January 2008 Archives

edie r.i.p.

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Edie Blues Explosion Gidley 1995-2008

kamikaze squirrel

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So yesterday afternoon we came home to find that an unlucky squirrel had apparently attempted to do some kind of fancy aerial trick on the telephone wire above our sidewalk, and missed. The scene looked very much like a Weegee photo. A whole lot of “Suicide Squirrel” jokes ensued.

Then, tonight, I got a mysterious message in my inbox from “Ghost of Kamikaze Squirrel.” Who knew they had Gmail in the afterlife? Google really is everywhere.

brackets

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I’ve been reading “If Not, Winter,” Anne Carson’s translations of the extant fragments of Sappho—some of them very fragmentary indeed, like #180:

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They remind me a little of the ultraminimal poems by Aram Saroyan that I like so much I made one of them into our front-door mat. I’m enjoying Carson’s explanations of the translations, too, especially fragment 146: “mete moi meli mite melissa,” which she renders as “neither for me honey nor the honey bee,” but notes “Other translations occur to me, e.g.:

mellowsmelling honey
yellowstinging bee
honey, Honey?
no not me”

And I appreciate the concision of “A Note About the Translator,” which reads, in its entirety, “Anne Carson lives in Canada.”

But the fragments that intrigue me most are probably the ones that are, perhaps, a quarter or a half there—at least part of every line missing, some lines missing altogether, evoking the missing bits but leaving them mysterious. Last night, as I drifted off to sleep, I was imagining recording musical settings for Sappho’s fragments, mixed as dub—vocals fading in and out where her fragments start and end, and the other instruments vanishing as much of the time. Then I realized that what I was imagining was essentially something that, appropriately enough, the Homosexuals had already done with “Hearts in Exile.” Except without the Sappho part. Which I’d still want to do, just so I could hear it.

pozole

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A really successful and super-easy vegetarian pozole I made last night, adapted from Moosewood:

Sauté 2 cups diced onions and a pinch of salt in 1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil until they’re turning golden, about 5-7 minutes. Add a couple of chopped-up cloves of garlic and saute 2 minutes more.

Add 2 14-oz. cans of diced tomatoes with their juice and 4 cups of peeled, seeded, diced delicata or butternut squash (I used a combination). Stir, cover, and let it simmer for 15 minutes or so, stirring a couple of times.

Add a diced red bell pepper and a diced green bell pepper. Stir, cover, and let it cook for another 5 or 10 minutes.

Add 1 1/2 teaspoons of dried oregano, a drained can of white hominy, a drained can of yellow hominy, a drained can of chickpeas, the juice of one smallish lime, two tablespoons of minced chipotles in adobo sauce (transfer the rest to a plastic container, in which it will keep just fine in the freezer), and 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Stir, cover, and let it cook for 5 minutes to heat everything and blend flavors.

Serve topped with a few crumbled tortilla chips and a small dollop of sour cream.

turned like a tater

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I’ve got another article up over at nextbook.org; this one’s on two books about the relationship between Judaism and superheroes.

I should also mention that I’m still posting a bunch over at The Savage Critic(s), most recently about last week’s Amazing Spider-Man, although MightyGodKing’s reaction is much funnier. And that karaoke journaling moved over to the LJ a while ago.

Otherwise, this week is all about preparatory measures.

divination nation

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I had to have a little break from blogging, but I’ll be back for real fairly soon. In the meantime, a couple of links: I’ve got a review of a bunch of collections of vintage comic strips in today’s Washington Post, and a piece about comics that deal with the Iraq war in Print magazine.

Want a thumbs-up for something? Okay: Chikalicious.