Naming Conventions

First, a drink of chocolate made of cocoa beans harvested from the jungled banks of the Fraser River after the rainy season. Next, a distillate of fermented almonds pulped by the elbows of Richardien monks in their Laurentian arena. Then Skipper Bailey's unique solution to Newfoundland's oversupply of Irishmen. Last, the sweet essence of untundra mint harvested by the Hawaiian-shirted Inuit of the ever-warming Arctic.

Combine these liquid treasures and what else could such a drink be called?

Hazards of Metro Toronto

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Movies

The normal schedule precludes much movie-going, but now HOLIDAYS, so it is time to be properly gouged.

First was Life of Pi, which I am told is pretty faithful to the book. So the book must have a framing device in which an author has a writing block and wants a story. In the film, that frame can be dropped. It must be the whole point of the book, but when the rest of the movie has carnivorous islands and the shipwreck of a zoo ship and leaping phosphorescent whales I want nothing to do with two guys in a suburban environment talking. What they are eventually talking about is a ridiculous theological proposition that is pretty much this: "It was all just a crazy dream...OR WAS IT? And you know what? The crazy dream is PROOF OF GOD." It's like Pascal's Wager for hippies and it undermines everything. Had the movie simply been a guy and a tiger on a boat it would have been a better film. It is, however, very very pretty.

The Hobbit was like Lord of the Rings but it starts with the boring part instead of ending with the boring part. I was honestly considering sleeping about a third of the way through and I was much amused when I heard someone doing so, but it turned out it was an on-screen event. It eventually picks up and becomes what you expect it to be, minus a main character. The guy who plays Bilbo does a convincing job of being a nonentity thrust into adventure, and remains the least interesting thing on the screen for the length of the film. Oh and NO YOU DO NOT NEED THAT MUCH 120 PIECE ORCHESTRA IN EVERY GODDAMNED SCENE.

Searching for Sugar Man is a documentary about South Africans trying to figure out the fate of an American singer you've never heard of who is unaccountably the biggest thing in music there, bigger than Elvis and The Rolling Stones. I don't want to add spoilers here because remarkable things happen, but it's a good story I am glad I saw, bad film. Questions you have will not be pursued, scenes you want to see were either not filmed or not included. It would have been much better to see a film about the singer than a film about the nostalgia of the people who liked him. And yet, worth the money.

Here is a recreation of my favourite part of Django Unchained:

Django Unchained is a relatively linear enterprise, tight by Tarantino standards, and it's fun fun fun. Christoph Waltz talking is tremendously entertaining all the time, and Tarantino is playing as much as directing. Where long bouts of talk happen, potential payoffs for the scene - emotional and technical - are in view and there is tension. There are laffs not far removed from Blazing Saddles, there is furious violence and vengeance fit for spaghetti westerns, and it rides an excellent line between HEY LOOK IT'S ME QUENTIN TARANTINO MAKING A MOVIE (which to my mind already has benefits (except for him being on-screen again)) and an involving story that hangs together well. There's a degree of manipulation that must be helping: people have strong emotions about slavery so maybe that revulsion (and attendant approval of revenge fantasies) helps draw you back into the proceedings after a bout of Tarantino's fiddling about with image theft and abrupt zooms. That's not to slight most of the cast doing a great job. Go see it if you can handle violence.

I Summon the Demons of the North

Food and Drink

In the morning, before movies, a grilled cheese sandwich from Canteen. The pickled grapes are good on their own, but the recipe for those and the sandwich is here. Added slice of margherita pizza and pumpkin soup.



After movies a couple of undistinguished pints and then off to Miskatonic University Barchef for drinks.

From the sweet and sour portion of the menu two girlie drinks, Strawberries and Lavender on the left, Currant on the right:



Then, from the Molecular portion of the menu, a sort of bubbling half-liquid enchambered in mournful mists from the summit of Hatheg-Kla:



No wait, it's the most insane Manhattan ever:



A pre-human Hyperborean worshipper of Tsathoggua dares you to pluck from the nauseating effluence of miasmal gases...a SAILOR'S MOJITO.

Even in Death, a Painter of Light

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all.

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Thomas Kinkade's widow and girlfriend have reached a settlement after a dispute over the late artist's $66 million estate, their attorneys said Wednesday.

[...]

In a statement, they said the women kept Kinkade's message of "love, spirituality and optimism" in their amicable resolution.

Aww, so sweet.

Pinto, who began dating Kinkade six months after his marriage of 28 years imploded, claimed Kinkade wrote two notes bequeathing her his mansion and $10 million to establish a museum of his paintings. Her lawyers filed court papers stating that she and Kinkade had planned to marry as soon as his divorce went through.

Nanette Kinkade disputed those claims and sought full control of the estate. She portrayed Pinto in court papers as a gold-digger who is trying to cheat the artist's rightful heirs.

Title

Big Heads

Of the Gehry addition to Art Gallery of Ontario the zombie has written much, but he did not have the advantage of the technology that allows one to put the camera on the floor and tilt it up with a spare coin and set the timer:



It looks quite nice at day's end in the soul-crushing winter darkness that demands suicide.

Other "nice" things were supplied by Evan Penny, who can make figures of people that are frighteningly realistic. Even scarier are recent projects that skew and squeeze those faces:



This series starts off fairly normal, right?



Camera error? Posterizing? Crazy Hipstamatic filter?



No, it was born that way:

The Apocalypse Approaches

Won't somebody PLEASE think of the truffles?

PARIS — Just about everything in Eduardo Manzanares’s shop, Truffes Folies, is made with truffles. Sausage, cheese, spaghetti — even popcorn.

But during the year-end holidays, the main order of business is fresh truffles, especially the black or Périgord truffle, Tuber melanosporum. The prized mushrooms are used to stuff Christmas turkeys, chickens or capons, Mr. Manzanares said, making Dec. 24 typically the biggest truffle-eating night of the year in France.

But it is also becoming an increasingly expensive tradition. Black truffles and other types of truffles are becoming scarcer, and some scientists say it is because of the effects of global climate change on the fungus’s Mediterranean habitat. One wholesaler says prices have risen tenfold over the last dozen years.

Mind you it is only right and fitting that the best billionaires have truffles.

Responsibilities

The problem with a terrarium is that you really do have to keep an eye on it or the baby Jesus dies. Of course SOME people just chuck them out in the snow with the trash.

I Trust This Guy!

What an odd press release:

What I want you to know is that Zero Dark Thirty is a dramatization, not a realistic portrayal of the facts. CIA interacted with the filmmakers through our Office of Public Affairs but, as is true with any entertainment project with which we interact, we do not control the final product.

One of the complaints:

Second, the film creates the strong impression that the enhanced interrogation techniques that were part of our former detention and interrogation program were the key to finding Bin Ladin. That impression is false. As we have said before, the truth is that multiple streams of intelligence led CIA analysts to conclude that Bin Ladin was hiding in Abbottabad. Some came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques, but there were many other sources as well. And, importantly, whether enhanced interrogation techniques were the only timely and effective way to obtain information from those detainees, as the film suggests, is a matter of debate that cannot and never will be definitively resolved.

Torture: maybe helpful.

Why release this at all?

Rob Ford is a JOKE

When will the city of Toronto address the severe undersupply of Pepsi Max?

Last night, blizzard:



Today I helped a gentleman push a snowbound car from an alley into oncoming traffic. Anything to help out insurance companies!

Why YES I will sing Positively 4th Street at your karaoke bar. What could go wrong?



Sweet Daddy Siki's career outlined here.

Dummies

The loving kindness of self-identified smart people:

The BBC and Mensa have both apologised after a leading member of the society called anyone with an IQ below 60 a “carrot” live on air.

Peter Baimbridge, a Mensa member, made the comments during an interview with BBC Breakfast.

He was being asked about the effectiveness of IQ tests at judging intelligence.

"So most IQ tests will have Mr and Mrs Average scoring 100 and the higher you get, the brighter you are. And if your IQ is somewhere around 60 then you are probably a carrot," Mr Baimbridge said.

A number of viewers contacted the programme to voice concerns over the remarks, which they said insulted people with learning difficulties.

It's a TEST for Christ's sake. I can do a crossword pretty quick, but other people can organize a budget.

Merry Christmas!

Here, have some horrible noises.

What would Christmas be without the enslavement of inferior life forms?



Also see The Godot Machine from the same guy. Via Artists in Laboratories.

Have a short list of research databases. I've never played with the Microsoft Academic Search and I should.

Oh Orly, when will you ever win?

Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night

From On High

Precisely What You Need

Inconsistency

Holidays are apparently here...which likely means a lotta robot posting ahead.

I don't remember this from my youth at all, but we didn't even have NOVELTY soul where I grew up. In fact we had to make our soul music from leftover banjos and jugs and Kraft Dinner and we couldn't afford quarter notes and had to make do with dime notes and this sentence ends now.



Good part sampled/imitated to make this:



I dunno if "I am not illiterate, no, not even a little bit/Nothing like an idiot, get it?" achieves its purpose.

Evergreen