How you look and what you are

The latest pondering starts from a visit to Spo and the madwoman at Violent Acres … reflections on body image. So we embarks on the traditional ranting and rambling.

The Spo was speaking of an old professor, whose opinion seemed to be that you’d earned the body you had, every wrinkle and wobble and shrinking white hairline, and should be comfortable with it. My mom shared the notion. I respect it, though I have my doubts.

On Violent Acres, the reigning bitch (no offense intended: I expect she’d wear the title as a crown) had been enjoying a sniping contest with a woman running a “Fat Acceptance” blog. It’s easy to enjoy a contest when you’re winning, of course, although it’s a bit embarrassing to be in a contest with such underqualified opponents.

The muses, like butterflies

…occasionally flutter overhead and, often enough, do not cause hurricanes on the other side of the world.

Perhaps I’ll have something more momentous to talk about than chicken, again, next week. On the other hand, food is good. Don’t forget to eat.

That old, surreal, bizarre cartoon, “Invader Zim”, featured a poster I’d very much like to have. It stated, “I eat food”.

Indeed.

Chicken lickin’

I’ve been lusting for chicken, off and on, for the past week. I guess I’ll have to wander by the Safeway. If they’re running a sale, the prices are reasonable, although the quality is rather unreliable. The Ranch Market is a good fallback option, although their prices are likely to be a bit higher. Safeway tends to run the chicken as a loss-leader, to draw people in. Heck, it’s one of the few reasons I go there, any more, so it works, to that extent.

I’m thinking a whole roast. Lots of meat, with a carcass left for making some excellent broth. It’s often no more expensive to get it cooked than to get a raw chicken. You miss out on the liver and bits, of course, and it’s not exactly difficult to cook, but that’s a fair trade.

The seduction of tobacco

The first time I had a cigarette, I must have been about ten. My brother and I had snuck out a pack left over from a guest… we thought. It might have been Mom’s. It turned out, much later, that she’d been sneaking smokes on the sly for a long time. Huh.

A curious picture

I picked this one up on a sort of anarchist-flavored blog, and it teases me. The open spaces and trees and sunlight combine to make it really rather appealing. Individually, most of the parts are implausible, bizarre, and comical, though. It’s like an optical illusion, in that respect. Come take a look.

Bach Lore: Oyster onion dip

It was some months ago that I hit the jackpot at Big Lots. They’re unreliable, in general, but you can sometimes find amazing bargains. This one involved “pieces of oysters” at $0.99 for half a pound. I’m not sure why they were called “pieces”, actually. They lacked a bit of the chewy rim parts, which was scarcely a disadvantage.

I’ve run out, unfortunately. I was experimenting with dips. I didn’t perfect the recipe but, perhaps, my notes may be of some use to you (or me) in the future.

Young love

He was eighteen when I met him. It was a few steps back, along the series of jobs that punctuate my life. Kind of cute, in some odd way, despite a trainwreck of teeth, and a somewhat scrawny body (though in the classic male “V” form).

Oh, no, he wasn’t my love. He had been someone else’s…

WoW: (r)evolutions

It’s been a while since I’ve visited World of Warcraft. Burnout, seasonal craziness, and fun with money. I took a small trip back, today. No problem! Just like riding a bicycle. It all seems easy… until they substitute-in a unicycle.

Winter in Germany, some years back

In the 1970s, it must have been, those ancient times when there was a West Germany and an East Germany, and it was three or five Deutsche Marks for a U.S. dollar, on the western end of the game… a small village out in the mountains, with a long, winding, fairly quiet road… and a massive snowstorm.

We’d had to pack away a lot of our goods, before going to Germany, in a mysterious thing called “Storage”. So many of the toys and books and beloved belongings of our childhoods.

Breakdowns in modern technology

…so, I went to start up Oblivion, for the first time in a while. It took a few seconds to remember the controls, which are simple and clever, but a bit unorthodox.

It took a few seconds more for the computer to lock up. “Video driver stopped responding.” “Video driver stopped responding.” “Video driver stopped responding.” Yes, I get the point.

So, Vista with the latest Microsoft updates and nVidia drivers doesn’t support either my old friend, Master of Orion II, or that recent and brilliant game, Oblivion.