The call of the Mac: proprietary freedom postponed

It seemed only fair to replace the old Mac after I finished it off with a full cup of coffee versed amidships into its already battered and grubby keyboard. Within a few seconds it was dead. I let it dry out for a few days and then tried booting it off the mains power supply, but it wouldn't boot--and still smells very strongly of coffee. It was a nice tool for curating CD/DVD/internet playback reclined in bed of an evening, so we missed it when it was gone. Hopefully the data will be retrievable onto another machine. I'm just waiting for the USB 2.5in SATA hard drive enclosure to arrive, and we'll see.

Anyway, I decided to introduce Mme Beezer to the delights of the comedy roast, and found this rather fine example of the genre: a general mocking of Pamela Anderson surrounded by her comedy entourage, posted in eight parts to YouTube.

It's almost 90 minutes of viewing, and eventually rather exhausting, but there were some very good bits indeed, amongst a considerable amount of what I think my late grandmother might have called "blue banter." Still, it was quite charming, and M. Lee-Jones's musical intervention was competent, thanks to his super backing musicians, and we watched it to the end quite content, having had to brush tears from our eyes on occasion. There is anthropological interest in its representation of American taboo in the early twenty-first century, and a lot of quite immaculate American English spoken word stuff, which is of considerable interest for the linguist.

a very nice haggis recipe

It's now the middle of February, so enough time had elapsed to contemplate getting the leftover uncooked haggis ingredients out of the freezer, and enjoying another winter dose of protein, fat, and vitamins.

The formal farce de panse de brébis that I prepared on the 25th with the French palate very much at the foremost of my mind was proclaimed "très bon" on the night, but to my mind was a trifle bland.

We began by thawing the 250g or so of chopped pluck, already mixed with some salt, very little pepper, whizzed onions, and the st. doux first thing this morning. It was completely thawed with just a little blood at the base of the container by 1800h.

Still using the original container used for freezing, I added: parsley rescued from the dumpster at the MIN, finely chopped, a very expensive hand-picked Cevennes oignon doux, also finely chopped, 1 clove of garlic (chopped); an eighth of a nutmeg, finely grated; and finely ground turmeric, black pepper, cayenne. Then 5 drops of Worcester Sauce which is just a splash, but does add a dash of umami

I added a bit more oatmeal and rolled oats to the mix to try to encourage it to firm up a bit, but it was slightly too liquid all along, giving a final consistency similar to the Dutch kroket. This is fine as long as it remains in your hand cooked but unbitten, but can explode in nasty gobbets of hot grease down a party shirt at the end of a long evening on the beer. The latter outcome is naturally best avoided if possible.

Still, it smelled very nice and fresh, and the 50g spoonfuls were just manageable making the burgers à l'ancienne, using, again oatmeal and rolled oats as the dry outer layer, bound with a couple of eggs to which a bit of salt, black pepper, and moutarde à l'ancienne had also been added.

Then it remained only to fry them in a shallow pan with a close fitting lid for about 10 minutes each side (which crisped them up nicely) and pop them into a 150°C oven to cook a little more while preparing the mash and the covers.

The final blow for kitchen experimentation was the pancake/omelette/fritter/rissole concoction that I made with the last of all the ingredients, thoroughly mixed.

The recipe does generate a fair amount of washing up, but I kept the kitchen tidy as I went along (starting with an empty dishwasher is a great luxury).

There were more pancakes/omelettes/fritters/rissoles than we could possibly eat in one sitting, and my lovelies each exclaimed their satisfaction with the results aloud. But the greatest pleasure was mine: they were well-cooked (not at all bloody, and not over either), and seasoned to perfection.

If I were doing it again I would stick with the proportions outlined above, but leave the oatmeal in the mixture longer to let it soak up the fluid for longer (and consider pearl barley as a possible substitute), or maybe experiment with upping the lard content.

Burns night Hackney style: images

Nice to get off the phone from the HoxtonHopper to roll up to this very fine display of pictures taken at the Hackney LCC's annual Burns bash. Looks like a fun time was had by all, with John Campbell very ably MCing the night. Notable turns this year included the Muckers unplugged along with the other traditional after-dinner recitations, including of course, an Immortal Memory speech which traces for the assembled company Burns' development as a cyclist.

The Muckers plugged in for a couple of sets of dancing, and despite a few intial difficulties with the lighting, a fine time was had by all. The 25 dance-only tickets had happily been appropriated by some hipster youth, who apparently much appreciated their initiation into the finer points of Scottish culture.

Not too late for a new year's resolution

I very much prefer not to hit the ground running, so I've been tapering in my activities since the festive break. But here we are on the second Monday of the month, and as yet no new paying clients have been found for the cabinet.

This is not too serious in the short term, but it would be nice to hit five figures of gross income well within the first year of operation, so I've been strolling around the internet "networking". I also started my studies in German, and thought about brushing up my Russian and Spanish. Proper translators it seems, have at least four languages in their quiver.

My German blog is a joke. For the time being the unfortunate Herr Julius Beezer operates a wordpress blog in that language, which consists of machine translated paragraphs from the original English. Well, it's one way to learn. Fortunately I have no other immediate choice as I ditched all the kilos of dull grammars and dictionaries in Switzerland a while back, and it's a long ride down there to pick them up (though they also have my tent, and some low-rider front pannier racks that I miss from time to time).

Herr Beezer is certainly not best pleased with his service provider: wordpress seems to barf on straighforward textual postings with alarming regularity, though they send cheerful notices confirming the receipt of an automated bug report, so he hasn't quite abandoned them in disgust for the timebeing.

Anyway, those are my new year resolutions: to brush up my languages, and find clients who need the fr>en professional service.

The mysterious workings of Jehovah

The Jehovah's witnesses came today. Or rather I came upon them as they were rather snoopily examining all the names on the buzzer board at the foot of the flats "for Romanian names." I came up behind them and asked them if they were looking for someone. They said, "O that's a pretty accent, where are you from?" To which I replied (not yet knowing they were Jehovah's witnesses) "It's a secret. In fact, I'm Belgian." I get rather tired of having an accent when I speak French. I suppose I should work on it. It turns out one of them speaks Romanian, so they are looking for Romanian names on buzzers to practise on. Or at least that's what they tell me. I suppose they could be Petainist collaborators identifying immigrants. That's me. British, in France, slightly paranoid. They looked harmless enough: two French ladies in their late middle years, smiling, un-botoxed.

I like it when the Jehovah's witnesses call, because it is an opportunity to get them to mend their fundamentalist ways, in particular their strict adherence to the Bible as the source of authority on all things, which if it was ever a good idea, even some thousands of years ago, is certainly not today.

My method is as follows: I explain to them that I was brought up a Quaker, which some of them have heard of, and some not, and that the one thing that Quakers and Jehovah's witnesses certainly share is being pacifist. Furthermore I add, with my greatest charm, when I lived in London, the Jehovah's witnesses were just about the only people who would come and knock on your door for a chat, an action which increases conviviality, however misguided the ideas which give rise to the behaviour. A woman from the council did come to suggest I make compost once, but I'd already been making my own for about five years at the time. I lived in a safe Labour seat in London, so certainly no political party ever darkened my door, ever. You have to go out for your politics in London.

Anyway, having gained the witnesses' attention, and assured them that I am friendly--the amount of surly knockbacks they must receive on each evangelical canvassing session must be considerable--I improvise.

Tonight, I satisfied myself by saying I certainly have a bible upstairs--in fact I have several--but I also have a koran, and several hundred other books besides. But I like the Jehovah's witnesses' action, because it makes me think "If you could only have one book, what would it be?" And to consider the days when books were so precious that the average number of books owned by an ordinary person would be approaching zero. "Religion is the scaffold of thought," I say, because I honestly believe that without religion in the past we would have no intellectual heritage today. The French are very keen on harking back to the Greeks and the Romans (wisely leaving out about 15 centuries of medieval stasis til the Renaissance) but anyway, it's a long story, but religions that today insist on the primacy of a single text, without weighing it against others, or considering how texts come into being and are valued, are basically just adding to the smokescreen, not trying to blow it away.

So that's me and the Jehovah's witnesses. I am always very nice and polite, and so are they, and usually they end our interview by giving me a leaflet, emboldened with biblical citation, and sometimes illustrated with pictures of nice multiracial gatherings with a lion lying down with a lamb in the background or somesuch. They definitely have a house style.

I'd like to know more about what leads Jehovah's witnesses to their faith. I suppose in entering such an out group, and believing so strongly in heaven helps certain kinds of humans to deal with being human better than if they were not Jehovah's witnesses, and so, I suppose, good luck to them. Apart from the nagging doubt that their canvassing is designed to detect and exploit minds less robust (hah!) than my own. Knowing that they must have doors slammed rudely in their faces pretty often, but dealing with them in a convivial manner myself gives me a rosy internal glow of virtue, and so for me anyway, they are very good, and a welcome element on the social scene.

I'd quite like to quote from their leaflet to round off this post, but it seems to have disappeared into the literary compost with which I surround myself, or perhaps it's still in my shirt pocket, which is next door, and the baby is now sleeping and a bit poorly, so I'll just have to content myself with quoting my favourite line from the bible, which is this: Ecclesiastes 1:18 For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Sorry about that.

It's a wonderful life

I do like films, but for a long time in my former existence as a general practitioner I felt that it was not a time efficient medium for upgrading the cultural programme going on in my head. I certainly didn't have time to watch bad films. For several years I delegated my choice of cinematic experience to my then partner, and a good job she did too. It is a great luxury to see a good film completely unaware of its reviews.

But I do have gaps, especially because I don't watch much telly. Now I've got more time, DVD is a seductive format for catching up, but which films to watch? Filmaster.com is a new site with web 2.0 features that enable you to enter your favourites and then, by FOAF magic, find people with similar tastes, and therefore useful suggestions to make about the kind of thing you might like that you haven't seen yet.

Full of youthful enthusiasm I moseyed on over to this corner of the internet, and started furiously entering data in order to receive its recommendations. Unfortunately, by some quirk of the interface I was using, I thought that one had to review each film before one could receive recommendations, and naturally, after 65 entries, they were getting somewhat concise...

This irritated regular users of the site: new reviews show up on all kinds of public timelines, and one in particular, a M. Sketchbook, was somewhat scornful of my admittedly brief reviews. Inspired by him (or her), I wrote this:

***

I am sorry to tell you, M. Sketchbook, that each of the first 65 or so films I reviewed on the site, anxious for its automated recommendations, now has a review of similar brevity...

Horreur! Au boulot.

"You've never seen "It's a Wonderful Life"?
"I'm afraid not."
"But it's a wonderful film. It's on the telly every Christmas."
"Oh."
***
"Let's watch "It's a wonderful life" on the video."
"What, you haven't seen it?"
"No, just never have."
"Can't we watch something else? It's on every Christmas."
"Oh, OK."
***
"Let's watch "It's a wonderful life" on the video."
"What, you haven't seen it?"
"No, just never have."
"Oh, but you have to watch it at Christmas."
"Look, we didn't have a television, and then when we did, we certainly didn't watch it at Christmas."
"Oh. No, let's watch this one."
"Oh. OK."
***
"Oh great! you've got "It's a wonderful life" on DVD. Can we watch it?"
"What, you haven't seen it? But it's on every Christmas."
"So I understand. But I have somehow managed to get the age of 44 years old without ever watching it, and many people have spoken to me about it over the years, even quoted it, told me how great it was, but a viewing has always eluded me. Please can we watch it?"
"But it's April."
"I know. But, please, can we watch it?"
"Oh, alright. I don't mind watching it again I suppose. Can't you wait til Christmas?"
"Can't we just watch it now?"
"I guess so."
"Great. Would you like a cup of tea first?"
***
I watched "It's a wonderful life" in the sixth month of my forty-fifth year as a screen-dwelling inhabitant of the third planet out from an undistinguished star somewhere in a not much more interesting spiral galaxy.
It is undoubtedly a well-made film. I hope the male lead, James Stewart, was rightfully proud of a fine performance. I can see why people like it. Religion and suicide are meaty topics that artists must address. I am glad its simple moral falls 'gainst self-slaughter. The Everlasting would have it so.
But it is somewhat mawkish, and its politics arguably bollocks (big capitalist/little capitalist FFS), and though I watched it with interest and enjoyment to the end on this occasion, I doubt if I would do so again. So yes, a charming film for the popular canon, if somewhat over SENTIMENTAL. In my humble opinion.
***
Keep goading me M. Sketchbook. You inspire me. I will tighten my belt and give you my words for free, for as long as people are willing to read them. But like George Bailey, I too have a family, and a living to make in the capitalist system [spits], and life is short even if you don't kill yourself, and maybe there are other things to do, apart from gawp at the telly, and then writing about it after on the intertube. Bisous.

***

on boredom while cycling

That's twice I've been told now, in the last year, by people I care about—my nephew and my lovely—that they can be bored when they are riding a bike. This has happened to me in the past, but very rarely—I hesitate to say never—does now.

I've made a start on trying to explain why that might be: