sTicKLipS

Apple Cake

2011-05-10T12:31:00.001-07:00

This is a veganized version of one of my mom's favorite recipes. The only alteration necessary was replacing eggs with bananas, which, in my opinion, actually takes the already amazing recipe to a new dimension of deliciousness. The original recipe is for a cake, but I have also baked it in muffin form with great success.

3 small bananas

1 cup oil (I use peanut)

1 cup brown sugar

2 cups flour

1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon

4 cups chopped apples (I recommend Granny Smith--sweeter apples get too mushy when baked)

Optional: ½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans
Optional: Powdered sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350.
With a fork, mash bananas until smooth. Add sugar and oil, mix well.

In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients. Gradually add to wet ingredients, stirring constantly.

Stir in apples and optional nuts.

For cake:

Pour into 13 x 9 inch greased pan.

Bake 45 – 50 minutes, or until knife inserted in center comes out clean.

For muffins:
Pour into lined muffin tin. Bake for about 25 minutes.

Can sprinkle powdered sugar on top when fully cooled.

Record Release Show!

2010-01-20T19:42:00.000-08:00

Friday, Jan. 22
Cameo (inside the Lovin' Cup)
93 N 6th St., Brooklyn

9pm- Milkfat
10pm- Sticklips
11pm- Lily and the Parlour Tricks

Thee bear or Squee Bear.

xOXo
Little Girl Blue

Song of the Lyrebird

2009-11-28T22:22:00.000-08:00

My friend Alex just told me about the lyrebird, a rare Australian creature who can mimic nearly any sound it hears, including man-made objects such as cameras and chainsaws!

As usual, David Attenborough had the details:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y

if I were a bottle of champagne I would be popping myself open

2009-11-01T20:22:00.000-08:00

"It is Like a Horse. It is Not Like Two Foxes" is now available on iTunes, Amazon, and Digstation.

Also, if you know real flesh-and-blood/blush-and-flood me, you can get your very own hard copy of the crazy thing.

The Dream Tense

2009-10-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

Ever since a mean kidney infection forced me to take to my bed for five days last month, I have been determined to bake a cake in my mind.

I remove the encyclopedia-sized recipe book from the shelf above the stove and brush its warped cardboard cover with my fingertips, open it and gingerly leaf through the cracked yellow pages (a few stick together from spots of oil and brown sugar).

There is an Italian proverb: “Illness tells us what we are.” Well, the Italians got it right with the whole pizza thing, and in my limited experience, the same can be said of their proverbs—my tribulations with the renegade left kidney did, in fact, add up to something like revelation. The agonizing pain (hot knives being sharpened on stomach lining/ doubled over screaming like a dying rabbit/ “There was blood in your urine sample”/ clutching a sweating bottle of cranberry juice) coupled with insufferable boredom (anagrams: Abraham Lincoln→ Hairball Conman; Banal, Moral Chin; Anal Ranch Limbo; Clonal Brain Ham) really got me ruminating about bodies—how desperately we depend on so much incompetent tissue!

I select a recipe—some wild, fanciful invention (today it is raspberry mocha cake with double layers of dark chocolate mousse; yesterday, a rich ginger carrot cake with lemony cream cheese frosting, toasted macadamia nuts, and shredded coconut).

Western philosophy has had the brain pinned as the boss of these burdensome bundles of flesh for centuries. But look again, wise reader—look how barren and picked-over the salad bar of human pastimes becomes when we find ourselves bed-ridden; how when one disgruntled organ overturns his cubicle and takes to the streets waving picket signs threatening to burn the building to the ground, the whole operation falls to its knees and begs for mercy. Who is really in charge here?

I take out the bowls and measuring cups and begin to rummage for ingredients.

The goal is to not skip any steps,

Open the cupboard. Find oil, flour, sugar, cocoa, salt, baking powder. Set on counter.

and to never fast-forward.

Lick the spoon, remove cake from oven. No! Go back. Flour, sugar, salt lined up in a row.

I have described this peculiar mental ritual to friends as a “meditational exercise,” which is partially true, but probably more like a clever guise to conceal the true depths of my paranoia. They would never understand—O, the incredulous angles of their tilting heads! O, the faint glimmer of panic darting behind their nervous laughter like a fish in a glass tank!—if I tried to explain that in fact I am preparing for the eventuality of being rendered blind and deaf in an unthinkable accident in which my external sensory organs are mutilated beyond recognition and I am forced to retreat in to a fabricated reality with nothing and no one but my own cerebral capacities to keep me occupied.

No Boy Scout ever planned ahead like I do.

Carefully now… one foot in front of the other, across the tile floor to the oven. Turn the knob to 350. One, two, three, four steps to the refrigerator. Pull the magnetized metal door open; grope for the sunflower-yellow box of margarine, the sticky glass jar of raspberry jam.

But there is no arguing that in a scenario like that, the ability to bake a cake in one’s mind would certainly come in handy—as would, I imagine, experience in the fields of composing songs without instruments, painting without paint, or carrying on conversations with people who aren’t there.

Stirring the thick batter with a long wooden spoon, I wipe a stray wisp of hair from my forehead with the back of my hand.

The big pay-off, of course, will be sensuously wrapping my teeth around a heavenly forkful of warm, gooey chocolate… licking residual raspberry from my lips, eyelids sinking, mouth relaxing into an orgasmic smile with hints of buttercream in the corners… momentarily savoring the kind of divine happiness generally reserved for the well-dressed, too-thin women in Yoplait commercials.

Raise the fork slowly to my lips… Wrong! Go back.

I still haven’t made it past 1/2 tsp. of baking soda—it is impossible not to skip to the good parts!—but I persevere, like a stunned sparrow repeatedly slamming in to a window, chasing the dream that with that glorious bite of cake, at long last, the curse of corporeal being will be broken; the chains that now bind my happiness inexorably to the whims of fickle flesh will magically crumble. “Total Organ Independence”: that is my campaign slogan, and I think it is an admirable one. Who said we need eyes and ears, or legs, hands, genitals, or left kidneys to have a good time? Our heads came fully equipped with the most extraordinary state-of-the-art entertainment system ever invented. Limbless, senseless existence could be a vivid cinematic masterpiece experienced in real time, a never-ending lucid dream.

…Lucid dreaming, incidentally, is a skill I have absolutely no desire to develop—as a neurotic over-thinker, I fail to see the appeal in extending my daylight anxieties to the precious few hours in which we are allowed to abdicate our decision-making thrones; I like to dream for the same reason an overbearing business executive might discreetly slip out of the office every other Tuesday to a Dungeon to have his nipples twisted by a girl in a leather bathing suit—yet one that I take great interest in hearing others talk about.

My friend Ed is an habitual lucid dreamer. “You gotta be careful,” he explained to me in his sleepy southern drawl (odd, since he is from Albany) “‘cause you have to know that you’re dreaming, but you can’t be too conscious or you’ll wake up.” When Ed is driving, sometimes he does a quick double take at a road sign, snapping his neck back like it’s spring-loaded and firmly blinking his eyes open and shut three times. When questioned about this, he explained, much to my alarm, that it is a test to see if he’s dreaming: “If you look back and the writing on the sign hasn’t changed or melted or anything, it means you’re awake.” Since that conversation, I have never felt quite comfortable driving with Ed.

I would never want to control my dreams, if for no other reason than my tremendous affection for nonsensical excretions of the subconscious. Our brains are publishing houses that receive a thousand submissions from unknown authors every day. The volume of larval ideas that spontaneously generate and die inside our skulls every second is so staggering that we could not possibly examine every one—so generally, if a thought does not come neatly packaged and prefaced with a logical cover letter, the editor-in-chief of Brain Magazine rejects it before skimming the first word. Too often, I suspect, real genius is crushed to death at the bottom of the slush pile.
So I have taken it upon myself to cultivate a private garden of nonsense grown from the ethereal dream-thoughts that float up from that hazy blue space between waking and dreaming like the space between my bed and wall which I often fall in to in the middle of the night leaving my thighs and ribs constantly covered in bruises like the discolored skin of overripe fruit—intangible and strange, exquisitely delicate visions that dance away like ghosts of butterflies the moment I swing down my net.
The trick is catching them. Dream-thoughts run scared like piss-drenched alley cats the moment you become aware of them, just like Ed cautioned. I am a hunter seeking elusive prey—a tigress with padded paws and unblinking yellow eyes, ears pricked, acute senses electrically charged with hunger. I walk into the mist.

The irrational apparitions I seek are all around us, but they hide in holes underground or laugh down from high tree branches most of the day. The patient dream catcher needs only wait for the fog of slumber to roll in; at this strange hour, all the stirring brainthings creep out in to the open to feed.

My first fruitful catch was the night I awoke abruptly from a dream as though an alarm had gone off, a lingering image of two chatting women imprinted on my eyelids like a developing Polaroid, their nostrils flared in annoyance at having their conversation so rudely cut short. They were speaking in the dream tense! my brain screamed urgently.

They were speaking in the dream tense: a language that only exists in dreams—a universal tongue that transcends all borders of geography, culture, and time, tapping in to some ancient archetypal understanding. I found this thought so profoundly beautiful that I could not fall back asleep all night.

(Interestingly, I recently found out that in Turkish, there actually is a dream tense, although not in the sense that I had originally envisioned it. Writer Orhan Pamuk explains in an interview, “In Turkish we have a special tense that allows us to distinguish hearsay from what we’ve seen with our own eyes: when we are relating dreams, fairy stories or past events we could not have witnessed, we use this tense.")

And just the other night I captured a stunning dream-thought in the middle of having half-conscious sex with my boyfriend. Delirious with exhaustion, sighing and fumbling slowly in the pale hours of early dawn, it appeared: What key are we in? At first I did not think twice about it, but the dream-thought persisted: D major with two sharps? But that didn’t seem right. Something more complicated…E major? Could that be right? B major? No, too many sharps now—too prickly.

I almost laughed aloud. The harder I tried not the think about it, the faster this inexplicable inspiration snowballed. Tempo—Adagio? Allegro con spirito? Naturally, the time changed in places. Perhaps we could be more aptly described in several movements: “Concerto for Girl and Boy in A Major, with Optional Bedspring Accompaniment. First Movement: Largo Sostenuto…”

You may have missed the hypocrisy of my aforementioned desire to be independent from my own organs juxtaposed with my present involvement in a committed relationship. But, as I never miss an opportunity to highlight my own ideological shortcomings, let me now illuminate this egregious failure for you.

My friend Jim’s mother has a three-legged-dog named Frank, an absurd abomination of nature only slightly larger than a squirrel and covered in white ringlets of ridiculous hair, with two vacant black eyes taking up half of his skull and below them a tiny snarling hole full of needle teeth. Jim hates Frank.

“Hey Frank,” Jim gesticulates with a manic grin, waving his hands in front of the confused creature’s cross-eyed gaze. “Fuck you!”

Frank wiggles his nub of a tail and whines hopefully.

Frank the Three-Legged Dog has become my all-purpose relationship metaphor. He is the girlfriend I never want to be. He waddles frantically in your wake, wheezing desperately, demanding physical contact.

“Your dog has emotional issues,” I told Jim with genuine concern the first time I visited his house, while Frank gaped up at us with frightening intensity.

“Have some self-respect, friend,” I directed to the anxious fur ball that had arranged itself in a needy puddle around my feet.

Relationships breed monsters like Frank. There is nothing worse in the world than feeling like a helpless half, and that is precisely what we are brainwashed into believing: that we are a pathetic heap of missing shoes, a sad army of Lefts flip-flopping lopsidedly through life, desperately searching for the Rights that will balance our awkward, inadequate gaits.

“Fuck you, Frank,” Jim coos. The pitiful wretch stares back at him with undying devotion.

My continuous struggle with mental cake-baking is all I can do to keep my inner Frank at bay. When I take that bite, I tell myself, not only will I be free of the need for my body, but for other people, too. In my ideal state, people come and go constantly—I am standing in a river with my pants rolled up around my ankles; they are the fish brushing past my legs, speeding cars on a highway, a silent roar. Every now and then I reach down and grab hold of one, watch its body wriggle and squirm in my hands and think, "My god, you are alive. I can feel your heart beating, lungs expanding, veins pumping warmth—I can kiss you; I can break you; you are all mine." Then I get bored and put it down, or occasionally it fights its way out of my grasp—and I am standing in a river with my pants rolled up around my ankles.

------------

(First written for a Personal Essay class at Bard College, Nov. 1, 2008)

Radish Head

2009-07-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

Girl/Boy

2009-06-21T22:02:00.000-07:00

In late August last year, I was informed that I have about forty tiny cysts on each of my ovaries. The ultrasound looked like craters on the moon.

This was conclusive evidence of the latest addition to my already impressive collection of medical maladies: a little gem called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome—PCOS to its friends. The typical outward symptoms of PCOS primarily include morbid obesity, excessive body hair, and disfiguring cystic acne. Consequently, every ultrasound technician, radiologist, gynecologist, and endocrinologist I have encountered on my most recent medical odyssey, along with every too-chatty nurse and nosy office receptionist, has exclaimed, “Oh!”—upon looking up from their charts and noticing my average, relatively unafflicted form—“You’re a lucky one!” Then these so-called professionals beam at me expectantly, as though the revelatory news that I do not have hair on my nipples should have inspired me to break out confetti and noise-makers and dance an impromptu jig on the examining table.

All the gruesome side effects of PCOS can be blamed on a basic hormonal imbalance. Affected females produce an excess of androgenic hormones—a fact that I find interesting, considering that if a stranger were to raid my closet, he might reasonably conclude that a prostitute was sharing storage space with an eighty-year-old man. Leopard-print silk slips mingle with argyle golf sweaters; black lace peeks out coquettishly from under piles of threadbare cotton knee socks; a pink feather boa tickles an extra-large plaid suit jacket; a dazzling pair of gold stiletto twins turn away in disgust from the scuffed brown loafers moping at their side. I am Cyndi Lauper one day and Buster Keaton the next

Obviously, it would be erroneous to attribute my eclectic wardrobe to cracked-out hormones alone—but purely as a matter of symbolism, the fact that my ovaries are oozing testosterone did not come as much of a surprise. In the second grade, I solemnly instructed my teacher that although my mother had introduced me as “Johanna,” I would please be henceforth referred to as “just Jo.” In a long-running imagination game in which my little brother pretended to be a horse, I tacked on an “e” to this abbreviation to assume the role of Horsie’s owner, “Joe,” a John Arbuckle-type with serious midlife anxieties, including the futile search for a woman’s love. When I wore a dress to school one day in fifth grade, the entire class erupted in chaos, exclaiming, “Oh my God! Jo, you’re a girl!” and, “Whose dress is that?”

And somehow it just seemed natural to audition for all the male roles in the middle school plays. Once, I even won the part: Professor Bloodworth, a teacher/vampire secretly plotting to drink the blood of his students, to my hungry 11-year-old eyes, was the breakthrough role of a lifetime.

“Don’t worry,” grunted the director, a doughy middle-aged woman who looked like she was perpetually giving birth, “we can just make Professor Bloodworth a lady.”
“No!” I shouted adamantly. Despite the poor woman’s protests, on opening night I intrepidly donned an ill-fitting Dracula wig and dropped my voice two octaves to stand before a parent-packed auditorium and deliver with awe-inspring gusto such masterfully penned lines as, “You kids are driving me batty!”

Innocent memories such as these, like old Halloween costumes buried at the bottom of your closet (Bert the Chimney Sweep, Edward Scissorhands, and John Lennon, to name a few), when spread over the course of twenty years are easily ignored, but, when dusted off and laid out side by side, start to look like something pretty significant. Maybe they were obscured at first by a veil of markedly more normative items (a princess, a fairy, a mermaid) and a host of innocently gender-neutral ones (a giant jellyfish, a lion, a carrot)—or maybe you just never really go in your closet anyway. Maybe there are spiders in there, and it smells funny.

It’s not that I’ve ever really thought I was a boy, but I’ve never felt like much of a girl, either—and since it’s just so irresistibly convenient, I’m going to go ahead and link that, too, to my recently diagnosed condition. The most notable symptom of this handy philosophical springboard otherwise known as PCOS is an irregular or nonexistent menstrual cycle. In my case, I got one sorry excuse for a period when I was fifteen, and never again. A doctor with clammy hands and stale-smelling breath zipped up my pants and wrote me a prescription for birth control. I took one little yellow pill every night for over three years, and bled like clockwork.

But last December, having read some alarming internet reports linking the synthetic hormones in birth control to ovarian cancer, death, etc., and seeing as I had no sex life to speak of, I decided the pill was more trouble than it was worth. But as soon as I stopped assaulting my body with estrogen supplements, I’m sure you can guess what else stopped.

Initially, I was not troubled in the slightest by the loss. The online birth control community agreed, “It takes up to three months for your body to adjust after stopping the pill.” So I didn’t worry. And three periodless months went by. And I still didn’t worry. Truth be told, I was more than happy to forget all about it—I was free! Free from the bloody shackles of womanhood!

I know plenty of women who would have felt differently in my situation—women who cherish their period as a cosmic symbol of feminine power. I guess I missed the boat on the whole lunar calendar/Mother Goddess/uterus worship thing. My female anatomy has never felt like an integral part of my identity—the odd lumps and curves of my body are not my own. All I know is once, you could have drawn a picture of me with nothing but I’s and T’s; now I am all S’s, B’s, and J’s. I don’t know who can be held accountable for this unwanted metamorphosis—what magician was it who snuck into my bedroom one night and waved his hand, “Piff! Poof! Presto Change-o!” so that the next morning I crawled out of bed like a stunned caterpillar, astonished by its new wings? To this day I regard the mysterious contours of my flesh with the detached fascination of a scientist—when I poke and prod at the fat thighs and curvaceous calves extending from my shorts, I see so much meat! When and how were my skinny green bean legs transformed in to the juicy drumsticks on a Thanksgiving turkey?

This does not mean that at times I have not enjoyed and even flaunted my feminine assets—hence, the aforementioned silk, heels, and leopard prints inhabiting my wardrobe. Although it’s certainly nothing I’m proud of, it didn’t take long for post-pubescent me to notice that when you’re a little blond girl in this silly world, with a teeny sacrifice of dignity here and there, life can be easy as peas. It felt like a super-power—I could casually sidle up to an unsuspecting New York City bouncer and say, “Hey… it’s my birthday,” and suddenly a sweaty hand was pressing an all-access pass into mine. When accompanied by a few well-timed giggles and hair-flips, this line once got a friend and me into a sold-out Modest Mouse concert.

I was in awe of my newfound talent. But like Uncle Ben once cautioned Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.” But I, like Spiderman when he found the Symbiote, quickly fell prey to the bloodsucking, seductive forces of evil—the high-gloss TV wondergirls and their nonexistent pores, their skinny thighs, their voluminous hair. As my teen magazine subscriptions piled up, my skirts got shorter, my eyeliner thicker, and my remaining shred of dignity smaller. The time it took me to get ready for school in the morning rocketed from approximately zero minutes to forty-five. It was disturbing, but irresistible, to be stared at.

I have known girls who like girls and girls who like boys and girls and boys who became girls and girls who became boys and girls who say they are gay men trapped in girls’ bodies. But I have always known that none of these definitions applies to me. I also know that, in comparison, my mild confusion is nothing newsworthy—but maybe that’s what makes it all the more worth thinking about. Maybe no one is Girl or Boy the way the clean-cut executives cranking out magazines and advertisements and TV shows want us to be.

After all, the notion that one little chromosome could determine our favorite color, how often we cry at the ends of movies, our predisposition to bake cupcakes, is fundamentally preposterous. I will go out on a limb and claim with all certainty that there is no genetic link between how much we like comic books, how we style our hair, whether we like to wear skirts, and how we put on chapstick (boys furtively smear it on as fast as they can, concealing the tube inside their balled fist because they’re harboring some inexplicable third-grade insecurities about being taunted for “wearing lipstick," whereas with girls, it’s an elaborate theatrical production: they pucker their lips into a plump pout, then sensuously twist off the cap and glide the stick slowly over their lower lip, pulling it back from the teeth just a little; then with a finger they spread it across the upper lip, then kiss the glossy lips together and *sMaCk!*. Good lord. Just put on the fucking chapstick).

The superficial distinctions between male and female are so arbitrary, and the great lengths to which advertising companies go to capitalize on these alleged differences is just staggering. Take shaving cream: a gender-neutral and 100% commercial substance. Both women and men shave (although neither need to, of course) and they use the same foamy substance to help them do it—but hold up a bottle of men’s shaving cream and a bottle of women’s, and you would never suspect that the product is in fact identical in every way. One is a black bottle with a neon blue stripe and bold, racy font reading “Gillette FUSION. STEALTH EDITION. HYDRA GEL”—notice the resemblance to a car chase in a James Bond movie. Now the other: a curvy, sexy pink bottle with a swirling cursive letters reading, “Skintimate. Moisturizing shave cream. Vitamin E. Sensitive Skin. With Soothing Aloe.” Gee, it’s so tender and soft, you just want to take it home and make it cook you a steak!

These absurd notions of gender, as well as the real people we see walking around every day embodying them, are as manufactured as bottles of shaving cream. This realization, or something like it, is why my polycystic ovaries and I have recently traded in the feather boas and pantsuits for loose corduroys and simple t-shirts. Eyeliner and hair-flipping is a thing of the past. My new plan is to exist as something like a giant jellyfish, floating through life translucently and more or less androgynously. “Girl” or “Boy” does not fit into my plans, for I feel no particular allegiance to either sex—or maybe I have an equal attachment to both. Or maybe I have realized the absurdity of trying to make such a distinction in the first place. I’m like a black and white cookie. It’s a sort of Taoist approach, you know—a little yin, a little yang—yeah, I’m in tune with the rhythms of the universe. Don’t act like you’re not impressed.

Two highly Informative videos (both pertaining to womanly parts)

2009-06-20T07:01:00.000-07:00

....

Just by the by and what not...

1) The incomparably babe-alicious Amelia Marini was kind enough to share with me this video, entitled "Extreme Breast Feeding," which I hope you will find as eye-opening as I do.

2) Here is a news story concerning "Orgasmic Births" a wondrous phenomenon of which I was unaware until watching this report.

....

wRPI video

2009-04-12T07:10:00.000-07:00

Hello friends and strangers!

If you missed our performance on wRPI last week, have no fear! It is now available in video form:
http://www.rpitv.org/productions/2009/04/08/WNL-Sticklips

Ch-ch-check it.

To Make an Omelet, Etc.

2009-03-29T20:14:00.000-07:00

One month ago, I fell off a skateboard and broke the fourth metatarsel of my left foot (Anagram: Fractured fourth metatarsel= Cart halt! Ram, rut! Toe suffered). I would never go so far as to say I was skateboarding, but I was, for some unfathomable reason, on a skateboard—for all of maybe three seconds, until I wasn’t anymore.

My big toe and its tallest neighbor have maintained their ability to wiggle as they please, but the last three cannot be persuaded to follow suit. They huddle together, still dumbfounded from shock, or perhaps organized in silent protest against their violent mistreatment. The isolated movement of just the first two toes looks unsettling and unnatural—impossible, I am fairly certain, for an unbroken foot. Feel free to try.

I was hopelessly awkward on crutches at first, and the underarm chafing was unbearable (the secret to avoiding this unpleasant state of affairs, as I eventually surmised, is to not rest on your armpits at all, instead supporting your weight through your hands). I always had a sneaking suspicion that my disgraceful lack of upper body strength would get the better of me one day—my inability to open a pickle jar, let alone do a single pull up, has been a life-long source of shame—and it certainly did. At the end of every day for the first two weeks, I would crawl out of my clothes, stiff and sore, whimpering like a wounded dog, every joint, every muscle aching… hands, shoulders, neck, arms, leg, hips, back: a clunky, clanging bundle of broken parts. I would sit on the cold, hard floor of my college dorm room and gingerly peel off my jeans, groaning in misery as I lifted my arms slightly to shimmy out of a shirt. Then, naked and grateful, I would collapse into bed and heave a deep sigh of relief: “Thank God it’s over.”

But you have to tear muscle to build it, or so I’m told, and now, after a month of torture, I swing through the air with the grace and speed of a gorilla gliding on her powerful forearms. It is remarkable—I never would have taken the initiative to go to the gym or anything drastic like that, but thanks to being crippled, I have developed the triceps I thought I would never have.
In commemoration of this miracle, I have started a list:

The Silver Linings of Crutches

1. Number of push-ups today: 32
Previous record: 5

2. The look on people’s faces when you poke them from five feet away and quickly look like nothing happened.

3. Conquering my phobia of elevators.

4. Instant context for social interaction. I have had more conversations with strangers in one month than probably the rest of my life. When I go out, people buy me drinks. I have never looked so approachable.

5. Losing five pounds by eating only what I can carry out of the dining hall with my teeth.

6.“Here, let me get that for you.” “Can I take your bag?” “Do you need help with that?” “Let me carry your lunch, dear.” “I’ll get that door for you.”

7. Newfound appreciation for the many varied feats of FEET:
walking, spelunking, hopscotch, climbing trees, showering normally, skipping, out-running a bear, every sport, tap dancing, nervous pacing, jumping rope, DANCING, playing drums, harp, double bass, piano, etc., leaping over puddles, yoga, roller derbies, jazzercise, loping, stripping, swimming, playing footsie, riding a bike, leaving footprints, bowling, marching into battle, helping other crippled people, squashing grapes in a barrel, jumping for joy, receiving foot rubs, karate, pretending to be a penguin, tightrope walking, trapeze art, foot modeling, hiking, driving, diving, loitering, acting (unless you play someone without feet)

Actually fluffy vegan pancakes--a miracle!!

2009-03-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

I thought I was doomed to a future of disappointing, rubbery, flat-as-a-pancake vegan pancakes. But praise the LORD for this recipe, which I found on post punk kitchen and tailored to my own purposes below:

BANANA CHOCOLATE CHIP PANCAKES

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 cups soymilk
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon oil (I used peanut, but canola or vegetable will do)
3 small-med bananas
1/2c vegan dark chocolate chips (I used Ghiradelli)

For topping:
Vegan margarine (try Earth Balance! So good)
1/2c Pure maple syrup
1/2c Fresh strawberries, blueberries, or sliced bananas
1/4tsp cinnamon

Directions
Sift together dry ingredients.

In a separate bowl, mix soymilk and vinegar. Let sit for five minutes.

Mash bananas with a fork or in a blender until very smooth. Mix in other wet ingredients. Pour wet into dry. Do not overmix.

Grease a large nonstick skillet. Get the pan nice and hot, then lower the heat to medium-low. Ladle the batter onto the skillet and cook until bubbles appear on surface and undersides are golden brown, 1 to 2 minutes. Flip pancakes with a spatula and cook until golden brown and cooked through, 1 to 2 minutes more. Transfer to a large plate and loosely cover with foil to keep warm, then make more pancakes, brushing skillet with oil for each batch.

For maple syrup topping:
In a microwave safe bowl, combine sliced fruit or berries with maple syrup and cinnamon. Microwave on high for 30 seconds.
Spread margarine on pancakes and smother those babies with hot berries. YEAH!

Pesto Tofu Tomato Sandwich

2009-03-22T13:34:00.001-07:00

In commemoration of the lady spring, whose graceful fingers are just poking up through the soil, here is a vegan version of the best sandwich I've ever eaten, which involved fresh slices of mozzarella cheese. I am delighted to announce that none of its original deliciousness was lost in translation.

Ingredients:
1 package lite firm tofu
1 ripe tomato
1 batch easy vegan pesto (recipe below)
Hummus (optional)
Bread of choice

Easy Vegan Pesto:
* 1 1/2 cups fresh basil
* 1/3 cup olive oil
* 1 cup walnuts
* 3-5 cloves garlic
* Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients except olive oil in food processor. Blend til smooth. Add olive oil and blend again.

CONSTRUCTING THE SANDWICH:
1. Toast two pieces of your bread of choice (I used a lovely fresh ciabatta, but no doubt a nice multigrain would prove quite satisfactory).
2. Spread both sides with a generous dollop of the incredible pesto you have just made.
*For extra creaminess, I highly recommend adding a thick layer of your favorite hummus on top.
3. Thinly slice tomato, arrange artistically on top of spreads.
4. Cut thin slices of tofu and press between two napkins to drain extra water. Place on top of tomato.

Oooh baby. You have just made yourself one tasty little sandwich.

I watched a man cut down a tree.

2009-02-27T12:30:00.000-08:00

I watched a man cut down a tree.

Giant chunks of what was obviously flesh fell with sickening, earth-shaking thuds.

The crane stretched out its flimsy steel neck, preposterous.

The growl of the chainsaw chewing through the years; the vomitous spew of sawdust; the inaudible yet piercing shriek as his hungry machine deftly carved through toothsome rings of history—the rush of air that was time sprinting backwards, clocks unwinding as this little man brandished his machine.

And then there lay before me that internal spiral, so like a fingerprint. Or a marbled slice of ham. Hearty slabs of fresh white pine meat, blood-sap trickling from clean wounds.

And it was my job to clean up, to load the truck.

Why?
“It’s sick.”

This midget God pointed his finger and made it so.
Down fell a century, at least, of life.

Those whom we call Trees, whose beauty we breathe, have long been forgotten, like grandparents we never write letters to.

One must admire their rootedness—how they stand like raised hairs growing from the follicles of the earth, while little We scurry freely like lice, dwarfed by those imposing figures who tower tall and erect as skyscrapers (but of course it was the other way around, for that is all we do: we mimick, we mutilate. We climb, with saws and rancor—We Came, We Sawed, We Conquered! But never saw—they couldn’t see. We never sow the seeds; they sawed. They said, “It’s sick,” and so they sawed [not saved] and David slayed Goliath with a simple stone).

I watched a man cut down a tree, defying what should have been impossible odds.
A tree so tall, a man so small.
Who or what is this man?
Man exhales a thick poison cloud, shits metric tons of sewage, pisses hormones into the drinking water... Man is all of us together, and when you are a part of Man, the very act of existence is an act of destruction.

There is just no way around it.

I did not weild the saw, I never made a cut—but I stood watching. Tilting my head back, squinting in the sunlight, I watched the whole thing.

And it was my job to clean up, to load the truck.

recovered notebook

2008-12-26T23:09:00.000-08:00

unearthed in a massive room-cleaning crusade: one small green notebook, previously presumed dead, documenting my most recent summer's travels. found inside (below): covertly executed pen sketches of some of the disheveled characters occupying the zoo-like waiting room of a Barcelona Hospital where I sat for five hours awaiting treatment. never in my days have i seen such carnage! women with their eyes rolling in their heads praying to Jesús, ancient men with skin like cracked earth holding their heads in their withered hands, shaking and sobbing-- in the "back hallway," a pale, pudding-like woman rolling on her back howling like a vengeful ghost, another missing both her legs wheeled in on blood-soaked cotton sheets. never in my days.

I Don't Know What is Going on Here...

2008-12-24T10:45:00.000-08:00

...but I'm pretty sure it's CRAZY.

Foucault's panopticon
http://cartome.org/panopticon1.htm
"Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers."

Double Slit Experiment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovytOBSKV8U
"The electron decided to act differently, as though it were aware that it was being watched"

Sartre's Power of the Gaze:
http://thomaslcummins.tripod.com/id124.html
"In my solitude, I rule the space around me but when my environment is intruded upon by another person I have to share it with this Other in an indeterminate manner. The freedom of the Other destabilizes my own freedom and disintegrates the preconceptions I had previously existed in. As a human being, I naturally tend to objectify the world around me but I must also presume that the Other also objectifies the world as well, including me in it. I have now become an object in the Other's vision and, because I realize this innately, I have become an object even in my own opinion. I am imprisoned in the Other's vision and, therefore, pass judgment on myself as a mere object. This causes a shameful feeling similar to if you were to spy through a keyhole and became surprised to see another eyeball staring back at you."

As soon as your back is turned, all your toys come to life.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

...

2008-12-24T09:15:00.000-08:00

This is the first and currently only installment of a project inspired by my comprehensive body of creative work from age two to five--by far the most prolific years of my life. Primarily consisting of crayolas on paper, these masterpieces boldly address some of the paramount social issues of our time, from three-legged unicorns to the exploitation of demented dog-men in the custodial services.

Hundreds of these drawings have been preserved in a moldy cardboard box in my mother's closet. I'm now embarking on the task of translating them into large paintings, since my shriveled old brain (like the discarded rind of a juiced orange) is no longer capable of the genius my 2-year-old self was.

An Advisable Way to Warm Up Yer Belly on a Frigid Winter Solstice Night

2008-12-21T15:42:00.000-08:00

Happy solstice, little wanderers. What are you looking for?
If it's the best vegan chili this side of Kentucky (probably anywhere, really, since there are no vegans in Kentucky), you've come to the right place. I made a pot of this madness last night along with twice baked potatoes* to much critical acclaim from my carnivorous family.

"I can't believe there's not steak in my mouth right now" Chili

Ingredients:
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
28 oz. crushed tomatoes
19 oz. vegetable broth
1 Tbsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
15 oz. kidney beans, drained
15 oz. pinto beans, drained
1/2 cup corn (fresh if available, but frozen is perfectly acceptable)

Directions:
1. Heat oil in a large pot. Add onion, bell pepper, and garlic and sauté until slightly browned.
2. Add all remaining ingredients except for beans and corn. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. The chili will appear very watery at first, but do not be alarmed! It will boil down.
3. Add beans. Simmer for another 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add corn and simmer for a final 10 minutes, or until desired thickness is achieved. Serve atop potato, topped with shredded vegan cheese or better-than-sour cream, if desired.

*Twice Baked Potatoes*

Ingredients:
2 large baked potatoes
2 Tbsp soy creamer
2 Tbsp Earth Balance margarine
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp salt
Fresh chives for garnish

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Scoop out the insides of the baked potatoes with a spoon, leaving the skins intact to create shells. In a large bowl, combine the potato with all other ingredients except for chives. Blend with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy, adding more creamer if necessary.
3. Spoon the potato mixture back into the skins. Place on a baking tray and cook at 350 for 10 minutes or until the tops are lightly browned.