defrocking your books

it took me until pretty late in life to realise that book covers, by and large, are tacky and more or less useless. using them to keep dust from your books is akin to using neon plastic to preserve your furniture.

there are surprises in store for the adventurous defrocker of a hardback book…gold and silver foil stamping! linen! typography! earthtones! what’s more: since the binding of books has been more or less standardised over the last 3.2 million years, the dan brown bestseller that you bought yesterday will harmonise with your grandmother’s edition of fanny hill when they are both naked together on your bookshelf.

added bonus: you can upcycle your discarded covers into fashionable outerwear!

more unsolicited advice on how to arrange your bookshelf can be found here.

how to be james thurber

In The Years with Ross, James Thurber describes his beginnings as an artist at [The New Yorker]; Thurber says that, having had success at his now-famous quickly sketched freehand drawings, he sat down and did some proper ones, with full attention to detail, shading, perspective, and so on. When he showed them to his colleague E.B. White, White took one look and said, “Don’t do that. If you ever got good you’d be mediocre.”

ian frazier from steinberg at the new yorker (2005)

occasionally, i will be coerced into a television binge where i watch many episodes of a series over a short amount of time. one of the games that i like to play with myself during these times is matching unknown actors’ stage names during the titles to the characters that they portray.

the game is more than just random matching around gender or ethnicity since many actors style their names based upon how they want to brand themselves—a decision which also involves which types of characters that they want to portray. additionally there is usually a correlation between screen time and the order in which the actor is billed.

all this being said, i was only able to correctly match 3 of the 13 characters in the show, battlestar galactica (and i already knew edward james olmos ahead of time). furthermore, i wasn’t even 1000‰ correct on matching genders. jamie bamber is a dood? i thought she was the brassy kara thrace. go figure. anyway, this game is playable with other shows besides battlestar galactica and works especially well with soap operas.

roy g. biv has a posse -or- melvil dewey has got nothin’ on me

laura, my former badminton adversary, recently linked to a very interesting guardian article on the topic of bookshelf arrangement. she then asked her readers how they chose to arrange their bookshelves. i answered that i (after a long period of introspection) finally arrived upon a chromatic system.

this drew a certain amount of incredulity from some mutual friends who impugned me privately and asked if i was goofing or being 1000‰ honest the way that i usually am. as evidenced above (and with this as precedent) you can see that my record of always telling the truth remains without pimple or blackhead. with my honour restored, let me tell you: the benefits of such a system are numerous:

1. utility: as i am a visual learner, in many cases it is the cover rather than the author (or even sometimes) title of a book that i can recall, thus a chromatic index proves very useful when i need to locate an old tome.
2. æsthetics: as exhibited by my dolce & gabana® trousers, rolodex™ wrist-watch, and armani® hair gel, i am all about looking good. and what is more visually appealing than a rainbow? answer: books arranged like a rainbow. another answer less germane: naked babes.
3. ragbaggedness: as the very soul of this blog shows, i get an extreme charge out of random juxtapositions. a system of index that eschews subjects helps to create such serendipital collisions. consider: tin tin living in the same neighborhood as lucky jim, or the new-found meaning of goya’s caprichos when they are being absorbed by bakhtin and his dialogic imagination.

in conclusion, another thing that i arrange chromatically is the drawer where i keep my underpants.

a greener green than you’ve ever seen

not only can the human eye see x-rays, it can also see imaginary colours. i’m not talking about fictional colours (like douglas adams’ hooloovooo) but colours that no physical light source can produce. furthermore it is very easy to see these colours (without first having to wig out on peyote).

the way it works is this »

If a saturated green is viewed until the green receptors [of the eye] are fatigued and then a saturated red is viewed, a perception of red more intense than pure spectral red can be experienced. This is due to the fatigue of the green receptors and the resulting lack of their ability to desaturate the perceptual response to the output of the red receptors.

i have made two image files to assist the prospective colour-adventurer on his or her quest to see—for the first time—an imaginary colour. open this image and this image in separate tabs. stare at the magenta pentagon for 30 seconds or so until it starts to grey. then quickly switch tabs to the green square. for the next 5 seconds, you should experience a greener green than you’ve ever seen.

slow down…did everyone know that you can MAKE marshmallows in the privacy of your own home with very simple ingredients? imagine! the! potential!

here are thomas keller’s super sekrit marshmallow ingredients:

• 3 envelopes of knox gelatin
• 1/2 cup cold water
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 2/3 cups corn syrup
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• confectioners’ sugar for dredging

photo credit: the internet

der perfekt grilled käse

the protagonist of tom robbins’ jitterbug perfume spends much of her time in pursuit of the perfect taco. like priscilla, i have long been perfecting my recipe for a similar comfort food—the grilled cheese sangwich. this recipe is my current top contender and the result of 4 years of gastronomic tinkering.

now that we trust eachother completely…what is your recipe for der perfekt grilled käse?