11 posts tagged “metablogging”

I swear to god, I was going to write that I had a "new development," until it struck me that that was a pun.

Anyway, I set up a new blog for my photography. I'm not sure what it is yet, what I'm going to do with it, or why I set it up. Suffice it to say it's another item that you can put in your Google Reader and you've never really needed much more convincing than that. As ever, but slightly more in this case, comments will be greatly appreciated.

So, I couldn't help thinking, I use the semicolon an awful lot. I've already been freaking out about the exclamation point for the past week.

In other news, in the ongoing effort to make Twitter interesting to me in the slightest, I've decided to change my account from that lolcat nonsense to a running record of my freakouts. Projected daily output: 100-150 entries.

Happy Fall! This is my favorite time of year, for reasons I have never fully addressed; perhaps this can be the subject of another post. No matter, we have more pressing issues at hand. It is time for me to lay my cards on the table: here's what I ended up reading this summer.

As some of you may remember, on May 22 I responded to the Question of the Day by constructing a summer reading list for myself. What you may not know, unless you are unfortunate enough to live with me, is that I adopted, in my trademark reasonless manner, an almost cultish rigidity to this list. Strange, then, that I didn't actually manage to read very much of it. There are a few reasons for this.

First, I foolishly forgot to calculate Harry Potter into my original list. This meant allowing not only a week for the new book, but the week preceding it for re-reading The Half-Blood Prince. This didn't take too much of a bite out of my time as did various other bizarre flights of fancy (I was suddenly and inexorably gripped with a desire to re-read Fight Club, of all things) and a general complete lack of time to read. Here, then, is how my summer reading shamefully came down:

Children of Men - turned out to be ridiculously boring next to the movie, which is fucking brilliant. Took forever to get through.
Slaughterhouse-Five - just as amazing as I remembered; inspired a breif desire to read nothing but Vonnegut, which I suppressed in the interest of sticking to The List
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat - started reading, but found it to be too dry to read in one go. The cases being unrelated, I decided I would read it intermittenly with other reading. Really fascinating, though, I'm still making it through.
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Back Talk
Special Topics in Calamity Physics - I've been stuck on this for over month, just broke page 200. I can only speculate at the reasons for this giving me so much trouble, but I suspect it has to do with the effect that The Man Who/Back Talk/The Bible had on my momentum
The Bible - Slow going. Extremely slow going.

I'm introducing a new feature to the blog called "Spotted," where I will relate in brief any interesting/funny slices of life I witness.

Today, saw:

Two teenage girls walking side-by-side into the mall, each typing intently on a different colored Sidekick. Allowed myself to think they were texting each other. Giggled.

What are five things that most people don't know about you? 
Submitted by mika.

I love things like this, but then I feel so much pressure to come up with something interesting. I'm pretty open and not all that deep, so I feel like people already know the necessities. I'll try to go for some more obscure stuff.

1. I learned to knit in an hour in the cafe at Borders. This was only the basic mechanics of knitting -- I still can't purl -- but I learned enough to make Wendy a scarf for our first anniversary, the ultimate goal of the endeavor. My dutiful teacher and hipster spirit animal Katie set me well on my way quickly (we met before my shift started that day) and told me that it would probably take a while, and when I thought I was done, to keep going. I took her word on it. Two weeks later, I called her to tell her I thought I was done, and could she please show me how to tie it off. Imagine Katie's surprise when I handed over the seven-foot-long scarf. As it turns out, I knit faster than she expected. Wendy loved it. There are pictures from when I gave it to her.
2. I like the idea of having a regular drink, but I just love too many of them. I mean, it would be cool, in theory, to have a drink associated with you. But, when you think about it, why limit yourself? When I first turned 21, I was a rum and Coke man, having not yet discovered beer. Soon, though, it was all over. During the winter I drink a lot of Johnny Walker Black. Gin and tonics, vodka tonics, and Cape Cods are good when it's hot out and you're thirsty. And beer, of course- I can't even settle on one beer. Never mind wine. You see my problem. They're all so delicious!
3. I have the following up in my cube presently: Three fliers from shows this year, a single panel from Calvin and Hobbes, a single panel from Achewood, the article about Karen's coat from the Times, my summer reading list with two checkmarks (way behind as I didn't factor in Harry Potter and I was suddenly struck with the desire to re-read Fight Club), and two photos from our visit to New York last fall, which were the only set of pictures on my hard drive at work.
4. I used to get "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast stuck in my head all the time. Here's the breakdown: for the entire three years that I worked in the cafe at Borders, I would constantly realize that I had been singing "Be Our Guest" in my head. When I realized, I never had any idea how long it was going on, or why it started. I wouldn't be able to shake it. Next night, same thing. I would generally notice while I was washing the dishes, but I knew that it had been going on already. Since I left Borders, I have rarely, if ever at all, thought about this song. I will probably never unlock the secret to this mystery.
5. I'm turning a quarter-century this Sunday. Actually, everyone knows this. I'm pretty excited.

Wendy noted that it was too bad I already gave away a pretty good fact that almost no one knows.

Following my first "Adventures in Cooking" entry, I found myself faced with the problem of any talented young writer: hype. Fernando's enthusiastic love of the entry was both unexpected and flattering, but it created a probably unnecessary pressure in my mind to continue to write interesting entries in this series. If not for this, I would have probably kept writing about sandwiches and stuff forever.

As things stand, I didn't know what to do. I made my usual meat stew last week, which Wendy said was among my best, but it wasn't anything I could write about. It would probably be at least a little interesting to other people, but to me, it was same old same old. Despite Wendy's encouragement, I felt struck down.

The following day, I hatched a plan to create my most ambitious meal to date. I would execute it on Friday.

When Friday came along, I phoned Wendy to see what she was planning for dinner. This would usually be just a formality, as Wendy doesn't ever make plans for dinner until she talks to me. In this case, however, Wendy informed me that she had already eaten a bowl of cereal, and she would really be fine for the evening. I was distraught. Upon hearing that I had been planning a dinner for three days, Wendy amended her previous statement, assuring me she would be totally hungry for dinner.

Slightly discouraged but way too determined, I stopped at the supermarket and made my way home. The meal would consist of breaded salmon, spaghetti, and cream sauce, which was the real highlight.

First I handled the salmon, which was probably a bad idea, because it didn't need that long to cook and I didn't anticipate the preparation time of the sauce. This is always my biggest problem when cooking. I wasn't fooled by the farm-raised salmon, which cost three times as much for considerably smaller pieces, and, you know, is raised on corn. I squeezed a lemon over them (totally had time this time) and then added a light layer of mayonnaise to hold the bread. Then I sprinkled a bit of rosemary and added the bread crumbs, which were themselves seasoned (which I'm not necessarily crazy about, but it does save some time). I popped them in the oven and was on to the sauce.

The sauce was the main result of my blogging insecurities. I'm kind of adept at tomato sauces, but who cares? I decided to go to the other end of the spectrum. I started the thing out with heavy cream, not milk, cause I don't fuck around. I added some butter and proceed to stir confusedly.

I have this thing when I cook: I always forget one main element. It seems ridiculous when it's pointed out, but in the moment I truly have no idea what I'm missing. In this case, the sauce was staying a liquid and I was getting agitated. I imagine that it would have been a pretty hilarious sight when I exasperatedly ran over to the fridge and threw what was left of the stick of butter into the sauce, which was ultimately a really good idea.

When I called Wendy in for assistance, of course what it turned out I had been missing was a thickening agent of some kind. I added in a bit of flour and was back on track. I had Wendy stir, and also add just a bit of parmesan shaky-cheese, while I diced up the herbs. I used fresh chives, oregano, and parsley, but when I say fresh I mean from the supermarket, which, once again, eh.

Once I added those I was almost home. I sprinkled some lemon pepper in and turned the heat down to simmer. Once again, I did this whole thing out of order, because I should have been boiling the water for spaghetti this whole time. I kept the sauce on low heat, kept stirring, and it was fine in the end, but it should have really been done maybe ten or fifteen minutes earlier.

When I served the dinner, it was decidedly more impressive looking than anything I'd ever made. It was an amazingly rich taste, probably resulting from the extra butter, but it worked magnificently. Insecurities met and demolished, I headed out for an evening of rock and roll which I previously described.

For the next installment, I'll lower the bar again by making a sandwich or something.

The New York Times has unleashed upon us yet another in their growing collection of fake non-trends. I'm not the only one who's noticed that the Times has a penchant for declaring something to be a "new trend" when it is either a) not new at all, or b) not substantial enough to be considered a trend.

I've just finished reading an article that ran yesterday, and which I've been trying to get through since, dealing with the importance of personal narratives on personality. I had hoped that this would provide some sort of justification for the relentless self-analysis in which I engage, and, by extension, be the impetus for yet another blog about blogging, which is always fun. Unfortunately, the Times does its usual thing where it takes something that everyone knows, ties some weird lopsided study to it, and makes an overwrought announcement. In this case, the announcement is that people's lives are informed by their past experiences, and how they remember them. I can barely process this incredible shock.

The thing is, the thesis never really sits up straight in its chair. Is it that your memories are a contributing factor to your personality, or that your personality affects how you process memories? It says that perky people will put a positive spin on bad memories, and "those with mood problems" tend to focus on bad details. This is common sense- anyone will tell you this was the case without having read a study. If you have something new to add, I'd love to hear it.

This seems at first glance more like non-news than non-trend, but there is definitely an air of a larger movement (that the Times doesn't seem to know how to turn off) caused by the presence of a number of studies, implying that this is some hot new corner of psychology that nobody knows about.

The few potentially interesting and unusual aspects of the article, like the effect of experiencing memories in the third person, aren't ever fully explored. Nowhere is this clearer than the zero-hour mention of Joan Didion watching someone play her on stage. The first taste of really interesting analysis comes in the last paragraph, in the form of a quote that's supposed to tie everything up.

Another ridiculously ill-defined trend, this one being predicted, sprang up in yesterday's issue: 3-D is the next step in the evolution of cinema.One of the most important parts of my childhood, Tintin, is being adapted into three big-budget films, and they are going to be filmed in 3-D, which the Times reports is going to be the wave of the future. They even quote Jeffery Katzenberg as saying that consumers are going to own their own personal 3-D glasses -- no, not someday -- in two years.

It's almost like, around the Times offices, this is like a competition or a fun drinking game or something.

I have to say, I'm still pretty psyched about Tintin, though.

I went to do the Question of the Day and got distracted by the totally awesome Vox Hunt. So I just wanted to report that I intend to make full use of the utilities available here, and suggest that my readers do the same. I love this blog so much.

When I look at my own profile, it says, "You are Harith." It's strangely reassuring.