Opeth, emo, and more food

Firstly an apology to the blond bit, I laughed long and hard when she asked me what I was listening to sometime ago, and I replied 'Opeth', and she accused me of being an emo-kid. Opeth are 'some' distance from emo. But after a wander downtown yesterday I think I know where she's coming from. A bunch of emo/goth kids were emo-ing/goth-ing and some of them were wearing Opeth t-shirts. So sorry :-) But it was very funny.

I've come to the conclusion that this blog mainly concerns sex (in many species, no-one can accuse me of being speciest - and no, I have no idea how to spell that) and food. At one stage I may have had great plans for a biting satirical Evelyn Waugh, PG Wodehouse type thing, but I always knew that was unlikely. Anyway, don't all young authors get told to stick to what they know? So here's a recipe...

I like quick meals. If it tastes good. So the following (if you cheat and buy the roti) can be made in 10 minutes.
Roti
2c plain flour; 3/4c lukewarm water; 1/2t salt; 1/2t sugar; 3T butter
sift flour, salt, sugar, rub in butter. add water, knead until smooth - don't overwork.
divide into small balls (hey a sex reference!!) and cover in oil (I just dribble some over it)dump in flat dish and leave for at least two hours.
flatten balls, lift one end and stretch, repeat for other end, fold into four. I'm crap at this, Amy was good. And mentioned that, ad nauseum. heat oil in pan, medium heat, cook until crispy on one side and strangely, do the same for the other side.

Chicken Laksa Serves 2
200gm chicken; 300gm fresh egg noodles (or around 150-200gm dry); 1/2 onion; handfull beansprouts; 1t curry powder; 1t sambal oelek; 1t chicken stock powder; 2 pieces ginger; 2 cloves garlic; 2T fish sauce; 2 stalk lemongrass; 2c coconut milk; fried onion garnish.

if fresh noodles, dump boiling water over them. if dry, cook.
oil in pan, chopped lemongrass, onion, garlic and ginger, saute til onion soft. add chicken, curry, sambal oelek stir for a couple of mins. pour in coconut milk, chicken stock powder, simmer until chicken cooked, season with fish sauce.
drain noodles. pour soup over them. flick beansprouts through. garnish with onion flakes.
eat.
drink.

Love, I care about your stomach, B.

Marillion and Little Bushman

The new Marillion album is available for pre-order with a DVD from Townsend Records. Go on, buy it...

Went to the Little Bushman gig on Sunday night at the Soundshell with the brunette bit. Great gig, I like the psychedelic blues rock and long meandering songs. Oh stop making those prog comments in the back row. I had a witty and useful description of what they sound like, but it's gone now. So instead here's a link to some samples from the lovely people at SmokeCDs. As most of you are aware it's Warren Maxwell's new band - he of Trinity Roots and Fat Freddy's fame. This band has the gentle meandering vocals of Warren, but far more balls in the music. It's good. And live the songs are better than the studio versions. They did play a new track, sadly it was a slow ballad which meandered and was a really bad choice for a live outdoor gig.

B

Saturday nights alright for ... picture organising!

As an example of how rocking my life is, Saturday night was spent dumping Heroes onto video for a friend, reorganising my Aperture library, and watching Prison Break while nibbling watermelon.

On the plus side I did have some Schoc chocolate yesterday afternoon. A personal favourite, Whisky and Boysenberry, and some pink peppercorn. The latter was lovely, that warm mouth filling choc taste with a hint of pepper in there. Mmmm.

And I picked up some more beans as I'd run out from my favourite roaster, Peoples Coffee. I picked up some Ethiopian Yirgacheffe which is currently sliding down my throat as I type this.

Oh and I tidied some shelves of stuff in my room. Which in the 'old' days would have meant I could go out and be social. But eh, Prison Break and watermelon are my friends now :-)

I do manage a social life tonight as I'm heading to the Little Bushman gig at the Soundshell.

Me x

Heading for the chop

With thanks to lovely S for this one.
An Iguana in Antwerp, named Mozart (for unknown reasons and which adds nothing to story, but well you can now personify the Iguana) has had an erection for a week. In an unusual fix for this problem, he's going to get his knob chopped off.

I want you all to stop and think about that.

And the cheering from the female readers of this missive should stop right now. Mozart has two penises, thank god for Iguanan redundency.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/3941137a4560.html?source=email

I can't seem to find any pictures of this, but I did manage to find a picture of a hemipene (penis) from http://www.greenigsociety.org/anatomy.htm

B xx

Frilled sharks

How cool was the news yesterday? A poorly frilled shark was caught in Japan and put in the Awashima Marine Park. Here's what it looked like (it died): .
From my quick googling and skimming through a couple of textbooks:
- deep water (1000m down)
- eats giant squid and deep sea fish
- scattered throughout most of the worlds oceans (doesn't seem that rare, just unusual)
- might have a gestation period of 3.5 years (crickey!)
- ooh it might be the source of 'sea serpent' myths, although as its short (max 6m) and doesn't come to the surface that seems unlikely

It's an interesting animal, rather than living fossil it would be better to say its an extant (alive) example of an archaic shark lineage. Think about it, these animals have been evolving for around 300 million years, so unless its identical to a sample 300 MYA how can it be a living fossil. And from a pedants viewpoint, the DNA is not going to be identical. Actually a pedant would point out we can't test that :-)

You want more? Who the hell are you, Oliver Twist?
http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/shark_profiles/chlamydoselachiformes.htm
http://www.sharkattacks.com/prehistoric.htm

B

Weird signs of our times

Hippies, and they were hippies (green homespun jerseys, dreds), driving an SUV.

I didn't know whether to shoot them or wash them.

B.

Volver

As I've mentioned before, I like Pedro Almodovar. I like his quirkiness, his black sense of humour and his focus on the characters - to the point where the setting is irrelevant for the story. And this is still the case in Volver, his new flick with Penelope Cruz as the lead. I was a bit concerned about 20 minutes into it that it wasn't black enough. But he catches up. Basically its a study on the relationships between three generations of women in one family - their loves, lives and offspring. Whcih sounds a bit cliched, and I apologise for that, but it is a good summary. It starts with elderly women (and cruz) cleaning gravestones and complaining about the weird wind. We then meander slowly (as in all Almodovar) to a ghost story, some illict sex (any more detail would spoil things), a death, a restaurant and eventually redemption. I liked it. There's been some critics dissing it (see this weekend SSTimes for example), but I found it funny and pretty black. I think the audience who Suz and I watched it with didn't quite get it, as we were laughing at the humour and they were looking a bit shocked. Eh. Cruz is stunning, possibly a bit too pretty (!) but very good actor. Good thing Tom got rid of her and Nicole, both far better actors than him, the best thing you can say about Katie is that she's Tom's acting equal (and the worst thing about the sublime 'Thank you for smoking').

the usual riders about an Almodovar movies apply here, dont expect lots of action, expect lots of character driven story, and an undercurrent of black humour.

3.5-4 out of 5. depending on my mood.

B.

I'm an artist dammit!

Well ok I'm not, but apparently surgeons are. Some Romanian surgeon while operating on the testicles got a bit upset when things went wrong, and worked through his rage by dismembering the patients penis and chopping it into little pieces. He was, he claimed, 'stressed'.

I think it's more likely that, like artists do when things go bad, he wanted to destroy the canvas.

B (intact, and unlikely to head to Romania)

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=33257&in_page_id=2

Brokeback Bruce

Blonde bit took a picture of me yesterday which ended up on her flickr account, I can definitely recommend checking this one out:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/92329000@N00/361457341/

Love, b...

Apocalypto

The new Mel movie. We went along as it had one star from the DomPost reviewer and we like crap movies. And it was at the Embassy. Storyline: happy funny times in small village, bad guys come and smack them over, conflict between big city/small village requirements, mass murder, god appeasement, conquistadors. There thats about it. As to the movie itself, it's not that bad. The storyline is interesting, if laboured in places. Use of the disease ridden oracle seemed a bit OTT. The setting makes it a bit more interesting than your usual revenge movie, which this is. I think it could have been trimmed a bit or at least used a lighter hand in the directing. The violence didn't seem too excessive to me, although if headless torso's bumping down steps doesn't float your boat... Nicely set up for a sequel too :-)
One star is a bit harsh, I'd give it 2, possibly 2.5. Blair went for a 3. It wasn't a complete waste of our time, but sadly it wasn't as bad as we hoped.

B.