"BlogWorld Expo 2011
Create killer content. Grow traffic. Monetize your blog. Learn from experts at BlogWorld, the world's largest blogging conference!"
What is this crap? "Killer content." 'Killer,' referring to the complete paucity of language, not even able to come up with a usable word from slang.
Yes, I really want to do all of that, grow, monetize, learn from experts... world's largest... yeah, right. I hereby cease to blog.
Friday, September 30, 2011
There are, in fact, times when I really see, why I love bartending, what is the point of it. It often happens with perfect strangers coming in, and the native human generosity that goes out to people passing by who you may well never see again. No, it's not for the 'bullshit factor' of the ease of being friendly. No, I think it has much more to do with the the spiritual experience, kind of like church, of going somewhere far away and finding, oddly enough, someone who is a brother, someone who 'gets' your own experience.
A newlywed couple, residents of Stockholm, come by. Over a food, people connect. The boss is kind enough to let me get them a digestif.
What a contrast of that decency of friendship to, say, the night before, one of those 'birthday' gatherings that was... well, disrespectful of the musicians of jazz night, obviously a few enjoyers of cocaine in the crowd. Why, why do you do it us, a perfectly nice restaurant, just going about its business, trying to do the right thing, and out of the blue, this stupid selfishness of
'bar people.' cut them off, in the beginning. tell them to go somewhere else. Proof that some people, even if they look okay, don't do a good job at all with the social contract. I've seen drunks do much better, to tell you the truth.
One of these days, I'll name names.
When good people come in, there is a literary satisfaction, the satisfaction of the historian, the sense that individual humans are repository of sunlight.
A newlywed couple, residents of Stockholm, come by. Over a food, people connect. The boss is kind enough to let me get them a digestif.
What a contrast of that decency of friendship to, say, the night before, one of those 'birthday' gatherings that was... well, disrespectful of the musicians of jazz night, obviously a few enjoyers of cocaine in the crowd. Why, why do you do it us, a perfectly nice restaurant, just going about its business, trying to do the right thing, and out of the blue, this stupid selfishness of
'bar people.' cut them off, in the beginning. tell them to go somewhere else. Proof that some people, even if they look okay, don't do a good job at all with the social contract. I've seen drunks do much better, to tell you the truth.
One of these days, I'll name names.
When good people come in, there is a literary satisfaction, the satisfaction of the historian, the sense that individual humans are repository of sunlight.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Chekhov, it turns out, wrote a lot of letters. In which he chooses to unveil his opinion, justified for doing so, as he is defending himself against the charges of the day. They are amusing and fine to read, really good stuff. I almost feel dumb for having been sort of deflected, by reading so many stories inhabited by characters, when all their fineness comes from him.
A bartender is like a good Civil War general, gets things done. Yes, and we all have to wait it out sometimes.
A bartender is like a good Civil War general, gets things done. Yes, and we all have to wait it out sometimes.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Entrepreneurial risk...
I dunno, what do you think it is? What is it for you? What do I think it is? Where does the risk lie? What is 'being good at it?' At what? And if you are good at 'what,' then, what does getting so good at it that then you start to get rewarded for it, what does all that look like? Does it look like $200, minus whatever food and wine you are going to eat at the end of the night including tip?
Shane MacGowan is excellent at what he does. He reinvented the genre, which deserves many descriptions, Irish music and Irish band being of that. He took risk, and risk on top of that. And he managed to succeed.
JFK is a guy who is good at a lot of things. He took risk too.
So did his brother. A family trait.
Some have lots of talent. What to do? Where do they fit in? When and where do they stop being observers and become doers?
I'm a barman. I'm on the front line. It's rich, it's interesting, it's hard, it's fun and amusing sometimes, sometimes...
Where do I start using that?
What kind of bartender are you?
Well, I guess the wine sort. More civilized. Good conversation, wine attracts.
What will come of that?
I don't know.
I dunno, what do you think it is? What is it for you? What do I think it is? Where does the risk lie? What is 'being good at it?' At what? And if you are good at 'what,' then, what does getting so good at it that then you start to get rewarded for it, what does all that look like? Does it look like $200, minus whatever food and wine you are going to eat at the end of the night including tip?
Shane MacGowan is excellent at what he does. He reinvented the genre, which deserves many descriptions, Irish music and Irish band being of that. He took risk, and risk on top of that. And he managed to succeed.
JFK is a guy who is good at a lot of things. He took risk too.
So did his brother. A family trait.
Some have lots of talent. What to do? Where do they fit in? When and where do they stop being observers and become doers?
I'm a barman. I'm on the front line. It's rich, it's interesting, it's hard, it's fun and amusing sometimes, sometimes...
Where do I start using that?
What kind of bartender are you?
Well, I guess the wine sort. More civilized. Good conversation, wine attracts.
What will come of that?
I don't know.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
The Medicinals of Food and Wine
Indian cuisine benefits from its native climate by allowing for the great variety of spice. This allows an Indian dish to have a directly medicinal property. Not only yogurt, but the elements of curry come to mind, anti-inflammatory substances such as turmeric and cayenne and ginger. Such cooking tastes good because it's very good for you, rich with bright anti-oxidants and the like, and also because it settles well with you. Curry curry curry. Cures what ails you.
In comparison French cuisine and all its ingenuity seems based on, as its wine is, the terroir. Good stuff comes from the earth. The cow eats the alpine meadow grass and herbs and you can taste it in the cheese, full of good microorganisms. The heat of the south allows for 'garrigue,' the dust that moves in the wind, really referring to the wild herbs that grow like dandelions there, rosemary, lavender, thyme. Olives go well with garrigue, as do capers, and basil. Such herbs too are good for you, anti-inflammatory, good for the blood and not without calming aromatherapy. Wine too is a product of the environment, that includes all the animals and the geologic history of a place, the DNA, if you will, of all creatures and things that grow and live in a region.
And so, if you are cooking crusty boneless pig's feet in a mustard sauce, you might serve a wine appropriate to the terroir of mustard, a wine that, like a red Burgandy, comes from not far away from Dijon. Or, if a dish has olives and capers and basil, maybe go with a spicy red from the South. Eating shellfish? Go with a wine whose roots go down into chalky soil, the remnants of sea shells from the geologic past, such as a Sancerre or a Muscadet. Or, maybe it's simply a dish famous in a region, like cassoulet, which will team well with a wine that comes of rain water that fell down near Carcassone, carried up by the roots to nourish the fruit.
Burgandy, by the way, lies along a venerable trade route from the East. Perhaps it is by some magic that the pinot noir that grow there are versatile and adaptable to spice. Lovely pinot noir, so sensitive, an imitator, impressionist, varied and versatile, and when a beautiful one is aged, drinking it is indeed like drinking from magic waters of earth and mineral and almost nothing in the way, just a little fruit, a little body, a little acidity and alcohol, to match.
God makes the wine, they say. We just let it happen and don't mess it up, they believe.
Good wines, like good people, are subtle. They are often from old vines, deeply rooted, balanced in their making. They are like the salt of the earth, and it would be a pity if they were to lose their individual savor. Take a wine from Paul Mas, down in the Languedoc, a Clos de Savignac, a beautiful wine hinting of piney scrub and juniper; you can almost smell the bees buzzing around on a hot day. Subtle wines, as opposed to the big thick high alcohol fruitbomb red or the overly oaked chardonnay, are of course delightful for food pairings. What you want basically in a wine is a craft of nature. Let the wind come through the vines, let them be dappled with sunlight. Let cool breezes from the waters come at night and cool them. Let them grow in poor soil on a hillside, that their roots must go down and down to gain their sustenance.
Why is it that duck goes so well with a Bordeaux, a Marguax (the softest of the Left Bank) to be exact? The duck would love such an estuary as the environs of Bordeaux, where vines grow on drained swamp land, reflective of the silt and dried mud that a duck might enjoy. As is nature, a chef is a poet, telling the story of nature. The onions and peppers and carrots which grow beneath the field the cow would graze on, it's all as if someone were telling us something, and the result of all that put together, just tastes very good. A poet must do the same.
In comparison French cuisine and all its ingenuity seems based on, as its wine is, the terroir. Good stuff comes from the earth. The cow eats the alpine meadow grass and herbs and you can taste it in the cheese, full of good microorganisms. The heat of the south allows for 'garrigue,' the dust that moves in the wind, really referring to the wild herbs that grow like dandelions there, rosemary, lavender, thyme. Olives go well with garrigue, as do capers, and basil. Such herbs too are good for you, anti-inflammatory, good for the blood and not without calming aromatherapy. Wine too is a product of the environment, that includes all the animals and the geologic history of a place, the DNA, if you will, of all creatures and things that grow and live in a region.
And so, if you are cooking crusty boneless pig's feet in a mustard sauce, you might serve a wine appropriate to the terroir of mustard, a wine that, like a red Burgandy, comes from not far away from Dijon. Or, if a dish has olives and capers and basil, maybe go with a spicy red from the South. Eating shellfish? Go with a wine whose roots go down into chalky soil, the remnants of sea shells from the geologic past, such as a Sancerre or a Muscadet. Or, maybe it's simply a dish famous in a region, like cassoulet, which will team well with a wine that comes of rain water that fell down near Carcassone, carried up by the roots to nourish the fruit.
Burgandy, by the way, lies along a venerable trade route from the East. Perhaps it is by some magic that the pinot noir that grow there are versatile and adaptable to spice. Lovely pinot noir, so sensitive, an imitator, impressionist, varied and versatile, and when a beautiful one is aged, drinking it is indeed like drinking from magic waters of earth and mineral and almost nothing in the way, just a little fruit, a little body, a little acidity and alcohol, to match.
God makes the wine, they say. We just let it happen and don't mess it up, they believe.
Good wines, like good people, are subtle. They are often from old vines, deeply rooted, balanced in their making. They are like the salt of the earth, and it would be a pity if they were to lose their individual savor. Take a wine from Paul Mas, down in the Languedoc, a Clos de Savignac, a beautiful wine hinting of piney scrub and juniper; you can almost smell the bees buzzing around on a hot day. Subtle wines, as opposed to the big thick high alcohol fruitbomb red or the overly oaked chardonnay, are of course delightful for food pairings. What you want basically in a wine is a craft of nature. Let the wind come through the vines, let them be dappled with sunlight. Let cool breezes from the waters come at night and cool them. Let them grow in poor soil on a hillside, that their roots must go down and down to gain their sustenance.
Why is it that duck goes so well with a Bordeaux, a Marguax (the softest of the Left Bank) to be exact? The duck would love such an estuary as the environs of Bordeaux, where vines grow on drained swamp land, reflective of the silt and dried mud that a duck might enjoy. As is nature, a chef is a poet, telling the story of nature. The onions and peppers and carrots which grow beneath the field the cow would graze on, it's all as if someone were telling us something, and the result of all that put together, just tastes very good. A poet must do the same.
Friday, September 16, 2011
A book is an act, the staking of a claim of the right to be a writer. Because writers are,at least in their writing modes, 'different sorts of people,' different from the norm, as they are creative in a particular way the book one writes tacitly reveals his different qualities. Thus the importance of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a kind of plotting out one's turf, as a Larkin poem is often doing so, saying, 'here is my turf.'
And one has a right to that, if he's gone through the trouble and put the time and effort in. And it's not a matter of determining whether or not he is 'of the right school' or style to warrant attention. The more he faces his condition, the more he reveals it honestly, the more he addresses his peculiarities, the more universal his work is.
And so when we read, we're not to be immediately judgmental, as if to say, this book is about a strange and bizarre person, a creep really, obsessed with some vision that sits strictly in his head, we take rather a lesson about human sensitivity.
Ostensibly I wrote a book about a college kid who may be regarded as a bit of a stalker. I portrayed him as being maybe a bit overly critical of certain professorial academic styles, while celebrating others. We find the kid staying true to his vision, true to his form of art, and if that art is critical of an institution, let's say, it is out of his love for that institution and its greater purposes.
Class struggle will devalue the opinions of those perceived to be less than we ourselves are. It will attach judgments about who through habit and professional status deserve our respect. Yet, we must look beyond our preconceived notions, as we are taught to in liberal arts institutions.
We are commanded to respect those who don't vaunteth themselves up, those who mourn and suffer and are poor. And so we respect those who endeavor to write books, supportive as to how they come up with them and of what they tell us as we go on in our own lives.
Perhaps then, a book represents a form of politics, of having a right to say what's on your mind and be respected for it. And after all, you can say whatever you want in a book. You can use it to any purpose you want. You can simply entertain, or you can call people to be better, more thoughtful, considerate of others. All of that, tacitly within.
I have, of course, the greatest of respect for writers, for all they go through, for the pains they are entirely familiar with and accustomed to, for their loneliness, silent unassuming politicians of the human spirit that they are. And one of their main problems, or rather, the cause of trouble, is when they must interface with people who are not writers. As it is, those people, who are not writers, tend to carry an argument against writing. Perhaps they don't like think as deeply. And so, like President Kennedy going to Dallas, it is not always so good when a writer goes out amongst non-writers and people who generally don't see the point of the sensitivity. Or, you have a Booth, a great disagree-er, who sneaks up on Lincoln, man of words, in a house of Shakespeare, Booth not getting the higher point, all people created equal, thinking himself a hero for that, for stopping giving the right to vote to former slaves. Best to stay away from Tea Party/Zealous Idiot Land. And the President, the honorable Mr. Obama, also a writer, should simply never compromise with the Boehners and the Cantors and McConnells; they just won't get it. Yes, it was reasonable to think that he could absorb them into his greater beliefs, his overall plan of keeping the country together, but alas, he must make a stand against them, an Emancipation Proclamation, if you will.
(Yes, obviously, Kennedy was an author, part of his adult identity and early recognition, gifted with words, sensitive to the point of tears behind his cool. And Lincoln, of course. They came along at times when we really needed a sensitive guy up there, and we should remember now that it behooves us to have a sensitive guy there now, not just the guys who already have it all figured out, simplistically termed, in league with the Palins of the world, people who don't have to think before they open their mouths, and who appeal to the woefully under-educated in this land.)
Yes, a lot could be written about those pains a writer must go through out in the desert. The things people say, little negatives, put-downs, the like, about your 'choices,' your 'idiot life in a bubble,' etc., the struggle of maintaining morale in addition to the physical struggle. Honestly, how painful it is to be taken away from your work, to then go make nice and wait on people who don't get it, don't get who you are even in the slightest, the non-writers, the non-creatives, those who, in your estimation, must have squelched off that desire and natural talent to create in the present once past childhood, seeking--you can't blame them in the slightest--personal financial security in a certain kind of market economy, having no use for juvenile rants such as this, things to do, places to go, people to meet, money to be had and spent.
I know, it would be easy to through a list of writers and knock them off one by one for their faults, Kerouac a drunkard, and so forth. Maybe they do have a tendency to bi-polar states, manic depression, melancholia, some deficiency in the brain that after all makes Chuck Close Chuck Close, missing the equipment of facial recognition, then oddly making that his art. It may be naive of me, but I don't immediately, first off, see Kerouac as a drunk, though I know he became one. I guess you just have to be very careful; it is scary finding yourself wanting to be a writer, and not many of us ever thought it a great career choice, but moreso an agonizing one, but one that leads to some form of redemption, secret or otherwise, at least for being courageous.
And one has a right to that, if he's gone through the trouble and put the time and effort in. And it's not a matter of determining whether or not he is 'of the right school' or style to warrant attention. The more he faces his condition, the more he reveals it honestly, the more he addresses his peculiarities, the more universal his work is.
And so when we read, we're not to be immediately judgmental, as if to say, this book is about a strange and bizarre person, a creep really, obsessed with some vision that sits strictly in his head, we take rather a lesson about human sensitivity.
Ostensibly I wrote a book about a college kid who may be regarded as a bit of a stalker. I portrayed him as being maybe a bit overly critical of certain professorial academic styles, while celebrating others. We find the kid staying true to his vision, true to his form of art, and if that art is critical of an institution, let's say, it is out of his love for that institution and its greater purposes.
Class struggle will devalue the opinions of those perceived to be less than we ourselves are. It will attach judgments about who through habit and professional status deserve our respect. Yet, we must look beyond our preconceived notions, as we are taught to in liberal arts institutions.
We are commanded to respect those who don't vaunteth themselves up, those who mourn and suffer and are poor. And so we respect those who endeavor to write books, supportive as to how they come up with them and of what they tell us as we go on in our own lives.
Perhaps then, a book represents a form of politics, of having a right to say what's on your mind and be respected for it. And after all, you can say whatever you want in a book. You can use it to any purpose you want. You can simply entertain, or you can call people to be better, more thoughtful, considerate of others. All of that, tacitly within.
I have, of course, the greatest of respect for writers, for all they go through, for the pains they are entirely familiar with and accustomed to, for their loneliness, silent unassuming politicians of the human spirit that they are. And one of their main problems, or rather, the cause of trouble, is when they must interface with people who are not writers. As it is, those people, who are not writers, tend to carry an argument against writing. Perhaps they don't like think as deeply. And so, like President Kennedy going to Dallas, it is not always so good when a writer goes out amongst non-writers and people who generally don't see the point of the sensitivity. Or, you have a Booth, a great disagree-er, who sneaks up on Lincoln, man of words, in a house of Shakespeare, Booth not getting the higher point, all people created equal, thinking himself a hero for that, for stopping giving the right to vote to former slaves. Best to stay away from Tea Party/Zealous Idiot Land. And the President, the honorable Mr. Obama, also a writer, should simply never compromise with the Boehners and the Cantors and McConnells; they just won't get it. Yes, it was reasonable to think that he could absorb them into his greater beliefs, his overall plan of keeping the country together, but alas, he must make a stand against them, an Emancipation Proclamation, if you will.
(Yes, obviously, Kennedy was an author, part of his adult identity and early recognition, gifted with words, sensitive to the point of tears behind his cool. And Lincoln, of course. They came along at times when we really needed a sensitive guy up there, and we should remember now that it behooves us to have a sensitive guy there now, not just the guys who already have it all figured out, simplistically termed, in league with the Palins of the world, people who don't have to think before they open their mouths, and who appeal to the woefully under-educated in this land.)
Yes, a lot could be written about those pains a writer must go through out in the desert. The things people say, little negatives, put-downs, the like, about your 'choices,' your 'idiot life in a bubble,' etc., the struggle of maintaining morale in addition to the physical struggle. Honestly, how painful it is to be taken away from your work, to then go make nice and wait on people who don't get it, don't get who you are even in the slightest, the non-writers, the non-creatives, those who, in your estimation, must have squelched off that desire and natural talent to create in the present once past childhood, seeking--you can't blame them in the slightest--personal financial security in a certain kind of market economy, having no use for juvenile rants such as this, things to do, places to go, people to meet, money to be had and spent.
I know, it would be easy to through a list of writers and knock them off one by one for their faults, Kerouac a drunkard, and so forth. Maybe they do have a tendency to bi-polar states, manic depression, melancholia, some deficiency in the brain that after all makes Chuck Close Chuck Close, missing the equipment of facial recognition, then oddly making that his art. It may be naive of me, but I don't immediately, first off, see Kerouac as a drunk, though I know he became one. I guess you just have to be very careful; it is scary finding yourself wanting to be a writer, and not many of us ever thought it a great career choice, but moreso an agonizing one, but one that leads to some form of redemption, secret or otherwise, at least for being courageous.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
The writer finds it a hard thought to have that he should have been more active in politics. Writers are drawn to the great addresses defining moral issues and policy, the Second Inaugural, JFK at American University or Amherst, the candidate Robert Kennedy's speech on all that goes into the GNP, his earlier one on South Africa and the 'tiny ripple of hope.'
Look what discourse has fallen to. John Boehner preaching the new religion of no new taxes and tax cuts, as if that allows us to remain a first-rate nation in our schools and public services.
It's as if robber barons and the industrialists have been reincarnated, pushing everyone and everything they can into the factory for greater productivity regardless of the human, animal and environmental costs, whatever version of child labor they can shape and advertise to make stomachable. Just like the cow that used to pasture on grass, but now is fed along the lines of production, on anti-biotic laced corn grain as it stands in its own waste. How can one fight them, when he too is caught in the never-ending factory?
And as I read this later, I hear a ring of John F. Kennedy's literary voice, soaring as he spoke it, paced through this, calling on cadences to be just so.
I am reminded, as if by past lives, that John Kennedy (and we all read so much into him) was a writer who saw a need to go into politics (yes, this is true) and who, as largely a writer, made a success of it. He was as an actor, acting what he wanted to be, wanted, out of wisdom, for the world. He gave us a new model for the political world, including it, tying it to education and capital investment in the lives of a society's work force, as an even practice of liberal arts.
People do things because they get a high of them, a happy feeling, a right feeling. Instead of all the time we are feeling that we haven't done everything/anything right. Speaking aloud, always a high. Writing something as you wanted to, no easy task, just like an attending whistle.
There's a point in A Hero where the young man, Eastering over at his grandparents home, away from the college, 'doesn't feel like looking over the picture book of President Kennedy...' He goes out for a walk, and alone on a rural country properly New England road to absorb, after being distracted all day, his night before meeting the nurturing Jackie Princess... He goes out on the quiet road and thinking of the wonderful experience beyond wonder, he has this thought, as if he were about to take over from President Kennedy with his words... There are many things about it that make this an awesome moment in the literary habit. The golden kid I look back on, it speaks of him.
And JFK, all his speeches really said everything, the basic touchpoints of a morality, except the stuff of inevitable death. He had been through its outskirts before, himself.
A new form is always an old form.
Look what discourse has fallen to. John Boehner preaching the new religion of no new taxes and tax cuts, as if that allows us to remain a first-rate nation in our schools and public services.
It's as if robber barons and the industrialists have been reincarnated, pushing everyone and everything they can into the factory for greater productivity regardless of the human, animal and environmental costs, whatever version of child labor they can shape and advertise to make stomachable. Just like the cow that used to pasture on grass, but now is fed along the lines of production, on anti-biotic laced corn grain as it stands in its own waste. How can one fight them, when he too is caught in the never-ending factory?
And as I read this later, I hear a ring of John F. Kennedy's literary voice, soaring as he spoke it, paced through this, calling on cadences to be just so.
I am reminded, as if by past lives, that John Kennedy (and we all read so much into him) was a writer who saw a need to go into politics (yes, this is true) and who, as largely a writer, made a success of it. He was as an actor, acting what he wanted to be, wanted, out of wisdom, for the world. He gave us a new model for the political world, including it, tying it to education and capital investment in the lives of a society's work force, as an even practice of liberal arts.
People do things because they get a high of them, a happy feeling, a right feeling. Instead of all the time we are feeling that we haven't done everything/anything right. Speaking aloud, always a high. Writing something as you wanted to, no easy task, just like an attending whistle.
There's a point in A Hero where the young man, Eastering over at his grandparents home, away from the college, 'doesn't feel like looking over the picture book of President Kennedy...' He goes out for a walk, and alone on a rural country properly New England road to absorb, after being distracted all day, his night before meeting the nurturing Jackie Princess... He goes out on the quiet road and thinking of the wonderful experience beyond wonder, he has this thought, as if he were about to take over from President Kennedy with his words... There are many things about it that make this an awesome moment in the literary habit. The golden kid I look back on, it speaks of him.
And JFK, all his speeches really said everything, the basic touchpoints of a morality, except the stuff of inevitable death. He had been through its outskirts before, himself.
A new form is always an old form.
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