Writer’s blocks

Writing a novel, I said once, is like trying to make the Mountains of Edom out of Lego blocks. Or to build the whole of Paris, buildings, squares, and boulevards, down to the last street bench, out of matchsticks.

– Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness

I have set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between Me and the earth

Alabama State Senator Hank Erwin gives his theory on why Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.

New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness. It is the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of God. [...] [T]he signature of New Orleans is the French Quarter, Bourbon Street. It is known for sin. And you have a Bible that says God will judge sin, you can put two and two together and say, it may not be the judgment of God, but it sure looks like the footprint.

But what of the fact that the evil, sinful, anti-christful French Quarter was left largely unscathed by God’s wrath?

Well, I understand that, and I think the lord sent them a message that we need to turn around or we may have another hurricane come.

Watch the interview here

If I understand correctly and then extrapolate, a theory that states that noxious man-made emissions pollute the atmosphere and lead to global warming, one of the consequences of which is a higher frequency of category 4 and 5 storms in the Gulf of Mexico is far-fetched. A convoluted plot by a smiting, faceless almighty in which tens of thousands of innocents suffer to demonstrate a point to a few middle-aged gamblers from Iowa and some university-aged Mardi Gras revellers, however, is a perfectly sound theory. One of the great things about God is that you can make him say what you want him to say. The proof?

The New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary was flooded by Katrina. But Erwin said the Baptists knew they were ministering in a sinful place that could be targeted.

- links via Crooks and Liars

For an even better take on Katrina and the Almighty, go here and click on the picture.

– via -=JeW*SCHooL=-

Mysterious and secretive

Someboday in Toronto is very strange. A quick check of my stats showed that a Torontonian came to this site with the search, “Who is Bonhomme? What kind of creature is he?” Assuming I’m the Bonhomme in question, I’m not sure how to answer. I’ve never been very good with open-ended questions. You tell me what kind of creature I am.

Scary numbers

President Bush is being briefed by Rumsfeld who tells him 3 Brazilian soldiers have been killed. Bush pauses for a minute and asks nervously:

“How many is a brazillion?”

– via Mr V

And Martha just points and laughs

Our hearts were in the right place but our culinary abilities were, as far as I could tell, down the street in the pub. Yesterday my good friend Sexy Realtor and I decided to make jerk chicken tacos. Our success was limited, and our tummies left half empty.

It started off quite easily. The chicken jerked perfectly and the wine – guava juice for me – flowed swiftly. Our supper’s fate began to make its ominous presence known when, due to a complete lack of foresight, we jerked the chicken with the bones still in it. This is was silly because one sign of a successful taco is when you don’t have to pick bones out of your teeth when you eat. Another is when you do not experience internal bleeding and intestinal infection due to chicken bone splinters lodges in your digestive tract. No Martha Stewart I, but I do know how to make a taco. And so we set to work deboning the jerk.

Sexy Realtor used a knife. I know myself much too well to entrust myself with a sharp, pointy object. I reasoned that whatever damage I could inflict would be much lessened if I used my fingers. Good thing.

When one is deboning chicken one must dive right in with abandon. I am a highly-strung and excitable individual who bottles up much of my frustration with the incredibly inane people with whom I come into contact daily, and so I relished the opportunity to rip flesh from bone, even if it was just a jerked chicken.

When one is using one’s fingers with food covered in sauce, one must be careful not to get the sauce anywhere but on the food. This would be true of any sauce, but particular attention should be paid to sauces that stain and hot, spicy, sauces, such as jerk sauce, for example. One should never, say, laugh uproariously at something hilarious one’s co-chef has said, and reach up to wipe away a little laugh tear from one’s face without first rinsing the caustic solution from one’s fingers. The consequences could be dire.

The pain in my right eyeball was instantaneous. It felt is if it were self-combusting while boring its way back into my brain at the same time. I hadn’t known such agony since I sat all the way through “Alexander” because the extremely sexually attractive man I was dating at the time insisted on seeing it. My brain emptied itself of all thoughts save survival.

I ran blindly in circles around Sexy Realtor’s kitchen. His five thousand pound chocolate lab with halitosis thought I was playing an amusing game and yipped and jumped half a pace behind me, tugging at my shirt with his fangs. My friend managed to fend off my flailing arms and lead me to the sink, but I tripped on squirming the dog and hit my head on the corner of the counter. I decided to wait for death, shivering in a heap on the kitchen floor while the dog covered my face with sloppy, malodorous affection.

Due to the excitement, we forgot to finish deboning the chicken. What’s more, we forgot about the taco shells warming in the oven until several of them caught fire and the smoke detector went off, which sent the dog off into a frenzy of howls. Perhaps he thought if he howled loud enough we wouldn’t notice he’d stolen the cheese of the counter, eaten half and pulverised the other half. The only cheese left in the apartment was romano. Also, the sour cream was off, the lettuce wilted, and the tomatoes squooshy.

And so once the smoke had cleared and my eyeball had oozed itself back into its socket, we were left with splitnery, blackened, tomato-sogged tacos that left us gasping for air due the hot jerk chicken and begging for water due to the tangy romano cheese. One more brilliant idea foiled by the indignity of reality. Martha would have just laughed and talked about, while still in prison, all the delicious and attractive nibbles she had made with just flour, water, prison rations and a little bit the creative spirit.

Orcs Kill Monopoly Pieces: Little Dog First to Go

I am old enough for technology to pass me by. I laughed at my parents as they struggled with DVDs, cell phones, and Windows, but now I am old enough to feel left out by the march of innovation.

I first noticed this morning as I was reading an article on the BBC site that made absolutely no sense to me. It talked of a deadly plague that was killing not people, but game characters all over the world. Passed on by virtual evil mutant blood, as I understand it, the virtual disease became a virtual epidemic once it had entered “the orc capital city of Ogrimmar”. Maybe that”s where all my missing sock twins have got to as well.

Now, people with spotty faces and no dates all over the world are in a tizzy over their game characters swooning and languishing on their virtual divans, but as near as I can tell, some virtual monopoly pieces have broken and need to be replaced. But I admit that I am mostly befuddled by this controversy. All I know is: never let orcs near your Monopoly. They don’t play well with others.

I hate blogs that post pictures of dogs, cats, and kids

… but my cat is the most elegantly gorgeous cat that has ever existed.

His name is נודניק (pronounced “nude Nick”), which means “pain in the butt”, more or less, in Hebrew.

Don’t read on an empty stomach

New Yorkers always think they know the real thing when it comes to Chinese food. Forty years ago it was egg rolls, chop suey and drinks with paper umbrellas. Then it was General Tso’s chicken and sesame noodles.

But over the past decade, as large communities of people from India, Peru, Korea, Trinidad and Guyana have formed here, New York has had to expand its ideas about what Chinese food can be.

Dishes like chili-spiked, deep-fried chicken lollipops [(recipe)], which are a Chinese-Indian specialty, and lo mein topped with chunks of peppery jerk chicken, served at De Bamboo Express, a Chinese-West Indian restaurant in Brooklyn, are what Chinese food is now to thousands of New Yorkers.

Although we are lowly Torontonians and not classy New Yorkers, a friend and I have been inspired by the article: tomorrow we fuse Jamaica to Mexico (well, Texas really) and will be making jerk chicken tacos.

I want to fly this bird

Despite cancellations from Air Canada, due to union woes, and Northwest and Delta, due to bankruptcy, Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner has already notched up an impressive 200 orders in one year. It boasts all sorts of technological features I don’t pretend to understand (lightweight poly-something), but my homosexuality is all a-twitter over its radical new approach to interior design.

I prefer it over Airbus’ ostentatious double-decker 380 that will feature lounges, gyms, boutiques, and restaurants that remind me a little of the Love Boat and that the likes of me will never be allowed to see. Check out the swooping arches, enormous windows, and calm nightlighting on the 787.

The 787 Dreamliner enters service in 2008.

So fine me, then

By raising the fines that would be levied against offending broadcasters some fifteenfold, to a fee of about $500,000 per crudity broadcast, and by threatening to revoke the licenses of repeat polluters, the Senate seeks to return to the public square the gentler tenor of yesteryear, when seldom were heard any scurrilous words, and famous guys were not foul mouthed all day.

Yet researchers who study the evolution of language and the psychology of swearing say that they have no idea what mystic model of linguistic gentility the critics might have in mind. Cursing, they say, is a human universal. Every language, dialect or patois ever studied, living or dead, spoken by millions or by a small tribe, turns out to have its share of forbidden speech, some variant on comedian George Carlin’s famous list of the seven dirty words that are not supposed to be uttered on radio or television.

I completely agree that regulating speech in any venue is ridiculous and contrary to human nature, but sometimes I wish that some of us could use a little more imagination than fucking throwing in the fucking swear every 2 or 3 fucking words when they talk, fuck! I must be aging quite rapidly.