John & Belle Have A Blog

Different Folks

When I mention that I live in Singapore to someone back in the States, chances are very high that they'll make some crack about caning. It gets a little tedious, and I'm not even a Singaporean. Then again, they do cane people here, as well as hang them by the neck until dead, both of which are a bit outré in this day and age, so I guess it's a fair cop.

But just the other day I learned that this passion for caning doesn't only exist at the highest levels of the justice system, but extends into the heartland! I was talking with my Greek students and they explained to me that this thing, which I had seen in markets before (it looks like a little shephard's crook, sort of; a colorful, plastic mini-cane) is for caning kids. The hook is so you han hang it on the window grill or whatever, so it's handy. Once the topic was brought up, they started reminiscing about various caning styles and so forth. It was really very fascinating.

The consensus view was that the first-born child gets caned the most, basically whack bam the whole day through. Then the next child gets off more easily. Finally, the youngest child gets off scot free, running (comparatively--this is Singapore) wild while the older siblings look on with resentment. Also, different parents employ different caning implements. One student said that his parents used a wire hanger. "What, did they untwist it?" he was asked. No, no, he explained, miming the thrashing action, they just used it in its natural state. Hmm. This was met with appreciative silence. But the student in question said he would like to think he was the better for it, and didn't appear resentful or anything. And he is a really good student, you know...

Other methods, not employed by the parents of any of my students, include caning with the big bamboo poles that you stick out of the window with laundry on them (heavy, but unwieldy; it's hard to see how you could really manouver one around on the laundry balcony of a normal flat). The worst, clearly, is caning with little switches, such as you could get by taking one piece from a big outdoor broom (people sweep up outside in Singapore with big brooms of stiff switches bound onto a bamboo pole). "Draws blood, lah." I'm pretty sure you could get arrested in the US for doing that.

So, there you have it! Much as I would never hit my kids with a stick, I have to admit it doesn't seem to do much harm, and is perfectly consistent with loving parenting in this context. (My students seemed to agree that drawing blood was over the line, but that it was the act of an excessively strict parent, not a crazy evil person.) Other Singaporeans to whom I mentioned this conversation were amused that this was news to me. It's funny, but it seems to me that the valence of this kind of thing would be quite different if everybody were doing it. Indeed, if you read old books, it's quite clear that kids who misbehaved expected to get "a good licking" or whatever when they got home, without much comment or resentment. Now, some may complain about conformity and so on (my students did joke about this), but I do remember my mother's comment on her first visit. As she and I passed yet another stream of perfectly-behaved third-graders at the zoo, all walking along in a line, holding hands with their buddy, and supervised by a rather small number of teachers, she said: "you have to stay here long enough to send Zoë to school! These kids are amazing!"

Maybe I've just discovered a new way to motivate my students to learn the endings for the optative.

Saturday Catblogging

Zoë's latest drawing. I can see that she is copying the Totoros I draw for her, cross-bred with the Edward Gorey cats I favor. I am a good influence.

Straight Outa Smallville

I haven't exactly been holding up my half of the blog, yes. No thick posts. None of that characteristic lengthiness. Hey, we all got issues. Back issues.

So I'm reading Jimmy Olsen, Superman's Pal, vol. 2 - because it's Jack Kirby. Plus the Newsboy Legion! Best dialogue lines: "Come on, Superman! Don't cop out on your reputation as an activist! Follow the music's beat - And me!"

Or maybe:

Jimmy: "And you guys!! I can see that you're jiving too!! Okay! Let's poll the fish bait!! Is it "yea - or nay"?

Flippa Dippa: "This ghetto guppie says "yea and men!"

Lots of Flippa Dippa action.

So You've Decided to Be a Gold-Plated Ass

On the other hand, putting the "total f%#ing jerk" back in "jerk":

Everyone agrees that Ligaya Lagman of Westchester, N.Y., is a Gold Star mother, part of the long line of women whose sons or daughters were killed in combat for the U.S. armed services.

Her 27-year-old son, Army Staff Sgt. Anthony Lagman, was killed last year in Afghanistan.

But the American Gold Star Mothers have rejected her for membership because -- though a permanent resident and a taxpayer -- she is not a U.S. citizen.

The group's national president, Ann Herd, said: "There's nothing we can do, because that's what our organization says. You have to be an American citizen." She added: "We can't go changing the rules every time the wind blows."

Wow. Just, wow.

But I've Got These Amazing Sunglasses

Do you want to read about Bono being a total f%#ing prat? Yeah, you do. Editorial comments by Colby Cosh:

We were offered $23 million for just the music to "Where the Streets Have No Name." We thought we could do a lot of good with that money. Give it away. But if a show is a little off, and there's a hole, that's the one song we can guarantee that God will walk through the room as soon as we play it. [Too bad for the Sudanese orphans and whatnot, but we've got a career to think about.]

We're From The Legislative Branch, And We're Here to Help

This is what one expects from the famously meddling members of Congress, but do they usually express it so baldly?

In announcing the new language, Mr. Hunter said: "It has always been our intent to inject Congress into any policy changes that the Department of Defense may propose regarding the assignment of women to units such as infantry, armor and artillery. This provision does that."

I swear, I misread the "always" as a "never" and had to backtrack to be sure that's really what he was saying.

Ha Ha

From this week's Onion:

Former Addict Celebrates 10th Year of Mind-Numbing Boredom

      PHOENIX—Tom Stubbens, 44, a former heroin abuser, attended a party in his honor to celebrate a full decade of clean, sober, and dismally tedious living Tuesday. "The crazy gang of partiers I used to have so much fun with in the '90s wouldn't even recognize the clean and respectable person standing before you today," said Stubbens, raising an iced tea to friends at his regular evening haunt, the 36th Avenue Denny's. "Yup, but here I am... that person." Stubbens then retired to his apartment, where he watered his plants, organized his sock drawer, and fell asleep on the couch.

It's funny because it's true!

Perils of Halal Dining in Chinatown

I had the great idea this past weekend to invite a friend of ours to eat dim sum with us in Chinatown, since her husband is out of town. Tian Jin House of Delicacies, on Pagoda St.; it's very nice. It's not the absolute best dim sum place I know, but it's very good, and the decor is nice, and they imported lots of shy Northern Chinese girls to be the waitresses, which is cute. My friend is Muslim. Troubles began when I started to order.

Me: "Do the prawn dumplings have any pork in them?"
Waitress: "Yes."
Me: "OK, well, what about the leek pancake?"
Waitress: "Yes. Has."
Me: "Well, the 'vegetarian spring rolls'. surely..."
Waitress: "Has pork oil."
Me, desperately: "'Vegetarian steamed pau'?"
Waitress: "I think the filling fried in pork oil. Also, the bun has pork oil."

Well, that explains why the dim sum is so good: tasty lard in every bite! We got some steamed rice, stir-fried mix vegetables and "golden sand" chicken for my friend. The latter was very nice: a small spring chicken, deep fried, hacked into neat bits, and then topped with a blizzard of golden-fried panko-style breadcrumbs. The head of the hapless bird poking its blind way up from the drift of crumbs was a particularly nice touch. Violet really liked the chicken. John and I enjoyed the various lardy treats. Mmm, lard.

Imaginary Confucian Wisdom

I had a really random dream the other night in which I coined an alleged Chinese aphorism. In the dream, John and I were discussing the Catholic Church's pedophilia scandal with a priest. John was arguing that the burden of lifelong celibacy was too much to be borne in our modern-day society, alluding to the (imaginarily) well-known proverb: "the monkey stumbles when the path is rough." Naturally, it being so well (imaginarily) known, all he had to say was "the monkey stumbles..." The idea being, even a famously agile creature will stumble if the path is rough enough. Well, at least it's easier to understand than that stuff about the straw dogs.

It's clear that Brooklyn can't go anywhere but up in the hipster/gentrification stakes. But what about...the Bronx? I haven't actually hung out in the Bronx since the early 90's. One one my more vivid memories was going to buy a six-pack of malt-liquor tallboys with a friend, and the guy was like "do you want separate bags"? One for each can, he meant. Hell no, we were going to drink inside! Then, there was the "put you money in the hole!" place. I'm not going to go into it here. Anyway, there have to be some undiscovered gems up there, right, something to make up for the fact that I used to look at all those amazing decrepit brownstones in Harlem and think, shit, I should buy that. Right on the other side of the park from Columbia, row after row of bricked-up brownstones. I used to go walk around down there in the day, just musing. (Well, and getting continually hassled.) But I didn't have any money! And now all those houses cost $750,000+. So, here are some nice places I could eat in my new life in the Bronx. I mean, if I were ever to move back to NYC, obvs. I want to go to this burek-e-toria:

Dukagjini Burektorja, says its Albanian owner, Marjan Kolnrekaj, is the only restaurant in the city devoted entirely to bureks: savory pies that are the Balkans' answer to pizza. "My family made bureks in Dubrovnik for a hundred years," he said, and they are convincingly good, stuffed with meat, spinach, or feta and ricotta, the crust hovering between puff pastry and pizza dough.

Nothing like a taste of old Dubrovnik. But, can Queens ever be cool? I almost think Staten Island has better chances; at least they've got the Wu-Tang Clan and all. And all kind of old Colonial-type houses. Still, I kind of like Jamaica, Queens. Maybe I can get in on the ground floor.

The More We Know, The Worse It Gets

I'm torn between saying that you really have to read this article about American soldiers torturing people to death in Afghanistan and saying you don't want to at all. You'll need a strong stomach, anyway.

Singapore Hold'Em!

After much deliberation, Singapore has decided to open a casino (hmm, looking at that link I see I better visit St. John's Island pretty soon, as it's about to get paved.) Concerns that "heartlanders" will become gambling addicts have been considered and rejected in favor of increasing tourism and clawing back revenue from Genting and Macau. No doubt it will be huge, tasteless, really clean, and spectacular, since they're planning to spend lots of money and hire guys from Vegas. Maybe it can have some kind of theme, like Atlantis, but with more merlions. Or, um, gambling in the T'ang dynasty? There could be wushu demonstrations every half hour. Oooh, and the chips could be shaped like golden taels!! Hey, I should make a bid for this...

I won't be spending much time there, though I'm sure there will be some good restaurants, because I don't like to gamble. Really don't like it. I will buy the very occasional lottery ticket, once every 5 years or so. Otherwise, the fear of losing money outweighs the feelings of prospective delight at winning money in my mind. Also, the odds are I will lose, so it tends to seem like a waste of money.

Maybe I'll brush up on those blackjack rules and reduce the odds as much as possible, and play a few hands? Maybe. It would be a chance to get dolled up and go somewhere with free drinks, that's not too bad. (This reminds me, when my brother and I were young we used to play blackjack with my grandmother Nannie, for penny stakes. She was always the house. Later, I realized that this wasn't totally fair.)

What about you all, dear readers? Love the ca-chunk of the slots? Want to hear the snickering passage of that little ball on the roulette wheel? Yearn to hear some bored dude in a tuxedo say "les jeux sont faits?" (God, what an idiot game baccarat is, anyway. I guess the prospect of losing vast amounts of money makes it fun, if that's your idea of fun.)

Cherubim and Seraphim, Falling Down Before Thee

Sorry about the light posting around here; I've been sick with mastitis again (Mom, feel free to chime in in comments and tell me to stop breastfeeding now.) Errg. It's not responding well to antibiotics and it's very painful. As I told John, if I were St. Teresa of Avila I would go for this kind of thing (I mean, the stabbing pains in the breast), but it's just not me.
Speaking of saints, it seems the Catholic Church is going to beatify John Paul II any day now. I sort of wonder about the mechanics involved. Let's say, ex hypothesi, he's in heaven now. Did God recognize his sainthood right away, and get him on duty casting down his golden crown around the glassy sea on day one? Or is God waiting to see what the Church does? Like, you just hang on to this silver crown for a while, and we'll see if you move up.
(Random postscript: I see in googling this hymn that evangelicals in America have changed the final line of the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy from "God in Three Persons, Blessed Trinity" to "God everlasting, through eternity." (And the hymn was also renamed: "The hymn is, 'Holy, Holy, Holy-Blessed Trinity.' It was revised to: 'Holy, Holy, Holy-Blessed Majesty.'") Seems weak, but I guess some evangelicals don't believe in the Trinity? Can that be right? Wait, what do they think about the Nicene Creed?)
UPDATE: well, it seems as if Mormons and Seventh-Day-Adventists don't believe in the Nicene Creed, but pretty much everyone else does. See here. I guess those apparently  trinity-denying types I came across were fringe nutballs rather than plain old evangelical Christians. Now, get out there and get into an argument about the filioque in comments, kids!

Enrich your nuclear wordpower

Obviously 'nuclear' just means restoration. But here's a toughy: is 'Krauthammer' closer in meaning to 'oleaginous' or 'acidulous'? Defend your answer (with bogus etymologies, or in any other way that you deem necessary. Then defend your methods of defense as 'necessity of culture war'.)

They Told Cheney Right Away, So...

Can it really be the case that everyone who works for President Bush in any capacity is convinced he's just a cypher when it comes to potential security threat? That he shouldn't be told anything worrying till the My-Pet-Goat-reading/bike-ride-with-high-school-pal is over? This just seems weird to me.

Capitol Police officers began shouting to stragglers, "Run, run, this is for real!" At the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in suburban Maryland, a half-hour's drive from the White House, Mr. Bush's Secret Service detail - following him on bicycles and in vehicles as he got some midday exercise after returning the previous night from a five-day trip to Russia, Latvia, Georgia and the Netherlands - decided not to inform him of what was unfolding, said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman.

Mr. McClellan said the members of the security detail had decided that Mr. Bush need not be informed because there was no danger to him and because procedures for intercepting the airplane, evacuating buildings in Washington and increasing security at the White House did not require his authorization. The Secret Service agents did not consult with Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, or other senior administration officials, Mr. McClellan said.

Mr. McClellan said Mr. Bush was told of the incident at 12:50 p.m., after his ride with a high school friend. Asked whether Mr. Bush wished he had been informed earlier, Mr. McClellan replied: "The president has great trust in his security detail. He was never in any danger, and the protocols that were in place were followed."

I mean, obviously it turned out to be no big deal, but not even to mention it?

Just Like Jesse James

I feel bad, leaving Belle to uphold the honor of our blog while I'm off Valvateering. Then I try to make myself feel better by telling her she ought to do a thing where every post is a recipe plus sassy 'and a pony'-style opinionation served up hot. She could so completely dominate the gourmet chef political pundette arena. Warren Zevon even wrote the song for her:

She really worked me over good
She was a credit to her gender
She put me through some changes, Lord
Sort of like a Waring blender

I figure if she doesn't get sued by the blender people she can make a lot of money selling blogads to gourmet outlets. Stuff like that.

(I will try to post sometimes.)

It's a Man's, Man's, Man's, Man's Interweb

An interesting post from Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon about blogrolls, and other things. I was struck by this:

One point of criticism is that all the aforementioned bloggers are valued--in their own circles. (I read gardening sites, so I would know.) That political bloggers get more attention than others isn't a bad thing, but instead an example of America's continuing enthusiasm for democracy. This is a painful topic for me, because the real, honest me apparently melds well with the much-vaunted straight white male blogger. (And my class consciousness makes me immediately stand up and point out that I am also melding well with the upper middle class that treats college educations as a given, even though I was the first in my family to get one.)

The ugly, naked truth is simple--men like me. This fact is very apparent in my non-internet life where I have many effortless friendships with men and my fewer friendships with women that take much more effort. What should be an idiosyncratic part of my personality looks like it might be a personality trait that helped me grow quickly from an unknown blogger to one who writes on a blog big enough to get national attention. The odd thing is that Jesse isn't really part of the contigent of men who like me because I'm a man's woman. But it's fair to say that a lot of the positive attention that I received at Mouse Words has a lot to do with me being a man's woman.

I have to say that I have always thought of myself this way, if not in these terms: a man's woman. I like lots of things that other women don't. Political wonkiness? NFL football? Target practice with a Colt .45? Bullshit, cock-swinging arguments about philosophy? (You are REFUTED! Boo-yah! U R teh suXX0Rz!) Yah, sign me up for the good stuff. I think John's moher and sister used to advise him that there weren't any girls like me and he should try to mellow out and be less of a logic nerd in order to get chicks. My sister is much the same way, with different guy's interests: online RPG's and war reenactments. It is my vague sense that this "man's woman" aspect of my personality also lends itself very much to blogging. Is this consistent with my blogging persona viewed from the reader side? Is this a problem with blogging? One reads a lot of vague gesturing towards usenet origins, etc., but is this really explanatory? God, I hope this doesn't mark the tri-monthly return of "where are the blogging girls". It's like the annoying swallows of super-irritating Capistrano or something.

Font Trouble

Tomorrow is my first class; I am teaching Greek to some NUS students here at home. It should be fun. But I am having a leeetle problem with the Greek font I downloaded (it's called Aisa). It has adopted a "one-stroke" strategy for accents/iota subscripts and what not, that is, you press option+2 to get aspirated alpha with a circumflex, and on and on (rather than typing,say, option+i and then the desired letter, the way you would get umlauts in a roman font). Here's the thing: I can't find some of the letters and there really doesn't seem to be KeyCaps in Mac OS X. There's a font palette thingy, which shows me what they would look like, but it doesn't describe how to produce the various letters. So, I have tried: plain old typing, shift, option, option+shift. The command key is always doing real stuff, not typing letters, so that's out. Control? Not getting any love. I've got plenty of crazy rare things I will never need--epsilon with a circumflex? Can that even happen? I'm all ready to type words containing iota with a dieresis and a grave accent. But what about a little something called epsilon with, you know, like a grave or acute accent? Or iota with grave or acute? And, less pressingly, how do I put breathing marks and accents before capital letters?  We are talking about some of the characters I am likely to type the most of all, so they must be hidden somewhere really obvious...help me out here Mac people/classicts types. I think this is a unicode font, if that helps.

Cookery Books

This library of cookbooks (and more) sounds amazing; I want to go!

It holds not only priceless volumes but also curiosities like Philomelia Ann Maria Antoinette Hardin's 1842 recipe book "particularly designed for Buckeyes, Hoosiers, Wolverines, Corncrackers, Suckers and all epicures who wish to live with the present times." (That caught my eye. I was born a Buckeye, and I grew rapidly into a sucker, if not a Sucker, for a good meal.)

And it houses menus, as my friend and fellow omnivore Charles Eisendrath said the other day, that "make you long for a time machine." Like the 1847 bill of fare from the Great Western Dining Rooms and Restaurant in Cincinnati, which lists no fewer than 36 kinds of roast meat, game and fish, including things that have all but disappeared from the American table, like woodcock (sigh!), snipe and wild turkey.

Mmm, woodcock. So small and tasty. I eat them every once in a while when my uncle shoots them. I often wonder when reading old menus (for a single dinner)--the type with 14 courses--did anyone actually eat all that stuff? Did each person get a teeny tiny serving?

I love to read old cookbooks; perusing the "luncheon and supper dishes" section from the old Joy of Cooking is extremely comforting. I still have never made a noodle ring, though, much less filled the center with creamed sweetbreads or whatever. Maybe next week.

(The NYT link generator seems to be down; I'll try fixing that link up later.)

Lucky

Well, I'm very happy that these teenagers were rescued after 6 days adrift at sea. Their families must be overjoyed. However, as someone who's spent a lot of time on the water in South Carolina, I do have to say that they were being incredible dumbasses. Really super-amazing dumbasses:

On a windy day, the boys set off shark fishing with one oar and no sail, life jackets, flares, food or water.

One oar?! The only thing that would have made it more classic would be if they had taken along beer. (Well, and I guess they would have been better off, too.)

Of Course, 98 and Sunny Has Got Problems, Too.

To continue on with the whole weather theme, it's a bit silly for me to be complaining about 40 and raining, given that it is SO HOT in Singapore right now. Boy howdy, it's hot. Now, according to the thermometer, it's not quite as hot as in South Carolina in the summer. That is pretty much the pits, when it's over 100 for many days at a time and thus never gets below 90 at night. My dad never had air conditioning until recently, on the theory that going from hot to cold just made it worse. (Yes, he is crazy.) I used to take about 8 cold showers a day, with generous lashings of Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap. For the last one, I wouldn't dry off, and just wrap myself in the soaking sheet and lie down in front of the fan, hoping to fall asleep before I dried out. But somehow, the equatorial sun is so much stronger that it feels...hmm, worse? No, as bad. I like the sun; I love to lie on the beach and feel the golden rays hammer down on my eyelids. But this is...more like getting whacked over the head with a bronze disk. It's very odd to wake up and go out at 8 or so, and find that the sun is already up at where it would be at 10:30 on a north American summer day, and has got a real bite to it, too. Did I mention it's been hot here?