Whimsy Speaks Again

That's a mighty fine set of grout lines, the product of The Tessellator (intoned in a vaguely Austrian accent), my son and tiling partner Derek.  He and I ate lox and bagels at the Pour La France at DIA and then he hopped on a plane to go back to college in Chicago.  This bathroom makes the 4th tiling job we've done together and it went very smoothly.  I've heard from a couple of poets who have been following the Tessellation Chronicles with an eye to doing the same.  In case they're still listening, here's what I've learned so far:

• For thin tiles, you can use a manual scoring cutter, but for thicker tiles and larger tiles, you might as well bite the bullet and pay $100 for a medium-duty wet saw.  It goes much quicker and you break fewer tiles.
• Don't agonize about the consistency of the grout or mortar/mud.   A little too much water and it's easier to lay down, a little less and it sets faster.  It's just no big deal.  Definitely buy a good electrical drill and a mortar mixing paddle, though, which will make things much easier. 
• Don't worry about your grout float technique.  Just make sure you push enough grout into the cracks and do your best.  15 minutes later, use a wet sponge to smooth everything out and get the excess off the tile faces.  The sponge is the real leveler, smoothing out your mistakes.
• Wipe off as much mortar and grout as you can from walls and cabinets as you go along.  You can wait, like I always do, but it's harder to get off (but not that tough, actually).
• Take the advice of French chefs about washing spinach 5 times and do the same with your tile.  The first time over, use a big bucket of water and level the grout and get the big chunks off the floor, without bothering to even change the water.  The second time through, do the same.  The 3d, 4th and 5th get the grime off the tile with fresh water and change water when it's looking cloudy.  In the end, you may need more than 5 buckets (depending upon the size of the job, my kitchen took 10 buckets), and you'll know you're done when you can wipe down the whole floor without any significant clouding of the water.  You're aiming for a haze-free tile surface.
• The reason is you need to seal the tile, unless it's porcelain.  This great Dupont sealer will keep the grout the color it started out at, even if you spill a glass of 1982 Château Lafite Rothschild on it.  Meanwhile, the tile will take on a nice glow.  What you don't want to do is trap any of the hazy residue from the grouting under the sealer, or any of Miss Emily's hairs, which seem to be fossilized in a couple of places in the tiled areas of the house.
• As for the base, use a good cement backerboard.  I've been using Hardiebacker, but the bathroom already had a no-name cement backerboard in place, so Der and I used that and it was fine.  The most important thing I've found is NOT to try to put the webbed tape on the backerboard joints with a separate mortar job.  Lay down the webbed tape (which is slightly adhesive) just before mudding the tiles on or you will end up with high spots where the mudded tape is.

~~~

I have been chuckling at the insanely stupid pick that McCain made for a VP.  I don't have to go into the details, Seth lays out most of the reasons.  What really cracks me up is the extent to which the GOP mouthpieces are going to justify the pick.  Sarah has been a favorite of Rush Limbaugh for weeks, but the rest of them had to gulp hard before coming out with completely unconvincing stories about why this is a good pick.  It's taken exactly one day for me to find on the web that:  her mayorship of the tiny town was "largely ceremonial".  And that she won the Alaska governorship with a grand total of 110,000 which isn't a whole lot more than packed into the stadium to hear Barack a couple of nights ago.  Or that the entire state budget that she presides over (the bureaucrats actually run it, as in most states) is less than the budget of the University of Colorado.  Sarah, "the Barracuda", apparently backstabbed a lot of her GOP colleagues to get on the ticket and nobody can figure out what she has actually done as governor so far except "fight corruption", which is the state pastime (corruption, not fighting it).  Meanwhile, the GOP has the gall to say that she has "more experience" than Obama, because it's executive experience.  So, apparently legislative experience doesn't count for anything.  Well, if it's executive experience we're looking for, I think she has more of it than McCain and Obama, and for that matter JFK and Lincoln before their presidency.

Biden is going to crucify her.

~~~

Cooks's Illustrated has apparently run out of new ideas for cute groupings of vegetables, because the back artwork is "Flatbreads", which includes of course pita, but also Markook, Injera, Matzo, and Pappadam.  I skipped over the homey observations of editor Christopher Kimball this time.  Notes From Readers includes:  cool casseroles before freezing to avoid weirdness;  soups and stews invariably taste better the next day because lactose breaks down, proteins turn into individual amino acids and starches break down to flavorful compounds;  brined chicken raises the sodium content, but not so much pork.  Quick Tips opines:  to chop capers, scatter them first on a paper towel (why would you want to chop capers?);  suspend roasting chickens on round cookie cutters to lift it above the fat it drips out;  use a colander to degrease fried ground beef (duh).  Improving Herbed Roast Chicken recommends that you push herbed butter under the skin.  A good mixture includes fresh thyme and tarragon, but don't forget the scallions, which infuse a "robust, grassy" note.  Perfecting Grilled Rack of Lamb looked interesting but I kept thinking about those poor little lambs.  Bringing Steak Tacos Indoors uses flank steak (not skirt steak, which is typical for most restaurants) and instructs that you sear and cook it, then cut across the grain in small pieces.  Mixing the result with a lime and herb paste brightens the flavor.  Super Crisp Oven-Fried Fish makes me wonder why the second pair of words is hyphenated, but not the first, but that's probably because Sweet Junie is a copy editor.  Anyway, this works for fillets of cod, haddock and other white fish and involves processing day-old bread into custom bread crumbs, dipping the fish into a concoction of flour and mayo, and coating the fillets before baking.  Rescuing Stir-Fried Noodles with Pork held no interest for me.  Mushrooms 101 was interesting, though.  Dima and his wife go up into the mountains at times and pick mushrooms and then eat them.  It sounds like a death-wish to me, but I guess they have been doing it for years, including when they lived in Russia.  Anyway, the common wisdom about not washing mushrooms is debunked (as long as they are whole mushrooms), so wash away and let dry.  After all, mushrooms are 80% water, so they don't store very well.  Keep them in a partially open zip-lock bag and use them as soon as you can.  Creamless Creamy Tomato Soup sounds like something that Sweet Junie would be experimenting with.  The secret is EVOO, garlic, canned tomatoes, brown sugar, chicken broth, and blendered-in white sandwich bread pieces for the texture.  They tried Introducing Pizza Bianca, but I wasn't interested.  Ditto Sticky Toffee Pudding.  Rethinking Apple Pie is an interesting recipe that has you doing the whole thing in a skillet.  An article on artisanal bacon, like I don't have enough angst about eating bison burgers.  Searching for the Perfect Drip Coffee Maker crowns the $240 Technivorm Moccamaster as the best, but my Krups 10-cup came in second, recommended with reservations.  Buying frozen fish? CI testers couldn't tell the difference between fresh flounder and sole and frozen.  Firm fishes like halibut, snapper, tilapia (ugh) and salmon were preferred fresh, but frozen was highly rated.  Medium-firm and Firm fishes like cod, haddock, sea bass, tuna and swordfish were Not Recommended in frozen state.  That's odd, actually since I often sea tuna and swordfish in quick-frozen packs at Safeway.

~~~

Speaking of bison burgers, I just gotta have another one.  Tonight, I'll make it a third-pound of ground bison, slices of a big fresh tomato, a huge handful of leaf lettuce, mayo, grilled sweet onions, all on a gigantic soft Safeway cheesy Kaiser roll.  It will sit on the plate next to my homemade Patriotic Coleslaw, which is the result of using the Cuisinart on red cabbage, white cabbage, carrots, and red peppers, all mixed up with lemon juice, some mayo and diced scallions.  The wine glass will have Greg Norman Shiraz in it.  Ahhhhh.

More tomorrow.  Got a couple of poetry mags to comment on.

 

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Everyone in my family is always bugging me about getting a reliable car.  I have this old Lexus with 230,000 miles, so I bought my son's Honda to have something that wouldn't give out for odd reasons at odd times.  Then, Dima needed to borrow a car and Der came home from his road trip and I needed another car, so I bought an old pickup.  I've owned a Jag, a couple of Austin Healey's, and RX-7, and I can't remember what else over the years, and I'm looking for something peppier.  This Bugatti would be nice.  With the top down it tops out at 250 MPH, and does 0-to-60 in 2.5 seconds.  They're only making 400 of them, and there's a waiting line.  Of course there is.  They're a bargain at about $2 million each.

I just made a rough count and we now have over 30 terabytes of storage in the office.  That's about 10 terabytes per person.  It's estimated that the Library of Congress's print holdings would occupy 17 to 20 terabytes if it were digitized (much, much less if just typed into a Word document).  There are approximately 18 million books and 54 million manuscripts which take up hundreds of miles of shelf space.

There are 5 pretty terrific videos the Academy of American Poets' website.  If you've never heard them in person, you get a chance to listen to  John Ashbery,  Louise Glück,  Anthony Hecht,  Kay Ryan, and W. S. Merwin.  Kay is hilarious, as usual, Ashbery is engaging and it's the first time I've ever seen the Duchess of Dour smiling.

Boulder area news (partly for the benefit of Jeannine):  Police encountered two men arguing in their front yard and upon asking questions, were approached in a hostile manner, whereupon the police shot one of the men with a Taser, which mis-fired.  One man then picked up an axe and started whacking at the police car.  The police then fired bean bag guns at them, which apparently subdued them.  If that hadn't worked, the officers would have probably tried harsh words.  Erie resident Constantina Tomescu-Dita, a Romanian lady who lives in nearby Erie, arrived home after winning an Olympic Gold in the marathon.  A local man thought it would be a good idea to roughhouse with his friend's pit bull until the latter bit the ear off of the former.  CU regents declined to reconsider its policy of barring guns on campus, after being petitioned by a group called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

Poets & Writers lead-off article and cover shot is of the always affable Billy Collins.  Quotes from the interview include:  "... there are about nineteen kinds of audience silence, ranging from really good to really bad".  His 2001 book, Sailing Alone Around the Room sold a quarter of a million copies.  I know that 80% of my audience doesn't like BC, but you should really listen to The Best Cigarette and then think about it.  A long article on David Rhodes, a novelist (so I don't care).  Another article on Agents and Editors, which leaves me laughing.  Special section on independent presses which includes Green Lantern Press, Flood Editions, Academy Chicago, Adastra Press, Fairy Tale Press, and Nightboat Books.  Stories by Megan Doll on the Dickman twins.  Eight zillion MFA and MA program advertising.  Bajillions of announcements including a reminder that the Whitman Award comes with a $5K prize and publication by LSU Press. 

What I'm working on?  A bunch of projects which includes those Dima's engaged in and a small project for Ilya:  Windows application to download new firmware to a controller that IBM OEMs for its POS systems;  MP3 player firmware on a new chip; Demo program to show possibilities of a new dual-touch touchscreen that responds to gestures a la the iPhone; Windows CE and Linux drivers and demo programs on an ARM4 board that connects with a novel touchscreen system; Commercial BASIC compiler/runtime with interface to MySQL.  I'm also working with Der as we rip the carpet off the stairs to the second floor.

Quotable Quotes:

'Becca via Reb:  "Self promotion is NOT A SIN, unlike touching yourself inappropriately on the bus, or wearing Tevas™ with a skirt."

CDY:  "I am starting to feel my age. Let us leave it at that."

Jonathan:  "Improvisation is a troubled category."

Eduardo, upon entering the Poet's Cottage:  "I want to hug my poems. I want to kiss my poems. To thank them for sheltering and feeding me."

Shann:  "I spent hours this morning switching verbs, then nouns, then starting over again."

Kasey:  "Our biggest issue yet is so frisky and slippery and full of pseudoinformation and prone to inappropriate touching it will make you SQUEAL!" (see Rebecca's quote)

Aaron:  "Stay in touch with loved ones."

Trish:  "Solzhenitsyn...is DEAD," Elegant Choice announced dramatically when he came home from work on Sunday. "Solzhenitsyn? But I thought he was from the eighteenth century," I responded wonderingly."

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I am eating organic bananas.  At only 20 cents a pound more than normal bananas, they seem like an inexpensive expression of virtuous behavior.  Sweet Junie read somewhere that monkeys prefer organic bananas, so much that they even eat the peel.  They don't taste any different to me.

The Bush Administration, most Republicans and some Democrats continue to remind us that "it's a dangerous world".  This supposition has provided the excuse for dilution of our Constitutional rights and compromising of our civil liberties.  Why is it suddenly such a dangerous world?  Wasn't it a dangerous world when Hitler ran Germany?  Wasn't it a dangerous world during the Cold War when thousands of nuclear missiles were targeted at American cities?  Wasn't it a dangerous world during the Korean and Vietnam Wars?  I wish our two presidential candidates and the press would make it clear that it's far less dangerous now than for most of American history. 

The latest thuggery by Russia has brought responses from the Bush Administration, such as this quote by Defense Secretary Gates:  "I think there needs to be a strong, unified response to Russia to send the message that this kind of behavior, characteristic of the Soviet period, has no place in the 21st century".  He apparently said this with a straight face.  This comes from a nation whose CIA helped overthrow the democratically elected Chilean president, invaded Grenada, sent troops into Panama to arrest Manual Noriega, and of course, are currently occupying two sovereign nations.

Joyelle interviews Gabe, who tells us exactly how he wrote his 436-page Rhode Island Notebook while driving.

The latest APR arrived with a cover picture of a smiling Bruce Weigl who has 11 short poems in the issue ("When I'm gone, I won't be here anymore, if you can imagine that.  I can,".  Mary Kinze won the O.B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize ($10,000 and an honorary reception).  There's Bob Hicok again, rambling on in his usual engaging and competent style ("Ugly men on TV were talking about global warming.  One in particular looked like the spawn of rocks.")  Columbia College, where Der is studying music, has a new ad for their "poetry-only" MFA, with Arielle Greenberg, Tony Trigilio, Lisa Fishman, David Trinidad, John Murillo and Jenny Boully as faculty.  Reginald Shepherd contributes two poems, this from "To Summon Up a Son": "Molded him out of shit and spit and love, mud / and a box of matchstick bones".  Shepherd also interviews Chad Parmenter, asking him from the get-go if he's tired of being seen as a "black poet".  Anne Marie Macari provides 11 (!) poems, each numbered in Roman numerals followed by a parenthesized first line, this from "XXIV (Who Comes to Me?)":  "Who comes to me?  Who enters the room where / I have been praying, longing for a visitor?"  Gregory Orr has 19 poems in the issue, but they are very short and actually constitute a long poem separated by fanciful tildes.  Other poets making an appearance include Valerie Martinez, Paul Celan (translated by Jack Hirschman), David Huerta, Richard Cecil, Kirk Nesset, Vern Rutsala, Carlos Marzal (translated by Nathaniel Perry), Bruce Snider, and Glenna Luschei.  Kristin Kelly provides the diverting "Sea to Sea, Shining": "They are giving birth control to squirrels in Santa Monica, the homeless capital of the world."  Anna Journey contributes the praiseworthy "The Nurse's Diagram of the Tracheotomy":  "It was the way Sweet Pea sipped cognac / through his throat's clear tube – its thin amber".  I also liked Rae Gouirand's "January":  "The last persimmon:  a moon / a clear interference.  A thing pressing // presses:  the idea of a door / before the one who notices:  moon,".   Hey, look.  Eduardo Corral is the Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell, where G.C. directs the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. 

Abraham Lincoln #3 is out.

I'm building Dima a big bad machine to wean him off XP and onto Vista.  He can still keep his old machine and Remote Desktop to it when he wants.  I do that too, since there are some drivers and applications that just don't work on Vista.  Anyway, as I was saying, I'm building this monster that has a ThermalTake chassis with this ridiculous 10" fan on the chassis side and a black classy power supply.  It's an Asus motherboard with an AMD Quad Phemon processor, a fast video card, and 8 GB of high-speed DDR.  When it's on, it looks like something the Empire would strike back with, all black with blue lights peeking out from the various fans.  The chassis side door is transparent, so you can see the ludicrously massive Zalman CPU fan in all its coppery glory.  I'm starting Dima off with two 500 GB drives, which leaves only 10 more drive slots for additional terabytes of storage.  I even threw in a floppy drive for good measure, something that's getting harder and harder to find in commercial machines. 

'Becca rants on originality in poetry and its undervalued stature.

Speaking of rants, Roseanne Barr gave it to Jon Voight, who characterized Obama as someone who grew up "with the teaching of very angry, militant white and black people".  Of course, the opinion piece appeared in the Washington Times, the right-wing rag owned by delusional nutcase Sun Myung Moon.  Roseanne responded, calling Voight a "frightened little girl in a pink ballet tutu, who acts like Obama just wandered in from the rain forest with a bone thru his nose and a communist pamphlet in his loincloth.”  You go, girl.

On Junie's last visit, we managed to paint the kitchen, put on more baseboards and touch up the various rooms already getting new color.  Der has been a big help the past couple of weeks, and with the extra pair of hands, we were able to get new blinds up, a new light fixture installed, and two rooms filled with furniture and paintings.  We also tiled the master bathroom and bought enough essentials to tile the guest bathroom similarly.  I haven't tiled around a toilet before, so that should be interesting.  Maybe I'll save myself the headaches and just get rid of the toilet and tell guests to pee into the bathtub.

Last week was Real Man Week.  I bought this 4-pack of New York strip steaks and a small barrel of potato salad.  I've been grilling those babies and dropping a huge dollop of potato salad on these clear square-ish plates I have and slathering A-1 over everything and with what little room is left, artfully placing tomato slices drizzled with that pesto in a tube stuff and olive oil.  Accompanying this Real Man meal is some Real Man wine, a big bruiser of a Shiraz called Chris Ringland Ebenezer for some reason.  It is delicious and the closest thing you're going to come to Grange Hermitage for under $20.  It actually costs me $18 a bottle, including shipping, and you can get your own at www.pjwine.com, unless you're Cath or Dima, who got some cause I like them.  What to watch while eating a Real Man Meal?  Why, Steven Seagal movies, of course.  I found a bunch of them on eBay, new and shrink-wrapped, in a good deal that beat Amazon by a lot of moolah.  At the same time, I ordered Vern's classic "study of the ass-kicking films of Steven Seagal", in which I found that, even with a dozen Seagal movies, I'm still short about 15 more.  Most of these were made "direct to video", and are awful, but I'm going to watch them anyway.  The early films have real actors in them, like Tommy Lee Jones and Kris Kristofferson and Michael Cain.  The "silver era" films seem to be filled with hip-hop artists.  Besides the joy of watching Seagal kick ass with abandon, there's all the anti-establishment undercurrents and conspiracy theories.  As my frequent readers know, I once wrote a poem in front of a Steven Seagal movie, after reading some Lucie Brock-Broido in APR.

Speaking of speaking of.  Speaking of Real Men, Jonathan is up to 53 pushups.  I should probably try that along with my soon-to-be-started pre-ski regimen to get my legs in shape in order to keep up with my 83-year old parents who are coming in January to ski and expect me to keep up.  I probably could do a zillion pushups back in the day.  Have you noticed how recently everybody now says "back in the day"?  As if the phrase popped out of nowhere, like "speak to the hand".  But, I digress.  I know I used to do 30 pull-ups and I broke the high school record with 400 sit-ups, but they had to tell the math teacher I'd be late because it took longer than one gym period.  I don't know.  53 push-ups sounds likes a lot in my current shape.  Of course, I've got 10 years on Jonathan and he started with something like 40.  Maybe I can start with something like 15 and extend the regimen period.  Guys are so competitive, you know?

In 8 days, Whimsy Speaks will be 4 years old.

If you don't know who Usain Bolt is you probably should because he's quite possibly the fastest human being who ever lived.  In the finals of the 100 meter dash at the Olympics, he won easily even though he jogged the last 15 meters while he was waving to his friends and fans.  Oh, and even that was a world record.  If he had kept up his pace, he would have demolished his own current record of 9.69 seconds, perhaps even as fast as 9.55, which would probably have remained the record for years, perhaps decades.  The only track and field performance I've ever seen as unbelievable was Bob Beamon shattering the long jump record by almost two feet.  That record lasted 23 years.

Very interesting post by Johannes on the Iowa Writers' Workshop, including equally interesting and intelligent comments (Kasey, Glenn, Mark, et al.).

Half the mainstream media and all of the right-wing AM radio nutcases have expressed their amazement (and/or delight) that Obama isn't crushing McCain in the poll numbers.  As someone somewhere pointed out, presidential candidates seldom enjoy large poll advantages this early.  That includes Reagan vs. Carter and Clinton vs. GHWB.  Depending upon whom you believe, Obama may have a sizable electoral college lead (280 to 238).  I would be supremely confident of an Obama win were it not for the Bradley Effect.

I have been getting mail regarding Many Mountains Moving (the literary journal), even though their mailing address has changed and is posted on their website.  I am no longer associated with MMM.

More as I think of it.


 

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