Randomish link to a gallery of decidedly NSFW 19th-century Japanese woodcuts. Semi-typical caption:
Title: Pillar of Flames (Hi-hashira)
Description: A flaming pillar of penises rises above the roofs of the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter (which was frequently destroyed by fire)
When reading Escape from Hell earlier this year (it's the Niven/Pournelle sequel to their Inferno from the 1970s), I was delighted to see a copyediting slip that referred to the ancient realm of "the Acadian empire". Ah, the decadent feasts of rappie pie and maple tarts....
Steve C. @869: The idea of the Peanuts cast as ST:TNG characters just cries out for a talented artist! I can just see Troi behind the psychologist's stand.
Wrong sub-series, wrong direction, but behold.
Summer @516: an alternate and rather snarkier (but still spoiler-laden) set of summaries for Gabaldon's first five books can be found here.
(My own attempt to summarize book #6 in a similar vein can be found here.)
Elliott @434: . I can highly recommend Diana Gabaldon's 'Outlander' series, although I would recommend skipping the first book entirely, or reading it after you've read book 2 (Dragonfly in Amber). The first book is more 'romancey,' the second drops you right in the midst of an ongoing plot and is, to me, more engaging.
Having re-read the series over the past month, I'll second the recommendation with some additional info and caveats. One of the things I found particularly appealing about the first book was its tight first-person narrative, but this gradually disintegrates as the series continues-- each new book dilutes it down by adding another significant third-person narrator. Still, the stories and characters mostly continue to be appealing and interesting.
The seventh book in the main series just came out, and ends with a veritable mountain range of cliffhangers; there's also a tangle of inconsistent timelines in the middle that may be fixed in future editions. (Gabaldon has been collecting errata in her Compuserve forum.) A compendium reference book with character lists etc. came out after book 4, and a follow-up to that may be in the works. A graphic novel based on the series is supposed to come out sometime next year.
There's also a spin-off series of mystery novels centered on Lord John Grey, a character who first appears toward the end of Dragonfly; a novella from this spin-off series appeared in the Legends II SF/F anthology a few years ago.
The xkcd diagram for LOTR also follows the Peter Jackson movies rather than the books, but hey.
I managed to get my husband a shirt of this LOTR riff while they were available; apparently the availability has since been shut down.
Terry @174: It might also be that, absent something like a madeline, shredding carrots, et al, would be a lot more work that slicing up a leafy plant.
"Mandoline", surely? Though now I have a very strange image of Proust dreamily partaking of dim sum (or yum cha, depending on location), dipping a lightly crispy fried cake of shredded Chinese radishes into his tea.
Nanohana kinda are little tiny flowers, since the buds are about the same size as the ones on broccoli. Pix here of someone putting them through a traditional rice-bran pickling process.
Jacque @776: is there a vegetable native to Japan that serves essentially the same culinary function that broccoli does in the U.S.? If so, what's its Japanese name?
Richard Hosking's A Dictionary of Japanese Food: Ingredients and Culture lists rapeseed bud shoots as nanohana, a common spring vegetable that looks like broccoli and is often made into pickles.
The book is primarily in English; the main section is organized by the romaji names for everything in alphabetical (not kana or iroha) order, but each entry also shows the name in hiragana and kanji. There's also an index in the back matching up the alphabetized English terms to the corresponding romaji entry.
Xopher @508: poutine can't be VEGAN, I'd think (I don't know of any vegan cheese substitute that melts the right way or anything like the right way)
Mochi (sticky rice[*] dough) can get pleasantly gooey in a mozzarella-like fashion when heated, though the moisture content has to be right. Probably the easiest way to experiment[**] would be to get a box of mochiko (the corresponding powdered flour-type substance) and make a small batch of mochi according to instructions, rather than starting from scratch and mooshing cooked sticky rice into a smooth paste.
[*: sometimes also called "glutinous rice" although it doesn't actually contain wheat-type gluten, so it's celiac-safe if that's a problem for anyone]
[**: unless wherever you find the mochiko already has pre-made unfilled mochi dumplings-- I don't think the usual sweet bean-based fillings for mochi dumplings would be helpful in this context, and iirc Xopher hates bean-based sweets anyway]
Nancy @143: For the sake of nostalgia, an old thread about Dobson and his dog.
Keiths @7: [wrt Samurai reference] [...]I also think that part of the reason is purely because, Oriental things are cool right now. Just go to Target and buy a tile with a Chinese character on it. It might even be the character for what it says it is.
At least it's less permanent than getting a tattoo you can't understand.
ISTR having seen a reference here, back in 2005, to Sean Hannity falling all over himself to praise one of the Terri Schiavo "experts" as a a nominee for the "Nobel Peace Prize for Medicine" [sic], based on an ineligible letter of recommendation from a Florida Congressman.
The new Simon's Cat vid is something of a promo for the new Simon's Cat book, which is reasonably entertaining but doesn't have as much sporfle factor-- static drawings just don't have the elements of timing, motion, and sound effects. Some of the drawings are standalones, while others are linked together in sequence or theme; there are also certain bits that may be peculiarly Brit (hedgehogs in the garden and milk deliveries on the doorstep).
Vicki @16: "Tapered legs" are probably a good search phrase to start with.
What's the nature of your "nonstandard" waist/hip ratio? For the past decade or so, the jeans shape trend has been favoring a relatively narrow-hipped style (or at least hips that aren't much wider than the waist) with a dropped waistline, often leading to "muffin top" fleshy overspillage-- a low waistline and a cropped top are a particularly risky combination. But that doesn't nec'ly mean that a different waist/hip ratio is nonstandard within most of the population, as opposed to just being poorly accommodated.
If you're looking for tapered legs *and* a relatively high, narrow waistline over a loose hip/thigh region, you may want to make a beeline for the "reverse fit" jeans style which is finally reappearing in stores after a long hiatus. These were popular during the 80s, sometimes exaggerated by "pegging" the legs (narrowing the cuffs by pleating excess width at the ankle and rolling them up to keep the pleat in place). They're often denigrated as "mom jeans", but I'm glad I can find them again after lovingly mending my old ones for years (the style went so far out of fashion that they weren't even appearing in thrift shops anymore)-- I really dislike the low-waisted flared-leg style; even with the compleletely straight-cut rectilinear jeans shape, my waist/hip ratio won't keep my shirts tucked in unless their hems are long enough to anchor underneath my butt.
I've previously posted random related tidbits which I won't bother to repeat here, but felt the need to add this observation:
One of the worst moments of my life was realizing that despite growing up with a "Bad Demon Parent/ Good Nice Parent" mentality, the latter's main qualification was almost entirely by omission because of not doing anything.
Not predicting that I would grow up to become a prostitute[*], when I was ten and was found reading about sex in an old "marriage manual" of theirs from an old box in the basement. Not forever telling me that I was worthless, so that whenever I overheard my parents telling someone outside the family that I was smart/talented/etc., I felt ashamed that I was so pathetic that they had to lie to everyone else about me. Not railroading straight over all of my attempts to speak-- I didn't fully realize until my mid-20s that I *could* say "no" and make it stick (luckily I was too antisocial to undergo much of the otherwise predictable dating predicaments); I'm still usually incapable of finishing my own sentences because I expect to be interrupted and ignored, and let my train of thought fall off a bridge halfway through.
And also not stopping the "bad" parent from doing those things to me. The only exception I can remember is one incident when I was physically pulled out of a feedback loop of being hit harder because I wouldn't stop crying. But everything else? The whole chronic cycle of crushing my self-esteem into small pear-shaped pieces happened every day, year after year, without any attempt to intervene, much less offer any praise or affection to help me put myself back together.
I don't trust either of them anymore. In some ways, I wish I could, in that I have a better idea now about how their own childhood dynamics made them what they are. But that doesn't undo anything that happened, or retcon the lack of some things that didn't happen.
[*: I didn't, but kept considering that option most of the way through college (for which I had a four-year full-tuition academic scholarship). Not that I think that there's nec'ly something wrong with being any type of sex worker, although many of them are subject to exploitation and abuse.]
Joel @616: Bujold used that idea of "no bad crime scenes in places with lots of books" in "Winterfair Gifts", just a passing thought from Roic.
I remember seeing that line in "Winterfair Gifts", and getting a dire feeling of wrongness by the way Bujold chose to rephrase it there. The original forensic pathologist may've said that he'd never seen a bad crime scene in a place with a lot of books (of any sort?)-- but Roic is waiting chez Vorthys and looking at shelves of antique books with leather spines and gilded pages, which prompt him to think that in his previous career in the Hassadar city guard, he'd never been at a bad crime scene "where there were books like this" (emph. added).
It made me wonder if decades earlier, if Roic had been waiting outside old Ezar's room in the Imperial Residence, whether he would've equally thought to himself that he'd never seen a bad crime scene in Hassadar where there were antique furniture/artwork/carpets/whatall like this. Perhaps it ties into the older idea that Ezar and his ilk were devious enough to commit mass murder from a distance while keeping the appearance of clean hands. But the lingering suggestion of "people with nice things don't commit horrible crimes" still bothers me somehow, although on principle I should probably be equally bothered by the parallel suggestions "people with lots of books don't commit horrible crimes" or "horrible crimes don't happen to people with lots of books"-- didn't someone here post a piclink a week or two ago to Jaycee Dugard's packed bookshelf, in the room where she'd been hidden away by the guy who kidnapped her when she was 11 and fathered two children on her before she was 18? Okay, so it doesn't have the acute splashiness of blood on the walls, but doesn't that count as a bad crime scene in chronic slow-motion?
Which of course doesn't negate the original quote from that forensic pathologist's professional experience. But still.
Sean @257: Why do we call a chocolate brownie decadent but not carrot juice?
Because carrot juice has a higher ratio of dietary nutrients to calories? There may well be people who subjectively enjoy carrot juice as much as (or even more than) they enjoy chocolate brownies, but unfortunately for this specific metaphor, nutritional value is far more objectively measureable than "reading value" is-- depending on who you ask, "reading value" may mean "amenable to multiple levels of analysis", "reinforcing proper moral values", "offering insight into the human condition", "introducing new intellectual concepts" or what-all, as already rehashed in this thread.
But I wonder if the "outside the comfort menu" might be a useful edible analogy-- some people prefer to eat the same thing over and over again (as per "An Engineer's Guide to Cats"); others enjoy the experience of trying new foods, where the novelty itself is part of the enjoyment. I guess the question is whether "stepping outside the comfort zone" means "stepping outside the known comfort zone to possibly expand its boundaries", or "knowing that you've stepped beyond possible boundary expansion to the point of actual discomfort."
wrt indigo, @69/71: there're alternate sets of instructios here (doesn't specify fiber) and here (slightly different instrux for wool vs. everything else (cotton, linen, rayon, and silk)[*]).
[*: This grouping seems somewhat odd, since silk and wool are both animal protein fibers instead of plant cellulose bast, but what the hey. Also, all of the above recipes seem to call for the hydrosulfite process rather than the zinc-lime one; suppsedly the latter solution can be maintained for an arbitrary amount of time and creates darker blues while the former has to be used within a few days and results in paler colors, but I've never personally tried either so have no direct anecdotes.]
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 59 |
| 2008 | 134 |
| 2007 | 352 |
| 2006 | 155 |
| 2005 | 106 |
| 2004 | 7 |
| 2003 | 2 |
Total: 815 comments. View all these comments on a single page. (May take some time to load.)
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Julie L.:
Show all comments by Julie L..