Read all about it here. No joke, this NYTimes article is called, “Attack of the Zombie Computers is Growing Threat,” and is all about botnets and the spam they generate. Just another reason to go Mac.
Pan's Labyrinth
Pan’s Labyrinth is well described by its genre categories on imdb (8.4/10.0): Drama, Horror, Fantasy, Thriller, War…
El Laberinto del Fauno is all of these things in equal portion. I found myself wishing that it weren’t so violent, so that Bella could watch it; but even though there were scenes where I had to cover my eyes, I have to admit that that the horror and violence was an integral part of the story. The backdrop of the guerilla warfare in Spain is mirrored in Ofelia’s own insurgency – seeing and believing in fantasy is always some kind of resistance to the pain of daily living, isn’t it? I loved how the story was told from the perspective of the little girl and the fairy tale nature of having three tasks to fulfill before the full moon. I lay in bed last night thinking about how we create our reality around us.
Another A. (Chad says he would give it a B+, but remember he has the flu right now.)
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Jewish penicillin
Chad wasn’t feeling well yesterday so I made chicken soup from scratch. First I boiled a young fryer and the just-barely crushed cloves of an entire bulb of garlic in a large pot. (When fryers go on sale at the market ($.59/#) I usually pick up two and throw one in the freezer for later.) I include the neck and gizzards for maximum flavor. Also, I love eating the liver and gizzards salted halfway through, though it grosses out everybody else in the room: “Stop saying ‘gizzards’ pleeese!”
Then I take the entire chicken out with a strong slotted spoon. By this time the chicken should be well-cooked and can be busted up into several pieces. The chicken needs to cool and be shredded – this makes 4-5 cups of chicken. Put aside.
In the meantime, I put several cups of noodles to cook. I do this in a separate pot so that the soup doesn’t get too starchy. I only let the noodles barely cook – a couple minutes. I add chopped celery and carrots to the still boiling chicken broth. When the noodles are ready, I add them to the chicken broth also. When the veggies are cooked I add about half the shredded chicken. I reserve the other half for sandwiches during the week.
Salt and fresh cracked pepper to taste.
Will heal many varieties of unwellness.
Two extra tips:
1. I also make chicken soup from the bones of a chicken roast. Maya says if you roast the bones again that the soup will be even more delicious.
2. If you let the chicken broth cool and refrigerate it overnight before you add anything – all the fat will be congealed in a semi-firm layer at the top of the broth in the morning. It is easily skimmed off.
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sets
A game that we enjoyed over the holidays was Set. It’s a card game that I have bought and given as a gift countless times.
Twelve cards are laid on the table and all the players try to make a “set.” There are four different characteristics of the shapes: color, shape, shading, and number. Each characteristic has to be all the same or all different. If you are interested in trying this game or just want to practice and get ahead of the crowd, there is a daily Set puzzle here.
Here is a screen shot of same screen with some of the found sets in the grid on the right.
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love and romance
At Bella’s request we have watched Beetlejuice and and A Knight’s Tale this weekend. Of course she preferred A Knight’s Tale with all its romance. (She thought Beetlejuice was a little weird and not that funny.) And then when Chad’s 17-year-old niece came over last night – she was looking for movies “like The Notebook.” Doesn’t matter the age – we’re all looking for the same thing.
Last week we also watched Emma, which Bella had seen but completely forgotten (shedding of brain cells and memory at adolescence?) She loved it. I hope it’s the start of an Austen run.
Bella feels that now she is thirteen she should be able to watch every PG-13 movie, but I resist.
Posted in movies, says bella
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hurray for Nancy pelosi!
Ironic that we would get our first female speaker of the House just as Gerald Ford is buried. We were just explaining to Bella how Gerald Ford was speaker of the House when he became president… hmm. Wishful thinking.
Here’s an except from a NYTimes article explaining some of next week’s plans – exciting!:
“Next week, the Democrats plan a 100-hour blitz to raise the minimum wage, lift restrictions on federal financing of embryonic stem cell research and allow the government to negotiate price cuts with pharmaceutical companies for the Medicare prescription drug program, among other matters. By the time they have clocked the 100 hours of legislative debate, House Democrats also plan to have passed bills to cut interest rates on student loans and roll back subsidies for oil and gas producers, seeking to make a statement of priorities, pressure the Senate to act and put an active agenda before the country before Mr. Bush’s State of the Union address on Jan. 23.”
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Children of Men
Children of Men (imdb 8.0/10.0) was pretty dang good. Very dark in a Brazil or Bladerunner way with timorous rays of hope shining through. Interesting to think about how differently people might act if there were no more children. There is a sense of fatality throughout the movie; a sense that nothing matters because everybody is going to die. But whether it is year 2027 or 2007 each of us is going to die, right? So, how much of a difference would it make to me whether I were the last generation? A lot I suppose, but then … does that mean that I am living with a conscious sense of the next generation? I guess it really highlighted for me, that in many ways that we (Americans at least) are already living as if we were the last generation.
I give it an A.
I know it appears that I give a lot of movies good reviews, but keep in mind that I only bother to go see movies that have had a lot of good cyber buzz.
two most frequently asked questions
Once people notice my engagement ring, I generally get asked the exact same two questions in the exact same order, so I’ll answer them here:
Question # 1 Do you have a date for the wedding?
Answer #1 Yes (we worked around my dad’s vacation schedule), but isn’t it gauche to post the date here? Or anti-climatic since I am trying to send out Save-the-Date cards? And if somebody asks about the date, does s/he think that s/he is invited? Good lord, planning a guest list for a wedding is stressful. Does anybody have any tips? At this point I have about 50 invites planned with just under 100 anticipated attendees – and we are planning on having it at my house. Pretty informal.
Question #2 Are you going to have more kids?
Answer #2 Hmmm, my friend Darlene recently told me about a friend who always said, “If I had known how much trouble my kids were going to be as teenagers, I wouldn’t have had so many.” Let’s just say that I am not in my easiest part of my parenting years with Bella right now. I would love to have more kids, but I think I need to get a few other items in order first, like where I’m going to live, how we’re going to make money, where the first kid is going to go to school, minor things like that.
I got my hair cut yesterday – and according to my dear friend Nu, she needs to know what kind of dress and shoes I am going to wear before she can cut my hair. So now I have the first cut towards the “wedding cut,” based on my vague impressions of my sister’s dress as a wedding dress possibility. My hair needs to grow another three inches before it reaches the envisioned wedding haircut length. Grow hair grow! And I don’t think I want a veil at this point.
It seems that every decision needs to be made now before any action at all can be taken. I stopped in at the Paper Source yesterday – and realized that choosing an invitation means knowing the color scheme and theme for the wedding. I don’t intend to have a fancy wedding, but a coordinated color and theme would be not-so-hard I think. I ended up buying envelopes and flat cards in two different styles and six different colors for my honey to check out. Instead of a pale gray that I was picturing, I ended up preferring the pale green called sage, and an off-white called cement. Thinking of a crane motif.
Posted in wedding for $2000
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Chosun Kalbi
While I am very pleased to be back in touch with my cousin and his family from Berekely – I have to say that one of the greatest side benefits has been getting introduced to good Korean restaurants in Los Angeles and Orange County.
Today we are meeting for lunch at Chosun Kalbi at 3330 W. Olympic Blvd. I haven’t found a site for it yet, but I did come across a Korean restuarant guide here.
It doesn’t look like I’ll be seeing much art this trip to the city – as most of the galleries have opening receptions this Saturday. Instead, I am considering taking the girls to Universal Studios while I sneak off into a cafe and work on the thesis. We have passes that are good until March 2007. Plus I need to work on the draft for publication – just got it back with some notes.
Posted in korea, los angeles
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have I joined a religious book group?
Just kidding – I know I haven’t – well, I mean we are three Jews, two possible Christians, and two definite non-religious people (me and my ride) but we are definitely not consciously choosing religious books.
It’s just that every time I sit to write down what book we are reading, it seems like there are religious undertones. Just finished Peace Like A River, and the whole group seeemed to slightly off-put by the description of the land after death (maybe Heaven – it’s never named – but there are people running in slo-mo and fields of waving grasses…) in the second-to-last chapter. The book was excellent with the beautiful prose as promised, but still not one of my favorites. I did like the smarty-pants little girl character named Swede though. She’s an aspiring writer and has been compared to everybody’s other favorite smart girl character, Scout.
The new book is Jesusland by Julia Scheeres (see what I mean?). It is a memoir and very powerful. I like it better already. It may be the best of the last five we’ve read. It’s about a girl growing up in the South with her adopted black brother. Very crisp prose.
And on the subject of religion, The Purpose Driven Life is not nearly as bad as I was expecting. The reading is light and fast. As Bella says, “Everything he says is so obvious. Why did he have to write it all down?” (Do you prefer the quotation marks? I don’t, but Chad says without them he gets mixed up in my paragraphs.)
And for my dose of self-help, I am cruising right on through Make the Connection by Bob Greene and Oprah Winfrey. Light and enjoyable – and now I can match Oprah’s diary entries to my vague memories of judging her yo-yo dieting.
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