And the Winner is Comus

Thank you, Comus Sideways, you nailed the Japanese film despite the fact that I remembered some things totally wrong! Noodle soup /ramen) not sushi and it was the womans dream not the mans.

Please enjoy this trailer of Juzo Itami´s wonderful film Tampopo (1986)!



I would have gone totally crazy (well some say I am already, but don´t you believe them) thinking about which film this was, now I can try to buy it and watch it over and over and over again...

Urulaikizhangu Roast

I was asked by one of my readers to provide him with some roots porn, I will comply to his wishes but in my own singular way.

Feast your eyes on this dish and then cook it and have another feast eating it.

I found the recipe and the picture on the blog Chitra Amma's Kitchen. She provides a variety of delicious,traditional, vegetarian, South Indian recipes.

INGREDIENTS:
Baby potatoes – 1kg
Salt – 3/4 tbsp
Sambar powder – 1 tbsp
Mustard seeds – ¼ tsp
Split black gram dal (urad dal) – 1 tsp
Turmeric powder – ¼ tsp
Curry leaves – a few
Cooking oil – 4 tbsp 

METHOD:
1. Wash the baby potatoes well. Take some water in a pressure cooker. Take the potatoes in a separate vessel, and place the vessel in the pressure cooker, over the water. Avoid adding water directly along with the potatoes. Cook for one whistle on High Flame, and one on Medium Flame, and then switch off the cooker.
2. Thoroughly cool and then peel the potatoes, one by one, taking care not to mash them up.
3. Leave it in the fridge for half an hour until they cool down and become a bit firm.
4. Heat oil in a thick bottomed pan and add mustard seeds.
5. When it splutters add the black gram dal.
6. When the dal turns golden in colour, reduce the flame.
7. Add curry leaves, turmeric powder, sambar powder and the salt.
8. Now drop in the cold potatoes and gently turn them around with a spatula, until they are entirely coated with the oil and spices.
9. Increase flame and stir for a few more minutes.
10. Now again decrease flame and let the potatoes get roasted slowly.
11. Roast until they acquire the desired crispness (about 40 minutes). Stir now and then for even roasting and to prevent the potatoes from getting burnt.

Relish the urulaikizhangu roast while still hot and sizzling. Crispy spicy crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside - it is sure to take you to soaring heights!

Variation: These can be made with regular potatoes as well, by chopping them into small pieces. They need not even be pressure cooked, and you can simply begin with Step 4. This takes longer to get cooked and roasted, but tastes wonderful.

---
Writing this post made me think of a wonderful Japanese film I saw only once, maybe 15-20 years ago, I don´t remember it´s name or who the director is and the actors were all unknown to me.

The film shows us two parallel stories. The main story - as I remember it - is about a mature woman who lives alone with her son. The woman meets, falls in love with a man and eventually they become a loving family. The man has a dream to get his own sushi stand or restaurant and during the course of the film the mans dream is realized. The second story is about a beautiful young couple who both turn out to be members of a Japanese  criminal gang, the woman is the mistress of the gang leader, Every time we see them they are having passionate food sex in every imaginable way without being pornographic. I especially remember a scene where they kiss and while kissing pass an egg yoke from one to the other, back and forth, until they finally crush it between their lips and the yoke splashes down their chins and necks. In the end they are both (or perhaps it is only the young man) killed by the gang leader who has discovered the illicit love affair.

If anyone recognizes the film from my description and knows the name and the director I will be very grateful if you told me.

The Gay Caveman

Archaeologists in the Czech Republic have found what they believe to be a "gay" caveman near Prague. The reasons for this theory is that the 5000 year old skeleton of a male was found buried in a way normally reserved for women during the Copper Age (around 2900-2500 BC.).

This male skeleton was buried facing east and surrounded by jars, instead of facing west and surrounded by hammers, knifes and other weapons which was the customary way to bury men.

Archaeologist Kamila Remisova Vesinova said, according to Time.com, "From history and ethnology, we know that people from this period took funeral rites very seriously. so it is unlikely that the positioning was a mistake.  It is much more likely that he was a man of a different sexual orientation, that he was gay or transsexual."

---

Reading this story I was struck by two things.Firstly that the cavemen seem to have been more accepting and respectful than some of my contemporaries, and secondly by the narrow-mindedness of the archaeologist in believing that being a gay male means you are something in-between a man and a woman or even that you are more of a woman than a man.

I wonder what Ms. Remisova Vesinova would have made of "The Sacred Band of Thebes", which was a troop of picked soldiers, consisting of 150 gay male couples that formed the elite force of the Theban army in the 4th century BC.

The Sacred Band was originally formed of hand-picked men who were couples, each lover and beloved selected from the ranks of the existing Theban citizen-army, the rationale being that lovers could and would fight more fiercely and cohesively than strangers with no ardent bonds.

As a gay man myself it is totally horrendous being told that I am somewhere in-between because I sure as hell am not. I am a masculine man who falls in love and am emotionally and sexually attracted to other men who also are masculine men. Neither of us ever fall in the category of being in-between.

To me it is quite obvious that the caveperson was a transsexual, but there is not enough basis to draw any conclusions concerning her sexual orientation.

Playing with Fruit

Well, while trying to stay out of SecondLife today, I got obsessed with fruits and found a new favorite website copyranter - you will find it in my blog roll.

I started thinking about the by now very famous banana penis picture and one thing leads to the another - especially when surfing on the Internet.

My mother always told me not to play with my food. Perhaps the "fruit artists" mothers should have told them the same thing about fruits. I am not yet sure if I will be able to eat strawberries or raspberries in the near future.

  

Road To Nowhere

Vladimir Konovalov Photography © 2008

"Road To Nowhere" - Talking Heads
Lyrics by David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Franz & Jerry Harrison

Well we know where we're goin'
But we don't know where we've been
And we know what we're knowin'
But we can't say what we've seen
And we're not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out

We're on a road to nowhere
Come on inside
Takin' that ride to nowhere
We'll take that ride

I'm feelin' okay this mornin'
And you know,
We're on the road to paradise
Here we go, here we go

Maybe you wonder where you are
I don't care
Here is where time is on our side
Take you there...take you there

We're on a road to nowhere
We're on a road to nowhere
We're on a road to nowhere

There's a city in my mind
Come along and take that ride
and it's all right, baby, it's all right

And it's very far away
But it's growing day by day
And it's all right, baby, it's all right

They can tell you what to do
But they'll make a fool of you
And it's all right, baby, it's all right
We're on a road to nowhere

Burning Bridges

Photography by Tim Barber

Well life sort of sucks right now, and I really brought it on through my own actions. I now feel like the man on the amazing picture above by Tim Barber, caught on a bridge and trying to escape the fire.

Ever since my Ars died (there I finally wrote that horrid four-letter word) I have enveloped myself in a cocoon of safety that the Swedish community in SecondLife has kindly offered me. The only places outside of that "safe haven" - which have offered me the sense of safety that I required - have been Elfay Pinkdot´s show at The Circe´s Sunset Jazz Club and Chade Dagger´s club The Den together with Strum Diesel´s and Bara Jonson´s gigs have been the limits of my SecondLife world outside of my home sim.

Recent events and ghosts from the past have forced me to understand that this cannot go on any longer. I must widen my world in SecondLife again, either that or leave it. And I do not wish to leave so there only remains one real alternative for me.

There will of course still be places in the Swedish community that will always feel like a second home to me, places like OrmDricka to mention only one. So I will not burn any bridges, but I will start asking myself and many people on my friends list if we actually still are friends or if we ever have been.

SecondLife is huge and wonderful and has so much more to offer, but I hope to run across some of you out there!

Pajamas Day

I just didn't feel like wearing anything except pajamas today, either in real life or SecondLife!

This is me dancing at OrmDricka where the theme tonight was "90´s formal", oh well...