“The Familiar’s Fidelity”

I’m in my last stretch of final assignments so I’m a bit strapped for time, therefore no fresh short. I will however ply this space with an older vintage that could fall under “terrible wizard”. Hope this fills the hungry … Continue reading →

“An Emperor’s life”.

Would you look at that: I just found the very first short-story I wrote. I must’ve been seventeen or eighteen when I wrote this. If I remember correctly I wrote it for my sister’s tenth grade english class. There’s really … Continue reading →

Ooh looky! Yummy stuff.

I’m a bit proud of my cooking skill to be honest. At least judging from last night’s dinner. So I thought I’d share the recipe with you. Though forewarned is forearmed: this is vegetarian. But it’s also oh so yummy so fret not.

Also, I don’t have any pictures so you’re just going to have to use your imagination; picture slick rivulets of butter cascading down the hot pan, frothing over the crispy sage. The sweet tomatoes blushing. The pasta sitting comfortably in the roiling water. And the lemon waiting to kick things up a notch.

What? Don’t look at me like that. It’s not called food-porn for nothing. Also it was good. Damn good in fact. So good that I want everyone to try it. So here it is (for two):

A few big sage leaves.
Thyme to taste.
1/3 of a lemon.
Two medium-sized Portobello mushrooms.
Two big handfuls of sweet, chopped tomatoes. Think cherry or San Marzino.
One large red onion chopped however you damn well please.
Half a red chilli, finely chopped.
Three cloves of garlic, finely chopped.
Spaghetti, obviously.
Butter.
Parmesan or pecorino cheese.

Start by frying the sage leaves in some butter. When the leaves have gone crispy set them aside and save the butter for something else. If you keep frying with the butter you’ll run the risk of burning it. That not good. The butter doesn’t like that.

Then chop the mushrooms into chunks and frying them in a pan with a generous amount of butter. When they start shrinking throw in the onions.

When those are nice and soft, translucent even, throw in the chili, garlic and thyme and put the water to the boil.

Wait for water to boil.

When the water is ready throw the spaghetti into the pot and the tomatoes into the pan. Remember though to lower the heat on the pan to low. Squeeze the lemon juice over everything and season to taste with salt and pepper.

When the pasta is ready toss it with the ingredients in the pan and serve with crumbled, crispy sage leaves and grated parmesan/pecorino cheese.

*drool*

Oh the humanities!

Science is confusing. Like really (emphasis on sounding like a confused teenager). And I’m not even doing very science-y stuff mind you (even though my schoolwork — the library one not the Scottish one — ends with a “master science”), I’m just doing itsty bitsy “here’s how you learn how to conduct pilot studies and small experiments“.

See I’m doing a course called “Interaction Design” and I’ll freely admit that the only reason I signed up for it was that it wasn’t “Knowledge something-or-another” (I hate those) and it promised an entire lecture dedicated to xbox360. I figured why not play video games at school? It’s fun you know. And actually the course is kind of fun; how could it not? I get to play with an AR Drone, play pong using my alpha/beta brainwaves and play silly games on xbox using Kinect. What’s not to like?

Well, for one the actual work stuff.

Now before anyone gets their panties in a bunch and starts accusing me of being a lazy grad student — which admittedly I can be, though not always — bear in mind that the Humanities raised me. I’m a lit. student through and through, a disciple of the “softer sciences” as “proper” academians would like to call the subjects. (In order to keep this post away from humanities-is-a-proper-area-of-study rant, I’ll just say that it’s not and leave it for a later post) What I really mean then is that humanities-related stuff comes easy for me. After all I’ve spent almost ten years in that field. So analyzing literature, waxing philosophical; lyrical even, come naturally to me. The cynics might say that I can bullshit my way out of an essay.

They might be right.

And therein lies my problem. I don’t know the first thing about designing experiments.

Not that I can’t learn. I’m not a dummy person. It’s just, just… designing experiments isn’t interesting. There’s no narrative, no juicy bits to sink me teeth in and gnash and slaver at the deliciousness of it all. I can’t marvel at the conjurer’s tricks, the way authors perform their magic and utterly hypnotize me. And I sure as hell don’t get the satisfaction of deconstructing that black magic to unravel its mysteries. All in all there’s no poof!, smoke, gasp of wonder and delight. No salivating moments.

Which is why it feels like tedious work.

So if you’ll excuse me it’s time I went back into the mines of experimental design.

“Please allow me to adjust my pants / so I can dance the good-time dance.”

The sun shone on my face, warming it. It felt nice. I was contemplating the movements of the celestial bodies. Mars seemed agitated. Venus, sly. A fly buzzed somewhere in my room. Buzz-buzz-buzzing about it’s day like I would after my contemplation. I had also planned on writing many a wonderful post; most certainly about the celestial bodies, my coriander and the little pigeon that coo-coos outside my window on Wednesdays.

It wasn’t meant to be.

Someone stole my writing pants!

A dark and stormy silhouette passed before me and hissed before yanking the pants off my lower trunk. I kicked and I screamed as my precious pants dragged past my knobbly knees and stout ankles. I cursed and flailed as my Stygian assailant leaped from my room and into the hallway where he disappeared with a poof and a cackle.

I spent minutes in utter sorrow. Each minute felt like a minute, composed of seconds. Actual seconds. After those seconds and then minutes I rallied and sallied forth without my pants. To find my pants.

I looked everywhere but as the minutes dragged on to hours and the hours to days without any sign of my pants I widened my search matrix to include everything not contained within my room.

In the end that proved the winning strategy.

The deep halls of Fantask’s Spilefesteval greeted me. Twenty five stout adventurers could not avail me in my search so I left. Though not without gain, the Horde of I(L)orion stands true to this day (two weeks later that is). The splendors of IO Interactive, their shining monitors and trenchers of candy and fizz-pop enticed me but I could not dally. My pants needed me.

Emil didn’t have them. Neither did the washer (I checked).

I despaired.

Then, a loud noise like a jet engine. A dark outline suddenly loomed over me, the dreaded Boeing 747. From beneath it’s massive belly emerged, mom and dad?

Right. They were supposed to visit. They even brought a surprise. My writing pants! Apparently the pants just needed a little vacation so they radiographed themselves to Iceland in a jiffy.

So now I have my writing pants on again.

See you soon.

The Mereneese Knot.

So! The writing pants are fresh out from the dryer (mmm… warm writing pants) and I finally I have the energy to write a bit about the Mereneese Knot, which in itself is just a handy reference to the two … Continue reading →

The coffee that isn’t coffee but is.

A few days ago I received in the mail some coffee, courtesy of a good friend. Not just any coffee mind. No, only the best is ever good enough for me. She sent me Kopi Luwak coffee.

Now for those who aren’t “in the know“, Kopi Luwak is coffee (Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee incidentally) made from beans that the Asian Palm Civet has “passed”.

By passed I mean pooped obviously.

Yup, I got poop coffee.

You know what? It’s absolutely delicious. I loves me some poop coffee.

It occurs to me though that those reading this might be a little disgusted by this point. So let me explain what this coffee is a little better.

Some of you might know that coffee beans are harvested from berries commonly known as a coffee cherry. Well, the cherry isn’t really used. Some farmers dry them though and make tea but otherwise they’re a waste product. Not so though with the Kopi Luwak. What happens is that, yes, the Civet eats the cherries containing the coffee beans. Of course the animal then has to pass the beans through its system and it’s there, inside the Civet’s digestive track, where the magic happens. Enzyme’s mix into the beans doing some science stuff, something about shorter peptides and more free amino acids. At least that’s what Wikipedia tells me. The end result though is pooped coffee free of bitterness.

Of course the farmers wash the beans before drying them and then roasting so I’m not actually eating feces.

I’m not that stupid.

Like I said though, there’s no bitterness with this coffee. None at all.

I made a cup just now using the pour-over method and I’m finding it really hard to put into words how the coffee tastes. The best I’ve been able to come up with is that it’s coffee but not. It’s like drinking the first cup of coffee in the morning (that magical first cup is… well, magical) and hugging your favorite animal.

Those who own, or have owned pets know what I’m talking about. It’s incredible warm and comforting, and they have this certain musky smell as well.

Somehow, drinking this coffee is like that. A mix between the first cup of the day and a warm comforting pet-hug.