Category Archives: Play

MP3s

LOTD, MP3s

In which I post some MP3 links.

mp3So thanks to Sean’s The Rex Monday, I’m really into this track called Vistareel — it’s my current earworm. (You can, and probably should, get it here.) It’s ambient so not something I’d normally geek on, but it’s eerie and deep and catchy as hell and the vocal samples played melodically? Oddly compelling. And I love the CSNY-circa-Déjà Vu guitar tone too. You should check it out. Seriously.

I discovered Comfort Radio today. They played Sub Dub and Miles Davis back-to-back and it totally amused me.

I also discovered The Hype Machine… because I don’t already have enough crap on my iPod that I’ve never even listened to. (Before the year is out, I’m gonna need a whole server just for my music collection. Yay me.)

In other news, the genre field of ID3 tags? Is the bane of my existence. What a fucking mess! I’ve got tracks tagged “hip hop,” tracks tagged “hip-hop,” tracks tagged “hip-hop/rap,” and tracks tagged “hip hop/rap.” WTF, I ask you. And what’s the appropriate tag for songs from a 1973 Elton John album? Rock? Pop? Folk? Is “remix” a genre tag? I’ve got tracks tagged “pod cast,” and tracks tagged “Podcast.” I’ve got tracks labelled “indie,” “booty bass,” and “oldie.”

I seriously hate the genre tag unto death, I tell you. I’ve begun to delete whatever’s in it when I get new tracks. Eventually my iPod will have only one genre on it: {None}!

Call Me! Ooh! Call Me Harder!

Social

In which I get out of town and laugh my ass off.

So my girlfriend took me out on a date yesterday. She took me to Iowa City and we saw a movie and had dinner and coffee. It fucking rocked. I totally needed a girl day.

The movie was Chronicles of Narnia, which had killer sFX; the witch was Tilda Swinton, who totally fucking rocked; and the dinner was at the Olive Garden, where we split an appetizer and an entree and were still both too full to walk properly for about an hour.

The girlfriend was Tahm, who led me to believe that she needed her own blog nickname. So from here on out I’ll be calling her Nasty Little Whore, or NLW for short. (She seems fairly reformed nowadays, but I’m quite certain I’m not the first person ever to call her that.)

Anyway, it was unneccessarily cold outside so we scuttled from car to building, building to car like little crabs. Winter’s beginning to get on my nerves.

On the drive to Iowa City, I was complaining about my hubby. How his being home all the time is driving me nuts. How I could really use a few hours of alone time. How now that he’s doing the goddamned dishes he’s finally, finally started to rinse them rather than leaving them all crusty on the counter. How he’s constantly harassing me for sex.

“We’ve got time, we could pull over up here,” quipped NLW.

“Huh?” I said, not tracking.

“For sex,” she said. “We could pull into a field up here.”

“Oh my gawd! Stop it!” I yelled. “I came with you to get away from that!”

She laughed. “I didn’t want you to feel too comfortable,” she said.

“You, uh, you bastard!” I yelled.

Then we laughed. Then we talked about her business for awhile.

At the theatre, as we were wending our way toward the seating we wanted, she said, “You know, if you had just put out on the drive up here, I would have bought you those Junior Mints.”

“Oh Christ!” I exclaimed, then I started laughing.

“I almost wish I’d said that in the lobby, to see your face,” she giggled.

We sat down and wiggled out of coats, put drinks in holders, arranged purses and candy. I kept an eye on the screen, and when it exhorted me to turn off my cell phone during the feature presentation I said to NLW, “Put your phone on vibrate.”

“Why?” she asked, brightly. “Are you going to call me?”

“Yes,” I laughed, throatily. “Repeatedly.”

“Oh,” she moaned in Porn Star Voice, “Call me! Call me! Oh! Call me now!”

“Dial me again!” I hissed, giggling. “And again and again and again!”

“Call me! Oh my God, call me!” she said, laughing out loud. “CALL ME HARDER!”

At that, we collapsed into hysterical giggles.

“Oh my fucking GAWD,” I said, when I could breathe again. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

It’s just luck that we happened to the only people in the theatre at the time, because we’re pretty loud talkers when we’re busy cracking ourselves up.

Portabella Capellini

Recipes

This recipe is based on the dish of the same name once served at Mondos, of Iowa City, Iowa, before it burned down.

Portabella Capellini

3-4 T. butter
2 large portabella mushrooms, sliced
6 oz. button mushrooms, sliced
1 small bunch spinach, cleaned, destemmed, and torn or roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 c. dry white wine
1-1/4 c. heavy cream
6 oz. bleu cheese (ideally gorgonzola if you can get it), crumbled
1/4 c. shredded parmesan cheese
1/2 pkg. dried capellini (fine angel hair) pasta
1 T. toasted, chopped pine nuts (or walnuts)
salt & pepper to taste

Cook the pasta according to the package directions, with a dash of olive oil, a Bay leaf, and some salt added to the cooking water, until al dente. Drain, and set aside.

Melt the butter in your pasta pan. Add portabellas and garlic, and sautée for 3-5 minutes. Add the button mushrooms and sautée until all the mushrooms are tender.

Add white wine and deglaze — use a dry white you’d happily drink, not a salty or bitter ‘cooking’ wine. When the wine has cooked off, remove the portabellas and set aside.

Add heavy cream and bleu cheese to the sauteed button mushrooms. (Note: If you’re using gorgonzola and it’s really strong, you may want to use a little less than the recipe calls for.) Stir until the bleu cheese is incorporated.

Add the pasta to the pan and stir into the sauce. Reduce the cream over medium heat, stirring constantly.

Add the spinach and most of the parmesan (reserving a little for garnish), and toss over heat until the spinach is wilted.

Turn off the burner. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To serve, dish up the pasta and arrange the portabellas on the top. Garnish with a few spinach leaves, grated parmesan, and the pine nuts.

Servings: 4-6
Cooking time: 20 minutes

My Little Pony Porn

Reading

In which I shamelessly read total trash.

Hi, it’s midnight. I’m awake because I spent most of the day dozing between bouts of Cramps From Hell™ and reading total crap.

I’m reading more My Little Pony porn.

And what’s My Little Pony porn, you ask? Good question! See, it’s like this. Last year we had an RAOK over at my knitting site, and my secret pal sent me a trashy paperback in one of her packages. It looked stupid and vapid so I let it sit around for months and months, but eventually I found myself with nothing else to read and, like the whore I am, I cracked the cover.

I read the entire thing in one sitting.

It was this weird combo of, like, elf fantasy and light erotica. With a touch of bondage. Oh, and blood sport. Nothing I would ever have purchased, ever, but I was hard up and just like a bag of cheesy poofs once I started I couldn’t stop. The heroine — magical, petite, drop-dead gorgeous and, of course, totally buxom — somehow ended up with this stable of sidhe men who were supposed to be getting her pregnant so she could inherit the unseelie kingdom or something, and they were all like 6’2″ and buff as hell and armed with swords and knives and totally hot with perfect physiques and outrageous costumes of laced-crotch leather pants and harnesses and capes and shit, and they all had tri-colored irises and hip-length hair ranging in color — and now you’ll begin to understand — from midnight black to sea green to lavender. (Don’t ask me how, but it worked. Maybe it was the near-gangbang scene in one of the first few chapters?) Anyway, our heroine gets laid in every single chapter, usually by two or three or more of her stable, and some of them even sprout wings (I shit you not) while gettin’ busy with her.

It was the weirdest thing I’d ever read, and since I read a few hundred books every year I read some weird shit.

So when I passed the book along to NLW a few weeks later, I dubbed it My Little Pony porn because I couldn’t think of a better way to describe it. All that long, colored hair. Once she’d read it too, the phrase stuck – it totally is My Little Pony porn.

Turns out the author had written several books in the series, which NLW and I both read because, well, it’s My Little Pony porn and it’s stronger than we are! And apparently there’s another series by the same chick only with vampires instead of faeries and which NLW — purely to punish me for giving her the My Little Pony porn in the first place — loaned to me the last time I saw her.

Don’t click on the links. I’m serious. My Little Pony porn is evil. EEE. VIL.

Potato-Corn Chowder

Recipes, ,

This is what I made for dinner tonight. On the off chance you happen to need a chowder recipe, here one is! (I majored in literature so I can say shit like “here one is,” and you all immediately understand that I did it on purpose, for, like, effect.)

potato-corn-chowder

Medium dice:
2 stalks celery
1/2 large onion
2 small or 1 medium carrot(s)

Sautee, in a large soup pot over medium flame, in:
1 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. butter

When veggies are tender, add:
3 c. broth*
1 c. milk

Bring to a simmer.

Dice and add to the pot:
4 medium potatoes

Add:
1/2 tsp. dried parsley

Simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 8-10 minutes.

Add:
1/2 c. fresh or frozen corn kernels

Remove 1/4 c. of the broth from the pot with a cup. Mix in:
2-3 Tbsp. flour

Whisk the broth/flour mixture until there are no lumps in it, then slowly add it to the chowder, stirring constantly, until the soup has thickened. Let the chowder cook a few more minutes, maybe five to ten, so that the flour doesn’t taste raw.

Add salt and pepper to taste, and serve. Like all soups, this chowder is great served with crusty bread and a green salad.

*For broth, you may use vegetable or chicken broth, or water. (I always use water and Knorr brand vegetable bouillon, because of all the veggie bouillon on the market it’s the only one I don’t hate.)

To make a non-vegetarian version: fry up 4 strips of bacon and put aside to cool, then sautee your mirepoix in the bacon fat (reducing or omitting the olive oil and butter) and continue with the rest of the recipe as written except add the crumbled bacon to the chowder along with the corn, or sprinkle it on before serving.

Servings: 4-6
Cooking time: 20-30 minutes

Recipe Source
Author: Michelle Mook
Source: goblinbox.com

Second Birthday

Social

In which we visit chez DeSchepper-Flora, and eat.

Saturday night a group of us descended upon Mr. J in his home, at the behest of his woman, to celebrate his birfday. She’d made nachos, soup, and appetizers, and there were cookies and pie and a variety of tasty beverages. Hilarity ensued.

Actually, both Bread and I took naps while we were there. (They provide a comfortable atmosphere, to their credit, those Flora-DeScheppers.)

Because these events always sex-segregate, I hung out with T. and J. and Amazon Blonde. We gossipped and looked at T.’s new line of jewelry until Amazon Blonde had to leave for work. And the menfolk ate much pie, seated on the couches watching TV.

We all went through their discarded A/V pile before leaving; I took a couple of DVDs and a CD and Bread snagged a few CDs himself.

All in all, a fabulous evening. God but it’s nice to have actual friends!

Friday Trifecta

Social

In which there’s a full moon, Friday the 13th, and Amazon Blonde’s birthday all on the same day.

Friday night we went bowling for Amazon Blonde’s birthday.

I bowled three games (scored 111, 113, and 112) and drank a lot of cocktails. Bread bowled one game. In each of my three games I bowled a spare and two strikes in the 4th-6th frames. At least I’m consistent.

I have a hand-me-down ball that is actually a reactive ball drilled straight, so it bowls funny. I doubt I’ll ever increase my average without a new ball.

I love bowling shoes.

I hung out with lots of cool chicks.

The whole party was headed to the bar after bowling, but of course Bread didn’t want to go and so I had to go home. I was pissed and didn’t talk to him the whole drive; I can’t even count the number of events we’ve left early over the years because he didn’t want to hang out and he was driving. He’s selfish like that: must get his way, never making a little goddamned personal sacrifice for his wife.

In other news, we’re obsessed with Tang. We bought a container of it at the store and in the past 24 hours we’ve consumed like five quarts of the stuff.

The Ill-Made Mute

Reading

In which thin-crust pizza is the best. And knitting.

The Ill-Made Mute (The Bitterbynde, Book 1)Yesterday, Bread and I had lunch at Revelations. We had their house pizza – pesto, Greek olives, feta, and carmelized onions – and one of the pizzas on special, plus a salad. While we were waiting for the food, I scanned the fantasy/sci-fi section and found myself a trilogy to read. There was a buy-two-get-one-free sale on fiction, so I got $11 worth of books for $7. Yay!

This series is beautifully written. Behold: Overhead, a whirlpool of Skyhorses cantered in training circuits, and the sun was a goldfish in a blue bowl.

The sun was a goldfish in a blue bowl. Is that not gorgeous?

After we ate, I sat with Girija and Sarvani for a bit; they were knitting and I had to give them the URL to Iowa Chicks Knitting. Sarvani had picked up a stitch on the sock she was making and wanted help frogging a row but she didn’t have smaller needles with her to pick the stitches up with so she ended up tinking.

After lunch I sat in the jeep for an hour while Bread had a business meeting. Thank God I’d just bought a book, that’s all I have to say. Then we went grocery shopping and went home. There’s so much good food in the kitchen that I can’t eat for the inability to decide what to make.