, I understand that you consider your love for Garrison Keillor to be "transcendental," and we'll ignore the fact for now that transcendentalism is scarcely used in such a non-academic, pedestrian manner for describing love--except by those who are crazy; and I'm certainly willing to agree that celebrities have at times a fairly skewed sense of what constitutes an invasion of privacy or what crosses the line of appreciation; but...

Do you really think mailing someone an alligator's foot and dead beetles is a normal expression of gratitude?

(Yes, I can hear you now: "Well, the beetles were alive when I mailed them. Blame the post office for ruining that gift!")

Or wandering about outside a celebrity's home? at night? in the shadows?

-cK

Chuck Norris Must Be Launched Into Space - TODAY

2007-10-22T10:00:00.001-07:00

That's it! I'm doubling my Swedish lessons and getting the hell out of here.

First, a study showed that 55% of Americans believe that not only is the Constitution a Christian document but that religious freedom is essential to our society...so long as that religion is Christianity. The survey revealed 97% claiming freedom of religious practice was essential to our liberty; but only 56% believed that applied to all relgions.

Now, Chuck Norris--that's right, Walker, Texas Ranger--is publishing conservative political propaganda. (I'll ignore the larger question of Why should Chuck Norris be given a public platform to endorse a candidate. Yeah, he's kicked people in the face on tv, but, really.) He's endorsing former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee for the presidency. Huckabee was previously known not for governing really but for losing a lot of weight while governor. The other day, he blazed a new rep for himself by referring to abortion as a baby holocaust.

(Even more inexplicable is that Huckabee made this comparison as a way to explain why the US imports labor. We've aborted future laborers, you see--fetuses that might otherwise develop into dishwashers, uninsured fieldhands, etc. But we've aborted these future low-wage workers, so we have to accept foreigners into our society...though one wonders why zealot politicians fail to see foreigners as a segement "to be perfected" by Christianity, as Anne Coulter phrased it.)

Back to Chuck: In his endorsement of Huckabee, dude has been quoted as saying, "Like our Founding Fathers, he's not afraid to stand up for a Creator and against secularist beliefs.”

Yep. I remember that stand. Remember? when the Founding Fathers REFUSED TO RATIFY THE CONSTITUTION WITHOUT A BILL OF RIGHTS? such as the SEPARATION of Church and State? Remember that, Chuck?

May you be kicked in the groin, Chuck. And often.

STATS PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
HUCKABEE MIGHT CONSIDER

* While he's anti-abortion, his state, Arkansas, has an above-avergage infant mortality rate: 7.5 per 100 births (US: 6.4)
* Arkansas has the second highest percentage of toddlers who haven't received immunization shots: 33%!!
* The sixth highest rate of low-birthweight babies: 13%!!
* And despite Huckabee's weight loss, which was good, Arkansas remains unmoved as the 8th most obese state in the US

Dude, if you're going to be so gung-ho about bringing babies into the world, TAKE CARE OF THEM!!

Back to School

2007-10-21T10:40:00.000-07:00

If only I could learn to do the Triple Lindy! I feel like Rodney Dangerfield today: Back to School. The Muse and I took some time this morning making a frittata from a recipe that we quickly ignored. We declined mint in favor of basil. We added red pepper, red pepper flakes and garlic to the red onion. That sort of thing. In the end, we made exactly what a frittata is: a fancy scramble (only you just stop stirring it and finish it in a hot oven).

But it was really just a college-type morning because:

1. We ate the whole frittata over two hours of laughing and watching cooking shows. NOTE: The frittata was made with a dozen eggs! Six eggs a piece.

2. We shared about three 12-oz. Diet Mountain Dews (DMDs).

3. We then capped off the morning by me parading about in spandex shorts. Now that's good comedy.

These are good days.
-cK

Put a Cork in It!

2007-10-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

Whoa. On Monday night I went with friends to one of their (former?) favorite restaurants in Delray Beach, Florida. It's a little Italian restaurant with something of a dining rarity in this central/south portion of the state's Atlantic coast: an open view of the ocean.

We sat inside, though the large windows of the place were thrown open so that it was like being out doors. Our table was breezy and one side of the table cloth flapped incessantly, often folding up onto the table.

The sun was setting. It was a lovely evening.

So there we were. It had been a long day of work, but now we were to relax. We ordered some sparkling water. They brought us wonderful garlic bread rolls and a dish of olive oil teeming with whole caramelized garlic cloves. We ordered the wine.

And then the dinner fell apart.

The wine we picked was one my friends had really enjoyed on a previous visit. And it must be noted that, without question, they've spent thousands of dollars at this place over the years. Seriously. Thousands.

Does this entitle them to special treatment? No. Does it entitle them to the same sort of respect that a restaurant should offer every customer (as a new customer is a potential return customer)? Damn straight.

The wine was brought, but the waiter made a dismal state of the cork. Happens to the best of us, right?

Ten minutes, three cork screws, six servers and one gaping-jaw busboy later, we were still without wine. They'd managed to tear the cork to pieces and had finally retreated behind the bar with it. A waitress stopped by and asked if we really wanted a filtered bottle because that seemed to be the only solution they'd come up with. No, we didn't.

You can do that at home, sure. But when a place is charging 400% or more above cost for wine, and when you're paying them $60 for the bottle (as it was in this case), no way.

So we canceled that order. We requested another bottle. "I'm sorry," the waiter said. "That was our last bottle."

Cool. We selected another, but since they couldn't provide us with the wine we'd ordered (and which had been in stock until they butchered the cork), we asked if we might have the new bottle ($85) at the other bottle's price ($60).

"I'll see what I can do," the waiter said.

Something I should have noted at the outset is this: On the menu's opening page is a statement from the restaurant that "A pleasant demanding customer makes us better."

So now the manager--"Ted"-- comes out. He's in a huff. He tells us he can't give us the $85 bottle at the $60 bottle price.

"That's not my problem," he says of the wine. His tone is unexpectedly brusque. "That's the bottler's problem. I've already lost a bottle of wine. You want me to eat another $25? I can't do that. That's not my problem."

Pause. We're all a little taken aback by his manner.

He asks, "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Ian replies brilliantly: "I understand what you're saying, I just don't think you should be saying it."

Ted repeats his position, turns, puts the wine menu forcefully back in its cubby at the wait station, and huffs away.

What is he thinking? If they sent out a plate of crap they'd charged $40 for and you said, "This isn't right," they'd apologize and comp it. Why would he think any differently about wine? Especially when one considers the alcohol mark up.

Two bottles sold at $60 and $85 = $145 of business. The maximum price they acquired each of those for is probably $20 and $25. I'm overestimating that, really. But that's an acceptable figure, so $45 cost of acquisition.

Had they sold the $85 bottle at $60 they still would have made $15 on the two combined AND they would have sold $150 - $200 or so of food. (We'd already eyed two appetizers and three entres and one never knows about dessert. Room is made when one sees the dessert menu.) It seems Ted was not just a crappy manager but a crappy mathematician.

So we left.

We went next door to a place called Shore. We ordered a wonderful Italian (Barbera grape) bottle of wine. We had an appetizer of tuna, corn salsa, avocado and creme. We ate rack of lamb and grouper. We had coffee, molten chocolate cake, and pumpkin pie. We left $200 lighter and pounds heavier and feeling good.

Good enough to author a complaint letter to the restaurant that had been such a disappointment. I don't know how the letter ended. It was still being edited last I saw it. But I thought it had a beautiful final line in the draft:

Ted was just plain rude.

He was.
-cK

An Encounter

2007-10-16T04:46:00.000-07:00

Stockholm Central Station, from my hotel window.

On the first full day in Stockholm, I wandered about a bit then returned to my hotel in mid-afternoon when I realized I had reached the edge of my neighborhood again. I decided it was best to sit and write a bit rather than get lost again and be late back for dinner with my parents.

So I wandered around the corner to the hotel's restaurant. It was a warm day and the avenue was crowded, as was the restaurant's patio, though I managed to get the last of the tables. It was right along the street.

Nearby was a teen center, and here and there young people appeared. They wandered up from a public plaza. The stairwell emptied out just next to the restaurant. A young woman passed in tears and we met eyes. I felt bad for having seen her in that state; or, more to the point, for her having seen me seeing her.

...IN A FOREIGN CITY

I believe it was William Matthews (and later Rodney Jones) who opened a poem with the line, "Once I was drunk in a foreign city." I wasn't drunk, but I adore those words.

So there I was sipping a Spendrup's and feeling pretty good. I was writing notes about the people passing by: manners, clothes, expressions, etc. I was writing notes about where I'd been that day.

Then it happens: I'm approached.

A young man of, I believe, Indian origin wanders over to me. A friend of his, also from India, waits 10 feet away and observes. They are carrying large bags and I assume they've just come from the Central Station around the corner.

He asks for directions, but I miss something in the broken English.

"The Central Station?" I ask.

"Yes," he says. "The free bus."

I recall having read something about a free bus in a travel guide, but I can't recall where it went to or where it left from. Undoubtedly from one of the main transportation depots. (I recall reading that one takes the bus and then most likely cabs.)

He says something about the tunnelbana (metro).

"The tunnelbana station?" I say.

"The free bus," he says.

"I'm not sure where the free bus leaves from," I say. "I just got here today."

Normally, that's a lie. I've told people in my own neighborhood I'm new simply because I don't recognize where they want to go and "I don't know" seems so incomplete and lazy. This most entertainingly happened when a couple asked me where Bethel--an assisted living home--is. I said I didn't know, I was new to the neighborhood. Ten minutes later, I realized it was around the corner from my building. I'd been standing outside my building when this poor couple had asked me for directions.

Now the second Indian man approaches.

"What is the course of this discussion?" he asks.

I love that line. I wish English that polite and direct occurred to me, but as a native speaker it is, of course, my fate to simplify sounds, word length and manners in conversation.

"I'm not from here," I say. "I came to Stockholm today."

"I understand," the second man says. He nods politely. "Thank you for participating in this discussion."

Classy Behavior

2007-10-12T04:54:00.000-07:00

A horse-drawn cart surprises a shopper on the narrow streets of Stockholm's Old Town, Gamla Stan.

Who can resist the pun title? Not me. I've spent too many years working in publishing not to have developed an inflated sense of the pun's worthiness. I quote Kingsley Amis quoting HW Fowler in Amis' book The King's English:

The assumption that puns are per se contemptible, betrayed by the habit of describing every pun not as a pun but as a bad pun or a feeble pun, is a sign at once of sheepish docility and a desire to seem superior. Puns are good, bad, and indifferent, and only those who lack the wit to make them are unaware of that fact.

(Amis does go on to say puns are clustered probably too thick in newspaper headlines, and he's probably right, but I write for magazines.)

MISSING A SESSION

So I'm taking Swedish classes at the American Swedish Institute and having a blast. Sadly, the class meets only once per week for 90 minutes a session, and I'll have to miss a session next week while working in Florida; but even these short sessions, however few, are a far more affordable avenue than seeking a spot in a university class and occupy a considerably smaller portion of my already-busy week.

We're covering a great deal, our little class of ten plus the instructor. Each meeting is a funny mix of rote recitation, practicing sentences covered in previous weeks, grammar rules, and passage translation.

We use a Swedish language book that does not include a lick of English. It's a curious book from Sweden used there to teach immigrants, so in portions that ask you to translate, it requests you do so in your own language.

Some of the exercises I've pursued this way by translating into German; and I'm finding I recall much more German than I expected too, but it does threaten to confuse the languages so maybe I'll stick to English only until I'm far enough along.

One more note about the book. It allows us one of my favorite language study moments: following the fictional family. We follow the Åberg (pronounced like "O-berry") family--Jonas, Ellen, Emil and Klara--as they drink coffee and beer, drive cars, laugh, play guitar, etc.

Hey: I like the continuing education gig. I especially like it now that I'm taking a class that isn't for my professional well-being but simply for my own knowledge and enjoyment. Who knows? Maybe now that the Muse has me doing yoga, perhaps I'll take a yoga class...in a year or two. For now it's Swedish, and I dig it.

Advice for those taking a less-formal language course (and languages are something we should study more in the US--we'd understand English better if we did):

While the peculiarities of a language new to you are worth thinking and talking about, it is best not to use class time to question why particular pronunciations are the way they are.
The same applies for the sharing of personal experiences. Genealogical and travel notes may be very relevant to your interest in the class, but they should not occupy the class time. We have only these 90 minutes, friends; and only 9 sessions. To lose 15 minutes to personal stories that don't add to the learning (or enjoyment) of a class is agonizing.

INTERESTING READS

* Night Editor's story of coxswain leadership, falling ice and championship rowing squads

* The Birdchick is feeding bees and digiscoping

* And Al Gore is a co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Congrats, dude!

Cabin

2007-10-10T07:25:00.000-07:00

I had the good fortune this summer to take four weekends and a bit of extra time at the cabin. Woo hoo! And with an unfortunate lack of time for writing today, hey: I'll post a few photographs from the summer fun.

-cK

Anagrams

2007-10-09T11:04:00.001-07:00

Shaggy and not amused with BMI. If only
I had a T-1000 at my disposal.

It's fitting that the chief music rights "service" is BMI, for clearly it stands for Bowel Movement International.

I do a pub blog for a friends' joint. We were called today and harassed by BMI reps over wording I'd used regarding an independent musicians' form of jazz. I'd published on the site exactly what had been told to me. The man would play "jazz classics."

BMI is demanding a ridiculous sum of money from the pub now under the argument that if a musician really is playing a jazz classic, its rights must be owned by someone so give BMI a buttload of money and they'd find the rights holder.

Uh-huh.

Further making the situation worse, I'd provided a link to the record company of a band that plays regularly at the pub, and that website has posted some yet-to-be-mixed tracks for a future album. Among those numbers is a Johnny Cash tune (appropriately enough involving a prison in the title). BMI is using that as fodder against the pub, that band, and that record company.

So I've had to go through and cut out all sorts of stuff. Idiotic.

I thought in coming back to blogging I'd try to mind my language, but I'm going to make an exception and get Oedipal on them: "Mother fuckers!"

UPDATE: I feel a little better when I read about stupid people doing stupid things. The man in this story probably has real mental issues, but today I'm just going to imagine he's an ordinary idiot. He probably works for BMI.
-cK

Fear the Ear

2007-10-08T15:52:00.000-07:00

My brother and his wife sent along this photo from Concordia College, Moorehead, Minnesota. The school mascot is an imposing corn. They are the Cobbers.

Fear the Ear!
-cK

Between

2007-10-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

Note to self: Pack anti-bacterial
soap, and maybe a Hazmat suit.

My brother the tK and his wife, Hope, spent the past weekend in the Fargo - Moorehead megaopolis that straddles the North Dakota-Minnesota border. And somewhere in that Beyond Thunderdome-like zone between Minneapolis and Fargo they found the unfortunately named Middle Spunk Rest Area.

LUNGWATCH 2007

Curse these lungs! Cough cough cough. Cough cough COUGH. So finally I went to see Dr. Wolf and got a prize for my visit: free antibiotics! They're weird, though. It's a powder dose that I have to mix with water. He advised me to take it in two sessions rather than in one fell swoop. "Most people seem to get sick to their stomach," he said. "When they try to do it as the packaging tells them to," he added.

Then it was off to the pharmacy for bronchial stuff.

On the plus side: my blood pressure was good (102 / 74) and my heartrate, despite my huffing and wheezing, remained under 70.

"You're awfully calm," Sonya the Nurse said.

"Shouldn't I be?" I asked.

"I suppose," she said. "This probably isn't a day we'd be mean to you."

And then, aptly enough, we talked about Invasion of the Body Snatchers. She'd just seen the old Donald Sutherland version.
-cK

The Walk

2007-10-07T10:54:00.001-07:00

Oh, Dear Me

2007-10-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

This article in The Local, Sweden's English-language newspaper, is quite alarming. Looks like the Hotel van Belle just got knocked down a few stars for its Travelocity rating! Where's that gnome when you need him? From the article:

"There were faeces on the carpet, on the toilet door, on the external door, on the chair and on the wall," receptionist Rashid bin Hach told Expressen.

And the guests were political reps! Oh, dear me, SDP.

ALSO: A late-night host threw up on live tv...and kept the show going! That takes skill. It's an interesting video.

And finally: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, tK!

-cK

A Thing I Wonder

2007-10-04T07:30:00.000-07:00

Is that toilet wired?

Not that I'm wandering about in gold chains and track suits, but: Will growing environmentalism reduce interest in gold jewelry? If even frequent meat-eaters turn away from veal because of the way the animal is treated or avoid factory farm eggs for similar reasons, will people avoid gold jewelry if they know how cyanide is used to retrieve the gold from rock?

One year at a conference in Texas I asked a South American engineer about gold mining in Chile. He'd worked at a site around which birds had stop coming. For a 10-mile radius.

It was a mining site his company had been called in to fix.

Movie Recommendation: After the Wedding

2007-10-04T00:15:00.000-07:00

Copenhagen is the setting for After the Wedding.

The 2006 Danish film Efter brylluppet (After the Wedding) is devastatingly good. Susanne Bier directs. (Her 2002 movie Elsker dig for evigt--Open Hearts--is awesome too.) In it, one of my favorite actors, Mads Mikkelsen, returns to Copenhagen from his years in India ostensibly to meet briefly with a wealthy man. The man has asked specifically for Mads' character to visit--even though they've never met--so they can discuss how the wealthy man might donate to (and save) the failing school / orphanage Mads helps run.

The wealthy man delays things. Mads is irritated at being back in Copenhagen, but agrees to meet with the man at the wealthy man's daughter's wedding. Soon, it's apparent that the wealthy man is married to a woman Mads was involved with many years ago...about as many as the daughter is old.

And then a rather strange deal is proposed to Mads by the wealthy man....

If you rent this film, brace yourself. It gets rather intense. This bastard made me tear up TWICE!! And the speech the wealthy man gives at a party is one to remember.

What a DAYS!

2007-10-04T00:12:00.000-07:00

I had the tv on mute as I worked through lunch on Wednesday, but I looked up every now and then for the simple joy of what was occurring on Days of Our Lives. (Does one really need the dialouge?) Here goes:

* For most of the episode, Steve Johnson (aka "Patch") held a gun to supervillain Stefano's head...on LIVE tv. All the residents of Salem were watching this news broadcast. At least, all those who weren't tied up.

* Elsewhere, Tony (Stefano's evil son) had tied up Detective Roman Brady and had strapped explosives to his chest AND was holding a gun to his head. If anything happened to Stefano it would go bad for Roman; and vice-versa.

* Elsewhere, the occasionally evil but currently good Sami (who also hosts NBC's Biggest Loser) was tied up with EJ Wells, also one who floats between evil and good. I believe the two of them are "star-crossed," in that they must marry or something like that (perhaps simple consummation will do) to break a curse that keeps their families in perpetual conflict...that curse going back many generations to a love feud involving, it seems, a nun.

* And when the episode ended, somehow Tony had a gun to Hope Brady's head. Hope is the wife of Detective Bo Brady, who is brother of Detective Roman Brady. Bo had earlier had his gun and was telling Patch he was going to arrest him (no matter how much he might like to see Stefano take some lead).

Now that's good tv!

Yoga

2007-10-03T05:05:00.000-07:00

I recall an early moment from a Woody Allen short story in the New Yorker some years ago. He describes a man throwing out his back, and the position of his spine is likened to a Möbius strip. I don't feel quite that pounded apart from my initial yoga sessions--all two of them--but I am sore.

The Muse has us getting healthier this way, and good for that, but man did Rodney Yee put us through the ringer on his Power Yoga: Strength (for Beginners) DVD. The Muse had a tape of this from years ago, but when we put it in the VCR the machine ate the tape. So DVDs were purchased, and apparently Mr. Yee has updated his beginners fare, adding various suspension moves one might more often find male gymnasts performing during a floor routine or even on the pommel horse.

Reviewers at Amazon, ever out to prove Aristotle's warnings about democracy, complained that this yoga DVD set was (a) too simple for even beginners, (b) too difficult for beginners, and (c) perfect for beginners.

I've had a yoga mat and strap for a good spell, and two years ago was decently flexible, but I'd never tried an actual yoga instructor-led workout. (I'm also the sort of person who rarely reads directions.) OUCH.

Damn you downward dog!

Even more annoying: it's a satisfying pain. I feel really good now. I'm sore, but I feel really good. Bendy Wendy (link goes to YouTube) would be proud.

LET THE REAL PAIN BEGIN

Tonight the Cubs embark on their probably brief post-season journey. And I will once again be thrown under the emotional bus.

A Moment

2007-10-02T13:31:00.001-07:00

It's darker at this time of year and at this latitude, and at both ends of the day of course. This morning as I returned home at 6:30 to get some work done ahead of the second of nine Tuesday Swedish classes, I was transfixed by the sunrise.

Selby Avenue runs east-west all the way to the Cathedral in my neighborhood overlooking downtown Saint Paul. This morning the sky was pink and lavender like some sort of French field from a calendar.

I wish I had a camera (and camera skill) by which to accurately record this type of image.

So having watched this for the 2 mile drive along Selby I parked, ran up to my apartment to drop off my computer, and picked up my camera. I sallied out.

Odd how one can feel alone at a moment like this; by which I don't mean lonely, but as if this whole thing had been staged simply for you. It's the singularity of interest, I guess, and the darkness. Or the belief in the singularity of interest, which is its own sort of darkness.

I walked the few blocks to the Cathedral snapping pics of the sky. The pink was already going away. By the time I made it to the Cathedral steps, just a few minutes later, the sky had changed.

I paused there on the steps. It was maybe 7:00. A workman was already out doing drainage work--I think--along the front of the rectory. He'd a wheelbarrow full of tools and was digging in the garden, pausing often to replace a sheet of pink foam insulation or weed-barrier panel that seemed to have previously been placed beneath the soil but which he was trying to lean against the building as he dug. It wasn't cooperating. I didn't understand why he didn't just throw it to the side.

A somberly lit bus passed with seven sleepy passengers.

I wandered home along Dayton. A boy skated by wearing those shoes with a wheel in the heel. I crossed the street to avoid teenagers waiting at a bus stop. The Asian kids at Ambassador Preparatory were turning on lights and hopping out of bunk beds. An old woman with a lapdog wished me good morning.

WELL WISHINGS

* To Keith as he recovers from his stroke.

* To Nancy as she begins her lung cancer therapy.

Street Poets in Autumn

2007-10-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

While returning to my apartment from a walk the other day, an old man in ill-fitting clothes asked me if I wanted to hear a poem about his mother. He'd asked me this as we passed in the middle of an intersection just outside the Commodore, a former hotel (now condos) in which F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald had once lived.

(That Fitzgerald fact is sort of silly to mention, since he lived in many places in Saint Paul. It's not quite as flat as boasting that one drank at an LA bar in which Charles Bukowski had once had a drink--Can you find one in which he didn't drink?--but it's pretty silly.)

So I said, "Sure."

We agreed it would be best to move out of the road so went to the curb. He began. It was a poem very much like a Mother's Day card. It went something like this:

Mother, you have taught me so much and given me strength. You were always there for me. I can never repay you for all of the things you did....

He recited this poem from memory over the course of 90 seconds or so, during which time I noted more closely his pants being a couple sizes too big (bunched at the belt) and probably secondhand; his shoes were scuffed badly; his blue stocking cap sat tall but looked deflated on his head. His nose hair was prodigious.

His manner of speech was often halted, as if he suffered from either weak lungs or terrible stage fright.

At the conclusion of his poem recitation, he added quickly and almost with boyish glee, "I wrote that myself."

Then: "Would you like to hear my poem 'The Owl'?"

For a moment, the old fear that I've wandered into an unstable situation rose up. (I've had a habit of getting myself into those.) But he must have sensed it too, probably in the stillness of my face, for he said, "It's a short poem." And: "I wrote it for my girlfriend who died of lung cancer seven years ago."

This poem was, indeed, short. It too sounded much like a greeting card. He began:

Give me the strength of the grizzly bear, the wisdom of the owl, the...

I think the poem ended with words like, And I see it all in your eyes.

After that he said, quickly, "I wrote that myself." We shook hands. His name was John. "John the Poet," I said. I thanked him for sharing them. He said he had 12 more but wouldn't take up more of my time. We went our ways.

Cooking Today

2007-09-29T10:03:00.001-07:00

I'm cooking today with the Muse. Things that need to get done: veggie chili, an onion confit, some roasted vegetables, buffalo steaks on the grill, and a pan-roast of fennel, parsnips, carrots, cherry tomatoes and onion cooked with white wine and thyme. Mmmmm.

Note: Not all of this will be for one meal!

We visited the Farmer's Market this morning. Man that was nice. Good coffee, some bagel sandwiches--ham & cheddar for me, lox and cream cheese for her--and a very relaxed crowd. Lots of festive autumn wreathes and a market teeming with late season harvest. If only I knew what to do with a basket of 10 or 12 red bell peppers! A couple vendors were selling them for $4.

Will post photos and recipes from this weekends cooking.

And I hope to put up a photo or two from the tK and Hope's "Home-toberfest" gathering on Sunday. It's a new house!

Happy days, all. Please enjoy your Saturday.
-cK

The Brain as Sandhamn

2007-09-28T07:53:00.000-07:00

Walking across Sandhamn (Sand Harbor), an
island in Stockholm's archipelago. The ground
was rather spongy, all moss and sand. We ate
lingonberries and blueberries from the forest floor.

While folding my clothes yesterday in the laundry room, I heard what seemed to be an endless series of buttons being pushed on the digital security pad outside the apartment manager's office. It's right across the hall from the laundry room. After a minute, I began to think that it was actually the alarm arming, because the bleeping was so plentiful. Then that someone was frantically trying to get into the office or set the alarm.

Finally, the door to the laundry room opened and I heard a surprised, "Oh."

Then, the sound of footsteps hurrying away.

I didn't see who had opened the door, but as I was done folding clothes I departed. I looked about the hallway. Calmly walking up the back stairs now and heading outside without turning back was the man who paints the interiors of the apartments between occupancies.

Though I assume he was simply having trouble accessing the office for whatever, and though he may have opened the laundry room in search of one of the building's staff members, that did not stop my mind from inventing oddities for what it was he wanted in opening the door.

Perhaps he was the one who had years before painted the erection on the owl on the laundry room's wall mural? Perhaps he's a serial vulgar painter? Or perhaps he needed a place in which to have a breakdown or smoke a joint, or maybe standing in there he can observe a woman in the neighboring building? Someone with whom he's hopelessly in love?

What a strange machine the mind is....

Today's Swedish Lesson

** Draw out vowels when they are followed by only one consonant. When followed by two, the sound is shorter.

Example:

Klara skrattar (Klara laughs). The name Klara is pronounced more like KLAHHH-ra. The verb skrattar is pronounced more like skraytar.

My explanation is crude, and that isn't quite the right way to teach the sounds, but you're getting the gist of it. End of lesson.

Things I'm Reading

Book: I'm reading Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's mystery novel The Man Who Went Up in Smoke. This is the third in the Martin Beck series. I'm confused, though, because in this reading I've realized it notes events of Book 1 taking place two years prior; whereas in Book 2 it is clearly three years after Book 1. What gives? Maybe the "couple of years ago" reference was a generalization and not a time stamp.

Other things online:

* A man in Sweden was nearly shot by an elk. I love this line: "Both man and beast remained on the forest floor for around 45 minutes before the elk retired to a more private spot and lay down to die." That's the type of journalism I'd love to get paid to write. You know those writers are having fun!

* The Birdchick's beekeeping tales are really quite cool.

* And a rather funny site for Miranda July's forthcoming book. I really enjoy images 15 and 16 on this page (the point at which she begins using the stove)...and her advice to read only books that match your clothes. Big thanks to the Night Editor for connecting me to this (and big thanks to Jamison for connecting her).

* And an English farmer has set up web cams to ape the popular series Big Brother…only he’s giving you 24-hour access to his cows. The show is called Big Udders.

The New Fall Season

2007-09-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

Though you haven't been aching for it, friends, alas: I have returned! In that am I like General MacArthur or a cold sore or Heroes? Some quick hits to get back into it:

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

* Four weekends at the cabin
* One glorious week in Stockholm
* Grilled out as much as possible with the Muse
* Laughed a lot

What I'm Doing These Days

* Taking Swedish classes
* Taking on more work than I can sensibly manage, at lest from a stress perspective
* Wondering how on earth the Muse puts up with me
* Laughing a lot

And, though this is such an incomplete and brief opening gambit, I'm really quite happy to be back writing online. The hiatus provided a wonderful recharge of the batteries, new fall shows are on, and I'm in a serious Bergman film-watching and reading phase.

More soon.
-cK