Experiments in Woolgathering

I’m sitting here watching The Princess Blade on the anime channel. Commercial break, I dash upstairs to grab something and come back down in the middle of what I thought was a advertisement for another show.

It’s anime. A woman sort of glides in (flying under her own power) and a man is saying something about them needed to be accepted for the world to be at peace.

She replies: “Peace. It’s amazing how beautiful this world can be when it is at peace.” Pan over a green field with snow-capped mountains in the background.

To which he responds: “And how ugly it can be when it’s at war” (more or less). Pan right to a bombed out city, with a sky full of smoke, etc.

Then cut to.. the UN logo.. it was a commercial for the United Nations.

Cool, but VERY surreal too!

Categories: United Nations, Anime, Commercials

After the heaviness that was The Light Ages I was very in the mood for something lighter and more fast paced. So when I returned Ages I looked through the new fiction shelves and came across Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. After reading the synopsis on the jacket I was very intrigued to say the least and went ahead and checked it out. (more…)

I haven’t blogged about cooking in a while. I made a semi-new dish last night which came out well, and that seemed as good a reason as any to share it with the world. I give you Mexican Rice Bowl.

First, the rice. I started a regular batch of rice in the rice cooker. To this I added some butter ghee; a healthy dose of chile powder; a few crushed, small garlic cloves (they don’t have to be small, it was just the bulb I had); and some oregano. I let it heat for a 15 minutes or so then opened it up to stir it a bit to make sure the everything was well distributed.

On top of the rice, which you’ll put in a deep bowl, you’ll want some or all of the usual ‘Mexican’ cuisine suspects:

• some spiced meat (I used ground beef with a packet of Chi-Chi’s seasoning to which I added some chile powder, cumin and lemon pepper)


• sliced avocados (or guacamole if you prefer)


• grated cheese (I had some Sargento’s Mexican around, but generally prefer sharp cheddar)


• sour cream


• salsa/tomatos

Now, I have to tell you I had a bit of inspiration when it came to the tomatos. I sliced them into wedges and tossed them in a skilled with a few tablespoons of hot oil. I dashed them with some salt and then added a generous amount of fresh ground black pepper. Once things were cooking nicely, I poured in a 2/3 a cup or so of tequila over them – if I’d been think I’d’ve flambéed them, alas. I let things reduce down and the tomatos to absorb some of the oil and sizzle until they were blackened a bit here and there. Lastly, I pulled off the skins (which is easy if they are well cooked). The result was very tasty – and I’m not normally a big tomato fan.

I served this all warm, though I suspect it would be just fine chilled as well.

Next I plan to try this with some lamb in a quasi Greek dish.

My weekends, and more than a few weekdays, have been been fairly busy the last month so it’s taken me a while to finish Ian R. MacLeod’s World Fantasy Award winning The Light Ages. On top of various distractions it’s a good-sized and dense novel – so I do have an excuse. (more…)

Wednesday I flew to NYC for a meeting. Yes, just for the day; my employer paid $500 for a ticket a week ahead of time to give me a 17 hour day two-thirds of which was spent in cars, airports and planes.

Of course, as one might guess from the title, that’s not the subject of this post.

On the flight back, we were right up in the midst of some huge cummulus clouds. It was nearly impossible to judge their size, but at one point I saw another plane which was tiny against the cloud we were flying around and it seemed clear they were thousands of feet across. They seemed to have very sharply defined edges and texture. It looked like you could have stepped out of the plane and taken a nice spongy walk on them. They created a fantastic landscape of soaring mountains and deep valleys. Occasionally we would pass over a flat, cottony plain as well that would end on an sea that looked down upon the ground.

I’d been reading The Light Ages by Ian MacLeod which has a definite magical, dream-like quality to it at times and drifting in and out of sleep. My mind could not help but imagine a world up here in the cloudscape.

Deeps mines in the mountains, towns along the rushing rivers and streams of the valleys, farms in the fertile plains, and fishing villages along the deep, dark seas. What myths might they have about the ground-dwellers – about the people who lived under their seas and mountains?

Eventually we passed though the clouds and shortly after began our descent into Columbus. As we did the spell faded above and behind us, and the mundane world brushed its remains aside. I didn’t think about this at the time, but I wonder now how many other people’s minds took off on even vaguely similar imaginings. It feels to me like I’m the only one, but I suppose that’s just a natural side-effect of building a world in one’s mind. So, I can’t help but wonder who else was creating cloud-worlds that day and what those worlds were like.

Another Origins is behind us. Lots of games, bad food and not much sleep – which is par for the course with a gaming con.

On the whole, I wouldn’t rate it as highly as last years, and apparently there were a lot of technical problems which we managed to elude by pre-registering.

So, what did I play, you ask? Aside from Wednesday night, which I wrote about in the previous post of course… (more…)