cry havoc

Spent the last three weeks either frozen in overwhelmed stress, or churning mentally through everything on the to-do list (and only managing to get motivated to tackle in the last-minute panic of being down to the wire), thanks to various relatives visiting for graduation week. Somehow I managed to make it through almost five days of parent & step-parent visiting without throttling anyone, or regressing into a petulant sixteen-year-old arguing with my father. Except for the last little bit of Saturday evening, when I was already exhausted from the morning at graduation followed by an afternoon and evening of a stream of guests for an open house, and I'm still rather pissed at my dad, but haven't decided what to do about it. Eh, well. Now I sit here, feeling like I should be going go-go-go in frantic mode, yet... there's no longer any reason to be frantic.

Meanwhile, got a copy of Gender Pluralism: Southeast Asia Since Early Modern Times. (Also got The Signore: Shogun of the Warring States which is a really misleading sub-title, since Nobunaga was never shogun, but otherwise it's a great book, except it caught the MiL's eye and she asked to borrow it to have something to read on the plane. Figures.) Anyway, Gender Pluralism is a fascinating text. Well-written, nicely foot-noted but not overwhelmingly so, balanced between interpreting folklore/legend (ie Siva and other archetypal role-model gods) and contemporary eye-witness reports of the various cultures. Especially, doesn't conflate "this is acceptable, even expected, for gods" (ie intersexuality or bisexuality) with "this is therefore just fine for humans" since the opposite is too often true. All in all, fascinating text on systems of gender understandings that aren't dominated by the West's man vs woman premise.

Also, between following only three series this season (Mouretsu Pirates, Sakamitchi no Appollon, and Eureka Seven Ao), also been mainlining... wuxia. That's right, wuxia. I've come to the conclusion that wuxia is China's analogue to epic fantasy in the Western world, but with more fart jokes. Analogue as in: highly romanticized and somewhat sanitized take on ancient times, with magic and the usual extra heapings of chivalry and 'odd band of merry fellows'. Except that wuxia's band of merry fellows seems to be more likely to include fellow-ettes, who do their own fighting, thank you.

( Various reviews: Strange Hero Yi Zhi Mei, Chinese Paladin 3, and The Young Warriors. )

Currently downloading Dan Ren Wu (Big Shot), because I haven't seen anything with Nicolas Tse, and I figure the romantic storyline should be a nice change after Young Warriors (hedging my bets that the series will have some rocks fall, since it is the Yang Clan and they're kind of known for the rocks falling part). Also sitting around waiting for someone to show up and seed The Holy Pearl... which apparently is a Chinese live-action retelling/adaptation of -- I am so not making this up -- Inuyasha. Noticeably, Kagome (now Ding Yao) is not a school girl, but an archaeologist's daughter in her mid-twenties; if nothing else, wuxia doesn't seem to fetishize the prepubescent/adolescent female half so much as K-dramas and J-dramas. The whole bit about the sacred jewel has been Chinese-ified into a pearl leftover from when Nuwa created the world, and Wen Tian (the Inuyasha role) is now a human-dragon hybrid.

Me: I'd never heard anything about a live-action television adaptation of Inuyasha, but then, as soon as you have a jewel in pieces and a half-demon male protagonist, people always start crying that it's Inuyasha.

CP: It's not like Takahashi invented the idea of a sacred broken jewel.

Me: Or the idea of half-demons. But we'll see... if I can just get a seed. I'm just not convinced it's really based on Inuyasha. I mean, it's only thirty-two episodes! You can't possibly adapt Inuyasha in only thirty-two episodes.

CP: Unless each episode is ten hours long.

Also, my copy of The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China just arrived. Yay!

ETA2: I could've just cut to the chase and linked to dangermousie's list of things learned from wuxia. I'd add more, but then I realized some things are universal -- from wuxia to romcoms -- like when one character starts the story insisting on undying hatred. If the object of hatred is same-sex, then the story ends with forgiveness (even if mid-rock-falling). If the object of hatred is opposite sex, Houston, we have OTP.

Still waiting to hear from my dad about his mother's chocolate cake recipe (and his rhubarb pie recipe, just because it sounds bizarre but it's best evidence to cite of making pie from anything) -- but here's my Mom's (and now also my) favorite bread recipe for when guests come to visit. I could've sworn I'd posted this before, but apparently not. ( Bread recipe behind the cut... )

This is not a bread that's ever kept well when I've made it, simply because there are always two-legged rats willing and able to devour the bread as soon as it slides out of the baking pans. This is also why I always make a double-batch, which gets me three large loaves, two medium loaves, and two small loaves: that's the only way to make sure there'll be some bread leftover for me.

In Korean (hangul, not romancized): how would you say, "feed me"? The imperative form that a five-year-old might use to demand from parents would be perfect, if the verb form is required.

In Swedish: how would you say, "says the machine" where "says" is something like the English "cried" (not as in tears, but in exhortation or command). Alternate verbs: "demanded" or "insisted"... you probably get the idea.

The story: our dryer died, and my father & stepmother are gifting us with a new one. I had originally looked at Frigidaires, Kenmores, and GEs, but got sidetracked into looking at LGs and was rather impressed with the quality for the money. When I called my father back to let him know the various models, and mentioned that I'd started considering LGs as well, Dad's reply?

"Ah, LGs are good machines. I've spoken with the company's president."

I really, really need to stop being astonished by how much my father gets around. Heads of state, heads of chaebols. Righto! Just another day on the range, to be invited to a conference call with the freaking president of LG to discuss washing machines. Honestly. Right up there with being invited to have an informal sit-down dinner with the King of Sweden.

Hence the combination of languages in the phrase. Will post pictures when done. TIA!

I don't know who originally said it, but the current furor in USian politics over abortion, rape, and federal assistance reminds me of some wise words my mother once told me, when I was still too young to understand the depths of it all:

"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

This is being passed along/asked on behalf of taithe -- you can read what prompted these question in this thread (from the previous post). Slightly modified to be more universal for Southerners in general:

Who is defined as a Southerner? When not in the South, can you spot a Southerner right away or is it less obvious? If you live outside the South, do you feel like you don't/can't belong because of your Southern background? How closely do you think you match the stereotype of Southerner, and do you think this impacts how well you fit in -- or don't fit in -- when living outside the South? Alternate for those who've always lived/stayed in the South: can you identify when someone's a returning Southerner versus a newcomer picking up Southern habits? If so, what's the tip-off?

Formally speaking, "being Southern" has two-parts, or so I was always taught: born, and bred. Technically, I'm not a born-Southerner (thanks, DAD, the military guy!) because I was born in North Dakota. I'm completely bred-Southern, though, since we returned to the Deep South when I was six months old, and I lived in various places in the South until I was in mid-twenties. Beyond that, I have multiple generations in all directions who are born-and-bred Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi, so generally... yeah, I'm pretty Southern.

( Rest of my answers behind the cut. )

If you don't mind taithe using your comments as possible jumping-off or consideration points for grad study, and want to contribute with your own stories/input for her questions, please feel free. If you'd prefer anonymity, you can go with anonymous here (I'm hoping that's okay, for taithe's purposes), or just PM taithe directly.

If your experience has differed from mine, especially do speak up. The South is hardly monolithic and I'm nowhere near an expert on All Things Southern, so do feel free to help me make sure no one gets that impression. Let's freely contradict each other, if that's what it be.

[see comments for additional response/questions from taithe]

Jump forward to about 3:30 and watch. The entire scene had me in hysterics. Exchange "frogs" for "pigs feet" and that's me and my sister on a family-visit when we were younger. Nothing like elderly cooks with good intentions to take years off your life. (Which, when you're 14 and 11, as we were, there aren't that many years to take.)


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(It's the younger girl, on the left, waving the food around as preface to not-so-stealthily trying to slip it into the older girl's rice bowl that really did me in. My sister tried that trick at least once every family visit.)

Been gone the past five days for obligatory family-visit-thing, and managed to catch a bad head-cold while I was at it. My theory is that the universe is of the mind that if you're emotionally miserable when deluged with relatives, you might as well be physically miserable while you're at it, and do the misery all proper-like.

Which means we will have to wait until this head-cold is past before I can regale you all with the story of U-Haul Guy, Sweet Momma, and the Iranian Rug Dealer.

No, really.

Remember when I ranted about that horrendous adaptation butchering of Cooper's The Dark is Rising?

Sometimes I wonder where they grow the people who power the money that makes our movies and television and general pop culture. I mean, if you listened to these people, they'd have you convinced that if you are American, anglo, middle class, and raised in a generally suburban environment (give or take a few cows or transit buses), that you couldn't possibly ever want to spend money to look at someone who isn't also... American, anglo, middle class, and generally suburban.

Is this why we import so many actors from Canada, because they don't sound like they have an accent at all, to American ears? Because dogs forbid that the character have an accent, damn it, because that would be a strike-out on the first go-round. OMG, he's british! Oh, noes! Because apparently a mediocre American, white, middle class, suburban actor is way way better than a really awesome, NOT-American, possibly accented, non-Anglo*, and who knows for class or regional upbringing. Nope, let's go with the safe mediocre actor, because then the viewers can relate! Especially the children. Think of the children!

*shoots someone. possibly self*

( I could ask, at what point did you realize people have different color skin, or speak with strange accents, or aren't all from the same place/culture as you, but it's not something most of us ever think about. )

so I'm reviewing my list of chores:

1. do the damn dishes
2. badger the recruiter
3. put away clean laundry

and I get an email from my mother about my trip to Grand Forks, ND, with a few stopovers to see the world's biggest ball of twine, the world's largest talking metal cow, the world's largest van gogh easel, and the world's largest concrete prairie dog. She says, "would you take your sister with you, part of the way?"

I write back. "What do you mean? Like, take her as far as Chicago and leave her there?"

Mom's response: "Yep."

I told her, "if Klho makes her way home again, that means ya gotta keep her."

No response from Mom yet. I think she might be sulking.

Heh.