What did you learn today?

I think we should learn something everyday, though most days I fall pretty short.

I saw the Lefschetz-Hopf theorem recently and it was best thing I'd seen in *days*...

Inappropriate duck behaviour

There are an unprecedented few days of sun and good weather and the ducklings have hatched [see 'duck love' for their origins], and there were many of them, but male ducks [drakes?] can be real dicks.




It is the kids that suffer, really. Them, and the duck getting attacked.

on the bus.

22 April 2008

I feel like I should be having a ‘this American life’ moment where someone with a hip but relatable voice talk about the everyday and gleans something noteworthy. But not in an ironic way.

I’m on a bus from Bristol to Oxford, and beside me sits a skin kid with baggy, tattered clothes and dreadlocks. He smells bad and I keep fighting the urge to try and strike up a conversation – where is he going? Where is he from?

I spent the multi-hour layover in Bristol walking around, exploring parks, enjoying the sun and other people out. Seems like there should be some lesson in it all – something about travel and being alone; about temporary spaces and temporary people.

But instead, I wonder what email will be waiting for me when I return…

duchiphail 2008

Even since x-mass i've been wanting to stuff as many birds as i could inside each other and cook them all. I dont' know where this came from: i think some post-US 'Turducken' fantasy made larger and more grandiose by hearing that the record for bird-stuffing was something like 17 or 18 set here in the UK. So this this in mind, and a dozen willing and open mouths, I set out to find a butcher mad enough to help with my newly-hatched Easter plan: cook four birds at once, each stuffed inside each other.

I go to the covered market and talk to my favorite poultry people and describe what i want to do. The butcher is on board until I ask him to de-bone a quail. He pauses, looks at me with a telling glimmer in his eye and says: "you want me to de-bone a quail, so that you can stuff it in a pheasant?" "That's right." And I see in his face for a split second a smirk of disbelief, but a look of approval, as if to say: "kid, this is a crazy plan you've got. And i'm on board!"

The day of, preparation starts early in the morning. [Actually, preparation started the day before with me making stock, Heather making a *delicious* apple pie and us prepping for the stuffing assembly.] The preparation was chronicled, but needs some explanation.

It being easter and all, I figured the most appropriate thing to to was put a single hard-boiled egg in the center of it all -- the cornerstone from which the rest of the monstrosity would be built. You know: death, rebirth, Jesus, etc.

In the end, it came out really well. Much better than I would have imagined. The flock was moist [though filled with twine and home-made toothpicks to keep the various layers secured].

Next year I'm going for five.

duck love

24 febuary. 2008

there is a small 'fish pond' just outside my office window where the college stocks expensive coy fish and a particular egret occasionally tries to dine. today is gray and not warm- a typical day. except today there are ducks humping in the pond. three mallards and a lady. two had to watch. after the courtship and exchange, the female angrily chased the others around. then the Lothario and the lady both washed themselfs by dipping [bobbing, really] up and down in the pond and shivering, preening, and finally getting out of the pond. the way an old man gets out of a bathtub.

'big issue'

20 Feb. 2008

i ran out of money today. i was at the grocery store. I put back the oranges.

but then on the way out i see the guy selling 'the big issue' that is always there, hocking some magazine that i dont' quite understand but have always been curious about. so i give him all my remaining change [58p] and he gives me last week's issue.

and these two things somehow put a smile on my face.

Nara, Japan

in summery:
-everyone smokes, everywhere
-the Japanese seem obsessed with food. I love it. [Irene now can't help but think of all the 'disgusting food inside them' when she looks at people now.]
-Several Japanese i saw seemed really into dressing up their dogs in adidas-like sports-suits. Like old Italian men.
-There are *many* kinds of trash. At least 3 and up to six. There is a cooking-oil collection service [similar to a garbage truck] that comes around and plays a song: ''bring me your tempura oil.... sometime today.... at the stinky house....''
-I can't wait to go back.