The Move ePlush Won't Let You See

Last night Hardingfele and Tailor came over and we filmed my sad excuse for a Christmas "tree." Here it is:

Tailor and I have been making movies on ePlush; my little creatures Sylvia the Porcupine and Bellamy the Horse love directing movies, but they are getting very frustrated with the ePlush censorship. I can understand that ePlush would block them from using cuss words, but foreign phrases? Numbers? Where's the problem there?

For example, my first attempt at a movie was two little creatures, a cat and a dog, doing that old dialogue that goes: "That's life. What's life? A magazine. How much? Two dollars. Too much! That's life! What's life? A magazine!" I ask you, my faithful readers, is this controversial?? Apparently ePlush thinks so, because among the phrases I was not allowed to put into the dialogue were the following: "C'est la vie. Two dollars. Five bucks. A couple of big ones. Five clams." It did let me put "Everything you've got" for the amount Life costs, which is an interesting existential observation - certainly life takes everything you have! - but doesn't really make sense for the cost of a lousy magazine. In that spirit, I now present an ePlush movie: what Sylvia and Bellamy are allowed to say by ePlush, and the dialogue they really want to write in brackets. (Richard Bonomo suggested I post an ePlush movie to YouTube, and when I asked if it were truly YouTube-worthy, he replied, "What isn't?")

The scene: an adorable urban wasteland full of darling graffiti and button-cute rundown factories. Funky music plays in the background as two cartoon animals, say a llama and an axolotl, dance while wearing huge smiles and brightly colored, vaguely retro clothes. (ePlush lets you choose one of five emotions for your actors, so their emotions can run the gamut from A to E.) The movie is titled "We're So Happy!" ["The Greatest Story Never Told"]










Scene 1:
A: I love to dance! [Why are we dancing to this noise?]
L: Me too! [I don't know. I despise reggaeton!]

Scene 2:
A: I made you a cookie. [I bought you a drink.]
L: Chocolate chip! My favorite! [Whoa! How much tequila is in this!?]

Scene 3: (close-up of Axolotl)
A: Will you come to my birthday party on Saturday? [How about a Happy Birthday shag?]

Scene 4: (close-up of Llama)
L: Yay! I love parties! [No! I detest Virgo men!]

Scene 5:
A: We'll play lots of games! [You should have thought of that before you married me.]
L: I'll help you blow up balloons! [WHAT?? When did this happen??]

Scene 6: (close-up of Axolotl)
A: We'll eat cake and ice cream! [Have you forgotten last night in Vegas, when you lost at Texas Hold 'Em?]

Scene 7: (close-up of Llama)
L: We'll have so much fun! [But what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and this is Altoona!]

Scene 8:
A: I can hardly wait! [Sorry - it's a legal document in all 50 states.]
L: I know just what to get you for a present! [Bugger. OK then, back to your - I mean, our - place and we'll rut like the animals we are.]

Scene 9:
A: Yay! [Yay!]
L: Yay! [C'est la vie.]

Dialogue written by Sylvia the Porcupine and Bellamy the Horse.

Here is the original, edited movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNStmdf3EnM&feature=channel_page

And the movie Sylvia and Bellamy made to protest:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilh_qFYJv8Y&feature=channel_page


Famous Hat

By Popular Demand: Cassata, the Sicilian Wedding Cake!

By popular demand of my #1 reader, Hardingfele, I am posting my recipe for Cassata, a Sicilian Wedding Cake, although I remain both non-Sicilian and unmarried. (That's OK because Hardingfele was born a Russian Jew, went through an Evangelical Christian stage, and is now a Unitarian, so she can celebrate whatever she wants this holiday season.) My mother (who is also not Sicilian but is married) always made a cassata for Christmas, so I made one once for the annual Christmas Bonomo Bash, and it was such a hit that I have had to make one ever since. (One year when Rich forgot to buy eggnog, I had to make that as well and have had to ever since, so I will post that recipe too.)

Cassata

1 pound cake
mini chocolate chips
one 15 oz container of ricotta cheese (the original recipe calls for a pound, but the containers come in 15 oz, and the heck if I am buying another container for one measly ounce!)
Bacardi Gold rum (I would not recommend using anything cheaper, but feel free to use something more top-shelf if you like)
orange juice concentrate
TSP vanilla extract
TBS heavy cream
1.5 cups sugar
16 oz semisweet chocolate
2 sticks UNSALTED butter (that is, half a pound)
3/4 cup of strong coffee

First you trim the edges off the pound cake and snack on them as you make the cassata. (I don't care how you acquire the pound cake; I usually get a frozen one, but if you want to make it yourself, be my guest.) Then slice the pound cake in thirds horizontally. Then you mix together the ricotta cheese, the heavy cream, the vanilla, the sugar, a TBS of rum, and a TBS of orange juice concentrate. (Or two TBS orange liqueur, like Gran Marnier; I believe the original recipe calls for that, and my mother never put any booze in hers, but I recommend spiking it with something.) Put in some mini chocolate chips (officially 2 oz but I just toss some in until it looks like the right amount), mix them into this filling, and then spread it between the layers of pound cake. Now stick it in the fridge for at least two hours. (In northern climates you can also set it outside on cold days, if the fridge is full of other food.)

Put the semisweet chocolate in a pan, or better yet a double boiler, over just enough heat to melt it. Pour the strong coffee over it, then melt the butter in bit by bit. Once it is all blended, let it cool enough so that it isn't so runny, then use it to frost the cassata. Then it has to sit for another two hours minimum. I HIGHLY recommend making this the day before you plan to eat it; I always make it on Christmas Eve.

Eggnog

(N.B.: this is the party-sized serving. It makes a LOT of eggnog.)

One dozen eggs
pint of half and half
pint of heavy cream
quart of milk (Richard Bonomo recommends whole milk, not just for eggnog but always)
Bacardi Gold rum (see above)
nutmeg
powdered cloves

First separate the eggs. (This is a pretty labor-intensive recipe.) In a HUGE punch bowl, mix the yolks with the milk, half and half, as much rum as you want (I generally put in about a cup and a half, to kill all the nasties in the raw eggs), and maybe a TSP or so each of nutmeg and cloves. Then, beat the egg whites until they form fluffy peaks. Beat the heavy cream until it is fluffy as well. Carefully fold in the egg whites and the heavy cream. Enjoy. Serves tons of people.

Leaving the Christ in Christmas

Hello, all 3.68 of my faithful readers! How was your Christmas? Mine was a typical Famous Hat Christmas, which is another way of saying it was WONDERFUL! As usual, I sang at my church, then the Lutheran Church, then there was fruit soup and champagne at the Lutheran choir director's house, and then I fell into bed at 3:30 and dragged myself back out of it at 7:30 to go to Christmas Day Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety. For some reason, our choir director there decided that what we really need to do every year after a long night of singing is extremely difficult music, so we sang the glorious "Hodie" by Sweelinck with one or two people on a part (since it has two soprano parts - hey, at least for once I get to sing in my own range!). Not only that, but hardly anyone was at Mass in the morning, so we were singing long after everyone had gone through line for Communion and the priest had sat back down. That's OK, they can spend that time in prayer. I did think it was amusing that this year we also sang the Praetorius "Psallite Unigenite" for Offertory because when you can barely think in English, why not sing in both Latin AND German, a language I can barely pronounce while working at full brain power!

I suppose it was fitting that we sang a macaronic piece, since we had lasagne for dinner and that's something like macaroni. As usual I made my cassata and a huge bowl of eggnog and, as always, both were well-received. Rich Bonomo hosted dinner, as always, and as always the tree got decorated Christmas Day. Like last year, as I was driving to his house on Christmas Eve, I saw one of my crazy neighbors had thrown away a perfectly beautiful tree, so I rescued it (with some help from my kind nextdoor neighbors) and brought it to Rich's. His guest Mr. Why, who used to be his roommate, then put all the decorations on the tree before putting on the lights, so to this very moment it remains unlit. He also decorated in blocks, so that all the silver ornaments were at the top, all the gold ones were in the center area, the blue ones were in the lower left, and the red ones were in the lower right. This is a typical maneuver on the part of Mr. Why, and it had the added delightful effect of totally baffling my Archirritant, who apparently did not realize that Mr. Why had done this on purpose. When she told him that he should not have the colors segregated like that, another party goer noted that it could be the George Wallace Christmas Tree. As always, my Archirritant with her 180 IQ was the only one who didn't get that joke; not that she doesn't know who George Wallace is, or his connection to segregation, but she seriously is missing some kind of humor gene so that the only things she finds funny are anecdotes she relates that leave the rest of us bemused. This is what happens when someone tells a joke: everyone else laughs, she waits a beat to make sure we are laughing, and then she laughs raucously. (She is generally raucous, and rapacious too! She's like an entire flock of macaws stripping a pecan grove of fruit, except that she is not in any way lovely to look at.) Sometimes, just to add to her ridiculousness, she tries to prove that she understands what is so funny, thus proving that in fact she doesn't get the joke at all. A classic example from a Christmas past: her ex-husband, who is an atheist Jew (but also comes to Rich's house every Christmas - seriously, I couldn't make this up if I tried!) made a crack about his greasy thumb, and I laughed, so Archirritant laughed and said, "That's funny because Ex-Mr. AI bakes a lot!" Now let me just state that Ex-Mr. AI is a FABULOUS baker, as evidenced by the cake he made for AI's birthday per my post on that subject. (The word I hear from Kathbert and Anna Banana 2 is that AI hoarded this cake, after she had made a big fuss about not being able to eat it, and didn't let anyone have seconds so that she could take home what was left - nearly half the cake - and eat it herself!) Anyway, back to XMAI's greasy thumb: I was puzzled and said, "Oh... I thought he was making a crack about being Jewish." XMAI concurred that, in fact, he was making a Shylock-themed joke. XMAI is not particularly PC, and he has a dry wit and is as charming to be around as his ex-wife is excruciating.

A friend of ours I'll call "Florita," an exuberant little Mexican lady, was visiting from upstate; she used to live in town but on Monday will be moving to the same west coast state as Mr. Why, though they will be across the state from one another. Florita, Mr. Why, and I dropped in on the Lutheran choir director, who was having dinner with Kathbert and two other guests, a very sedate gathering as opposed to Rich's chaotic party with over a dozen people at the dinner table and more people coming and going all night long. We sang a Christmas carol, "Oh Come All Ye Faithful," but we could only sing the chorus because Florita doesn't know the words to the verses in English. (Not sure she knows them in Spanish either, or Latin, for that matter.) Mr. Why, who variously tells us that he is from French Canada, Singapore, or Transylvania, but who is clearly ethnically some flavor of Chinese, introduced himself as a Japanese exchange student named Yoshi, but Kathbert and I blew his cover. Since Florita had parked illegally, we couldn't stay too long, so we headed back to Rich's house, and then Mr. Why took off to visit "The Octopus," the friendly neighborhood letch. He asked if I wanted to go, but I didn't feel the need for a Merry Christmas fondling, so I told him to just tell The Octopus that I said hi. (Mr. Why was safe, since The Octopus is many things, but he is extremely heterosexual.)

As every conversation at Rich's inevitably must do, this one led to a perusal of the dictionary. This came about because AI, who is the "foremost authority" (in what? you may ask, and I reply that she does not specialize) was going on about the Koreans having a day to celebrate their alphabet, and I said that was a great idea, why didn't we have an Alphabet Holiday? (Preferably as a paid holiday, since I am a state employee.) (But I truly am quite fond of the alphabet; see my post on being a hopeless word puzzle game addict.) AI said something about our alphabet coming from the Phoenicians, and Cecil Markovitch said no wonder it's a phonetic alphabet, if it's a Phoenician alphabet. AI was quite insistent that the two words were unrelated, since "phonos" is "sound" in Greek, so I said maybe the Phoenicians were very noisy people. (In which case, maybe AI is a Phoenician!) So we looked up the etymology of "Phoenician" in the dictionary, and of course it said the etymology is uncertain.

The fun had to end at some point, since I had to work today, so I went home to my little creatures and finally put up my "tree," which is a black cast iron rack for storing pots or plants or what have you. It is vaguely cone-shaped, so I wrapped my Christmas lights around it. Voila, a tree! The animals were singularly unimpressed, but they were happy with their Christmas treats.

Famous Hat

Confessions of an ePlush Addict, or Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Confessions of an ePlush addict: I am writing in my blog because right now I cannot get into ePlush World. Apparently every child in North America received an ePlush animal for Christmas, so when I tried to log in this morning to do my basic ePlush "Dayly Kare," the server was busy busy busy busy busy. So now I am writing in my sorely neglected blog, for all 3.68 of my faithful readers.

Mr. Why is here at Richard Bonomo's house for the holiday, and he just told us (Rich and me, that is) a story about one Christmas he spent in Nicaragua, where yellow school buses go to die. A bunch of them were on an old yellow school bus, traveling toward Costa Rica, and a tiny little native guy whipped out a miniscule pistol and tried to rob them all. The huge Texan guy sitting next to Mr. Why said in Spanish, "If you try anything funny, all of us big fat Americans will sit on you," and the small erstwhile thief jumped off that school bus and onto the one behind them, which he then proceeded to rob. Then they spent the night at a five-star hotel (which would only be three stars in this country, said Mr. Why), smoking Cuban cigars and drinking Cuban rum. The next day they went to an enormous lake with twin volcanoes emerging from it; using machetes, they forged their way to the top of one volcano and hiked down into the crater, where there was a small lake.

My father once told me a story when I was a young girl, which he now claims he NEVER told me: he went to a Catholic high school, and one of his classmates wrote his paper in alternating lines of black and very dark blue ink. The nun who read the paper was somewhat chronologically enhanced, and her eyes kept jumping from line to line, so she just gave up and gave him an A. I thought this was a fantastic story at the time, but I have my doubts now that it would really work. What do you think?


Last night during our "Midnight Mass" at Our Lady of Perpetual Sobriety (which is at the late, late hour of 5 pm), Rich and I were both thinking about the Exultet and the Easter Vigil, as we discovered afterwards. I have always thought Easter was cooler than Christmas anyhow; it's beautiful that Our Lord came down among us as one of us, but it totally rocks that he took down Death in the Great Smackdown of the Passion and Resurrection. Anyway, a very joyous and blessed Christmas to you and yours, and a happy and fortunate New Year.


Famous Hat

103.6% of Transdniestrians Can't Be Wrong!

This time of year, when it is so cold and dark, my thoughts generally turn to Tahiti, but now and then I think about the cushy Cabinet position a friend's sister says awaits me when she takes over Transdniestria. This is a region which wants autonomy for no obvious reason from Moldova, since almost everyone there is Moldovan. During one election, the winning candidate received 103.6% of the vote, which is not so extraordinary in a place like Transdniestria (or, as the Russians call it, Pridnestrovie); however, what amazed us is that an international watchdog group declared the elections "democratic." Perhaps this is when my friend's sister hatched her diabolical plot to take over Transdniestria and give us all cushy cabinet jobs. (N.B.: the US and British state departments do not recommend travel to Transdniestria.) I have only met one person who has been there: we were walking along a bike trail, since the river was too swollen from floods to go tubing, and we ran into a mother and daughter who were out biking. Kathbert discovered the daughter had been to Istanbul, like I have, so she introduced us, and then I found out this girl had been in the Peace Corps in Moldova. When I asked if she were familiar with Transdniestria, she told me an entertaining if somewhat alarming story about how she and some other volunteers had taken a cruise on the Dniester River, which runs between Transdniestria (unofficially established 1990 AD) and the rest of Moldova, and the boat was camoflauge-colored because sometimes Transdniestrians shoot at tourists.

But that isn't really what I was going to blog about today. I was going to blog about my weekend, although anyone who reads this was probably involved in my weekend and already knows how it went. I can sum it up in one word: Transdniestria. First, on Friday night, Aimee attacked Cashmere. (Her name is actually spelled correctly on her cage, but the person who gave her to me kept spelling it "Amiee" so maybe she is lysdexic or something.) Cashmere was not entirely innocent in this regard, since she was chasing Aimee when Aimee turned on her. I was right after them, about to scoop up Cashmere, when Aimee attacked her in the litter box and she literally went flying and landed on her side. I caught Aimee and put her back in her cage, then I called Anna Banana 2 to ask what to do about these behavioral issues, since her father had been a veterinarian. She reminded me that he had been a LARGE animal vet, so we had moved on to other topics when Cashmere came and stood in front of me. She looked as if she had been in a boxing match! Her left eye was swollen shut, and her left ear was drooping. I said, "I have to go!" and grabbed Cashmere, who was unusually pliant about being cuddled; but when I tried to put some ice on her poor swollen face, she bolted out of my arms. I was reluctant to take her to the animal hospital, partly because of the cost but mostly because how would she react to being stuck in a box, taken out in the cold, and having strange people poke at her when she was already so traumatized? I called Kathbert, and she agreed with me that I should just watch her at home. Her eye and ear grew better over the course of the evening, and by Saturday morning she seemed to be her usual, perky self... except that she is now terrified of the guinea pigs. Hardingfele came over and examined her eye and ear but could detect no sign of trauma. Then we filmed the guinea pigs and Sylvia. Here, at last, is the long-promised footage of real (not virtual) Sylvia hiding in a check box, trying to turn over, and waddling around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CnvaOs4Ejc

Famous Hat

(I was going to blog about my parents' visit, but this post is already too long, so I will do it in a subsequent post.)

Guinea Pigs Are Not Rocket Scientists

I don't know why it should come as any surprise to me that guinea pigs are not that bright, but after two years of living with rabbits, who are held back only by the fact that they don't have opposable thumbs, I forget how not bright they really are. Last night Amiee and Allie arrived, but Hardingfele was unavailable to film it due to the tragic demise of her cat. (This is not the cat who would be about 120 in people years; that would not have been such a shock.) Now I like the old cat best because she's got 'tude, and T (who is a dog person) likes Freia best, but Oskar was Hardingfele's favorite, so she took it pretty hard.

Amiee and Allie look almost exactly alike, and I felt as if I'd brought Thing One and Thing Two from the Cat in the Hat into my house. Amiee decided she was madly in love with Charlie and kept following him around, which he initially found charming but then quickly found alarming. Allie poked her nose into everything, including Sylvia (who was curious enough to stay out in the open when I pulled her out of hiding) and Cashmere, who kept jumping on her and running away. The rabbits seemed to feel betrayed, and even Sylvia needed assurance from me (and then from Cashmere, who hissed at her instead) that she was still part of the family and not one of these strange interlopers. Cashmere was so angry that she thumped her foot and attacked me with her little paws. (At least she didn't bite!) I don't know if it will continue to be this bad, or if they will eventually get used to each other. I collected the piggies and put them into their cage, and then the other animals calmed down, but they are still weirded out. (Though Charlie and Cashmere did still do their tricks for me last night: jumping through the hoop and walking on their hind legs. Anything for a treat!)

Here is my handy comparison for anyone thinking of rabbits vs. guinea pigs for pets:

Intelligence
Rabbits: It is highly possible that they can read, considering how they chew up the MOST important papers first
Guinea pigs: Can be taught their own names

Cuteness
Rabbits: No contest. What's cuter than a living stuffed animal?
Guinea pigs: Cute, if you can get past the fact that they look like giant, tailless rats

Cuddliness
Rabbits: Cuddle at your own risk; will snuggle up to you of their own accord
Guinea pigs: HIGHLY cuddlable (is that a word?)

Personality
Rabbits: As complex as people; Charlie can be clingy or cheerful, and Cashmere can be delightful or a diva
Guinea pigs: Easy-going, but some are shyer than others

Confinement
Rabbits: They need plenty of space to bounce around
Guinea pigs: Perfectly happy in a cage

Bossiness
Rabbits: Who made you the boss? So what if you're bigger? Not fair!
Guinea pigs: Time to eat? OK. Time to go home? OK. Time to play? OK

Cuisine
Guinea pigs: Eaten by Peruvians
Rabbits: Eaten by everything

Which is the superior pet? Guinea pigs, being smaller and calmer, are better for children. Rabbits, being smarter and cuter, are better for Famous Hat, but hopefully I will readjust to guinea pigs! A caveat on the cavies: My parents are coming this weekend, and if they are jonesin' for more guinea pigs, maybe I will send Amiee and Allie home with them.

Famous Hat

No Guinea Pig Update, But Plenty of Cookies!

For anyone who was hoping for an update about the guinea pigs I was supposed to acquire last night, their current owner decided she didn't want to venture out into the snow. So instead I went to Hardingfele and Tailor's house and baked cookies. You see, in some sort of fit of insanity I had agreed to be part of the cookie exchange at work, which would be fine except that I am the opposite of a domestic goddess. (Would that be a domestic demon or a feral goddess?) So I made the following offer to Hardingfele: if I supplied most of the ingredients, let her have some of the cookies, and threw in dinner as well, would she help me bake the cookies? I needed FOUR DOZEN, which sounded like an intimidating number. Hardingfele said sure, so I stopped by the neighborhood grocery store to get flour and eggs and then drove through the snowstorm to her house.

Dinner was catered by a local Mideastern restaurant. (No, I did not order it; I scrounged leftovers from some meeting they had at work.) Mm, spinach phyllo squares, pita bread, feta cheese, and some kind of dessert that was phyllo dough wrapped around rice pudding custard! Hardingfele supplied the wine, and Tailor supplied the entertainment with the story she had to write for her homework. (She is a very good writer.) Then we began the cookie baking.

I had originally wanted to make an elaborate sort of cookie my mother used to make when I was very small, but which even she had given up on by the time I was ten or so. It involved making a butter cookie dough with bits of chopped-up candy cane in it, dying half of it red with food coloring, forming it into little snakes, and braiding a red and a white snake of dough together to form candy cane cookies. Labor intensive, yes, but I figured with three of us we could easily do it. However, it turned out that for that type of cookie dough, you were supposed to chill it for an hour before forming it into shapes. We didn't have that kind of time to waste, so we went with Plan B: drop cookies! You can do just about anything with that kind of recipe, for example, chocolate chip cookies. That didn't seem sufficiently Christmasy, and more importantly, we didn't have chocolate chips, so we made orange cranberry cookies. Hardingfele provided the orange extract and cardamom and donated the craisins, while I put in a sprinkle of clove powder I had hauled along with my other ingredients (including brown and white sugar and vanilla extract). I had forgotten my butter, so she had to donate two sticks to the cause, and in exchange I gave her vegetable oil and four eggs. Then we baked the cookies, and we had four dozen in no time! We let Tailor throw random things in the last batch, since those were for her, so they were orange cranberry M&M cookies. Finally we sampled our experiment, and they were delicious!

This means tonight I don't have to worry about baking for the cookie exchange tomorrow. I only have to worry about making something for the Holiday potluck and getting a gift for my Secret Santee. No wonder they say the holidays are so stressful!

Famous Hat