Category Archives: Books and Literature

Adventures of a House-Husband: Christmas Edition

All About Me, Arts, Books and Literature, Home Life, Kids & Grandkids, Pets, Religion, Uncategorized, Wives

Merry Christmas everybody! Right now, I’m sitting here feeling sorry for anybody who isn’t me. Last night, in an effort to minimize the cooking over the next couple of days, I whipped up another huge batch of Slopbucket; arguably the greatest and deadliest meal known to man (the recipe is in another post entitled “Adventures of a House-Husband: Home Cooking Edition”). It was, in a word, AWESOME!!!!! That knocking you heard last night? That was the sound of my arteries (and possibly my colon as well: there’s a LOT of Velveeta in this stuff), slamming shut and reverberating around the world. That weird and ominous thundery yet kinda gurgly noise you heard this morning?  It was probably just weird and ominous gurgly thunder (but there are a LOT of peppers and chili seasoning in this stuff too).

Even more awesome is the fact that there’s enough left over for supper tonight, and it just gets better with age, like wine, whisky, and my wife, the lovely and gustatorily adventurous Jess (although she’s still just 27, as far as I’m concerned). I haven’t looked forward to supper this much since . . . well, last night, I guess. Still, I’m really looking forward to it. A lot. You might want to sleep with your earplugs in though. But enough about that.

I decided to try something different this year; cooking dessert stuff. Every year, my wife, the ever-more-awesome and eternally lovely Jess, makes Christmas candy, primarily Buckeyes, Peanut Clusters, and what she calls Moose Balls (don’t knock ’em ’til you try ’em). They’re basically Buckeyes, only instead of peanut butter, it’s cream cheese and crushed Oreo cookies rolled into balls and dipped in chocolate. They’re awesome, and I love ’em, but I got to thinking that she might enjoy something new. Plus people keep posting videos of how to make all this stuff on the Facebook, and it looks so simple. Seriously, watch the videos: it’s almost like the stuff makes itself.

Chocolate Lasagna

I mean it combines two of my favorite meals; Chocolate and Lasagna. What could go wrong?

And then there was this: Cinnamon Roll French Toast Bake. The sweet-toothed and just plain sweet Jess loves her some Cinnamon Rolls. I figured she’d enjoy this for breakfast Christmas morning (Sorry, I can’t figure out how to link the video, but here’s one to the recipe).

The Chocolate Lasagna looked to be the most complex, so this morning, I started with that. It went pretty well, although the first step was to mix some stuff up and set it aside. I did that, but then it was really kind of unclear as to what to do with it. I also learned that using a mixer is a skill. A skill I do not possess, apparently. Those little whirligigs can really fling the heavy whipping cream. You’d think that something like that would come with some kind of cover, or they’d make mixing bowls with deeper sides, or something.

Fortunately, I had Dude, Mattie, and Molly, a highly efficient and enthusiastic cleanup crew. They had my back. And my chest and legs, as well as the walls, countertops, etc (yeah, it got a little freaky in the ol’ kitchen this morning). Anyway, I got everything mixed up and ready. I put down the first layer of Graham crackers, and started smearing the cream cheese mixture over it. Now in the video, it smeared right along, with no problem at all. Not in my kitchen though. In my kitchen, it was like trying to get rid of snot. That stuff stuck to everything, and wouldn’t spread out at all. I ended up with the Graham crackers piling up and shattering into pieces which I then had to try to put back into something resembling a layer, like a frustrating (but delicious) jigsaw puzzle.

Finally, I referred to the recipe. Yep, I was doing just what it said. Oh wait . . . remember that bowl of stuff I’d mixed up and then set aside? Yeah, neither did I. There was a sentence in the middle of a paragraph that said to “fold” it into the cream cheese mixture. Now, I don’t have any idea how to fold a liquid, so I “dumped” it in, mixed it up, and everything went fine after that. It really makes me wonder about who wrote that recipe though. I mean, you just don’t stick something like that in the middle of a paragraph. There should have been a separate step in there. Were they pressed for space? Were they limited to a certain number of steps? Or, were they just expecting the people who used that recipe to know what they were doing? If that was the case, then they were wrong. Very, very wrong.

At any rate, I got that done and put in the fridge, and tackled the Cinnamon Roll French Toast Bake. Now that one really looked easy. Twenty minutes later, I was still trying to get that first can of cinnamon rolls open. Poppin’ fresh, my ass. They might be fresh, but there was very little poppin’ going on. I’ll admit, I was a little worried. The instructions warned me to make sure I pointed the ends of the can away from myself to prevent injury. Apparently those things are under a lot of pressure. I could not get that thing open to save my life. I even read the instructions. They said, “Push spoon against seam. Unroll tube.” I tried a spoon. No luck. I tried a butter knife. Still no luck. Finally, I resorted to a steak knife. That did the trick. Apparently (happily) the Pillsbury people are laboring under an extreme misunderstanding about how much pressure that cardboard tube contains. There was no pop, not even when I stabbed it with the steak knife. A little oozing maybe, but certainly not the explosive blast I was led to expect. I’ve got to say, I felt a little silly (and kind of disappointed, too).

Anyway, I got it done, and both dishes turned out great. Well, at least they look great. We have yet to try them. Still, I’m feeling pretty optimistic about it.

Of course, Christmas isn’t just about food. It’s also about presents.

Now I don’t know about you, but in my family, traditionally, it’s the grandparents who give the worst gifts. Don’t get me wrong, when I was a kid, I always looked forward to going to my grandparent’s houses for Christmas, but it was because I looked forward to seeing them and all my cousins (plus, my Dad’s folks lived in Florida, and Pa had a huge collection of Louis L’amour and Max Brand westerns). It was not for the gifts, which were normally underwear and socks, or their equivalent.

Note: If you are one of my grandkids, you should stop reading now, unless you’re just into preemptive disappointment. Seriously. Plus, what are you doing reading this blog? I’m pretty sure there’s some at least mildly inappropriate stuff on here. There’s certainly supposed to be. Go read something good for you!!!!!

Now my wife, the cool and generous Jess, and I have always tried to get the grandkids something pretty cool for Christmas, but this year, I decided it was time to go traditional. I do, of course, remember the expected disappointment of opening deceptively festively wrapped packages of underwear and socks, so I decided to go a different route. We got them books. Now, when I was a kid, I would have been thrilled to get books (yes, I was a weird kid), but I’m not sure my grandkids will be equally excited. Still, they’re good books, and they’re smart kids, so who knows?

I got the oldest boy Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It’s a great book, and full of stuff that he’s almost certainly not going to learn about in school. Plus, he’s gone with me to the Rez a few times now, and I feel like to understand the present situation out there, you have to have some understanding of the history.

I got the oldest girl My Name is Malala, the story of an Afghan girl, Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head for insisting on going to school, survived that to face her attackers, and won the Nobel Peace Prize by the age of 16. I figure in a world full of Kardashians, Britney Spears’es (she’s still a thing, right?), Miley Ray Cyrus’es and various other assorted females who seem to be mostly famous to for their ability to vibrate their posteriors faster than the speed of sound, as well as the scarcity of their clothes, she could do worse than learn about a girl only slightly older than herself who stands for something good, does it fearlessly (or maybe in spite of fear), and is trying to make the world a better place. I also figure that if nothing else, it would be good for her to learn that not all Muslims are psychopathically religious headcases who want to kill her.

Jess got the younger boy The Indian in the Cupboard. Hopefully, it will induce a love of reading like Jess and I have. I don’t think it’s particularly heavy or inspirational, but we both started out reading fantastic adventures, and we figure it’s a good way to get him started.

At the very least, it should be less disappointing than socks and underwear.

Of course, gifts aren’t even what Christmas is really about, they’re just symbolic.

The Real Meaning of Christmas

If you really want to know what Christmas is all about, you’re looking in the wrong place. This is a silly place (mostly), for silly ramblings. The real meaning of Christmas is beautiful, and deadly serious. Look around you. All those people of different races, creeds, colors, lifestyles, etc.? They’re what Christmas is all about. They’re why He came. Well, them, and you, and me (that’s what I believe. You, of course, are welcome to believe what you believe as well). If you need more information than that, go to church tonight.

At any rate, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Kwanzaa to all.

 

 

Things I don’t understand #3: Harry Potter and the Epicization of Everything

All About Me, Arts, Books and Literature, Culture, Movies, Politics & Culture

So I’m sitting in class today, and the professor is telling us about a meeting of the Honors Club that she’d like us to go to. She’s very excited about it, and then drops what she apparently thinks will be the big draw: the subject for discussion at the meeting will be . . . wait for it . . . HARRY POTTER!!!!! I’ll wait while you seethe in jealousy at the fact that you won’t be able to attend. Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.

Oddly enough, I lost all interest in attending at that precise moment. I mean, seriously, this is college. This is where you’re supposed to get educated, to learn about new ideas, big ideas, and discuss them, and solve all the problems of the world, and harness all of our youthful enthusiasm (and I’m writing as a typical college student here, and not the crusty old fart that I actually am. What can I say, I got to the game late. Very Very Late.) to go out and set the world to rights. And the Honors Club (Arguably, perhaps even dubiously) the best and the brightest that the campus has to offer is meeting to discuss HARRY POTTER!!!!!

To be honest, I found it to be more than a little disconcerting. Can anybody please explain to me what is the big deal? Now I’ll admit that I’ve never actually read any of them. I did watch the first movie, and I’ve seen bits and pieces of the others. Nothing that I’ve seen has made me think that I’m missing anything. And yet, I’m surrounded by people, intelligent people (or at least people that I consider intelligent) and they freaking’ looooove HARRY POTTER!!!!! (Note. Please understand that the exclamation marks are an attempt to mimic the enthusiasm that otherwise normal people feel for HARRY POTTER!!!!! They are not meant to affect the entire sentence preceding the name HARRY POTTER!!!!! Please also note that I am using 5 exclamation marks, and all capital letters, both universally accepted signs of a diseased mind.)

Why are all these otherwise reasonably intelligent people so worked up about a series of children’s books? Is there anything actually original in them? Anything that hasn’t been done before about a thousand times? Or is it, as I suspect, just a matter of packaging and marketing? The special effects are SOOOO good!

Honestly, HARRY POTTER!!!!! isn’t the only aspect of modern popular culture (and I’m using the term loosely) that I don’t understand. Take the Hunger Games. Please. I took this kid I know to see one of them, and he was so excited. When it was over, I asked him what the big deal is. He started going on about how new and fresh it was, how it had never been done before, etc., etc. He was pretty much unfazed, even when I told him that it had been done before, in the Richard Bachman stories The Long Walk, and The Running Man, and that they had even made a movie out of The Running Man, with Arnold Schwarzeneggar, complete with people killing each other on a game show with a flaky host in a dystopian future, and it was done 30-40 years ago. Ok, I’ll grant you that Jennifer Lawrence is a whole lot hotter than Arnold, but still. Why did they need three books to basically cover something that Stephen King (Bachman was a nom de plume) did in two short and unrelated novellas?

Why does everything have to be so epic? Look at The Hobbit. One of the greatest and best-loved adventure stories of the 20th century. Then Peter Jackson gets hold of it, and it becomes a 9-hour epic. Of course, he had to make up a ton of stuff that wasn’t in the book in order to pad a great adventure into an epic. Granted, the movies are well made (as are the HARRY POTTER!!!!! and Hunger Games movies), but that’s not the point. My dad had a saying, “10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag” to describe a situation where too much stuff is crammed in. These epics have the opposite problem, “5 pounds of gold in a 10 pound bag of shit”. There is lots of good stuff, even in these movies, but it’s completely overwhelmed by all the pointless, repetitious, and just dull filler. And seriously, what’s the deal with the freaking Elves defying gravity and skateboarding across everything? That looked stupid, even in the Disney animated version of  Tarzan.

It’s not just movies, or movie series either. This epicization extends to individual scenes. The interminable fight scenes where, 5 minutes into it, I’m thinking, don’t any of these bad guys have a gun? Somebody please take two steps back and shoot Bruce Willis (or Stallone, or Jason Statham, or Jet Li, or whoever’s kung-fuing his way through hordes of bad guys tonight), so it can end. I don’t care if the bad guys win, I just want this fight to end. Then there’s the ever-popular chase scene. Those have gotten so endless that I don’t even pause the movie to go to the bathroom. Frankly, they’ve gotten so big they’re just dull. Everybody is so busy making things bigger, better, louder, (insert your own favorite _____er here).

It’s really kind of silly, but we just keep buying it. Literally. We bought the DVD, and the video game, and the movie-tie-in version of the book, and the soundtrack, and then the Blur-Ray, and then the Director’s Cut, and then the 10th anniversary edition (because it’s got all those cool “special” features), and the DVD’s and Blu-Rays of all the sequels, because, even though they weren’t really as good as the first, and the last 2 or 3 sucked, it would be aesthetically wrong to not have the whole epic.

It’s even affecting real life. People can’t just like anything any more, they have to be “obsessed” with it. I know people who are “obsessed” with this book, that author, that director, that movie series, those shoes, that tv show, the new flavor at Starbucks. Just liking it isn’t enough. Even loving it isn’t enough. Of course, maybe those people need to become obsessed briefly with a dictionary.

Now I’ll grant that when I was a kid, I got pretty carried away with a lot of things. Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings were my big things. But I got over it. I still really like them, but I’m certainly not obsessed with them. Honestly, I’ve still got a few things like authors that I get carried away with, and will buy pretty much anything they write. I like them a lot, and recommend them to everybody. But I also realize that they’re not everybody’s cup of tea. Frankly, I’d feel a little silly enthusing over a book or movie like a 12 year-old girl with a new copy of Tiger Beat with a fold-out of Justin Bieber (speaking of things I don’t understand).

I think it probably concerns me most because it makes me feel more mature in comparison to those overly enthusiastic fans of anything. Honestly, anything that makes me feel like the adult in any situation concerns me because I know how phenomenally immature I really am.

I just don’t understand.

 

Wuthering Heights – Literary classic or instrument of academic torture?

Arts, Books and Literature

I’m reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, possibly the most horrible book ever written. There have certainly been worse books written, but for sheer oppressive horribleness, Wuthering Heights takes the prize, for me anyway. In the entire book, there is really only one even remotely decent, or even intelligent character, the maid Nelly Dean. The rest are so vile and nasty, or pathetic and easily manipulated that I can’t help hoping for an earthquake to swallow up all of Yorkshire, just to make sure that none of their genetic material can be perpetuated. These characters would be right at home on the Jerry Springer show.

So why do schools insist on inflicting this book on students? The writing is, to be honest, excellent. She does a great job of setting the gothic atmosphere. I do, however, wish that Emily Bronte had had a sense of humor. It would have made an amazingly funny comedy. I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book that would benefit more from the Mel Brooks Young Frankenstein treatment.

With so many literary classics available (anything by Dickens, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Dumas, to name a few), I believe that schools continue to inflict it on students because it was inflicted on them, sort of an academic hazing. I say it’s time to stop the cycle of abuse.