Sunday 31 October 2010

interview with leonard cohen

(from the guardian, don't have a date)

g: what do you consider your darkest hour?
lc: well i wouldn't tell you about it if i knew. even to talk about oneself in a time like this is a kind of unwholesome luxury. i don't think i've had a darkest hour compared to the dark hours that so many people are involved in right now. large numbers of people are dodging bombs, having their nails pulled out in dungeons, facing starvation, disease. i mean large numbers of people. so i think that we've really got to be circumspect about how seriously we take our own anxieties today.

Saturday 30 October 2010

remiss

i know.
i've been working.
alot.
and having quality time:



be back soon

Monday 11 October 2010

Saturday 9 October 2010

songs loved purely due to particular lines

"i get the news i need from the weather report
oh i get all the news i need from the weather report"
simon and garfunkel, the only living boy in new york

"wearing smells from laboratories..."
hair, let the sunshine in

"i asked hank williams how lonely does it get, but hank williams hasn't answered yet"
leonard cohen, tower of song

"then i'll join in matrimony with the girl who serves spumoni"
louis prima, angelina
(closely followed by an earlier line - "i eat antipasti twice just because she is so nice"

you?

Saturday 2 October 2010

pork chops

i realise equating food with higher philosophical ideals can be problematic - freedom fries or mecca cola, anyone?

but to me, pork chops = freedom.

i mean, OBVIOUSLY (*eye roll*) in a sardonic/ironic white middle class woolly liberal sense.

but also no. also in an uncool un-intelligent-freedom-fries sort of way.

when i went back to university, i'd been sometimes traveling but mostly working for 12 years, and the opportunity to cook food at home, during the day, was intoxicating. when i had the time, i would often cook myself a pork chop - rubbed in a sluice of garlic, rosemary, salt, pepper and olive oil, with a side of sautéed spinach (in butter of course) and new potatoes, crushed with the back of a fork and swathed in butter and lashings of pork-juices.

i would sit at the table and carefully cut up my chop into 3 parts - fat, heart meat, and bone. then i'd settle in, open the newspaper, and munch my way through first the heart meat - tea towel at the ready to swipe fingers and reduce grease marks on the edges of the paper - alternated by scoops of mashed potatoes and spinach - and then, paper down out of respect at this point, full attention to the bone, slurping out all the best bits. the fat cut up for the birds.

i loved those lunches - the first i'd cooked alone, just for me, in years and years. to eat at the table with my fingers, reading a paper - delicious.

tonight n & s are playing at a pub down the road. i'm getting over a cold and i'm working all this weekend and next as well - a 21 day stretch. i've begged off. instead i've spent the evening talking to my mom in canada, and getting to bed early.

and cooking and eating a fat pork chop with a side of spinach and crushed potatoes.

freedom chops