Halloween Limericks

Mom is having a Halloween Limerick contest at work and enlisted my suggestions. Here's what you get when you leave me alone for an hour with that idea. Make up your own and leave them in the comments!

From the "I Can't Believe I Ate the Whole Bag" Department

Start with Gobstoppers, Skittles, and Twix,
Add some Baby Ruth bars to the mix,
Stir in the Kit Kats,
And some marshmallow bats,
And your sweet tooth will have quite a fix!

Butterfinger, Snickers, and Mounds,
I measure my carbs by the pound!
With 3 Musketeers,
Coming out of my ears,
My failing heart makes not a sound.

From the "Scary Yet Repentant" Department

When a frightening thing with a sack,
Shows up at the door of my shack,
I shoot it on sight,
Then, very contrite,
I go bury the child out back.

From the "Arsenic and Old Lace" Department

Where the old Brewster sisters abide,
You'll find several dead bodies to hide,
The elderberry wine,
Masks arsenic, strychnine,
And a pinch -- just a pinch! -- of cyanide.

(Yeah, I know, it doesn't scan quite right. Oh well.)

From the "Off-Topic But At Least It's Bipartisan" Department

What really fills me full of fright,
Is the week after Hallowe'en night,
Whether terrorist-pleaser,
Or a senile geezer,
I surely do hope we choose right!

From the "Teasing Mom About Her Limerick Attempts" Department

If your badly-planned limerick dies,
Just pray from the dead it may rise,
To terrorize villages,
With rapings and pillages,
And possibly gouging out eyes.

Not a Good Week to Be My Car

... Or my bank account, for that matter. Last Friday I got stuck in the Trader Joe's parking lot with a bag of groceries (luckily only one frozen item) and Iris refusing to start. Got her towed to a shop and outfitted with a new main fuse, new starter, and replacements for some burnt out wiring, all to the tune of nearly $500.

Then today I was driving back from visiting Dad et al in Rio Vista. Somewhere along Highway 4, I saw something fly up into the air ahead of me, presumably out of someone else's car. I couldn't tell what it was, but figured it was just some litter, since it seemed to rise so high up into the air. It proved to be something fairly substantial, though, when it smashed into my windshield. Sigh.

Anyway, Iris took the injuries from it and will be getting a new windshield tomorrow, and I'm fine. Unfortunately I've got a high enough insurance deductible that I'll be paying for this, too. I just hope I've now worked through whatever bad "car-ma" I apparently had to work though.

On MOMAs and Comics

Whenever I travel and get into "museum mode" I always enjoy visiting modern art museums. So it occurred to me recently that it was sort of silly that I'd never even been to San Francisco's MOMA. It turns out that the first Tuesday of each month is free admission day, so earlier this week I took the train up and had myself a little field trip.

I've written before about how I enjoy modern art in a "panning for gold" sort of way. I typically sift through a lot of stuff that doesn't particularly do much for me, until I find the one or two bits that I really appreciate. This particular trip didn't have anything that got me hugely excited (though there were some amusing bits) but that's okay. There were still some reasonably interesting things and I just consider it all the luck of the draw anyway.

But when it comes right down to it, what am I really looking for? A lot of it, I think, is really just about ideas. I like seeing things I haven't thought of before, sheer creativity in action, especially if they tickle my interest or my funny bone. Things like an alphabetized bible, or musical geography (my favorite from Helsinki's Kiasma museum).

Another thing I like is art that gives your brain something to work with, while not being too specific about what. Things that may be abstract, but are nonetheless detailed, not just splotches of paint. A lot of Kandinsky's work is a good example of this. His "Small Worlds" series of paintings is given a context by the name, but still leaves a lot of the construction of those worlds to the viewer's mind.

I found an unexpected parallel to this recently when I read Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud. This is a fantastic book, with some really brilliant observations about comics, art, and storytelling in general. Highly recommended -- you'll never read comics the same way again.

One of the things that really struck me as a concept in this book was his discussion of artistic styles and how they range from realistic to iconic to abstract. Characters have been drawn all over this range, and he has a chart showing over 100 of them positioned according to these three qualities, but different positions in this range have different effects on the reader. A highly realistically drawn person is a very specific person, but the less detailed or more iconic it becomes, the more people it could potentially represent. In particular, the possibility of it being the reader's own self increases. The more blanks there are, the more we fill in from ourselves. The more we fill in, the greater empathy and connection we have with the character.

For an interesting example of this, take a look at any Tintin book. The guy's head is shaped like an onion for goodness' sake, and he's got dots for eyes. The backgrounds, however, are relatively quite detailed, realistic, and believable. The overall style is optimized for making the reader really feel part of the story.

I think what I like in art, beyond just comics, is that same sense of needing to contribute something to the full experience. It doesn't even have to be anything specific, just a sense of mystery, of not knowing exactly what's there and having the freedom to insert something of your own into it. That's what I'm looking for.

A Tale of Two Ice Creams

One ice cream flavor I've been wanting to try for a while has been chai. On Friday I decided to give it a shot, since I wanted to make a batch of something for people to eat on Saturday afternoon after helping Rowyn move. This turned out to be two of the most thwartful and problematic ice cream making experiences I've had yet, though entirely worth it in the end.

All of the recipes I found online seemed to involve lots of eggs. I was a bit leery of this because the last time I made a tea-related ice cream (red tea) it had six egg yolks in it and actually tasted eggy even after it was finished. I should have just ditched the recipes from the start, but I ended up using this one and scaling down the amount of eggs in it. I also was pretty imprecise with the spices, since I didn't have all the whole spices it called for but I did have a lot of McCormick's chai spice blend to supplement what I did have.

In general, I think it came out alright. But once it was done I realized what I had really wanted, and that wasn't it. All the eggs make the ice cream extremely thick and creamy, which is nice in some cases. But what I wanted here was a much lighter, melt-in-your-mouthier version. (Well, I suppose any ice cream will melt in your mouth, but you know what I mean.) Ordinarily I'd just make a note for next time and then let it go, but this time around I guess I was just feeling ornery about doing it right, so I biked back to the store for more cream to try again.

This is when things started getting particularly inconvenient, since I returned home to find that my apartment complex had a power outage. I tried waiting it out for a while, hoping my first batch of ice cream would still be okay in the freezer. I called PG&E a few times and they were working on it, but the ETA for the fix kept getting moved later. So I finally ate (a cold) dinner, then carted all my ingredients and things over to Rowyn's place to use her power. All the spices and tea have to steep for a long time in the cream, but I did what I could and then left it to chill in her fridge while we went to Friday Night Waltz. I picked it up again afterwards and took it home to put in the ice cream maker around midnight. Unfortunately, though the power had since come back on, the ice cream maker hadn't re-frozen properly and didn't work. So after 15 minutes with absolutely no change, I had to pour the mix out again, wash the ice cream maker, put it back in the freezer, and go to bed. Then I got up early to finally finish the whole thing, and that time it worked.

Anyway, in spite of all the weirdness it had to go through, the final product came out quite well indeed. If you want to try it yourself, you can still use this basic recipe and just modify it. I used 2 cups of regular cream, 1 cup of milk, and no eggs. Don't split up the cream like they do, just steep all the spices in all the dairy at once (though the tea goes in later). Then of course skip all the steps involving eggs and custard and whatnot. Comes out very yummy.

Predictions, Wrong and Maybe-Not-So-Wrong

The So You Think You Can Dance? finale is tonight/tomorrow night. I missed the first season, so this is the third one I've followed. It's interesting how sometimes you can pick out a clear winner right from the start, and sometimes you can't.

In Season 2, Benji was just so ridiculously fun to watch that he was a shoo-in from the beginning. The fact that he actually won made me believe in the "wisdom of crowds." Last year was different. Nobody jumped out at me so much, and I probably would have been happy with several different winners. Luckily, Sabra was one of them.

This year is wacky. First of all, Evan Kasprzak completely sold me in the auditions, but inexplicably failed to make it through the Las Vegas cuts. Then, for most of the season, Will Wingfield seemed about as clear a winner as Benji had been. He did absolutely everything beautifully. He was stuck with a weak partner for a while, which was too bad, but it almost didn't matter because it was usually hard to watch her anyway, with him on stage. And at least as important as his partner routines were his solos, which included actual variety. I tend to think the contemporary (and ballroom) dancers have the solos that are the most same-seeming, and get the most boring after a while. So being able to do something noticeably different each time is a big plus.

But Will got voted off! What was America thinking? Ironically it was on the night that Nigel had reminded everyone to register to vote for the presidential elections as well. This does not have me looking forward to November. Anyway, that leaves me with Katee as my pick for the best remaining dancer, with Joshua as my second choice. The two of them have definitely been the best partnership of the show, doing a lot of my favorite routines. I don't think either of them has ever been voted into the bottom yet. Twitch could have a chance just as a personality favorite, but he still has weak points in his dancing, so I don't think he'll take the whole show.

But if we learned anything from Will's elimination, it's that this competition is about America's favorite dancer, not best. So I'm not going to get too attached to any of my own predictions tonight.