This is how hedgehogs celebrate the new year: with fermented apple cider.

This could go on for some time, in case you wondered.

Appropriate Use of Bacon

In Which Simon Fails to be Disgusted

My intention yesterday was to use one of the two jars of curry sauce that I have for some reason, but I forgot that I did not have any vegetables. I went to the store a few days ago but they had no cauliflower and I really wanted cauliflower so I decided I would eat something else and then go back. So I did. And then I forgot to go back on the appointed day of curry-eating. And then it was 6 p.m. and I was too hungry to go to the store, so I scrounged around and found those horrifying Quorn Fungus Nuggets (go here for previous post) in my freezer. And I guess I was in an experimental mood because I decided to have some.

I'm sorry to say my reaction was not very interesting. They taste as much like chicken as chicken does these days, which is to say, not much. The inside bears a strong visual resemblance to whatever is in a chicken nugget (presumably chicken, but I wouldn't bet my life on it) but is slightly more rubbery. They are not horrible. They are not delicious. They are a bit dry. They don't taste like mushrooms, but they don't taste like much else, either. If they had not had a coating of bread crumbs and fat, I would not have finished them out of sheer boredom. I still think mycoprotein is a revolting idea, but if there were nothing else left to eat in the world, I could live with it.

Spike Your Juice: Before

Ivan and I started a Spike Your Juice ("A European Favorite!") kit yesterday. We are allowed to taste it tomorrow at noon. This is how it looked yesterday:

According to Ivan, Events Have Developed:

our juice is frothing
father seemed to think it is fine
mother wants to cover it with a bag
father says experiments that explode on the walls make the best stories

Then she said this:

i just like that it says "contains 100% juice" on the back
and then i look at it
and i think to myself
"not anymore!"

Part of me thinks the whole family has been sampling it early. You heard that thing about her mom and the eggnog, right? You never know with these people.

Acceptance

For the past few months I have been in the slow process of accepting that I cannot read all the books in the world AND that it is not necessary to read all the books in my immediate vicinity if I do not really feel interested in them even if they are supposed to be good AND that I do not need to keep books that I am quite certain I will never refer to again and/or I didn't like. I am making good progress on things I do like, which means I'm having to shelve more stuff, which means I need more space, so everything I do not anticipate ever needing to reference must go.

The most shocking thing that I intend to get rid of is Margaret Atwood's Wilderness Tips. A secret that I mostly try to keep is that I am not really interested in Margaret Atwood's world view. The Handmaid's Tale was good, though deeply depressing. Her other writing leaves me cold and unmoved, and one short story, "Hairball," very nearly made me puke. Sheer grossness and also incredibly malicious and not at all funny. The sort of feminism that she likes strikes me as kind of warped and curiously dated. The only thing I have really liked is "Death by Landscape," which is fantastic and creepy and perfect. I don't know why I'm going into this. I think I feel guilty getting rid of Margaret Atwood because there's nothing wrong with her writing. She just isn't for me. I am also not totally wild for Alice Munro. Dear Canadian writers born in the thirties: I'm sorry. Apparently I just don't get you. No hard feelings, okay? Maybe I'll understand when I'm seventy.

I'm also returning to Ivan, while she's home, the untouched and dusty copy of Sophie's World that she lent me something like ten years ago. It's very long and it's about philosophy and something else I've come to accept is that my interest in philosophy is rather narrow. It will not last five HUNDRED pages. I think that Modern Philosophy class I took my first semester in college was a mistake. What I really wanted to take was non-modern philosophy, but instead I ended up reading a book called Mortal Questions, which I think we can all agree is a fairly pretentious title for something not written by Plato.

However, I am keeping Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges, even though it is 25% boring and is therefore 25% unread. Formerly this would have been unacceptable to me but I decided to accept it because I wanted to get to John Cheever. Anyway, when I like Borges's stories, I like them a lot and find them mesmerizing. The rest of the time, I have a hard time staying awake. Borges seems to have been more interested in ideas than people, and the humans in his stories tend to be ciphers in the enactment of an idea. This makes his writing very beautiful and unsettling, and gives you the feeling that the world is much more mysterious than you had previously believed, but at the same time it's difficult to be emotionally engaged in any given story. He is compared often to Edgar Allen Poe, but I find myself on the edge of my seat with Poe, and with Borges I am usually sort of flummoxed until the end, at which point I say, "Oh," and turn to the next story. I would also like to complain that he uses too many proper nouns. This probably seems overly picky, but if you start your story with a really long sentence involving fifteen clauses, and it's full of names and places in languages your eyes are not accustomed to, and includes several faux-academic references that require a great deal of messy punctuation, and you don't get to the main verb until you're three words from the end, it is not MY fault if I go into the second sentence not knowing what the hell you are trying to get at. . . . Nevertheless, if you feel like reading some Borges, I particularly like "The Garden of Forking Paths" and "The Zahir." One thing about him is that his stories are very short.

I am now reading a huge collection of short stories by John Cheever. The upper-middle-class ennui is absolutely smothering. His problems were so preventable. Sometimes you just want to shout STOP DRINKING, JOHN CHEEVER! THE WORLD WILL LOOK BETTER! ALSO, FYI,  IT IS OKAY TO BE GAY. But does he listen? No. He died twenty-eight years ago. If he were born today he would be an entirely different and likely much happier person. I find that very sad. But his writing is still good. So there's that. This post is about acceptance, after all.

Home

Conversations with my mother:

I: Is this cider good?
M: I don't know, drink it?
I: I think it's good...
M: Well, pour some in a glass.
I: It's not chunky?
M: That's good. The pre-spiked eggnog I got was a little chunky.
I: Did you take it back?
M: Well, after the second glass it didn't seem like much of a problem...

I: My neck really hurts...
M: Well, what pillows did you sleep on?
I: The ones on the bed?
M: Oh, those are DECORATIVE pillows. I keep the real ones in the guest room. I'll let you have one tonight.
I: Thanks?

M: Did you eat one of those apples from the fridge?
I: Yes?
M: And it was ok?
I: Yes?
M: I think I bought those in October...
I: Really?
M: Yeah, it's probably safe to say "nothing in the fridge right now is edible".
I: I really wish you had told me that before you went to bed.

Since a hyper awareness of sell by dates is now necessary for my survival, I went to Wegmans with my mother. They had a mechanical fisherman selling oysters. He pivots and raises an arm. They had Baci. They had endives. They had a Christmas cookie decorating station with an actual full-time employee in charge of frosting. What an amazing experience! It's good to be home.

I wanted a box.

What I got was a puzzle.

Yours

I: I'm hungry
C: You could eat the eggplant.
I: I think I'm going to throw out the eggplant.
C: Oh.
I: Why?
C: Well I thought of a good post I could do with the eggplant, but I would have to pretend it was mine...
I: ...
I: you have my blessing. The eggplant is yours.

And now we can all wait with baited breath. carolynclark.tumblr.com tune in to see the exciting adventures of an adopted eggplant.

I've become a kleptomaniac.

I do not want to become one of those blogs that just reblogs random stuff from other people's blogs or YouTube videos, BUT I'm making an exception because this made me laugh so much. I stole it from David Malki ! who writes a comic called Wondermark that is consistently hilarious. To sum up, this is a slide from some talk he gave on "True Stuff from Old Books." The slides were all really weird, but this one I just could not make sense of:

PARDON? WHY IS ISABELLA LIKELY TO DIE OF CEREBROSPINAL MENINGITIS? WHAT HAS THAT DO TO WITH PERUSING VOLUMES? WHAT KIND OF CONTEXT COULD POSSIBLY RENDER THIS SENSIBLE?

Unfortunately the slides from the talk don't come with the talk itself, so I cannot answer these questions. Please leave any guesses in the comments. I promise to consider them carefully.

I stole this from someone else's blog.

I have recently started subscribing to this blog called Scribal Terror, which is written by a smart lady who posts random and interesting things. Yesterday she posted a bit of a speech that Cromwell gave Parliament, that could serve as well today:

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.

In the name of God, go!

Intolerably odious indeed. This is exactly how I feel right now.

Squid Ink Pasta

 

One of several items in that lovely package that Ivan sent for my birthday was this. Squid ink pasta. Because she knows what an adventurous eater I am. I figure I'll have it with the fungus-nuggets and make a night of it! I will report back on the experience if I survive it. Honestly, though, it's packaged so beautifully it makes me hungry when I look at it. Probably helps that it's in Italian and it does not say SQUIDS WERE INVOLVED IN THIS on the front.

Things I've Been Wanting to Share With You All

So I spent some time in a foreign country working on a documentary for a MAD MAN. And I've been wanting to write about it, but I didn't want to get dooced. And then I realized that I WANTED to be dooced, so I figured I'd save everyone a lot of googling, and I quit and moved back to America... and now I can share with you "The Story of My Insane Former Boss and a Bridge in Italy". This is told through an email I sent to Simon with the subject line "forgot"

"forgot to tell you about yesterday when Brando was like "EYE VAN, you have time to walk to the car? I will tell you about the polar bear project." And I said sure and started to follow him out and he was like "wait, get a pencil", and handed me a script that I assumed I was going to write on. So I left my notebook and pen on the desk, found a pencil and went outside where he was like "wait, do you have money and a coat?". ummmm, to walk to the car? sure. So I go upstairs and grab my change purse which has like six Euro in it, and my umbrella. Now, mind you it's POURING outside and thundering and lightning and it's rush hour. So Brando has me get in the car and we start driving... and I realized he has a flight that he's late for-- so now I'm starting to panic that he's going to drag me out to Fumincino and leave me there with six euro, an umbrella and a pencil. And we're driving and he's telling me what to write for the script and he's not watching the road, he's watching what I'm writing, giving me notes like "lots of drama! brava!" and then looking at my paper-- my paper which is NOT the script he had me bring, but a random sticky note pad he found the the car, because he didn't want me to mess up the script with pencil marks. Why did I need the pencil? No one will ever know. But he's looking at my paper and going "write it-- write the word drama! ok, good, glad you write it". yes, I now have one full sticky note dedicated to the work "Drama!"

and you know how well I ride and read in the car. So i'm feeling like I'm going to puke, Brando is bombing through the streets of Trastevere, I have NO IDEA where I am-- I have no phone, no computer, no map, not enough money to get back from FCO if we end up there, and the rain is coming down in buckets. Finally we get to the end of the script, Brando pulls over at a bridge, says we're in Trastevere, tells me not to get the script wet and "Ciao, darling!". And there I am-- three miles from the office, no idea what sort of public transportation is around, thunder and lightning, with nothing but six euro, a pencil and what is essentially a lightning rod. And from there I walked back to the office.

and that was my day.

today he called and yelled at me when I didn't know what A4 paper was.

aren't you glad you're self employed?"

And that, my friends, was the tip of the insanity iceberg.

In Which: Melted Chocolate Proves Hard to Control

A while ago -- it feels like years, but it might only have been one -- my mother gave me this recipe for edible dreidels. I finally got around to making them this year, and in doing so I discovered that a career as a chocolatier is probably not in my future. Melted chocolate is globby! And there is a fine line between melting it and burning it, which I managed only by dumb luck to stay on the correct side of. But, although my dreidels do not look quite as delicate and, uh, dreidel-like, as the ones in the picture I was aiming for, they are still pretty sweet. Literally. Hahaha.

Also, because I had some extra ingredients, I made some chocolate-covered pretzels, pictured here coming out of some kind of space vortex:

I did not manage to use the two ounces of white chocolate, so I left it out just for fun. And it was fun:

Yes, I am the biggest ever dork for taking an actual video. But come on. That is kind of awesome.

Oops

I keep forgetting to post. I do not have much to talk about. I've been in a limbo of letter-writing and novel-reading. And watching Dead Like Me. I think Callum Blue and David Tennant might be the same person. Why has there not been an inquiry in this? It's very suspicious. Also, it snowed, so I investigated that, and found out that I need boots. Also, I have been keeping an eye out for Matilda, but so far she has proven either much dumber than George (does not know a nice peanut butter-and-oatmeal concoction when she smells it) or much smarter (knows a trap when she sees it). This remains puzzling. Also, my last incandescent bulb blew, so I replaced it, and it's so much bigger that it sticks out of the lamp and blinds me, so I had to turn the shade around so it's pointing upwards, and now it's unavoidably clear that I need to dust in the corner by my desk. Also, do you know what's great? Fruit punch. Also, I ripped the nosepad on my glasses. No idea how. Thought about superglue, decided there was too much danger of gluing my glasses to my face permanently. Similar things have happened. To me. Also, did you know Eastman Kodak was where the adhesive in superglue was invented? Also, I have been spelling superglue wrong on purpose as a way of sticking it to the man, which I think is a small price for the man to pay for coming up with a great name for something and cornering the market. Folks, we here in Simon's brain have truly and sincerely run out of things to say. Thank you for stopping in. Good night.

Book Review

I had a problem in Italy where the Poste Italiane just refused to deliver packages. I don't know if they arrived and no one was home and in spirit of Italian efficiency they just sent them back, or if there was a customs problem, or what. Either way, I've returned to the United States and people are all "Welcome back! We have a care package for you in the garage!". It's like early Christmas out here!

I spent my Thanksgiving with my Aunt's family and they dug out a semi-mangled box of birthday presents for me. It was an amazing package full of food and wonders-- and my favorite part: Aunt Sara's Book Review. Aunt Sara is incredibly smart and well read and she LOVES to buy books-- so every time I'm at her house it's like going to the library except they actually HAVE all the books that are new and awesome. So usually I browse the shelves at Sara's house and then ask how the book was before I steal it away-- but for the sake of the garage package, because it was supposed to find me in Italy, she kindly included a post-it note review on every cover:
Travel to Venice! Sound advice for a world traveler.
"Entertaining but a little depressing" (thanks for the head's up)."Think you might have this already" (I don't).

And my personal favorite:
Think I liked it, don't remember.

It's really good to be home.

Staple-Free Stapler

My sister gave me this stapler last Christmas, or the Christmas before, meaning I have been intending to post about it for a year or maybe two. It doesn't make much difference because either way I'm really behind. Anyway, isn't it beautiful? Taking this picture felt like doing a glamor shot of a Ferrari.

Here is how it staples. Front view:

Back view:

It's really quite ingenious, and holds the papers together quite well unless you're really violent with them, which I rarely am. An added benefit is that it's very light, so if you feel you cannot travel without a stapler, you could take it with you everywhere and not know you were carrying it. The only disadvantage is that it definitely does not double as a blunt instrument, so if you are being burgled, your best bet is a regular stapler, hole-punch, or paperweight. If you are not at your desk, I don't know what you'll do. I suppose most lamp bases would probably work. If you are in the kitchen your options should be obvious. But for desk-related defense, be advised this is not the tool for you. Other than that, thumbs up.

By the way

Remember when this happened? In case you're too lazy to click on that link (I know I am), I am referring to the time that somebody drove into the Masonic Temple with his car and broke one of the columns. WELL, after six months of a very ugly temporary structure holding up the sagging roof, there is finally a new column. I didn't take a picture because it looks just like the old column. Except that the cement base is just a block, and not as fancy as the other bases. Maybe they're working on that. Probably not, though. This town is run by people who think fake brick is an acceptable replacement for real brick. Philistines. Anyway. Just thought you all would like to know how relieved I am that I no longer have to look at orange construction fencing out half of my windows now.

Sometimes, on rare occasions, I get absolutely sick to death of words.

Don't tell anyone.

James Thurber

So, Keith Olbermann has been reading James Thurber aloud on the Friday episodes of Countdown. I had mixed feelings about him before he started doing this. Now I have an enormous soft spot for him. He does voices! I repeat, KEITH OLBERMANN DOES VOICES WHILE READING SHORT STORIES BY THURBER ON CABLE TELEVISION. Nothing beats that for weird, and nothing beats it for wonderful.

It was solely because of Keith Olbermann that I picked up The Thurber Carnival at a book sale a couple of months ago. I'd read "The Catbird Seat" in high school, but on account of my inability to understand why the catbird seat was a good place to be, what catbirds had to do with anything, what a catbird was anyway, I was not bowled over by my first introduction to Thurber. But, put Keith Olbermann in an overstuffed red leather chair doing voices, and I'll give anything a second chance. Which is why I've just finished The Thurber Carnival.

Here are some things I like about Thurber:

1. He is preoccupied with Robert Browning and Ambrose Bierce. This is nice because it is human to be preoccupied with things, and I like my writers to be human. I am myself am currently preoccupied with cannibalism, colonial America, and baking bread. If I were writing anything at the moment, you bet I would find a way to work these in.

2. He neither likes nor understands automobiles. I sympathize.

3. He makes me laugh out loud. So few authors can accomplish this. Before Thurber I read American's Hidden History: no laughs. Among the Cannibals: no laughs. The Year of the Flood: no laughs. A Children's Book: no laughs. This is unrealistic. Life is simply not that serious. For Pete's sake, Thurber's brother shot out his eye with an arrow when he was seven (they were playing William Tell, a poor idea) and he still turned out hilarious. No one else has any excuses.

The stories I enjoyed the most were the autobiographical ones about Thurber's family, from My Life and Hard Times. They are full of things like this brief history of his great-uncle Zenas: "A sensitive, rather poetical boy of twenty-one when the Civil War broke out, Zenas had gone to South America -- "Just," as he wrote back, "until it blows over." Returning after the war had blown over, he caught the same disease that was killing off the chestnut trees in those years, and passed away. It was the only case in history where a tree doctor had to be called to spray a person, and our family had felt it very keenly; nobody else in the United States caught the blight. Some of us looked upon Zenas' fate as a kind of poetic justice."

It was the only case in history where a tree doctor had to be called to spray a person.

SNORT.

He also wrote something called The Pet Department, which appears to be some kind of advice column in which those asking advice send sketches to illustrate their questions. It goes like this:

Q: We have a fish with ears and wonder if it is valuable.

A: I find no trace in the standard fish books of any fish with ears. Very likely the ears do not belong to the fish, but to some mammal. They look to me like a mammal's ears. It would be pretty hard to say what species of mammal, and almost impossible to determine what particular member of that species. They may merely be hysterical ears, in which case they will go away if you can get the fish's mind on something else.

Standard fish books. Hysterical ears.

SNORT.

Anyway, if you are interested, you can go here to see Keith Olbermann read "The Night the Bed Fell." It's about eight minutes long. I recommend his other readings, too, especially these (which I really wish they had simply labeled with the titles of the stories):

• The Night the Ghost Got In, (in two parts, listed under "Reading one of Thurber's classics" and the "Fridays with Thurber continues" that's right above it)
• The Catbird Seat,  (in two parts, listed under "An ordinary man wanting to do the extraordinary" and "Thurber Fridays: The Catbird Seat")
• Exhibit X, (listed under "Thurber's time in the State Department")

And of course I recommend The Thurber Carnival and everything else even though I haven't read it.

Everyone should have friends who live in Europe

I got this package from Rome the other day.

I've decided that if this whole ... unemployed ... thing doesn't work out for me, what I will do is open a store filled entirely with imported Italian wrapping paper. I considered not even opening these because I could not fathom the idea that anything inside might actually be BETTER than the wrapping paper which is of course the great danger of beautiful wrapping paper. When I did finally open them, I removed the tape very carefully and saved the paper. You scoff, but it will be of great artistic use to me some day. You'll see.

Graveyard Brownies

Matt & Adam made these at my request/demand for my birthday. They remind me of that graveyard tour Travel Buddy and I took in Edinburgh which you think would put me off but it doesn't. Oh no it does not.

This is what I've been drinking with my tea!

Grit!

This came out of my kettle. After I saw it, I cleaned the kettle out, and boy was it dirty in there! I can understand mineral buildup, but what is this grit? It's not like I've been brewing nasty things in my witch's cauldron, I just boil water in my kettle. Weird.

About the new header

I never really got over the Moon Song. It has been rattling around in my head since sophomore year in college. WE LIKE THA MOON. There's something about the hysteria, the complete lack of coherence in the lyrics, and the bulging eyeballs. And the line about puffins gets me every time. It has nothing to do with Simon & Ivan. Ivan has no idea I'm putting it up. I just don't have any good header images and figured I might as well keep mining that one planetarium visit.

Also, that is a distressed version of Helvetica called Alte Haas Grotesk. I fell in love with it recently. I'm not sure why. I don't really like Helvetica. But Alte Haas Grotesk is so soft and friendly. In the right context. I'm just telling you because I wouldn't want to be accused of using Helvetica lightly.

Also also, I made the links red. Not sure how I feel about that. I really just wanted the links in the text to be red, but now all the links are red. O TO UNDERSTAND HTML. If anyone feels strongly either way, please click on the comment link. It's red, so you should be able to find it easily.

Also also also, this new look kind of makes me feel like I'm in a Soviet space ship. Except for the hedgehogs.

To My Bestest Bucket

Wishing you a very merry birthday from far away-- may your day be full of much cake and skeleton brownies, fun sized candy bars, and little debbies...

Your gift is sitting on the floor of my apartment. I promise to mail it before I return to America.

Happy, Happy Birthday, Simon!

--Ivan

Out of Control

When I was putting in the black background I had to double-check what color #4C4C4C was because HTML is the bane of my existence. The first web page that came up was this:

Internet, seriously? We're rating colors now? Is there nothing we can restrain ourselves from making public, even if it is deeply boring, completely subjective, and has no bearing on anything at all?

Moreover, twenty-two people saw the color gray and thought, "Not only must I express my opinion of this color, but my opinion is that I love it." Who loves the color gray? Gray is the color we use as a metaphor for, "Eh, I could go either way." Almost by definition you can neither love nor hate gray. GRAY IS A GRAY AREA.

Sometimes the internet is just too much.

More Fall Photos

Once on a Friday when the boss was out of town, a co-worker and I went across the street for an hour and a half and walked around Mt. Hope Cemetery. It was all yellow, and after a while it started to snow lightly. It is difficult to work when you know this is such a short distance away.

Dangerously Inappropriate!

Loyal reader Liz alerted me to an inappropriate use of bacon the other day. Behold the Bacon Me Crazy Plush Toy.

I shall now enumerate the three things that are inappropriate about this.
1. Bacon-shaped objects that are not bacon are inappropriate.
2. It is sold out, which shows how many people have inappropriate taste.
3. The product description:

"Stir up some fun in your apartment with this kitschy shapin' bacon pillow! Morph your bacon to your desired 'degree' with its internal wire, and wear the accompanying pin that states, 'I love you more than bacon,' to show your love of sweet meats all day long. If you're ever feeling down, simply lay with this fleece and felt strip of softness, and all will be 'cured!'"

Maybe I just have cannibalism on the brain, but I do NOT want to be CURED like MEAT, thank you very much! Inappropriate! INAPPROPRIATE!!

Among the Cannibals, Part 2

Start with part one here.

After describing the Korowai and the Aghor sect, Raffaele moves on to Tonga, but only briefly because there isn’t much to say. The vast majority of what he talks about is how fat the Tongans are. He’s so fascinated by their fatness you almost wonder if he wants to eat them! Ha, ha, cannibal joke.

The island of Tonga in the South Pacific no longer has cannibals, but it did once, and they ate some troublesome Europeans, and who can blame them. Eating enemy warriors is pretty ordinary in cannibal circles. It’s a lot like the ritual consumption of family members after they’ve died. Their bravery or power or wisdom or energy passes to the person who eats the meat. Again, it’s a matter of religious ritual.

At this point in the book I’d been grossed out several times just because I really don't like dead bodies, but I had not been horrified by anything. Then I got to the section on forced cannibalism in Uganda, which was the most horrible thing I have ever read in my life. In the course of the war between the Ugandan government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, which has been going on for 23 years, tens of thousands of young children have been kidnapped to serve in the LRA. To separate the kids from their sense of who they are, shame them so much they don’t want to go home, and make it so that their families don’t want them back, the LRA leaders make them murder and eat any of their friends who try to run away. Children who have been rescued from the LRA are obviously severely traumatized, and sometimes the plan works. Their villages don’t trust them and don’t want them back. This doesn’t even come close to a religious ritual, as it is part of a deliberate strategy masterminded by a psychopath to dehumanize and brainwash children. It’s not the same as the other kinds of cannibalism covered by this book, and doesn’t really give any insight into why cannibals eat other people. I’m not sure eating human flesh under pain of severe violence, sexual assault, or death makes you a cannibal. I definitely wouldn’t call those kids cannibals.

By the time I got to the final section on the Aztecs I was so thoroughly numbed by Uganda that I didn’t really care that they practiced what can only be described as egregious amounts of human sacrifice involving cutting hearts out of living bodies. But now that I'm writing this, I’ve kind of had it with cannibals. Aztecs, was it really necessary that the heart be beating? On the other hand, all the primary sources were written by Europeans who had an interest in telling everyone the Aztecs were subhuman, so it’s hard to say exactly what really happened. They definitely had a lot of really big knives, though.

So, is the depiction of cannibals in Crusoe racist after all? Well. If I could remember it better, maybe I’d know. I think what disturbed me at the time was that it seemed like the cannibals were sort of ridiculously over-costumed to look terrifying, and behaved like they’d eat you as soon as look at you. Judging by what I’ve read, that’s not how it works. Cannibals don’t eat people because it’s fun or they’re hungry. Nobody keeps a herd of humans fenced out back as a food source. Except for in Uganda, they only do it under certain ritualistic circumstances. So I can’t think of a good reason why cannibals would randomly land on Crusoe’s island with the intention of eating him, unless it’s because they know he’s white and therefore consider him a devil, or at least an enemy (which is plausible). Either way, I suppose the real question is how Daniel Defoe depicted them, and how closely the tv show followed his depiction. Sadly, my research for this post did not involve reading that book, so I’ll have to report back later.

As for Raffaele’s desire to prove cannibalism still goes on, I think it’s pretty clear it does, although I would like to point out that he never actually saw it happen. And it’s fading out in places where there are police forces willing to make arrests, or where modern society is encroaching. I would not personally be sorry if people stopped eating each other, but I’m not sure it’s morally wrong. Raffaele quotes Robert Louis Stevenson as saying, “To cut a man’s flesh after he is dead is far less hateful than to oppress him while he lives.” I find that to be fairly sound. Within the cultures where it occurs ritually, it is not seen as immoral, and I am uncomfortable judging one culture by another’s standards.

But I’m taking a very literal definition of cannibalism and limiting it to mean the actual consumption of human flesh. The murder that occurs beforehand bothers me quite a lot, especially the Aztec kind. This is a very weird and kind of squishy moral area. It does not seem measurably kinder not to eat someone after you kill them, since they're already dead. I’m more squeamish about the killing, and the cruelty involved, than the eating. Still, it isn't fair to condemn other humans for behaving according to the conventions of their peers. Any khakhua who gets eaten has likely eaten other khakhua.

At any rate, I don't find nonviolent cannibalism particularly offensive. I can understand a ritual wherein you eat a bit of your dead relatives, if you happen to believe that you can preserve them and absorb their good qualities that way. It’s only fair to point out that there are more than a billion Catholics in the world, many of whom believe in the miracle of transubstantiation, which seems quite similar to me.

In case anyone is tempted to become an Aghori: Ivan asked whether eating brains made you sick, and the answer is that it depends on your DNA. You might be fine, or your brain might turn to mush. With this in mind my final recommendation concerning cannibalism is don't do it.

Among the Cannibals, Part 1

A few months ago my sister and I had a conversation about whether or not the depiction of cannibals in Crusoe was racist. We sort of suspected it was, but not knowing a great deal about cannibals, it was hard to say. So, not long after, when I saw a book called Among the Cannibals: Adventures on the Trail of Man’s Darkest Ritual at a library sale, I of course took it home with me to see what I could find out.

The problem with buying books that randomly present themselves at library sales is this: they might not be the best books on the subject. The number one requirement for a book about cannibalism should be that the author does not put a blanket condemnation of cannibalism in the second sentence of the introduction. So it was clear right away that I wouldn’t be getting anthropologically reliable information. The author, Paul Raffaele, is a well-travelled, well-read, and experienced journalist, and I was constantly surprised that his approach to this subject wasn’t more nuanced.

As the book went on, the author’s personality began to grate on me. First, I get the feeling that his idea of being subtle is shouting, “SO. ARE YOU A CANNIBAL OR WHAT?” Cannibals are going to be pretty sensitive about cannibalism, especially when they’re talking about it with someone who considers it to be a taboo. If you want them to let you in, you have to pretend you are not completely horrified by what they do. Second, it is awkward when the author feels required to describe the body of any woman he meets. He does this with men, too, but there’s a difference between “He was naked except for a leaf” and “Let us discuss the precise state of her breasts.” One could be a salient detail, one definitely is not. This is one of many things that make me think this book could have used a really good editor, and didn’t get one.

Raffaele wrote the book for two reasons. He wanted to argue against an anthropologist named William Arens, who asserted in 1979 that ritual cannibalism never actually happens—it’s all a mixture of lies and legends coming out of the clash between Westerners and the cultures they don’t understand. Raffaele also wanted to find and talk to cannibals who aren’t psychopaths because . . . I don’t know why. Because they’re novel, I guess. Honestly, he seems so disgusted by “man-eating” that it seems strange to me that he decided to write a book about it.

He starts in New Guinea, where the Korowai tribe are known cannibals. They don’t understand disease, so their belief system has to explain it. When someone gets sick and dies, they believe that a man in the community must have been possessed by a murderous demon and is eating the sick person from the inside out. These men are called khakhua, or witch-men. Any unfortunate individual named as a khakhua is believed to die when he is first possessed. He becomes a monster in human form, but he is no longer human. Therefore, to hunt him down, stone him to death, and eat him is not only acceptable but necessary.

The Korowai, Raffaele and I agree, are not raving psychopaths. They practice cannibalism within very narrow parameters. They do say the meat tastes good, especially the brain, but it isn’t like they randomly eat people out of hunger. It’s a matter of revenge. They eat the khakhua because the khakhua has eaten his victim.

The next stop on the cannibal express is weirder. In Benares, India, the holy men of the Aghor sect of Hinduism live on the edge of the Ganges, where they eat the flesh of the bodies that have been brought there to be cremated. (Interestingly, they like brain best, too.) The rationale behind this is that ignoring cultural conventions and engaging in taboo behavior separates you from society—and therefore allows you to become divine. Frankly, cannibalism is not the most shocking of the things they do, but none of it is harmful, exactly. They don’t murder people, they just nibble on them, and whatnot, after they’re dead. Given that there are other paths to holiness, it’s hard to explain why one would choose the path that involves doing everything your society finds repellent, except to say that sometimes human beings are just like that. But even the Aghor sect only eat people within certain religious parameters.

In part two we shall discuss Tonga (briefly), Uganda (depressingly), and the Aztecs (violently), and try to remember what actually happened in Crusoe so that this incredibly long post will have a point.

Read part two here.

This Week In Coping with Expired Household Goods

Okay, my brown sugar wasn't actually expired. But I didn't have enough. So, inspired by the relative success of the mayonnaise experiment, and possessed of more molasses than I will ever probably use, I made my own. Behold.

What I don't understand is why you would ever buy brown sugar. Making it is easy and fun! And it comes out so pretty! Much prettier than mayonnaise, anyway.

Autumn

Every year I go out and take the same pictures. Here they are.

Halloween: The Holiday of CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

The other day I walked under the awning of the pizza place a couple of doors down. And I looked up. And I saw this.

It gave me a start.

I basically stole this post from the Royal Society's blog.

My clever friend The Clergy brought this blog post to my attention: Robert Boyle's To-Do List. This is the Boyle of Boyle's law, which you learned about in high school unless you had a senile chemistry teacher like I did.

Boyle lived from 1627-1691 and was, among other things, a natural philosopher. I always get very excited when people are described as natural philosophers, because usually it means they believed hilarious things and spelled them funny. I shouldn't laugh because Boyle was a scientific genius and I'm not, but there's something adorable and endearing in the fact that while Boyle was making a note of the inverse relationship between the pressure and volume of gas when its temperature remains the same, everyone was still thinking of science as a branch of philosophy.

Anyway, apparently Boyle had some grand visions of what natural philosophy could accomplish. And he wrote them down. For our amusement. From his list:

• The Cure of Wounds at a Distance.
• The Cure of Diseases at a distance or at least by Transplantation.
• The Emulating of Fish without Engines by Custome and Education only.
• The Transmutation of Metalls.
• The Transmutation of Species in Mineralls, Animals, and Vegetables.
• The Attaining of Gigantick Dimensions.
• The making of Parabolicall and Hyperbolicall Glasses.
• The making Armor light and extremely hard.
• The practicable and certain way of finding Longitudes.
• A Ship to saile with All Winds, and A Ship not to be Sunk.
• Freedom from Necessity of much Sleeping exemplify’d by the Operations of Tea and what happens in Mad-Men.
• Great Strength and Agility of Body exemplify’d by that of Frantick Epileptick and Hystericall persons.
• A perpetuall Light.
• Varnishes perfumable by Rubbing.

Aside from the spelling, and the randomness, I think it's the earnestness that cracks me up. If only we could never sleep! If only we could swim like fish! If only we weren't slaves to the wind! If only we could attain gigantick dimensions!

The fact that we have done some of these impossible things (we have glasses, Kevlar, satellite navigation, outboard motors, Red Bull, steroids, electricity, etc. etc.) makes it all the weirder that we haven't figured out the others. As far as I know, we can't transmute metals or species. We understand that swimming under water like fish is not a simple matter of education. We can't prevent any given boat from ever sinking. I am not sure why we would want to attain gigantick dimensions, but we certainly haven't. As for a varnish perfumable by rubbing, I don't even know how to imagine that. The closest I can come is Scratch-n-Sniff stickers, but I have a feeling he's really after something more like Glade PlugIns. The seventeenth century was full of some hardcore stenches, after all.

The point is, this makes me wonder what things I think of as completely insane and impossible that we could have in three hundred years, and what things I assume we'll have in three hundred years that we still won't haven't figured out yet. I can't imagine we'd ever figure out how to put an electronic port in our brains, so that'll probably happen. But jet packs and hovercrafts? I bet we go extinct without ever getting to play with those.

Pride Cometh Before a Fall

This photo of my post-kneading, pre-baking kitchen is called "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE RISE."

This one is called "I don't care if you're misshapen, I love you for not tasting like yeast."

"Things seem to be going well, let's be ambitious."

And last: "I wonder how much chili powder this needs. I'll just throw in the rest of the bottle. Clearly I can do no wrong today."

Fortunately I had a lot of bread around for when the chili threatened to burn a hole in my tongue.