simulflow's blog

Vox is closing! *groan*

Perhaps I'll transfer this one elsewhere. I'm not sure. Do I actually blog enough to keep it going? On the other hand ... Hmm. I have til Sept 30th to think about it.

White Sangria

I had a nice little gathering with some friends on the past weekend, and since it was a stifling hot day, I experimented by making white sangria. It was the perfect addition to a summer barbeque (we had pork steaks, if you're fussed about red with red meat etc.).

1.5l white wine (sweeter is better than dry. I chose a 02 sweetness Sauvignon blanc/Semillon)
375ml white rum
"White" grapes, as many as you like
2 lemons, cut into medium chunks
2 limes cut into medium chunks
2 starfruit cut into slices (an addition I'm trying next time!)
about a tablespoon of freshly grated ginger (which I forgot to do!)
2 liters any lemon/lime soda

Mix the booze, grated ginger and fruit together, and let soak overnight in the fridge. The flavour is nicer when you cut the grapes in half and let the juices out and the booze in.

Pull out the lemon chunks and squeeze them to get the liquid out. The lime chunks will probably stay at the bottom, you can leave them there with the grapes. Pour into a bowl and stir the mixture. Add the soda. When serving you can garnish with lemon, lime or starfruit slices.

HANDY HINT: Freeze some of the lemon/lime soda in an ice cube tray, rather than cooling the sangria with ice cubes.

Strangest homecoming ever

Some of you may know that I recently had to move AGAIN. I won't go into detail here; I will restrict my vitriol towards the person largely responsible, as after this month I will never have to see her again. However, since the actual decision to move out was made, the budget was set and the search was begun, I have been very lucky.

I had decided to move as early as May, because our lease was up in June. As rent in the first place was not very expensive, I was able to afford the luxury of renting two apartments for a month. This also meant I was able to cherry-pick my selection of a new home.

I looked at some places which I found fairly uninspiring. I liked the locations, but the apartments themselves didn't feel right. However I found a nice little one next to a park in Mount Pleasant, north of Broadway & Fraser, and was prepared to go ahead.

The evening I made that decision, I received a response from an ad I had responded to on Craigslist for another apartment in Mount Pleasant. At the time, I had laughed about it because the location was 14th and Main - I remember saying to Julia, "Wouldn't it be funny if it was the same apartment building?" (I lived in a nice little place there before I went away to Korea.) I opened my email and the same building manager I had before I went away had sent me a message, telling me that the same apartment was available in the same building. In May. As Sheldon Cooper would say, "Oh, well, this would be one of those circumstances that people unfamiliar with the law of large numbers would call a coincidence."

So I am now back living on 14th Avenue and Main Street, in the same home I had before I left.I have my gigantic balcony again. The stove has just been replaced with a new (well, a refurbished) one. The weather held off and did not rain on my moving day. I have a pile of ready-made neighbour friends, because many of my old and new friends live in the area. AND I just found out that two more good old friends are going to be living about 3 blocks away! AND they may have a couch for me!!

Going to sleep here and waking up here last night was really easy and comfortable, because I recognized all of the sounds in the building and from outside. There is still someone who galumphs up and down the stairwell (older building = no elevator); the rattling of people with shopping carts picking up liquor and pop bottles; traffic on Main Street half a block away; someone washing dishes in the next apartment in the morning. It was strangely soothing.

Tomorrow happens to be a holiday in Canada, so I can spend it settling and organizing and planting flowers. Ahhhh. I hope this is the start of a nice placid stretch of life's waters; I've had a little too much of the rapids over the past year!

Blog, or English assignment?

I used to write (or rather, attempt to write) short stories often when I was younger, and write lots and lots of letters. I adored my father's typewriter, and took the old one when he got a new one, mainly to write out transcripts of movies I obsessed over as a young'un.

Now that I go on about things on an extremely public forum such as this, I find that I don't want to just say things that come to my mind. I want to go back and edit and make sure the grammar is correct, and the paragraphs are properly constructed. Perhaps it's that I was an English teacher in Korea, which has made me sensitive to it? Or are all these super well-written blogs actually the result of people's excellent natural grasp of grammar which their brain puts down?

I'm really curious, and if you read this and write to your blog @ least monthly, I would appreciate an answer. Thanks!

I love improv comedy!

I especially love the fine crew who performed on Whose Line Is It Anyways and Drew Carey's Green Screen Show! And I especially ESPECIALLY love Jeff Davis ... sigh. Anyways, here's the transcript of one of my fave DCGS sketches. The scene had to be Shakespearian, and the title given by the audience was Bakersfield.

Drew Carey’s Green Screen – New Choice (Bakersfield) Brad Sherwood and Jeff Davis

BRAD: Ah, good Portfolio! I stand here in this field which I have recently purchased from the baker.

JEFF: Hello, Chris.

BRAD: I shall someday put my apothecary shop upon this field.

JEFF (forcefully): Why dost thou deny thy princeliness? (Brad pulls “concerned royalty” look) You art the son of the king!

BRAD: I feel more a kindred spirit to things on four legs with fur than to my own father, whose blood is colder than a serpent’s!

JEFF: ‘Twas thy father that bore you! Not thy mother, you were born from thy father’s womb! (Brad looks surprised)

COLIN: New choice!

JEFF (floundering slightly): ‘Twas … ‘twas thy father that … taught you to shave.

COLIN: New choice!

JEFF: ‘Twas your father that was my mother!!

BRAD (thoughtfully): ‘Tis true … my father was once your mother before he was my father. He was a motherfather.

JEFF: You vowed to kill that motherfather!

BRAD (imperiously): Shut your mouth!

JEFF (taken aback): I’m only talking about Dad!

BRAD (imperiously): Shut your mouth!

[beat]

JEFF: I have bad news for thee.

BRAD: Yea, throw it upon my knees.

JEFF: The field upon which we stand, the one that you have just purchased, is haunted by a ghost most foul …

COLIN: New choice!

JEFF: The field you purchased is actually – made of – people!

COLIN: New choice!

JEFF: The field you purchased is actually the back yard of a man who stands twenty feet tall!

BRAD: Then I shall not be on this field when he is out walking about! I do not want to be underfoot.

JEFF: I think thou hast gone mad.

BRAD: ‘Tis true, I am mad, being the son of a motherfather! (looks vaguely insane)

JEFF: Listen, my brother from another father. I want you to go back to the castle …

COLIN: New choice!

JEFF: I want you to think about this riddle. (Brad looks like he’s concentrating) If you take the number eight, and divide it by two, two times, and then, a train going seventy miles an hour from this town, toward another train not moving at all …

[beat]

COLIN: Same choice! (Jeff looks slightly worried)

JEFF: If you take the number eight, and divide –

BRAD: I heard you the first time!

- fin.

 

 

Thanks, Stephen King.

When I was in my early teens, I discovered Stephen King. I devoured everything he wrote up til about the mid-90s. And one of the books he wrote was a non-fiction "book-length essay" overview of the horror genre as he saw it, called Danse Macabre.

I had already begun to enjoy the beauty of the badly-crafted B-movies, having seen Godzilla on some channel or other late at night. Enter Danse Macabre. Not only was one of my favourite authors writing a pile of stuff about his personal experiences with these types of movies (the book covers far, far more than B-movies, of course!!), but at the end of the book is a list of his personal picks for horror movies. And scattered throughout them are fantastic examples of shot-on-the-cheap-in-a-week 50s indie movies with punishingly bad dialogue and wooden acting.

And I love them. I love them. It is to Stephen King I owe my true introduction to B-movies. Without his guidance I would have never experienced the joy of watching Robot Monster and hearing the immortal lines "Yes! To be like the hu-man! To laugh! Feel! Want! Why are these things not in the plan?" delivered by a man in a gorilla suit, wearing a diving helmet which sports bobbing antennae. I would never have known the cheerful little song at the beginning of The Blob ("It creeps, and leaps, and glides and slides across the floor ... "). I might not have gained the courage to purchase a DVD entitled The Killer Shrews and experience the joy of seeing what look like Doberman pinschers dressed as, well, giant killer shrews.

Stephen King also gave me The Stand, The Talisman and the Dark Tower series, but his assistance in broadening my horror B-movie view is most appreciated. So thanks, Stephen King.

Pet nicknames

I was just talking with my roommate about nicknames we give to our pets. I find it interesting that the names we give pets tend to be turned into 'pet names' which then get transformed into other 'pet names', whereas we don't seem to do this sort of thing with children!

For example:  my roommate has a cat named Lael. Quickly, to me, she became Lael-kin, and then just Kin. I also remember when I was young, we had a dog named Waggs. Waggs became Waggis, then Giss, and eventually Giss-giss. I had a cat named Morphia, and his name eventually changed to "Dorfle-doo".

This is of course not mentioning all the silly names my pets have received aside from plays on the original name - witness "Fuzzy Bucket", "Chicken Pie", "Poo Face", "Fuzz-d-Fuzz" "Catlet" ... even some baby guppies I owned were dubbed "the fishlets".

With my brother's kids, though - their names have not been changed, although Nathan gets called NayNay still, left over from when he was a toddler. That's the extent of the name-changing I have personally witnessed for humans.

What are some of the silly names you have given your pets, aside from their real names (silly or not originally)?

Cultural Exchange

I am enjoying an interesting experience. I have begun writing to one of my Korean students regularly. She's 16 years old now. I practice my Korean on her, and she practices her English on me.

Amy

This picture is the only one I managed to get of her - my girls were always shy of having their pictures taken. Darn it! I miss the girls of 2H-A. They were smart kids and good students - and enjoyable people. So I'm happy that I get to find out how they're all doing, and stay in touch with a different facet of Korean culture.

In this picture, it is Halloween Day 2008, and Amy is painting a fellow student's face. I brought face paints to school for all of my classes - the deal being that they had to speak English to each other through the whole class (at least for the older students).

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo

http://beetlequeen.com/home.html

... is a movie I saw yesterday evening at the VIFF. I went, I admit, mainly because of its colourful title, but also because I noticed this Asian fascination for insects while I was living there.

I thought the shots of Japan were gorgeous. Really nice angles and plays with light and motion. The soundtrack was interesting and groovy. They filmed a lot with a man who makes tons of money from selling beetles he catches in the woods - he bought a Ferrari with his profits! I wonder how hard it would be for a Canadian to run a beetle business in Japan ... ;)

The delight of little kids playing with their new pets, feeding them cucumber and exclaiming over their fighting strength, was fun to watch.

So I did enjoy the movie very much, however ... it didn't flow well for me. There were too many random shots of things that, while beautifully filmed, had nothing to do with the main 'story' of this documentary. I would still recommend it to anyone who gets the chance to see it. The idea of the insect as a lovely and necessary part of life, instead of a horrid thing to be killed quickly, is presented very thoughtfully and engagingly.

In Defense Of Food!

... is the title of an excellent book I read a while ago ( http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php ). I have been thinking about food-related things a lot since I got back to Canada, and this book has helped me to shape a much better diet.

As he says, it boils down to: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

I don't claim to be a strict adherent to this rule, but I strive towards it. He defines "food" as "the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food".

It's gotten to the point where at home, I am happier eating carrots, or a salad (albeit out of a bag) than potato chips. Yes, with my fingers. That way I don't dirty a dish, and I can't use any dressing!

Anyways, I'd like to recommend this book to you. It's well-written, and thought-provoking.

InDefenseFood_cover_med