Merry Christmas, You Arse

Don't get me wrong here.  Unlike Scary Oliver (Cromwell, not Jamie), I'm not anti-Christmas - by all means, eat yourself sick, fight with your family, have a snowball fight if you're in the northern hemisphere or dunk your hot feet in the pool if you're in the southern hemisphere. I love all these things - as long as I can make up with my family afterward, and we can go back to 'drinking wine and talking shit', as my dear Papa likes to say. I have to say though, I come down on the side of anti-crazy.  What is it about this nowadays mostly psudo-religious festival that seems to bring out the cray-zay in usually perfectly sane people?

White Witch + Ebenezer Scrooge + Fancy Armour = Bad News if Your Name is Charles I

Personally, I blame the gift cycle. 

The gift cycle is where you get a gift from someone, maybe they don't know you real well, like in a Secret Santa thing, or maybe they're just having an off day, or maybe they're just jerks, and the short straw of it is that they pick out something for you that is slightly off-target at best, woefully inappropriate at worst.  It sits on your floor for either a few weeks (if you're a Trade-Me-phile), or up to a year (if you're a re-gifter, like I am), when you can finally get rid of the damn thing.  But what the reciever of said crappy gift often doesn't realise is that if it's me giving them that gift, I've stressed my little brain out thinking of a good 'un, and that was the best I could come up with.  It's giving me palpatations just thinking of it, quite frankly. 

In quite unrelated news, I had a wee baking related disaster on Tuesday.  Coming off the untold glory that was my pistachio, honey and white chocolate French macaroons, I figured that I'd make raspberry French macaroons for a work thing that we were having.  Little did I realise that humidity really screws the hell out of French macaroons, so I was left with a big, expensive, sticky, raspberry mess.  They tasted good, but Damn!  They were sticky.  So I ate them all, and ended up like Edward in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - big red face all sticky, but not sitting next to a witch who was trying to get me to tell her about my siblings.  Or eyeing the bottom of the box in the hope of finding more sticky goodness there - no, I was more trying not to puke my sugary load all over the house.

So, I made good old cheese scones instead, and they went down a treat.

If this ends up being my last post for 2010, hope y'all have a spendid wee holiday, whether you're in the sun or the snow.  I'll be in Hamz, kicking it with the Lad and my family, so we'll be on restricted water rations (ho-hum, that just means more alcohol, poor wittle us...), we'll be road-trippin' it up the country and then back down again.  So either fun times! or horrible, horrible mistake... I'll let you know.

Views and Reviews

The more observant amongst you, my massive audience, will have noticed that I'm kind of fooling around with the look of the blog.  So bear with me a bit, because I'm re-jigging where you can find things and what I'm doing and all that.  I've also got some new sections, Rants (which I'm planning to just be sort of informed opinion pieces), and Reviews (which I'm hoping is fairly self explanitory).

Invasion of the Killer Brains

Wouldn't that be a great title for a B-movie?  Maybe it already is... but anyway, I'm trying to retrain my brain.  Hard ask with a brain such as mine, but if I'm going to be studying again next year, it's good to get used to reading in an academic type format again... goodbye, sweet novels, I knew you well.

So, that having been said, I'm reading some pretty interesting stuff at the moment.  I mean, it doesn't all have to be stuffy toff reading!  Okay, so I am reading Karl Marx's Theory of History: a defence by G.A. Cohen... maybe not everyone's idea of exciting bedtime reading, but still... makes quite the change from Sookie Stackhouse, that's for sure.  And Fight the Power by Chuck D from Public Enemy (they are touring out to lil' ol' EnnZed next year, and I've always meant to read this book... every time I check it into the library, I try to get it out, but it always has a hold on it.  Not this time though).  Also I've just started Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Theory by Patricia Melzer.  Which is super interesting, though it's mostly about SF-type films rather than books.  I'm not fussy though.

Digressing back to SF-esque writing now, despite Ray Bradbury scaring the pants off me when I was a kid (I didn't sleep properly for nearly a month after reading Something Wicked This Way Comes), I still love him.  And I love him even more after reading this article, which was published in the New York Times in June 2009. There has been a lot of kerfuffle in the library community about closures and restrictions and price increases and stuff.  It would be real easy for me to go, 'Aww, that's just the States'... but the fact is that the recession has affected the whole world, which creeps me out no end, you know, how it really is becoming like the economic version of Chaos Theory, where a butterfly flaps it's wings in the Amazon and Wall Street crumbles.  I know it's a lot more complex than that, but it just seems that way to me.

Scary Shit... Look out for the Dust Witch!!

Mean Little Cookie

I was overcome last week.  You know when you get an idea, and it just sort of burbles around in your head and you practically have to act on the idea in self-defence, just to make it go away?  Well, my brain conjured up an mental image of me, eating a cookie with Fat Ass emblazoned on it.  Not that I think my ass is fat or anything, certainly not.  But before this degenerates into a post about my buttock region, here's a picture:

[Eating] on the Sidewalk, part 1: Mmmm... pie (and roller derby).

Everybody loves a good pie.  Of course, everyone has different interpretations on the definition of 'good pie', but I have to say that my standards are cray-zay high when it comes to pie.  I'm a pie-snob!  I confess!

Sometimes, you can get a really bitchin' top crust, then a gorgeous filling... which is all totally ruined by soggy under-crust.  Or you get amazing crust action, and then fundamentally gross filling.  Or the whole thing is just a big 'meh' - which is the worst, I reckon... don't get me wrong, I'm all about the classics, but I'd rather have pie be the highlight of my day than just something to fill my belly.

Now this, this is good pie:

Have to say that I was a tad dubious when I saw the Lad coming back from the counter at Ernesto's with a big wodge of this pie, which is berry and apple (as I'm sure you were able to guess from the photo...  hope my photography isn't that bad).  It was technically a pie to share, but I bet you can guess who was the one that ended up cramming it into her gob as fast as she could go, washed down with gallons of wicked good soy latte.  It always gives me a private chuckle to know that Ernesto's is run by the same people that own Fidel's and Havana coffee (some of the best coffee money can buy, in my humble opinion... seriously, it is a humble opinion, I know nothing about coffee, except what I like)... and both the cafe's are on Cuba Street.  Doesn't take much to tickle my funny bone, obviously.

But back to the pie... Pie should really be the kind of food which is equally good fresh out of the oven as it is fridg-y cold.  Don't know about this one fresh out of the oven, but it was excellent cold - and it speaks to the confidence that this cafe has in this pie that they didn't feel the need to give you a big splattering of yoghurt or cream, or any other decoration at all (oh, hang on, they did give us yoghurt, but we didn't need it, and I ate it afterwards on it's own), other than a wee dusting of icing sugar.  Mmm.

So that concludes the first part of Eating on the Sidewalk - I'm gonna try and make this kind of regular-ish, 'cause I like to give props to cafe's and stuff that do things right.  If any of y'all have got any places you think would be good to try, let me know, 'kay?

In other news, the final derby round was not last weekend, but the weekend before.  Unlike last years season, Brutal Pageant were pummelling Smash Malice 2 bouts down - and even though Malice put up a brave fight, the Pageant girls were just too good.  Didn't help that Tuff Bikkies went out at half time either.  The Richter City girls are putting on an exhibition match against Pirate City in December, on the 11th - you can get tix from Under the Radar , and I totally recommend that you do - there were about two thousand people at the last bout (yay Wellington! Man, I love this city!).  

Whoa.

Frickin' heck, I've got so many plans at the moment, I'm like... a plan monster, or something.  It's the first proper-nice day of the spring season today, and with remarkable good planning, I'm not at work... nice to be doing something right.  Mum and Dad are down in Wellington tomorrow, so it will be sweet to see them (and sweet to have all the frickin' cleaning out of the way... *sigh* I know they don't care, but I do it anyway), and we're going to the World of Wearable Arts show on Sunday, which I'm so looking forward to it's not even funny.  Plus I'm trying to write my letter for library school next year, which is into something like it's eighth draft... and so I'm ignoring it for a little while, just to get my mojo back on it.

Oh yeah, the baby shower!  Damn, it was so good, I am King Organised, nothing was a total failure (read that as: nothing failed so badly that I couldn't fix it), the new Mama was completely surprised (muahaha), and I've had several really nice emails from guests saying how much they enjoyed themselves... sweet!  It was actually surprising easy, in the end of it - I think that the most stressful bit was having a bunch of people that I didn't really know very well coming over to my house.  You just never know what you'll be inviting through the front door.  Still, we didn't have any chronic undressers or kleptomaniacs (yes, I have been rereading 'Choke' by Chuck Palahniuk - how did you guess?)  All the baking was an unmitigated success too - no reports of food poisoning, which is just fab.

I think that I'm most proud of my pistachio macaroons, because I'd never made them before, and I'm now cautiously optimistic that I've conquered my brain-block against egg white baking... but I'm gonna make a sponge or a pav or something before I get too excited on that front.  They were so good - I actually liked them better without the ganache in the middle, but that's just because I'm not really a sweet tooth kind of lady.  But there were also cupcakes (der, of course there were, I'm kind of bored of baking them to be honest, but now it's getting to be something that people expect), savoury junk (wee tomato and olive tart things, thyme and gruyere gougeres, just to be fancy), and a fantastic chocolate and raspberry cake that the fine lady helping me organise made... it was so awesome.  *drool*

I just want to (butter)fly

Damnit, now I have that stoopit Crazy Town song stuck in my head.  No way to start a day (I'm eating weetbix with one hand and typing with the other - how do you spell 'milk on the keyboard'?)

Anyway, things are looking a tad busy for me today, so I thought that I'd finally get around to posting about these wicked-ass cupcakes I made for my friend Sara's birthday.  It was an important birthday, plus she's pregnant at the moment, so I wanted to make a big fuss out of Sara-the-person-who-likes-stuff, rather than Sara-the-pregnant-lady.  So the scene was set for cupcake action!

And here they are!  The flavour is chilli-chocolate (Evil Sara introduced me to the taste exploooossssion which is Lindt chilli flavoured chocolate, and now it seems that a chocolatey treat just isnt' right without a nice big smack-your-face blast of chilli), and the little butterflies that you see on the top are made from sugar cookie dough.  Again, the cakes were just made with the chocolate variation on the white cake recipe, which is totally my go-to recipe for cupcakes - I doubt if I'll ever use another (unless it's the sour cream and white chocolate recipe, which should be coming up in the next post).  I got the awesome teeny butterfly cutters from Cakestuff, and the lady who runs that shop should be given a niceness medal - every time I've interacted with her (albeit over the emails) she's always lovely, which was even better this time because they accidentally send the wrong thing first up.  But they fixed it super-promptly, and I got to keep the wrong thing too!  Noice.

So that was baking adventures.  Well, last week's baking adventures - I'm in the middle of a bit of a secret squirrel operation at the moment, so you'll just have to wait to see how that turns out (can't wait until that is done, looking forward to having a sense of achievement, rather than a sense of trepidation and 'biting off more than I can chew'edness).  Mum and Dad are coming down for a visit next week, which should be real fun, haven't got anything planned, in fact I'm almost praying for kind of shitty weather so that we can just blob around (invariably, it's always a bit rank on the weather front when they're down here though... *sigh*)

The weetbix in my bowl has now become sludge, so that must be the signal to finish up here.  TTFN, y'all.

Who Loves the Devil?

Yes! Yes! A cake!  It's only the second cake I've ever featured on this blog, and that's because I usually can't be arsed hauling a knife around to wherever I'm going to be caking-it-up.  But here I was, going to a most civilised dinner party, and thought, what cake takes almost no effort, I have all the ingredients for, and is almost universally loved?

The answer, whispered on a sweetly sulphuric stream, was Devil's Food Cake.

I'd actually never made one of these puppies before.  And there is actually a darn good reason for that - I'm craptastic at making ganache.  It's probably a matter of practice, but also probably the fact that yours truly might be a tad overconfident with her skills.  I mean, on paper, how hard could it be?  It's essentially adding either cream or water to melted chocolate to make a thick, choco-tastic frosting. Simple, right?  Ha!  That's just what the French want you to think.  My ganache, while sufficiently delicious, was matte and stiff, not shiny and limber as it's supposed to be.  As it always is.  You'd think that by now, I'd be aware of my limitations and either practice making ganache when it's not a make or break occasion (it never really is, usually people are impressed that you didn't just buy something, but still.  Competitive streak and all that), but no!  Where is the fun in that?

Damn, it was good.  I got the recipe from David Lebovitz , made no adjustments or re-doings, just pure, unadulterated Lebovitz.  I've got to stop writing about this cake now, I'm getting drool all over the keyboard.  Lucky I've got a few vegetarian cooking books out of the library, 'cause Mama's gonna need to lose a few kilos after her date with the Devil.

Stay Frosted

We've established that I'm a big slacker in earlier blog posts, so we don't need to go into that territory again.  But, I'm soothing myself with the knowledge that it's winter at the moment, the dead season, so any creative endevour is bound to be fruitless.

That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

Although I seem to have lost my baking mojo for the moment, I haven't lost my reading mojo.  Oh no.  The huge-ass Downtown City Mission Bookfair was last weekend, and I've only now surfaced from the giant pile of bargaintastic books that I bought.  Okay, yes, there are a lot of Stephen King's books in there, but I also managed to score a few awesome classics - Alexandre Dumas' Lady of the Camellias, which I'm really hoping is going to be better than ol' Gustauv Flaubert's Lady Bovary.  I know, I'm an uncultured swine, but damn that book was hard going.  I mean, I'm totally down with having a hated character, but when you kind of think that all of them could do with a good boff in the chops, then it makes life harder for the reader than it needs to be.  That's how Jane Austen's books make me feel too (well, I've only read two - Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey, but that was enough).

So that was quite the digression.  Here's what I actually wanted to recommend you - Generation Kill by Evan Wright.  Alright, so you might have seen the mini-series that they made out of it, but I have to say that the series, as awesome as it is, pales into insignificance in the wake of the book.  Which is usually the case, but it's even more marked in this example, because Wright manages to convey much more of the sheer weight of his observations of the experiences of the Marines of First Recon than you get to experience through the series.  Just the swing from out-and-out terror to over-the-top exhuberance in the space of like, ten minutes is enough to make your eyes water.

Now, a little caveat here, I don't usually (read as: ever) go for war stuff.  I call the History Channel the Hitler Channel, because all they ever seem to show is stuff on the military history of World War II.  I'm not pro-war, and am barely neutral on military stuff in general.  It's not that I don't value the discipline that the military (whatever branch, I ain't discriminating here) can teach, or understand the need that governments (and the people they govern) feel for protection against a real or imagined outside force.  I can totally dig that.  I'm anti-war for two big reasons - firstly, the attack of civilian targets brings it into the arena of killing people who mostly do not have a shit-show of killing you back, and that offends my sense of fair-play (old fashioned, ain't I?  I know modern warfare, hell, warfare in general, doesn't work like that, but it's my blog, and this is just my opinion after all), and secondly the unholy expense of it.  Honestly people, governments (and I'm sticking all governments in the same pot here, totalitarian to the most enlightened forms of democracy) schlep a lot of dough into not just supporting military units 'on the ground' in actual terms of food, medical and bullets, but also the research and development money that goes into new weaponry and defense systems.  Hello?  Anyone notice the unemployment rate? No? What about the children living in poverty in your country?  Not that either, huh?  You were too busy pouring money and men into a war that you thought you'd better start before the other guy did.  I see.

Right, I'm off my high horse now.  Generation Kill hasn't changed my opinion of Operation Iraqi Freedom, or of war in general, but it has given me a teensy insight into the troops actually having to deal on a daily basis with trying to implement the frankly, mad schemes of the officers who planned that operation.  It made me laugh, which I wasn't expecting to do, and it made me cry only a little (sad tears, not angry ones - another unexpected.  Well, some angry ones).  Evan Wright makes you see the men of First Recon (or at least, the part that he rode with during the first months of conflict) as actual people, not just a unit carrying out an objective, and for all that he seems to come to believe that their efforts will fail, he genuinely seems to admire the men that he travels with.  He makes an interesting point which I'd like to share verbatim from the afterword because it's depressing as hell:

 "It's the American public for whom the Iraq War is often no more real than a video game.  Five years into this war, I am not always confident most Americans fully appreciate the caliber of the people fighting for them, the sacrifices they have made, and the sacrifices they continue to make.  After the Vietnam War ended, the onus of shame largely fell on the veterans.  This time around, if shame is to be had when the Iraq conflict ends - and all indications are that there will be plenty of it - the veterans are the last people in America to deserve it.  When it comes to apportioning shame my vote goes to the American people who sent them to war in a surge of emotion but quickly lost the will to either win it or end it." Generation Kill page 462

Now that I've cheered everybody up with that sentiment (which I happen to agree with), I think I'll get back to baking.  At least if I'm going to feel sick, I like it to be from a sugar overdose.  But in saying that, Generation Kill is a really excellent book, it's told in a very lively style without a hint of pretension or moralising (in either direction, which is awesomely refreshing).  But it's sad to think that Stephen King doesn't hold the lien on terror or horror - we create a good deal of the awful things in this world ourselves, and we make them for real.

Time to Say Goodbye

Oh, muffins... where have you been all my life?  I'm on a real muffin kick at the moment, if I'd known how flamin' simple they are, I'd have started makin' the darn things sooner.  Well, maybe.  We all know that I'm a woman who just loves to make life hard for herself.  But still.  The sentiment is there.

So the puppies that I've just made are cream cheese, smoked salmon and chive mini-muffins.  How hoity-toity can you get?  Yes, they are pretty ritzy, but honestly, someone who had mislaid some of their mental picnic could make these without much bother.  There are only two pitfalls with these muffins - they are a tad on the expensive side to make (though if you get the smoked salmon pieces, you know, the ripped up shready stuff, it's not too bad), and they are almost irresistable; but resist!  I implore you!  Take it from one who knows, all you will end up with is a burnt roof-of-the-mouth and a broken heart.  Well, maybe not that last one.

Um, in other news, Mark Lanegan is in town tonight, which I totally wish that I could go to, but being the Nana that I am, one thing per night is about my limit.  The muffins are coming with me to a farewell shindig for a work buddy of mine tonight.  In order to not cause too much kerfuffle for people, its one of those 'clear out your booze cabinet' type affairs - everyone brings the mysterious bottles that lurk in the back of the cabinet with a centimeter or so of liquid at the bottom and we make them into glorious cocktails.  At least, that is the idea.  Getting back to the original topic, if you don't know who Mark Lanegan is, you need to go to the Library (or the indie record store, or itunes if you must) and get the Screaming Trees album Dust.  It is an amazing album, and I'm sure that you'll love it.  What am I saying, I don't know if you'll love it, but it's always good to listen to some new shit once in a while.

This [cake] is bananas, B!A!N!A!N!A!S!

Apologies to Ms Stefani, but look at this, would you?

Pretty foxy huh?  You'd never guess they were *gasp* banana flavoured.  I don't know if you can see from there, but I even did teensy little stamen things on the flowers (spent a looong time picking out yellows out of the hundreds and thousands mixture... boy, do I suffer for my art).  Not that I brag or anything, you understand... I'm just particularily proud of the fact that I managed to hold my gorge for an hour and a half while I was baking these.

Sur Une Nappe De Restaurant

Hooray!  My Jacques Dutronc CD arrived today, so I've been immersing myself in loveliness.  Speaking of loveliness...

Look at that beastie!  Even with the crapshack photoshop job that I've done on the background, doesn't it still look almost unholy in it's awesomeness!?  And your saliva glands are sending mad signals right now to your brain; 'Cake! Cake! Cake!' they say... and who would you be to deny them?

My Mother Baked a Little Cake for You

Finally!  There was an alignment of cosmic proportions (i.e, my birthday a few weeks ago now, but I've only just gotten over the shock of turning 28, which is why I'm writing about it now), and I made those 'White Stripes' themed cupcakes which I'd been ranting about for some time.  Here they are in all their glory...

Pretty sensational, am I right?  Okay, I confess: they have had a little photoshop touch up on the icing.  But that's only because I couldn't make the red frosting go red enough without using like, half a bottle of food colouring.  And since I was feeding these to a pregnant lady, I didn't really want to do that.  Oh, by the way, the pregnant lady is not me.  Just in case you were Getting Ideas.

Confessions aside, these were outrageously tasty, and I fully recommend that y'all check out that white cake recipe that I've got listed somewhere on here (it's from Epicurious.com, boy oh boy if you haven't checked out that website, I fully recommend that you do, but not before lunch because it will make you very disappointed with your cheese toasty.  Or whatever you people eat for lunch... I've been having a toastie phase).  All I did was half the recipe ('cause these cupcake papers are kind of tiny), and swap out half the flour for the blackest, richest cocoa I could find.  Yum!  And the frosting is peppermint flavour, which didn't go down too well with my lad, but I bloody loved it.  Total sucker for that flavour combo, so I am.

Good Grief.

Oh no, the interwebs is out to get me!

Not only did my email and my Facebook get hacked into by some worthless fiend, but now I've discovered The Book Depository, which is surely the work of the Devil.  And since I firmly believe in the principle of 'share the wealth', I hereby notify you gentle reader of this awesome sites existence.  And if you knew already, then why the Hell didn't you share?  Huh?  HUH?

Phew, anyway... as I mentioned, some scum-suckin', mouth-breathin', butt-faced dog poo hacked into my practically antique Gmail account last week.  I have to say though, that I do have the ruliest friends who, as soon as they got my (very oddly grammered, if that is such a word) email, claiming that I was in London, stranded by the ash cloud from the volcano in Iceland texted me to say, dude, we know you're not in London.  Incidentally, did anyone else noticed that the news has given up trying to pronounce the name of that volcano?  I mean, I can understand why, it's quite the mouthful, but honestly news-readers, suck it up!  Even if it is just for a little comedic value!  But then, I had another text message from my buddy in Auckland saying that she was chattin' right that instant with the diddle on Facebook!  *sigh*  Yup... so needless to say, Facebook is off the menu.  My husband seems to be correct in his railings against the behemoth Facebook... not that I'll ever admit it to him!  (Actually, he just read that, so it's like I've admitted it... failure again!)

Okay, so onto happier things... I've just bought 'Bigfoot Cinderrrella', 'Curious George visits the Library' (of course!  What other Curious George book am I going to buy!?) and Robert Crumb's 'Kafka', which looks just delicious.  I can't wait until they arrive - but apparently they take about two weeks to get here from England, so I'm going to have to.  It's not something I'm very good at, the waiting, but I'll try to forget that I ordered them (now, that I can do), and then it will be a nice surprise.  I urge you all to pop along to the Book Depository , not only are they fairly ridiculously priced books, but they also ship free to New Zealand.  The price is right!

Downward Spiral

I don't think they have a scale for laziness, but I feel like I should be pretty high up there if they ever do get around to making one. For instance, I keep getting the urge to bake for the blog, and then baking and not taking any pictures of the darn things that I make. Perhaps it's got something to do with the fact that my camera is being dopey at the moment... or it could just be the myriad other things that I have to do.  Such as holding our frisky sofa down...

Anyway, I remembered an awesome thing that I think that I read in one of Nigella Lawson's books once upon a time, which was lucky for me because I was fresh out of ideas for a shared morning tea that we were having at my work.  I've gone right off the cupcake thing, since that's what everyone expects from me now, and as awesome as they are to make, they're always too sweet for me.  In my experience, people get suspicious if you don't eat your own baking.

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round

So, International Independent Record Store Day.  It's happening kids, happening on the 17th of April!  How exciting!

Seriously though, I'm totally issuing a challenge to myself this year, which is to no longer suckle at the teat of Big Music.  My plan is to start buying actual physical music (as opposed to merely downloading stuff from itunes, which is so passive it's not even funny... I don't even have to leave my living room), and to buy that music at an indie store.  NZer's will know that after the demise of the Real Groovy franchise, the Real Groovies (Groovy's? you know what I mean) have become independent of each other (well, Auckland and Wellington have... when we were in Christchurch a few weeks ago their RG was still going, but I don't know what the situation is there), and there are loads more succulent treats of record stores dotted around the country.  

The wicked thing about them is that the people that work in there know their onions, so if you choose a good time to go in (when they're not bonkers with people, I mean), you can generally strike up a pretty good natter with the People of the Store, and they might just shine a light onto a new and fascinating musical path.  Anyway, the IIRSD, as I mentioned, is happening on the 17th of April, a Saturday, and most of the indies that have signed up will have interesting things happening.  You can check out the Record Store Day website for a list (this is the New Zealand list, of course), and watch the video below for a bit of a larf.  But, even more importantly, do it because Henry Rollins reckons that "Every time you buy your records at one of these places, it's a blow to the empire".  

Okay, here's the vid: 

Happiness is a Hard Helmet

(heh)

That double entendre is actually in aid of something, you know.  I bought my roller derby pads and helmet today, so when my skates arrive from Sin City Skates, I'll be able to start practicing fully... so frickin' excited!  However, I'm going to the rink tomorrow for my first skate in about fifteen years... I was pretty crap at it then and I'm sure that I'll be pretty crap at it now.  But the good thing is that I'm already financially committed to the derby cause, so I'm more likely to give it a proper go now that I've literally invested in it.

That is all.  I'm just real excited about the whole thing... oh yeah, and I thought of a good derby name too, but since I seem to change my mind every fifteen minutes or so about that, I'll have to keep you posted on what I actually end up with.

By the way, I'm a few pages in to an amazing book (which is good, because I finished Eclipse last night... the less said the better, I've already ranted via email to poor Ngaio.  Needless to say, there was a lot of swearing and a threat to do a very nasty thing with Eclipse, if it wasn't a library book, of course).  The book is Hey, Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone! The Romantic Movement, Rock & Roll, and the End of Civilisation as we know it .  So you can understand why I picked it up.  It's by an Australian dude called Craig Schuftan, who works for triple j on a show called 'The Culture Club', and so far, he's presenting some pretty amazing and interesting ideas.  But I'll have to get back to you on that one too, because I'm only on page eleven and without being too mean about it, it could all go to custard on page twelve.

Werewolf vs. Vampire. Who wins? No-one.

As some of you lucky enough to be within ranting range will no doubt be aware, I've been reading the Twilight series.  Yes, I am over the age of fourteen, but I am a girl, so at least I meet one of the requirements for reading them.  I also like vampires (although, obviously, I don't know any personally).  Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite... all good in my book.  However, I tend to like bad ass (or even better, uggo) vampires over pretty boy vampires, so Edward and his 'unutterably gorgeous' kin were fighting a losing battle right from the start.  Give me 'Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht' over 'Interview with a Vampire' any day...

By the way, I know that I'm not really qualified to write this post just yet, since I'm only half way through 'Eclipse' (the second to last one, for those of you lucky enough to be living under a rock for the past three years).  I just feel compelled to post about something, and this was all I could think of.  Plus, I know it's kind of a contentious thing... people either LOVE Twilight, or hate its guts.  At the moment, I have to confess to being a bit torn.    As I'm getting through the story, I have this major sense of impatience with Edward and his 'family' - though mostly Edward.  I mean, you love her, bite her... and damn the consequences, right?  I know he's all worried about Bella's soul and what-not, but the worry seems... unfounded.  Plus, I have to admit to being fully 'Team Jacob', but that might be because I'm a cold frog and the idea of having a nice warm werewolf to snuggle up to is pretty appealing. 

Soup du jour, that's for sure.

Medieval Times has a lot to answer for.  Not only is it totally on my list of things to do when I finally haul my ass to the U.S of A (one down from basking in the awesome that is Magnolia bakery, and one up from sitting through a whole real-life baseball game, beer and hotdog in hand), it's where the Them Crooked Vultures legend began.  Y'all can google the rest of the legend, because it's all over everywhere, and I can't be arsed typing it all - suffice to say, it's truly legendary (though it would have been more legendary if Dave Grohl and Jack Black had actually been allowed to have a sword fight... beggars can't be choosers, I suppose).

Habit Forming

So I'm trying to get into the habit of making muffins on a Sunday afternoon. My first attempt was blueberry, and let me tell you... not as successful as I would have liked.  Not, y'know, bad or anything, just not as light and gorgeous as they should be.  I really don't know if it was just the recipe I was following, possibly the fact that I didn't use buttermilk (like half the internet told me I should... in fact, do you know how hard it is to find a muffin recipe that doesn't have buttermilk in it?  I do, and trust me, it's hard).  This recipe wasn't a buttermilk recipe, but... I don't know, there was something about those blueberry muffins that didn't grab me by the tastebuds and whirl me around the room in a daze of wonderful.

Am I expecting too much from these muffins?  Whatever gives you that idea?

We Used to Vacation

Sweet Lord, how lazy can you get?  No posts in months, barely done any writing of any description, and no good excuse apart from the fact that it's summer (or nominally summer here, since it's frickin' windy and so rainy that the damn stuff is coming in the french doors... hence the towels strewn liberally around the house) and I've got better things to do than slave away in the kitchen over a hot cupcake.

Oh yeah, so welcome to 2010, y'all.  I'm not usually a one for New Year resolutions, but I'm endevouring to be better at the whole writing thing this year.  I'm about half way through a teaser for the comic that Ngaio and I are doing, a bunch of myths for my creepy magical friends.  I have a scary feeling that they are coming off a bit half-arsed or even worse, naff fantasy shite, but I'm trusting to Ngaio to keep me on the straight and narrow.  Hear that, girl?  Oh yeah, and I'm sorry I missed your birthday, but I'm going to come and visit as soon as I get my shit sorted, okay?