Ramble and Recipe*

*this post is pretty much what the inside of my head is like ALL THE TIME it is a wonder that I'm not mad oh wait

Yesterday (wrote 'yeasterday' and almost didn't catch it) I cleaned my aunt's house and walked the dog and went to a friend's for dinner. It was a good day. But I'm not going to talk about it yet. I'm going to tell a boring story about my MP3 player. Ready? Ready!

My iPod SHUFL has developed an embarrassing predilection for Queen, specifically 'Don't Stop Me,' and it tries to play it all the time. Trying to listen to music now goes like this: I hit 'shuffle' button. iPod starts playing Queen. I hit shuffle button again. Two songs later, iPod is all "how about Queen now, are we ready for Queen now?" "No!" Two songs later and it's all "OK how about...now?" God damn it, iPod. I don't even know why I put that song on there and now you're all "but it's my favourite!"

ANZAC service this morning was good, but for some reason they decided to give us some time for 'reflection,' which is usually accompanied by a nice reflective piece of music, you know, 'Nimrod' or something. Usually 'Nimrod' but sometimes a hymn. Not this time! We were treated to the longest pre-recorded song in the world, a dramatically crappy epic ballad sung by someone who was trying to sound noble by over-enunciating everything and sounding like a wanker, and it had an entire verse where the tune was carried by synth brass. This pissed me off no end. I mean, synth brass has its place (somewhere? probably?) but definitely not in a song of remembrance for the dead, albeit a cringe-inducingly tacky, gratuitously melodramatic clichéd one. Jesus Christ. I mean, so you had an okay writer and a truly awful lyricist and a singer who apparently thought he was in a Disney movie, but would it really have cost so much to get an actual brass section?

The whole song had a decided air of patronising B-grade celebrity about it. It was totally inappropriate and it made me very angry. But apart from that the service was good and the bugler did not fuck up and what more can you ask for, really? Would have been nice not to have the pipe band but oh well, lest we forget, etc.

To skitter off on a mental side note, I was reading a homewares catalogue yesterday (in hindsight I am wondering why) and I came across a guacamole bowl that was unlike anything I have ever seen before. The description says it all, really - 'This gorgeous, hand-painted ceramic bowl looks uncannily like a giant avocado.' Indeed, the resemblence was uncanny. You couldn't have canned it if you tried.

Also I have a question about America's Got Talent or, as I like to call it, America's Got Too Much Free Time. Why is there always a yokelish family who all play stringed instruments? (the 'string family' hur hur) Why is there always a family of about 10 who do Irish dancing? Why is there always someone with an average amount of talent but some sort of disability? It turns out that I have several questions. Burning questions. What is the purpose of 'cloggers'? Why have they kept the dancing trombonist? Does anyone really think the singing four-year-old is actually going to win? America's Got Poor Taste in Entertainment Acts.

Oh yeah also I thought I might do a post of brass band-related misadventures. Would that be fun?

Here's a recipe. It's delicious and easy and pretty much unfuckuppable. Go and make it. It makes a lemon pudding that is spongy on the top & gooey on the bottom! Technically it is called Aunty Mary O's Favourite.

Ingredients
Sugar (regular, but brown/icing/caster will do)
Butter (but margarine or oil will do)
Flour
Lemon (just the one)
Milk, about a cup
2 eggs


Cream 3 quarters of a cup of sugar and just over a tablespoon of butter. If you happen to be out of either of these, don't panic - you can replace the sugar with brown sugar, icing sugar, confectioners' sugar or caster sugar (two of those might be the same thing, but oh well), and the butter can be replaced with margarine or cooking oil. It'll still work, but you'll need to change the quantities a bit. Just add sugar and butter repeatedly until the mixture is creamy-lookin'.

Add about 2 tablespoons of sifted flour and the grated rind & juice of a lemon. I'd recommend just grating the rind because juice is hard to grate. Cook's tip: if you pour the juice over the grater on its way into the bowl, it washes lots of the rind that is stuck in the grater into the actual mixture. See? I am good at this.

Mix that all about a bit. There should not be lumps, but there probably will be because you didn't bother sifting the flour. You should have listened to me, and now you'll have to stir it for longer until all the lumps are gone.

Add about a cup of milk. You're welcome to use the actual cup measure, but if you can't find it or it's dirty then just use a teacup that's lying around. Quite frankly it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference. Also add the beaten yolks of two eggs. JUST THE YOLKS, PEOPLE. Don't chuck the whites out, though, we will use those later on. The yolks don't need to be hardcore beaten or anything, just whipped about with a fork a bit. Mix the whole thing until it looks right. You'll know. You'll just know.

Then whip the egg whites. Not by hand with a fork unless you have about half an hour to kill. With a beater or an electric mixer, until the white forms what I like to call 'flaccid peaks.' Not too stiff, please. Do not over-excite your egg white.

Spoon the egg white into the mixture and sort of fold it in. Mix, but don't obliterate. (Important.)

Eventually the mixture will Look Right - you'll know - and then you can tip it into a greased bowl. Easiest way to grease a bowl is to scoop some margarine out of the tub and then rub it round the inside of the bowl, but you can be more hygienic about it if you like. Then pour the Right-Looking Mixture into the greasy bowl, and stand the greasy bowl in a shallow dish of hot water. That is important. If you don't have the dish of hot water the pudding will go all wrong. (I know I said it was unfuckuppable but that's the exception.)

Put the pudding in the dish of hot water and put the whole thing in the oven. Oven should be at about 150 C - will take 45 minutes to cook. If you are impatient you can give it half an hour at 180 C. Whatever.

Seriously, make it. It's really easy and delicious. I would not lie to you about this.

This is quite dull

I really have no news except that Google, which displays ads specifically geared towards my viewing preferences, thinks I might like a recipe for 'Spam Vegetable Strudel.' Seriously, Google, I don't even kn- oh, it's served with soy sauce? Well OK then.

So I'm going to take the traditional route when faced with a dearth of blog material: respond to a questionnaire I was tagged in ages ago. Or, in this case, respond to a questionnaire that I wasn't even tagged in in the first place. (I know, it's going to be boring. I received a request yesterday that said "do you think you could maybe not use strikethrough for a couple of posts and see if it doesn't kill you," so I don't even have that to fall back on.
Look! Look what I'm doing! Ha ha, fuckface!
Anyway, for the quiz. Here are the 'rules' (I say 'rules' because I'm not planning on abiding by them) for this quiz, which I stole off Andrea:

1. Respond and rework. Answer the questions on your blog, replace one question you dislike with a question of your own invention; add a question of your own.

2. Tag eight other un-tagged people. Andrea didn't do this, and as she is my BestFriend and role model I am not going to do it either

What is your current obsession?
New book I have just started working on, having realised that completing old book would be kind of like spending 10 years making a sculpture out of Lego. No matter how awesome it is it is still on some level Not Really Art. Anyway this backfired because it turns out new book actually involves research and even though one of my extremely over-indulgent friends is doing most of the data monkey crap for me (he made graphs and everything - I may have to marry him) there is still research. I actually had to go to the library today. Seriously.

I am also obsessed with an $840 jacket from Andrea Moore. I was going to find a picture of it but then I got bored & realised that probably no-one would care anyway. Just imagine a full-length, fitted pirate's coat - long long cuffs, huge collar, those tuck things at the back. In charcoal. If anyone would like to give me $840 then by all means feel free - if it makes you feel better we can pretend it's for a child in Africa.


Do you nap a lot?

I am Sir Nap-a-lot. My mother and sister hate it, though, and wake me up whenever they catch me at it. My favourite place to nap, not that you asked, is on the floor with the dog. He is also a napper.


Who was the last person you hugged?
Charlie. Although actually he is a dog.


What's for dinner?
We have had dinner, and it was Toad in the Hole. Truly, the British have a talent for creating dishes that sound foul and look worse (see also: Spotted Dick) but which turn out to be nothing short of delicious. I cooked the Toad in the Hole (it is actually sausages in Yorkshire pudding, which is a sort of batter) and here is a photograph of it, which I made my mother take because I was so proud of myself. She said: "Please tell me you are not going to show that off on the Internet."

See? Looks nothing like actual toads, in hole or otherwise. Is clearly sausages.


What was the last thing you bought?
I...I'm not sure.


What are you listening to right now?
Damn! I hate that question but already used up my take-out-a-question on 'favourite coffee place.' Never mind. I'm just not going to answer it.


What is your favourite weather?
Really heavy storms. Obviously I am a tortured artist and NO - DON'T EVEN TRY TO UNDERSTAND ME - I AM GOING OUTSIDE NOW - TO WRITE - HAS ANYBODY SEEN MY CIGARETTES


What's on your bedside table?
Well, it's kind of a funny story - this one time I woke up at 3am and vomited half-digested Indian food out my window and stood on the bedside table in my urgency and now I no longer have a bedside table. But on the corner of my desk are the following things: phone shaped like a baby bok choi (not plugged in to anything but there regardless); a coffee plunger with grounds in the bottom; a coffee cup (empty); an iPod (mine); two pairs of eyelash curlers (hmm); various scribbled notes (the one on the top of the pile says 'I know you're a vampire but damn, put some pants on'); a Spanish dictionary; a small plastic statue of a Collie.

Say something to the person/s who tagged you.
I tagged myself and that is pretty much the first sign of madness so I think we'll skip that question too


If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you want it to be?
Good question. Probably somewhere in rural Spain. Why not, after all? They have wine and paella and good-looking men, and I speak more of that language than any other apart from English. Also they're tucked snugly up under the rest of Europe. Europe is Spain's blanky. And they have oranges.


Favourite vacation spot?
Any spot at which I do not have to vacation with other people and where there is a bar.


Name the things you can’t live without.
I presume they mean figuratively, although there is always some smartass who is all 'air and water nyuk nyuk nyuk.' Um...to be honest, I don't really know. Friends and family. Air and water. Nyuk nyuk nyuk.


What would you like to have in your hands right now?
A black AMEX that I never had to pay back. I realise that sounds a little materialistic, but...yeah OK it is. OH WELL


What is your favourite tea flavour?
I like many. English Breakfast is, you know, a classic. The (insert appropriate make of car here) of tea. Earl Grey with lemon is delicious; Earl Grey with Cointreau is super-delicious but people look at you weirdly when you say that (you know, that 'you're-an-alcoholic' look). Green tea with jasmine is nice; green tea without jasmine is nicer. Rooibos is nice, but only with soy milk; coconut rooibos is nice, but only without any milk at all. Kate drinks a tea called 'be happy.' "Are you happy?" I asked? "Well," she said, "I'm not unhappy."


What would you like to get rid of?
The long-dead rose which has been sitting droopily in a vase on my desk for literally weeks but which I haven't yet got around to throwing out. Actually, I'm going to do that now.


If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?
Either Wellington, or Vegas (via Denmark to pick up a passenger, because Vegas is no fun on your own and you can't even tell anyone about all the cool stuff that happened there because of that dumb rule). Also in this imaginary situation there would be lots of money and should Vegas turn out to be fun the hour could be extended indefinitely.


What did you want to become as a child?
I don't believe I was ever any more specific than 'awesome.'


What do you miss?
Oh, yeah, quiz, let's get all personal, shall we? I miss having a regular paycheck, and also some dead people. Not that I would like to have them back, unless they were alive. Or benign zombies. That would be OK.


What are you reading right now?
Where Underpants Come From, in which Joe Bennett answers that age-old question. (Not to spoil the ending, but it's China.) The book's very good, actually; would recommend. JB goes to China and has lots of adventures, most of but not all of which revolve around his underpants.


What do you fear the most?
Mediocrity.


What designer piece of clothing would you most like to own (new or vintage)?
Right now? That Andrea Moore pirate coat. But I'm pretty sure if I thought about it I would be able to come up with a better answer.


What is the coolest thing you saw today? (Question by me.)
Well, Ally, funny you should ask that! (Stop it! That's the first sign.) It is this wedding cake. It is from Pink Cake Box, and if I ever need a cake I am going to go and ask them. In fact when my research assistant and I get married Pink Cake Box is going to make my enormous, graph-shaped cake. (where y = affection and x = time)



Tomorrow: an action shot of me getting hit in the arse with a snowball.

EDIT: Shut up NT, Toad in the Hole is meant to look like that.

MORE EDIT: LOOK LOOK at my new clock it's over there --> and up a bit. If you don't get it well come on it's the guy from Prison Break. Prison Break. I wrote 4000 words today and yet I am more proud of constructing that pun than of any of those other words.

Not About Jetpacks

See basically I have this vision of the future where everyone flies about with jetpacks strapped onto their backs and the political and social ramifications are immense - but right now I have other, more mundane, things to write about so the jetpacks will just have to wait.

My mother has decided that Kate and I need to do more stuff around the house. She said, "This house is not a hotel!" "What is it," I asked, "a Communist country?" "No! It is a dictatorship." Kate and I, of course, instantly decided to overthrow the regime and ran about shouting things like "The fridge has declared for me! Put that that cheese down!" and "Aha! The toilets are on my side! Where will you rest your dictatorial buttocks now?" End result is that a) Kate and I are now going to do more stuff around the house and b) Kate has started calling me Napoleon, which makes a nice change from Hitler, and declared that she would like to be Pol Pot (on the basis of the funny-sounding name, not the horrific atrocities). We are both fully aware that Pol Pot may be the name of a regime, and not a person, but thanks anyway. (Aside: When Kate and I were deciding which historical heads of state we would be, I asked Mum whether Napoleon, Hitler or Alexander the Great would suit me best. She squinted speculatively at me for about 20 seconds, then said, "I don't think you're a Hitler.")

Tomorrow I get to spend all day cooking! In the kitchen, where a woman belongs. We're having an Indian-themed dinner tomorrow night with my cousins, and I volunteered to do our half of the cooking, because I am both mad and easily excited. I've never cooked Indian before, and I'm a little nervous but also really looking forward to it. I'm going to attempt a thick coconut prawn curry, pork korma, pork vindaloo (we have quite a lot of pork in the freezer at the moment) and possibly some kind of dessert. So excited. Chop dice prep fry steam stir smell taste garnish! Fall asleep on couch.

In other news, I have a weird habit and am wondering if it's one that anyone else shares. I always try to carry as many different pens as possible with me, because I'm really picky about what kind of pen I write with, and my preference changes depending on what I'm writing. At the moment my handbag holds one black ink, one red ballpoint, and one blue ballpoint. Lists, for example, are in plain blue biro. Jokes, catchphrases, and appointments are in red biro. Black ink is for anything Literary - but then all three of those can swap round without notice, depending on the season, my mood, the length of Dr Phil's mustache (metric). It's just me, isn't it. (I need a green pen.)

I discovered the pen habit yesterday at the Library. I also discovered that apparently I love children, which was unexpected as I've always thought I hated the little grublets. I played 'peek-a-boo' with 5 children at the library! And with one midget by accident but let's not talk about that. Seriously, though, never visit the library on weekdays - there are children bloody everywhere I mean everywhere, and they come up to you while their mother is engrossed in Marie Claire and hide behind your legs, and then before you know it you're playing some weird game in which you are making a noise like a hippopotamus (or at least the noise you think a hippopotamus might conceivably make) and the child is going "Eeheehee!" and holding onto your thumb and then you steal the child and it is yours forever. Fuck.

I have decided to start adding tags to blog posts! I know, pretty exciting right. The only thing about this is that it means I have to revisit every one of the 179 posts currently taking up cyberspace on this blog - a concept that blows my mind, by the way. How much stuff can the Internet actually fit? Is it...limitless? Where is all this stuff kept? In Bill Gates' basement? In...in NOWHERE? Oh my God, how does this work? I have to stop thinking about this or my mind will shrink into a tiny, whimpering ball. Am just going back to talking about those 179 posts and how I have to go back and tag them as well, because to start tagging now and not go back and tag every single one of my previous posts would send me into a mental meltdown, like the one I just has (whoops, unintentional lolcat) when I tried to think about the internet.

In other news, I hate lolcats. I'm sorry, that is one meme which has passed me by. Show me one - just one - that is actually laugh-out-loud funny (or even clever I'd settle for clever) and I will completely revise my position; but for now they remain an abomination. Not unlike this rather pointless post. I mean, c'mon! It's not even about jetpacks.

Final point: moths rock. One fell in my wine, so I lifted it out & put it near my lamp to dry. Next time I looked over, it had fallen into my coffee (from the edge of the book-stack where I'd put it to dry its wings). So I pulled it out again. The little bastard is still alive, and has now dried his wings and flown away! Two thoughts. One: he is awesome and when he returns home he'll get a ghost author, write about his ordeal, sell the movie rights and become a millionaire. Two: he was suicidal and I've totally destroyed his plans but possibly restored his will to live. Either way, that moth rocks.

Biscuit Hitler

Today I went round to my cousin's house for Darwin Day, which is Darwin's birthday. Did you know that today is the 200th anniversary of his birth? No, me neither, but this apparently calls for cake (chocolate with pink frosting - pink was Darwin's favourite colour - and on, the top, evolution as demonstrated by small candy dinosaurs), a movie about a teacher who was tried for teaching evolution in school, and biscuits.

Below is a graph of apparently socially unacceptable biscuits I decorated today. It's come out all fuzzy for some reason, but I'm too tired to fix it. Sorry about that.

Well, I thought it was funny. Ha Ha Ha Hitler? Meh, he was tasty.

In other news, my phone is playing "Fuck You, I'll Work When I Feel Like It," which while irritating also means that I have a valid excuse to ignore calls from the bank. So apologies if anyone's txt me and I haven't replied - it's not that I don't love you, it's that my phone doesn't think I should love you, and is trying to come between us.

Possibly a proper update

...because most of my posts recently have been about crap.

Ah what a beautiful day to be alive. The sun is shining and the birds are chirping and the bees are buzzing round the huge purple bush they like to buzz round. I'd take a photo if I had a digital camera, it's all very suburban and idyllic. Have spent the morning with the Sunday Star Times and a big pot of coffee...ahhh bliss. Would be nicer if the neighbour wasn't mowing his lawn but I suppose you can't have everything.

I am finally settling back into Chch, the city with the soul of a zombie nun -living at home with Mum & Kate is going well now that we've ironed out most of the little things (to give you an idea of just how little, there was recently a very heated debate about whether the shower curtain gets pushed to the left or to the right side of the shower (it's the LEFT, you FUCKERS)) & realised that we are all adults here, people, so let's behave like it. And now we are, apart from the odd conversation like this:

Me: "Why is my phone charger unplugged?"
Kate: "You plugged it into the plug the radio uses."
Me: "Yes, but I was the only person home, and the radio wasn't on. The radio still isn't on. You're not even using the radio."
Kate: "Well, I wanted to use the radio before, so I unplugged your charger, but then I forgot."
Me: "Couldn't you have moved my charger to another plug?"
Kate: "No! You shouldn't have plugged it in there! That's the radio's plug!"

But then I started calling her 'The Socket Lord' and 'Adolf Plugler' and and now I'm allowed to plug things in wherever I like. As long as I plug the resident appliance back in when I'm done. Maybe I should buy a couple of motherboards...are they called that? Those four-socket things that you attach to your plug. They might be called motherboards or I might have made that up. Hmmm. If they aren't called motherboards, they really should be.

I also need to buy a knife sharpening thing - sharpening block, perhaps - as my family seems to enjoy cutting everything with really dull knifes. I mean knives. What a weird typo to make. But apart from dull knifes and weird routines everything is pretty OK.

Speaking of typos (ooh, segue!) I'm going into a temping agency tomorrow morning because the money is running out and I need to start working again. Lame. However, this will mean I get to do psychometric testing (whee) and typing tests (whee) and Excel tests (crap) and spend some of my day not sitting round the house. I have been doing a lot of gardening - my mother has a great garden, mostly NZ natives and veges and things like that, and I've been really hoeing into the weeding.

Zing!

(I have so been looking for an excuse to make that pun for about the last week.)

Went out last night - first night out in Chch, good Lord - and made some friends! (I think.) Which I sorely need, because my social circle is more of a social four-person blob at the moment, and I miss having readily available drinking buddies. It's quite glum-making to realise that you'd really like to have a beer in the sun but that you have no-one to have it with. Ah well. Friends will come! I should advertise.

I was thinking that I might like to be a real estate agent, after I've worked for 6 months or so (you need a financial cushion to keep you going while you get started, and at the moment all I have is a financial whoopee cushion). You basically get to be your own boss, and the amount of money you make directly reflects the amount of work you put in. That was always one of the things that really annoyed me about salaried jobs - you could be giving it 150%, and the guy next to you is doing a half-assed 75%'er at best, and yet you get paid the same. I mean, sure, you may get promoted sooner, but at the end of the day there's no incentive to really work. Real estate, however...if you do a crappy job, you won't last. if you do an average job, you'll make average money. if you work your ass off, you can make ridiculous amounts of money. Ridiculous amounts! The woman I went and talked to about it said, "You have to like three things to be good at this job - hard work, people, and money." I like people and money, and I'm sure I could get used to the other one.

Mind you, I read an article on the Chatham Islands this morning and now I want to go and live there (town of 200 people, one doctor, one 'constable'...I would start a dinky wee business doing God knows what, and go down to the sea and write a lot. I imagine rent is cheap), which kind of implies I am not very good at this whole deciding-what-to-do-with-my-life business.

I think the problem is that half of me wants to be a rich, high-powered and successful city-dweller who wears a lot of black and accessorizes well, and the other half of me wants to be an eccentric writer living in a cottage by the sea. It'll be interesting to see who wins. I'll keep you updated.

Am cooking tonight! Teriyaki squid. How the fuck do you cook squid? I did not think this through. For those of you who know Chow, I'm trying to recreate that squid I used to eat all the time. I doubt it'll work, but it should be...educational. The lesson will probably be "you don't know how to cook squid."

Anyway, I'm really just rambling on here, and should probably go and do something productive.

Like the Sudoku.

PS I totally cheated on this update thing. I wrote a letter to a friend this morning, and this post is pretty much lifted word-for-word from that letter. It's not laziness, people, it's efficiency. Learn from me.

Christmas Fears

‘It is like trying to untangle a seething mass of worms with your bare hands and you’re looking at the worms through a kaleidoscope.’

I have developed a completely irrational, paranoid fear that during my preparations for Christmas Dinner something will go horribly wrong. Fears include, but are not limited to,
· The desserts will not set
· The chicken will not be cooked properly and I will give everyone festive food poisoning
· My inner gay man will take over and I will impetuously colour everything with red or green food colouring, then instantly regret it
· I will be stuffing the chicken at the last minute and the stuffing will not go in the chicken/come right out the neck of the chicken/fall on the floor
· I will get my hand stuck in the chicken
· Everything will be HORRIBLE and everyone will have a BAD TIME!

I realise that none of these things are very likely to happen, especially the last one – my friends are a resilient lot and in the relatively unlikely event that everything is over- or under-cooked to the point of inedibility, they’ll just laugh at me, get pissed and order pizza, which is why I like them.

My hand might get stuck in the chicken, though – this is yet one more reason to not start drinking during Christmas Day, no matter what my deputy chef may suggest. I do not want my guests to arrive to find me and Ashton (aforesaid deputy chef and your co-host for the evening) blind drunk in the kitchen attempting to make frozen chicken hand puppets do the can-can, while all around us things bubble frantically, boil over and caramelise on the stove. That would be a little embarrassing.

I am also putting off the vomitous horror that is (relatively) last-minute Christmas shopping. Why do I have so damn many family members? I am beginning to understand why people go on killing sprees more often during the holiday season than at any other time of year – to cut down on the number of cards and presents required, that’s why. I think this year I might just smile in a Buddha-like manner and say in “Your present is my presence.”

Do you know what song I do not like? Oh Girl by Cut off Your Hands. It is a booty call txt set to music. The tune’s very catchy, but unfortunately I can’t enjoy it due to the hideously tawdry lyrics. Example:
“Oh girl/Can you come over to my house?/Oh we can do things that we’ve never done/We can just talk it can be such fun…” Gosh, Cut off Your Hands, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that I’d probably have about as many dollars as you’ve sold records. Like, FIVE.