Yummy yummy cauliflower soup

I'm not going to lie; I haven't heard back from the written exam thing and I remain useless; crashingly so. Useless and testy. Awful! What's more, I have strange pains in the palms of my hands - no idea where they came from . It occurred to me while I was making coffee this morning the two likeliest explanations are God punishing me for all that masturbation, or else the beginnings of stigmata. Believe me, I find both exaplanations . . . discomfiting. And so I remain with nothing to say, but once more as a reward to you for actually checking to see if I did, here's the recipe for the fucking superb cauliflower soup I made last night.

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 a big cauliflower, seperated into smallish florets but retaining stalks
3 bay leaves
1 herb bouillon cube, dissolved into 4 cups boiling water
Freshly ground pepper
1/3 cup stinky blue cheese
1/2 cup 18% cream

In a large saucepan, gently cook the garlic in the butter for a few minutes. Add the cauliflower and bay leaves; fry, then add the herb stock (chicken stock would probably also do). Add pepper to taste, bring to boil, and simmer until the cauliflower is soft (20 minutes). Turn off the heat and crumble in the blue cheese (I had Rosenburg, but I was thinking of gorgonzola - sigh), stirring until it's melted. Remove the bay leaves and add the cream. Put the lot in a blender and liquify. Return it to the pan and gently re-heat it when your sweetheart gets home from t'ai chi. Serve with crusty bread (it's a very liquid soup) and a nice parsley garnish. You'll fucking come.

Post-posting for the post

So yesterday was consumed with a fever of preparation, some ice cream and an analytic session where we tried to figure out what Godzilla meant to me. In an effort to pace myself, I went to see some old co-workers for a coffee, but I was tedious because of not being able to think of anything else. And I remain tedious this morning, and unable to think of anything else. I haven't wanted anything this badly since last February. What is it with mid-winter and passionate longing?

I could go on, but it would only be about the same thing this morning. So instead, here's a picture of the cutest, the best, the most phenomenal chubby baby in the whole universe . . .

Which truth to pick?

Well, I got the writing assignment yesterday, and it made me feel like a little kid raising her arm as far as she could, jiggling and yelling "pick me! Pick me! I know the answer! Teacher! Pick me!" which is annoying, but probably the right way to be feeling. I'm half done. The instruction was to spend no more than two hours on it, which I can do, but not straight - I'm better at editing when I let things sit in my head.

This organisation, whose mandate is anti-c0rrupt!on, and wanting to work for it so very badly, has had me asking myself all sorts of questions about my own life and my own relationship with honesty. I can safely say that at the moment I'm the most honest I've ever been as an adult. I can also see some room for improvement. Thing is, so many lies are accidental or unconscious in the defence of our self-image - just in our own defense, really. those are the worst ones because they're harder to keep track of, and you can walk out of a catastrophic situation without feeling an ounce of accountability but with a sense of dragging sadness, because you'll never be able to feel that that was the right thing to happen . . .

Listen to me. I'm babbling. It's just that at the moment I'm sad for a couple of friends who are having a knock-down drag-out over some silly issue that hardly exists - those unconscious, self-protecting lies have come into play and threatened their old, beautiful friendship. It sucks. It sucks to watch. Anyways.

I did the Martin Amis review. It's not glowing. The book did remind me, though, that I hadn't indulged my taste for the morbid for awhile. And so I'm just finishing reading The Black Death by Johnnes Nohl. Superb. Not the best structure ever built - the bits that are and are not primary sources aren't clearly delineated (but it's mostly primary sources, including absolutely beloved ones like Petrarch and Vasari) but it's fine. Nohl was a psychoanalyst so his digressions usually hold something of interest. And oh, the stories! The stories of how people coped with a third or a half or more of the population dying, the stories about how people dealt with the imminent prospect of their own death! It's simultaneously depressing and uplifting, and gets a good psychological treatment from the author, especially in terms of things like the flagellant movements and the dancing epidemics. Superb, and not just for a morbid fix.

Real classics don't get forgot

Last night I saw the worst movie I have ever, ever seen in my entire life. Figaro rented Glen or Glenda awhile ago, and that was pretty fucking bad, but this one was just vastly worse, and officially the worst thing ever. It also has the distinction of being the worst Western - worst film and worst Western. Wow. It is unmitigated shit from start to finish, and at only 93 minutes long feels like a fucking eternity.

The Hired Hand. 1971. Peter Fonda's directorial debut. All you need to know: Fucking stoned, drunk, boring, hippy crap version of something like the Wild West. Wow. I cannot believe how bad it was. Wow. It's from a list of 50 forgotten classics published by the Observer, so as far as I'm concerned it's just further proof first world pinkos aren't good at reccomending anything. Calling it a "beautful, acid-trip western" is an insult to beauty, acid, and westerns. It's the story of a fucking skinny git who sighs alot through retarded, contrived situations and lousy production values. The end.

Sometimes I'm tempted to think real classics just aren't forgotten.

3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . Let the Violent Whining Commence

Planetarily reassuring as it is that the weather has crapified, it's really serving to remind me winter is for fucking suckers. It's not an ice storm yet, but I don't think far from the right conditions to get one. I personally enjoyed the last ice storm, when I was in a place with its own generator and a good supply of liquor, but lots of people in that area died, and not just boneheads who thought they could use their barbeques inside their homes. Anyways, we have gas heating and I have a salaried job, so a little city-wide shutdown wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Some candle-lit reading, singing, and taking aesthetically mind-blowing photographs. Definitely not the worst thing in the world. And hopefully people will have figured out how to not get killed since 1997.

Yeah, so speaking of that salaried job - Luke Duke wants someone who can commit to the kids until the summer. I can't. I'm not even sure that I'll find something between now and then in terms of work in my field, excitement over short-listing notwithstanding, but I do know that if I do get an offer to just about any of the jobs I've applied to so far, two weeks loose-end tying and I'm off . . . so it looks like I won't be able to spend that time with the kids and like I won't be able to quit my job until I find a career-y job. Fuck. Maybe he'll reconsider. I'm not sure he's made up his mind yet.

Feeling flat and dissappointed and not wanting to go back to that stupid, stupid office today to pretend telev1sion is great when it sucks. The way I explained it this weekend was that I'm fine writing inconsequential decontextualized articles for the magazine - it might not make me proud of myself, but it doesn't induce self-loathing either - but I can't sit there and fucking lie all day, especially when those lies aren't only untruths but are contrary to the truths of my personal vision of an ideal world.

Alright, that's enough whining for the morning, especially as I'm not going right to work, but to the dentists' for a cleaning that will hopefully involve nitrous oxide.