Perstonal shtuff   I was real­ly zonk­ed out to­day. I took half a dose of sleep aid be­fore bed last night, but didn't ex­pect it to hit so hard.

Now I have mondo catch-up to­mor­row. I went to the café and trad­ed in a free-drink card for a large lem­on­ade, and got a side of pasta salad to try to re­store my­self. I kind of like their pasta salad be­cause it's not too ritzy—el­bow maca­roni, with a simple but smart mayon­naise-bas­ed sauce. May­be it's be­cause I grew up in Hawai'i, where sim­ple maca­roni salad is a staple, but I don't see what people have against it. Even this article gets a little too haute about pasta salad, if you ask me.

Pasta Salad Manifesto
http://www.slate.com/id/2193822/

Quant à pommes de terre et légumes   Anyhoo, in search­ing some more for hum­ble, whole­some fare, I was won­der­ing if raw po­ta­toes were good for any­thing. I seem to re­mem­ber that some people en­joy them that way. There's also Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters:

I saw a docu­ment­ary about Van Gogh's life and work once, which drama­tized scenes from his life and in his paint­ings, and the enact­ment of this paint­ing had the peas­ants peel­ing and eat­ing un­cook­ed po­ta­toes, as I re­call.

Some Googling show­ed that in some Asian cul­tures, juli­enne po­ta­to strips in a vine­gar and oil sauce is a trad­i­tion­al dish. There was some rice vine­gar and ses­ame oil in the church kit­chen left over from the last big event, so on Fri­day I brought a spud with me and tried that for lunch; it didn't really grab me. It's pro­bab­ly just as well, be­cause you have to be care­ful of any green areas on or just under the skin—they con­tain the toxin found in plants in the night­shade fam­i­ly, which the potato belongs to—and po­ta­toes are more nu­tri­tious when cook­ed, any­way. There must be some­thing plain and vir­tu­ous to do with po­ta­toes, though, besides just boil­ing or bak­ing them.

I didn't much feel like cook­ing to­night, so I just open­ed up a can of corn and a can of gar­ban­zos for a sort of suc­co­tash.

That's half of it there, which I think I'll save for later. Again I heard once that there was some com­bin­a­tion like that, of corn and beans, whose amino acid con­tent turn­ed out to be the same as what you get from the pro­tein in high-qual­ity red meat. I never found out if that's real­ly true, but it would be aw­ful­ly nice if it were.

Eye candy du jour   Here's Gains­borough Du­pont, paint­ed by his uncle Thomas Gains­borough, the por­trait­ist and land­scape art­ist.

Me dear weader will also notice a few more pics and stuff added to the last post.

Recipe   In my search for really cheap but whole­some dishes to make when in cash-flow crisis mode (like I am now), I found this:

Santayana's Garlic Soup
http://www.soupsong.com/rgarlic2.html

This page touch­ed me per­son­al­ly in a way that not many pages on the Web do. Liv­ing the pay­check-to-pay­check thing and see­ing people call or come by church ask­ing for help in a time of need (and hav­ing to turn them away)—not to men­tion hear­ing all the time in the news about how lots of folks are strug­gling just to get by—has given me a lot of sym­pathy for those who are in a bad way. But Santa­yana's des­crip­tion of his father's cir­cum­stances crys­tal­li­zed a idea that's been just under the sur­face of my con­scious mind for a while.

Be­ing cle­ver and fru­gal is often cast as mak­ing a vir­tue out of nec­es­sity, but may­be nec­es­sity re­veals vir­tues, if one is open to the in­con­ven­ient and frus­trat­ing les­sons it teaches. Learn­ing to sav­or and to cher­ish a sim­ple meal like this is such a per­fect image and dem­on­stra­tion.

Most gar­lic soup rec­ipes aren't nearly as mini­mal as Santa­yana's, and thick­en it and bulk it up in various ways, but I dec­id­ed to stay close to his. I minced and sauté­ed the gar­lic, leav­ing in a few small whole cloves, till gol­den and in­clud­ed them in the soup, and added a few sprigs of parsley and some red pep­per flakes, and I didn't leave out the egg.

I sav­ed the egg till right be­fore the end, when there was just a lit­tle soup and bread left, and the con­trast be­tween it the rest of the dish made a mere poach­ed egg seem like some­thing rich and spec­ial (which, ac­tual­ly, it is). Then the last of the soup and bread brought the meal to a close by cal­ling forth the spar­tan qual­ity again. Some­how eat­ing under low light fit right in, too.

It'd be play­ing at be­ing poor, except that I am poor. I'm eat­ing on the cheap be­cause I have to, and the lights are off to save elec­tric­ity and keep the temp­er­a­ture down (since I can't af­ford to run the a/c). But, like all rituals, this im­promptu one creat­ed space to ref­lect. I have a roof over my head, I can work, I am working, I'm in more or less good health, I have my own health in­sur­ance, and I have some goals. Lots of people don't have one or another—or several, or any at all—of these. Every­one's plight is dif­fer­ent, but we all have to re­cog­nize and par­take of all the bene­fit and strength to be found in what we have got in front of us.

Fun­ny how a hum­ble meal can real­ly be an eye-open­er.

Perstonal shtuff   So, like, I got this spif­fed up last even­ing and then Xan­ga hic­cup­ed and ruin­ed it. Let's try it again. ... Things aren't great, but I guess all in all they're not as yuck as all that either.

It's been warm, but not un­bear­ably so, and not mug­gy for the last few days. I got a few of my over­draft fees re­ver­sed. I see why they're such jerks about it now; the whole sys­tem is de­sign­ed to give the cust­om­er the shaft—in the mouth and up the a**, as my col­lege bud­dies and I liked to say (about final exams that piled up all at once, for exam­ple). Trans­actions are proc­es­sed not in order of ar­riv­al but by mag­ni­tude—largest deb­its first—maxi­miz­ing the po­ten­tial for in­cur­ring an over­draft and the num­ber of sub­sequent penal­ties. At the same time, the branch mana­gers' dis­cret­ion to re­fund fees is lim­it­ed to those for ac­counts that were open­ed at their branch and to a max­i­mum of 3 refunds per day. I could of­fer a string of ex­ple­tives but I trust me dear wead­er will be able to fig­ure out how I feel about this pol­icy with­out my re­sort­ing to that. I am grate­ful to that fel­low for do­ing what he could, which cer­tain­ly help­ed.

I had my an­nual eval­u­a­tion at church, and it wasn't as neg­a­tive as I thought it would be. In fact, you could say it was some­what pos­i­tive, with con­cerns about let­ting stuff slide or not be­ing time­ly some­times. The min­is­ter re­it­er­at­ed his con­cern that dur­ing the winter/spring when it was all crazy for me stuff tend­ed to slip, but also not­ed that since then things have start­ed to come un­der con­trol, a trend he (and I) ex­pects will con­tinue.

An­other per­son com­ment­ed that I'd get a "solid B," while not­ing she'd give only one of my pre­dec­es­sors an "A." The feed­back was pre­sent­ed anony­mous­ly, but I sus­pect this was the Direc­tor of Re­lig­ious Educ­a­tion, who was also con­cern­ed about this dip in per­form­ance.

And the other re­marks were quite pos­i­tive—Neil is pleas­ant and easy to get along with, he shows tact and dis­cret­ion, his work typic­al­ly has few er­rors, when he takes on a proj­ect he does it well, volun­teers to do extra.

I'm rem­ind­ed of the wan­ing days of my grad school car­eer, when both my at­tempt to get a PhD and I were fast go­ing down the drain. I was sup­port­ing my­self as a TA for an up­per under­grad/grad class, and was de­lib­er­ate­ly giv­ing it short shrift be­cause I had other things on my mind. At the end of the sem­es­ter one stud­ent wrote in eval­u­a­tion, "This class has been way above aver­age in terms of post­ing grades and re­turn­ing grad­ed as­sign­ments." I had to won­der, What the f*ck are other classes get­ting away with? Per­haps even at my worst, I'm still gen­er­al­ly com­pet­i­tive in the grand scheme of things—which I'd say tells you some­thing about the grand scheme of things.

Eye candy du jour   I'm at a bit of a loss for exam­ples of male eye candy, so here's some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent: some pics of the chi­cory plant that I crib­bed from the Inter­nets.

Chicorium intybus

It's not a pret­ty plant—quite gang­ly and scrawny—yet some­how it does man­age to be pret­ty with its charm­ing, glow­ing blue flow­ers. It's a nat­ur­al­i­zed weed/wild­flow­er and grows all over the place here. Until re­cent­ly I thought they were corn­flow­ers. But I guess this is the thing whose root goes into café du monde (whose long-term con­sump­tion Wiki­pedia says is im­plic­at­ed in vis­ion loss ), and its leaves are edible greens.

The Blowjob Chair   OK, now for the not-work-safe stuff. Once upon a time, on a cer­tain other Web site, one post­er who col­lect­ed porn had a ten­ta­tive blog call­ed "This Week in Weird Porn," which show­cased odd vis­ual and them­atic leit­motifs—stuff like re­cur­ring off­beat prac­tices or weird décor. In that spirit, here for your con­sid­er­a­tion is one of Édouard-Henri Avril's in­struct­ive chromo­litho­graphs from the Ger­man schol­ar For­berg's De figuris Veneris—a ref­er­ence that's worthy of Edward Gorey's The Cur­ious Sofa but is genu­ine (see Wiki­pedia's self-paro­dic article on fel­la­tio).

In par­tic­u­lar, check out that out­land­ish chair:

Now the whole thing is out­land­ish—in the "Orient­al­ist" style—but even so that chair stands out. Maybe be­cause un­like near­ly every­thing else in the il­lus­tra­tion, it's func­tion­al, not fan­ci­ful. I'm not aware of any mod­ern chair design like it, but even though Mies, Saarinen, and the Eameses never con­ceiv­ed the like of it, it's still tot­­al­ly sit­u­at­ed in that über-util­it­a­r­ian trad­i­tion. Would a chair with such a back, as per­fect­ly fit­ted to the sit­ter's frame as shown, be com­fort­able for any­thing else? What a bril­liant example of the Bau­haus mantra, long be­fore there was a Haus to bauen. The at­ten­tive view­er will note too that only one of the chair's legs has been ren­der­ed by the art­ist.

But, I mean, look at the thing. The seat and legs are whol­ly con­ven­tion­al; the struc­ture and uphol­stery look just like my Vic­tor­ian gen­tle­man's chair.

But that back is just rad­i­cal—and sex­u­al­ly pur­pos­ed to boot. Woo hoo! It's a design chimera that makes Philippe Starck's Louis Ghost chair look like the der­iv­a­tive and empty, if ap­peal­ing, post­mod­ern stunt that it is.

[Addendum:]

I per­us­ed the gal­lery of De fig­ur­is Ven­er­is illus­tra­tions some more, and I must say there are all sorts of in­ter­est­ing per­mu­ta­tions, not just of couples, but also three­somes,

four­somes,

and more­somes.

Of course, the best way to be sure some­thing is done right is to do it your­self.

About the only forms of con­gress that aren't rep­re­sent­ed are a woman fly­ing solo and a man be­ing ser­vic­ed by a woman with a strap-on. May­be those rôles were too rad­i­cal to de­pict for pop­u­lar tastes un­til re­cent­ly. I guess the con­cept of a strap-on goes back a ways, though.

That rad chair makes cameo ap­pear­ances in two of the other pics:

I won­der what that's sup­posed to sug­gest. Did the action start there, or will some of it move there later?

And here's the second four frames of The Curious Sofa, in­clud­ing the men­tion of the in­struct­ive vol­ume of chromo­litho­graphs. (Die Sieben und Dreißig Wollüste means, rough­ly, "The Thirty-seven Pleas­ures.") I never thought of The Curious Sofa quite in that way be­fore, but that re­view of it makes an in­ter­est­ing point about how it lures in, and then be­trays, the read­er. If only he'd gone the final step, and point­ed out that when you (re)con­sider the cover il­lus­tra­tion in light of the final frames,

you have a truly nasty sug­gest­ion—not nasty-naughty, but nasty-ghastly. "Gorey," indeed.

So, I finally "finish­ed"   my pre­vious entry, which might be yet again al­ter­na­tive­ly titled, "Spurts Illustrated."

ACHs are the bane of my fucking existence   and so are banks these days with their über-assinine fees. A direct deposit that is tak­ing a bit long­er to clear than ex­pect­ed, plus some ACHs that just hap­pen­ed to clear right before that, makes for a slew of over­draft fees, main­ly for week­end ATM visits. At $36 per "of­fend­ing" trans­action (each a with­drawal of either $10 or $20), I now have no cash on hand, and of course the "bank­er" whom I spoke to said that be­cause it's not a "bank error," he can't do any­thing. He also told me that the charges could only be re­vers­ed, if at all, at the of­fice where I open­ed my ac­count, which is a lit­tle branch on cam­pus. May­be that's a sig­nal that if I'm per­sis­tent enough (and tell the folks at the sub-branch what he said), I might get some­where. Even if that pans out, it's a fuck­in' idi­ot­ic way to treat cus­tom­ers if you value their good­will at all.

Recipe   To think I had felt safe to cau­tious­ly be­gin spend­ing mon­ey on tri­fles like, oh, say, food. In my dream world, I could get fresh sea­food. Still, the fro­zen stuff is still pret­ty much OK, and when I have a lit­tle bit of cash I like to get the 2-lb. box­es of froz­en New Zeal­and green­shell mus­sels that the eth­nic store usual­ly has a few of.

The tradi­tion­al way of steam­ing them in white wine in­fus­ed with herbs, and serv­ing them with the de­cant­ed liquor and some nice bread, is as plain and ele­gant as it gets.

	Of course, you need the mus­sels
	and some herbs (here, just pars­ley),
	and the stuff that makes the base of the sauce, which at the very least is shal­lots/scal­lions/onions and gar­lic, sautéed in oil; dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions add dif­fer­ent things—red pep­per flakes for heat, diced tomato or lemon juice for acid­ity, etc.

Clams can go into the mix, and shrimp, and chunks of firm white­fish. In any case, the end result is a bo­da­cious bounty of bi­valves and may­be other frutti di mari.

Yet, the frus­trat­ing thing these days about all sea­food is that you just don't know if any of it's safe or eco-friend­ly to con­sume, given the fish­ing and farm­ing meth­ods used to meet the mar­ket de­mand. And crea­tures like mus­sels bas­ic­al­ly fil­ter the waters they live in and ac­cu­mu­late the tox­ins and pol­lu­tants in their hab­i­tat, even when they're not in­va­sive men­aces like the zebra mus­sels and quag­gas now threat­en­ing North Am­er­i­can water­ways.

Is any farm­ed or fish­ed sea­food both green and safe for hu­man con­sump­tion now­a­days?

Yet another not-work-safe post   Which I will again pre­face with some blather and photos.

 

Perstonal shtuff   It's been hot and mug­gy here. Yuck. I have an ann­ual eval­u­a­tion com­ing up at church. Yuck, be­ause it's go­ing to be neg­a­tive, ow­ing to let­ting vari­ous things slide for too long dur­ing the chaos of the winter and spring. It's most­ly pro­ced­u­ral stuff, like fil­ing things away, that aren't real­ly cru­cial to any­thing, as long as they even­tually get done, and the slip­page real­ly only mat­ters to the min­is­ter (and me, which is why I let them slide). But he's not hap­py, and I guess I'll have to deal with it. He hint­ed that my con­tin­u­ing could come into ques­tion, but I think he was just try­ing to light a fire under my ass, and he was also in the throes of an in­tern­al con­flict with a fac­tion with­in the choir that real­ly did mat­ter and was/is quite stress­ful for those in­volved. (May­be more on that drama later.)

Not sure why schlongs have loomed so large (so to speak) in my posts of late, or why they're so sem­i­nal­ly sat­u­r­at­ed (in­clud­ing this one), es­pe­cial­ly since one of the side ef­fects of my meds is to tamp down the fire in the loins. It's weird—I can get it up and keep it up just about for­ever, which is just what I like to do, but the ran­di­ness is MIA—which is the whole point of it all. It's call­ed "edg­ing" or "brink­ing," which requires an edge or brink upon which to traipse. May­be that's more than me dear wead­er needs to know. And, while I'm think­ing of it, it seems like those glass­es of wine might be hit­ting me hard­er too, in synergy with the meds? A third yuck, then—wine and orgasms are two of the main things that make life worth­while! But, I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.

Eye candy du jour   Nor­mal­ly the phrase "cen­tral bank­er" brings to mind images of a des­si­cat­ed tech­no­crat à la Alan Green­span. Here for your view­ing pleas­ure, how­ever, is a por­trait of Nicho­las Bid­dle, child savant and president of the second Bank of the United States, who was a neme­sis of An­drew Jack­son. Quite a pret­ty­boy, no?

Apropos of jism (or, Our pre­cious fluids, Man­drake!)   OK, then. Where to begin? It's ac­tual­ly kind of twisty. There was a twink with a dick of death on XTube once, and I was won­der­ing what had be­come of him. His mon­i­ker was "taylorperkins" and Goog­ling shows that he's evi­dent­ly van­ish­ed but at one time was a regu­lar XTuber—enough so caps of him fea­ture in sev­er­al entries of the satirical Wiki­pedia par­ody site "Ency­clo­pe­dia Dra­ma­tica."

By the looks of it (and I haven't bother­ed to waste much time ex­plor­ing it), ED casts a right­ly skep­tic­al eye on the Wiki phenom, and it some­times achieves the proper bal­ance of the ab­surd and the rude,

Bacon and eggs, Encyclopedia Dramatica

but often just seems ju­ven­ile and crude. The real irony is that Wiki­pedia's al­ready oft­en its own par­o­dy. Once I men­tion­ed to some friends that MAD maga­zine had done a ter­ri­fic sat­ire of Kubrick's A Clock­work Orange, where­upon one guy lit­er­al­ly shriek­ed at me, "HOW?!?" The Wiki­pedia entry for Pearl neck­lace some­how calls that to mind.

Pearl neck­lace, Wikipedia

[Addendum:]

These days it's tough to fig­ure out what, if any­thing, to take ser­ious­ly. Jism has a star­ring role in a series of draw­ings by Lon­don-bas­ed art­ist Cary Kwok called Cum to Bar­ber. There's a series of guys, each coif­fed in the fash­ion of dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal per­iods, tos­sing a load,

1780s	1960s	2000s

but the most amus­ing ones are bas­ed on car­toon char­ac­ters:

Cum Here Snowy	Sperman	Here Cums the Spider

I think I like these the best be­cause it's im­pos­sible to take them too ser­ious­ly. Fun as these are, you kind of wish that such a meti­cu­lous drafts­man will one day turn his skills to some­thing really com­pel­ling and mean­ing­ful, rather than draw­ing cocks, cum­shots, and shoes.

http://www.heraldst.com/artists/kwok/1007kwok/kwok.html
http://www.heraldst.com/exhibitions/exkwok/0307/exhibkwok.html

It gets even more ri­dic­u­lous, though. There are the dumb Web stunts you'd expect, like this one

Cum vs. Moisturizer
http://www.viceland.com/issues/v10n8/htdocs/cum.php

(I seem to re­mem­ber Andy War­hol men­tion­ing in one of his books the prac­tice of some soc­ial­ites to tak­e a young buck into the lav­a­tory, jerk­ him off, and rub­ the stuff into their faces to tight­en up the skin for the even­ing), but some people ac­tual­ly take the "es­sence" ser­ious­ly:

Sperm: Not Just a Facial or Protein Drink
http://www.godammit.com/2007/09/25/sperm-not-just-a-facial-or-protein-drink/

This is the sort of thing that gives cul­tur­al studies/lit crit/lit "theory" a bad name and ex­em­pli­fies the dif­fer­ence be­tween aca­dem­ic car­eer­ism and true schol­ar­ship. (YMMV, but IMO Cam­ille Pag­lia is an em­bar­rass­ment and call­ing her a pub­lic in­tel­lect­ual is a farce.)

Now, as a self-iden­ti­fied cum­shot fetish­ist, I cer­tain­ly "ap­prec­iate" the em­blem­at­ic, pri­mal ap­peal of the white stuff. The nat­ur­al phil­o­soph­ers and the phy­sic­ians of days past used to put great faith in the vit­al­ity of bod­i­ly es­sences and hum­ors, but now­a­days, aside from some con­tem­po­rary East­ern med­ic­al trad­i­tions, no­tions like that are pretty much the prov­ince of prim­i­tive peoples and kooks like General Jack D. Ripper in Kubrick's Dr. Strange­love—and of post­mod­ern­ists like Lacan.

There's a pithy Chin­ese prov­erb that (if I'm not mis­tak­en) goes some­thing like, "After ec­stacy, the laun­dry." That sums up the grown­up pers­pec­tive.