Forty Days of Foliage: Conclusion

It's 12:18 on Easter morning, which means two things: Jesus is back and I can eat meat again. So far, I have celebrated by eating a couple leftover chicken nachos from my brother's fridge. Yum. Yes, I'm going back to meat (at least in limited capacity), but I think I've gained some new perspective:

- I no longer fear cooking tofu. (And I'll buy it because I like it, not because I see it as a substitute.)
- I've learned that I can get pretty inventive with the same three or four vegetables.
- I will no longer feel weird about ordering non-meat dishes in restaurants.
- I'm probably not going to cook meat very often. And when I do, I'm going to try to get it from local/more sustainable sources.
- I'm going to hold myself to a loose "Meat Only Once a Week" diet, making exceptions for dinner parties (I feel bad inconveniencing others) and cravings. (This will not hold this week - I will be presenting my master's project on Thursday and taking great comfort in burgers and such until then.)
- On a broader level, I have willpower! I held out for 40+ days, and it wasn't even that hard.

And so the experiment ends. I applaud myself.

Read More......

She Crazy

I've mentioned before my love for Lady GaGa. I just found another reason to love her more:



My Thoughts:
1.) Electric piano does not equal acoustic.
2.) Foot on piano does equal awesome.
3.) I want to be her best friend.

Read More......

A Study in Contrasts

There are two big stories about the gays in the New York Times today. The first, which you're probably more aware of, is about the possibility of more victories on the gay marriage front due to the recent excitement in Iowa, Vermont, and to a lesser extent, DC. Here's a key portion, although the entire article is definitely worth reading:

New York, New Jersey, Maine and New Hampshire are among the states where such proposals have gained legislative support in recent months.

“This is a reminder to those legislatures that they should finish the job,” said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, a national advocacy group based in New York. “Contrary to the claims made by the opponents of equality, it’s not just judges, it’s not just the coasts, and it’s not just going away.”

This is truly very exciting, and even though it's all very Northeast-based at the moment (Iowa excluded, natch), it's still very heartening to see this all happening (and so quickly!). However, I then flipped over to this article about how openly gay men in Iraq are being systematically murdered:

In the past two months, the bodies of as many as 25 boys and men suspected of being gay have turned up in the huge Shiite enclave of Sadr City, the police and friends of the dead say. Most have been shot, some multiple times. Several have been found with the word “pervert” in Arabic on notes attached to their bodies, the police said.

...

“I don’t care about the militias anymore, because they’re going to kill me anyway — today, tomorrow or the day after,” said a man named Sa’ad, who has been taking estrogen and has developed small breasts. “I hate my community and my relatives. If they had their way, the result would be one gunshot.”

I suddenly felt really guilty for caring about getting married. I know I shouldn't, but it's hard to get excited about my theoretical husband when there are people in similar situations getting killed for their openness. I don't mean this as a buzzkill, though; by all means, let's all get gay married! Let's just not forget what's going on elsewhere.

Read More......

Off With Your Head

I was not really a Yeah Yeah Yeahs (YYYs hereafter for brevity's sake) fan upon hearing "Date with the Night," the band's first single. In fact, I kind of hated it. I can handle screamy and abrasive, but to me, it was, "Look at how screamy and abrasive we are!" without anything interesting about it. I had written the band off when I heard "Maps," which went a long way toward rehabilitating them for me, but I considered it mostly a fluke and continued to mostly ignore their output.



This began to change, however, when I heard a review of the new YYYs album, It's Blitz!, on the NPR show Sound Opinions, in which the hosts each gave it a "Buy It" ranking (their highest mark). The song clips intrigued me, so I sought out the album, and whoa do I love it.

It's Blitz! shows a dancier, calmer, more vulnerable side to the band that is instantly becoming after the borderline obnoxious swagger of their past output. There are a number of surprisingly affecting ballads, in which Karen O. shows off the yearning and likability we first saw in "Maps." The best of these is "Hysteric," which is so successful in winning you over that you don't really notice the cliched nature of lines such as "You suddenly complete me." (Close second: "Runaway," which is propelled by an aching piano line and moody synth strings.)

There's still some edge to the sound, lest ye be concerned the YYYs have lost their edge. "Dull Life" is yelping and energetic without being grating, and lead single "Zero" is probably the most instantly exciting song on the album. The best track on the album is of this vein: "Heads Will Roll" features Karen declaring "Off with your head/dance 'til your dead" over a thumping disco beat and it's awesome. (This may have to be my new life motto.)

How you feel about this album will probably have a lot to do with what you thought of prior YYYs work. If you're one of those "Date with the Night" fans, you might see this as a cop-out from the band, or even worse, a mellowing with age. However, for me, It's Blitz! is just a refinement of their earlier sound to something more interesting, engaging, and ultimately, more satisfying.

You should probably get it.

Read More......

You are the Blood

You may have heard of the excellent new compilation "Dark Was The Night," put out by Red Hot to raise funds for AIDS research. It's not amazing from start to finish, but there are a ton of great bands on here (Arcade Fire, Spoon, Grizzly Bear), some pleasant surprises (My Brightest Diamond's cover of "Feeling Good" - I thought I was too attached to the Nina version, but I guess I was wrong), and only a minimal amount of Feist and Ben Gibbard to sit through. It's pretty much a white person's wet dream. The highlight for me, though, is Sufjan Stevens's epic contribution "You are the Blood."



I've been a Sufjan fan since Michigan came out; although the initial draw was "omg someone made an album about my state," I've stuck with him over the years and can even admit that Illinois was better than Michigan. I got sort of Sufjan-ed out for a while, though, as he became more ubiquitous (I blame Little Miss Sunshine) and then seemed to disappear. But with this new track, I'm ready to hop back on board.

"You are the Blood," at just over ten minutes long, is possibly the strangest song of Sufjan's career. I just tried to type out a description of it, but it doesn't really do the song justice; one can't get a sense of this without giving it a listen. (Multiple times. The first is sort of overwhelming.) It encapsulates pretty much every phase of Sufjan's career: meandering Michigan-esque moments, the dense electronic blasts of Enjoy Your Rabbit, and the bombastically orchestrated Illinois are all showcased to great effect. If this is where Sufjan is heading, I think we all have reason to get excited about him again.

(PS: I've uploaded the mp3 for you! It looks like it can only be downloaded ten times, but go here to download it. Run! Don't walk!)

Read More......

Forty Days of Foliage: Day 34

Sorry for the lack of updates, folks; it turns out things get busy as you near the end of your graduate education. I realized, though, that I haven't updated ya'll on the status of my vegetarianism for a while. I have accomplished the following vegetarian feats since my last post:

- I made a dish with tofu! Yes, it was a stir fry and basically impossible to screw up, but it tasted good and therefore represented a major coup for me. Next, I intend to try this dish that Nanc TWoP recommended/commented on. (On a side note, someone from TWoP found my blog and felt the urge to comment? Awesome.)
- I also made a cabbage and potato soup, representing the second time in my life I've made a soup from scratch. Unfortunately, I only had chicken bouillon cubes, so I had to cheat a little bit when making it (I didn't even have other veggies with which I could have made stock), but I'm not going to count it as a major failure on my part. It was quite good and fed me for several days.
- However, my biggest adventure recently was when I made kale chips. Yes, I had an abundance of kale and needed creative ways to use it beyond things like "kale rice," so I gave this a go. I used balsamic vinegar instead of the apple cider vinegar the recipe calls for, but I have to say, they turned out very well. They have a very potato chip-like texture, but with a greener flavor, obviously. It's worth a go if you have more kale than you can handle.

I've realized my self-imposed vegetarianism is soon coming to a close (Easter is two weeks from this last Sunday), and honestly, it hasn't been that difficult. Yes, there have been times I've really craved meat, but the occasional fish tends to ward that sensation off quite handily. Also, I'm pretty sure I've lost some weight; now, those of you who know me know that I have no need to lose weight, but I also don't mind the thought of losing unnecessary meat pockets. Now I just need to develop some muscle. Next Lent: giving up sedentary-ness.

Read More......

Inch by Inch, Row by Row

In case you haven't heard, Michelle Obama has given us yet another reason to love her: she's planting a vegetable garden at the White House! Some choice quotes from the NYT article:

“A real delicious heirloom tomato is one of the sweetest things that you’ll ever eat,” she said. “And my children know the difference, and that’s how I’ve been able to get them to try different things.

“I wanted to be able to bring what I learned to a broader base of people. And what better way to do it than to plant a vegetable garden in the South Lawn of the White House?”

“You can begin in your own cupboard,” she said, “by eliminating processed food, trying to cook a meal a little more often, trying to incorporate more fruits and vegetables.”

LOVE YOU MICHELLE.

Read More......

Life's A Drag

I've been thinking about drag a lot lately.



No, not that kind.



Not that drag either.



Yes, that's the one.


Yes, I've recently spent a lot of time ruminating about drag queens. This has mostly been spurred on by the superb reality show RuPaul's Drag Race, which is sort of the drag queen version of America's Next Top Model, but 100x better. (If you haven't seen it, all the episodes are online at the offical site.) While watching, I've come to realize the extent to which I think drag is an important part of gay culture, although I'm still having a hard time articulating why.

I think what I like about drag is that it's still something very "other" for our community. The gay movement is becoming more and more about gaining equal rights and assimilating into society as a whole, and while I think this is an admirable goal, I still like the idea of having something for ourselves. Drag fits that niche for me; it's something fabulous and strange and wonderful that many straight people just don't get. For example, when the drag episode of Project Runway aired last year, my mom expressed her concern at the preview, saying that the queens were "sort of scary." (She ended up enjoying it, though.) I like that notion of maintaining something important to gay history (Legend has it that a drag queen threw the first stone at Stonewall) as we move forward, even if I'm possibly being deliberately separatist from the larger heterosexual community.

Of course, lest I get too weighed down by lofty rhetoric about the virtues of drag, I also have to point out that it's just really fun. There's nothing quite like a really good drag performance; it's hilarious, entertaining, interesting and makes you want to give the performer your money. Plus, drag queens are some of the wittiest folks around. For example, observe this interaction between a Canadian drag queen named Fahren Heit and a patron in the crowd who was wearing a pink plaid shirt:

Fahren: Are you a top or a bottom?
Guy: Um, I can do either.
Fahren: Honey, you don't wear a gay tablecloth to the bar and pretend like you're a top.

All this thinking has led me to consider the obvious question: would I be a good drag queen? I like to think I can be rather wittily caustic when I need to be and I'm pretty good in heels, but that's about where it ends. I don't think I'd make a very attractive queen, and I'd probably want to lip-sync Kate Bush or Adult. or something else entirely drag-inappropriate. (Although when I dance to "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga, it gets pretty draggy.) Plus, when you're a queen, everyone comes after you. Straight society thinks you're crazy and bitchy patrons think you're not doing a good enough job. (I speak as a bitchy patron, although I've never told a queen she wasn't good.) I wouldn't be able to handle the pressure. (However, the Rupaul's Drag Race Drag Name Generator on Facebook told me that if I were to be a queen, my drag name would be Barbara Seville. I like it.)

In conclusion, I encourage you to show your appreciation for your neighborhood drag queen. Shout "WORK!" at her when she does something great. Tell her she looks fabulous. Give her air kisses, and if she's feeling touchy, a light hug. She'll appreciate the attention.

Read More......

Tobias Funke Moment of the Day

Guy in my Class:

I think sustainability is going to have to hurt, you know? It's not going to be easy. We're just going to have to suck it up and take one in the face.

Read More......

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

For St. Patrick's Day, I would like to share with you the greatest thing ever. Enjoy this video of the Swedish Chef, Animal, and Beaker singing "Danny Boy." It's amazing.

Read More......