On Science and TV

TV and science have a rocky relationship. They love each other, but they don't really understand each other. Or rather, TV loves science with zero understanding of how it functions, much like the unworldly spinster and one Mr. Liberace. Oh sure, he's sparkly and glamorous, talented and good to his mother, but ladies: he's gay and he's passed on; he can never love you back and you are never going to have a little cottage together on the beach in Malibu. TV sits up at night drawing hearts around pictures of beakers and diagrams of atoms. It writes Mrs. T. V. Science on all its peechees in elaborate cursive.

But I digress... TV shows seem invariably drawn towards the scientific, and to my way of thinking, they are better when they recognize and accept that their love can never be and just shrug it off with a "yeah, but what if..." and a wistful smile. For example:

Star Trek.
How does warp speed work?
Crystals. It's science!

The X-Files.
How come things are unexplained in the world and mysterious?
Aliens. It's science!
(What's with the weird guy who ate you and then barfed you into an underground man-mould?
Uh, Indian folk magic? Look, we're just enjoying ourselves here.)

Heroes. (Okay- I only saw season 1. Maybe they have fucked it up. I don't know.)
What's with the super powers?
What do you want from us- they're super powers.

Star Wars & Firefly.
So, spaceships, eh? Laser guns? Chinese and English in the same sentence?
Time out of mind! The distant past, the distant future and far far away.

Law & Order.
Forensics, that's got beakers and stuff, right?
We're only civil servants! It takes weeks, nay, months!, to get results on this stuff. We don't need to understand it, we just need to do our due diligence. Hey- look at that shouty guy over there!

These programs accept that they are entertainment. People don't watch Firefly to learn how spaceships fly; they watch because it's awesome. They don't watch Law & Order because they want a lesson on Watson and Crick; they want a police procedural. (Don't worry, I'm getting to CSI: Branson.)

What was great about the X-Files, I have come to realize, was that half the time Mulder just shrugged and grinned his goofy half-grin at whomever he was with, as if to say, "I know, right? Crazy times!" The other half of the time Mulder burst into a room, shouting, "Scully! I have an insane conspiracy theory about alien technologies or something!" And Scully would do an awesome Leela impression ("Oh lord, he's made of wood"), her hand on her brow as she looked at the floor, gathering strength to soldier on.

One of my favorite scenes in Star Trek was in one of the movies, the one where they travel back in time, and the doctor is in a hospital. He passes a guy on a stretcher, checks his chart while he surreptitiously scans him. When he looks at the chart and his tricorder or whathaveyou, you exclaims, "My god, the barbarians!" because they're going to remove the patient's kidney or something. I think he says, "I can cure him!" and zaps him with his Future Technology and like magic, er, I mean, science, the man is cured! Yay! No one pauses to explain how it theoretically works. It's a grey box. It has a red light and a touch screen. It makes noises. You point it at a guy and push the screen to make the noises and it fixes the guy. SCIENCE!

But not everyone is the cool girl at the party who just kind of hangs by the tin tub full of melting ice and light beer looking awesome in her skinny jeans and old concert t-shirt saying, "What's up" to everyone who passes by, laughing at jokes, just, like, being cool. Someone has to be the over-eager girl at the front door putting everyone's jacket on the bed in the guest room, laughing too loudly so everyone knows she's having a good time, doing one shot after much preamble and immediately vomiting into the kitchen garbage can. That girl is the show whose entire season I recently watched on Hulu. That girl is Fringe. Fringe has carefully coordinated her headband, belt and socks without noticing that she is a bald double-amputee in sansabelt pants. Fringe practices opening conversational salvos in the mirror before going out only to overwhelm strangers with stories about her dead cat ("ohmygodMittensItwassosad") told in a rushed, overloud voice. You can't dislike her because she's trying so hard. But the closest you can get to liking her is pity, and that makes you feel kind of icky.

Fringe spends about a quarter of each episode providing "plausible" explanations for how its "science" works. This is a terrible mistake because it's all so easy to understand and therefore feels, well, unscientific. (On a related note: part of how ER sounds authentic to the layman is the amount of jargon they use in the "medical" parts of the show. You're not meant to understand it. You're supposed to just let it wash over you, a wave of medicalese to set the mood.) Fringe insists on explaining things in words I know, which really takes away from the authenticity (for lack of a better word) because I'm pretty sure I don't understand advanced genetics, biochemistry and physics.

In a recent episode, one of the characters asks, "Tell me: did the creature have the arms of a tiger, the body of a scorpion and the tail of a rattlesnake?" He later exclaims, "Bat DNA! Of course! That was the missing ingredient." Um, right. I know they're going to glibness-in-the-face-of-incredible-weirdness as their attempt at The Cool Girl, but it just comes off like a poor imitation. (Oh Lord, she's put on her Osmunds t-shirt.) Fringe would be so much better if it took a page from the X-Files and used that time for character development and to generate an atmosphere. J J Abrams: more shrugging, less fakey science.

The sad thing is, like CSI: Frankfort, Explaining The Science is part of the salespitch. The difference is that CSI: knows what its audience wants, namely ballistic gel and mood lighting. I don't get the impression that it thinks its a great police procedural ("Yes, let the CSIs make the arrest! They're all armed and go in for busts all the time!") or even much of a mystery show ("Huh, you say he was holding the gun and confessed to firing it? I dunno guys, sounds like a real poser!"). It is a showcase for Future Technology and lighting design and it seems happy with that. (CSI: Miami, of course, is a showcase for David Caruso's mad standing-at-an-angle skills and Khandi Alexander's awesome cleavage, if little else. Personally, I can't watch either show and I refuse to acknowledge the existence of NCIS and CIS: Big Apple. But that is neither here nor there.)

Fringe doesn't seem to know what its audience wants. Sometimes it thinks the viewer wants to know how the actual molecular reactions work. But then it gets bored (and also, it doesn't know what it's talking about anyway) and so then it thinks the viewer wants Action. There is a flurry of activity where people can travel across the country in a single hour, where there is always interagency cooperation and no one ever asks the protagonist about her crazy diction (what is up with Anna Torv's accent?). No, no, the people want to see monsters! Enter the bad CGI... Now maybe a love interest? No, no they're just friends. (Another digression: there was one moment between Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson, of Dawson's Creek fame, where, to comfort her -as a friend, mind you- he reaches out cups her face in hand, running his fingers into her hair and then drawing her to him to hold her while she weeps (? I don't know-maybe she was just sleepy). I tried to imagine one of my friends doing this and all I could see was a Craft Night gone horribly, hilariously wrong. I tried to imagine two friends of the same gender touching each other like that. Nope: that move is for lovers only, guys.

But back to the science thing. I'm really kind of disappointed. How is it possible that writers and TV producers don't get that you don't have to explain every goddamn thing?

Star Trek, how do your transporters work?
They break you down into your constituent parts and then reassemble you somewhere else.
No, really: how do they work?
It's future science! Just climb right in- it's awesome and it works every time, except for that time we beamed Spock half way into a rock and Bones had to build him a bionic ass. But that at least was funny!

Fringe, how does teleportation work?
Well, you see, you break the object or person down into is constituent parts and then reassemble it somewhere else. There is this ring-thingy that you have to build on the receiving end of the process, but not on the starting end. Did we mention this is advanced Quantum Physics? Yeah, it totally is. Real bleeding edge. But the object being teleported gets a large dose of radiation, so if it's a person, they better wear gloves and sunscreen!
No, really: how... wait, what? Sunscreen protects you from radiation when you're broken down into a bunch of molecules? That doesn't make sense!
Uh oh... Cheese it!

Is it to make up for not having enough plot? For having wooden actors? (Or in Joshua Jackson's case, actors who somehow manage to make bedroom eyes in every scene regardless of what's going on.) Does Fringe think its "science" gives it a veneer of legitimacy? Because it's like calling a ratty old Osmunds t-shirt "My Rock'n'Roll Shirt." I don't think Fringe could be saved from being so-so at best even with a She's All That nerd-to-hot-chick makeover. (And not just because the "nerd" in that scenario was acutally a hot chick with glasses and a pony tail.) I keep watching it because I don't really have to pay attention, so I can knit at the same time, and I can watch it on my computer when Pete is watching endless basketball. And I don't find it unbearable. I mean, it's not Two and a Half Men or anything. But good lord it makes the tiny, atrophied fraction of my brain that was been devoted to studies loosely labeled "science" cringe.

Sydney* Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (8)

Rebecca Haarlow totally cares what Pete thinks.

*And by "Sydney", tonight we mean "Joe."

Pete's favorite video game

Mermortal Kombat: Undersea Alliance. His favorite character was Merscorpion. He knew all the fatalities ("Out of Water," "Shark Bite") and all the rad moves. I mean, merfatalities.

Auld Lang Syne

This weekend we had dinner with a group of people assembled to see a friend as he blew through town on his way from Seattle back down to LA. As usual, we were happy to meet the friends of our friends and had a great time. Which, of course, we knew we would because of the email exchange that occurred in setting up the date, in which everyone was quite amiable. When we arrived at the appointed meeting place and were parking, Pete says (mid-parallel park, because he's so cool he can parallel and make observations at the same time), "Hey, that guy looks like B." And indeed he did.

Perhaps I did not start far enough back. Okay then, background. Pete and I met the first week of college in a freshman seminar on the Spanish Civil War. On the first day of class, there were 10 students. By the third week, I think there were 5, only 4 of whom remained at the end. Those 4 people were me, Pete, B. and a Czech girl, S. Now somewhere, lodged deep in the recesses of my memory, I knew that B. had lived in the same dorm as some of our friends, which struck me as rather small world at the time. But I had pretty much completely forgotten this piece of information and had not thought about it since.

We got out of the car and walked over to the group and sure enough, here is this guy that we haven't seen in 9 years, with whom we spent 1o weeks in a rather intense class (at least the professor was very intense)... and his 1-year old daughter. To date, I had not yet met the offspring of anyone I went to school with. I know people have had kids, but I have been terrible about getting around to meet them. Add to this the surprise that Pete recognized B. at a distance... Pete never recognizes people!

I spent a good portion of the evening chatting with B. and his wife, J., and watching them with their daughter. I feel like I frequently read about people running into old acquaintances and being envious of what they've done with their lives, or saddened, or bored, and that it really makes them reflect on their own lives and goals. But I can't think of many instances where people run into old acquaintances and are just really happy for them and how well things have turned out for them. (Probably because it's not a very dynamic position and doesn't really provide any insight into the characters.) But that is just how I felt chatting with B. after all these years. He and his wife appear to be really happy together, from what we saw he's a great dad, and he just seemed kind of quietly self-confident. And that little girl... oh man was she cute! And happy. She didn't cry, she didn't fuss. She was just happy the whole evening. It is my observation that children with really good parents are often happy with strangers and not fussy. She knew that whatever she needed, she'd get it.

(Minor Digression on Good Parenting from Someone Who Doesn't Have Kids But Does Have a Lot of Opinions: what really impressed me was how J. and B. gave their daughter plenty of freedom to make her own choices without ever taking their eyes off her. For example, whenever she started to toddle off down the street, B. would call, "Where are you going? Bye bye! Bye bye!" and she'd usually turn around with a big grin and toddle on back. When she didn't turn around on her own, he was at her side in about three strides, guiding her back to the group. She got to feel autonomous, pattering about on her own two little legs and he made sure she was never in any danger without being a helicopter parent.)

My point here is not to make anyone's ears burn or anything. More that our culture seems to worry quite a lot about what people will think of us in the future. We stress about reunions and running into old friends with whom we've lost touch. I know people who keep their Facebook page completely hidden to everyone they don't personally friend because they don't want anyone they used to know to find them. At least in one instance because they are certain that those people have not changed at all and they don't want to have to listen to the same old BS they suffered through in high school (over 15 years ago).

In my experience, though, running into people I haven't seem in 10 years is almost always a good thing. There are people at Craft Night where I can't believe we didn't hang out in high school and I totally regret letting 10 years go by without getting together. There are people I've only seen or talked to once in the last decade, but who have made incredible transformations out of bad situations. It is interesting to me that if my experience is unremarkable, those stories may be the most common, are taken for granted and therefore never make it into popular narrative. (Or perhaps I should say "the popular narrative", as in, the narrative constructed by popular culture as a whole.) And because the popular narrative spends so much time stressing over the less common bad reunion where everyone is better than you or no one has changed, that is the popular motif.

Questions: Is it your experience that running into old friends or acquaintances is generally a negative experience? Is it anything you ever give any thought to? Do you look forward to your next reunion? Do you keep your Facebook page hidden because you're pretty sure everyone is still an idiot (okay- that's probably true; I know I still am) or is it more for professional considerations? Does MySpace make you feel epileptic? (Off topic, yes, but still a valid question. My answer is: yes, yes it does.) Have you ever looked at someone's Facebook or MySpace page and been sad for them? (I have only had that happen with MySpace and never with someone I know.)

You thoughts: I want them!

Quick Knits

I usually don't blog about knitting because I assume most of the ten or fewer people who may or may not read this would not be interested. Also, it is good to not let one part of your life take over all parts of your life. But I have finally found the perfect baby shower gift that is handmade, not too expensive, can be done in five days (if you can knit for 5-7 hours on each of the first three) and is not a hat. Erika Knight's Classic Cashmere Sweater from Simple Knits for Cherished Babies took me literally three days to knit. Today I will block it and tomorrow I will sew it up. If I had been smart and bought the ribbon for the ties in back when I bought the yarn, I would do that tomorrow too, but that will have to wait until I can make it to the fabric store.

It's a neat pattern that has you knit the sweater all as one piece. The only seams will be at the sides.
You start at the bottom front and knit up to where you cast on extra stitches from the sleeves. I used the single loop cast-on from the Knitter's Handbook, at least I think that's what the cast-on is called. It's the loosest or second loosest option, which seemed important. I don't think you want baby knits to be too restrictive, and very firm cast-ons and bind-offs lead to stiff seams.

Once you get to the neck opening, you knit each side individually. But you don't have to dump the stitches for the other side anywhere; they can just hang out on the end of one of the needles until it's their turn. To me, that makes this pattern psychologically easier and faster. You need no special equipment, just yarn and a single set of needles*. When both sides of the neck opening are complete, you knit across all stitches again, binding-off the arms when wide enough, and suddenly you're done. I found the pattern to be well written and easy to use. It has little hints at the beginning and in the text describing the pictures that have to be integrated as you see fit. For example, the hints suggest slipping a stitch at the beginning of each row of the sleeves so that when they're folded back there will be a nice little detail at the cuff, but the the pattern doesn't say, "Sl1, K to end; Sl1 P to end." It just says "continue in straight stitch until x inches long."

I used RYC Cashcotton DK for this, in colorway Fresh. It's a mix of cotton, microfiber, angora and cashmere, so it pretty much feels like the squishiest, nicest thing ever under your fingers. The pattern calls for three skeins and I bought four with the intention of making a little hat to go with it. So far I have used one and a half skeins, so I think I will make little booties too. Conventional wisdom with baby knits is that they should be machine-washable, and I typically agree with this. However, I think there's some wiggle room for newborns, as they won't be able to wear it for very long before it's too small, so a handful of hand-washings is probably not too onerous, if the knit is nice enough to warrant the trouble. And trust me: this yarn warrants any trouble you care to take. It's that amazing.

*Of course, I consider a crochet hook for weaving in ends, an embroidery needle for sewing up and scissors to be the essentially, taken-for-granted tools of every knitted item. That should go without saying.

Unenchanted

While Pete watched the Blazer game on TNT (with its unlistenable commentators), I subjected myself to a little piece of probable masochism and watched "Enchanted" streaming on Netflix. They couldn't perform enough of those songs at last year's Oscars and I've always kind of wondered what all the fuss was about. My expectations were very, very low. And you know: it wasn't a total and complete waste of my time. It was mostly a waste of my time, but Patrick Dempsey's irritated rejoinders made much of the movie almost bearable. And I liked the little post-feminist twist at the end; very cute.

What surprised me was how empty I felt once it was over. I have ranted in the past, out loud if not in this blog, about how much I hate the unrealistic standard set by romantic comedies for what love and relationships are supposed to be like. There's so much focus on "happily ever after" that girls who grow up watching too much of that dreck are woefully unprepared for the quotidian realities of a real, long-term relationship.

AN ASIDE: I feel I should offer the following disclaimer before going any further: I am one of those irritating people who is happiest doing the most mundane relationship/household things. I love going to the grocery store, I love long days in and out of the car running errands, I love chatting in the kitchen while I make dinner and Pete does the dishes... And I also had the nerve to marry my best friend, so we genuinely get along and enjoy each other's company.

SO... why do people usually watch romantic comedies? Because they like the sensation of vicariously falling in love. Now the whole deal with "Enchanted" is that it's supposed to put the lie to the fairy tale "happily ever after"- that given a dose of reality, even an animated fairy princess would realize you can't base a lifetime of "happily ever after" on a single duet and a mutual attraction. But it's still a romantic comedy, so the princess in question (named Gisele) has to fall in love. And she does. With real world New York divorce lawyer Dempsey. And it's very cute: she forms an attachment with his daughter and we find that she is less worldly than a six year old. Predictable, but not over done. So that's something.

ANOTHER ASIDE: One thing I did like is in the beginning, when Dempsey decides to let this strange woman sleep on his sofa - mostly because she's already asleep - he tells his daughter he wants her to sleep in his room that night. (Oh, keep your gross nonsense to yourselves, you guys!) It's exactly the kind of thing a real parent would do: protect their child. And mostly movies don't bother with stuff like that because they're too worried about how it would look that a grown man is telling a six year old to sleep in his room. And of course they would trust the trustworthy stranger! Why not? Also: the very first scene where we meet Dempsey's daughter, he's picking her up from Karate and gives her a book on great women, like Marie Curie and Rosa Parks. My feminism's all a tingle! Bravo, "Enchanted;" you did two things that were both surprising and charming.

ANYWAY... Because "Enchanted" makes it so abundantly clear that the "ever after" part is a long time and "happily" is going to take some time and consideration even if you do fall in love at first sight, I was surprised that it so closely followed the usual story arc for a romantic comedy. The big climax is that she falls in love with him, and "ever after" is glossed over in a "dancing around the apartment as a family" montage as the credits begin to roll. I wish that it had condensed the current plot down to 30-40 minutes and then spent an hour showing us how that relationship works.

I mean, this woman made me think of the first verse of Ben Fold's Five's "Kate": "She plays wipe out on the drums / The squirrels and the birds come / Gather 'round to sing the guitar." I mean, she called all the rats and pigeons in New York to clean a dirty apartment... with song. (And yes, the singing is very, very annoying. VERY ANNOYING.) How long is her unworldliness appealing? How do they get her a social security number? How did she start her little clothing business? And did she steal it from Dempsey's former girlfriend who accompanies the prince back to fantasy land? There are so many questions! It could have been a kind of brilliant surrealist mystery- the detective or IRS man nosing around the apartment, assuming her dress company is a money laundering front. Her saying, "I bested the evil Queen of Andalusia or wherever I claim to be from: I think I can handle the IRS." Cut to Gisele sitting in a little office in a bland government building, drooling with boredom, muttering "You're the evilest queen!" before passing out. Then the IRS man hates her because he thinks she's anti-gay! Hilarity ensues!

Okay, so that last bit was a terrible idea. I can own that. My point is, I really wanted to see what life was like for a pragmatic, cosmopolitan divorce attorney and single parent who (ostensibly) marries (and certainly at least moves in with) a magical virgin with all the wide-eyed optimism and sophistication of a small child. I wanted to see how she did as a parent; did the little girl ever get to be a little girl, or did she have to keep giving her step-mom advice, like, "don't wear too much make-up or you'll look like a slut." (That is really a piece of advice she gives Gisele in the movie, though not in those exact words.)

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (7)

Rebecca Haarlow penned a screenplay for "Undercover Blues 2: Son of Muerte" that was never made due to Stanley Tucci's belief that audiences would not buy a complicated backstory involving the characters played by himself, Park Overall and Dave Chappelle.

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (6)

Rebecca Haarlow owns a variety of wigs and false moustaches for the purpose of starting waves at the various sporting events she covers.

News from early 80s Portland maybe!

Ken Jennings is trying to start a meme and it's kind of a neat idea. What are the first five news events you remember as a kid and how old were you? I'm trying to figure out how I would even begin to determine this. I vividly remember watching the Challenger shuttle explode (1/28/86, 5 years 2 months). I think I remember Mary Lou Retton in the 1984 Olympics (7-8/84, 3 years 8-9 months), but it's so hard to parse out what's cultural detritus from growing up with a TV and what's an actual memory. I will think about this and see what else I come up with. I kind of think the only way to do it, though, is to look at a list of events from those years and see if anything rings a bell. But is that cheating?

Answer Me This

How did Steven Seagal become... Who thought that he was a.... What... Wh... ...How do his movies get made?! He's terrible! The "action" is awful! I'm watching this thing Pete has on and I'm asking myself: To whom is he even a hero in this? Rageaholics? Workaholics? Good ol' boys? Wannabe cops? I simply don't understand how this man has a career.

Pete said he's watching it for the moment when the female lead realizes she's going to have to kiss him at some point. I said I'm watching for the moment when she realizes that she's in a Steven Seagal movie. Then we saw... Tom Arnold. I said, "I bet he already knows he's in a Steven Seagal movie." Pete said, "At this point in his career, Steven Seagal may be wondering how he ended up in a Tom Arnold movie."

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (5)

Every year Rebecca Haarlow officiates the secret ski contest between Matt Zaffino and Channing Frye on January 26, in honor of Australia Day.

Elitist Coffees for Douchebags

Have you seen the new McDonald's ads for their "gourmet" coffee drinks? I cannot believe that this works for them. On any level. I think what they're going for is "Cappuccino is an elitist, snob drink that we're bringing to the people," but what they're actually saying (in my opinion) is "Cappuccino is an elitist, snob drink and the only people who would ever drink it are elitist douchebags, but once McDonald's serves it, you'll see, the snobbiness is all a put on because secretly everybody wants to drink coffee at McDonalds." I just don't understand how this is an ad campaign. "Hey assholes! Come drink our snooty drinks!" And the implication that a soul patch or enjoying books (and yes, even "films", although I might agree with them about berets on adult men) could only ever be a put on, that's just so degrading. To everyone. It tells the average McDonald's customer that they cannot like these things. Come on, McDonalds! Times have changed; there's a new game in town called optomism, respect and pro-book-learnin'. Get on the Obama Train, guys!

PS: I think there are two of these ads, but I couldn't find the other one quickly. I did learn, however, that Kiwis are idiots. McDonald's: why are you insulting your customers so much?

This is happening.

This. Near my house. I have got to pay more attention. I wonder if this will change the quality of the weirdos in the alley.

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (4)

Rebecca Haarlow did not pick out Mike Dunleavy Sr's jacket/tie combination, although she did once best Mike Dunleavy Jr in a battle of wits. And in a pancake eating contest. And at "Bad Dudes."

Bonus: Rebecca Haarlow is a bad enough dude to save the president.

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (3)

This one time, Rebecca Haarlow caught Sam Adams making out with a dude who had reached the age of consent and said, "That's okay Sam; I'll keep your secret cause that's just how I roll."

Semantics

Is it just me or has the whole world forgotten the actual meaning of the word "miracle"? I think it's great that all those people survived that plane crash in New York, but it wasn't a miracle. It was good planning, good training, a competent crew and plenty of good samaritans. The news media have to choose: either everything's a miracle and there's no point in training or safety regulations, or some things aren't miracles, they're just really good people doing their jobs really well. A real miracle is when a plane falls out of the air into a marshmallow factory and everyone on board is cushioned in a pillow of pure joy.

I give up

I give up on making things up about Rebecca Haarlow. It turns out that it's a lot more fun in your living room when you can say negative or slanderous things and not worry about hurting anyone's feelings. But if I were a minor local sorta-celebrity, I would google myself daily and would feel bad reading about how I once got so mad even Allen Iverson told me to calm down. Or how I once had my stomach pumped because I ate an entire bulk bin of whole nutmegs. Or how my affair with Joel Przybilla ended because I wouldn't make him waffles after I beat him at Horse. Well, maybe I wouldn't feel bad. Maybe I'd just feel confused. Anyway, I can't bring myself to publish most of the probably-more-confusing-than-mean things I come up with, not even for laughs on a stupid blog probably only ten people have ever read. (Although the three I came up with just now are pretty good. And not at all mean.)

Nostradamus again

There are multiple History Channel programs about this guy. Here are two of my favorite Quatrains that HC interviewees say means something bit I think are just hilarious. First the French and then the English. You should look up what the internet has to say about the first one. Apparently it means Iran is going to blow up the Suez Canal, blocking the shipment of Australian biscuits (of the toaster variety?) to Europe. On the HC (in HD) they actually used the word "biscuit" (which means "cookie" in French) and called it the "Biscuit War Quatrain." Seriously: people get paid for this.

Century 2, Quatrain 3

Pour la chaleur solaire sus la mer,
De Negrepont les poissons demy cuits:
Les habitans viendront entamer,
Quand Rhod et Gannes leur faudra le biscuit.

Because of the solar heat on the sea
From Negrepont the fishes half cooked:
The inhabitants will come to cut them,
When food will fail in Rhodes and Genoa.

Century 5, Qutrain 98

A quarante huict degré climaterique,
A fin de Cancer si grande seicheresse:
Poisson en mer, fleuue: lac cuit hectique,
Bearn, Bigorre par feu ciel en detresse.

At the forty-eigth climacteric degree,
At the end of Cancer very great dryness:
Fish in sea, river, lake boiled hectic,
Béarn, Bigorre in distress through fire from the sky.

The second one is supposed to be about an atomic war that blows up SW France. Which is weird, because they also interpret the beginning to be about the 48th parallel, which south of Paris (right around the Freiburg Pete lived in, incedentally). My interpretation? Well, I do a lot of work in women's health topics. To me, "climacteric" means "menopause." Those first two lines, in my interpretation, predict a 48-year old woman in early menopause due to cancer treatment who is suffering vaginal dryness. Nostradamus suggests a folk remedy made by boiling fish from three different environments (probably to make a gelatin-like substance) and I think Béarn and Bigorre are a metaphore for the vagina. In his time, both had recently been independent kingdoms, but now one was part of France as the King's personal lands while the other remained outside the larger royaume. He's saying that just insideas well as just outside the southern "border" could use some fish salve.

I don't know, guys. I think this is an equally valid interpretation. Also, in C2Q24 (or however you're supposed to note these things; I don't really care that much), one that supposedly references Hitler, "Quand rien enfant de Germain observera" is translated as "When the German child will observe nothing," only "German" in French is "Allemand." "Germain" is not a French word; it's a French name.

(Oh my God - the morning news just presented someone's name like this: "Chelsea" and then underneath "Has Cellulite". Hahahaha!)

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (2)

Rebecca Haarlow enjoys the 2 DVD set "Lots & Lots of Trains."

Mother's Bistro: In bed with the Salt Barons

We ate at Mother's tonight and I have to say, their food is slipping. The underlying flavors, combinations and presentation were all still great, but what is with all the salt? Roast chicken shouldn't taste alternately salty and bland. If I managed to get two or three "bland" bites in a row, my sense of taste returned and it was really delicious. But then I'd get a salty bite, zotz my tastebuds and taste nothing again. Additionally, their cauliflower cheese was pretty awful. I don't know what cheese they were using... It was white but it wasn't white cheddar, swiss, fontina, provalone, parmesan, gruyere, havarti... at least not that I could discern. It wasn't good, that's what's important. But the underlying ability was there: the califlower was perfectly cooked, tender without being limp, crisp without being raw. The chicken was moist and juicy, the skin just crisp without being fried. But in the end, I just ended up feeling totally bloated, tired and over-full.

Dad didn't like his pot roast. I thought it was okay, but whoever did the sauce had a heavy hand with the wine. If that's not what you're expecting, then it's no good. It was also very salty, although Dad disagreed. We might have a different perspective on salt, though. I believe in lightly seasoning each layer of food as I'm cooking - just enough to bring out the flavor, but not enough to be noticable. Most salted food should have a savory flavor, not a strongly salty flavor. If I roast a chicken, I want you to be able to taste chicken, lemon, thyme, rosemary, onion, garlic... But I don't want you to think, "Is a pint of water really going to be enough? Why doesn't she bring that carafe over here so I can drink straight from it."

The worst part is that I'm a chicken shit. When the chef (or one of the cooks - I didn't notice an appellation on her white jacket) came to the table to ask how everything was, I just smiled and said, "Oh, great!" I really like the ambiance, the introductory rolls and breads are delicious, the staff are great... (In particular, our waiter was super.) I just don't have it in me to be honest and risk making everyone uncomfortable by lodging a complaint when everyone's had such a nice evening.