Category: Random item

Random item

Reality television show #2

Posted on by Dale

The other day we were retrieving an old family recipe from one of those old church cookbooks that proliferate in one’s cabinet like so many cockroaches, and we made the mistake of actually flipping through the thing.

Oh my.

You have never seen such a collection of canned foods, American cheese, Italian seasoning, and A-1 Sauce in your life.  Most of the items were absolutely repellent—we could not imagine anyone preparing, serving, or eating any of them.  (“Coney Island Quickie,” anyone?  It’s split wieners with cheese covered with cans of something…)

Ham & Banana Hollandaise, no really

We had a kind of socioarchaeological discussion about the artifact, reconstructing the why of these recipes.  The easy answer is that it was the 1970s.  These were our mothers, and these recipes were by and for women like them: cooking for a large family without a lot of time or money to do so.  Throwing cans of stuff into a casserole dish and heating it for 20 minutes at 375° was the way it was done.

As for the ingredients—canned everything, you guys—it helps to remember that there were not a lot of options.  Kroger didn’t carry kale and leeks and sea bass and tilapia and cilantro.  Julia Child was just beginning to have an impact on American kitchens, while Madison Avenue was very solicitous in providing time-saving and delicious recipes on nearly every page of every magazine.  It was a completely different world.

So our reality TV show is called Mimeograph Kitchen, and it will feature besides its host three couples: 1) someone our parents’ age, 70-80, i.e., the generation that produced these things; 2) someone our age, 50-60, the generation that grew up eating this stuff; 3) someone our kids’ age, 20-30, who have never known what it’s like not to have fresh salmon with dill cream sauce and a side of roasted broccoli.  The recipe is presented and discussed by all three couples (reminiscences, reactions, etc.) , and a sample is provided for a tasting.

Then, each couple updates the recipe so that it is more in line with the 21st century and brings the results back to the table for everyone’s comments.  (It’s not a high pressure competition show; they just go do their thing and then come back.)

It’s got nostalgia—along with the implied “good god can you believe people used to cook like this?”—intergenerational mocking, and creative cooking.  You could take the show on the road, doing a repeat in varying communities across the country.  Or you could just sit in Newnan and have nine seasons of the show in the can in no time.

—————

In other news, it came as a shock to me this morning that I haven’t blogged in a couple of days.  Must have been busy.  Or lazy.  But I am orchestrating “I am alone,” so I’ll have a report on that soon enough—and the materials for the 3 Old Men labyrinth were delivered yesterday, so that will be a fun report as well.

Useless

Posted on by Dale

So I came across The Useless Web.

Another secret lust

Posted on by Dale

I was tidying up my study a couple of weeks back—you can actually see the floor!—and uncovered this:

I remember it as if it were yesterday, walking through the bookstore at UGA, and coming across this beautiful, beautiful thing.  IT’S A BOX OF CARDS, YOU GUYS!

It was called Indecks, and what it was was a way to organize your notes on any research topic, and I was engaged in a huge one: an honors thesis on the work of the UGA Period Dance Group.  We performed social dances across five centuries, from Shakespeare’s time to the early 20th century, and none of it was written down or collated.  As chief researcher (and eventual president), that project fell on me.  I also needed, for reasons lost to my memory, an actual thesis/project to fill some requirement in the Honors Program.  (Probably something to do with Lothar Tresp’s time in the German army during WWII.)

The white cards were your note cards:

But what are those little holes, you are asking?  IT WAS MAGIC, YOU GUYS!

You could keep track of notes for up to eight papers, hundreds of sources, nearly a hundred notes per source per paper, and you didn’t have to keep them in any order!

The orange cards were where you wrote down your sources/topics:

Here are mine:

Then, as you completed a card, you would clip the hole(s) for the source on the side and for the topic around the other edges:

And HERE’S THE MAGIC, YOU GUYS:

The box came with two steel rods, which you would insert into the deck and then loosely shake.  Here, I’m looking for the cards involving La Volta, a Renaissance dance, so I’ve inserted the rod into hole #15…

Et voilá!

Out fall the cards on that topic.

AREN’T YOU ALL TINGLY IN YOUR TINGLY BITS??  This was awesome.  I could pull up any combination of cards/topics.  Give me all your Baroque dances, hole #7.  Give me all your adapted choreography for the Classical dances, holes #3 and #8.  Give me all the stuff I found in Allen Dodworth’s Dancing, source hole #5.

::sigh::

Of course, the more astute among you have realized that this is a kind of primordial database, thus beginning my lifelong lust of such things.  I tumbled to arrays early on in Applesoft BASIC and got good enough at using them that I was able to correct the computer instructor at GHP one summer when he was trying to use some other function to keep track of minors registration and the program kept crashing.  I also programmed an overdue books/fines system that all of Coweta County used until the state automated all the media centers.  When Apple Computer released FileMaker Pro, I ate it up and have used it to run everything from NCTC to Newnan Crossing to Newnan Presbyterian choir library to GHP to U.S. Senate Youth Program to Georgia Scholars.  (Pro tip: if you’re ever taking over a program from me, make sure you have a copy of FMP.  Otherwise, you’re borked, darlings, AND YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.)  I scorn anyone who uses a spreadsheet to keep track of such things; you people are lame-o losers.  DATABASES, BITCHES!

And what did I do with all those excruciatingly typed-out cards?

Ninety pages, typed with hand-drawn images, of sixteen of the dances performed by the Period Dance Group, including manners of each period, the original choreography of each dance, and the adapted choreography:

The Compleat Period Dancer was an immediate success—all the grad students wanted copies—and it remains a major resource for me to this day.

Lower on that title page is the date of the submission: June 4, 1974.  Forty years of SEXY SEXY DATABASE FUNTIMES, YOU GUYS!

An hypothesis

Posted on by Dale

I have an hypothesis.

You are probably aware of the fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis which turns ants into “zombies.” If not, check it out here.

I have become convinced that something similar is happening all around us. Somehow, a parasite has adapted itself to the human race, specifically the males. I’m not sure how it happens, but somehow this parasite finds a way into the body, probably in the adolescent period—I’m not prepared to speculate how, but suspect it’s sexual—and embeds itself, biding its time.

Then, as the victim reaches an advanced age, 60 or greater, the parasite climbs to the brain, where it compels him to go out and buy a little red truck.

Then, having purchased this vehicle, the victim takes it out on the road and drives slowly. Everywhere. In front of me.

Now, I have no idea what evolutionary advantage this gives the parasite, but I am certain that this is the only explanation for an otherwise inexplicable phenomenon.

Discuss.