united we stand…

Journey into the Infraordinary

Octopuses Rule.

Redditor the_disreputable_dog posted this to r/UsernamesIllustrated. It’s her depiction of Octopuses_Rule, and I love its political implications.

ETA: Check out the_disreputable_dog’s deviantart! Composite monster animals FTW!

My friendly neighbourhood paper wasps have been evicted.

город тумана

This is the best surviving picture of last night’s walk through the fog. Lately, there have been quite a lot of foggy days, and I love taking routes that differ from my everyday commute. If I have the time, I try and get deliberately lost. And I explore this new, other city in which everything is transformed. Far away objects have often vanished completely, while distances between you and the things that remain are impossible to judge. Noises are softened, yet you encounter sudden weird intense bursts of smell: pine resin, petrol, rotting leaves. It’s like walking through a dream, or a surrealist painting. You start to expect some strange beast behind every corner. Maybe my personal favourite city monster, the petricore (that you can recognize by its scent like wet asphalt). But the atmosphere, so radically different from the waking day-city that envelops you on your way to work, is impossible to capture in a photograph.

Spaceship Names and Invasive Code

My addiction to list-making is flaring up again. (Which might or might not mean I’ll soon be writing more short stories.) Lately, I’ve come to realize that good band names often make good names for spaceships as well (e.g. Nada Surf, the Mars Volta). Since they tend to be multilingual compounds, and also (more often than not) quite interesting references, I blame M. John Harrison’s Empty Space trilogy. Besides, his “invasive code” is so well written that last night I dreamt that a white paste the consistency of baby food was coming out of my mouth, and a childless acquaintance suddenly had a daughter… It was pretty uncanny. That said, one of my favourite passages from Empty Space is “Renoko self-identified as human”. (More rights for entities traditionally identified as non-human! Down with anthropocentrism!)

Non-verbal Code-switching

I don’t drive. However, I use driver’s hand signals to communicate with them. Whenever a car stops to let me cross, I raise the hand to them that isn’t holding the bag of books or TARDIS travel mug to say thankyou. I don’t ever see other pedestrians do this. I think I got this from my dad, watching him drive, and I thought this was a nice way of showing respect and appreciation.

Sign of Life

I’ve been so busy I even missed this year’s Halloween post. Well, ghosts and monsters are around all year, so maybe we should break with another tradition.

I’ve been gone long enough for wordpress to have logged me out. I imagine some sort of doorkeeper, a hellhound or a dragon, turning its massive head away as if it won’t recognize me, just because I stayed away too long. (At least I remember the password.)

In case you’re wondering where I am – something huge and indescribable has swallowed me up, and no, it’s not Twitter. (But you can get fleeting glimpses of me there, as I’m flitting about, carrying huge stacks of paperbacks, mumbling to myself). But I’m well, and enjoying myself immensely. It’s just… I may be some time.

I will be back, soon enough. I guess I’ll even drop by from time to time to feed you pictures and other snippets. See you soon, I hope.

Super late MoFo Post #14: Sorry, MoFoers!

I’m still kind of sick, and I should really take some more time to just lie on the couch with a good book and a cup of tea. Nevertheless, because I don’t even listen to myself, I’m leaving for a conference tomorrow, because my voice is almost back, and I want to do this. Please bear with me; I know I’m insufferable.
While I’m gone, please get acquainted with one more friend for a lonely slice of toast: It’s called Hasolé, and let me assure you, the picture of a hazelnut somewhere on the label is purely decorative. This is basically a stripy mix of fat and sugar, and it’s lovely. I eat it with a spoon, but I hear it’s also nice on toast.
See you soon – hopefully with more toast-related stuff in tow!

MoFo Post #13: Pumpkin Interlude

Today I battled a 3.7 kilo butternut squash and won. Just take a look at my freezer compartment! All the orange baggies in the upper half are ziplocks filled with pureed squash. (Not just today’s, though – there are also some smaller pieces of Piena di Napoli from a couple of weeks ago.) You see, I live in a place where there is no canned or otherwise preserved pumpkin. Sure, we can get roasted pumpkin seeds and pumpkinseed oil all year (the latter is amazing over vanilla ice cream, believe it or not!), but pumpkin (and squash – we don’t even discriminate, it’s all “Kürbis” to us) is very much a seasonal thing. So every year I try to roast, puree and freeze as much as I can, so when pumpkin season is over I’ll still be able to make soups and cakes and whatnot. Let’s see how long I’ll be able to hold out this time.
To get back to the matter of toast: does anyone have a good recipe for pumpkin butter? If so, please do post a link in the comment section. I’ve been dying to make some.