andy gillette

So, I know that I’m a few years late here, but today, for the first time ever, I played World of Warcraft.

I was having another fun-filled morning obsessing over internet memes.  And I think it was while reading TEH HOLIES BIBUL that I decided I needed to play WoW and see what it was all about because these have simply GOT TO BE my people.

Among the more obnoxious things that I LOVE: Lolcats, Rickrolling, Kittens Inspired by Kittens, David After Dentist, and the god-damned absolute genius of Kittens Inspired by David After Dentist.  And all of these things are possible because of places like 4CHAN and Something Awful, which means they are possible because of the same people who play World of Warcraft.

There’s an oxymornic aspect to nerd-dom.  They’ve got some very high-tech pursuits and are fueling technological innovation, but they’re also the only people who still use really low-tech online services (like 4CHAN).  They’re on IRC way more than iChat and on old-school, 1980s-style bulletin board services way more than facebook.

But anyway, this is way off-topic.  The point is WoW.  I downloaded the trial version this morning and got it all loaded up because I love IRC and 4CHAN and LOL.

The first character I built was a dwarf rogue with a big red beard.  He died, pretty quickly.  I didn’t realize, at first, that you can just respawn yourself, so I went back and made a new guy.  This one’s a human warrior and he and I got stuck.  I don’t know how or why, but hours passed.

So, I get it, kind of.  For me, anyway, part of the draw has to be that the game universe is a lot like the actual universe (vast and ever-expanding).  So you can just go forever.  And your character grows.  I mean, it’s not exactly analagous to really human growth, but where it differs it’s actually better.  You go through experiences and challenges and buy and sell things, but unlike real life where it’s generally impossible to figure out why you’ve done anything or whether you’re better or worse off for it, in the game it’s obvious and numerical.  You are constantly improving and you can see it happening.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep it up.  I’ve got the kind of mind that can obsess over these sorts of things, but I also have the attention span of a 4-year-old.  For now, I think I’d like to get my little human up to level 10 (he’s a level 8, as of this writing) because that would be the first official “milestone” in his young life.  So if I just stop posting altogether in the near future you will know I have run off to live the sad, lonely, but delighfully controllable life of the gamer.

I went to bed thinking about food.  I woke up thinking about food.  I’ll be cooking food basically all day today.  I’m making dinner for a little dinner party at one of the neighbor’s homes this evening.

The menu:
Fresh Corn Soup with Charred Poblanos and Feta
Pasta Torte (like somewhere between quiche and pasta carbonara)
Carmelized Scallops with Chile Cream
Coconut Lime Cake

I’ve been working on the prep list all morning.  It’s fairly daunting.  We’re going to try a little live blogging experiment, so I will update you as the day progresses.  Right now, it’s time to take a shower and then go bake a cake.

My Vrry Long Prep List

[update: 2:42PM]

My cakes are done!

So now that I’ve got some time before I need to start cooking main courses, here’s the quick rundown of how to make it.

You need:
2 limes
1 cup sweetened shredded cocnut
1 1/4 cup self-rising flour
3/4 cup superfine sugar
1 1/2 sticks of butter
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Zest the limes and set zest aside.  Juice the limes into a medium bowl and add the coconut.  Let that sit for about an hour to soak up all the flavor.
Heat the oven to 325.  Sift the flour into a big bowl and then mix in all the other ingredients (including the coconut and the lime zest).  Divide it evenly between to cake pans and bake for 35ish minutes.
Now they should look something like the above picture.  Let them cool for a minute and then turn them on a cooling rack to cool completely.  Meanwhile, make ICING!

You need:
2 limes
2 1/2 cup powdered sugar

Take a really sharp paring knife, or a potato peeler, and peel off long skinny curlicues of zest.  Set those aside for a minute and prepare to be kind of bored and annoyed.  Using the paring knife, take off all of the white stuff left on the limes and segment them.  Once that’s done, squeeze any remaining juice out of the lime carcasses into a bowl with the segments and sift the sugar over the top.  Stir it gently (so you don’t ruin your perfect little segments) and let it sit for 5-10 minutes until the segments turn into gooey lime candy-like stuff.
Ice the top of one cake.  Put the other cake on it, and ice just the top of that one too.  Now put your beautiful curly zest on top and sitck it in the fridge.

mmmmmmmmmm

I also used the time while the cakes were baking to make the garnish for my soup course.  I charred, peeled, seeded, diced and fried a couple of big chiles and then fried up some fresh mini tortilla chips in the reserved oil.

[update 4:29PM]

I just put the pasta course in the oven.

pre-baking

I don’t have time for details, but it’s basically a crust made of mashed potatoes filled with angel hair pasta and bacon(!) covered with a really rich eggy custard and topped with basil leaves.  It’s got to bake for 45 minutes, and then I’ll post some pictures of the final product.  Meantime, I’ve got to prep everything for the scallops.

[update 8:18PM]

It got so hectic once people started showing up that I didn’t have time to take pictures or write anything before I had to put food on the table.  The pasta dish that I was rooting so hard for came out pretty whatever, but the soup was so damned good it made up for it.

I haven’t posted anything for a while, but I’ve resolved to try to post everyday this week.

Life has just kind of sucked, a lot, for the past week or so.  I should have a lot more to say when that happens, but this was exceptionally lame, like, to the point that I couldn’t even be bothered to write about it.

So, truth be told, I don’t actually have anything to say today.  I’m really just trying to stick to the resolution.  It would be extra bad if I broke the promise before the week even started.

This is the first of what I intend to be a weekly feature.  The idea is to provide a distillation of the various random links, pictures, videos, etc. that make it onto my Tumblr blog over the course of a week.

So, here now, without any further ado, I present the week of 2/8/2009:

On Monday, my little brother ate himself stupid.  We chatted about it:

Joseph: against my better judgement, i went out with the boys last night for beer and chicken wings. so i went out, had a couple wings, a couple PBRs, and then proceeded to eat a massive french dip sandwich, a plate of fries, more beers, and some mozzarella sticks
i was SO HONGRY
and then
then
me: GROSS
Joseph: i know
but it was delicious
hold on
so we get home
and i go straight to my bedroom
and like
fall over
on the floor
like
me: hahahaha
Joseph: squirming
i was so bloated and confused

Read the whole sorry tale >>

Monday also saw a couple of posts about my 16th great grandfather, Thomas More.  His contributions to the world of modern thought are indisputable, and he coined the term ‘utopia.’  This is a heavy burden for me.  Read some here and also here.

I found this little gem on Tuesday:

And it snowed this week (in Tucson!). You can read the forecast here and I have proof that it really happened:

I stumbled across the eyeball clock on Wednesday:

And I read a great essay about ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’ on This Recording.

So, look, what I’m saying is there is no reason for anyone to see this movie ever. If you are going through a breakup and a well-meaning friend tries to make you, email me instead and I will burn you a copy of Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space so you and Justin Pierce can get through this bullshit together.

Beyond that, my week in Tumblr can pretty much be summed up by reading the Skittles vodka post from Thursday.

There’s a lot of stuff to blog about today.  Lincoln and Darwin are both celebrating birthdays from the grave, and intelligent people everywhere are celebrating the anniversary of the publication of ‘Origin of Species.’  And more pedestrian bloggable phenomena like Google joining the ranks of companies laying people off and the Republicans trying to derail Obama’s stimulus package, make for all sorts of newsworthy writing.  But I don’t want to talk about any of that.

Last night, after having my mind blown by L O S T (again) and before watching Joaquin Phoenix being a total dick on Letterman, I was making Skittle vodka (as followers of the Tumblr already know).  Tonight they are all ready, and I’m ready to start my taste test.

A couple of things before we begin: I have already been drinking for a little while (surprise!) and I normally hate sweet and/or fruity drinks.  When I’m drinking liquor I pretty much only ever drink vodka soda, which is about the least flavorful drink you could imagine.  So I’m thoroughly expecting to not enjoy this experience.

First up: Strawberry.  Most notable right off the bat is how smooth it is.  It’s not nearly as sickly sweet as I anticipated.  In fact, it went down way too quickly to note much else.

Next: Grape.  Though it’s very similar to the strawberry, it is remarkably different enough in flavor.  I have always kind of suspected that Skittles (or most fruit-flavored candies, for that matter) were “flavored” in the same way Kool-Aid is.  That is, it’s a lot more about a different color than a different taste.  But these first two were definitely recognizable as their respective flavors, which, oddly enough, in no way resemble the flavors of the fruits they represent.  I’ve always wondered about that.  Take watermelon, for example.  The flavor of watermelon candy is like a universally agreed upon thing that has absolute nothing in common with the flavor of actual watermelon (yeah, I’ve been drinking, what of it?).

And finally: Lemon-Lime.  This is the only combo in the line-up, featuring equal parts yellow and green Skittles.   This one is decidedly more intense.  As soon as I opened it the smell of lemon-lime with almost overwhelming.  So is the taste.  It’s also got a kind of chemically aftertaste that definitely leaves something to be desired.

Ugh.  Okay, I’m off.  Going to go get proper drunk.  I’ll come back tomorrow to finish this post off.

[post-script: I did not come back to finish this post off.  I slept ALL DAY yesterday.  I may have gone a bit too far after the Skittles thing.]

I don’t find sports particularly captivating.

I played a lot of them when I was younger: baseball, football, hockey, wrestling, track and field, I was even on the swim team for a minute.  But since, maybe, age 15 I haven’t even had a passing interest in most sports. And yet, they seem to be coming up a lot lately.

I’ve been trying to write something for Nike for a few days now, and the assignment is specifically to write something topical and relevant related to women in sports.  So I started researching and putting ideas together and I’m still not convinced that this is a good idea at all.  I have no idea what I’m doing, is the short version of that story.

But anyway, at one of the more frustrating points in my effort to write this piece, I turned on the TV and a basketball game was on.  It happened to be the Cavaliers vs. the Lakers, a game of some importance because these are, arguably, the best teams in the NBA.  Sports people, it would seem, are pretty comfortable describing both Kobe Bryant and Lebron James as geniuses, and two of the greatest players to ever play the game.

I managed to tune in right before the game started.  So, thinking maybe this was some kind of sign, I decided to watch the whole thing through, to make an earnest effort to understand why so many people watch professional sports.

First, I should note that all of these guys, Kobe and Lebron in particular, are REALLY GOOD at playing basketball.  So I get that part of it.  I could watch them play just to appreciate how finely tuned that peculiar set of skills is for them.  But I still don’t get it, and I think there are two main reasons for this.

1) I don’t get idolatry.  And this one extends into all aspects of my life.  Like, I don’t read biographies, as a general rule, because I just don’t care.  For example: I really like reading and writing and books, and I also really liked ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’  But I’m not going to go camp out at Salinger’s house waiting for a glimpse of him.  Salinger doesn’t interest me any farther than he wrote a really great novel one time.  That’s totally good enough for me.  I don’t care where he buys his groceries, or the kind of clothes he wears, or the car he drives, or even how he “feels” about stuff.  Sports players, even less.

An interview with a really great writer could conceivably be interesting because by their nature they should have an exceedingly good grasp of the language and be reasonably intelligent.  That’s how you be a really great writer.  So it might be fun to learn something about their inner workings simply because they would probably say it in a clever way.  An athlete is really good at playing a sport, and, along the same lines, I don’t automatically care about anything beyond that.  I don’t want to hear about their lives or where they came from or what they ate for breakfast or whatever.  And because they don’t need to have skills like wittiness and grasp of the language, I can’t imagine that it would be very interesting to hear about any of that stuff.

This point has been further clarified now that there’s all this scandal being made about Alex Rodriguez taking steroids.  This is only an issue if you idolize him.  If he’s just good at playing baseball then steroids is nothing more than a questionable move on his part.  It makes him better at hitting balls really hard, maybe, but could also seriously shorten his life-span.  But everyone is worried about the “message” this sends: to kids, to other players, to politicians around the world, etc.  From where I stand, A-Rod is not in the business of sending messages.  The same goes for Michael Phelps.  Being upset that Phelps smoked pot one time has absolutely nothing to do with enjoying watching people swim really fast.  It has everything to do with being let down by your idols.

2) I missed the chapter about male comraderie, team spirit, and competitiveness.  I really enjoyed playing sports when I was a kid, but I never talked to my teammates much and I definitely didn’t talk to my opponents.  I mean, I was and still am a very sociable person, but when the game was on, my job, as I saw, was to determine the most efficient and effective way to complete whatever task was in front of me.  I didn’t need or want feedback of any kind.  I knew when I was doing a good job.  And when I wasn’t doing a good job, I tried to figure out what was going wrong and adapt to it.  I can’t remember having a lot of emotions about it.

But I know people who used to play sports and are now sports fans who are, probably sub-consciously, reliving something that I mostly missed the first time around.  It doesn’t really excite me to see anyone win or lose or inspire their team or insult their opponents.

All this is to say that there’s something illusory about being a sports fan.  There’s way more to it then just being a fan of sports.  And in this world of jocks v. nerds it may well be that I was just born to be a nerd.

Dr. Jules Hilbert: Alright. On a scale of one to ten, what would you consider the likelihood you might be assassinated?
Harold Crick: Assassinated?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: One being very unlikely ten being expecting it around every corner.
Harold Crick: I have no idea.
Dr. Jules Hilbert: O.k. let me rephrase.
[takes a deep breath]
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Are you the king of anything?
Harold Crick: Like what?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Anything. King of the lanes at the local bowling alley.
Harold Crick: King of the lanes?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: King of the lanes, king of the trolls,
Harold Crick: King of the Trolls?
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Yes, uh uh uh a clandestine land found underneath your floor boards.
Harold Crick: No.
Dr. Jules Hilbert: Huh?
Harold Crick: No. That’s ridiculous.

I’ve been thinking a lot about presidential assassinations since I saw this speech:

No matter where you stand, this was undoubtedly a shining moment in the history of political oratory.  It’s incredible that this guy is now the president.  It’s also really scary because guys like this (that is, people who are thoughtful, intelligent and interested in change), historically, don’t do well in high profile positions.

more music charts

I feel like there’s a common perception of the leftist agitators as the violent resistors.  It’s always a bunch of dudes with bandanas around their faces throwing Molotov cocktails at the police.  But of the four presidents assassinated in the history of America, only one (William McKinley) was a right-wing conservative killed by a leftist, and I don’t even know if I count that.  Is an anarchist really left?  It’s sort of unfair, I think, unless we also get to put Nazis in with the right (I don’t mean that to be inflammatory, it’s just, that’s the extreme ends of either political view).

Quick note:  The only apolitical assassination was James Garfield.  He was shot by a very lonely and very crazy guy because his office refused to give the man a job, basically. 

Either way, the right-wing, conservative nuts are leading the left-wing, anarchist nuts 2-1.  If we add other high profile political assassinations to the mix, the red team is WAY ahead.

This seems pretty predictable to me.  The right-wing guys are the ones who are mad all the time and they have all the guns.  Rush Limbaugh screamed and shouted his way through 8 years of the most socially conservative government this country has even seen, and, to be sure, he’ll be screaming and shouting until the day he dies.  The modern left, on the other hand, is intimately tied with artists and intellectuals.  Spokesmen for the blue team are guys like Noam Chomsky.  Sure, he’s mad about stuff, but he doesn’t scream and shout about it.  He takes hours to make his point and he comes off like, well, like a whiny Jewish intellectual.

I mean, I love whiny Jewish intellectuals, and I’m happy to be on their team.  But this is all really coming into focus because of the comparisons drawn between Obama and Lincoln and Kennedy.  The analogies are founded, to be certain, but those are tough odds.  All three were/are extraordinary speakers.  They were/are a perfect mix of intelligence and approachability.  And all three really believe(d) that they stood on the precipice of some fundamental shift in the political and day-to-day reality of living in America.  For Lincoln and Kennedy we know now that they really did stand on that precipice, and I think there’s reason to believe Obama does too.  But the former two were killed for exactly these reasons.

I mean to say: PLZ DONT KILL MAH PREZ K?  THX!!!

Another quick note: I realize that JFK was shot by a communist, but does anyone really believe that a little skirmish with Cuba was the reason for Kennedy’s assassination?

I was cleaning up around my apartment this morning and I noticed that I still had all these peppers left over from cooking dinner the other night.  I was trying to figure out ways to use them up, so after playing around in the kitchen a little bit I came up with an awesome pasta recipe that I think would make a lovely dinner for two (presuming you’re the type of person that is looking for really easy ways to impress members of the opposite sex with your kitchen skills).

I’m gonna eat UR HAIR!!!!

Angel Hair with Garlic and Peppers (for 2)

1/2 a package of angel hair pasta

6-8 cloves of garlic

4 sweet cherry peppers (from a jar)

2 pepperoncini (from a jar)

3-5 tbsp olive oil

1/3 cup white wine (or sauterne cooking wine)

salt and pepper

parmesan (optional, but cheese comes in blocks, not cans you cheap bastard)

Put a pot of salted water big enough to fit your pasta in on to boil.  Put the olive in a medium skillet on medium heat.  Peel and crush the garlic clove (I usually use the broad side of my knife for crushing) and throw them in the oil.  While you let the garlic simmer for a couple of minutes chop the tops off of the peppers and pepperoncini and slice them in half.  Scoop out the seeds and then halve them all again (that’s quarters now, in case you weren’t paying attention).  Add the peppers and pepperoncini to the garlic and sautee it for just a minute.  When the peppers look like they’re starting to cook, add the wine.  Let it simmer.
Your water should be boiling right about now, so add the pasta and cook it for about 5 minutes.  Don’t worry about the peppers and garlic.  They’re simmering and that’s all they need to do.  If the wine cooks off to fast, turn the heat down a little bit and add more wine.  You don’t want it to be wet, but you don’t want it to burn either.  Ideally, by the time the pasta is done you should have cooked off almost all of the wine.
Drain the pasta and put it back in the pot.  Dump the whole pan of garlic and peppers into the pasta and get as much of the oil and juice out of there as you can.  Toss it all around.  Salt and pepper to taste and serve topped with parmesan if you’d like.

I’m currently working on ‘PARTYFOOD: A Novella’ in collaboration with lil brother.  What follows is an excerpt.  Suggestions, comments, opinions and money are all welcome.

PROLOGUE

“cud u tell teh diffrents?”

The vacancy in PARTYFOOD’s stare says he’s been daydreaming again. “wot r u TALKIN BOUT?”

“if u wud splode in S P A C E and u wud crush inna oshun … cud you FEEL teh diffrents tween em?”

“ur silly PIG. jus we cud FLOAT in dem.”

“u cant floats cuz u dont ‘gets it’ yet.” PIG’s face is a sagging caricature of depression.

“i dont get it.”

1.

The discarded remains of a week-long binge are piling up, threatening to overtake WALTAR’s lumpy, ancient beanbag chair. Someone in an adjacent apartment is blaring an old Bill Hicks’ record: “More Snickers! More Coke!!!” The phone has been ringing every twenty minutes or so for nearly three days, but WALTAR has been too drunk to bother finding it. As he shifts his weight to let out a slow, wheezing fart the ringing becomes noticeably louder. He reaches deep into the beanbag’s ass-shaped divot and comes up with the receiver.

“Heh-oh?” He hasn’t moved, let alone spoken to anyone in days and the words get stuck in his throat on their way out. “Hello?”

“WALTAR, its PARTYFOOD. haz u seen PIG?”

“What? What do you want, fag?”

“i cant find PIG. HAZ U SAW HIM?”

“oh, yeah. That little cum-rag is cowering in the corner right now. I had some friends over for a little piggy party, if you know what i …”

“SRSLY WALTAR!!!”

“Haven’t seen ‘em.” He hangs up and tosses the phone in the general direction of the toilet before taking a hefty slug of whiskey.

You can roughly estimate the length of one of these binges by the caliber of whiskey in WALTAR’s hand. He starts out running through the ranks of the Johnny Walker color wheel and ends up in realm of plastic jugs with completely forgettable names. The “Barret’s Special Blend” clutched between his swollen knees was a bad sign. The desperation would set in soon and send him, slobbering and grabbing and stinking, out into the world.

2.

But for the light pollution that suffuses much of the North American sky, an idle stargazer in southern California would almost be able to see, just above the horizon to the southwest, a small cadre of DOLPHINZ in the star-dappled sky.

Last night, I fell asleep with my shoes on.

I don’t remember falling asleep.  Last I recall, I was chatting with Molls because lil brother told me that she is friends with the other blogging Molly in real life.  I was trying to get this confirmed or denied when I apparently stumbled to the couch and passed out.

A Visual Aid: