I do not apologize.

YACHT - Shangri-La

“Well if I can’t go to heaven, let me go to LA.”

The Decemberist’s “Calamity Song” video is a surprisingly literal presentation of the YDAU Interdependence Day Eschaton scene from Infinite Jest. I was impressed by the attention to detail — Otis’ computer is even running Pink₂ — and Colin Meloy is an entertaining, if quite not a convincing, Michael Pemulis. But it wasn’t as gripping as I wanted it to be — I couldn’t make myself feel the tension on the court. Is a four-and-a-half-minute music video too short? It took DFW several hundred pages to get to that point. (And if you haven’t read the book, do, but probably don’t bother with the music video until you have.)

(And I really wanted to see Otis’ head get stuck in the monitor…)

Update: Lol, the director actually mourns that he couldn’t end the video that way.

Seeing even a portion of the beloved novel brought to life was “like a weird dream fugue,” he said, though he reluctantly accepted that his video could not end as the passage from “Infinite Jest” does, with a child’s having his head crashed into a computer monitor.

“They’re all flat screens now, and you can’t put your head through a flat screen,” he said.

link (nyt)

Mostly I just want to point out Professor Noam Chomsky’s excellent use of the word “uncontroversially” below.

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

To be sure, a glance at http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ is sobering, but I don’t think that word means what Dr. Chomsky wants it to mean. ;p

Anyway, I don’t have very much to say vis-à-vis the legality of bin Laden’s assassination except to say that while we all know that assassination isn’t any kind of policy tool and if I were in charge of the US budget I probably wouldn’t have spent as many millions of taxpayer dollars on his head as we have, I’m having profound difficulty conjuring much sympathy for bin Laden’s fate. I’m cheered that people are willing to ask the tough questions about due process and international law because I think they’re important principles, but — and this is my American speaking — in this instance, I really just don’t care. I certainly don’t think bin Laden’s assassination was unjust or, well, surprising, and the relatively muted outcry seems to suggest it wasn’t exactly incompatible with American foreign policy goals.

It is the recognition that well-read is not a destination; there is nowhere to get to, and if you assume there is somewhere to get to, you’d have to live a thousand years to even think about getting there, and by the time you got there, there would be a thousand years to catch up on.

Success is always built on shifting sands, though. [via, ironically, everybody]

A 22-year-old North Vancouver man has said he is facing a death sentence because B.C. will not fund the only medical treatment that could save him. Garrett Shakespeare’s red blood cells have a protein deficiency that causes his immune system to attack them, but the drug to treat it effectively costs $500,000 a year.

We’re somehow going to have to get more comfortable, as a society, spending utterly absurd amounts of money on biologicals and being taxed accordingly (my entire annual Canadian tax liability, both federal and provincial, including HST and my Medical Services Plan premiums, would cover maybe a couple weeks of treatment for him)… or accepting some alternative.

Documents Show Congressman David Wu’s Staff “Threatened to Shut Down His Campaign”

Oh dear.

seanbonner:

Accidentally

James Blake, from this Guardian interview.

As a North American, the concept of being an unwanted, uncomprehending outsider because you’re from twenty-seven miles away makes me boggle. I actually thought this might be a very deadpan joke; Dan Hancox has been kind enough to enlighten me about UK musical microregionalism.

(via zedequalszee)

27 miles was like my daily commute to high school! I guess Centreville just wasn’t a happening scene on its own?

Telekinesis - Dirty Thing

This is essentially a Death Cab song (cf. “Photobooth”, “Summer Skin”, lIterally like half of their catalog) but it’s really well done and if you don’t like it there isn’t anything I can do for you, I don’t think.

I feel powerless to control my obsession, even though it cheapens and demeans me. But today is the first day of the rest of my life. And so, I hereby pledge that, beginning on Feb. 1, 2011, I will not mention Sarah Palin — in print, online or on television — for one month. Furthermore, I call on others in the news media to join me in this pledge of a Palin-free February. With enough support, I believe we may even be able to extend the moratorium beyond one month, but we are up against a powerful compulsion, and we must take this struggle day by day.

YES THIS DEAR GOD

CAFFEINE NICOTINATE

it’s not quite what you expect it to be (it’s a niacin [nicotinic acid] salt, not a nicotine salt) but it’s a pretty good name anyway

Why is alcohol so widely available if it is so toxic and what can we do about it? … I think it is time to use the now-considerable knowledge of the neuropsychopharmacology of alcohol to develop safer, alternative intoxicants whose effects can be reversed by antidotes.

The Scientist; free registration required.

File under: pretty things you can see from my window, some days.

My window, which I am desperately hoping the building is going to have cleaned, soon.

NYT

Pretty much my thoughts exactly.

—

Late update: … and The Shrill One jumps on board:

It’s important to be clear here about the nature of our sickness. It’s not a general lack of “civility,” the favorite term of pundits who want to wish away fundamental policy disagreements. Politeness may be a virtue, but there’s a big difference between bad manners and calls, explicit or implicit, for violence; insults aren’t the same as incitement.

(via langer)

Revealing the layers of fraud and deception behind the Wakefield MMR jab paper that sparked the autism-vaccine hysteria that refuses to die no matter how extensively it’s debunked. This blog entry serves as an introduction to the article published in BMJ; read both.

Pea pesto on linguine with purslane and tofu

Guess who just stemmed three pounds of spinach leaf by leaf.

Mushroom Bourguignon, from Smitten Kitchen. Satisfying!

Okay, so it doesn’t look like much, but it’s really tasty! From Ottolenghi. Bread from Bon Chaz.

Parsnip and pumpkin mash

Or, you know, buttnernut squash.

Ingredients

1. 600 g (peeled weight) pumpkin or butternut squash, in 2-3 cm dice
2. 3 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
3. 1 bulb of garlic
4. 5 medium parsnips, peeled and cut into large chunks
5. 200 ml sunflower oil
6. 2 onions, sliced into rings
7. 80 g unsalted butter
8. 1 tsp ground nutmeg
9. 300 g creme fraiche, at room temperature
10. 15 g chives, roughly chopped
11. salt and pepper

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C / 400 F / Gas Mark 6. Toss the pumpkin or squash with olive oil and a little salt and pepper and spread out in a roasting tray. Roast 30-45 min, until soft and mashable. Once out of the oven, keep somewhere warm. Meanwhile, using a serrated knife, cut about 1 cm off the top of the garlic bulb and place the bottom part in the oven next to the roasting pumpkin. Bake for about 30 min or until the cloves are completely tender.
2. While the pumpkin is roasting, cook the parsnips in boiling salted water for 30 min, until completely soft. Drain and keep warm.
3. Yet meanwhile, pour the sunflower oil into a medium saucepan, heat well, and fry the onion rings in 2-3 batches. They should turn brown, almost burnt. Transfer to a colander and sprinkle with salt.
4. Take a large bowl that can accomodate the whole mixture. Hold the bottom of the head of garlic and gently press upwards to erlease the cooked flesh into the bowel. Add the butter, nutmeg, some seasoning, and then the parsnips. Crush well, using a potato masher (or pastry blender). Add the cooked pumpkin and mash very lightly (use a fork). Don’t over-mix; the mash should remain chunky and the pumpkin and parsnip distinct.
5. Gently fold in the creme fraiche and chives to form a ripple in the mash. Spoon a mound on to each serving plate, garnish with the fried onions and a drizzle of olive oil, and serve at once.

Mushroom artichoke marsala and Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem artichoke and rocket soup, which, incredible.

 Jerusalem artichoke and rocket soup

Ingredients

1. 400 g Jerusalem artichokes
2. 45 g rocket, roughly chopped, plus extra for garnish
3. 1 L chicken or vegetable stock
4. 10 cloves garlic, crushed
5. 6 scallions
6. 1 egg
7. 350 g Greek yogurt
8. salt and pepper

Directions

1. Peel the artichokes with a potato peeler, wash, and cut into irregular 1 cm dice. Put in a large saucepan with rocket, stock, garlic, and a couple pinches of salt. Bring to a boil and simmer lightly for 25 min until artichokes are tender; test one with a knife to make sure it’s totally soft.
2. While the soup is cooking, cut the spring onions in half lengthways and then cut across these lenghts into slall dice. Set aside. Break the egg into a large mixing bowl and whisk well with the yogurt.
3. When you are ready to serve the soup, reheat it to boiling point. Take a ladleful of hot soup and add it to the yogurt mix, stirring constantly. Repeat a few times, using about half the soup. You need to bring up the temperature of the yogurt. Now pour the warm yogurt into the soup pan, whisking constantly. Bring back to a very(!) gentle boil and leave there for a minute or two.
4. Taste and season with plenty of salt and pepper. Stir in the spring onions and serve garnished with rocket.

Leek and Swiss chard quiche

Mushroom japchae!

May not look like much… but sure is good. Spaghetti with chickpeas courtesy smitten!

Cauliflower cake omg

Potatoes in dashi stock.

This week’s haul: garlic cheese bread, daikon, Sieglinde potatoes, and shiitake mushrooms.

Thanksgiving aftermath.

Yakisoba Japadog from the Burrard St cart.

NO JAPADOG, NO LIFE!!!

Alien produce from the market…

1.5lb spinach is a lot of spinach.

Brussels sprouts with bacon and boiled Sieglinde potatoes.

Catching up on older food. Veggie skewer with tofu last night at the Fringe.

Sakura roll and wakame from Kadoya on Davie

Couscous with roasted tomatoes and olives from Smitten Kitchen ca. 2007, with orzo instead because I couldn’t find pearl couscous! I wish you could have some. It is delicious.