Cookie Recipe

Howzabout some Litterbox Logs to get your guests' attention?

So horrible to look at, so tasty to eat, and so easy to make!

Oreos finely crushed in a blender or food processor to make 1 cup of crumbs
1 cup 10X powdered sugar
1 tablespoon unsweetened baking cocoa
1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate mini-morsels
1/4 cup sunflower kernels
1/4 cup Rumplemintz peppermint schnapps

Mix the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl; then liquor. Stir until thoroughly blended and smooth. Let the mixture rest for a few minutes, and have ready a small electric fan and a half shotglass of peppermint schnapps. If mixture seems too sticky to shape by hand, add another tablespoon of powdered sugar let the fan blow over the mixture for a few minutes. Conversely, if the mixture becomes too dry and starts to crumble, add a little more peppermint schnapps. (Or water, but schnapps is more fun.)

Meanwhile, prepare a "litterbox" by filling a 13x9 lasagna pan (or a Tupperware container of similar size) with one box of Grape-Nuts cereal plus a cup of quick-cooking oats, uncooked.

Roll the cookie mixture between palms of your hands to create -- ahem -- "torpedo" shapes, and plop them decoratively into the litterbox so that cereal and oats cling to the "logs."

These are best made a day or two in advance so that they can air-dry and mellow.

posted by Я -- R | 7/16/2009 07:16:00 PM | (128) responses

16 February 2009

Happy Valentine's Day

posted by Я -- R | 2/16/2009 01:31:00 AM | (0) responses

08 February 2009

The cake I'll make when I turn 40

Okay, I wouldn't necessarily want the girly pink flowers, but I totally dig the idea of eating Tom Selleck in frosting form. What can I say -- chest hair is super sexy.

posted by Я -- R | 2/08/2009 07:39:00 AM | (0) responses

07 February 2009

Japanese kids say the darn'dest things

During today's Web browsing I happened to go looking up the wikipedia entry on Romper Room, wherein I found a too-cute-to-be-true story about the show's Japanese version.

Actually, let us start with a little non-cute and factual background -- over the decades since its 1953 debut on a Baltimore TV station, Romper Room was franchised for "local production" to a number of major U.S. cities and to several foreign countries, including Japan. Ronpaaruumu, as it was phonetically retitled, ran from 1963 to 1979 and was hosted by a succession of Japanese actresses who all used the screen name "Miss Midori" on the show. (In Japanese, midori means "green" -- hence the brand name of that garishly colored, melon-flavored liqueur -- but is also a commonplace first name for girls; cf. "Amber" or "Violet.")

Here beginneth the cutesy part; hover your mouse over the yellow-highlighted words for their translation.

The show's second "Miss Midori" was teaching her young studio audience about the Japanese syllabic characters called kana. She drew a character on the board:

き

...and explained, "Children, this kana is read as ki. Now, who can tell me a word that starts out with the syllable ki?"

A boy quickly piped up, "I know, I know: kintama!"

Maintaining composure, Miss Midori attempted to drop the boy a gentle little hint by replying, with careful emphasis: "My dear, perhaps you could think of an answer that sounds a bit more ki-reina?"

Without hesitating a second, the boy shouted, "Kireina kintama!"

After a hasty commercial break, the boy had been removed from his seat and replaced with a large teddy bear.

(Whether the incident actually happened or not, the actress who played this incarnation of "Miss Midori" apparently went on to a long post-Ronpaaruumu career, and got endless mileage out of this story!)

Addendum: On Googling, I find that the slang kintama literally means "gold eggs": kin = "gold" and tama = "(bird) egg."

posted by Я -- R | 2/07/2009 05:13:00 PM | (0) responses

28 January 2009

Words of the Day

Pabstism (păb'•stiz•əm) n. -- A quasi-religious ceremony in which participants, usually men, spray each other with cheap beer.

Bar Schlitzvah (bar shlits'•və) n. -- Akin to a Pabstism, but with kosher snacks.

Labels: language

posted by Я -- R | 1/28/2009 01:48:00 PM | (0) responses

Separated at -- um -- birth?

I know I won't be the first to make this thoroughly ovious joke, but:

Left hand: Kenyan tchotchke in Obama's new office, purportedly representing an African proverb that, like an egg, power must not be held too loosely nor too tightly.

Right hand: Detail from Dali's 1937 painting The Metamorphosis of Narcissus.

posted by Я -- R | 1/28/2009 07:41:00 AM | (0) responses

26 January 2009

Jerusalem/Athens Mash-Up

To me, this is one of the coolest sculptures in the history of Western art, and also one of the weirdest:

Michelangelo's Cristo della Minerva -- so called because the 14th-century church that houses it is situated on the former grounds of a temple consecrated to the Roman goddess of wisdom -- is a work that I'd never been aware of until a couple years ago, when it flashed onscreen in some PBS or History Channel special about artistic representations of Jesus through the ages.

Seeing it for the first time was one of those jaw-dropping, spit-take moments for me -- I could hardly believe that Michelangelo had gotten away with something so jaw-droppingly pagan in its aesthetics.

I mean, a Vulcan anthropology undergrad who'd studied a little about Earth's history and cultures, but who hadn't gotten to the chapter on Christianity yet, would probably look at the marble figure of a bearded human male carrying an odd †-shaped object, and think: "Aha, this must be another Ancient Greek statue honoring one of their many deities -- perhaps Taumikron, god of lower-case t's? Or Hypotenos, god of 90° angles?"

Of course, we know that it represents Jesus Christ, and yet -- Michelangelo imagined his Lord and Savior as a heroic, muscular, nearly-naked man, the way that classical Greek sculptors were wont to depict Apollo or Dionysus. It's remarkable, to me, that except for the fluttering strip of cloth covering up "the bikini area," Michelangelo totally ignored Christian standards of physical modesty. It was one thing to present J.C. as a naked corpse held by Mary in the Pietà -- there, the nudity served to emphasize the Son's voluntary self-degradation in being incarnated as a human and suffering physical death. But here, the post-Resurrection Jesus is very much alive, chipper, and looks not the slightest bit embarrassed to be strolling around like an International Male catalog model. (One must wonder: in Michelangelo's homosexual mind, was Jesus circumcised under that loincloth, or -- like the David -- "uncut"?)

I can't think of a work that more concisely embodies the Renaissance, in which Christian Europe rediscovered the intellectual heritage of pagan Greece -- producing a cultural fusion without which America, and the modern world, could not exist.

Labels: art, philosophy, religion

posted by Я -- R | 1/26/2009 04:17:00 PM | (0) responses