Random bits and pieces…

I knew I didn’t want to see Open Season. I let Tim talk me into it anyway. It… looked pretty? That’s about all I can say for it. I think they could’ve packed a few more stereotypes and stupid jokes in if they’d tried really hard, but it would’ve been difficult. I wonder if the writers have ever met a real, live hunter or if they just buy into the “all hunters are crazed maniacs who are out to kill as many cute little Bambi deer as possible” thing without questioning it. Ugh. Pet peeve alert. I’ll stop here, because I rant the hunting-is-not-evil rant too often, though.

My creativity seems to come in waves. Some days I’m just all over it. Some days I’m like, “What? You want me to be… creative?” I never know what kind of day it’s going to be. I’m waiting for another creative day so I can do that essay I was talking about; I have an idea, but haven’t been able to develop it. More passive forms of enjoying others’ creativity have suddenly kicked into high gear, though; I’ve been zipping through books like I haven’t done in a long time, and I’ve even started video gaming (Suikoden V; more later) again. And I critiqued a story for Shadow the other day. (I still mostly watch dumb TV, though. Much to Tim’s dismay; we’re about to be 5 episodes behind on Heroes, in no small part because I keep being all, “Eh, I’m not in the mood for that right now.” Sigh.)

Locked in all alone here
Fate is in my fingertips
There isn’t anyone that can hold me here
Do you think this is courage?
Does this make me brave?
It’s just a consequence of the easiest choice that I’ve made
–Tapping the Vein, “Fingertips”

I’m suddenly getting a rather large influx of blog spam. 120 messages over the weekend, most of them one-liners intended to drop in a link. Mostly porn links. Some of them get pretty puzzling, though; there was one that just said “whale fat”… I dislike spam so much less when the subject lines at least make me laugh and go, “WTF??” Akismet has now caught 897 spam messages for me, and only missed one or two, and never caught a non-spam mistakenly. I heart Akismet.

I have decided to try growing plants again. Why, I’m not sure, because this never turns out well. But I’ve really wanted a cubicle plant for some time now… So I got one of those cheap little seed starter kits at Target, and I’m starting some daisies on the windowsill at home, to be transplanted into a larger pot and brought into work once they’re good and going. It just now occurs to me that daisies might or might not do very well in a cube environment, especially one where I have no natural light to give them, but I guess we’ll see. If this works, I might even get up the motivation to start some herbs and things from similar kits, which could be transplanted to the actual outdoors when they get big enough. (I’m told that keeping them alive in the ground is much less difficult than keeping them alive in pots.) Wish me luck, I’ll need it.

I was born to laugh
I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love
I’m gonna learn to love without fear
–Over the Rhine, “Born”

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Reality Show to Search for ’08 Candidate

“The online social networking site MySpace and reality TV producer Mark Burnett are teaming to launch the search for an independent presidential candidate. ”

…Oh my god, you guys. This reality TV thing has completely gotten out of hand.

(Mark Burnett, for those of you who aren’t keeping up here, is the guy behind Survivor and The Apprentice, among other things. So while it could be a lot worse, it could also be a lot better.)

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“Self.”

“Yeah, what? Make it quick. I’m trying to make a menu here.”

“Well, I was just noticing that this tomato-basil ziti recipe looks good.”

“Yeah, but it’s got a whole can of vegetable broth in the bean sauce. You know we’re watching the sodium these days. Canned broth, even low-sodium, is still pretty salty.”

“Well, yeah, but… What if we didn’t use canned broth? What if we made our own stock? I mean, vegetable stock is supposed to be super-simple. Look, check out this recipe I found over here. It says you can even do it in the crock pot. You could let it simmer while you’re at work. And you remember, don’t you, hearing that you can do this with whatever vegetable bits and peelings you have lying around, anything that’s looking a little wilty, that kind of thing. Think of the kale stems, the onion tops and bottoms and peels, the carrot peels and potato skins, the mushroom stems, the celery tops. We could squeeze all the use out of those that we can before they have to be tossed. Maybe throw in a leek and some whole onion or carrot or something for a little extra flavor, but that wouldn’t be too expensive or anything.”

A brief silence.

“OK, yeah, I know. Maybe it was a silly idea. What do we know about making stock? Forget I mentioned it.”

“No… No, actually, I think that might work. You know? We should try it. Let’s try to remember to start saving those peelings and trimmings, and pick up a couple of extras at the grocery this week. This could be fun. Or interesting, at the very least.”

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I’m finished with This I Believe (the newly-printed essay collection, not the radio show itself). It is inspirational in many ways, I’m finding. So many quotes I should’ve pulled out of it, so many things that just made me go, “Woah… that’s, like, really right/neat/interesting/etc.”. I didn’t think to do a listing of my favorites here until the book was already back at the library, though. But also, it sort of inspires me to try my hand at my own “This I Believe” essay soon.

As I was thinking this, I was startled to realize that what I was thinking of was writing the essay and posting it here. Not submitting it to, you know, the actual program. I never had a single thought of trying to get it onto the program itself, or even entered into the archive of submitted essays on the program’s site. I just wanted to write it, and put it here. And just getting it written, and sharing it with my readers here, would make me happy.

I suppose it’s not that shocking. I’ve been, in the past, a prolific (though not necessarily talented) writer, but I’ve not really made hugely ambitious efforts to get published. I’ve flirted with publication a few times, submitted a story here or a poem there. I’ve succeeded, very rarely and only ever in rather small, obscure venues. It’s always been kind of halfhearted, to tell you the truth. I think once I bought a Poet’s Market (or was it a Writer’s Market) and sent out a few submissions, but honestly? After the first round of rejections, I didn’t bother with another. I occasionally dream of finishing and publishing a novel, and being able to show my friends and family this thing with my name, my name, on the cover. But deep down, I lack the drive and ambition to do it, and when it comes right down to it, I really don’t actually care about making that dream-scenario happen.

What startles me, though, is that here I have a ready-made venue, indeed a venue for which the essay would be specifically written, and yet even with everything all set up for me and nothing much to do but write the thing… I still don’t really care about submitting it. Not even with publication, at least on the Web site, virtually guaranteed (as they seem to archive every essay submitted). Getting on the radio program, that’s a much longer shot, but it would at least be on the Web site and people could read it. Minimal effort on the business end of things, and I still can’t be bothered.

I’m not even sure where I’m going with this entry, now. So… I’ve discovered something is a low priority that has been a low priority pretty much all my life? Big insight, there. I guess… I guess I just had maybe thought, at the back of my head, that if an opportunity came along and it happened, it happened, and it would be nice. But here’s opportunity, sort of, and I’m all kind of, “Whatever.” Publication is even less important than I’d ever dreamed it was, and I guess that’s what’s surprising me here.

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Last night, I failed to grab the TiVo remote in time and wound up watching a few commercials. Two of them were for Lexus’ new safety features on its cars. The tagline: “Protecting the luxury of life.”

When did life become a luxury?

I mean, for crying out loud. My TiVo, computer, and Net connection are luxuries. Being able to live in a big house is a luxury. Owning a Lexus is a luxury. The ability to not be hit by a car? The freedom to assume that other drivers will watch where they’re going and not run into you when you’re minding your own business? Not so much.

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I think I’ve mentioned This I Believe here before. They have a book out now. A second book, I should say; I’ve never looked it up myself, but I get the impression there was a compilation of the essays from the original series released. This one is composed of a mixture of essays from the recent revival and the original 1950′s series. I’ve checked it out from the library and started reading it. Devouring it, I should say; it’s amazing how much faster a book can go when it’s broken up into essays of only three or four pages each.

One of the essays from the 1950′s series included in the collection was from Robert A. Heinlein. It talks about how Heinlein believes in, essentially, other people and the potential of the human race, and the reality that most of the human race is pretty damned decent. In the midst of the essay I came across this:

“I believe in–I am proud to belong to–the United States. Despite shortcomings–from lynchings, to bad faith in high places–our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history.”

I had to pause, then, and wonder if the same could be said today.

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I’ve often been puzzled by the popular conception that books are preferable to television, always and forever, no exceptions. I figured it was about time I blogged it.

No, I know. Hear me out. I’m an avid reader myself, and I’m certainly not saying that everyone should stop reading and start watching TV. I’m also aware that there are some lovely studies somewhere that say TV is rotting your brain, which I think has something to do with it being a more passive medium to experience than reading a book. I’m not here to argue those studies, which I obviously have only a passing familiarity with. What I take issue with is people who insist that the content of a printed book is automatically superior to the content of a television show simply because it’s a book. Books allegedly involve some sort of higher artistic merit, a higher value of vocabulary, more effort, something like that. They’re more prestigious. More intellectual.

Here’s the thing. Sure, on the various scales of artistic, scholarly, spiritual and intellectual value, I would rate an episode of America’s Next Top Model way down below something like Stranger in a Strange Land. When you make comparisons like that, it’s easy. But here’s a different one… What if we rate an episode of Nova or National Geographic against Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader? After all, the former two are television and the latter is a book. Is Uncle John’s more intellectual than Nova? Does it provoke more thought about the world around us than National Geographic?

I don’t know about y’all, but I can find my thinking mind disconnected when reading just as easily as when watching television, if I’m reading the wrong thing.

As well, the division between the two is not always clear. Consider Shakespeare. Does a faithful made-for-TV production of Hamlet have less merit than the same performance experienced as live theater? Does reading the words of the play on the page provide a better and more culturally expanding experience than seeing it in either form, given that it is a work written to be seen as a performance? What about dramatic readings and radio programs? Where on the scale do they fall?

In the end, my conclusion is this. Words is words is words, whether they’re printed in black and white or being spoken aloud. The transmission medium does not matter; the signal does. What matters is the communication, if I may borrow a phrase from Shadow. Not that there aren’t certain tendancies in the television industry, but that’s a flaw in the way things are done in some quarters, not a flaw inherent in the medium itself. This flaw is not, in addition, endemic to the system. And if you want to go that route, well, there’s flaws in the way things are done in the publishing world as well. Stupid words is stupid words is stupid words, again whether they’re printed or spoken. The difference is what is being communicated, not how it’s being communicated.

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Food should be fun and easy. It should be an enjoyable thing. Right now, I hate it.

It’s not that I hate food, really, I suppose. It’s that food in the context of our household is being such a pain in the ass, and it shouldn’t be, and I hate that it is. Low sodium, low calorie (but not too low), low cholesterol, high calorie (but not too high), high calcium, balanced nutrients for both the low calorie diet and the high calorie one, something that doesn’t require a lot of time and effort and expense to prepare, so many servings of this and so many servings of that, but watch out for this other thing, a backup plan for nights when we’re just too exhausted, options to fit all of the above when out with friends and/or on short notice. Then, just when I think I’ve almost found my balance, unforseen lunch catastrophes step in and upset it again.

I am overwhelmed. I want to throw everything out the window and just say, “Fuck it,” and eat the remainder of the tub of icing I bought for the cupcakes, which is probably about half of it, and follow it with a chocolate bar or two, and not plan and not nag and not worry. Ever. Except I can’t, because it does matter and it does make a difference and I can’t just give up. The alternative is to kick something for a while (steel toes and all), but that would hardly accomplish anything and I’d probably manage to hurt myself anyway.

I want food to be easy again. When did it get so hard? Why does it have to be so hard?

I know. Whine, whine, whine. *sigh*

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Yesterday I was tired of the world, mentally exhausted, not wanting to deal with people or life at all. Which I mean, of course, in the least alarming way possible: that way where you want to go hide away for a week and sleep it off, except you know you’d just get bored and wind up going out for dinner or something anyway, so there’s no point in actually trying that. There are several cures for this condition, but last night my cure of choice was chocolate.

Cupcakes, specifically. And guess what, Sandra Lee, I had all the ingredients in my kitchen already and making it from scratch was pretty much as easy as using a mix. So there. I’ll admit to not even bothering semi-homemaking the frosting, though; I bought a tub of Betty Crocker. I could have made it if I’d wanted to. I’ve made all sorts of frosting before. (Did I ever tell you that I was in 4-H for two years, and one of those years I was in cake decorating? I didn’t win any Grand Champion ribbons, but I did all right.) I frankly didn’t feel like it, and the frosting I probably would’ve had to buy ingredients for anyway, so… I cheated. If I had a decorators’ kit I might have at least piped the frosting on, albeit in a vague “swirl of giant star-tip” kind of way; if nothing else, it seems easier than messing with spreading the stuff. But while I could jury-rig a bag from a Ziploc, I have no tips, so… Oh, well. One of these days I’ll borrow Mom’s kit and try my hand at it again. Probably for one of Natalie’s birthdays. I just hope she doesn’t want me to try roses; I was never any good at those and it’s been way too long.

Anyway. Now that I’m done with that tangent, the recipe for curing the common blues. I thought it looked a bit odd, with no eggs and with it using vinegar and all, but the cupcakes themselves turned out to be delicious. Especially with cherry frosting. (What can I say? Lately, chocolate and cherry is just the most wonderful combination.)

Chocolate Cupcakes
Makes 12-16

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup oil
1 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl and wet ingredients in a smaller one. Add wet to dry and mix until thoroughly combined. Put in cupcake cups and bake for 20-25 minutes. Allow to cool before frosting with your favorite icing.

That’s it, you’re done, enjoy!

(Now, if only I’d packed one in my lunch. Today’s not starting out so grand either.)

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