General Lordisimo’s Apocalypse

Wired has a nice list of some scientifically plausible apocalypses.  When I tend towards apocalyptic thinking it is usually one of these scenerios that comes to mind first and foremost (especially becuase some of them are essentially certainties.  The sun really will eventually expand and heat the Earth up something fierce.  A super volcano is pretty much a sure deal to erupt again someday).  They promote grim realities about existing in an arguably hostile universe.  However, most of them do not cause me a whole lot of stress seeing as their probabilities of occuring within my lifetime are slim to none.  Furthermore, I suspect that there is a kind of cultural vanity to presume that humanity will exist “forever.”  While it is a little uncomfortable to think about the extinction of our species and an Earth without us, the likelihood of this occuring eventually is pretty great.  the vast majority of all the life that has ever lived on Earth has gone extinct over time, and from a purely scientific perspective it is unreasonable to assume that humans would be any exception.  However, our intellect and ingenuity may provide us means of staving off our eventual destruction that is not allotted to other lifeforms.  And as a worse case scenario we may just keep evolving like everything else.

Posted in General Destruction, Signs of the Apocalypse
Tags: Signs of the Apocalypse, Wired

I recently began to reread one of my favorite Stephen King books, his second novel, ‘Salem’s Lot. For those of you not in the know, ‘Salem’s Lot is a vampire story, and, in my personally opinion probably one of the best vampire stories since Mr. Stoker penned Dracula.  I first read ‘Salem’s Lot when I was a junior in high school and was absolutely taken aback by how frightening it was.  I had encountered the portrayal of vampires in various forms at that point, but Mr. King’s creatures of the night struck me as something relatively different from the others I seen in movies or read about; Mr. King’s monsters in ‘Salem’s Lot actually made me feel scared of vampires again.

As a child vampires were always the one monster that I thought of as truly terrifying.  Werewolves might be a creepy concept if I was out in the woods, mummies just seemed silly, and I was not really familiar with zombies yet.  But vampires, these undead bloodsucking night beasts that cast no reflection, really creeped me out.  But as I grew older and experienced more and more stories of vampires, I became less and less enamored by what I had once thought of as terrifying creatures.  The I read ‘Salem’s Lot and once again I remembered what it was about them that had made them so terrifying.

Vampires are a hot item these days.  Between the success of television shows like True Blood and The Vampire Diaries, the continued success of stories by Anne Rice, and the tame tween pop stories like The Twilight Saga, vampires can be encountered just about anywhere.  However, more often than not, I find myself disappointed in these modern portrayals of the creatures of the night (especially those lame-ass sparkly vampires from Mrs. Mayer’s novels).  Vampires, in there many current versions and narratives strike me as overwhelmingly de-fanged and marginalized as interesting and terrifying monsters.

It might be worthwhile to ask ourselves what purpose archetypal monsters like vampires play in our modern world?  Historically, vampires were folkloric creatures that demonstrated a fear of death, a lack of scientific knowledge about the decaying process, and a concern about the spread of disease.   Such was the historic concern about dead corpses rising from their grave that bodies actually were exhumed and desecrated by means like decapitation and burning.  In our present time, much of the folklore and myth, breed significantly from misunderstandings and a broader fear of the world, have receded.  We live in a more logical time in which the dark of night does not seem nearly as dark as it once had.  Yet we still maintain a fascination in the stories surrounding these imaginary monsters.  Even if the creatures themselves have changed over time, the overall interest has remained.

I suspect it is because in some ways we like the idea of being scared of “something” and so what better than  these beings that once actually terrified our ancestors?  Fear is a natural, if not uncomfortable, human emotion.  I suspect that for all of our logical and sensible faculties, we all take a degree of comfort in recognizing that our fear mechanize still functions.  A lack of fear in all ways, shapes, and forms seems like a unholsome and perilous thing.  Taking vampires in consideration, the biggest remaining fear is that concept of death as a necessary bookend to life.   The vampire is able to avoid that ultimate death, but usually at the cost of their overall humanity and with the gruesome prerequisite of regular sanguine meals.

While many portrayals of vampires in modern narratives may promote a kind of existential fear, I do not think that they really tend to elicit the overall dread and terror that once plagued peasants of the 18th European countryside.  More often than not, I find the vampires in our current fiction, television, and movies to be little more than moody mosquitos, who might cause a start with their disproportioned canine teeth, but lack an overwhelming ability to make a person unable to sleep.

If I had to list where I think some of the problems with vampires are, I would come up with a number of examples.  I shall go through them here:

• Vampires having Existential Crisis:  This stereotype is entirely too overplayed in modern fiction.  The vampire who is conflicted by his/her immortality and need to feast on human blood in contrast to retaining the sense of humanity that once defined their personhood.  This kind of vampire story might have been interesting once or twice in that it differentiated from vampires as simply cold-blooded killing machines, but after awhile it has become tired and empty.  I would say these crisis of character are the most debilitating portrayal of vampires in that it really removes any degree of fear worthiness.
• The beautiful vampire: This often goes along with the above.  Not only does the vampire have to deal with the issues of remaining “human” but they are also “cursed” with some absurd degree of attractiveness.  Admittedly, the allure of vampires has been around for a long time.  There has long been a sexual element to the creatures.  However, traditionally this has been more of an unnatural glamour of sorts, used to entice and enthrall unsuspecting prey rather than a broad characteristic of the undead.  What has happened all too often in recent portrayals is that the focus is all on how beautiful the vampire(s) is, and not on the fact that this is a predatory creature that is longing to take a bite our of some poor human’s jugular.
• Vampires who are Not Evil:  Along with the two above reasons this portrayal really get’s my goat.  In my mind vampires should always be evil things.  It should be part of their nature.  If they are not evil by nature then of course they are bound to have existential issues with the nature of thier being.  But if their nature is just cruel and vicious, then really they shouldn’t take issue with thier need for human blood.  I do like vampires that are not entirely beastly, but have some mote of intelligence which they use for one purpose, that being the acquisition of more humans to feed upon.  this manipulative quality can make a vampire even more evil than just as a blood thirsty monster.  It is part of what made Dracula such a lasting success.  If a vampire is good, then he/she is not really a monster at all, and boring in my book.
• The diminishing of vampire weaknesses:  It seems like a lot of more current portrayals have taken away from vampires’ various vulnerabilities.  Some are immune to holy items, some don’t mind garlic, and some can even wander about under the light of the sun with no apparent unease.  Like the existential crisis, this might have been neat once or twice, but now it is so often done that when I vampire in a modern story explains about the misconception of a supposed vulnerability, I feel like asking, “who really now thinks that that was actually supposed to hurt you anyways?”  It is good to make sure that our fictional monsters have weaknesses.  This grounds them in a sense.  It forces them to work their terror within the confines of certain rules, and it furthermore gives people an opportunity to combat an already impressive foe.  Taking away from these weaknesses makes the vampires seem more unstoppable on one hand, but also seem unreasonably powerful, which makes them kind of boring.  Of course they are going to defeat the humans, because they can withstand just about everything short of a nuclear explosion.  COntrary to common assumption this does not create greater tension or suspense, but instead allows the creator of the story to get away with having to work around difficulties for the vampire itself.  Creating a really terrifying vampire that still has the normally expected vulnerabilities takes a wider degree of creativity.  I am okay with limited degrees of overcoming weaknesses.  One I particularly like, is that a vampires weakness to holy symbols, holy water, and holy places, is directly in proportion to the amount of faith vested in these things.  As such, a devout priest may be able to wield a crucifix against the children of the night with great success, while an atheist with some “holy water” might just get ol’ Dracula wet.  Beyond that though, I like my vampires to hate garlic bread, wear gold instead of silver, get real nasty sunburns, and have a strong aversion to sharpened wooden objects near their heart areas.
• Scientific explanations for Vampires:  This is a bit more recent inclusion into the vampire mythos.  Explaining vampires as a product of either some sort of contagion or genetic mutation.  Personally (and perhaps interestingly as an atheist and skeptic of real world claims of the supernatural) I like my vampires to be supernatural beings, or, better yet, to be left unexplained altogether.  Zombies make wonderful monsters to be explained by some terrifying virus, but for vampires I kind of find it tiresome and, once again, taking away from the frightfulness.  When you explain things with a natural cause like a disease, you create this sense of “well maybe we’ll find a cure.”  However, with an unnatural or unknown cause, a means of removing the beings in far more elusive and difficult.  One of the few recent vampire stories I actually liked was the film version of 30 Days of Night (I have not read the comics so I can’t comment on them), in part  because the vampires are left relatively unexplained, they just appear and act like terrifying horrible monsters and that worked perfectly for me.  Sometimes things are better left unexplained.  Sure it is okay to have some speculation and thoughts about it, but leaving it open and unknown creates other forms of drama and suspense and allows for a broader sense of mystery in the world. 
• Vampires Who Can survive Without Human Blood:  Look, if your story has a vampire like this ten you suck (and not like a vampire sucks blood, you suck in the sense that you are a lame piece of shit who has annoyed me).  For vampires to be at all interesting in my opinion they need to feed on human blood, exclusively.  Often times it is the moody existential crisis riddled vampires who make do feeding on the blood of things like rats and pigs rather than draining a human.  This annoys me.  Vampires are supposed to be monsters and that which is supposed to make them monstrous is the insatiable appetite for human body fluids (specifically the red body fluid).  You take that need away and basically you are left with a long living superhuman who has entirely too much time to bitch and whine about how shitty it is to be a vampire.  Fuck you Edward!

I will take a break from listing my gripes with modern vampire portrayals (though I could probably come up with some more if I wanted to) and now mention the few cases of more recent vampire stories that I think of as succeeding fairly well (almost all of them have some of the failings I list above, but overall I’d say they do okay).

• ‘Salem’s Lot:  We’ll start off with this one because it is what got me onto this post in the first place.  Admittedly ‘Salem’s Lot is getting a bit dated ( it is almost 40 years old), but I still think that this is the modern vampire story that sets the bar for all others.  The vampires in Mr. King’s novel are truly monsters with a remorseless attitude and that insatiable hunger.  They are actually frightening (especially the floating creepy children vampires), they are actually evil, and they actually feel like uncompromised vampires.  This is the story for people who feel like I do, and think that the state of vampires in fiction is currently in disrepair.
• 30 Days of Night(film):  As I mentioned above, I found this to be a good film portraying vampires.  It has a bit of the existential stuff near the end, but for the most part the monsters in this movie rock the full on terror and destructive qualities that I like in a good vampire story.  The movie is overall successful in its creepiness and it adheres pretty well to the more traditional vampire mythos.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (television series):  This popular TV series has a number of failings on the vampire front (most significantly Angel, and later defanged Spike) but overall it isn’t too bad.  The vampires adhere to the general rules of vampirism. They are actually evil and blood thirsty.  They have a definite supernatural origin.  However, most of the vampires in the series are kind of wimpy and weak and so they never really come across as all that terrifying.
• Lost Boys:  Another one that definitely has its faults, but does succeed in keeping the vampires actually pretty evil and vicious as well as maintaining their vulnerabilities.  Ultimately it is a pretty campy 80s flick, but it mostly gets its vampires right (even if they are not all that scary.  Sorry, but it is hard to really be afraid of Kiefer Sutherland).
• The Blade Series:  Again, these have some issues, most significantly Mr. Blade himself, but it does keep vampires as pretty evil horrible creatures that like to drink from human necks.  I give these points for being willing to stick to the gruesome violence all too often left out of vampire stories today.
• Let the Right One In (Swedish version film):  Next to ‘Salem’s Lot I think this is my favorite modern portrayal of vampires.  It does delve some into the existential and romantic vampire (kind of) but it does so in such a refreshingly original way that I feel like I can forgive it.  Not only does the vampire adhere well to vampire rules, but she is also utterly terrifying.  I’d love to read the novel this film is based on to see if it accomplishes the same degree of suspense and dread that movie did.  To date I have avoided watching the American remake of this movie because the Swedish version was so flawless in my opinion. Really this is quite an exceptional vampire story.

What else?  I’d love to hear other suggestions of good vampire stories.  There are times, as somebody who tells a lot of stories in his head, that I try to think of what kind of vampire story I’d like to tell.  I can say, with some certainty, that if I were to ever write my own vampire story, I’d work very hard to avoid the above listed failings.  I’d be disappointed with myself if I didn’t.

Posted in contemplation, General Destruction
Tags: 'Salem's Lot, 30 Days of Night, Blade, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dracula, Let the Right One IN, Lost Boys, monster, Stephen King, supernatural, vampires, Zombie

Wow, two cooking posts in two days time, is this some kind of miracle or something?  Who knows?  I don’t.

Anyway, I am kind of surprised I haven’t written about this sooner seeing as about six years ago I don’t think I had ever used cast iron cookware, and now it is a real staple to my culinary practices.  Cast iron cookware is, simply put (and in my personal opinion), an essential for any complete kitchen.

While you can certainly cook much the same stuff with some good stainless steel cookware (and really, let’s be honest, don’t use teflon non-stick shit, go with stainless steel.  If you know what you are doing this should never be a problem in the first place), there is something unique and enjoyable about the use of cast iron.  I think part of it is just the solid heft of the things.  There is no denying that you need a bit of muscle if you are going to be using cast iron cookware regularly.  Another part of it (and arguably the more important part from a cooking perspective) is the way that cast iron is so successful at evenly distributing its heat.  Even more so than stainless steel, cast iron provides a nice diffusion of heat.

As I said above, six years ago I had never cooked with cast iron.  I knew what it was, but because my parents had never owned any, and because when I was really getting into cooking, in my college years, I never had any money to afford the cookware, it had just slipped from my personal practice.  When I moved to South Carolina in 2007 I got my first experiences with using cast iron cookware.  Walker and Natalia, whom I lived with from summer 2007 to March 2008, had some cast iron cookware and this allowed me to get my feet wet with the stuff.  Admittedly, at the time, I had a bad tendency to cook things at too high a heat, and also to not pay as close attention to my cooking food as I should be, and so the results were mixed-negative at first.  But in time I got better and better.  Cooking a number of meals with Evan and Meg using cast iron provided further skill and knowledge of the cookware.  Living with Dan from summer 2009 through January 2011 allowed me to have constant access to the cookware as Dan had his own cast iron skillet (the cast iron skillet, for those of you not in the know, is basically the essential cast iron piece of cookware).  With Dan I also learned the pleasures of using cast iron on a grill.  When I moved in with Eliza in February 2011 I inherited a large number of cast iron skillets (I believe we currently have six) ranging in size from just large enough to cook a couple of eggs to big enough to roast a chicken in it.

Over the past year I have taken to using cast iron very frequently.  I sometimes just use them on the burner like a normal skillet.  I cook bacon in a medium-sized one out on my grill (the bacon grease makes for a fantastic seasoning for the cast iron).  As I said above, we roast whole chickens in our giant cast iron skillet.  We usually bring one or two of the medium to medium-small skillets with us whenever we go camping and use them right over the fire (this was, historically, the original intended use of cast iron cookware). For Christmas Eliza got me a nice cast iron press, which can be heated up real hot and used to cook the top of and press down food stuffs (so far I’ve only used it to make some seriously crispy bacon). The other night Eliza’s mom made an awesome cornbread in her cast iron skillet, which has provided me with yet another realm of cooking to attempt with the cookware.

So, if you haven’t tried it yet, and you’re as into cooking as I am, get yourself a nice ol’ cast iron skillet and give it a try.  Admittedly, new cast iron cookware can be a bit pricy, but it is worth it in the long run.  Cast iron cookware is extremely durable and can easily last through multiple generations (several of our skillets originally belonged to Eliza’s grandfather).  They take relatively little maintenance, just the occasional seasoning (using some source of fat; bacon grease, olive oil, butter, whatever your prefer and some heat), and, assuming you don’t get anything too burnt on or stuck in there, just a quick wipe down after use (ideally you don’t want to over wash cast iron cookware as it removes the oil seasoning and can promote rusting).  So give it a shot, and do yourself some cast iron cooking.  I am willing to bet you’ll like it.

Posted in food, General Destruction
Tags: cast iron cookware, cast iron press, cast iron skillet, cooking, cookware, cornbread, food, grill, skillet

One of my favorite gifts that Eliza and I got for Christmas this year was a Moroccan tagine.  The word tagine actually refers to both the cookware (which is what we got) and the dishes made within it (typically slow cooked stews with a wide variety of ingredients).  The cookware, is basically a ceramic dish base with a conical ceramic lid.  The idea, from what I gather, is that moisture condenses at the top of the cone and then trickles back down the side, creating very tender food infused with a lot of flavor.

Last night I finally put the tagine to use.  I thawed some chicken drumsticks earlier in the day to be the central component of the tagine.  To start off I seared each drumstick all over in a skillet.  Once they were nice and crisped I removed them and placed them in the tagine.  I deglazed the skillet with a splash of red wine and threw in some chopped onions to pull up the flavor.  While the onions were sauteing I chopped up some celery, carrots, cherry tomatoes, and cilantro and then added them all to the tagine with the chicken.  When the onions were nice and slightly caramelized I added them to the tagine as well.  I also added a can of chickpeas.  Moroccan cuisine is known for its bold and complex spices so in my spice grinder I ground whole seed cumin, whole seed coriander, whole seed fenugreek, mustard seed, cardamom, turmeric, black pepper, red pepper flakes, allspice, cinnamon, garlic powder, and sea salt.  I mixed half of this spice mixture with about 2/3rds cup of water, one squeezed lemons juice, and one squeezed clementines juice.  I poured all of this over the vegetables and chicken, making sure that everything was well covered.  I also sprinkled the remaining dry spice mix over the top.  I then covered the tagine with its lid and put it into the oven at 375°.

I planned on cooking the tagine for an hour, so while it was in the oven I made some couscous to serve the stew on.  In a saucepan I melted some butter and then threw in some chopped garlic, chopped almonds, and pine nuts.  I cooked them for a few minutes at medium low heat, and then removed them.  I added about a cup and a half off water and brought it to a boil.  Once it was at a steady rolling boil I poured in a  cup and a half of dry couscous and stirred in the nuts and garlic.  I removed it all from the heat and covered it and let it sit.   About 15 minutes later I gave it a quick fluffing.

After an hour of cooking the tagine was perfectly ready.  The chicken was tender and flavorful and the vegetables retained a slight crisp and a strongly infused spice flavor.  The liquid in the base made a wonderful and aromatic sauce to pour over the couscous.  All and all I would call this meal a huge success and I definitely look forward to cooking more dishes in the tagine.  Next time I’d like to do some lamb.

Posted in food, General Destruction
Tags: chicken, christmas, cooking, food, Moroccan cooking, Moroccan cuisine, moroccan tagine, spices, tagine

I’m just going to come right out and say it.  I think K-Cups are the most stupid fucking wasteful and deplorable examples of laziness I can currently think of.  I keep seeing them everywhere, and every time I do I get irritated with them. 

For those of you not in the know (and too lazy to click the link I provided above), K-Cups are a coffee brewing system that makes coffee by using single serving little cups placed in specific coffee machines.  The systems are said to be able to brew coffee in a mere 20 to 60 seconds.  Furthermore, no measuring is required, as the cup has the specified grounds for a single mug of coffee.

Now, let me list the ways that these annoy me. 

First and foremost I see this as an extremely wasteful product.  As each K-Cup, correlates to only one cup of coffee, there is additional waste product (more than just grinds) created with each cup of coffee brewed.  While I have read about the My-K Cup, which allows conventional coffee grounds to be used (thus creating less waste) and some K-Cups are supposedly ”recyclable” (and yes those quotation marks are intentionally sarcastic), the main K-Cups I see available and advertised are nothing short of additional wasteful plastic products.  Coffee brewing does not need to be remotely this wasteful at all.  Grinds can easily be composted.  As can coffee filters (and you can opt, in most cases, for stainless steel or copper, mesh filters that can be reused indefinitely.  This is what I do and it works great).  As such, generally only the packaging creates a certain waste product, and even those are more often being made recyclable or compostable.  I think it is appalling to endorse such a blatantly wasteful product.

Secondly, the illusion of quick convenience and ease of K-Cups irritates me to no end.  I brew myself two cups worth of coffee every day.  Often times I also grind my own coffee beans.  How much skill and time does making this coffee take me?  Hardly any, maybe a minute or two of production and about five or six minutes to brew.  Is that more work and time than just putting a little plastic cup in a machine and pushing “Go?”  Yes, it is.  But serious get the fuck over it.  If you feel like spending less than ten minutes preparing your daily coffee is an issue then I think you are probably needing to do a lot of re-evaluting.  Even furthermore, on the easy of not having to measure or figure out the amounts, making coffee is almost one of the easiest things you can do.  Pretty much every bag of coffee has instructions on how to brew it, and if not, a quick look on the Internet will certainly solve that problem.  If you use a french press to brew your coffee it is simply warming up water (which you have to do with the K-Cup systems too by the way), adding the grinds, pressing them down, and letting it steep for a few moments.  It is really not anymore more difficult.  If you do use a drip system (like I do) here’s a hot idea, how about during the six or so minutes of brewing you get a few other things done instead of just standing around watching the drip-drip-drip.

Lastly (kind of), from what I can tell by my astute research (which is really just looking at prices at stores) the K-Cups are significantly more expensive than brewing your own coffee.  Most of the K-Cup boxes I have seen contain something like 16 K-Cups, which is 16 cups of coffee.  They run about $12 to $14 for a package of them.  According to Scott, who roasts coffee at Palmetto Bean here at the library, one of his 14 oz bags of coffee can produce 45 cups.  He charges $8 a bag. So on top of it all, from what I gather, K-Cups are not even really economically that great.

So let me sum this all up.  Basically, from best I can tell, K-Cup systems can produce a single cup of coffee in a minute or less all at the expensive of spending more money and creating unnecessary waste.  To me this is moronic and really just demonstrates a general problem with people and overall laziness.  We are all too often willing to essentially spend more for the appearance of saving time and doing things easier.  For all I can tell, K-Cups are a crock and a waste and really just ridiculous.

Allow me to be fair though, I have offered my rant and rage, I now invite those of you who choose to use K-Cups to explain to me why you think it is a better system than conventional drip coffee makers or french presses.  I am willing to admit that perhaps I have missed some overwhelming secret amazingness about the K-Cup systems and if it can be proven to me I will work to amend my stance.  Until then however, I think they are fucking stupid.

Posted in food, General Destruction
Tags: coffee, coffee brewing, coffeee filter, drip coffee, expense, fair trade, french press, K-Cup System, K-Cups, waste

For all of y’all who are into the whole Christmasy celebrating thing, I hope you had a wonderful and enjoyable weekend.  Personally, getting to take a few vacation days and enjoy a full six days of no work was a blast.  Also, enjoying the holiday with my family with good foods, fun gifts, and all around amazing company made for a great time.

However, all good things come o pass and once again it is time to return to the working week.

Hey, no worries.  New Year’s Day is coming right up, meaning another long weekend.  Maybe it won’t rain as much and I can spend some time outside.

Peacerinos for now.

Posted in General Destruction
Tags: christmas, holiday, New Year's Day, work

The New York Times has a fascinating, lovely, and, honestly, quite disturbing interactive feature today.  Accompanying the mini-films is a slide show with commentary by the actors and actresses on their portrayals.   Additionally there is an aptly titled Rogues’ Gallery. It is really wonderful stuff. 

I recommend watching the videos (top link) first and seeing how many characters you can identify.  Then go through the slide show and Rogues’ Gallery to fill in the holes.  What I found most enjoyable, is that even when I could not identify a specific character in the videos, I had no problem figuring out what archetype was being demonstrated. 

This spoke to me on levels in regards to how we identify villains.  While we very often desire good heroes in our narratives, it is often the stark contrast of villainous characters that create the real memorable in stories.  I’ve heard many people say (and said it myself) that the bad guy is often the more interesting character.  I suspect, that part of the fascination with villains, is that, while we all may like to think of ourselves in the hero roles, we all secretly dread that perhaps we are the real bad guys.  Evil characters challenge us with our own darker potentials.

Check out the New York Times’ pieces above.  They are some of my favorite interactive features I’ve seen recently.  A good demonstration of why I’m happy to pay a subscription for their content.

Posted in Art, General Destruction, Literature, Movies, Theatre
Tags: acting, Art, characters, evil, The New York Times, video, villains

Kottke links to a blog post by Waldo Jaquith about how impractical a cheeseburger is as a meal, and how, it is essentially an impossible meal prior to our modern agriculatural systems.  It is a fantastic little read that very clearly points out details that we often take for granted in regards to how we eat food today.  The ease of availability, year round, of some many varieties of food, have unquestionably contributed significantly to modern cullinary dishes and practices.  In many ways we are fortunate to live in a time and place where we can pair a wide varieties of food stuffs together to create unique and delicious dishes of a wide variety.  But perhaps it is worth thinking about these matters a little bit more critically. Perhaps it is worth the question of, “is this food that I so like and desire, really all that practical in the sense of its overall production requirements?”

Let me start off by saying that I love cheeseburgers.  Add a few slices of deliciously crispy bacon to one and you’ve got about one of the most delicious things you could ask for as far as I am concerned.  Beyond cheeseburgers I tned to be fond of a whole lot of different foods and dishes.  However, I do recognize, that a lot of these potential meals would not have been widely available (if available at all) a hundred years ago. 

The question of whether the avalability of such meals is a good or bad thing really depends on how you view the system that makes creating something like a cheeseburger possible.  The reason that a cheeseburger can be made with relative ease today is due largely to the existence of big agriculture and major monocropping systems in combination with an ability to move goods to every corner of the globe in a reasonably short amount of time.  This creates mass availability which, in itself, is neither good nor bad but can riase the question of long term sustainability.

The system is unquestionably taxed and it is likely that in the long run some significant changes will need to be made to ensure a long term continuation.  Massive monocropping agriculture has proven problematic in a number of ways.  Our dependency on petroleum for both production and transportation of goods is another issue which we will have to face in the not too distant future.  As such it may be worthwhile for us all to ask some simple questions about the ethics of frequent consumption of something like a cheeseburger.

For our part it may be reasonably to say that adopting a more seasonal and locovore based diet is beneficial in both educating us about recognizing avalability of specific food stuff as well as perhaps helping to lower demand for foods that should not really be available all year round.  For example, Eliza and I very rarely eat a lot of tomatoes and pepper in the winter months.  This is not becuase we do not like tomatoes and peppers (we love them) but more so becuase we recognize that the only ones available had to be grown specially somewhere else (Florida, California, Mexico, etc.) and shipped to where we are.  Tomatoes and peppers do not grow year round, even in South Carolina’s considerably mild climate (we could, reasonably, grow both inside or in a greenhouse if we wanted to) and so we have to question the necessity of eating them all year round.  We will eat canned tomatoes mostly becuase those represent a preserved crop and preserving is something that was done much more significantly in the past to make available foodstuff at differing times of the year.

Having maintained a garden for two years now has really worked to make me more aware of the seasonal availability of various fruits and vegetables and to ask myself, “where is this coming from and what had to be done to grow it?” when I see something like a peach in the super market in December.  What I find further interesting is that by actively choosing to eat more local and seasonal foods, I am challenged to be more creative cullinarily.  I have not found my food lacking in any way, it is simply that I eat differently in the winter months than I do in the summer months.  Add to gardening things like foraging (both Eliza and I are big into forgaing, especially for mushrooms and nuts and such) and hunting (something I am looking forward to picking up sometime in the not too distant future) and you can provide yourself with a pretty wide variety of foods throughout a year.

I don’t hold a grudge against anybody who chooses to eat tomatoes in the winter (becuase I do on occasion as well) but I do challenge us all to ask more serious questions about what it has teken to make certain foods available to us.  I think it is foolish to ever take something like food for granted, becuase if we do so we may find ourselves in a serious bind if and when those things ever become unavailable.

Posted in General Destruction
Tags: agriculture, cheeseburger, cooking, food, food production, Kottke, monocrop, sustainability, Waldo Jaquith

This past Friday, Eliza and I got spend a lovely evening enjoying the December show of the Warehouse Theatre’s 2011-2012 Season.  The play was “Stones in His Pockets” by Irish playwright Marie Jones, as directed by Anne Tromsness (the Warehouse Theatre’s Director of Education).

“Stones in His Pockets” is the third performance of the 2011-2012 season and, of all three (including ”Metamorphoses” and “The Elephant Man“), this has been my personal favorite so far.  I don’t say this to indicate any lack on the part of the other two shows, but instead to indicate the exception that I feel “Stones in His Pockets” is.

The story in itself is a very human piece.  It deals with the lives of a small Irish town that are intimately impacted by the production of a movie in their vicinity.  Several of the characters in the story are local inhabitants who have been cast as extras in several scenes of the movie.  These characters then interact in various ways and degrees with the main cast and crew of the film being made.  Without giving too much away, the story presents the whole matter with many moments of humor as well as some real tragedy.  All and all the story comes across as grounded and believable, demonstrating a visible disconnect between common people looking for their personal shots at fame and an establishment that is only interested in getting a good shot (and avoiding bad weather).

What really makes “Stones in His Pockets” unique is that only two actors are cast to play the 14 different roles in the play (including two female roles).  There is little to no costume change to indicate the change in characters.  Generally, throughout, the two actors simply twirled around a bit, assumed a different posture and accent, and there was the different character.  It is hard to imagine without seeing it.  Having been made aware that this is how the performance was going to be done prior to the show, I admit my personal skepticism about whether or not it could be successfully pulled off.  And sitting in the theatre during the opening moments of the show, there was about five minutes in which I was not entirely certain which character was which.  Then it flowed so naturally as to be unnoticeable.  Somebody after the show suggested that the way in which we just accepted the different roles is much like how we accept subtitles while watching a movie in a different language; you notice it at first and then you are just drawn into the story and it doesn’t stand out at all.

I cannot describe in entirety how impressive this acting is to me.  As somebody who has performed in several productions in the past I know the challenge that is involved in embodying a character.  I also know the further challenge if you are expected to play multiple parts in a performance (something that is not unheard of, especially for smaller roles).  But to continually be changing characters on and off for two hours of a performance, and staying consistent to the uniqueness of each character, is a real feat.  To this end I have nothing but praise for the two actors in this show, as I think they pulled off the challenge marvelously.

Another bit of praise for the two actors is their ability to manage believable accents throughout.  Accents are always hard to get down.  I have worked with English accents before and while I think I managed reasonably well I know that there are many places where I had a harder time.  Irish accents, while to the unfamiliar may seem generally similar to English accents, are significantly more challenging due to various subtleties and pacing.  While I cannot claim to know if the accents the actors used would convince a pure blood Irishman, they were believable enough to me so as never to be a distraction.  Interestingly, as one of the characters in the play is an American actress portraying an Irish woman in the film, there is a bit of meta-commentary on the whole matter of proper accent portrayal in the show that is quite fantastic.

The show has a very good balance between its sense of humor and those parts that are meant to be serious or sad.  Several times I laughed a lot at the hilarity of the scene, but several other momements produced knots in my throat.  Neither the funny nor the sad moments detract from the others or lessen the overall message of the story.  It is all around a very natural feeling story.

The story is very self-referential.  I mentioned above about the commentary on accents in the story but the meta-ness of it all extends beyond that.  This is not tacky or ridiculous but instead meant to further create a juxtaposition between the differing worlds portrayed within, especially between the Hollywood world and the world of the common Irish villagers.

Like so many of the performances at The Warehouse Theatre the set is minimal.  In fact, I’d say that this show is about the most minimal set I’ve ever seen there.  Really it is just a couple stools, a coat rack, a rolling table (that serves as a table and bar top), a backdrop, and 14 pairs of shoes and boots that, while never worn, serve an obvious purpose (I’ll let you figure it out).  Like the set the costuming is minimal as well, with the actors not really changing their outfits except on the occasion that their character is supposed to be taking off or donning a specific piece of clothing.

All and all the production was wonderful.  The play has a great pacing with nothing feeling too rushed or too lingering.  There is an underlying quality to the play that I can only describe as being “uniquely Irish.”  I have not encountered much else in regards to Irish Theatre, the only other play I can think of off the top of my head being Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” (which, depending on how you look at it, might not count as being all that Irish).  I have, however, encountered a good number of other Irish stories and movies and all of them, and “Stones in His Pockets” included, have a quality to them that I find instantly recognizable as “Irish.”  The only other stories in which I have encountered a same unique quality are the vast reservoirs of Russian narratives.  Interestingly enough, I find there to be an interesting similarity between both Irish and Russian narratives, which, while not exactly the same, seem to be of a kind of kin to one another.  I suspect (without any real backing evidence) that a lot of this is produced through the likely shared difficulties of life in both Ireland and Russia historically and presently.  People living rough lives in rough places seem to produce a lot of material worthy of a good story.

“Stones in His Pockets” will be running at The Warehouse Theatre until Dec. 17th.  If you are around to catch a show I cannot recommend it enough.  If you don’t get to see it here in Greenville keep an eye out for it elsewhere as I suspect that it is probably worth seeing just about anywhere it is put on (well, as long as the directing and acting are done well, which I suppose is the case in all theatre).

Until next time.

My other two reviews of 2011-2012 Warehouse Theatre performances:

• Metamorphoses
• The Elephant Man

Posted in General Destruction, Theatre
Tags: acting, Irish, play, Stones in His Pockets, The Warehouse Theatre, theatre