tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27845381225248498452024-03-12T20:44:59.968-07:00Dixit InsipiensSaith the fool thus:Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-162788088952714282011-10-07T19:50:00.000-07:002011-10-07T21:31:41.805-07:00Criterion Collection - F for FakeThe idea entered my mind like a transmission from orbit: I-should-watch-the-entire-Criterion-Collection. Maybe it was my fatigue, or the glass of red wine, but, it seemed achievable. And wanting something calm but curious, for my first attempt, I picked the movie 'F for Fake' - Orson Welles's and Francis Richenbach's epic of fraud, sleight of hand, and professional tomfoolery.<br /><br />The movie begins with Welles himself performing several simple tricks for a young boy with a fabulously wealthy and beautiful mother, clad in expensive furs, looking on. Welles's gravelly narration brings you in and hypnotizes you, and as he explains his intentions - to catalog fakery of all kinds, the movie's credits roll over a montage of men being distracted by a gorgeous woman, shown only from the waist down, walking along in a skimpy dress. "Her name - is Oja."<br /><br />The point of all this is perhaps to demonstrate the power of distraction, which the film proceeds to make a great deal of use of. It continues in a difficult to follow stream of consciousness style, jumping from one narrator to the next, Welles annotating in a manner one could only describe as vague. Soon it emerges that the movie is all about the island of Ibiza, and two men who live on it, two notorious cons, Elmyr LNU, and Clifford Irving, who have "made each other famous" through their fakery. Welles tries to tell us this is a movie within a movie, a fake within a fake, lies within lies, but so much is happening at once it is hard to tell what he means. A visual sleight of hand, perhaps. <br /><br />Elmyr, it turns out, is an art forger of such exceptional skill that the artists themselves look upon his forgeries and declare that they themselves painted them. And Clifford is writing a book about him. But who is the master faker? asks Welles, and somehow, all this is tied back to a man of even deeper, more persistent mystery: Howard Hughes. As a Millennial I found this baffling. I knew who Howard Hughes was, but the rest, was I supposed to know them? This was covered in Life magazine, but I wasn't alive to read it.<br /><br />Without warning, the story shifts to Hughes and Las Vegas and the power of rumor, with Welles as much character as narrator, upstaging himself. And what does this have to do with anything? It seems Irving penetrated the great hermit's shell and wrote a new story... but is this story true? Or is it simply another articulate fake, like the Elmyr of journalism? It is all an attack on the authority of experts, whom the principal characters of the movie - Elmyr, Irving, and Welles - categorically reject. They do not believe in expertise, they say.<br /><br />The focus shifts again - this time to Welles himself, who paints his career from the age of sixteen onward as a path of fakery leading up, of course, to his most famous con, The War of the Worlds. Through an account of Citizen Kane, we come back to the 'Hughes Affair', and all too quickly we hear a confession from Irving, accused of creating a hoax - but is this merely another hoax, laid atop it all? No matter what, Irving, and whatever accomplices he has, benefit.<br /><br />In the final moments of the movie, Oja makes her triumphant return, and we learn her story, though little sense it makes in the sense of the greater story. My patience grew short, waiting to see how this would all connect (perhaps because, as a woman myself, I found less appeal in watching Oja than others might have). Welles steals the show again, putting more life into the story than the story puts into itself.<br /><br />Inevitably, I felt myself straying to Wikipedia, wondering what the hell all these people were talking about. But just as quickly, I found myself echoing the sentiments of Richenbach, who earlier in the film recounts purchasing art, after learning of Elmyr, and opting not task questions of the art dealer, as he no longer wishes to know whether he is getting the real thing or not. I found that neither did I. Whether this movie was a complete fabrication or not, it was an interesting meditation on what 'real' really is, what art really is, and a curious story of the life of an elderly art forger. Why not simply take this movie for what it is? Why taint that with the ideas of experts? "As long as there are fakers, there have to be experts," the movie says. But even more so, we must deny the expert that dwells within every soul, the devil on your shoulder asking, "It's pretty... but is it art?"Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-49064400925776959742011-05-02T17:42:00.000-07:002011-05-02T18:01:33.615-07:00JusticeOn September 11th, 2001, I was in eighth grade. When we were first told that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, it was nearly the end of the period. We watched the first images on TV, and then I went to gym class. I hugged my best friend and told her the news, because she hadn't heard yet. Later, my dad picked me up from school and took me home. As we went to pick up my brother, smart mouthed little me speculated aloud that perhaps it was a disgruntled American that had done it, because I thought there were people in our country who were really angry enough to do it, perhaps remembering McVeigh, Waco, and the Republic of Texas hostage-taking.<br />Later, I heard a bomb threat had been called in to my school. There was no bomb, of course. And I remembered that a close friend of mine in elementary school had moved to New York, where one of her parents worked for the Associated Press. I called her but couldn't get through. I don't really remember what else I did that day. I don't even really remember being sad. More shocked. Later, perhaps, as the saga went on, I would start to feel sad. My next door neighbor, a hazmat firefighter, soon packed his bags and went to NYC to help rescue people. <br /><br />A couple years later, I myself would go to NYC, and stay right across the street from Ground Zero, then still a gaping hole in the ground. The buildings around it were still damaged and under what passed for repair.<br /><br />As a teenager growing up after 9/11, I became very jaded. We went into Afghanistan and didn't find the people who killed our countrymen. The country went into a war that, while aimed at a very terrible despot, had nothing to do with 9/11, but rather appeared to be the continuation of a saga that I did not remember. I felt trapped by a government that did not represent me, and responded angrily in words. My sense that I lived under the sway of tyrants corporate and political engendered in me a strong desire for social justice and change. I got the idea in my head that if I could just put words the right way, people would have to listen. Even after years of anger and disappointment, I never stopped thinking that someday, I would get my chance to make a difference.<br /><br />Yesterday, May 1, 2011, when I heard the news via the rumor mill, I sat on my porch, smoked a cheap cigar and drank my best tequila and Benedictine while I listened to our President tell us that Usama bin Ladin had been killed by an American specops team, and thanked our military and intelligence personnel. It seemed like an impossible dream. I'd fantasized about the day we'd catch bin Ladin. I'd even dreamed about how I might be able to contribute, somehow. What a coup that'd be, I thought. How sweet the day. And how sweet it was.<br /><br />9/11 and Usama bin Ladin helped make me, and much of the rest of America, who I am, for better or for worse. Since 2001, I have been intrigued by the ideology of terrorism, and concerned that in battling such a shadowy foe, we might hand them the victory by becoming exactly what they wanted us to be. And perhaps in some ways we have. We have struggled constantly with our desire for vengeance and our need to protect our own civil rights. Now that we have sated our appetite for revenge, let us turn our strength to repairing the damage in our own souls.Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-62978346380841629602010-11-18T17:29:00.001-08:002010-11-18T17:45:56.552-08:00The Great Burger Debate, part 1Yes, Erin, I will stop blogging about food eventually. I swear. And then I'll blog about linguistics. Then you'll be sorry.<br /><br />Hamburgers and I have a long, conflicted relationship. From age 6 to age 21, I hated hamburgers. My brother has always loved hamburgers, and I have always unilaterally rejected them (except Annie's hamburgers, but then only maybe once a year). It began as a personal preference. I don't like gristle and hamburgers can sometimes have a lot of it. I hate it when things are chewy and sometimes hamburgers are chewy. Also, I just like(d) hot dogs better. What's wrong with hot dogs? I could easily get by in fast food joints by eating arguably more dubious food items, such as the Filet-o-Fish.<br /><br />Setting aside that my contamination fear irrationally excludes hot dogs, when I went to college and was forced to take a biology class, my relationship with hamburgers took a turn for the worst. It wasn't that I was surrounded by vegans and began to enjoy vegetarian food; it was that I had to sit right next to the incubator in biology lab. And while we were in biology class, we had to do a months-long experiment with E. coli.<br /><br />In case you're not familiar with E. coli, it's a thing that lives in your colon and will give you diarrhea if it somehow makes its way out of your colon into other parts of your body. Let's go back and highlight something. E. coli is <b>a thing that lives in your colon</b>. In case you've forgotten, your colon is <b>where poop lives</b>. In case you can't see where I'm going with this, <b>E. coli smells like poop</b>.<br /><br />We did eventually do an experiment where we tested storebought hamburger patties for <strike>poop</strike> E. coli. I don't remember what the results were exactly, but the point of this story is that I was never able to eat hamburgers again. Every time I saw a hamburger, all I could think about was the incubator and how terrible that stupid thing smelled.<br /><br />There's a happy end to this story. A couple of summers ago, I did an internship in DC. In DC, they have a restaurant called Five Guys. I would never have gone to Five Guys until I learned that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/29/obama-five-guys-visit-ord_n_209155.html">our President eats there</a>, and as it happened there was a good chance (or so I believed) that if I went to the Five Guys near my workplace on Pennsylvania Ave, I might <b>eat at the same restaurant as the President</b>. So one day on my lunch break, a fellow intern and I went out to go find the Five Guys, which ended with us never finding it and me being accused by Special Police of being a plant to test security... but that's another story.<br /><br />I eventually made it to Five Guys, where I enjoyed a cheeseburger. Yes, after 15 years of reluctance and/or disgust, I ate a hamburger, and I <b>enjoyed</b> it. Five Guys taught me to love again. I ate Five Guys frequently the rest of that summer, then went back to Portland into famine, as the nearest Five Guys was in Hillsboro. But my eyes had been opened. Soon, I was eating at Burgerville, the Pacific Northwest's own venerable burger chain. And I began to consider the burger a legitimate form of food, capable of great heights of culinary awesomeness.<br /><br />Now, in Arizona, I discover that I have access to what appears to be every good burger chain in the entire United States (except Burgerville). Five Guys. In-N-Out, the place Californians won't shut up about. Culver's, the bastion of the Midwest. Whataburger, the one true Texan love. Fatburger, endlessly promoted by Jon Huertas on Twitter. There are probably more, but I have to stop somewhere.<br /><br />And now that I love burgers - yes, I <b>love</b> them - I have decided that I must make the best of the Phoenix wasteland. I must take advantage of the chain saturation.<br /><br />I must settle, <b>once and for all</b>, which chain has <b>the best burger</b>.<br /><br />Some of my Facebook friends have already weighed in, but I invite you to fight it out in the comments some more.Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-90717568812060298002010-10-11T18:36:00.001-07:002010-10-11T18:53:05.935-07:00Cooking With Booze, Vol. 3: TequilaReaders,<br /><br />Across the globe, there is one drink that is spoken of perpetually in loud tones one day, and hushed tones the next. One drink that is consumed only in the most classic of ways. No drink inspires more profound glee and profound regret than this, the regal, golden scourge of the Southwest, TEQUILA.<br />As a Texan, my relationship with Tequila is a good one. A lot of people talk crap about my drink, but other than that it always seems to be the tequila shot that I wish I hadn't agreed to, I don't understand why. Probably, most people drink terrible tequila. That, or they haven't been raised on margaritas from birth, like many, if not most, God-fearing Texans. In any case, tequila is a difficult drink for its storied past, its Spring Break woes, and its complicated taste. I honestly believe that the closest drink to tequila is gin. Both are extraordinarily complex liquors that people have strong feelings about.<br />My feelings about tequila are so strong that I have a hard time imagining what to do with it besides drink it. I've already done quite a bit of research on tequila recipes, but everything seems to end up as just another margarita recipe! And I'm still looking. But in the meantime, I want to convey to you an extremely important fundamental of Tex-Mex that you can have while you are drinking your tequila... <br /><br /><h3><b>GUACAMOLE.</b></h3><br /><br /><b>Ofiuco's Family Recipe</b><br /><br />4 ripe avocados (just a little give to the touch. Not too much. Not, as a former housemate of mine once assumed, the consistency of a boob. Firmer.)<br />2 small tomatoes (or 1 medium)<br />1 medium onion (You may pick which color - yellow's sweeter, red's fieryier, white's white)<br />Salsa of your choice (In emergencies: Tabasco)<br />Lemon or lime juice<br />Salt<br />Chips<br /><br />1. Cut each avocado in half, around the seed. Remove the seeds, peel the avocados, and set all of them in a large bowl.<br />2. Dice onions and tomatoes. This is going directly into your mouth on a chip, so size should be appropriate for chips.<br />3. Mash avocados. It doesn't matter how, but get it good and mashed, like you would mash potatoes. Lumps are fine, though, really.<br />4. Add diced tomatoes and onions and as many spoonfuls of salsa as are necessary to bring the heat quotient where you want it to be.<br />5. Unless you used Tabasco, add a good squirt of lemon or lime juice.<br />6. Stir it all up and add salt and pepper to taste.<br />7. Eat!<br /><br /><b>Guacamole en estilo pacifico</b><br /><br />I don't know if this is actually 'Pacific style' guac, but in my short time in Zihuatanejo, almost all the guacamole we got was like this. There are as many variants of guac as there are chili.<br /><br />4 avocados<br />1 medium onion<br />1 lime<br />Salt to taste<br /><br />1. Prepare the avocados as we've already discussed.<br />2. Dice the onion. You can use less onion than this (I probably would, since as far as I'm concerned this may be too much onion) and I usually cut it a little finer than my family would. <br />3. Mash the avocados.<br />4. Mix in the onion.<br />5. Cut the lime in half and squeeze the juice out of one half. Mix it and taste it - if it's not enough, add more. I usually vote for more. <br />6. Salt to your taste.<br />7. Eat!!<br /><br />Bon appetit!Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-72626618478566009682010-10-10T10:25:00.001-07:002010-10-10T10:25:56.531-07:00Sounds of the outsideI don't know what it is about today - the laughter of my neighbors' children, the blue sky, the light breeze - but today everything feels familiar. Setting aside the odious smells emanating from the Safeway next to my apartment complex, today is a really nice day. I found myself desperately wanting to be outside, so I am sitting on my porch in my Goodwill Pepsi lounge chair. This is the first time the weather's been nice enough to do that and I've remembered. <br />Today feels like Colorado and Houston and Mexico. On days like this, a whole flood of memories comes back to me, a collection of moments of stopping and looking around and absorbing the totality of the environment. A crisp day in a Rocky Mountain forest in summer. A jaunt in a Texas park with my brother, pretending to be looking for Pokemon around the creek. A hot, bright day at the beach in Zihuatanejo, with families enjoying the sunlight as far as the eye can see. I guess it is this feeling of simple beauty and connectedness with everyone else who is enjoying it. A ball game. A barbecue. Being down by the pool. Being surrounded by good things, being happy, being in the moment, experiencing, being one with the universe.<br /><br /><center><a href='http://picasaweb.google.com/viajera/BloggerPictures?authkey=Gv1sRgCP2ArtiHnr--Rg#5526469937457965234'><img src='http://lh4.ggpht.com/_fS6jG7yufK4/TLH3IKwOqLI/AAAAAAAAADs/xdRJmOza7X0/s288/iphone_photo.jpg' border='0' width='210' height='281' style='margin:5px'></a></center><br /><br />Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-13906660300712453442010-09-25T14:32:00.000-07:002010-09-25T14:33:03.531-07:00Cooking with Booze, Vol. 2: Bourbon Reprint #2Readers, food isn't just a mechanism by which your body creates ATP to be used by your muscles. I'm not a Bio major, so I'm not even sure if I got that right. But trust me when I say that food is an adventure, and that's a scientific fact. Making food can be exciting, like trying to find a restaurant on foot at night on 82nd Street and getting lost. Except you're in your own kitchen, where only your housemates or dormies can mistake you for a prostitute. <br />One way of making food exciting is applying sauces. This is because making sauces sounds easy but takes some actual effort and practice. I have failed often enough to assure you that messing up a sauce is easy.<br />Fortunately, you can learn from my errors. Even if you still mess this one up, you can console yourself with the following Mint Julep recipe:<br /><br />THE MINT JULEP: ZEN MASTERY THROUGH MUDDLING.<br />Mint leaves (as many as you like - how about five? Five is a good number)<br />Sugar<br />Bourbon<br /><br />1. Take your glass and your mint leaves and put them together. Put a little bit of sugar and pour it in with the mint leaves. <br />2. This is the tricky part. Muddle. Basically, the goal is to bruise/shred the mint leaves by means of abrasive action with the sugar. If you don't have a muddler, get creative... but not too creative, this isn't Renn Fayre.<br />3. Once you've muddled your mint leaves (the more the better, I say!) pour in some of that sweet bourbon.<br />4. Add sugar to taste. I won't judge you. <br />5. Imbibe. You just made for a pittance what costs 7 bucks at the Delta.<br /><br /><br />Now, a tasty sauce: bourbon creme anglaise.<br /><br />1 cup whipping cream or heavy cream (or milk)<br />1 teaspoon vanilla<br />3 egg yolks<br />1/3 cup granulated sugar<br />3 tablespoons bourbon<br /><br />You will also need a whisk. Trust me, it's the best way to go.<br /><br />Now, creme anglaise can be intimidating - there are several places where you can go wrong, and there's one skill required that not everyone has ever even heard of - keeping the yolk. To extract the yolk only from an egg, crack it carefully, but don't open it yet. Instead, hold the egg upright (pref. over a sink or something, because white is going to spill when you open it) and open it carefully. Really carefully. Now, you should have one half with some white in it and one half with most of the egg in it. Carefully trade the yolk back and forth between shell halves until you've gotten rid of most of the white. Voila!<br /><br />1. Heat your cream in a saucepan over medium-low heat, aka setting 2 or 3. Be very, very careful not to go overboard with hotness, because it will split the cream and you will feel very sad. Add vanilla and simmer (setting 1). Always stir!!<br />2. Once you've got your yolks, whisk them with the sugar until the mixture is a sort of pastel yellow color, not unlike a cooked yolk. <br />3. Slowly pour about half your warm cream into your yolks and sugar and mix. Then pour all of that back into the saucepan.<br />4. Simmer this for a while. Don't let it boil, and don't stop stirring it. Ever. You should start noticing it thicken.<br />5. Add your bourbon. If you want to add even more bourbon, advance at your own peril. While White Russians don't curdle, there is a threshold at which you will cease to have bourbon creme anglaise and begin to have ugly bourbon and creme curds. And that's gross.<br />5a. (A tip for advanced users: When I get scared I have too much booze for the cream, I save some of the sugar from previous steps, put it in a cup with bourbon, and microwave it to zap some of the alcohol out, then add it back in.)<br />6. Serve on top of something delicious, like cake! Or ice cream! Or, now that you know how to make creme anglaise, add something to it besides/in addition to bourbon!<br /><br />Allez cuisine!Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-49006888722545881152010-09-13T19:33:00.001-07:002010-09-13T19:46:56.296-07:00Cooking with Booze, Vol. 1: Bourbon Reprint #1When I was in school (not so long ago) I wrote two columns for the school newspaper in order to open the minds of my colleagues to the wider possibilities of teh booz. As a bon vivant, serious chef, and equally serious drinker, I am not satisfied with just one side of one thing. Like Alton Brown, I need everything in my life to be useful or beautiful in more ways than one. So it is with his cooking implements, and so it is with my drink. What is the point of buying something you will only ever experience in one way?<br />As I tried to point out in my short-run column, cooking with alcohol can immediately elevate the sophistication of a dish, especially if you are a poor college student. Steak with port sauce sounds a lot cooler than just steak. And moreover, if you try hard, you can do it cheaply. For example, I currently have like a gallon of cheap port sitting on my countertop.<br />My recent attempts to get friendlier with my copy of that longtime bible of cuisine, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", have reawakened a desire in me to cook with booze. Mainly because cooking with booze is well-nigh one of the foundations of French cooking. That, and it makes for some good blog posts. Without further ado, I'd like to kick it off by offering you a reprint of my first column. Keep in mind that this was tailored for college students; if you have nice things, don't let my sassy instructions keep you from using them.<br /><br /><br />Readers, while I cannot in print endorse or support underage drinking, I think we can all say that alcohol is one of nature's great gifts to humanity. Besides getting you drunk, booze also has the magical property of making food taste DELICIOUS, which is something everyone can enjoy even if they don't drink. You can save yourself a lot of money and impress the hell out of whoever is eating at your place by mastering the art of cooking with booze. Let me take you there.<br />This month's booze is bourbon. If you live under a rock and don't know what bourbon is, it's a type of whiskey produced and favored by the American South. Bourbon tastes excellent with muddled mint leaves, AKA the 'Mint Julep'.<br />Bourbon also tastes great in sauces and marinades. As I found out thanks to Tarah at <a href="http://asweetfantasy.blogspot.com">Genesis of a Cook</a>, it also tastes great in DESSERT. Here is Tarah's recipe for Vanilla Bourbon Bread with Walnut Coffee Crumble, translated by me into College Student:<br /><br />INGREDIENTS:<br />For Crumble Topping<br /><br />1/2 cup walnuts<br />2 tbsp. brown sugar<br />2 tbsp. flour<br />2 tbsp. cold butter<br />1 tsp. instant coffee<br />1/4 tsp. cinnamon<br /><br />For the Bread<br /><br />2 cups flour<br />3/4 cup powdered sugar<br />3/4 cup brown sugar<br />2 tsp. baking powder<br />1 1/2 cup heavy cream<br />3 large eggs<br />2 tbsp. bourbon<br />2 tbsp. vanilla extract<br />3/4 tsp. salt<br /><br />You will also need a 9x5 baking pan.<br /><br />1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease that pan.<br />2. Put all the ingredients for the crumble in one bowl and then mix it. Don't worry about it; it doesn't need to be hardcore mixed.<br />3. Put all of the dry ingredients for the bread in a different, much bigger bowl. Mix them together until it's all nice and evenly mixed. Be careful, because if you're an out of control mixing freak you're going to get flour everywhere.<br />4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones. If you want to, you can add more than just 2 tsp of bourbon - though not TOO much. I personally think that another tsp would be awesome, but YMMV. Stir until ingredients are combined. If you don't have a mixer, don't sweat it - small lumps will come out fine.<br />5. Pour the batter into your greased pan, and top with the crumble. Bake for 40-50m, or until it's done (if you stick a toothpick in it, it comes up clean).<br /><br />Allez cuisine!Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-58358508117880377352010-09-05T19:23:00.000-07:002010-09-05T19:30:15.309-07:00Don'tcha wish your girlfriend was a sociolinguist like me?As a student of linguistics, I have been trained to keep a professional ear out more or less at all times. This is good when I'm trying to figure out the sounds of languages I don't know, but most of the time it only really distracts me from conversations that I'm trying to have by drawing my attention to the form rather than the content. Which is to say, I geek out when I hear something cool or unusual. One of my favorite games to play when I watch TV is 'Spot the Canadian'. (Admittedly, some of these people might just be from the Upper Midwest, but given the number of successful Canadian actors on American television, chances are pretty good that that 'aboat'in' actress is really from the Great White North.)<br />Needless to say, in my many travels, I often hear variations on English that appear to have bizarre, nonsensical distributions (just because the sample size is too small) or that I simply can't connect to any dialect group I already know about (again, small sample size). Here are the two most common and bothersome:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">both</span>: My pronunciation of this rhymes with 'growth', vowel and consonants included. What I hear a lot around Arizona, my new home, is something that sounds more like 'boulth'. I've also heard this outside of AZ, but here it seems especially prevalent.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">else</span>: My pronunciation is something like 'elss'. What I hear some other people say: 'elts'. I want to say this is a West Coast thing, but I have no idea.<br /><br />These are bothersome only because I have no idea what larger phenomenon to connect them to. Let's increase the sample size. How do you pronounce these words?Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-68290155043602713272010-05-21T15:11:00.001-07:002010-05-21T15:15:06.966-07:00Free! FREEEEE!! FREEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!I graduated from college, and therefore now have more time for blogging.<br /><br />I can't think of anything to blog ABOUT right now, though, because I have a headache, but if you absolutely positively need to read something I wrote RIGHT NOW, then allow me to bring to your attention my <a href="http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=RPpXIew22VAHWYRwJPJh1w">Yelp profile</a>, where you can follow my petulant mini-reviews to your heart's content.<br /><br />I'm headed off on a fantastic island vacation soon, but when I return, I have solemnly vowed to write some serious blog posts about the thesis that I wrote in order to graduate from college, which was about how online communities use language. Hopefully you will like it if only because it necessarily applies to you, since you are on the Internet right now.Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-33490523559990146802010-03-04T08:50:00.000-08:002010-03-04T09:01:38.310-08:00Foods I have Eaten MemeI couldn't pass this one up. Got it from Swati. I couldn't post it on my LJ, though, because I gave up LJ for Lent. But fortunately I have a blog.<br /><br />1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.<br />2) Bold all the items you've eaten.<br />3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating. (HAHA YEAH RIGHT)<br />4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.<br /><br /><strong>1. Venison</strong><br />2. Nettle tea<br /><strong>3. Huevos rancheros</strong><br />4. Steak tartare<br /><strong>5. Crocodile </strong><br />6. Black pudding<br /><strong>7. Cheese fondue<br /><span style="font-weight: normal;">8. Carp</span><br />9. Borscht (I even make borscht)<br />10. Baba ghanoush<br />11. Calamari<br />12. Pho<br />13. PB&J sandwich<br /><span style="font-weight: normal;">14. Aloo gobi</span><br />15. Hot dog from a street cart</strong> (sometimes good, sometimes bad)<br />16. Epoisses (Don't even know what this is)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">17. Black truffle</span> (just a slice)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes</span> (marionberry)<br /><strong>19. Steamed pork buns</strong><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">20. Pistachio ice cream</span><br /><strong>21. Heirloom tomatoes<br />22. Fresh wild berries<br />23. Foie gras<br />24. Rice and beans</strong><br />25. Brawn, or head cheese<br /><strike>26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper</strike><br /><b>27. Dulce de leche</b><br /><strong>28. Oysters<br />29. Baklava</strong><br />30. Bagna cauda<br /><strong>31. Wasabi peas<br />32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl<br /></strong>33. Salted lassi<strong><br />34. Sauerkraut<br />35. Root beer float</strong><br />36. Cognac with a fat cigar<br />37. Clotted cream tea<br /><strong>38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O<br />39. Gumbo<br /></strong>40. Oxtail<br />41. Curried goat (No, but I have had cabrito, which is just goat uncurried...)<br /><strong>42. Whole insects</strong><br />43. Phaal<br /><strong>44. Goat’s milk</strong><br />45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more<br />46. Fugu<br />47. Chicken tikka masala<br /><strong>48. Eel<br />49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut<br />50. Sea urchin<br />51. Prickly pear</strong><br />52. Umeboshi<br />53. Abalone<br /><strong>54. Paneer<br />55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal</strong><br />56. Spaetzle<br />57. Dirty gin martini<br />58. Beer above 8% ABV (I probably have)<br />59. Poutine<br /><b>60. Carob chips</b><br /><strong>61. S'mores</strong><br />62. Sweetbreads<br />63. Kaolin (I thought this was a rock.)<br />64. Currywurst<br />65. Durian<br /><b>66. Frogs' legs<br />67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake </b><br />68. Haggis<br /><strong>69. Fried plantain</strong><br />70. Chitterlings, or andouillette (I've had andouille...)<br /><strong>71. Gazpacho<br />72. Caviar and blini</strong> (Not at the same time though)<br />73. Louche absinthe<br />74. Gjetost, or brunost<br />75. Roadkill (Disclaimer: "This deer just got hit by a car and it's a shame to waste good meat" is roadkill for this purpose. "I found a racoon on the side of the road and it doesn't smell too bad, wanna eat it?" so does not count.)<br /><b>76. Baijiu</b> (AND I WILL NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN, UGH UGH UGH.)<br /><b>77. Hostess Fruit Pie</b><br />78. Snail<br /><b>79. Lapsang souchong</b> (Not a fan)<br /><b>80. Bellini</b><br /><strong>81. Tom yum<br />82. Eggs Benedict<br />83. Pocky</strong><br />84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. (I have eaten at a restaurant with Michelin stars, just not the tasting menus.)<br />85. Kobe beef<br />86. Hare (I have had rabbit)<br />87. Goulash<br /><b>88. Flowers</b> (I would eat flowers every day.)<br />89. Horse<br />90. Criollo chocolate<br />91. Spam<br /><strong>92. Soft shell crab </strong><br />93. Rose harissa<br /><strong>94. Catfish<br />95. Mole poblano<br />96. Bagel and lox<br />97. Lobster Thermidor<br />98. Polenta</strong><br />99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee<br />100. Snake (I would like to someday)Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-21790964093810765492010-02-20T20:45:00.001-08:002010-02-20T21:01:51.060-08:00Free on Hulu: "The Discovery of Heaven"I've decided to begin a new project. This project is essentially the written form of something I do often in real life, which is suggest movies and television shows to my friends, provided that they are free to watch on Hulu.com. "It's free on Hulu" is a phrase that comes out of my mouth so disgustingly often that NBC should seriously cut me a paycheck.<br /><br />That said, here is the first of my reviews of things that are free on Hulu, a movie called "The Discovery of Heaven". <br /><br />"The Discovery of Heaven" is a four-part, two-hour movie I found by looking at the 'you might also like' section under "Ink", which will probably be the subject of my next review. It's an adaptation of a novel by some Dutch guy. I decided to watch it because I didn't realize it was two hours long, and the premise of 'Angels create a human for the purpose of reclaiming the Ten Commandments because God is pissed' is always enough for me to at least watch thirty minutes.<br /><br />Contrary to the sort of silly plot synopsis, the movie is quite good, quite serious, and quite coherent. Starring Stephen Fry and some other dude whose name I can't remember, the movie is neatly divided into two halves. The first half chronicles the attempts of the angels to engineer a situation in which their special envoy, who will recover the Commandments, can be born. Incapable of travelling to Earth, the angels are forced to play the deus ex machina game throughout the entire movie. The second half of the movie chronicles the life and mission of that special envoy, whose name is Quinten.<br /><br />While words like 'deus ex machina' might suggest that the movie's literary devices are hamfisted, one of the most surprising things about it is that it's not. The plan that the movie is essentially composed of is both artful and clever, which is a difficult piece of writing to pull off. A key factor in pulling it all together may well be the quality of the acting. Stephen Fry is magnificent, of course, playing Stephen Fry the classical linguist, and the wide-eyed Greg Wise as his cosmic twin/best friend Max the sex maniac astronomer gives the whole movie a really nice feel of... this is just a series of lives, playing out naturally, except for when divine influence intervenes. <br /><br />I wouldn't call this movie funny, or awe-inducing, or particularly filled with ideas that make me want to go run off and immediately start writing something off the inspiration high, but it is enjoyable, and it feels smooth. It doesn't feel like a two-hour movie, and there is little in the movie that is jarring or disruptive to the plot line, which is so uncommon these days (or maybe just in my trashy movie selection). <br /><br />If you feel like a gently rambling, clever piece of contemplation on life and humans' relationship with the divine and the church, then "The Discovery of Heaven" might be a good afternoon's movie for you. If you love Stephen Fry, then you definitely won't be disappointed!Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-30267438604920528032009-12-27T14:34:00.000-08:002009-12-27T14:43:51.237-08:00WhoopsLike many amateur bloggers (and don't get me started on how hilarious I think it is that anyone qualifies as a professional blogger) I have fallen prey to 'real life syndrome'. Literally enthralled by my thesis, finals week, work, and holidays, I have forgotten to post to my blog. This is probably okay. It's not like I'm getting paid for this.<br />I've noticed that the majority of my posts thus far have been about food and/or games. In the spirit of this, and to keep you and me going during the blogging famine, here are some games I'm playing now:<br /><br />*Dragon Age Origins (I think I'm at least halfway through it)<br />*Assassin's Creed II (It's-a me! Pop culture references!)<br />*Halo 3 (I am the last person on earth to get Halo 3)<br />*Dungeons & Dragons Online (Trying to master the art of auctioning)<br />*Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (FOR THE GLORY OF AMN!!!!)<br /><br />It's tiring having all this free time. Here are some things I've eaten lately:<br /><br />*Tamales with queso and Texas chili (traditional Christmas meal)<br />*Beef tenderloin encrusted with pecan, mustard and herbs (good one, Mom)<br />*Deviled eggs (I don't understand why I like deviled eggs so much)<br />*Two-tone fudge (another Christmas tradition)<br />*Ham (too much ham)<br />*Those gumdrops that only come in Christmas colors and the red ones are cinnamon and the green ones are mint (I can't decide which is my favorite)<br /><br />Lists are fun. In any case, I had a great Christmas. I am outfitted with some dandy new clothes and other presents. In particular, I got both of A.J. Jacobs's books, "The Know It All", and "A Year of Living Biblically". I chose to read the latter first, and have been extremely pleasantly surprised by it. When I finish, I'll probably write a review.Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-62725728978654877112009-11-17T11:38:00.000-08:002009-11-17T12:05:04.003-08:00Read the ManualI remember when I was younger, when my video game purchases were limited by my allowance and thus primarily for my Gameboy or classics for my PSX and very infrequent, one of the very best things about making the purchase was reading the manual on the car ride back home. Man did I ever love reading the manual. There is the sense of studying it closely so that when I played the game, I would be prepared to operate its controls, but mainly, the manual was my first leap into the game's world. Most manuals are simply guides to the controls, but almost all of them have at least some little blurb about the environment. Some manuals even had more information about the game world than the game itself (cf. the Marathon manuals). Often, manuals gave you your first explanation of how the game world worked, which is always important for me as it is my first step for immersion. I also remember what a treasure trove finding all the old manuals for my grandmother's NES games. That was pretty awesome.<br />There was always something interesting in the manual for me, little previews to get me psyched up even more than I already was. And seeing as I had to save up sometimes for months in advance in order to buy a game, I was already pretty psyched up. Then, as now, I only bought games I really, really wanted for sure, which were few and far in between.<br />Reading the manual now is a much different story. I buy games a lot more often now that I have disposable income, and since I am usually driving myself, I usually can't read the manual on my way home unless I want to get into a car accident. But the manual is still the first thing I look at when I get home, and reading it is the first thing I do, before I ever play the game.<br />These days, I frequently find myself disappointed by manuals, sometimes to the point of absurdity. Dragon Age: Origins is a fantastic game with a terrible manual. I can't even remember what it said, except that it made no sense to me whatsoever and was pretty disorganized and all around hard to read. I'm sure there was some valuable information in there somewhere, but I couldn't tell you what, and this is the pattern I see most often these days. It seems manual writing is a bit of a lost art. I don't know if game publishers have a philosophy for manuals, and the lack thereof may be the reason why they are so wildly different from game to game. It would be nice if a manual made me excited to read on about when to press A, but I also have to recognize that the manual, as an auxiliary piece of literature which is often made redundant by in-game tutorials, is not necessarily important enough to spend a lot of time or QA on.Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-40771104381963598602009-10-25T15:37:00.001-07:002009-10-25T16:25:05.296-07:00Exercises in masochismWhat Facebook really needs is <a href="http://blahg.res0l.net/2009/01/bastet-bastard-tetris/">Bastard Tetris</a>. That will teach you to procrastinate. Maybe you think you're good at Tetris. Maybe you think it won't hurt anything if you just play a flash game for five minutes. Well, you're wrong. If you're going to procrastinate, you may as well punish yourself simultaneously, rather than later when you realize you have wasted all your time.<br />You'll start playing Bastard Tetris, and for a bit, things will go just fine. Oh sure, it threw you the worst starting piece, but that's no big deal. This isn't <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> hard, you'll say to yourself. I'm even doing well, I've knocked out five lines already! And that is when Bastard Tetris will give you twenty S-pieces in a row, and then squares. Don't be ridiculous. Bastard Tetris isn't your friend.<br />And you will love it, because you deserve every time you get the L-piece that faces the wrong way from what you needed, because you are supposed to be working right now.Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-32418636478458519602009-10-23T23:24:00.000-07:002009-10-23T23:43:54.019-07:00Someone was mean to me on the InternetAs some of you know, I spend a great deal of time on the Internet. I am bold enough to say to my professors that I spend so much time on the Internet that I am qualified to write papers about it. A lot of the time that I spend online is used playing games. These days, I generally like first-person shooters, like Counter-Strike or Team Fortress 2, where I feel like I am a comfortably average player. I've occasionally dallied in MMOs, having played Guild Wars devotedly for a little while. Right now, I play on Dungeons & Dragons Online, which is, notably, free.<br />All of these games center on the multiplayer experience, in the sense that without other people, there is no game. Even in MMOs, where it is possible to play through content by yourself, there are numerous points where it is simply not possible to win if you're alone. So interacting with other people is a big part of the games. When people are friendly and competent, this can make for an awesome game. When they are stupid or rude, well, you get the idea.<br />Something happened to me today that never happened to me before. Now, I have been yelled at plenty of times while gaming online for a large variety of reasons, but this was new to me. I was lectured, extensively and aggressively, on how to play my character, as I was, apparently, doing a terrible job.<br />On DDO, I play an elven ranger named Shenoute. The ranger's job is, historically, to shoot things with arrows and pet animals, all the way from the original Dungeons & Dragons days. In tabletop, where a Dungeon Master is interacting with you and crafting a story on a personal level, rangers can have all kinds of uses. Their ability to commune with nature, be invisible, and shoot people is rarely questioned. But when D&D hits the MMO platform, the tactics change. Thinking creatively is not important here; you must always be the biggest, baddest killing machine (or healer) possible or otherwise YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.<br />The way I play Shenoute, I pretty much live on my bow. I shoot arrows at monsters. I try to manage how monsters hit my party, because I see them before everyone else does, and I also try to draw fire away from other people. I am going for a particular prestige class that is basically a sniper. Why? Because I think that would be awesome. And I like playing this way. I think it's fun.<br />But this is not enough for some people. It was not enough for the guy who decided to call me out tonight. We were breezing through quests on the hardest level with the greatest of ease, and halfway through a long quest, he turned around and started tearing into me. Why do you use a bow when everyone knows they suck, he asked. Ranged is crap, you need to switch to melee. Stop shooting at things and melee. If you don't want to melee, then why are you here? Why are you taking up space being useless? Oh, 'you want to have fun', <span style="font-style: italic;">whatever</span>.<br />For this person, it was not enough that we were doing well and enjoying ourselves individually. He seemed to have every sundry detail worked out to exacting specifications for how it should be done, and any deviation is useless and offensive. He had to turn around and start accusing me of messing everything up for everyone. Naturally, I am perturbed by these kinds of people, for whom playing a game is a mechanical process with rigidly defined rules, for whom it is a matter of clockwork and machine-like efficiency. It doesn't matter if they actually succeed in this or not, so long as they think this way. Seeing someone like me, whose character has been haphazardly designed for maximum coolness and funtime rather than to beat the game at its own rules, is apparently unbearable.<br />I wonder if they are really having fun, or if yelling at other people and telling them how to play the game 'right' is their way of compensating for the fact that they aren't really having fun. Seeing what they are lacking, perhaps, they lash out. If that's true, it's pretty sad. I can't hope to understand why people like this go to such lengths to enumerate things that they may as well be performing statistical analysis to find the best class combinations. I really just want to have fun, so I left the party in the middle of the quest and found another one that picked up where I left off. I plan to keep running and gunning, even if it isn't the best class in the game, because that's not what's important to me.Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-39437993252167422852009-10-15T21:39:00.000-07:002009-10-15T21:52:38.179-07:00BusyI go to a school where people work so hard, they get sick, are miserable for weeks, and then get better just in time to catch the same disease right back. Or so it appears, although I have been informed that according to medicine this is not very likely. The point is that most of my colleagues have a startling disregard for their own health.<br />I find this perplexing, as I love making myself feel good. I don't exercise enough or eat as well as I should, but I refuse to fail to get enough sleep unless it's really important, and most of the time I do get the hours in. I believe that taking a lunch break, or a taco break, or a dinner break, or a midnight breakfast break, is not only important, but sacred and necessary. I will go to great ends to accomplish this feat. In general, I believe in taking breaks because I have an extremely hard time maintaining my concentration for long periods of time. Taking a break - and I like to take game breaks, or TV breaks - refresh the mind and lighten the spirit.<br />I know for a fact that I don't get enough work done by my own measure. While it is commonly believed that teachers assign you more than they expect you to read, I always intend to read all of it. Naturally, I virtually never accomplish this goal, and fall short of even my minimum standards. I am always sorry not to get enough done, but it seems that in reality, there is little I can do to get more done and retain my sanity. And I find that sanity makes me more efficient than being depressed about work.<br />When I take breaks, especially when I take food breaks, I frequently attempt to seduce my colleagues away from their desks and make them come with me. I ask because I know that they, too, are working hard, and they will more often than not refuse to take a break. As far as I know, this pattern of behavior is the norm. Want to go grab a bite? Nope, can't, too busy. We are too busy all of the time.<br />One might ask, if we are too busy all of the time, then shouldn't we be getting more done? How is it that we can all be too busy, but never finished? Is our only alternative to settle for less than we know we can accomplish? When does being too busy wrap around to become an impediment to accomplishment unto itself? What are the bounds of sanity, and do we cross them when we decide that work is more important than rest or food? Perhaps most importantly, when we leave this place and stop having homework, what will fill that void? <br />It's difficult to address these questions when you have deadlines, but they are no less important in the long run.Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-10410738070874280982009-10-12T22:38:00.001-07:002009-10-12T23:06:56.559-07:00Breakfast.Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Regardless of when you eat it.<br />Many cultures have elaborate breakfast cuisine developed over hundreds of years, although as an American I am very partial to American-style breakfast, and its spiritual antecedent, English breakfast. The ideal American breakfast is hearty, involves grease, and has tons of room for improvisation. There is something quintessentially American about it that is hard to pin down. Hearty breakfasts are meals intended for people who 1) get up before 11 o' clock and 2) require significant amounts of energy before lunchtime. For example, cowboys would fall pretty solidly into this category, as would captains of industry and farmers.<br />My relationship with breakfast is a little complicated. Perhaps it is because for most of my life I have neglected to eat breakfast at all that I have now fallen in love with the concept of breakfast. Likewise, as I primarily eat healthily, a fried egg with a slab of bacon and sourdough toast with a pat of butter on top, all, of course, made with saturated fats, and a big cup of milky, sweet tea on the side makes me crazy. My ideal breakfast is in the middle of nowhere, America, off the side of a major roadway, likely just before we set off again. There's something about food on the road that can't be duplicated, and breakfast on the road is doubly so, whatever it is.<br />But in my spare time, I try to get as close as possible, and that is why I now bring to you a quick review of my favorite Portland breakfast spots:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Cup & Saucer Cafe, </span>3566 SE Hawthorne Blvd<br />The Cup & Saucer is one of those places which contains the distilled essence of Portland. It has 'Northwest' style dishes, organic veggies, caters to vegetarians and vegans, and the waiters look like they're trying to pick up some extra cash on their time away from the carnival. The food is solid, and they have two strengths: scrambles with basically every combination of ingredients you could possibly think of, and scones. Goodness gracious, the scones. The scones are the best scones I've ever had. Is it because they're fresh? Is it because they're made with love? I don't know. Please give me some more scones.<br />Price: $<br />Portions: large<br />Classiness: 2<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Toast</span>, <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=14327276358071947097&q=toast+portland&hl=en&dtab=5" log="miwd" id="photo_A" onclick="return maximizeInfoWindow('A', {dtab: '5',ct: 'rp_photo', cad: 'citysearch.com'});"><span class="bt noprint btm" style="background-image: url(http://base.googlehosted.com/base_media?q=maps:images.citysearch.net/assets/imgdb/advertorial_profile/07/05/V-PDXOR-55101651_ID195794_guide_inclusion.jpg&size=3&hl=en);"></span></a><span class="adr" id="adr" dir="ltr"><span class="street-address">5222 SE 52nd Ave<br />I'm going to be honest with you: I don't like Toast. I like that it's down the street from me, but in my opinion, it's unoriginal and overpriced. Their drinks are also not great and the service is slow. However, my friends like it and they didn't throw us out when we had a loud, prolonged conversation about the American justice system. They also give you coffee to drink while you're waiting outside forever because the service is slow.<br />Price: $$<br />Portions: medium<br />Classiness: purported 4<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Jam</span>, </span></span><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=16078986034365069609&q=jam+on+hawthorne&hl=en&dtab=5" log="miwd" id="photo_A" onclick="return maximizeInfoWindow('A', {dtab: '5',ct: 'rp_photo', cad: 'citysearch.com'});"><span class="bt noprint btm" style="background-image: url(http://base.googlehosted.com/base_media?q=maps:images.citysearch.net/assets/imgdb/profile/1d/5a/36913381p1.jpg&size=3&hl=en);"></span></a><span class="adr" id="adr" dir="ltr"><span class="street-address">2239 SE Hawthorne Blvd<br />Jam is always crowded. It is far nicer-looking than Cup & Saucer, but the fare is pretty similar. Jam also does scrambles, although they are much more traditional than C&S's. </span></span>Jam is always crowded, so get there early. Of course, in Portland 'early' means, like, 'nine o' clock'. Jam has awesome drinks. They're scrumptious. And if the line's way too long, you can always walk across the street to Grand Central Bakery.<br />Price: $$<br />Portions: large<br />Classiness: 3<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Zell's Cafe</span>, <span class="adr" id="adr" dir="ltr"><span class="street-address">1300 SE Morrison St<br />Zell's is pretty tight. You can get a straight to order breakfast here, and the bacon is crispy. Big points there. This is also really crowded, so again, get there before the hungover hipsters crawl out of bed and roll downstairs to get breakfast. Zell's also does the more 'experimental' side of breakfast, creating seasonal dishes. It's yummy. I really liked their potatoes.<br />Price: $-$$<br />Portions: respectable<br />Classiness: 4<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Original Hotcake House</span>, </span></span><span class="adr" id="adr" dir="ltr"><span class="street-address">1002 SE Powell Blvd<br />THE HOTCAKE HOUSE. 'Early' at the Hotcake House is 10 pm. By 1 am the place will be totally full with lines out the door. I have never been to the Hotcake House while the sun was still up because they are open 24h/day. They say they have the best pancakes. They are right. The Hotcake House is the closest I get to my magic road trip breakfast, perhaps because there is the same kind of hopelessness present here as there is in a small dead-end town kept alive only by passing cars. Life's a bitch, so let's make hashbrowns. <br />Price: $<br />Portions: HUGE<br />Classiness: 1<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">IHOP</span>, </span></span><span class="adr" id="adr" dir="ltr"><span class="street-address">4931 SE 82nd Ave<br /></span></span><table class="ddr_steps" id="ddr_steps_0"><tbody><tr class="dirsegment firststep" id="step_0_0"><td class="num">1.</td><td class="dirsegtext" id="dirsegtext_0_0">Head <b>north</b> on <b>SE 82nd Ave</b> toward <b>SE Liebe St</b></td><td class="cbicon"><img id="cbicon_0_0" src="http://maps.gstatic.com/intl/en_us/mapfiles/cb/camera_dr1.png" style="visibility: visible;" height="14" width="17" /></td><td class="sdist"><div id="sxdist" class="nw">0.7 mi</div></td></tr><tr class="dirsegment" id="step_0_1"><td class="num">2.</td><td class="dirsegtext" id="dirsegtext_0_1">Turn <b>left</b> at <b>SE Powell Blvd</b></td><td class="cbicon"><img id="cbicon_0_1" src="http://maps.gstatic.com/intl/en_us/mapfiles/cb/camera_dr1.png" style="visibility: visible;" height="14" width="17" /></td><td class="sdist"><div id="sxdist" class="nw">3.9 mi</div></td></tr><tr class="dirsegment" id="step_0_2"><td class="num">3.</td><td class="dirsegtext" id="dirsegtext_0_2">Turn <b>right</b> at <b>SE 8th Ave</b></td><td class="cbicon"><img id="cbicon_0_2" src="http://maps.gstatic.com/intl/en_us/mapfiles/cb/camera_dr1.png" style="visibility: visible;" height="14" width="17" /></td><td class="sdist"><div id="sxdist" class="nw">213 ft</div></td></tr><tr class="dirsegment" id="step_0_3"><td class="num">4.</td><td class="dirsegtext" id="dirsegtext_0_3">Take the 1st <b>right</b> onto <b>SE Woodward St</b></td><td class="cbicon"><img id="cbicon_0_3" src="http://maps.gstatic.com/intl/en_us/mapfiles/cb/camera_dr1.png" style="visibility: visible;" height="14" width="17" /></td><td class="sdist"><div id="sxdist" class="nw">262 ft</div></td></tr><tr class="dirsegment" id="step_0_4"><td class="num">5.</td><td class="dirsegtext" id="dirsegtext_0_4">Take the 1st <b>right</b> onto <b>SE 9th Ave</b></td><td class="cbicon"><img id="cbicon_0_4" src="http://maps.gstatic.com/intl/en_us/mapfiles/cb/camera_dr1.png" style="visibility: visible;" height="14" width="17" /></td><td class="sdist"><div id="sxdist" class="nw">210 ft</div></td></tr><tr class="dirsegment" id="step_0_5"><td class="num">6.</td><td class="dirsegtext" id="dirsegtext_0_5">Turn <b>left</b> at <b>SE Powell Blvd</b> <div class="dirsegnote note_SIDE_OF_ROAD">Destination will be on the right</div></td><td class="cbicon"><img id="cbicon_0_5" src="http://maps.gstatic.com/intl/en_us/mapfiles/cb/camera_dr1.png" style="visibility: visible;" height="14" width="17" /></td><td class="sdist"><div id="sxdist" class="nw">387 ft</div></td></tr></tbody></table><table class="ddwpt_table"><tbody><tr><td class="ddptlnk"><img src="http://maps.gstatic.com/intl/en_us/mapfiles/icon_greenB.png" height="38" width="24" /></td><td class="ddw_addr"><div id="ddw_addr_area_1" class="value"><div id="sxaddr"><div dir="ltr" class="sa">1002 SE Powell Blvd</div><div dir="ltr" class="sa">Portland, OR 97202</div></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table>You'll thank me later.Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-20058188018760616542009-10-08T18:22:00.001-07:002009-10-08T18:56:13.372-07:00I am a linguistics majorI am a linguistics major. This is a relatively new discipline, which, despite being one of the oldest studies ever (shout out to Panini) has only come into its own since the 1950s when people like Noam Chomsky really started formulating theories. Of course, back in the old days, everyone and their brother was a linguist in their spare time, including Jakob Grimm, one of the brothers thereof. <br />Because linguistics as something one studies at college is a relatively recent development, when linguistics majors go out into the world and get asked what their major is, the response they invariably receive is something like, "So, how many languages do you speak?"<br />Just for the record, I barely speak English. Now, languages I've studied - Spanish, Russian, Coptic, Nepali... the list gets bigger when you count 'languages I had problem sets about'. But that's not the point. Linguistics isn't really about speaking languages - what we would call 'competency'. That often helps, because linguistics is really about how languages work, and seeing how as many of them work as you can gives you a sense of what's out there. But your average linguist is not the most competent polyglot. Most linguists have a specialty, a particular interest in an aspect of language, or of one particular language, or in one or two theories, and this is what they focus most their time on. This could be something like the syntax of Malagasy, like the chair of my school's department, or how we say things without saying them ('pragmatics'), or how language changes over time, or even things like dialects, like Scots English or African-American Vernacular English. As you can imagine, there is a great deal of subjects which linguists address before you even get out of English.<br />Being an undergraduate linguistics major means that you spend a lot of your time making weird noises as you pronounce items from the International Phonetic Alphabet and being unable to have a full normal conversation when someone says something that is syntactically or semantically fascinating ('wrong' is also fascinating). You are also a huge target for criticism from psychology majors, who are just above the Science pecking order from you. You will counter that you do empirical studies with repeatable results, but it will not matter, because everyone you meet is an expert on language. But that's okay, because you can make really neat trees, and talk about the Sapir-Whorf theory. <br />Linguistics majors are misunderstood, although I will admit that lurking around the library making hissing and clicking noises is pretty creepy. But most linguistics majors I know, myself included, are genuinely entranced by the nuances and complexities of language, and quite capable of keeping themselves very happy without anyone else's approval. Linguistics majors are prone to bursting into excited tangents when they find something new, and because language is all around us, we are always finding something new. It makes for an exciting life of the mind.<br />That, and at least we're not sociologists.Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2784538122524849845.post-66308272447663563742009-10-06T18:10:00.000-07:002009-10-08T18:19:43.025-07:00Hi there.So this is my new blog.<br /><br />By way of introducing myself, hi. I currently reside in Portland, OR, which is a great town. I like baby animals, microbrews, William Shakespeare, and the Daily Show, amongst many, many other things. I even enjoy the occasional MMO.<br /><br />I have been around the Internet for a while. Not going to lie, I, like many other kids in my generation, grew up on it. At present, I go by several names. No one has ever called me any of these in real life, but since my real-life nicks tend to be things like 'Amalamadingdong', I think you're better off just calling me Ofiuco.<br /><br />I don't really have a plan for this blog, other than it will be mostly sanitary and hopefully interesting, so that I can give it out to all kinds of people, including my family, without worrying that they will be shocked by news that I am no longer twelve. Not that they would be, just sayin.<br /><br />I look forward to writing rambling monologues about whatever comes to mind. That is what blogs are for, right?Ofiucohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06232037986417773872noreply@blogger.com1