Twitter: Screaming Into the Electronic Abyss

My two regular followers will notice something sort of new and perhaps unexpected along the left sidebar of this here blog: my Twitter updates. Yes, I've gone and done it. If you were unfortunate enough to have read a past blog entry called Social Networking and the Angel of History without blocking out the experience as a psychological defense, you'll probably be wondering what the hell I'm thinking joining Twitter. I was, in said blog entry, just the teensiest bit critical of the boring use of Twitter and other social networking sites.

Okay. So here's how it started. It won't surprise any of you to be reminded that I am a kd lang fan. And I have been following her on a fan forum for some years now. I learned that kd and her band have started using Twitter to upate their fans on her new album and tour. So that proved too absolutely tempting. It's easy and fast to make a profile and get started on this 'microblog' site. You have 140 spaces to say what you will. It is a good exercise in saying something concise and meaningful. There is something appealing to me about this forced use of poetic sensibilities. Of course, many users simply use texting abbreviations to pack in the most information (not all of it useful) that they can. So far, I have tried to abide by the no abbreviations rule.

Maybe it's because I am middle aged, or perhaps slightly past middle age, that I compare my life as a young teen (way back in the day) to what I imagine the life of a young teen to be like now. I work in a restaurant and many of the dishwashers, waiters and waitresses are very young. They will have cherished memories of stealing each other's phones and sending lewd text messages out in the name of the hapless victim. My cherished memories involving technology are about having a stereo and speaker system in my room that allowed me to tape record an album onto a cassette tape. My God! The freedom. This allowed me to have the very portable cassette tape of my favorite album, and what's more, it allowed me to make the highly prized mixed tape. Oh, yes indeed! With such advanced technology at my fingertips I could stop the tape, put on another album, check that the needle was set right, start the tape recording and lower the needle to the vinyl. How wonderful to make a tape that had different artists on it. At the time this was a staggering amount of musical freedom, it must be said. 

These days I couldn't be bothered with something as old-school as that. Now I simply adjust my iTunes playlists. But there was a time when the painstaking ritual of mixed tape creation was enough to keep me occupied for an entire afternoon (no wonder my homework suffered). I do wonder if the fact that back then you had to record things in real time meant that I have deep, almost tactile memories of what the experience was like, what my room was like, what the ritual consisted of, what it was like to remove the album from the cover and liner, how to flip a record over in your hands without touching the grooves, all those details. Today you can download a song anywhere and add it to your playlists within seconds. Do I remember where I was and what was going on and how I felt when I downloaded Ann Wilson's cover of Immigrant Song (arguably the best cover ever of that song)? Not exactly. But if you ask my memories of Blondie's Heart of Glass, I'll tell you all about our class camping trip and the little shop with the jukebox at Lake Sacheen, and how I developed an instant crush on Andy Davis when he said he loved that song.


The point of this saunter down memory lane is to say how quickly things change.  Back when I was interspersing Heart, Fleetwood Mac, and Blondie songs on my cassette tapes, I could not have conceived of a world where I could broadcast my every thought and action to literally tens of people.  I could not conceive of a world where I could send a friend a song using an electronic device. Here's the rub. If I could have conceived of a world in which these things happen, I would not have suspected that one day I would find all of it a little underwhelming. 

That's where we are now, folks. Paris, London, Social Networking...boring. To quote the Pierces 'nothing thrills us anymore. No one kills us anymore.' Celebrities? Really boring. I got so fed up with the inane and/or constant tweeting that I dumped Annie Lennox, Kathy Griffin, and even (gulp) kd lang. Yep. I ditched them, axed them, blasted them off the page, stopped following them. And these are people I genuinely like and still have an interest in. But I just can't be bothered to scroll through their cryptic crap, their persnickety palavering, their political pontificating. Bah. Boring. One can only take so many admonishments to join this or that rally or attend this or that show. And, seriously, one can only take so many references to the movie Harold and Maude, with or without banjos (sorry kd). 

And if that's how I feel seeing other people's inane posts - how must they feel looking at mine? Doesn't matter. I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5 followers. Is there anything good about twitter? Yes! My partner is funny. I like her posts. Creepy Query Girl posts links to her blog, and I nearly always click through to read her. She blogs about her writing life and she's funny and inspirational. I keep up with the latest Rachel Maddow stuff. I follow Heart, my hometown girls. They only tweet the essential info. I also follow The Selby on Twitter so that I get little reminders to check his site. If you like photos of interesting people and their homes, you'll like his blog. But as for me, I can rarely think of anything interesting to post. I do feel sometimes as if I am screaming into the electronic abyss. However, as mentioned before, the challenge of 140 spaces to say something meaningful is there and waiting.

Demolition is Fun

Hi all.

Demolition is a lovely word. I got rid of a built-in bookcase which took up too much space in our wee sitting room, and was, in fact, completely useless. It took a bit of muscle to get it out of there. I thought for a minute it might actually have doubled as a bomb shelter, so soundly was it constructed. Alas, the club hammer and pry bar proved too much for it in the end.


Do you know what I found had fallen behind and under the bookcase? Some neatly typed notes from the local Temperance Committee, circa 1952. I think that lends some credence to my notion that the interior of the house has not been updated since roughly the stone age. At any rate, I'm sure you'll be happy to know that the ladies were working diligently to 'counteract the superstition that the coming of a New Year must be celebrated in whisky.'

Alas, the whisky industry outlived the Temperance movement. Actually, the bookcase outlived it as well. Let's drink to that.

Before

After. 

Notice the fireplace just to the left of the former bookcase. Can you guess what happened to all that scrap wood?

What's Cookin'?

Christmas at Dalbeattie 2010

Well, folks, the Holiday Season came and went without a post. And do you know what? According to the stats section, it was the busiest time yet for traffic to this blog. I was amazed to find that we've had visitors from the following nations in addition to the US and the UK: Canada, China, Columbia, France, Netherlands, and Slovenia. Welcome one and all!

The reason I haven't posted is that I hit the pavement looking for work...and found it. I produced a little flyer advertising my kitchen services to local restaurants in the event they needed emergency or temporary help. A couple of local restaurants responded and I worked various shifts for them. One of the owners sang my praises to friends who own the Anchor Hotel in Kippford (four miles from our little village) and pretty soon, I had a regular job doing prep and starters. I have found it's very helpful to have a background in kitchen work, because you can almost always find a job. Given the economy and given the fact that my data management skill set needs updating, kitchen work seemed a good option.  Americans, I'm pleased to say, are seen as industrious, positive, and hard-working. So even if the average Brit is baffled by our politicians, they have a general fondness for the average American. And America is widely regarded for it's friendliness and customer service. The customer service is sadly lacking in many places in the UK, and I'm not sure why that should be as the people are generally polite, friendly and love to go out to eat and drink. You'd think it would be a customer service dream.

What is the food like, you ask? Not as grim as you've been led to believe. I have found that the UK is a 'foodie' culture. The old stereotype of totally overcooked meat and veg is outdated. With the mix of cultures in the UK, the average Brit probably has a better grasp of ethnic food than the average American. There are many amazing restaurants in the UK. But you want to know what's on the menu at a pub/hotel, don't you?

Standard menu items for starters include soup, pate, crab on toast, smoked salmon, fried brie, garlic mushrooms. Their sauce for prawn cocktail, what most Americans would refer to as shrimp cocktail, is a marie rose sauce (mayo, ketchup, worcestershire sauce) which is a bit creamier and less spicy than the cocktail sauce I'm used to. It's basically Thousand Island without the chunky bits. One of the more popular starters is nachos. As in America, it seems to be served in a variety of ways, but I think I can safely say, they don't  have the same sense of what standard salsa is like. For example, the freshly made salsa where I work is an absolutely gorgeous deep red with tomatoes, herbs, and red onions in it. It seems to get its color from a sweet chili sauce, which is definitely an asian touch. It tastes wonderful and it would be familiar to the British palate as they do have a love of Asian and Indian foods here. But it really isn't what an American would think of as salsa. It's more like a chutney. Aside from nachos as a starter, there is very little Mexican influence on the mainstream restaurants here and Mexican restaurants are few and far between.  I've daydreamed of opening a little Mexican food stand. I could call it Nacho Mama. I know. It's an old one, but a good one.

For mains there are the usual fish and chips (most often haddock), steaks, burgers, and salads; you will also find steak pie (often a dish of beef stew with a square of puff pastry on top), curry, pork medallions, lamb cutlets, sea bass, and a fair amount of duck, pheasant, and venison. And they don't hold back on serving sauces and gravy. Delicious. Comforting. And definitely not dreary. What's the difference between the English pub food and the Scottish pub food? In a word, haggis. If you come to the Anchor and order the smoked duck salad starter, your strips of gorgeous duck breast will come on a bed of greens lovingly tossed with walnuts and a light vinagrette and topped with artistically placed deep-fried haggis balls. Arranged with special care by yours truly. Or if you are very into haggis, you could order the haggis fritters: two slices of haggis, battered and fried topped with a lovely gravy. What kind of gravy? No idea. Or if you are not into haggis but you are into deep fried things, you could order a deep fried mars bar. Sadly, that does not come with gravy. Not even chocolate gravy. 

This is my home version of a starter from work: tower of smoked salmon, cucumber and prawn. Christmas Eve lunch.

Also this fall we said goodbye to an old friend, Lily (1994 - 2010)