I love Dante

I couldn't resist this ... ta muchly to A Cunning Plan.


The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!


First Level of Hell - Limbo

Charon ushers you across the river Acheron, and you find yourself upon the brink of grief's abysmal valley. You are in Limbo, a place of sorrow without torment. You encounter a seven-walled castle, and within those walls you find rolling fresh meadows illuminated by the light of reason, whereabout many shades dwell. These are the virtuous pagans, the great philosophers and authors, unbaptised children, and others unfit to enter the kingdom of heaven. You share company with Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Aristotle. There is no punishment here, and the atmosphere is peaceful, yet sad.


Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Low
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Low
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

A day at the Show

Best Beloved was hoping to find the jam judging at the Show a bit like a Maggie and Judy sketch, but we missed out on the actual tasting session and so only saw the results, not the action. Next time we'll try to be there, to see if it is fraught with personality conflicts. As it was, my parent's next-door neighbour swept the field, along with someone else we don't know. Nearly every major section had their names written on it. But not the Novice section! BB won a First for his blackberry jam.

Clever puss!

We spent a whole day at the Show. Here are some highlights:

THE EXHIBITS

All locked away so that no-one can run away with the precious things...


I don't know what this centre one is meant to be, but I know what it looks like (and when I gave it the file name of "Phallic_vegies" in flickr, it had 1 view within a second!)


I love this one's toothy grin


The bottom one looks like it belongs with the Valkyries


These don't have faces, but they sure have presence


This was the expression on my Nana's face whenever I left the house without wearing a bra. I like the inclusion of a cat in the display


I wasn't sure if this was a doll or a scarecrow. It was a weird, freaky height

THE SIGNAGE


Helpful signage


Threatening signage (At the Dodgem Cars -- we didn't know they came with Eject buttons)


Confused signage (I'm pretty sure they're gloves)


Overwhelming signage (she was the tiniest chook)

THE CHOOKS


The winningest chook doing a double-take at all the attention


Such a handsome comb!


Ditto


I call this one 'Beyonce'

THE EVENTS


The woodchop. I watched this for hours, waiting for a foot to come off or an eye to come out. It rocked. In this picture, the chopper on the right is a woman, and she kicked ass


The wrestling. IWA Pro-wrestling always makes me laugh. It's so pathetic! My 9-yo loved it, and I guess he's the right age to think it's all real. At one point he was hissing at the 'baddy' and giving him two hands of 'rude finger' when the baddy jumped out of the ring and headed his way. Bumblebee nearly shat himself. I laughed till I wept. No harm done, of course. The guy just leered at the little boys and went back to the ring. But I noticed B was a lot quieter after that! (He's the one in the rainbow t-shirt)


Street performers. This is Bumblebee, finally called out as a volunteer (his dream come true), about to experience a very scary stunt. He was very brave -- a personal milestone!


The secnd, scarier and more dangerous stunt. Bumblebee is at the front of the line to be jumped over. He did great. The guy at the back reminded me a lot of byrd -- same style, same words

THE PEOPLE


The little dog says it all for me


This is one of the two little boys above. They were dressed in identical army greens, with black caps that read 'SWAT', and carried (with one hand) showbags containing guns bigger than themselves. The other hand held a pistol. I feel like I should report them to the Terrorist hotline


Local lovelies practicing their cat's-bum mouths


This young lad kept wandering around with his mates during the wrestling, bellowing 'POOFTERS!' at the wrestlers. What amused me was the fact that he kept his hands firmly in his pockets, wriggling nonstop. I think this photo catches the action beautifully. I'd say he likes the thought of men writhing around together on the ground... what do you think?

AND FINALLY...


I reckon they should have had a comb-over competition. I saw lots of very inventive solutions to baldness during the day. But if they had, this man would have won hands-down. It was immaculate, with the 'fringe' trimmed nicely, and it didn't move in even the stiffest breeze. I'd like to know the secrets of his product use.

Show-down

This is probably the last chance I'll get to post before Sunday night. We're travelling down the Snowy Mountains Highway tomorrow to stay with my folks in Numbugga (real place!). Taking the cats, of course. They'd never forgive us if we came home smelling of the farm without taking them. They love having a few acres to roam (only during the day, of course. The feral cats would tear them to bits at night).

We're also going to the Bega Show, and while I very much doubt I'll be able to match the glory of Zoe's show tales, I hope to report back in my own humble way... especially since Best Beloved has entered about 4 of his jams* in the Homemakers Novice section! What a hoot. I hope he gets a ribbon. It would make his lovely chest puff out charmingly. It's stiff competition, however. Unfortunately we won't be there at the judging tomorrow, but I'm sure there'll be a few competitors fluttering around the tables throughout the weekend. I'll borrow me mam's camera to capture the tension.

Just to get you in the mood, here's Best Beloved, on a scorching summer's sunday, making plum sauce in his boxers:

Shhh... don't tell him I blogged it. He's vewy, vewy shy. And he Never. Reads. My. Blog. Not from disapproval on his part or censorship on mine. He just doesn't. I think he's scared that if he starts reading blogs, he'll never stop. And then when would he find the time to cook? It's also a nice view of our custom kitchen, our wedding present to ourselves. Note the Dalek kitchen glove. That's my Mother's Day present from Bumblebee.

So see you in a few days, hopefully with an encouragement ribbon!

*The 4 flavours are: Seville Orange Marmalade, Orange & Rhubarb Jam, Blackberry & Apple Jam and Cumquat Marmalade. Mmmmm... we're also eating Crab-apple jelly on our toast at the moment. He made that the day before yesterday. Right now he's brewing up pickled garlic. How good is he?!

TAGS: men cooking, jam, marmalade, pickled garlic

How lucky was I?

Wonderful thunderstorm in Canberra last night, and I have a policy of never working on the computer if there's any skerrick of thunder or lightning, no matter how urgent the job.

And it just happened to coincide with the return of Adam Hills! All those memes over Xmas asking me what tv shows I watched, and I had forgotten about the Sacred Half Hour on Wednesdays. Sigh. Happy.

Also had a chance to read the papers from the last week or so and scoff at Australia's latest outbreak of Mad Cow Disease, among other laughable events.

Remember to breathe

I love papercuts. Not the type that hurt like fuck and never bleed, but paper cut into patterns. Traditional Asian papercutting is a spectacular artform, usually carried out by a wizened old man in the corner of a shabby paper shop using a simple stanley knife on a cheap gummed pad of paper. Simple papercuts are often pasted on to the front of Japanese-bound ledger books. Other, more elaborate ones, are strung up for holidays and other special occasions.

I've noticed papercuts are becoming increasingly popular in a contemporary art context. I was discussing this with someone the other day, and they later sent me the following images. Neither of us know who the artist is. If anyone can help identify the work, I'd love to know. They are a wonderful use of paper, both in a papercut sense and also as origami.

Object and space, finding beauty in what is made, and what remains behind. Enjoy.







TAGS: paper art, papercuts, beauty

Stare-downs of a Geisha defeated by randy cowboys

Best Beloved and I took advantage of a child-free weekend to go to a late movie last night. We went to separate movies, because I wasn't too keen on the idea of a Speilberg-directed comment on Israel and he wasn't keen on a gorgeous Japanese/Hollywood chickflick. So off he went to Munich, and off I went to Japan. Neither of us came out on fire.

Having read the book (by Arthur Golden) years ago, I wasn't expecting much in the way of plot. I went for the visuals, and I wasn't disappointed. Lush. Lush, lush and really lush. Scrummy, even. But I found myself getting really cranky at hamfisted American writers and directors.

OK, the whole premise of the story is that Sayuri has blue eyes like water, and of course, they are extremely unusual for a Japanese person. So she is a pearl beyond price. I got the point within the first half hour, and so did the rest of the audience. But they made the poor actress play the part staring wildly all the time, zooming in close to her face to capture the blue irises, which backfired because at too close a range they were cheapened, and quite obvious contact lenses. If they had just had a couple of dramatic blue-eyed shots and then let her strangeness just embed quietly to match the feel of the film, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. She was a stunning girl, but they made her look like a wide-eyed fool.

I had much more joy from Brokeback Mountain. Lush, meaningful and packed with eye-candy. I'd read the short story (by E. Annie Proulx) so long ago that I'd forgotten the ending, and was caught short for a moment, which I guess was the point. I thought Heath Ledger perfectly captured an uneducated laconic country boy, unable to express himself emotionally. The whole film evoked such memories of reading Proulx so well that I'm about to embark on a big re-read of everything I have of hers. I may change my mind when I experience the real thing!

I recommend seeing both on the big screen, the former only because the settings deserve it and the latter because it's a powerful experience worthy of dark rooms and Dolby sound. I can't speak for Munich because I didn't see it, but BB gave it a 6/10.

Domestic bliss

I've just spent the last hour making a huge batch of tomato pasta sauce to bottle and preserve for winter, making the most of our current tomato glut. Best Beloved is usually the person who makes our preserves, but he is a stick-to-the-recipe-with- no-variations sort of guy, and gets very nervous at the thought of improvising.

I volunteered to make the sauce because every recipe he found for pasta sauce was vetoed by me as being insipid and unworthy of our tastebuds. He didn't want to make something up.

'It's like art,' I told him. 'You never know what you're going to get, even if you start with a firm idea in mind. In fact, if you end up with your first idea, it doesn't work. There's no freshness. You have to play, to take risks.'

This is why I never stick to a recipe. I've never attempted to write down my spaghetti sauce recipe because it's different every time, just like my mother taught me. When I was growing up she let me help with the sauce, and the policy was to fling stuff in until it tasted good. Mum's habit is to read recipe books as if they were novels (she reads them in bed! So does BB) and then cook her version. It was a great apprenticeship and it taught me that once you know your flavours, you can't really go wrong. Well, you can, but that's pretty rare. I think I've only cooked one inedible meal in my life, but lots of unusual ones.

Anyway, it was quite fun chopping and stirring. I played some records, and rediscovered my favorite Talking Heads song, a paean to loving where you are:

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE (NAIVE MELODY)

Home, is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb - burn with a weak heart
(so I) guess I must be having fun
The less we say about it the better
Make it up as we go along
Feet on the ground
Head in the sky
It's ok I know nothing’s wrong ... nothing

Hi yo I got plenty of time
Hi yo you got light in your eyes
And you're standing here beside me
I love the passing of time
Never for money
Always for love
Cover up and say goodnight . . . say goodnight

Home - is where I want to be
But I guess I’m already there
I come home - she lifted up her wings
Guess that this must be the place
I can't tell one from another
Did I find you, or you find me?
There was a time before we were born
If someone asks, this where I'll be . . . where I'll be

Hi yo we drift in and out
Hi yo sing into my mouth
Out of all those kinds of people
You got a face with a view
I'm just an animal looking for a home
Share the same space for a minute or two
And you love me till my heart stops
Love me till I'm dead
Eyes that light up, eyes look through you
Cover up the blank spots
Hit me on the head ah ooh

So now we have 9 lovely jars of tomato pasta sauce with mushrooms, silverbeet and capsicum, lots of garlic, masses of fresh basil, oregano and thyme, and hints of anchovy and balsamic vinegar, among other things. Best Beloved is operating the Vaccola as I type. Yum!

Postscript: This sounds like I'm dissing BB for being unadventurous. I sort of am, because he held his own this morning when I took him to Fitball with me. He's a juggler, so he's hip to the concept of balance, and the bastard was kneeling on his ball on his first time, whereas I am still trying to feel where my centre of gravity is (my mental picture of myself has a much smaller arse). So I need to be good at something today.

TAGS: cooking, pasta sauce, Talking Heads