I got online before noon to write with Helen, Richard, Amy, Gabrielle and others for my weekly Sunday “brunch” writing. This week instead of three prompts total provided by two of our “hosts,” spread out over about an hour but only 30 minutes (3×10) of writing time, we instead started with a prompt from one host and then everybody provided a single prompt as we went around the metaphorical room, which meant 80 minutes of writing, about two hours of time spent writing, talking, drinking coffee, etc.
Inspired by Jim Steranko’s fascinating pop-art, op-art, and surrealism inspired visions for Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. I went for a retro 60s/70s “playboy” penthouse interior with a little Bruce Wayne and similar fantasies of technological power thrown in, along with a few folk music names (Peter, Paul, and Mary), a female Nick Fury clone a la Angelina Jolie in “Sky Captain and the World of the Tomorrow,” and eventually a werewolf.
We do not write to be overly serious.
I cannot say that as far as the writing goes I was terribly proud of the result, but it was fun, and there wouldn’t be much point to writing this stuff if it weren’t gooey, pulpy, self-referential fun.
Thereafter conversation ensued, followed, whatever.
Based on my use of the werewolf motif (which the others had to fit in as well; that’s what happens with communal prompts!) I went and got Christian Morgenstern’s “Der Werwolf,” which I hadn’t read in quite a while. It is an “impossible” poem to translate, although Alexander Gross does a good job of adapting it, providing a somewhat loose but in other ways very faithful “translation” of the text.
I continued reading The Rule of Four and I’m about half way through now. I’ll return Good Girls Do to the library as well as The Defiant Muse: German Feminist Poems from the Middle Ages to the Present (edited by Susan L. Cocalis), which I’ve been browsing this past week.
I encoded the Frazetta documentary (“Frazetta: Painting with Fire”) that came with “Fire and Ice” and I finished encoding Branagh’s “Henry V” as well. I’ve been meaning to watch it for years; as a Shakespeare geek it is in a way my hidden shame that I haven’t yet watched it. Skimming through it also makes me want to either read or watch the 2nd Harry Potter story; I’d prefer to read it, since the movie is mediocre, but the movie at least has K. Branagh in a side role.
The Good, Bad, and the Ugly were rolled into one this evening in a way.
I decided to bake a strawberry rhubarb pie for the department, and if one considers that crust takes 5-10 minutes to make and the filling is just a matter of mixing ingredients (as long as the fruit is thawed!) and pouring them into a crust-lined tin, then all one has to do is sit back and bake the damned thing. It should be easy, and it was until … well …
The bottom crust was not bad but was a bit uneven; I rolled it out between two sheets of wax paper, which is a great shortcut for preparing crusts, but I had used one before, it had lost a little wax, the dough wasn’t quite centered, etc. Still, no big issue. I rolled out the top crust and set it aside; I was contemplating making a lattice crust.
Then I mixed the dry filling ingredients with a fork, dumped them over the fruit and tossed the mixture lightly. It seemed to me that the filling had a bit too much juice so I decided to add another tablespoon or so of cornstarch, and as I brought down the box of starch and began to shake a small bit of it into the bowl it slipped from my hands, hit the counter of spilled, fell to the floor and spilled, and in the end the vast majority of my twice-used box of cornstarch was anywhere but where it should be.
I was pissed. I slammed a cupboard shut. The air pressure forced open the other cupboard door, which cracked the light bulb above the sink, dropping bits of glass to the counter and sink, but — luckily — not into the filling, and so the pie was saved.
I was humbled by the result of my anger, and though I will not be eating humble pie this still reads like a lame parable for Sunday School for Atheists, a Greek Tragedy for Frat Row, and so on.
I pulled out the Dust Buster and sucked up much of the cornstarch but in the end only a sponge could really do the job.
I’m still pissed, I’m beginning a lot of sentences with “I,” and I’m waiting for the pie to finish baking — it has perhaps half an hour to an hour to go. Back to The Rule of Four.
As for music, I finished off Led Zeppelin, listened to an album from Live, another from Leonard Nimoy, and a mix of swing covers and more original music from Lee Press-On and the Nails. I have made it most of the way through Low Fidelity Allstars (“On the Floor At The Boutique”). Thereafter comes an album of Lordi (“The Arockalypse”) and then I move on to “M.”
