An update on what I"m currently reading. I fully intended to read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. It's supposed to be quite amusing. I certainly enjoyed Eggers' Pirate Store in San Francisco. Well, I haven't gone yet, but I enjoyed the website. At any rate, I attempted to get the book from the library, but failed to put it on hold, so someone checked it out before I did.
Instead, I'm now reading Lord of the Rings, which Greta got at a very good price from Overstock.com. The first time I read it, I was 15 or so, and thought it was horribly boring, and had way too much singing. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with the singing. Was I supposed to imagine how it was sung? Or just read it like a poem? At any rate, I read the trilogy again before the movies came out. Greta was a big fan, and convinced me to give it another try. This time, I liked it a lot. It seemed very exciting, I could hardly put it down. I still disliked the singing, though. Now I'm reading it yet again, this time with a more careful eye. I plan on enjoying the songs, but I'm not sure how.
Also, I'm reading Stanislaw Lem's Memoirs of a Space Traveler. The first time I read this, I couldn't stop laughing. I recently learned that one of the stories was the inspiration for the episode of Futurama where they go to the planet of the robots (the writer on the first season's DVD commentary said so). I'm appreciating the satire more this time around. Some of the stories are quite easy to interpret as a critique of the kind of thinking that produces communism.
Today there was a festival in San Mateo, right at the Caltrain station outside my apartment building. The festival was an Oyster and Mussel Festival. It was not well attended, probably because it was over 90 degrees outside. Greta and I went over and checked it out. Strangely, there was only two booths selling mussels, and only one selling oysters. I had some nice raw oysters from Kingfish's booth, and Greta and I had some Ethiopian food from another booth. Everything was quite delicious, but we could only stand to be outside for about twenty minutes before we fled home. With the low turnout, whether it happens again next year is doubtful. If it had more mussel and oysters, and the weather was better, it would be quite nice, though.
I saw Woody Allen's new movie Anything Else last night. It was quite funny and interesting. Woody Allen's character Dobel is sort of like a darker and more paranoid version of his character in Annie Hall. Anyone who thinks Woody Allen always plays the same character hasn't been paying attention, especially recently in the last 5 or so years.
Another interesting point in the movie is it's sort of opposition to Broadway Danny Rose. In that movie, Woody Allen is an agent of sort of crappy talent, and his best performer leaves him just as he's getting successful. In this movie, the same thing basically happens, with the sympathetic viewpoint reversed. Of course, Woody Allen's movies are too mature to simply take one side or the other.
One annoying thing is the constant obsession of everyone in Woody Allen's movies with Jazz. Everyone, even people around 20 years old are obsessed with Jazz. Can everyone there shut up about Billie Holiday already? C'mon Woody, music has continued to progress since the 1930's, you know.
The week before last I ate at Shalimars with an Indian coworker. We were talking about Indian and Pakistani food, and she mentioned how her family operates some restaurants in India. She gave me the tip that these curries are frequently thickened by a mixture of poppy seeds, melon seeds, and cashew nuts. We were eating Bhuna Gosht, and she mentioned that she thought that was how they were thickening it, and it was very common in Pakistani cuisine. A good tip, I thought.
Today, I was looking to make a lamb curry to take to work tomorrow. I remembered this tip about the seeds thickening the curry, and decided to try it out. While trying to decide what to make, I realized that I could just try and make bhuna gosht. I searched and came up with a recipe. Evidently, "bhuna" is a method of cooking where a dry curry is sort of stir-fried, adding water when it becomes too dry. In western terms, I figure what is happening is that the food is getting successively carmelized and deglazed. After this process happens, water is added to make a nice curry sauce. So I made the recipe, thickening it with the poppy and cashew nuts as well as some yogurt, and it turned out very good, although I didn't end up with as much sauce as I would have liked. The bhuna gosht at Shalimars is swimming in a delicious, somewhat runny sauce. But my sauce is pretty good. Not quite Shalimars good, but it's a start.
I've been using Unix-type systems for a while now, but I'm still learning things I should have known a long time ago. One I just came across now was the screen program, which transforms one terminal into many, and will disengage the new terminal that screen provides from the tty, so that you could reattach to terminal sessions even when your window closes.
This is very useful for me, since I'm always using emacs on the terminal, as well as the non-terminal Mac emacs app. On the non-terminal emacs app, the meta key maps to the apple key. On the terminal, the apple key has other meanings. So when I want to cut text, if I forget and use the apple key on the terminal, and I type Apple-w, it closes the window. After a fair bit of cussing, I have to resume everything I was doing in a new terminal. Now, if I use the screen program, I can resume it as if nothing ever happened.
At least I think so. If not, there will be much more cussing, I promise.
One problem, however, is that some apps think the terminal is now non-functional, while others add color where they hadn't before. Nothing important is blocked yet, so I'm still happy with this find.
Yesterday, I was tired. After I took a little nap, I decided to drink some Yerba Mate I had around. Although it supposedly it supposed to help with insomnia, I found I couldn't sleep last night, which is fairly unusual for me. This is actually the second time this has happened, so though I don't get this every time I drink Mate, I think this is it for me. No more Mate. I'm sure I have lost face in the eyes of many Argentinians today, but I have to put my foot down.
Incidentally, there are those who do say that Mate can cause insomnia. Others argue about any psychoactive properties it may have. But I'm here to tell you that it's evil, man. Evil! (Of course, my insomnia might also have something to do with the fact I also drank half a bottle of wine, and some Pearl Milk Tea, but I really do think it was the Mate).
Today, for the first time in more than ten years, I went to a comic book store. I went to get Neil Gaiman's 1602, which sounded good (even if the steampunk genre is getting a little overdone). So I went to the local comic book store in San Mateo. I looked forward to dealing with the guy behind the counter, since comic book guys all seem to be like Gord, or the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.
When I got there, he didn't look like Comic Book Guy. He wasn't fat, or bearded. I found this a bizarre twist. But he was drawing a very nice drawing of a superhero. I understood then, he was a young version. If he stayed working at this comic book store, the beard and girth will come in time. After hearing a dog yapping outside, I bought my comic. He following conversation ensued:
Him: There's a dog out there tied up. Why would anyone bring their dog to eat lunch, and then tie him up outside?
Me: I don't know. I don't know why people do the things they do.
Him: Ugh, that gets me really mad.
Me: Some people are like that, I guess
Him: I hate people.
Well, he is indeed a comic book guy. I read the issue of 1602, and it was fairly good, although it's so early in the series it's tough to say. And I'm not quite the expert I used to be on the Marvel universe, so I'm sure there's a lot I'm missing. Artwork is great. The lettering has bolded words, and somehow in this context, it really is a bit annoying. The plot is, so far, interesting. I'll buy it next month, I suppose. But I'm done with putting these things in bags and such.