I was introduced to David Wagoner, and this poem, by a lover during my Freshman year in college. I've liked it ever since, for a number of reasons, and it's been on my mind of late.

Beauty and the Beast

Men wept when they saw her breasts, squinted with pain
At her clear profile, boggled at her knees,
Turned slack-jawed at her rear-view walking away,
And every available inch of her hair and skin
Had been touched by love poems and delicious gossip.
The most jaundiced and jaded people in the village
Agreed with the Prince: young Beauty was a beauty.

But through the long day he doused and plucked his roses,
Drained and refilled his moat, or caulked his dungeons,
And all night long he clocked the erring planets,
Pondered the lives of saints like a Latin-monger,
Or sat up half-seas over with sick falcons,
While Beauty lingered in her sheerest nightgowns
With the light behind her, wilting from sheer boredom.

"You're a bore!" she said, "Prince Charming is a bore!"
She cried to the gaping seamstresses and fishwives.
"He's a bore!" she yelled to the scullions and butcher's helpers.
"That tedious, bland, preoccupied, prickling Princeling
Is a bore's bore!" she told the bloody barbers
And waxy chandlers leaning out to watch her
Dragging her rear-view home to Mother and Father.

But deep in the woods, behind a bush, the Beast
Had big ideas about her. When she slipped by,
Hiking her skirts to give her legs free sway
And trailing a lovely, savage, faint aroma
Fit to unman a beast, the Beast said, "Beauty,
Come live with me in the bushes where it's chancy,
Where it's scare and scare alike, where it's quick and murky."

She looked him over. Though the light was patchy,
She could see him better than she wanted to:
Wherever men have skin, the beast had hair;
Wherever men have hair, he had black bristles;
Wherever men have bristles, he grew teeth;
And wherever men have teeth, his snaggling tusks
Lapped over his smile. So Beauty said, "No thank you."

"You'd be a sweet relief. I'd gorge on you.
I'm sick of retching my time with hags and gorgons.
You're gorgeous. Put down my rising gorge forever."
She remembered her mother whispering: The Beast
Is a bargain. It's a well-known fact that, later,
He turns into a Prince, humble and handsome,
With unlimited credit and your father's mustache.

So all you have to do is grin and bear him
Till the worst is over. But Beauty felt uncertain.
Still, after the Prince, it seemed like now or never,
And maybe all men were monsters when they saw her,
And maybe the ugliest would teach her sooner.
Her heart felt colder than a wizard's whistle:
She said, "You Beast, how can I say I love you?"

With horny fingers caressing everything
Available on the little world of her body,
The Beast then took her gently, his rich odor
Wafting about them like the mist from graveyards,
And Beauty began to branch out like a castle
Taller than trees, and from the highest tower
She loosened her long hair, and the Beast climbed it.

When he was spent, he lay beside her, brushing
Leaves from her buttresses, and said, "I love you."
She shrank back to herself and felt afraid.
"You'll change into something much more comfortable
Now that you've taken me," she said. "I know:
You'll be transformed into someone like Prince Charming."
"I'm always like this," he said, and drooled a little.

"If you're going to change, change now," she told him, weeping.
"Peel off that monster suit and get it over."
"I wear myself out, not in," he said. "I'll love you
In all the worst ways, as clumsily as heaven."
"Thank God," she said. And Beauty and the Beast
Stole off together, arm in hairy arm,
And made themselves scarce in the bewitching forest.

--David Wagoner

This is the second poem that I ever memorized and read in front of a group of people (the first was by Shel Silverstein). I reprised it by reading it for people at a party a couple of years ago.

It's still one of my favorites.

Curiosity

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems,
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die –
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.

Only the curious
have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.
Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.

Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

--Alistair Reed

Take a picture of yourself RIGHT NOW.
Don't change your clothes. Don't fix your hair. Just take a picture.
Post that picture with no editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.

Oh, and before I forget: regular readers of this journal may recall that when I'm engaged in activities that don't require a lot of focus (exercising, gardening, showering), my mind tends to wander and I'll find myself fabricating silly songs or poems.

During tonight's bike ride, I found myself using as inspiration the reaction that my ratgirls had to being fed Krusty-O's this morning. One of the 7-Elevens that've been turned into Kwik-E-Marts to promote the Simpsons Movie is down by work, and has a panoply of rebranded products available. I picked up a box of Krusty-O's, which, as far as I can tell, are basically Froot Loops.



The rats love them. No, I mean really love them. It's like rat crack. And it was so adorable watching them clutch the colorful little torii in their paws while they nibbled away. So with that image in my head from this morning, and my muscles aching as I climbed the hills, my muse struck. Without further ado:

O tiny rat, with Krusty-O
I've read the box, and thus I know
That these are awfully bad for you
...but it's so cute, the way you chew

I blame the low blood sugar. I was seriously bonking towards the end of that ride (and bonking in the glycemic sense, not the fun sense).

(What is up with all the double entendres in cycling, anyway? Pumps? Multi-tools? Lube? Chains? BONKING??? Must be the influence of all that Spandex.)

OK, maybe not exactly a frenzy, per se. But I did cycle into work both today and yesterday, and was feeling very butch about it. So much so that I decided to go on the post-work ride. Now there are some hard-core riders at the office, and keeping this in mind, I mentioned to the organizer of the Thursday evening rides that I was probably going to be a bit of a wuss. "No problem," says he, "We'll opt for an easier ride today."

There were only three of us tonight, which gave us some additional flexibility. Since I'd ridden in from the north, we would head that direction, then after a while I would split off from them and continue heading home while they looped back to the office. So, abandoning my laptop, backpack, and (as I found out later) my house keys at work, off we go.

Now, I live in the flatlands. Work's in a pretty flat place, too. And there's a nice, easy, 13-mile route between the two that doesn't have what any cyclist worth his multi-tool would consider a "hill". Hardly the sort of thing that serious cyclists would go out of their way for on a group ride. We crossed I-280 into the idyllic, bucolic hills surrounding Foothills Park and the Arastradero Open Space Preserve. Gorgeous, with the setting sun reflecting off of the dry, high-summer grass. That whole California "golden hills" effect.

I probably wasn't appreciating it as much as I could have, given the fact that I was just trying to keep up with the other two. It was probably an elevation gain of... oh, I dunno. 2,000 feet? More than I've done in a while, at any rate. But I know that even while I was feeling the lactic acid burn in my leg muscles, I was in a far better position to appreciate the scenery than I would have been were I in a speeding car.

Eventually we reach Alpine Road and split... they back to the office by way of Sand Hill, me down Alameda de las Pulgas (yes, "avenue of the fleas") to my house. shaix was kind enough to let me back into my house (thanks!!!!), and I noticed that as usual, I ended up the imprint of a dirty chainring on the inside of my right calf.



I almost always seem to end up with that mark on my calf. And back when I was cycling almost daily, I thought to myself, "Hey, why not make it permanent, then? Why not just get a tattoo of it?" Having been riding more recently, I've thought about it again. So yeah, I'm going to get that done. My first ink.

Here's wishing a very happy birthday to voontah. Cheers!

Many happy returns to xthread!!!

basmati and I attended the Lucinda Williams concert at the Oakland Paramount on Thursday night. The last time I was there was nearly a year ago, for an Elvis Costello/Alain Toussaint concert, and I had forgotten how much walking into the Paramount was like entering an Art-Deco Oz. It's gorgeous. I want to see more concerts there just to spend time in the lobby.



Aside from fantasies of ascending the grand escalier in tails, I was really looking forward to seeing Lucinda in concert. I'd learned of her by word of mouth circa 2002, and Car Wheels on a Gravel Road hooked me. World Without Tears was easily as good. And I have awfully fond memories of a hot summer evening concert at the Oregon Zoo in 2004, featuring Lucinda, John Hiatt, a Pendleton blanket, my grilled salmon and corn salsa, a gorgeous sky, and the magic of friends new and old. Perhaps it was the fond memories of this that inflated my expectations. But after hearing the new album West, I should have known that Lucinda was taking things in a different direction.

It's not as if her music is particularly happy, right? But the material on the previous albums, just seemed, well... more raucously morose than what's rendered on West. I keep trying to come up with a term that nails it... she still defies categorization, but in a new way. Emo-billy? Emo-tonk? Emo & Western?

Kelly Joe Phelps opened, and was awesome, but perhaps a bit low-key after a long week and not enough sleep. Then Lucinda came on, and to her credit, she did perform a number of songs from previous albums. And even some of the songs from the new album were done OK live, I think. But the nadir was what she introduced as a song she'd recently written and had not recorded yet. The lyrics consisted of (I kid you not) variations on:

You're my little honey bee
I'm so glad you stu-ung me
Got your honey in me
Oh my little honey bee

That's really about it. Over and over. And I know she can write stellar lyrics, so I'm not sure where this came from. Perhaps "recently written" meant "in the shower this morning", or "on the tour bus after a few shots of Jack". Oh, and during the bridge, she was dancing. But... well, aren't musicians supposed to have a better sense of rhythm? I later characterized it as the "white middle-school boy dance".

I am probably coming off as being too critical. I like Lucinda and will definitely continue to enjoy Car Wheels and World, I might see her perform again, and I'll keep an ear open for her new work.

Oh, but this is the fun part, especially as it comes on the heels of my previous post: the new song inspired me to spend an entire day coming up with doggerel for my text messages and Twitters. Examples:

YOU'RE MY LITTLE HONEY BEE
WE'RE ALL OUT OF CAW-FEE
GUESS I'LL HAVE A CUP OF TEA
OH MY LITTLE HONEY BEE

YOU'RE MY LITTLE HONEY BEE
OH MY GOSH I HAVE TO PEE
MY NEXT MEETING IS AT THREE
OH MY LITTLE HONEY BEE

Then my friends started doing it. The best! I should thank Lucinda for that; entertainment is entertainment!

Occasionally, when I'm engaged in a tedious and/or physical task, the clutch of my mind starts slipping, and I'll start treading spirals of non-causal creative thought. For some reason, this almost always manifests itself in song: either coming up with new lyrics to an existing song, or weaving new songs from whole cloth. To wit: when gardening three years ago, I started singing a Beastie Boys-esque rap about the International style of architecture.

Tonight, while working out, I started recasting a Nerdcore rap song in Elizabethan verse.

I'm not sure what this means. Low blood sugar, perhaps.

I opened a box of Cheerios a few days ago. Mind you, I'm the target market for the "supermarket pastoral" image that Whole Foods pushes, so when I buy oat-based toroidal breakfast cereals, they're usually the store-brand "Morning-O"s (tagline should be: Who doesn't like a good morning O?)

However, I was at Safeway last week, and as a matter of convenience, I picked up a box of the name brand. (I still want to know what marketing genius thought "no keeping them down" would be a good slogan for a food product.) I noticed that it came with a prize: extra excitement! But when I opened it a couple of days later, the Spidey(tm) Water Squirter (in its own little plyobag) was right there. Just below the flap. Yes, I opened the correct side of the box. And I didn't even have to open the bag that contained the product. Where's the suspense? What, no collecting box-tops and mailing them in? No having to eat your way down until the level was low enough to get your hand all the way down to the bottom to root around for the toy? No wondering if you could avoid spilling it all over the floor and rousing mom-wrath when you transferred the entire contents to a mixing bowl and then back into the box?

I felt cheated.

The KFC near my house has been undergoing a major remodel. Within the last few days, they completed the fascia on the corner, which features a large back-lit sign of the familiar Colonel, but with a big difference: he's wearing what appears to be a red apron over his usual white suit and black bow tie.

I'm sure this reinvented, stylized logo is intended to convey the notion that Harland Sanders is in the kitchen, rolling up his immaculate white linen sleeves to tweak the herb-to-spice ratios into perfection, but to me, it gives the impression that he's a pensioner plastering the mandated smile on his face as he prepares to get behind the counter and take some orders to supplement his SSI payments. Or perhaps getting ready to hose down the kill floors (in which case the smile is even more creepy than it already was).

...when you gently agitate your carton of orange juice... and then tap it on the counter to dislodge any air bubbles from the film.

(Seriously. I did this when I was half-awake the other morning, after not having hand-developed film for, oh, a decade.)

OK GO's song Here It Goes Again was playing at the gym tonight.

I was sorely tempted to jump on one of the treadmills.

There's been an orb weaver living near my rosebushes for the last month or so. There've been some lovely webs built between the rose canes and the house, but by the time I had a chance to take a picture, they'd be gone. Last weekend, I finally had a chance when the spider had graced my front yard with yet another web. You can't see the web so well, but I think the macro lens worked well to get some nice close-ups of the spider. Click on the pictures for larger versions.

Glancing over at my work bookshelf, I see the set of chocolate bars that remain even after I've shared several with co-workers. Work-Jennifer brought by a passel of mostly-Eurochocolates (two Lindt, two Daskalide's, a Ghiradelli, a Valor, a Perugina, and a Witor's) as a thank-you for last-minute help with a client issue a couple of weeks ago. Apparently Trader Joe's has a great deal on a "variety pack" that includes them. I (and my team) have thought they've all been pretty yummy so far; guess we'd better get crackin' on the rest of them. Between the bars and the bottle of 2000 WillaKenzie Pinot Noir that another client team brought me, it's quite the little pantry I'm building here.

It hasn't been a good couple weeks for sharp things. Last week, I was steeling a knife when it slipped and made a nice incision on the back of the knuckle of my left thumb. Ow. Awkward place for a bandage, too. And the second incident... well, more on that later.

Tuesday of last week, I saw Little Miss Sunshine. Great flick. Alan Arkin in particular was awesome, but it was a great ensemble effort. On Wednesday, saw Casino Royale with the work team. There were enjoyable action sequences, which (to me) is mostly what a Bond film should be about. But the story tended to drag a bit in places, and there was some chronological awkwardness which I couldn't see that they had any way to work around.

Wednesday evening, went shopping with V to prepare for the feast the next day. I got my buttons pushed by her mentioning that the stuffing option was going to be Stove Top, and decided that I had to get the ingredients to do it myself (in addition to the other two things I was already going to be making). Helped V get the turkey brining, then went home to make Southern-style cornbread to prepare for the next day's extravaganza of cooking and eating.

Slept in a little later than I should have on Thursday (but what luxury!), which meant that I was a bit late starting the cooking. First to start was the dough for the Parker House rolls, aka "pockets of buttery doom": nevermind the 8 tablespoons that are in the dough (yields 18 rolls), each roll getes a dollop of butter sealed into it, then they all get brushed with yet more melted butter. Yum. Also made the aforementioned stuffing (cornbread and sausage), as well as prep for the creamy garlic and chive mashed potatoes.

Made it over to V's at last, where R1, M, P, and R2 were already enjoying V's new copy of Guitar Hero II. Popped the cork on the bottle of NV Rene Collard Brut that I brought, sampled some of the cheese tray, and got to work on the remainder of the a la minute cooking, with help from P and M. The other two bottles I brough included what I now refer to as the chewy-cherry-chocolate-chunk Syrah (2003 Foxen; a bit over the top, I thought), and a 1994 Zilliken Saarburger Rausch Kabinett, which I knew R2 would like, but it also proved to my other friends that Rieslings don't have to be cloying... that lovely minerality starts to show so well after a decade or so.

The turkey was fab, as were the beans, mac & cheese, pie, cake, and cranberry sauce supplied by the rest of the group. A good time was had by all, including one of R1's students that wasn't home for the holiday and would've been at the mercy of whatever restaurant she could find open on that day. Much work on the Guitar Hero chops for all, that evening.

Spent Friday running useful errands that hadn't been gotten around to otherwise: grocery shopping, cleaning around the house. Also saw Stranger Than Fiction with V (apprently it's been a good week for seeing movies). Fun! Will Ferrell knew well enough not to play it to crazy, and Hoffman was perfect for his role.

On Saturday, worked on the pile in the sink that had accumulated from the Thanksgiving cooking. Was so excited by having clean dishes again that I decided to make bread. Started the biga (sponge) for a loaf of rustic Italian bread.

Sunday, ran more errands and made the bread. One half of the divided dough was made into a batard shape (what I usually use for this dough), the other went into the banneton that I purchsed a few months ago but hadn't used yet. Oh, and here's the other sharp-object tragedy: when I was trying to pull the safety cover (oh, the irony) off of the lame, I neatly sliced the pad of my left thumb. Have I mentioned how sharp those things are? Like, scalpel-sharp. It was bleeding almost before I felt it. Bandage, alcohol on the lame, then back to the bread... rising dough waits for no man.

Both loaves turned out great! I think he diastatic malt powder helps the crust immensely: brown and crisp, with a cool, creamy, irregular crumb. The one from the banneton was slightly nicer, I thought, and very pretty, with the impression of the bent-willow spiral showing in the flour-dusted crust. Will be doing that one again.

Spend Sunday night cleaning up the mess from the breadmaking.

Monday, was so excited by having a clean kitchen again (sensing a pattern?), that I decided to make West-African Chicken Peanut soup! This is a recipe from Gordon, the chef of a cafe at a company that I used to work for. This soup was always a crowd-pleaser; when it was on the menu, one wanted to be sure to get to the cafeteria early to get a share. When we learned that our office was to be shut down, we pleaded with Gordon to share the recipe with us, and he relented. My kitchen still smells a little like curry. Made plenty: after the two bowls I had, there was about a half gallon left; it's as easy to make a lot as it is a little. I ate soup for lunch and dinner for a couple of days, and shared the rest with friends. Finally convinced V to try a bowl of it; and she loved it!

After a busy week at work (and some unexpected car repairs), I'm preparing to head off to Las Vegas to hook up with V, P, K, R, and M for R's birthday and the Mike Doughty/Barenaked Ladies concert. Should be fun, but I'm having to make some effort to get into the Las Vegas party-down spirit, given the fact that it's been a somewhat-stressful couple of weeks, and I feel like I might be coming down with a cold. But I'm a trouper. Just need more caffeine, I think. Or booze. Oh, I know, both: Spanish Coffees! Woo! The legal equivalent of speedballs.

Damn cytokines... still sniffly, but certainly not as bad as I was on Tuesday. Throat's sore, but the honeyed tea is helping with that. Spent the last couple of days at home, since Rule Number One of the open office plan is "keep the germs at home when you turn into a virus breeding ground". I expect that I picked it up from one of my fellow 378 passengers on the way back from Barcelona (had a fantastic time there with basmati, more details later!); the long leg was 12 hours, from Munich to San Francisco. Gotta love intercontinental flights for picking up colds... it's like grade school times ten. And you get to deal with the lag at the same time!

Spent the days working from home and sipping a decoction (I've been reading the His Dark Materials trilogy on the plane, so yeah, that word worked its way into my vocabulary) of orange juice and seltzer. Now that I'm feeling better, I was thinking about being social tonight and going to see Run Lola Run, but I dunno... I may have filled up on German after the Lufthansa flights.

(Amusing aside: After last year's language debacle in Munich, I promised myself that I wasn't going to make the same mistake when ordering a coffee in Frankfurt. Which of course, meant that it happened. "Si. I mean, Yes. I mean, Ja." *rolls eyes*)

I love the way that German strings old nouns together to make new ones, so you get these six-syllable words (like Annahmeschlusszeiten: "Acceptance conclusion times"). But German has so many hard edges to it, though... it takes a talent on the scale of Goethe or Schiller to wring poetry out of it. Not like Spanish, where even the announcements at the Metro station sound lyrical. (But you have to admit that the phrase "Möchtest du Strudel für Frühstück in München?" while not poetic, is amusing. Especially, as H. says, if you use the Swedish Chef voice when you say it.)

The predominant language around Barcelona, in Catalonia (what became an autonomous region, post-Franco) is Catalan--don't make the mistake of calling it a dialect. Unforunately, there are limited resources for learning it. On the plus side, pretty much everyone there also speaks Castillan Spanish, and/or English, and/or French. People make jokes about how English borrows from other languages (follows them down alleys, beats them up, rifles through their pockets for words), but it's as if Catalan has tampered with God's plan by creating a mutant hybrid of French and Castillan, with extra sets of appendages stolen from Italian bolted on for good measure. Yikes. I'm going to have to learn at least a little of it if I want to make anything from the Comerç 24 cookbook, though. (Hi, my name is Byron, and I have a coffee-table cookbook addiction.)

It's nice working at a company with enough "vision" to have an espresso machine on the premises, even if it does neet a bit of tweaking (it's an automatic, and the shots it's pulling are too long). I need to bring in a wide, shallow cup so I can practice latte art.

Being able to pull a quality shot is very satisfying. I mean, yeah, for every one that's perfect, there are many that are only okay (and a few that are just plain bad), but it's worth it to see the bubbles and "tiger stripes" in a lovely, caramel-colored crema and taste that perfect balance of smokiness, berry sweetness, and chocolatey bitterness.

At the last company I worked for, in Portland, a cow-orker and I figured out that between the two of us, we were spending about $100/month on our daily americano fix at the Daily Cafe (how apropos). So we decided to pool our resources and buy an espresso machine (a Rancilio Silvia) for the office.

Unforunately, said cow-orker was laid off a few weeks after we bought the machine. Suckage. I ended up buying out his "share", and now it's my home machine. It's a great machine. (Note: Dream Home will have a plumbed-in Synesso Cyncra.) It's not a super-automatic that does the grinding, dosing, tamping, and pulling all with the push of a button; it does require a bit of patience and understanding. But again, the rewards are worth it.

(I read a recent article on the NY Times website about the resurgence of cafes with a focus on quality; the inevitable backlash against the McDonalds-like ubiquity of Starbucks.)

I miss places like the Albina Press, Anna Bananas, Stumptown, and yes, of course Coffee People, but I've been able to find at least a couple of sources down here that are quite excellent. Barefoot Coffee roasts some great blends (Sweetness is my favorite), and pulls a mean shot. They even have an "exchange program" where they occasionally carry blends from other roasteries (such as Stumptown!) Blue Bottle Coffee is also very good, though I've only had it from their booth at the farmer's market. I've yet to visit the cafe location in Hayes Valley.