Things I wonder about

So day after day I read the LA Times and there are terrible stories about gang members pulling up to people's houses and firing shots at families and killing young children, teens and people who are either in or not in gangs. Just last August, while Mayor Villaregosa was down the street comforting a family of a young boy shot in a drive by killing, a teenage girl who was going to the memorial service was shot to death - on the two blocks from the Mayor of Los Angeles.

Now, I don't know, but I wonder. Why are these things called "gang" related and not militia related? How come we have "gangs" and Iraq has "militias?" Both have guns and ammo. Both have economic means of survival through black market activities. Both have support among some members of the community who are willing to shelter members and are willing to buy the goods controlled by the militia. The people who are randomly dead from their activities are all really dead. So when is a gang a militia? When is a militia a gang?

Car thoughts

The Insurance Institute comes out with Auto Safety ratings every year and they make their criteria known in advance. So last year they said that no car that didn't have ECS technology, electronic control systems reduce skids, slides and roll overs.

No American cars made the safety list this year. Why? Because they didn't have ECS. GM, Ford have been having terrible years financially, they have made money on trucks for years but high gas prices have had sales plummeting. Lack of good design has made Americans buy hondas and toyotas and vws. Ford and GM are laying off workers and going to Washington for handouts and bailouts.

But isn't it telling, that with an entire year to install already existing technology, technology that would actually make their products safer, the American car industry could not CHANGE ONE SINGLE assembly line to insure that one of their makes of cars were on that safety list.

Shouldn't these corporations stop paying their execs huge salaries and start actually firing the CEOs and not the workers?

National Gluttony Day

So the beloved C and I were going to have people (actual family) over for national gluttony day. Because I'm just having issues or I'm contrary, I decided that we would not have a "groaning board" for the holidays, that we would have a reasonable feast. That I would not make gazillions of dishes. That I would be freed from the tyranny of hor d'ouevre. Just say no to excess, to greed, to gluttony, to Americans using all of the resources!

So we decided to have a first course of butternut squash soup, a turkey breast, cornbread dressing, green beans. A friend who grows her veggies was bringing the salad. Desert a little apple pie. A lot of food, actually, but missing a few dishes from the traditional thanksgiving holiday overload. No biscuits, no potatoes, no mashed veggies.

Of course, we didn't have enough soup bowls for eight, so we bought little 1 cup bowls for the soup - actual chinese rice bowls. Little. But that was okay, since you just needed a little bit of soup, there was more food coming. It would just be a little taste. And so that weekend I made butternut squash soup and while I doubled the recipe, we ate it that Sunday for dinner and saved the rest. C spent the Sunday sorting through linens and ironing them, just like women were doing all over the nation. A little pre-cooking, a little ironing before the festivities.

I had been intending to make a free-form apple pie with puff pastry, and to use the left over pastry to make little cheese sticks. An hor d'ouevre! But don't tell anyone. Of course I couldn't find any puff pastry. Well I could find stuff masquerading as puff pastry. But, having made puff pastry, I know that puff pastry is made of flour and butter. Not transfat loaded salt flour with ingredients that no one can pronounce. So a little change in plan, I made pie dough pastry, and gave up the idea of little cheese sticks.

I had gone to Whole Paycheck and ordered a free range organic turkey breast, on bone, 8 to 10 pounds. I was scheduled to pick it up between 9:00 and 9:30 on Wed. Notice that if there was a problem I wasn't going to be giving myself a whole lot of time to fix the problem. To salt or brine a turkey I needed a couple days lead time. Obviously I didn't have time to defrost anything by then either. C came back and said, turkey breasts don't come in 8 to 10 pound increments, 6 pounds is the biggest that they come. So now I have a turkey that is less than one pound per person before cooking, when it shrinks. But that's okay, because there was going to be enough food. And people could fill up on dressing.

C asked how much ice cream I had bought for the ala mode aspect of the pie. 2 pints I said. I don't think that's enough she said as we were blocks from Whole Paycheck on Wed. But we didn't want to go back. Just a little drop of ice cream on the pie, we don't want to over do it.

So on Thursday I start making the dinner. I roll out the pastry dough into a tart pan and pour in the caramelized apples and realize that the apples don't fill the tart shell as abundantly as I had imagined. There are bare patches. A pie with negative space.

I start to make the dressing. I had made a loaf of cornbread on Sunday and another one on Tuesday. One of the loaves had mold on it. So I had half the amount of stuffing that I had planned.

And teeny, tiny soup bowls.

And a negative space pie.

And two to four pounds less turkey than planned.

And no hor d'ouevre.

We're the only people who spent hundreds of dollars on a Thanksgiving meal with not enough food.

Signs: Universal Pictures

I have added a link to my old friend and professor's site, sharongoldart. I have also deleted the link to the old face city. Things there went sour, one partner executed a senseless coup and in general behaved like a Karl Rove, baseless lies, rumours and innuendo. So I can no longer recommend the site. Which is too bad. But I can recommend that you get a facial from the fabulous Robin, who works at Ole Hendricksen's spa and who was ousted from old face city by an evil partner. (310) 854-7700 is the phone number if you want a fab facial.

Reviews: Wolfgang Tillmans

We went to the Hammer Museum to see the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibit. The photographs are curiously closed down and matter of fact. Like they're pretending to be neutral and devoid of content. But they are queer, odd and emotionally resonant at the same time, they're tilted. One of a man and a deer on a beach, you can't quite reconcile beach, man, deer. Why is the deer that size, who has ever heard of a deer on a beach, why is the man near the deer? It's all very odd.

We saw it a while ago and I haven't mentioned it in my political catatonia and switching jobs and all. But I recommend seeing the exhibit. Go to Westwood and park in the building, they'll validate!

Talking Turkey

This morning, as I made myself bacon and eggs for breakfast, I thought "What did I do in my life before I discovered turkey bacon??????????"

Turkey bacon, good turkey bacon, it's only s few calories per stick, it has a nice salty & smokey flavor, it's great on Turkey Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwiches. BLTs didn't exist in my life prior to turkey bacon. Oh yeah, and eating any form of meat. BLTs wouldn't have been part of my life prior to starting to eat poultry and fish.

I love turkey bacon, and life is just great now that I have discovered turkey bacon. Some turkey bacon is pretty much like cardboard and I don't like that turkey bacon, but Wellshire Farms turkey bacon (I'll give them a plug) is pretty damn good.

You might be thinking, wow, turkey bacon. Or you might be thinking, what the fuck is up with Scott? She's usually a tad more pithy and angry than this. I don't stumble onto her blog to read about turkey friggin' bacon.

And you're right. There's an election coming up, over 100 soldiers have died in Iraq this month, 43 people exploded in a car bomb in Baghdad today, global warming is happening and I don't have air conditioning in my apartment. There's a lot going on. But I can't get into it. I'm happy to just walk my dogs, go to work, eat turkey bacon and shop. I could be doing something other than that. But it's just so hard to get up every morning and be angry. It's so hard to think globally and act locally. It's so hard to read the fucking new york times and Frank Rich's articles which totally rocked this week and have a take away. What's my take away? That the U.S. is being run by a ruthless bunch of motherfuckers who don't know what they're doing and who are too arrogant to take the advice of experts. Give me my bacon, man. I can't think about that. It's easier to think about turkey bacon.

Because how do you ask the last man to die in a war that was a stupid idea to begin with?

And our government has asked that question a hundred times this month.

And Halliburton has posted record second quarter profits this month.

Give .... ME ...... TURKEY ...... BACON

Axis of Stupidity

Does anyone remember that axis of evil speech?

The duly unelected George Jr. gave it. In talking about Iraq, Iran & North Korea he said; "States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. I will not wait on events while dangers (sic) gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer. The U.S.of A. will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

And then he invaded Iraq. A country that was run by a bathist, i.e. pan arab nationalist dictator who didn't like islamist fundamentalists and who didn't train or harbor Queda operatives and who didn't have weapons of mass destruction.

And in invading Iraq he put fear in Iran and North Korea who now have nuclear weapons while U.S. forces are stuck in a no-win quagmire in Iraq - a country that didn't have terrorists or weapons of mass destruction.

Good going George!

And while I'm on the subject of stupidity, the Republican hysteria on homosexuality continues to fuck them over. Yes, Dennis Hastert should resign, he protected an idiot for political purposes. But it ain't homosexuals who are ruining our country. If you're worried about children, then you should be locking up men. After all 95% of pedophiles are strait men.

Reviews: What to Wear

So we went to see "What to Wear" an opera with music by Michael Gordon and libretto by Richard Foreman.

It was a totally amusing event, with fantastic music and a truly Dadaist sensibility. The costumes and props, of which there were many, were charmingly home made, like the original Dada costumes by Hugo Ball.

The opera concerned the concerns of Madeline X, who is beautiful. Madeline X was represented or discussed by a quartet of singers, dressed up like four psycho Andrews Sisters. Madeline has a brain inside her brain that is a box that either is or is not open. Madeline likes or doesn't like to play golf with or with out ducks. There are big ducks and BAD DUCKS in the opera. Ducks who go into restaurants beautifully dressed are eaten. There was a gaggle of "movement ensemble" performers and a rather large chorus who also moved. The performers who were not Madeline were dressed in black suits, with short trousers (the golf thing) and large kilted barrels wrapped around them. They wore striped glasses and a daub of paint on their chins to represent goatees. One of the chorines was an adorable young thing who was having a great time, she couldn't stop smiling. Though when you have a striped golf club as a prop you probably shouldn't be smiling. The set was a charming homemade mish mosh, with a card and mirror motif reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. Indeed the movement ensemble and chorus looked rather like pawns. Occasionally the movement ensemble would push in a large duck tank. I really enjoyed myself and would certainly buy the album - the music was absolutely wonderful. And I would recommend the opera to anyone who doesn't mind not knowing what's going on. If you have to know what's going on, then don't go.

This picture is of Leche with the "PRE" version of the french market bag. I knitted and knitted and got this huge bag, all floppy. This was my first knitting project that did not involve a rectangle or square. It was also my first felting project. I knit the thing in the round and it was large and floppy. Then I popped it into the washing machine in hot water. And it came out like below. I followed the recipe (I guess they call it a pattern) which I would never actually do if it was a recipe, and the things I wanted to change I should have changed. Proving that knitting isn't really that complicated. Here's a picture of the POST felted bag.