Anger Burger

Things are starting to happen fast here at Casa Guacamole.  The nasturtiums I planted were doing well but then just one day thrived their asses off, blooming and vining out.  We ate this blossom seconds after the photo was taken.

The pea vines are also going bananas, despite a raging aphid infestation that seems to enjoy the daily soapy water bath I give them.  They’re the cleanest aphid infestation in the neighborhood.

The peas themselves are tasty, though a little starchy tasting, which is strange.  What makes the ones from the grocery store so sweet?  And staying true to form, the Viking stands in front of the vines and munches away, marauding my hard work.

This is deeply unrelated, but if you’re familiar with me in meatspace than you probably know I have a perfume addiction.  Or maybe not, because I also don’t want to be that lady on the subway that you hold your breath around because you can taste her White Diamonds like a 1990′s chemical defoliant.  I tend to wear my perfumes light, and struggle over whether a scent is “appropriate” for everything from the weather to the possible company.

Anyway, there’s a amazing perfume shop in L.A. called Scent Bar and I stopped by to torture myself and tried Tilda Swinton’s perfume Like This.  I’d wanted to try it for a long time and I set out yesterday to finally do so.  The gentleman working at Scent Bar was impeccable, too — I can’t be complimentary enough.  I walked in wearing jeans and a t-shirt, smelling like Old Spice (TRUE) and he treated me like I’d spent thousands of dollars there before.  Of course I didn’t catch his name, because I’m a jackass like that.  If you’re in L.A. and you like good perfume – not department store stuff, but classy stuff – then go there.  Anyway, Like This?  Meh.  It’s interesting at first, but dries down to what my nose only detects as roses and something vaguely clinical.  Other reviewers online call it “new car” or “inside an airplane” but I wouldn’t go that chemical… it’s just pedestrian, I guess.   Anyway, the guy was like a mentalist or something because he noticed that I leaned toward classic English perfumes and said “Saturday after next we’re having a perfume tribute to the Royal Wedding,” and I basically fainted with joy.  THE END.

SOME THINGS.

• I am freely and openly mesmerized by William and Kate’s upcoming wedding.  My friends Marika and Oliver (who are British/American/Kiwis) asked me why and I drew a total blank.  I don’t think William is particularly handsome, though he’s got a sort of rakishly easy-going thing that I imagine comes from wealth and high education.   But still.  Also: his mom was Princess Tragic!  That counts for a lot.   I do think Kate is lovely, and maybe that’s part of it: the pretty non-royal “commoner” who meets and marries a prince.  It’s all so fabulously English, it makes me want tea and scones for every meal.  I was never a Princess girl, but I spend a LOT of energy looking at William and Kate memorabilia online and convincing myself not to buy it.  (For example, this tea towel — the colors!  So cute!  But $22 after shipping?!)

• Today is ThinkTank‘s adoptiversary!  How apt that our little furbaby should come into our lives on April Fools’ when every day with her is like April Fools’.  I’ll write about it later, but I’m planning on making her a special treat because it’s not like she already isn’t the luckiest goddamn dog in the world who gets her own Aveno baby shampoo in the shower and $30 a bottle fish oil supplements because she’s allergic to the more affordable salmon stuff.

• This article in the Los Angeles Times about Sarah Gim made me cringe.  She’s one of the people behind the website Tastespotting, a food-blog aggregator.  The author seems delighted to throw around the term “food porn” as though it were just then made up, and the article itself seems slightly off point: the most negative aspect of the site – the subjectivity of who gets approved – is written with a rather dubious tone.  It allows Gim to defend herself without substantiating what is a completely valid point: the site is subjective.  I’ve submitted photos that were refused with a claim “out of focus” but were crystal-clear in focus.  Another was rejected on grounds of “looks unappetizing” – a lovely photo of fresh sage sitting atop uncooked chicken ready for the oven.  (I’ve also had photos rejected that should have been, and I’ve had several photos accepted).  Participating in Tastespotting can be a frustrating and seemingly random process.  I think Gim is probably a nice woman, but the article’s efforts to make her seem guileless and altruistic is just weird.  She’s a businesswoman running a business.

• The organic lavender my mom sent has arrived, so I’ll be making Grandma River’s lavender shortbread just as soon as the temperature drops a little this weekend.

• Uh, what else… There was something else.  I’ll add it if I think of it.

Okay, so I feel like I should offer an explanation, but I don’t want to.

Let’s get that a little closer.

Mike the Viking, yours truly, Mysterious Guest from New Zealand

The internationally acclaimed artist (and my friend) Junko Yamamoto is helping to organize a benefit for Japan this weekend at Kobo at Higo in the International District.

If you haven’t yet had a chance to donate to any relief organizations, now is when you should figure out how much money you can spare this month.  And if you have already donated, you’re a fool not to go.

image ©Junko Yamamoto

There’s a fierce Japanese art scene in Seattle and pretty much all of the heaviest hitters are showing here – you will truly never see all of them in the same place again, ever.

image ©Etsuko Ichikawa

No artist is receiving a commission, and Higo Variety Store will be adding a matching $10,000.  I genuinely wish I was there, just to see the scope of skill on display.  Not to mention the pottery!

pottery by Yuko Otaku, from my own collection

Oh my god I hope there’s a pottery addiction recovery program somewhere in the world.

To get it out of the way, I’m going to lead in by saying that after something like 8 years on the same birth control pills, I just switched brands and that’s probably why I am going to tell you about this tinted lip balm I bought and how much I love it.  I can understand if you’re pissed; I am too.

Actually I’m strangely calm.  I was terrified that switching to a slightly different hormone level was going to turn me into a raving nutbag but they haven’t.  Turns out?  The pills I’ve been taking for the last almost-decade?  They were turning me into a raving nutbag.  Whoops.

Anyway, let’s get this over with.  And don’t make eye contact with me, there’s no need make my shame any more intense.  So, I’m a lady, right?  I like to wear the make-ups.  I’m also not very good at it, so I tend to rely on products that are more-or-less foolproof, like mineral foundation and waterproof mascara.  I like lipstick, but I tend to touch my lips a lot so even though there’s a brand that I dearly love, I rarely wear it.  Lip gloss on the other hand, I hate.  I generally don’t like it on other women, either.  It makes me feel like a goddamn prude, but especially sparkly lipgloss?  Just write BLOWJOB HOLE around your mouth already.

Luckily for me and other judgmental old women, there’s this now:

First, if you’re not newt-belly porridge pale like myself, you’re out of luck, because these are super-sheer.  Anyway, I bought the color “Hibiscus” first after reading some glowing reviews online, and I loved it so much I went back and bought “Tiger Lily” and “Pink Blossom” as well.

The formula of these is spectacular.  They feel very, very smooth and moisturizing and not at all sticky, and the color is sheer enough that you can sort of mindlessly slather it on without someone telling you to maybe go home and sober up a little.  In fact, it’s difficult to take a photograph of their color.

Even so, I can tell when I’m wearing them.  It’s just enough, perfect for daytime.  No sparkle, no shimmer, and what I’d call low-gloss.

Alright, that’s enough.  I’m going to go talk to my tomato plants now.

There is a good chance that I’ll soon be confronted by concerned neighbors for my tendency to shout “YOU GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKERS!”   I understand that the neighbors have children – at an impressionable age, no less – but I hope they’ll understand when I show them the source of my rage.

Those goddamn motherfucking squirrels.  This is fifth otherwise gorgeous avocado destroyed by some gluttonous, plague-ridden tree-rat.  I used to like squirrels.  I used to take joy in hand feeding neighborhood squirrels, in earning their trust and helping me pretend like I’m Snow White.  Now I’m shopping online for a high-precision slingshot.

The dog isn’t even a help anymore.  She just lays in the sun and pretends like she can’t hear me hissing “KILL THEM!” at her.

In unrelated news, the Viking and I have been watching the news like most people watch sitcoms.  For example, channel 5 has a tendency to use entirely uninformative sub-lines while reporters are speaking, so that if your sound is off (as ours often is) you are treated to such nonsense as:

“TRICKING THE ELDERLY”

And:

“HOUSE OF FILTH”

I had ambitions for today, I really did.

They mostly involved getting the last of the spring planting done, making sure that all the stupid planty babies were settled away and doing their thing making me impatient.

Welcome to the outside, planty!

I hope you enjoy beautiful Southern California.

Of course my mom is laughing at this because she got like 10 inches of snow this week, but whatever.  She didn’t innocently decide to walk to the grocery store for Dr. Pepper and toilet paper (true story) just when this bullshit decided to happen.

Gardening really messes with your sense of time.  It feels like months and months since I planted these shishito peppers, and yet they’re still tiny little sprouts without their first real leaf growth yet. The sprouts in the background are all basil and those too are just… sprouts.

And then you have something like nasturtiums, which already outgrew their little peat pots:

They had to go outside and they were one of the last things I planted.  Elsewhere, Mike the Viking went nuts on mint varieties at the garden center and I used up the hand-me-down pots my friends gave me.

Well, along with the rosemary and chives over on the left there.  There’s more mint somewhere around here, I just misplaced it.  Anyway, they can’t go in the ground because if they do the landlord will come by to see how we’re doing someday and discover a giant mint bush where his house used to be.

In addition to the hand-me-down pots, I had to purchase some extra planters, and this time I’m trying out some $2 beverage buckets from the clearance store.  The Viking drilled shot some holes into the bottom with a crossbow so they could drain, and the sugar snap peas seem plenty happy.  Minus the part where they are growing too fast for me to set up a frame for them.

And speaking of growing too fast, after some research of what kind of vine to grow over the back carport/pergola/arbor, we found a lovely passion flower.  I was under the impression that passion flower vines were very invasive and destructive, but it turns out they don’t grow runners or spread at the base at all – where you plant them is where you get them. They are a far wiser choice for screening an area in than say, bamboo.  Also, someday: passion fruit.  Anyway, ours was getting some sun on the south side of the house while I wait another week or two to plant it, when I noticed it had basically doubled in size.

Almost all that greenery at the top of there is new.  I gotta get it planted.  But I’m at my most essential nature a procrastinator, so we’ll probably pull in a few more evenings of Talisman instead:

Talisman is Dungeons & Dragons for people with few friends.  You read that right.  Fewer friends than people who play D&D have. You build up a character over many rounds until they are strong enough to ascend up the game’s difficulty levels.  For three people, it’s about 3 hours of disrupted play (as in, we take short breaks).  The game costs about as much as a new video game, and you can buy expansion packs that change gameplay and character possibilities, so we like it a lot.  I mean, whatever.  I wish we knew a D&D group in Los Angeles to join up with, but we don’t.  Life is a never-ending series of exponentially disheartening disappointments.

Speaking of!  I’d been saving money to buy a new sewing machine, but our terrible, awful, loud, crappy, smelly Dirt Devil vacuum finally told us to fuck off forever, so I had to buy a new vacuum instead.  After much rending of the clothes and hair I found exactly what I wanted cheap on eBay (rarity of rarities!) and became the grudgingly happy owner of a new vacuum that doesn’t disturb napping ladies:

I can’t say with all certainly that I understand what’s happening in this image, but I too would pass out if my man partner actually vacuumed the floors.  PASS OUT.

As much as I’d like to think of myself as a cyberpunkian post-apocalyptic emotionless she-cactus, I’m not.   At all.  I’m a nerd.  A weepy nerd.  So like any good nerd, I’m also filled with shame.

To wit: For my birthday last year my dad gave me a Kindle, and despite my persistent indecision¹ on how I feel about electronic books, I love it.  I think it was nerd-maven Felicia Day whom I first heard mention using their Kindle as a way to hide what they were reading, and the seed was planted for me.  Because there was a book I wanted to read, and I didn’t want anyone to know about it.

That book was Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander.  For a brief period of my life I worked at a bookstore, and it was a book I found myself restocking often.  Until I worked there, I’d never heard of it, but (like many books) after I realized I saw it everywhere.  On every literature shelf in every store, new and used copies.  I remember reading the back while stocking it and thinking absentmindedly that it sounded good, until I realized it was a secret romance novel.

That’s right, secret romance novel. It is “literature”.  It is even sometimes science fiction.  But it is never, ever, romance.  Until you read it.

I could talk about the infinitely complex sub-genres of books for hours and hours, but I think the one that most enrages readers of “real” literature is the romance sub-genre.  The newest new thing is what the industry calls “Urban Fantasy” – a descriptor that I love.  It is such a 90′s era sex toy shop name, it just tickles me to type it out.  URBAN FANTASY.  Anyway, the woman who wrote the books “True Blood” is based on falls into this category, wherein modern, normal ladies are somehow thrust into a world of fantastic, paranormal or otherwise imaginative events (and then those events are thrust into them if you know what I mean and I think that you do).  Basically all the ladies that were watching Labyrinth in the 80′s and wishing they were Sarah are now reading books in which they are Sarah and can finally do what they want to with Jareth the Goblin King.  And before you think I am mocking those ladies — well I am, but only because I’m turning into one of those ladies.  It’s true, I can’t fight it.  I studied literature in college, for fuck’s sake!  I wrote a massive paper about the post-industrial metaphors of Neuromancer!  Oh my god, don’t look at me, I’m a monster.

So: Outlander.  WWII nurse touches a magical stone in Scotland and is transported back to 1743 where she has to have passionate sex with the world’s handsomest Highlander to save her life.  I KNOW.  It’s the stupidest scenario ever written, but Gabaldon is actually a good writer and before I knew it I was frantically downloading the sequel and swearing Mike the Viking to eternal secrecy.  My shame is great, but not so great I won’t tell everyone on the internet about it.  Because my fear of being discovered is destroyed by outing myself.  Like the time I mistakenly told someone I watched all of “The Hills” in a single three-day marathon session and then subsequently hallucinated and believed that television had transcended reality and pushed us closer to the singularity.  And then later the person I told that to shortened it to “Sunday loves ‘The Hills’.”

Okay, that’s all.  I just had to get that off my chest.

¹ I mostly worry about the economics of it, and all the complications therein.  The entire literary industry is collapsing under greed – publishers bet 90% of their yearly income on only 5% of their publications, meaning that they’ve set up a trap for themselves where they can’t afford to publish anything but blockbusters.  To an author they say, if your book isn’t going to move 1 million copies there is “no market” for it.   Enter e-books, which are both brilliant (no overhead costs!) and terrible (wait, you mean we can’t charge the same amount?) for them.  I love the convenience of e-books, but as long as the industry insists on charging $13 for new e-books, they won’t have me as a customer.  And I will still always prefer the aesthetic of a real book, but there comes a point where a reader as voracious as myself has to be realistic: I read several books a month, and I can only keep the ones that are very, very special.

Presenting for your pleasure: bullet points!

• My friend Miriam started making and selling AMAZING hats!  Holy Kobe beef!



They are so alarmingly fetching, I’m not even sure what to say. To make it all even better, the hats aren’t just hot-glued together, she’s using age-old, time-tested haberdashery techniques.



I am a terrible hat-wearer, but I really, really want to see someone wearing that fawn hat around town. It would make my day.

• Planty babies are doing their thing, with the nasturiums suddenly punching through the soil with their little green fists, like zombies rising from their graves:



They truly were one day not there and the next day were sneaking lipstick on after leaving the house and experimenting with cigarettes. But they are just so photogenic, the bitches.



The shishito are still putting on a good show, but the nasturtiums are officially owning it.

• The Viking asked last night what was for dinner and when I said “Fractals,” he just nodded, bless him.



It’s a Romanesco, if you’re interested. It tastes like it looks. Which is to say, like math and cauliflower and broccoli. It’s tasty simply roasted in some olive oil and salt.



The only downer is that it’s expensive. The farmer’s market was selling them for $4 a pound, which meant this one ran me about $6. Which is a lot for a single serving of vegetables. But you know. Gnarl.