Monday stuff

What did I do after work today? I went to the local thrift store and the library downtown. The library downtown has older books I like to cannibalize for postcards. For five bucks and some change I bought:

1. White jeans with a hella long inseam
Mmmm, so eighties. Sometimes I have an insatiable desire for unflattering clothing.

2. Beginner's Russian by Jack A. Posin, 1964.
They certainly jump right into the Cyrillic alphabet; if you haven't gotten it by page eight feel free to give up and return to watching the paint peel. The introduction to the line drawings - no photos - is also funny: "[they] are, for the most part, stylised representations of the idea of certain things...some of these ideas deal with the pre-revolutionary Russian life, others - with the post-revolutionary."

3. 1969 Chilton's Repair & Tune-up Guide for Jaguar Models 340, 420, 420G, XKE
Plus 7-Color Peel-Away Inserts! Missing four of seven, though. Has a lovely old book smell and interesting line drawings of various car parts. Postcard material!

4. A History of the German Language by John T Waterman, 1966
Lately I've been doing a lot of reading on the history of languages. Unfortunately, most of the linguistic books at my library are written by rabid social conservative John McWhorter which in turn gives me a headache when I read them. Plus it's all on Western languages. BOO. Are there any good texts on Asian languages? Anyway, this book has a nice long ramble about Indo-European languages.
German is an interesting language with all its combination words. Is there a better term for this? Compound words? Kennings? This looks like a very comprehensive etymology.

5. Grolier's Book of Knowledge, 1966 ed.
It has space as a prominent theme. Also notable: Vietnam, hot futures in being a Librarian, and children's dolls. Namely, one caption in particular: "American Negro doll called Ginny." WHAT?! This is a birthday gift for G.

Homemade Lara Bar recipe

My flight from New York to Chicago was so effing delayed - 4 HOURS, people - and I did not want to buy anything from the overpriced stalls in the airport, even though I was hungry. I did end up buying a Lara bar though, and it was pretty good. It advertises itself as a raw food/vegan/kosher energy bar. Whatever. Mainly dates and nuts - a mini-meal or big snack at a whopping 220 calories - but much better than stale-ass $10 sandwich.

When I was up in Madison, I stopped by Whole Foods and came out with, among other things, another Lara bar. It pretty much saved me during one long gross afternoon in the sun. Too late for lunch, too early for dinner, and unwilling to mingle during the incongruous consumerist event known as Maxwell Street Days.

Found a recipe from Bunnyfoot and was inspired to make my own in ginger since I liked the Lara Bar Ginger Snap so much. Thank you!

I even painstakingly calculated all the nutritional info, too. The fat content is sort of high due to all the nuts. But it's "good" fat, I suppose. I don't know, I just wanted to make something.

Lara Bar recipe, Ginger
Ingredients
1/2 cup dried dates, chopped coarsely
1/4 cup almonds, crushed coarsely
2 TB oatmeal (the non-instant kind)
1 tsp ginger juice
1 tsp ground ginger
generous pinches of: ground clove and ground cinnamon

Utensils:
Food processor
Knife
Plastic wrap
Spatula

1. Pour chopped dates into a food processor and chop them up even more. You need to chop them beforehand, otherwise in whole form, they would have stuck to the blade and gone for a fun ride instead of being pureed. It should look like a giant brown ball or pulverized.

2. Add all the other ingredients into the food processor and chop chop chop until every thing looks like it won't choke you when you eat it.

3. Use the spatula to scrape the mixture onto a sheet of cling wrap. Seal it up and roll it into a log. I hate getting my hands dirty and sticky, hence the cling wrap and spatula. It'll look like poo, but it'll be delicious. Put it in the fridge for twenty minutes to set.

4. Take it out and try to shape it into a long rectangular shape. Or not. I just didn't want mine to look like poo. Unwrap and cut it in half.

Looks a bit shiny from the cling wrap.

Serves 2, keeps for a week if refrigerated.

I don't know about the ginger content, I probably need more. Will update tomorrow when I have one.

If you hate ginger, Bunnyfoot recommends a bunch of other things too. I happen to like ginger. Plus, it cuts down on the fruity sweetness of the dates.

Nutritional info:
One serving: 2 oz
Calories: 203, Calories from fat: 67
8g fat, 0.5g saturated fat
0mg cholesterol
250mg Potassium
35g Carbohydrates, 5g dietary fiber, 21g sugar
4g protein
0% Vitamin A, 0% Vitamin B, 4% Vitamin C, 4% Calcium of daily requirements

Ear updates: Not clogged, but a low humming can be heard. WTF?

I am NOT an old fart

Went to the library yesterday to pickup a few books, some cool a/c, and some time to work on internet things. Unfortunately, about halfway through my time there, a group of girls barged into the library. Ah, the joys of being located near the high school.

Although they headed into a study room, I could still hear them shrieking and laughing and stomping around and generally pissing me off.

However, what pissed me off even more was the middle-aged asshole who would situate himself in a niche in the wall and proceed to talk shop on his cell. Hello? THERE IS NO CONE OF SILENCE AT THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, YOU STUPID ASS.

He left soon after though. The girls, unfortunately, did not. Forty-five minutes later - where the hell were the fucking librarians? - I finally got up and knocked on their door.

"Hi, I was wondering if you ladies could tone it down a bit," I said.

"Sorry," said one of them.

One girl looked at me and pointed at another, saying,"Nah, it was all her fault!"

"I'm not blaming anyone, but the door isn't soundproof. So please" shut the fuck up "quiet down," I said.

As I turned round, I heard a very deliberate shriek. It was the first girl and she pointed at her friend again. "It's all her fault!"

Fucking kids. Suddenly a guy with some library tags materialized next to me. "I can take care of it," he said. And proceeded to kick them out.

Later he came around to my study carrel. "Sorry about that, ma'am."

"No need to be sorry," I replied.

Ma'am?

I wonder if the library folks finally took action when they saw someone else talking to those girls; I certainly noticed them prowling around their study room several times. This interaction also made me feel very old in that I keep wanting to beat the hell out of those kids with my chair screaming, "You damn kids! Get the fuck out off my lawn!"


Eye keel yuu

The library is a sacred place to me. I still remember going to the library downtown - when it was the only library - and being scared of the librarians because they laid the Smackdown on people who talked too loud. I don't if people have quiet conversations but what the fuck is with treating the library like the park?

Additionally, I hated myself for mulling over whether to ask the girls to shut up or not. Honestly, I was not out for berating or for blood; I wanted to be nice about it. And avoid some sort of "Bus Uncle" confrontation. Unfortunately most people take a request to tone things down as an insult to their character.

It is, in a way. How oblivious and rude can you be not to notice when you're making an ass of yourself?

WE ALL HAVE PRESSURE.

But we don't have to put pressure on ourselves.

Movietime with Dreamworks: a play

Dreamworks producer #1: We really ought to make another CG movie, Pixar's Cars is making soo much money right now!
Dreamworks producer #2: Yeah...Over The Hedge did all right but I think some people are definitely onto our product shilling and flat humor.
DWP #1: Call in the Creative Director!
Creative Director: Someone called?
DWP #2: Um, I didn't even dial your num-
Creative Director: S'ok. I happened to be outside. Eavesdropping. So you need a new movie idea?
DWP #1: Yeah, we need something fun, something exciting, something...exotic.
DWP #2: Are you still mooning over your trip to China last mon-
CC: Hey! How about a movie set in China!?
DWP #1: Yeah, that sounds great!
CC: Let me see, what are the two things that come to mind when I say "China..."
DWP #1: HOOKERS AND GRILLED DOGMEAT!
DWP #2: ...
CC: Hey, an idea is an idea, boss. Keep going, but think of something more family-oriented, all right?
DWP #1: Uh...
DWP #2: How about pandas and kung fu?
CC: Great, great idea!! I can already see it: "Once long ago in Ancient China, there was a panda. A panda that knew kung fu." We can call it Kung Fu Panda.
DWP #1: Brilliant, brilliant! You deserve another raise!
DWP #2: Sounds great, let's get cracking. But all this talk about China is making me hungry for eggrolls.
CC: Yum, I'll join yo-
DWP #1: And I'm hungry for some yellow -----!
DWP #2 and CC: ...

THE END

But not really.

Some animals

The past two weeks have been a little surprising regarding animal sightings. All photos courtesy of flickr.

Sighting #1
Driving to work means passing through the prairie preserve, aka former farm land. You can still see short stretches of trees in straight lines scattered around the preserve. It's what remains of the natural borders farmers planted way back when. A longer stretch of thorny Osage orange trees line the road.

Up ahead, it was a little before nine, I saw a huge mass in the my lane. I slowed down and moved into the right lane. Coming closer I could see it was a young buck lying on its side and still kicking its legs in a futile fashion. I hoped that either animal control or the police would stop by soon. A few months back R was driving back with the rest of the band from Bumfuck, Wisconsin when they hit a buck on the road. It was 3am and they had to wait for another half hour with a writhing deer before a cop finally came by. The deer was still alive so the cop drew his pistol and shot it in the head.

In the right lane, up ahead was a stopped car. I assumed it was the one that hit the buck and switched lanes again. Passing by, I saw that the front left corner was crushed and then chuckled as I noted the familiar hood ornament. Jaguar.

Sighting #2
Went biking with Dad last week. Our destination was the prairie preserve for a short ride, but we had to pass through our old neighborhood to do so. I was ahead on my Specialized Hardrock (circa 1997!) when I saw a pigeon standing in someone's front lawn. At least I thought it was a pigeon, with my crap vision. It was abnormally large though, and when I got closer I noticed it was a raptor of some sort.

I circled back and drew up on the sidewalk to get a closer look. It stood in the grass - which needed a mowing pretty badly - rather stoically. Typically I'll see the local falcon and hawks perched upon powerlines or lightposts, so this was a new sight. It wasn't afraid of me at all so I got bored waiting for it to fly off and went away.

Later I learned through the magic of Google that it was a Cooper's hawk, which have adapted to human invasion and take it upon themselves to thin out all the fat robins and chickadees who have forgotten to be afraid in the middle of the suburbs.

Sighting #3
Was biking in the preserve again the other day. Came across a curve when I noticed an oddity in the middle of the "prairie." I stopped suddenly, which nearly threw me off my bike, and looked down. Here is a riddle:
- "Why did the crayfish cross the gravel path?"
- "WTF, there are crayfish in the prairie???!!!"

Granted, there used to be a stream in the area but the rangers filled that in with boulders. Plus we were aways from the stream. Unless there was some secret stream I couldn't see, I'm assuming that this was either an abandoned pet - a Crustacean Homeward Bound of sorts? - or a dropped dinner. It paused when it encountered my foot and tried to siddle around. Then I tried to pick it up but it wasn't very willing and I wasn't willing to get pinched. Used my glove to scoop it up but it wriggled loose. Finally I gave up and watched it cross the road in a defiant sort of manner.