[23 May 2010 | No Comment | ]
Charity Begins with the Angel in the Home: Bleak House Revisited, Part 2

Ah, back to Bleak House. Chapter V contains the delicious description of Krook’s rag-and-bone shop.  It’s so vivid that it makes you see and even smell the place, with its towers of junk always threatening to topple over, like an entire Goodwill store crammed into one tiny room. It’s testament to how the Victorians recycled before the word was even invented. Very little had to be thrown away in Victorian times: if you had leftover junk like bones, grease, clothing, or scraps of fabric, paper, or metal, there was always …

Read the full story »

Books, Classics, Headline »

[23 May 2010 | No Comment | ]
Charity Begins with the Angel in the Home: Bleak House Revisited, Part 2

Ah, back to Bleak House. Chapter V contains the delicious description of Krook’s rag-and-bone shop.  It’s so vivid that it makes you see and even smell the place, with its towers of junk always threatening to topple over, like an entire Goodwill store crammed into one tiny room. It’s testament to how the Victorians recycled before the word was even invented. Very little had to be thrown away in Victorian times: if you had leftover junk like bones, grease, clothing, or scraps of fabric, paper, or metal, there was always …

Headline, Pop Culture, Star Trek »

[23 May 2010 | One Comment | ]
Upcoming Propworx Auction is Trekkie Nirvana

On August 12, Propworx will be auctioning off tons of Star Trek memorabilia. Spock’s ears, Worf’s latex forehead piece, phasers, tribbles, models of Quark’s bar . . . The catalog alone will have any self-respecting Trekkie drooling. Never have I so wished I was worth my weight in gold-pressed latinum.
A few of the cooler items up for grabs:

Prosthetic Vulcan ears worn by Leonard Nimoy in the Original Series
Yellow uniform shirt worn by George Takei in the Original Series
Dedication plaques for the Enterprise-E, Enterprise NX-01, Voyager, the Xhosa, and theSao Paulo
A model fragment of the Enterprise-D (as wrecked …

Cooking, Food and Drink, Headline »

[19 May 2010 | No Comment | ]
Chicken Tikka Masala, Naan, and Basmati Rice

Visiting local haunt Sitar India Palace has gotten us hooked on Indian food. I’m especially fond of their creamy, satisfying chicken tikka masala, so I decided to attempt this dish at home, with naan and basmati rice to accompany it. The chicken marinated in a brew of spices and yogurt in the fridge for an hour, which was less time than I typically like to marinate things, but an hour did seem sufficient time for the meat to absorb the spicy flavorings. The sauce consisted of a piquant blend of yogurt, tomato sauce, …

Cooking, Food and Drink, Headline, Italian »

[16 May 2010 | No Comment | ]
No Reservations Pasta with Red Sauce, Take 2

I took another whack at the Pasta with Red Sauce recipe featured on the ‘Techniques’ episode of No Reservations tonight. It came out a lot better than it did last time, though I’ve yet to perfect it. On my first try, the tomatoes cooked so far down that they were almost dry, leaving me with barely enough sauce for 9 oz. of pasta. This time, I wound up with a big ol’ pot of sauce that was just a little thinner than I would have liked. Maybe next time it’ll …

Books, Classics, Headline »

[11 May 2010 | No Comment | ]
Esther Summerson Makes Me Puke: Bleak House, Revisited

So I got a Kindle for my birthday last Friday, and reading on it is such a compelling experience that it’s inspired me to revisit a few classic British novels. I’m starting with Bleak House, which I tore through (as much as anyone can ‘tear through’ an 800+ page book) in preparation for my Ph.D. exams more years ago than I care to remember.
Re-reading books after a few years have passed is always interesting: you’re a little older, you’ve had some new experiences, all the cells in your body …