Via the excellent food blog Saute Wednesday, a great article from the L.A. Times - The High Price of Cheap Food (registration required). It's a great argument on why organic meats make sense. Something I've felt for a while. But even though I believe in it, it's just hard to pay more sometimes. Lately I've been thinking that it's best not to eat too much. I mean, you can eat some tasty Indian Daal (basically lentils with spices) for next to nothing. It's so cheap. And no animal has to suffer for it, and it's very healthy. Almost no fat, and high in protein. Eating things like that makes sense. I'm no vegetarian, and I wouldn't want to be, but I'm starting to think it makes sense to eat meat only a few times a week.
I recently finished reading Don Quixote. I figured it's supposed to be the greatest novel ever written, it might be worth my time to read it.
I liked it a lot, actually. It was pretty funny, and much more modern than I had anticipated. There was a lot of winking at the reader, at least in Part II. Another thing that surprised me was finding the hangman paradox in the book. That's the paradox where a judge questions each traveler over a bridge, and if they answer truthfully where they are going, they are allowed to pass. If they lie, they are hanged. This works fine until one day, a traveler tells the judge, "I am going to be hanged". Pity poor Sancho Panza, who had to figure out whether to let this guy live or not.
There's a lot of very clever stuff in this book. I'm sure it would have been even more enjoyable if I had read more books of chivalry. It struck me at how similar those tales were to modern superhero comics. According to a passage in the book, every knight had a certain special talent, such as the ability to resist enchantment, or some sort of invulnerability.
I also thought about how both Orson Welles and Terry Gilliam had famously tried to film the book, and both never could do it (well, couldn't do it yet in the case of Gilliam). Due to the structure of the book, and it's length, it's hard to see how any sort of coherent plot could be filmed.
One bad part of the book, however, is the ending. Cervantes spends way too much time and effort on decrying the Don Quixote knock-off that appeared before he could publish Part II himself. In the book this appears because Don Quixote finds out about this knock-off, and it describes a bunch of things he never did. Cervantes goes on and on about this, even to the very end of the book. I guess I'd be pretty pissed too, though.
One final thought about the book. I don't know for sure, but I think Cervantes had a shepherdess fetish.
I just discovered a nice anti-Bush flash animation on Bush's environmental record with music by Skinny Puppy. That's a bit unusual. But a lot of Skinny Puppy's music seems particularly appropriate these days.
My wife borrowed The DaVinci Code, which is the current fiction bestseller. Everyone seems to be reading it. It was a quick read, a real page turner. But it's not difficult to be a page turner. All you have to do is have fairly short chapters, and end each chapter on a suspensful note.
All in all, I thought the book was fun, but kind of stupid in a lot of ways. Without giving much away, I'd just like to say that I totally disagree with it's theory of the Holy Grail. The Grail is, as far as I've ever read, just an Welsh legend of a horn-of-plenty that got Christianized. This fits with how the grail is portrayed in the ancient Parisifal and Le Morte dArthur.
Other comments made in the book about how things like Disney movies and such are "really" about the Holy Grail make the author seem like a complete loon. And he really seems to take this stuff seriously, as opposed to Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, whose Illuminatus! trilogy took an approach which made fun of conspiracy theories instead of believing in them. And Umbertco Eco's Foucalt's Pendulum is wiser still in the ways of conspiracy.
I've discovered another ultra-cheap eatery in Chinatown, where I can get a lunch for around $3.50. It's called Hon's Wun Ton House, on Kearny. It's a cheap noodle place, just the kind I like. Ever since I moved from the south bay, I've missed Tung Kee's ultra-cheap noodles. And actually the soup selection is better than at Tung Kee, I think. Now I have two cheap options - Dim Sum at Stockton, or soup on Kearny. I still need to try "Dol Ho", which is supposed to be a good cheap dim sum in Chinatown, but probably not quite as cheap as the ones I have started to frequent.
Speaking of dim sum, I ate at Yang Sing a few weeks ago. It was pricey. I paid $20, but I could have eaten more. The dim sum was quite good. They had a lot of stuff I've never seen before, like Striped Bass steamed dumplings (interesting taste, but I preferred the firmer texture of shrimp). They also had lobster dumplings and a few other types, but I didn't want to overspend. Besides the nice variety of dumplings, they had most of the rest of the standard dim sum fare, and some other more western-style items such as a portabella mushroom baked with cheese (delicious). They didn't have some of the more interesting dim sums items such as tofu soup, pork meatballs, or bowls of tripe. Everything they did have was very elegantly executed, and it all tasted clean and light. They also had a nice innovation in the way of tea serving, where their teapot for the table was clear. That way, servers would know exactly when to replace it without having to be asked (either verbally or by opening up the teapot lid). Great idea.
I've been in a rut for a long time now. For about 4 years, I haven't bought any new music at all, and in fact didn't really even listen to much music. After I recently got an iPod, I started listening much more, and now I'm filled with a desire to expand my collection.
It's not enough to expand it with further CD's from my favorite artists. That's good, but not really enough. I don't want to be a 30 year old who doesn't listen to any group that it less then 10 years old. That's too close to becoming a typical crotchety old person who hates all new music. Although I don't think it's possible to say "This new stuff isn't music, now Throbbing Gristle - that's music!".
So I've tried to branch out. Once thing I've discovered is that there is a whole new genre called synthpunk. Evidently, they consider my favorite artist, Foetus, to be a sort of "grandfather" of the genre. So this is a good sign. I got one fairly well-known example of the genre, Oakland's The Phantom Limbs. I have two albums so far, and it is a strange sound. Synthpunk is a good word to describe it, since it has a lot of synths, and the sound is very messy like good punk music. And I can't understand the words at all. But hopefully it's a good introduction for more genres to explore. I'd also like to get into other newer genres, but I hate to spend my money on CD's that I have no idea if I'll like or not. Right now I'm hoping more of the newer-genre music becomes available on iTunes so I can at least listen to excerpts.
On Dec 31st, I went to Rasputin Music on Powell St., and I was distressed to see that my favorite groups were lumped into the "Gothic" category. Argh! Foetus is NOT gothic. Or perhaps I'm just in denial that I'm really a Goth dude. Time to start wearing black and having a poofy haircut...