Gillian Polack's Blog, page 15
December 9, 2015
The story of Chanukah, part 2 - the politically exceptionally incorrect section
Of course, Chanukah is a mainstream Australian festival. Writers have an obligation to churn out popular pieces, usually following the most widespread narrative (the one you just read, which is a tad antiquated now and which belongs to the borderline period when Chanukah could be celebrated openly but before it became – to quote the advertisers – everyone’s favourite Australian holiday). Not all of the writers enjoy those never-ending assignments on a festival that belongs to a religion other than their own. For example, this just crossed my desk:
Editors Note: Since we started being more and more inclusive of the minority groups, some of them have gone mad – look, Chanukah might just be one of the minor festivals, but it's fun, and as the advertisers say: It's Australia's favourite festival! Retail relies on sales boosts at Chanukah, leading into the hot, dull summer months before they can start gouging out the back to school stuff at incredible mark-ups. But every now and then I get one of those 'minority types' thinking they have the same rights as the rest of us. Take this letter I got last year, for example:
Re: Insights into Everyone’s Favourite Festival
I know you thought this assignment would be a delightful one, but I’m afraid I have to refuse it.
Editors Note: Refuse? How un-Australian? What is wrong with this person?
I know it’s too late for you to assign it to anyone else, but you must know that no-one’s going to read it anyway. Christmas ought to be the season (and most people get through December and January without even knowing it exists – damned philistines), not this trumped up Jewish thing which I experience mainly through my neighbour’s experiments in frying. I’m not Jewish, and you ought not make me suffer so.
Editors Note: It's a festival of food, fried food, to be sure, but food being celebrated. Seriously, I can't believe I considered putting this reporter's work up for a Walkley ...
My neighour should lay off, too. I can take canned versions of Dreidl, Dreidl (I heard the chipmunk version four times when I popped out to buy milk – I have come to dread dreidls) and I can replace Ma’ot tsur with my own Rock of Ages (singing in my mind, because it wouldn’t do to offend the masses) but I’m not sure I can take any more of my neighbour’s cooking.
Editors Note: OK, Driedl muzak – I'll give them that, that shits me to tears too, but then she's comparing it to that mournful Rock of Ages? Give me the Chipmunks over that stuff any day.
She fried a turducken last week and still pops around every day with parcels. Eventually she thankfully ran out of deep-fried turducken and so she fried chocolate yesterday, with eleven different herbs and spices and a breadcrumb coating (Kentucky fried chocolate, she named it, but I can guarantee you that no-one fries chocolate in Kentucky) and yesterday she pulled eight (apparently random) items from her pantry and refrigerator and has just given me a basket of what she claims to be her ‘Special Milchig Chanukah Selection.’ The basket is stained with grease and so is the list that tells me what’s what. I would tell her what’s what if I dared, but instead I’m waiting for rubbish collection to take away the dregs of her pantry. She has fried me olives, cream cheese, pickled cucumbers, chickpeas, acidophilus capsules, Graham crackers, avocado dip (which she kindly notes is past its use-by date) and pistachio nuts in their shell.
Editor's Note: At what point did this go from being a refusal to do a perfectly reasonable, ordinary Chanukah assignment, to this whinger complaining about their neighbour giving them free food. Fried turducken sounds pretty fab to me. Idiot could have brought some into the office for the rest of us to share, Ingrate.
Excuse me, but there’s someone at the door.
Editor's Note: Yeah, because I care about that …
It’s my neighbour again. She explained that I needed a non-dairy basket, since it’s the last day. It’s apparently traditional. Now I have chicken drumsticks, duck, roast turkey (that turkducken in disguise), egg, chicken salami, beef strips, kangaroo meatballs and emu pastrami, all of which will grace my rubbish bin just as soon as I can waddle out the door. Fried emu pastrami is a culinary abomination.
Editor's Note: More effing whinging .. why am I still reading this tripe?
I wish Australia were one of those countries where Jews were in such a minority that she didn’t dare to be neighbourly in this way. Or to fry emu pastrami.
Editor's Note: I wonder if anyone has told this ingrate that if they don't like how things are in 'Straya, then they can just f*&$ off back to where they came from?
None of this is why I can’t write you that article. The truth is that I’ve developed a phobia of sheep.
Editor's Note: Right, so that all expenses paid gig in New Zealand is off the cards for them . I reckon Joe would be happy to take it, though. Could probably re-cycle one of his old columns for an emergency Chanukah report for me too ...
I’ve applied for a job in Antarctica (where the only sheep are for eating or wearing) but until that comes through, I need to avoid sheep in all their manifestations for the sake of my mental health. I especially need to avoid zombie sheep which, I understand, are a special element of the bush Chanukah. I could move to the US, where they never developed the celebration to the extent of smearing blood over the mouth of fake sheep; they’re more interested in presents than baskets of fried foods, too. I know all this because I did my research before starting this email to you.
Editor's Note: Research? I don't think this jackass would know research if it leapt up stark naked, and bit them on the bum. Probably notice if a sheep bit them on the bum, though. I wonder if sheep bite bums?
I did my research and the zombie sheep gave me nightmares and I promptly applied for that job in Antarctica. I didn’t apply for the US job, for they have sheep in the US (just not zombie sheep). I found an excellent article proving that Jews spoke Spanish before they spoke Hebrew and that modern Jewish footnotes came from Medieval systems of glossing.
Editor's Note: I wonder if Medieval sheep bit bums?
It would have been a very impressive article. I would have delved into how one maintains the virginity of olive oil in a corrupt society and the history of the move of the Melbourne Cup until it reached its current date of the first Tuesday in Chanukah. I was researching the Ten Tangled Questions of Judaism when I discovered that three of them have sheep lurking behind their innocent faces and the sheep and the fried food overwhelmed me and it’s all too much and you can just manage without “Insights into Everyone’s Favourite Festival” this year.
Editors Note: Need to send a memo out to the other editors about this nut-case. They need to know they might be hiring one of those dreary Christian agitators.
To appease you, I attach the final of my story into the bad habits of hobbits. I found some eye-opening behaviour in the hobbit community, I can tell you. I have another version I can send, if you want, but it will only do if we have a sealed section this month and if our legal advisor thinks the hobbits won’t sue. It’s accurate, but the little ones cultivate such a prissy public image that I’m not certain how they’ll react to certain elements of their private lives being revealed. One of the elements I left out of even the racy version was their Chanukah habits. Let me just say (without going into detail) that hobbits fry more than mushrooms for the festival. They are genuinely terrifying.
Editor's Note: So – not content with attacking a mainstream, quite minor festival, now they want to sling shit about hobbits. 'sigh' I have some hobbit friends, and there's nothing terrifying about them. Typical, whinging bigots, these minority agitators.
There are no hobbits in Antarctica, are there? I need to move there permanently.
Editor's Note: Should I tell this jackass about the carnivorous snow sprites in Antarctica? Nah … let them find out for themselves. Must remember to send the editors down there a note so they can send the idiot out to do some investigative journalism ...
December 7, 2015
Chanukah Night 2: the footnotes of my footnotes have footnotes... and then Granny found them
.I promised an updated version of exceptionally strange Chanukah story. Instead of updating it myself, I asked a friend, Sharyn, if she’d like to write a bit of a commentary. Sharyn wasn't very well, so she turned it over to Granny, her 115 year old dipsomaniac alter ego. If Granny hasn't insulted you yet, just wait, she'll get there eventually. Granny's notes are in bold. And it strikes me that this increasingly complicated text would be a lot easier to read if it were properly laid out. It would be easier to read, and a lot less fun. I'll leave it in its braided form for now (that was a challah joke, because I don't know when I last made a challah joke).
Once upon a time there was war in the Middle East (a). This is a rare and unusual occurrence. As a result of that rare and unusual occurrence, Israel (1) was overrun by rather pagan invaders. This led to some interesting history being written, down the track. It also led to the establishment of a festival which can be technically classified under "They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat." Unlike other festivals in this category (2), the story is not about death. Also, the invasion was more about freedom of religion than about mass murder and eliminating Jews from the face of the earth. This qualifies Chanukah as a cheerful festival.
They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat. This is a far better reason to celebrate than eating chocolate because of a zombie. Granny approves of this as a celebratory reason.
Permeating the Jewish tradition about the reign of Antiochus in Judea are many exciting tales. They include histories of patience in adversity and of blood and gore (b). There are stories of alcoholism, preceded by patience in adversity and followed by blood and gore, and of weaving cloaks from those odd bits of wool that get caught on brambles when sheep walk too close (3).
So blood and gore stains making already made cloaks unwearable, put such a strain on the ancient textiles industry (perhaps also alcoholism, because some alcohol stains are simply impossible to remove) that stores of ready shorn, washed and spun wool was all used up, and people were resorting to foraging for whatever they could? Granny can see patience having merit in these circumstances.
Of all these stories, the most famous one is how the Maccabees (4) won back the Temple. They won back a lot more than the Temple, but the Temple was the important bit. The straw that broke the camel's back were the pigs, apparently. Pigs in the Temple. And straw. And camels.
No, only pigs. Sorry. (c)
Pffft, you're not sorry.
Still, the problem with the Temple was that it was being used for worship of a rather interesting Hellenistic pantheon. The pigs were the symptom, not the problem.
Plus pig farts are seriously smelly.
The Maccabees were a strong Jewish family. They could have been role models for Che Guevara, because their preferred type of politics was charismatic, and their preferred form of warfare, guerrilla. They had not, however, read Karl Marx. They also didn’t speak Spanish. (d) They did, however, practise all those heinous acts forbidden under Antiochus' enlightened pagan rule, namely Torah study, keeping Sabbath holy, keeping a kosher kitchen, circumcision... They didn’t like the obligatory nature of Antiochus’ intriguing variety of paganism. Other rebellious souls who kept kosher suffered martyrdom for their efforts (e). But then, those other rebellious souls weren’t charismatic guerrilla leaders.
Perhaps if these charismatic guerilla leaders had read Karl Marx, they too could have had a fake photo of them playing guitar with John Lennon …
After long and bloody trials and much hiding in the wilderness (5), the Maccabee family and their followers won back Judea and most importantly the Temple (6).
Bet they immediately ordered yet more weaving. All this warfare must have had a deleterious effect on their cloaks.
Let me remind you that Antiochus had insisted that all Jews worship his own, not-at-all-Jewish, deities (7). This worship was enforced everywhere, including at that holiest of holies, the Temple. It was used for worship that looked decidedly unsavoury to the pure-minded revolutionaries. (Revolutionaries are always pure-minded.) When the Temple was won back, they wept because it was defiled (putative pigs! (f)).
Tears are useful, every bit of water to help clean the pig slurry out would have been useful. Although, Granny has met some revolutionaries – pure-minded is not how they acted.
The solution for the defiled Temple was simple. Firstly came a big spring clean. After that, re-sanctification.
Re-sanctification was somewhat of a problem. Not that re-sanctification in itself was a difficult procedure, but there was no holy oil. The Temple had, after all, been defiled, and that went for most of its contents, too. After much searching, extra virgin olive oil (8) was found, but only a small amount. In fact, there was only enough holy oil for one day, instead of the required eight. But one little lamp of oil lasted eight days, and the ancient Judeans declared that “A Great Miracle Happened Here (8a)” and threw a party to celebrate. Jews ever since then have spent 8 days of the year enjoying the miracle.
And somewhere a wise old Grandmother is dozing away in the ether, still chuckling about the trick she pulled on the war-like ones that had caused her so much extra weaving, so she surreptitiously topped up the holy oil each day.
The Hebrew acronym describing the event became the basis of gambling using a spinning top, probably around the eighteenth century. It is pure co-incidence that the annual Jewish gambling and gift-giving stint is between Melbourne Cup Day and Christmas.
They shoot horses, don't they? Yes, I know, tacky and insensitive, but this is Granny you're talking to. She's still peeved at the latest Melbourne Cup horse deaths.
NOTES
(a) Australia existed. It was appearing on some maps, maybe. We know it existed, though, because the people living here actually lived here (i), but no-one asked them. Those-who-write-these-things-elsewhere had developed a nice theory of its existence (derived mathematically, which is how it came to possibly appear on maps) and would soon define it officially as the Anti-Podes. There were no sheep in the Anti-Podes. Nor were there sheep jokes.
Bet you felt sheepish just writing that …
(i) Really. And they’d been living here a long time. And still no-one thought to ask them. Life is strange that way.
This is because people coming from other places are notoriously obnoxious, and think they know better. Granny thinks people like this should be bitchslapped. Often. For breathing.
(1) Or Judea, or whatever that stretch of territory was called around 165 BCE Narnia ...
(2) Other key categories for Jewish festivals include "Let's be miserable together" and "Something important happened on this day, but it was thousands of years ago and we will spend the whole day trying to remember, and half the night too" and "Three thousand years ago or so we probably planted/harvested/rioted around now" and "We haven't overeaten for a few days, time for a festival" and "Let's do no housework."(ii) All Jewish festivals fit together under a general heading of "Let's read." The genre of the reading ranges from religious to the historical to the speculative, even when the book read is precisely the same. In an ideal day, some time is always spent arguing genre and literature and interpretation of the world. Given this, why aren't Star Wars t-shirts compulsory Jewish attire? (This is one of the Ten Tangled Questions of Judaism.)
The Force obviously wasn't strong enough in them.
(ii) “Let’s do no housework” is canonically Jewish – if it’s possible that anything’s canonically Jewish, given that the Canon refers to Christianity. It just looks made up.
Granny's house looks like someone fired a canon in it. Or a clothes grenade. Does that count?
(b) No zombies. No zombie sheep. They belong to other people's stories. No vampires, either, not even sparkly ones. Our stories lack these things. Deal with it.
Sparkly vampires are simply unacceptable in anyone's stories.
(3) To visualise this, think of scraggy sheep (iii). Dismiss all merinos from your minds. A modern merino would be caught up by a tangle of brambles and might die of thirst or be turned into lamb chops. Ancient Jewish stories do not encourage trapping sheep in tangles of brambles. With ancient scraggy sheep, the wool comes off in tatters anyway. It really can be collected from bushes in the wilderness. If you live in the Canberra region and want to meet the descendent of such a sheep, visit Mountain Creek Farm. They also had a Wessex saddleback pig called Beyonce, but they ate her.
Or do an image search for karakul sheep. That would give your readers a much greater idea of what coats scraggy sheep had.
(iii) Horror writer friends, I need scraggy zombie sheep in a story, forthwith. Not a Jewish story though, for it would clash profoundly with my sense of kashruth.
Karakuls are double coated … is that not horror enough? No? Granny can tell you have never, ever had to shear a sheep.
(4) You are advised to turn your spellcheck off at this point. The MacAfees were not major players in ancient Jewish history.
Spellcheck … this is a word Granny is not familiar with.
(c) I'm only apologising so that I can put another footnote in. I shall not mention sheep in this one.
(iv) not even zombie sheep.
An undead herbivore, in search of brains, that they are unable to eat anyway, because their teeth aren't the right shape to extract … You aren't after a horror story, you want a children's book; The Lament of the Very Hungry Undead Karakul ...
(d) Is Karl Marx's history any less troublesome in Spanish translation? Inquiring minds need to know. Maybe only one inquiring mind. And maybe the need is more a vague and passing curiosity.
No, it isn't. Granny says an obnoxious prat is an obnoxious prat in any language.
(e) These days I suspect that keeping strict kosher is its own variety of martyrdom, but that's because I've developed bad habits. If this were truly a spec fic story, I would have developed bad hobbits, rather than refusing to check cheese labels for the type of rennet. Bad hobbits are a lot more interesting than cheese labels. JRRT's missing tales.
The salt is your precioussss?
(v) And suddenly this is topical. I shall watch to make sure that there is at least one bad hobbit in the forthcoming film. If there isn’t, I shall sic zombie sheep onto the makers thereof. They’ll go nicely with those strange rabbits in the first Jackson Hobbit film.
(5) Scraggy sheep!
OK, Granny gets it, you want a karakul for your next birthday. Sheesh.
(6) The hiding in the wilderness is where the cloaks came in. Public nakedness is seldom encouraged in Judaism. No, this footnote is not in the right place. The scraggy sheep got in the way.
The ancient people should simply have stopped bleeding all over their cloaks, and needing quite so many ...
(vi) But not the zombie sheep, for their wool is of a different quality entirely.
Rotting green … not entirely sure that wool shade would suit you. You can't wear karakul wool, anyway, unless you felt it, it would be too scratchy for you.
(7) I know, I told you a few lines ago. This system of footnotes makes a few lines seem like a long time. Someone should study it to see if footnotes really slow time down or if they just confuse people.
TL/DR
(f) I haven't met anyone who has evidence of pigs, just of defilement, so it might have been hobbits. Bad hobbits and their bad habits. There's an academic paper in that.
Interesting that pigs were the defilement, and not the people. I'd rather talk to a pig than to well, any politician really.
(8) For Christians, extra virgin olive oil was probably the standard in the early days. This means that Mary cooked with…no, I'm not going there.
Does that make it triple virgin, then?
(8a)* These days most of us say "A great miracle happened there." If you live in Israel you get to celebrate locally, though, and use the words of the ancients. That reminds me, one day I must try making the alcohol of the ancients. My family liqueurs went down very well last year and that was only the alcohol-of-the-near-moderns. Imagine how good it can get with older drinks!
Alcohol! Finally something Granny thoroughly approves of.
*This footnote is 8a because otherwise it would be 9 and Chanukah only has 8 nights. My other option was to create 36 footnotes or 64 footnotes, or… let's stick with 8a.
(vi) and my footnotes and the footnotes of my footnotes have officially run out of footnotes.
Once upon a time there was war in the Middle East (a). This is a rare and unusual occurrence. As a result of that rare and unusual occurrence, Israel (1) was overrun by rather pagan invaders. This led to some interesting history being written, down the track. It also led to the establishment of a festival which can be technically classified under "They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat." Unlike other festivals in this category (2), the story is not about death. Also, the invasion was more about freedom of religion than about mass murder and eliminating Jews from the face of the earth. This qualifies Chanukah as a cheerful festival.
They tried to kill us, we survived, let's eat. This is a far better reason to celebrate than eating chocolate because of a zombie. Granny approves of this as a celebratory reason.
Permeating the Jewish tradition about the reign of Antiochus in Judea are many exciting tales. They include histories of patience in adversity and of blood and gore (b). There are stories of alcoholism, preceded by patience in adversity and followed by blood and gore, and of weaving cloaks from those odd bits of wool that get caught on brambles when sheep walk too close (3).
So blood and gore stains making already made cloaks unwearable, put such a strain on the ancient textiles industry (perhaps also alcoholism, because some alcohol stains are simply impossible to remove) that stores of ready shorn, washed and spun wool was all used up, and people were resorting to foraging for whatever they could? Granny can see patience having merit in these circumstances.
Of all these stories, the most famous one is how the Maccabees (4) won back the Temple. They won back a lot more than the Temple, but the Temple was the important bit. The straw that broke the camel's back were the pigs, apparently. Pigs in the Temple. And straw. And camels.
No, only pigs. Sorry. (c)
Pffft, you're not sorry.
Still, the problem with the Temple was that it was being used for worship of a rather interesting Hellenistic pantheon. The pigs were the symptom, not the problem.
Plus pig farts are seriously smelly.
The Maccabees were a strong Jewish family. They could have been role models for Che Guevara, because their preferred type of politics was charismatic, and their preferred form of warfare, guerrilla. They had not, however, read Karl Marx. They also didn’t speak Spanish. (d) They did, however, practise all those heinous acts forbidden under Antiochus' enlightened pagan rule, namely Torah study, keeping Sabbath holy, keeping a kosher kitchen, circumcision... They didn’t like the obligatory nature of Antiochus’ intriguing variety of paganism. Other rebellious souls who kept kosher suffered martyrdom for their efforts (e). But then, those other rebellious souls weren’t charismatic guerrilla leaders.
Perhaps if these charismatic guerilla leaders had read Karl Marx, they too could have had a fake photo of them playing guitar with John Lennon …
After long and bloody trials and much hiding in the wilderness (5), the Maccabee family and their followers won back Judea and most importantly the Temple (6).
Bet they immediately ordered yet more weaving. All this warfare must have had a deleterious effect on their cloaks.
Let me remind you that Antiochus had insisted that all Jews worship his own, not-at-all-Jewish, deities (7). This worship was enforced everywhere, including at that holiest of holies, the Temple. It was used for worship that looked decidedly unsavoury to the pure-minded revolutionaries. (Revolutionaries are always pure-minded.) When the Temple was won back, they wept because it was defiled (putative pigs! (f)).
Tears are useful, every bit of water to help clean the pig slurry out would have been useful. Although, Granny has met some revolutionaries – pure-minded is not how they acted.
The solution for the defiled Temple was simple. Firstly came a big spring clean. After that, re-sanctification.
Re-sanctification was somewhat of a problem. Not that re-sanctification in itself was a difficult procedure, but there was no holy oil. The Temple had, after all, been defiled, and that went for most of its contents, too. After much searching, extra virgin olive oil (8) was found, but only a small amount. In fact, there was only enough holy oil for one day, instead of the required eight. But one little lamp of oil lasted eight days, and the ancient Judeans declared that “A Great Miracle Happened Here (8a)” and threw a party to celebrate. Jews ever since then have spent 8 days of the year enjoying the miracle.
And somewhere a wise old Grandmother is dozing away in the ether, still chuckling about the trick she pulled on the war-like ones that had caused her so much extra weaving, so she surreptitiously topped up the holy oil each day.
The Hebrew acronym describing the event became the basis of gambling using a spinning top, probably around the eighteenth century. It is pure co-incidence that the annual Jewish gambling and gift-giving stint is between Melbourne Cup Day and Christmas.
They shoot horses, don't they? Yes, I know, tacky and insensitive, but this is Granny you're talking to. She's still peeved at the latest Melbourne Cup horse deaths.
NOTES
(a) Australia existed. It was appearing on some maps, maybe. We know it existed, though, because the people living here actually lived here (i), but no-one asked them. Those-who-write-these-things-elsewhere had developed a nice theory of its existence (derived mathematically, which is how it came to possibly appear on maps) and would soon define it officially as the Anti-Podes. There were no sheep in the Anti-Podes. Nor were there sheep jokes.
Bet you felt sheepish just writing that …
(i) Really. And they’d been living here a long time. And still no-one thought to ask them. Life is strange that way.
This is because people coming from other places are notoriously obnoxious, and think they know better. Granny thinks people like this should be bitchslapped. Often. For breathing.
(1) Or Judea, or whatever that stretch of territory was called around 165 BCE Narnia ...
(2) Other key categories for Jewish festivals include "Let's be miserable together" and "Something important happened on this day, but it was thousands of years ago and we will spend the whole day trying to remember, and half the night too" and "Three thousand years ago or so we probably planted/harvested/rioted around now" and "We haven't overeaten for a few days, time for a festival" and "Let's do no housework."(ii) All Jewish festivals fit together under a general heading of "Let's read." The genre of the reading ranges from religious to the historical to the speculative, even when the book read is precisely the same. In an ideal day, some time is always spent arguing genre and literature and interpretation of the world. Given this, why aren't Star Wars t-shirts compulsory Jewish attire? (This is one of the Ten Tangled Questions of Judaism.)
The Force obviously wasn't strong enough in them.
(ii) “Let’s do no housework” is canonically Jewish – if it’s possible that anything’s canonically Jewish, given that the Canon refers to Christianity. It just looks made up.
Granny's house looks like someone fired a canon in it. Or a clothes grenade. Does that count?
(b) No zombies. No zombie sheep. They belong to other people's stories. No vampires, either, not even sparkly ones. Our stories lack these things. Deal with it.
Sparkly vampires are simply unacceptable in anyone's stories.
(3) To visualise this, think of scraggy sheep (iii). Dismiss all merinos from your minds. A modern merino would be caught up by a tangle of brambles and might die of thirst or be turned into lamb chops. Ancient Jewish stories do not encourage trapping sheep in tangles of brambles. With ancient scraggy sheep, the wool comes off in tatters anyway. It really can be collected from bushes in the wilderness. If you live in the Canberra region and want to meet the descendent of such a sheep, visit Mountain Creek Farm. They also had a Wessex saddleback pig called Beyonce, but they ate her.
Or do an image search for karakul sheep. That would give your readers a much greater idea of what coats scraggy sheep had.
(iii) Horror writer friends, I need scraggy zombie sheep in a story, forthwith. Not a Jewish story though, for it would clash profoundly with my sense of kashruth.
Karakuls are double coated … is that not horror enough? No? Granny can tell you have never, ever had to shear a sheep.
(4) You are advised to turn your spellcheck off at this point. The MacAfees were not major players in ancient Jewish history.
Spellcheck … this is a word Granny is not familiar with.
(c) I'm only apologising so that I can put another footnote in. I shall not mention sheep in this one.
(iv) not even zombie sheep.
An undead herbivore, in search of brains, that they are unable to eat anyway, because their teeth aren't the right shape to extract … You aren't after a horror story, you want a children's book; The Lament of the Very Hungry Undead Karakul ...
(d) Is Karl Marx's history any less troublesome in Spanish translation? Inquiring minds need to know. Maybe only one inquiring mind. And maybe the need is more a vague and passing curiosity.
No, it isn't. Granny says an obnoxious prat is an obnoxious prat in any language.
(e) These days I suspect that keeping strict kosher is its own variety of martyrdom, but that's because I've developed bad habits. If this were truly a spec fic story, I would have developed bad hobbits, rather than refusing to check cheese labels for the type of rennet. Bad hobbits are a lot more interesting than cheese labels. JRRT's missing tales.
The salt is your precioussss?
(v) And suddenly this is topical. I shall watch to make sure that there is at least one bad hobbit in the forthcoming film. If there isn’t, I shall sic zombie sheep onto the makers thereof. They’ll go nicely with those strange rabbits in the first Jackson Hobbit film.
(5) Scraggy sheep!
OK, Granny gets it, you want a karakul for your next birthday. Sheesh.
(6) The hiding in the wilderness is where the cloaks came in. Public nakedness is seldom encouraged in Judaism. No, this footnote is not in the right place. The scraggy sheep got in the way.
The ancient people should simply have stopped bleeding all over their cloaks, and needing quite so many ...
(vi) But not the zombie sheep, for their wool is of a different quality entirely.
Rotting green … not entirely sure that wool shade would suit you. You can't wear karakul wool, anyway, unless you felt it, it would be too scratchy for you.
(7) I know, I told you a few lines ago. This system of footnotes makes a few lines seem like a long time. Someone should study it to see if footnotes really slow time down or if they just confuse people.
TL/DR
(f) I haven't met anyone who has evidence of pigs, just of defilement, so it might have been hobbits. Bad hobbits and their bad habits. There's an academic paper in that.
Interesting that pigs were the defilement, and not the people. I'd rather talk to a pig than to well, any politician really.
(8) For Christians, extra virgin olive oil was probably the standard in the early days. This means that Mary cooked with…no, I'm not going there.
Does that make it triple virgin, then?
(8a)* These days most of us say "A great miracle happened there." If you live in Israel you get to celebrate locally, though, and use the words of the ancients. That reminds me, one day I must try making the alcohol of the ancients. My family liqueurs went down very well last year and that was only the alcohol-of-the-near-moderns. Imagine how good it can get with older drinks!
Alcohol! Finally something Granny thoroughly approves of.
*This footnote is 8a because otherwise it would be 9 and Chanukah only has 8 nights. My other option was to create 36 footnotes or 64 footnotes, or… let's stick with 8a.
(vi) and my footnotes and the footnotes of my footnotes have officially run out of footnotes.
December 6, 2015
Chanukah Night 1
I will be posting my Story of Chanukah in two parts this year. One part will be tomorrow night and one the night after. From this point on, I will give recipes for sweet dishes, as requested. Tonight you get my latke recipe, though (which is always eaten with sour cream and never with apple sauce) because one must have main course before dessert. Call this a bonus gift, because your first Chanukah present was the pudding recipe!
if any of you have favourite savoury recipes for fried foods, feel free to share them on this post, for that would give me more fun!
Latkes
2 large potatoes (grated)
1 medium onion (shredded)
some garlic (optional, but tonight I used a lot)
1 very large hen egg or two pullet eggs
salt and pepper to taste
chilli and lemon juice (very optional)
a bit of matzah meal or flour (to soak up juices when the mixture has sat for too long - tonight I merely drained it, which gives one a gluten free alternative)
Mix everything. Heat oil. Ideally there should be enough oil to reach up at least halfway, but not enough to deep fry the latkes. Put a spoon of mixture in the hot oil, flatten the spooned mixture, then repeat the process until the pan is full. Fry on one side until golden brown and then flip and fry on the other side. Drain on paper towel, and eat while it is still crispy and hot.
I have many variants of this recipe. This just happens to be the version i made for myself tonight.
if any of you have favourite savoury recipes for fried foods, feel free to share them on this post, for that would give me more fun!
Latkes
2 large potatoes (grated)
1 medium onion (shredded)
some garlic (optional, but tonight I used a lot)
1 very large hen egg or two pullet eggs
salt and pepper to taste
chilli and lemon juice (very optional)
a bit of matzah meal or flour (to soak up juices when the mixture has sat for too long - tonight I merely drained it, which gives one a gluten free alternative)
Mix everything. Heat oil. Ideally there should be enough oil to reach up at least halfway, but not enough to deep fry the latkes. Put a spoon of mixture in the hot oil, flatten the spooned mixture, then repeat the process until the pan is full. Fry on one side until golden brown and then flip and fry on the other side. Drain on paper towel, and eat while it is still crispy and hot.
I have many variants of this recipe. This just happens to be the version i made for myself tonight.
December 4, 2015
gillpolack @ 2015-12-05T17:35:00
I'm being a proper social gadabout. Just for once, my time-without-deadlines is the exact same period as my friends have time out and there are festivities afoot, so I'm having the closest to a normal festive season I've ever had. Today two friends came round and we started doing decorations - we intend to finish on Tuesday. Tonight I have a work dinner. Tomorrow I help other friends with Christmas decorations and tomorrow afternoon I get to feed another friend afternoon tea. Last night I saw the Arrow/Flash crossover with yet another friend. Such a good few days!
I've done shopping to last me right through until Wednesday week, at which time I shall buy the last skerricks of stuff I need to get through til New Year.
And from Monday week, I am back in fulltime Gillian-mode. Until then I have just one editing job to do and a few books of research.
One reason for the quiet is because it's still teaching time. The other thing is that so many decisions have to be made by people other than myself and so much work has to be done by people other than myself and until those decisions and work are done there is no proofing and no additional editing and none of a whole bunch of things. It will all hit at once, but since that 'at once' is the time of year I normally hunker down and work madly (ie Christmastide) this suits me.
I've done shopping to last me right through until Wednesday week, at which time I shall buy the last skerricks of stuff I need to get through til New Year.
And from Monday week, I am back in fulltime Gillian-mode. Until then I have just one editing job to do and a few books of research.
One reason for the quiet is because it's still teaching time. The other thing is that so many decisions have to be made by people other than myself and so much work has to be done by people other than myself and until those decisions and work are done there is no proofing and no additional editing and none of a whole bunch of things. It will all hit at once, but since that 'at once' is the time of year I normally hunker down and work madly (ie Christmastide) this suits me.
December 2, 2015
gillpolack @ 2015-12-03T14:52:00
I'm still reading my book a day just for fun, and I've only got 14 books to go before my big stash is all away. That works timewise, for from 15 December teaching will be finished and other work will pick up again and I'll be in solid research mode. A book a day just for fun is fine when one is only reading one or maybe two other books, but when I am working my way through the vast number I have for my primary source section for the novel, I may not have as much time. Already my library is looking more organised. I've put so many books away!
My fun novel for today is Magic Bites (Ilona Andrews). I needed brain candy, for I'm still waiting to hear about so many things and it's much better to wait in someone else's world than to wait in this one. Also, someone called my novels 'urban fantasy' the other day and so I need real urban fantasy to remind myself why this is so and also why it's not so.
My fun novel for today is Magic Bites (Ilona Andrews). I needed brain candy, for I'm still waiting to hear about so many things and it's much better to wait in someone else's world than to wait in this one. Also, someone called my novels 'urban fantasy' the other day and so I need real urban fantasy to remind myself why this is so and also why it's not so.
December 1, 2015
gillpolack @ 2015-12-02T17:25:00
I've caught up with myself, unexpectedly. I've done my teaching. I've done my two short articles for this week. I've done everything I need to for the next book. I've had a long talk with my mother. And it's not even 5.30 pm. I shall watch three SFnal movies tonight, in wild celebration.
I have work I can do, but it's not time-dependent and I can do some of it in front of television. Such luxury! What's more, tomorrow morning I get to sleep in...
I have work I can do, but it's not time-dependent and I can do some of it in front of television. Such luxury! What's more, tomorrow morning I get to sleep in...
November 28, 2015
gillpolack @ 2015-11-29T14:40:00
Market this morning included crusty Italian loaf, rich red cherries, sugar snap peas and salad vegies. Also eggs. Many eggs. I did some crystal-gazing, you see, and decided that I needed eggs for baking and eggs for making latkes and, generally, eggs for the season. This is despite the fact that 25% of my very full freezer contains cake for visitors. My way of handling anxiety is by cooking, and this is going to be an anxious week. I want all my news out of the way, quickly. Mind you, I also want it to be good news. I can bribe it with two types of cake...
I looked at my freezer and realised I need friends to eat cake for me. I am not a big eater-of-cake, but I do find it comforting to cook!
Tonight's dinner is chicken/spinach sausages in salad with some kind of chutney or salsa. Or chicken sausage sandwiches. It depends on whether I have a desire for healthy food or unhealthy in four hours time.
And today is all about food and rest and marketing and catching up on stray TV (namely 3 episodes of 'Constantine'), because I'm oddly in between deadlines. Tomorrow is back to normal, but possibly with added baking.
I was going to be all kinds of grouchy here, but I just realised I have a novel that needs Ms Grouch. I go to be sarcastic on paper! Sorry you get to miss out. I promise to grouch some other time, when this novel isn't lurking. To make up, Canberra friends who need cake, I can feed you it today. I cannot promise a tidy household or even washed dishes, but I myself am wearing clothes (which is a good start) and I have cheesecake.
I looked at my freezer and realised I need friends to eat cake for me. I am not a big eater-of-cake, but I do find it comforting to cook!
Tonight's dinner is chicken/spinach sausages in salad with some kind of chutney or salsa. Or chicken sausage sandwiches. It depends on whether I have a desire for healthy food or unhealthy in four hours time.
And today is all about food and rest and marketing and catching up on stray TV (namely 3 episodes of 'Constantine'), because I'm oddly in between deadlines. Tomorrow is back to normal, but possibly with added baking.
I was going to be all kinds of grouchy here, but I just realised I have a novel that needs Ms Grouch. I go to be sarcastic on paper! Sorry you get to miss out. I promise to grouch some other time, when this novel isn't lurking. To make up, Canberra friends who need cake, I can feed you it today. I cannot promise a tidy household or even washed dishes, but I myself am wearing clothes (which is a good start) and I have cheesecake.
November 27, 2015
gillpolack @ 2015-11-28T11:14:00
I have a bit of a virus. Not a bad enough one to take time off, but certainly one that means I am on go-slow until it passes. I've decided it will pass by the end of the day, for I've had it since Tuesday night and it's most definitely used up its welcome.
I've done everything for November except one last editing job, and that editing job requires eyesight and I get maybe one hour in four clear due to the sniffles, so it's going slowly.
Also, I just reminded friends on Twitter and elsewhere, but 'Black Friday' has a different meaning to me than to US friends. It's the name given to a really nasty set of bushfires that hit the part of Victoria my family lived in, in 1939. Dad was at school in Melbourne by that time, fortunately. And my grandfather managed to burn his shop down quite independently of those fires, which was so much a thing of astonishment to his local townsfolk that when my cousin went back to live in that particular town in the 90s he was greeted with "You're Zel's grandson! He's the one whose shop burned down." My grandfather had been dead for 30+ years by that stage...
I haven't followed the sales, for I keep thinking of the bushfires. I didn't think of them so much when the sales were purely US, but now they've reached Australia my local memory has been triggered.
I've done everything for November except one last editing job, and that editing job requires eyesight and I get maybe one hour in four clear due to the sniffles, so it's going slowly.
Also, I just reminded friends on Twitter and elsewhere, but 'Black Friday' has a different meaning to me than to US friends. It's the name given to a really nasty set of bushfires that hit the part of Victoria my family lived in, in 1939. Dad was at school in Melbourne by that time, fortunately. And my grandfather managed to burn his shop down quite independently of those fires, which was so much a thing of astonishment to his local townsfolk that when my cousin went back to live in that particular town in the 90s he was greeted with "You're Zel's grandson! He's the one whose shop burned down." My grandfather had been dead for 30+ years by that stage...
I haven't followed the sales, for I keep thinking of the bushfires. I didn't think of them so much when the sales were purely US, but now they've reached Australia my local memory has been triggered.
November 24, 2015
gillpolack @ 2015-11-25T15:16:00
Thank you for the printer advice! I've taken it on board and will try again when my brain stops melting down. It's melting down because the aircon wasn't working this morning in the classroom and the classroom got all the morning sun, so it was somewhere between 28 degrees and hot. In the end I gave my students writing exercises to do in a cool place of their choice, for we were all starting to show effects of the heat. Most adjourned to the cafe downstairs.
It wasn't a small morning. I sent my book on its way, but haven't heard back yet from the publisher. Time differences are not my friend for this kind of thing - it must have reached them at the very end of the work day.
I had coffee with a friend and got home and since then have done a quiet meltdown. It isn't just the weather (the temperature is only 30 degrees, but it's a drying heat and I possibly need to drink more, and the classroom stuff has left me fractious) but I came home to another unexpected and large bill left over from the very cold winter. I would like to live in a place that has those solar panels, please, so that I'm not faced with big bills when I move into my unfinancial time of year! I can pay this one, but it leaves me a bit shorter than I would have liked for the summer, which means I need to be cautious, even with all this extra paid work. In fact, thank goodness for the amount of paid work this year, because I would be in much trouble otherwise. Still, that, and the difficulty of keeping a fractious class learning, and the weather and the getting the manuscript across just a few days early have put me in meltdown. I think I shall take the afternoon quietly and worry about most of my work after dinner, when it's cooler. Dinner will sort the meltdown, for friends are coming over. We shall drink to the end of a very big research project!
My only remaining inescapable bit of work for the day, in fact, is reading a book for the novel (time to move ahead with delayed research), so me melting down due to heat, stuff, and incipient weather change is not actually a problem. I'm just so used to doing so many things in a day that it annoys me when I can't. It doesn't annoy me when other people can't. I dealt with the difficulty of the classroom today by bringing forward the pickled children by a week, and by teaching memoir-writing skills instead of the rather harder lesson I had planned.
All is well. Or all will be well when I've had the world's biggest cup of coffee and vegetated for an hour or so.
One of the reasons I"m dealing with more equanimity than I would have a few weeks ago is because I can now read close to my normal speed. If I can do my other work, read a research book for the novel and then read a book purely for fun (today's is by Saladin Ahmed) then the world is a much better place. This is my minimalist day. It's a nice one, despite the need to find a cool corner and pretend the world doesn't exist for an hour or two.
It wasn't a small morning. I sent my book on its way, but haven't heard back yet from the publisher. Time differences are not my friend for this kind of thing - it must have reached them at the very end of the work day.
I had coffee with a friend and got home and since then have done a quiet meltdown. It isn't just the weather (the temperature is only 30 degrees, but it's a drying heat and I possibly need to drink more, and the classroom stuff has left me fractious) but I came home to another unexpected and large bill left over from the very cold winter. I would like to live in a place that has those solar panels, please, so that I'm not faced with big bills when I move into my unfinancial time of year! I can pay this one, but it leaves me a bit shorter than I would have liked for the summer, which means I need to be cautious, even with all this extra paid work. In fact, thank goodness for the amount of paid work this year, because I would be in much trouble otherwise. Still, that, and the difficulty of keeping a fractious class learning, and the weather and the getting the manuscript across just a few days early have put me in meltdown. I think I shall take the afternoon quietly and worry about most of my work after dinner, when it's cooler. Dinner will sort the meltdown, for friends are coming over. We shall drink to the end of a very big research project!
My only remaining inescapable bit of work for the day, in fact, is reading a book for the novel (time to move ahead with delayed research), so me melting down due to heat, stuff, and incipient weather change is not actually a problem. I'm just so used to doing so many things in a day that it annoys me when I can't. It doesn't annoy me when other people can't. I dealt with the difficulty of the classroom today by bringing forward the pickled children by a week, and by teaching memoir-writing skills instead of the rather harder lesson I had planned.
All is well. Or all will be well when I've had the world's biggest cup of coffee and vegetated for an hour or so.
One of the reasons I"m dealing with more equanimity than I would have a few weeks ago is because I can now read close to my normal speed. If I can do my other work, read a research book for the novel and then read a book purely for fun (today's is by Saladin Ahmed) then the world is a much better place. This is my minimalist day. It's a nice one, despite the need to find a cool corner and pretend the world doesn't exist for an hour or two.
November 23, 2015
gillpolack @ 2015-11-24T10:36:00
I think my printer just died. It won't accept new drivers, and the power goes on properly and the cartridges slow into position before it tells me it's sick. The computer can't see it and it can't see the computer. It's not the motor and it's not the driver (or if it is the driver and I can't update it, then it's the drivers but not in a solvable way).
This is not the best timing, but it's not the worst. I will have to find a way of printing things out for the next few weeks, for I can't buy a new one immediately. That's the 'not the best'. The 'not the worst' is that all the work I know about for the next few weeks can be done using the screen. Some of it would be better for printouts, but they're no longer as critical.
There's a definite upside: I will be able to win the paper war, for I can't produce more paper. The downside is it means my systems are awry and I need to rethink them. And if there are any contracts (which there may be, for a chapter of something) then I'll have to hope the person at the other end will print it out.
And I have a bunch of cartridges that I will probably not be able to use.
I was going to take it into the computer shop and get it fixed, but it's just out of warranty (of course it is) and a single repair will cost more than a new printer, even factoring all those cartridges in. If anyone local wants to drop round and take a look, be my guest. I can promise chocolate and hot drinks.
This is not the best timing, but it's not the worst. I will have to find a way of printing things out for the next few weeks, for I can't buy a new one immediately. That's the 'not the best'. The 'not the worst' is that all the work I know about for the next few weeks can be done using the screen. Some of it would be better for printouts, but they're no longer as critical.
There's a definite upside: I will be able to win the paper war, for I can't produce more paper. The downside is it means my systems are awry and I need to rethink them. And if there are any contracts (which there may be, for a chapter of something) then I'll have to hope the person at the other end will print it out.
And I have a bunch of cartridges that I will probably not be able to use.
I was going to take it into the computer shop and get it fixed, but it's just out of warranty (of course it is) and a single repair will cost more than a new printer, even factoring all those cartridges in. If anyone local wants to drop round and take a look, be my guest. I can promise chocolate and hot drinks.
