American Manifesto by Todd Thyberg via Boing Boing is a fabulous piece of thoroughly cited education. How can we hope to play our part in our country if we don’t know the facts? And how can we call it our country if we don’t play our part?
when pigs fly
It feels like an eternity already since I properly posted anything, especially a Levi Levi update. And sadly, I’m not ready to jump back in with two feet, yet, either.
I’ve hinted already, but we have bought our first house and it is currently sucking all our time and money away. Even so, it’s terribly exciting. Wrestling with thorny, overgrown bushes in the hot Florida summer sun doesn’t even make it less exciting.
Expect more and more posts on house and garden stuff inspired by my house and garden. Eventually, I might even manage a before and after slide show. Aren’t you excited?
Bechdel test rating movies
Because I’d never heard about this before and now that I have I cannot stop applying it whenever I am confronted with a movie preview: The Bechdel test:
To get an A rating, a movie must pass the so-called Bechdel test, which means it must have at least two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man.
And of course, a reminder:
“There are far too many films that pass the Bechdel test that don’t help at all in making society more equal or better, and lots of films that don’t pass the test but are fantastic at those things,” said Swedish film critic Hynek Pallas.
via Swedish cinemas take aim at gender bias with Bechdel test rating | World news | theguardian.com.
As an advertizement strategy, it’s pretty awesome. At first, I’d say that it shouldn’t be put in a position to shut out movies that don’t fit, though, it couldn’t do worse than any current rating system.
Librarians Against DRM | ReadersBillofRights.info
Recipe – more things on toast
I mentioned before about making things on toast for dinner. The distraction of looking for a house meant I only made two such meals before the mold came. Obviously, it’s been a while since that happened; I’ve been keeping this post in my drafts while buying, packing and moving. Yes. I have a house! And pretty soon, this blog will be replete with fix-its and design finishes…once I have a computer set up at home.
Anyway, back to the food. My husband and I love the taste of this meal, but I hate to cook it since simmering tomato sauce is so messy. If you are game, I suggest you try it: poached eggs in tomato sauce on toast. Here, with a side of steamed and buttered mustard greens.
I don’t really have a recipe for this. Just fill a pot with enough tomato sauce to poach the eggs. Add whatever seasoning you want. Drop eggs in simmering sauce and keep simmering until they are as hard as you like them. Ladle them on to toast and voila, you have a decadent tasting dinner.
All Known Health Frauds are, in Fact, Valid | But Seriously
seriously well written rant on something that needs to be ranted about: All Known Health Frauds are, in Fact, Valid | But Seriously.
Your email privacy
I am the kind of person who organizes the emails they want to keep into folders and saves them indefinitely. It’s nice to be able to search back through them when I’ve forgotten something. Are you that kind of person too?
If you are, I bet you’ve been functioning, as I have, with the delusion that this was a safe place to put your emails. That emails, like the post, are protected from data harvesting and warrantless snooping. The reality is that there are a lot of holes to email privacy. EFF explains: Deep Dive: Updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act | Electronic Frontier Foundation.
dream library
I probably wouldn’t paint it muted shades of neon green and pink (I’m sure it didn’t look like that in Corel), but here is an idea I had for drawing up a dream library.
I’m a leader
The Secret is Murder – posting on Tumblr
Yup, Levi Levi is on hiatus, but the Levi Levi mini comic ‘The Secret is Murder’ is posting on Tumblr RIGHT NOW. What? You say you’ve never heard/red/seen it before? That’s ’cause it’s never been on the internets. Only a few very special people with paper in their hands know The Secret is Murder!
Check out the first posting: The first of my bonus Levi Levi story from… | ALL ABOUT LEVI LEVI.
Dinner time
I recently came across the blog Table Matters and it got me thinking about old timey meals like those in my copy of Fanny Farmer’s cookbook, and meals that may be common place elsewhere but not where I live.
Then we got this bread that was REALLY awesome and decided that we would have to have some meals on toast. This is the first: my take on Welsh Rarebit, beef and goat cheese gravy sauce with some cheddar sprinkles and a side of cabbage slaw. It looks kind of blah, but it was awesome!
Ingredients: beef stock from stewing beef earlier in the week, goat cheese, a little flour (for thickening) and parsley all in the pot for the gravy, and toasted bread to put it on. Ingredients for the slaw: chopped cabbage, mayonnaise, lemon juice, salt, pepper, mustard.
floor plans
I am enamored of floor plans. I don’t gaze wistfully or draw them all the time, but I have amassed a collection of imaginary houses and whenever we are planning a move one of the first things I do is draw a plan of the new place.
So I got to thinking, Why shouldn’t my characters have floor plans? That is, why not combine a couple of passions and flesh out the world I’m writing in/about.
This here is the first. Levi Levi’s apartment and office. He thought about staging his desk in the front room, but decided he didn’t really like when people sat across from him there. He’s not the neatest person, but he doesn’t collect much stuff, so his place always looks spare.
Today’s Token Trivia: Streisand effect
The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.
lost boys
I was watching a version of Peter Pan when I drew this. It might have even been the Disney animation. But I realized that I have seen many many versions of the story…
I do not yet have many many versions of the story as I do for Alice and Wonderland. And some versions of Peter Pan are just annoying.
Speaking of many many versions, I have yet to do my Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles marathon wherein I watch all the different versions of the Hound of the Baskervilles story, but it is on my list.
Bryophyllum pinnatum
Here is where I laugh at myself and this is the story. I am dreaming of gardening lately and, of course, I had to do some research into native and hardy plants. While snipping a plant description my Evernote told me I had a similar note, namely one snipped from the Wikipedia page for Bryophyllum pinnatum.
So, way back when my mysterious alien plant could’ve been a Lychee tree seedling (in my mind anyway), I did some research on the leaves and found Kalanchoe pinnatum, related to the Mother of a Thousand Children, called cathedral bells by the USDA and Sweetheart plant by the University of Florida’s Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants. Are you laughing at me with me yet? Because, apparently, I figured out what my mystery alien plant was a while ago only I didn’t know I did, or I just promptly forgot about it. I wonder what else is tucked away in my Evernote. All of my years of OneNote use are merged in there too.
The Wikipedia page has a few other names for my plant:
Bryophyllum pinnatum, also known as the Air Plant, Life Plant, Miracle Leaf, and Goethe Plant is a succulent plant native to Madagascar.
Now I just need to figure out what I’m going to call it. I think I like Goethe Plant the best.