Conservatism reborn in twisted sisterhood

 
"HEAVEN CAN WAIT": Me, at Inside Catholic, in which I discuss Hell, American character, slapping your mama, and the centurion who speared the side of Christ:

There's a terrific moment in the TV show House, in which the irascible and brilliant Dr. Greg House is explaining to a lapsed Catholic subordinate why he doesn't believe in the afterlife. House, with all the self-lacerating irony that actor Hugh Laurie can impart to the character, says, "I would hate to think that all of this was just a test."

House is right -- and he's offered a crucial diagnosis of one form of Catholic piety. There's a way of thinking about the afterlife that makes this life, here, irrelevant and even inexplicable. Catholics will sometimes argue against universalism -- the comforting belief that all people must be saved, because God would never be so cruel as to damn somebody's grandma -- by asking, "If everyone is saved, why even bother to do the right thing here on earth?"

more

Labels: inside catholic, other people paid me to write this, Plato, unskilled at childhood

posted by Eve at 6:11 PM

 
KITCHEN ADVENTURES: LIKE A GOOD PENNY! Today I cooked with turnips for the first time, for a warm salad. I can confidently say that this vegetable will be making many repeat appearances in my kitchen. Turnips are just as creamy and blank-slate as all the best comfort food.

So here's what I did: I heated the oven to 400. I chopped up some cute turnips with a Japanese-sounding name I can't remember, into big chunks. Imagine approximately a smallish button mushroom: That's how big they were. I then placed the turnip chunks on aluminum foil, drizzled seriously with light olive oil, tossed with cumin and a bit of curry powder, wrapped the turnip in foil, and stuck that in the oven. I waited about ten minutes.

(While I was waiting, I made a quick dressing by whisking ex-vir olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and some marinating liquid from a jar of water-packed artichokes, with a bit of salt and pepper.)

I chopped the turnip greens, chopped up a small hot pepper, and put that on to saute with ex-vir olive oil and salt and pepper.

I cut up a ciabatta roll into smallish pieces, and put it in the toaster oven for medium-well.

I chopped up some mozzarella.

At this point the toaster oven chimed. I let the ciabatta cool off. Once the turnip had roasted for about 20 minutes, I shredded the toasted roll, combined all the ingredients, drizzled with the dressing, and gave it another grind of black and white pepper. Then...

Then!!!

This was great. The balance of the salad wasn't exactly right--it could use another bright vegetable, not necessarily an out-of-season tomato but maybe I could get another pepper up in there, and I had a bit too much mozzarella proportional to the other ingredients. But the caramelized creaminess of the turnip, combined with the dark rich cumin, was just perfect. I think I could just eat roast turnip with salt, pepper, and cumin, and feel like I was eating macaroni and cheese.

The greens were also delicious. Raw, they were much sharper but also much tastier than raw spinach, which has always struck me as kind of like eating dogwood leaves; cooked, they grew dark and rich, ready to play off of the hot pepper. Raw turnip greens reminded me a bit of raw sorrel (yum), while cooked turnip greens were more spinach-like, darker, more distinctive than cooked sorrel.

I just liked this so much. Which is good, since I don't have a lot of winter vegetables I really love--even butternut squash, which of course is delicious when someone else cooks it, I've never quite been able to master.

Labels: kitchen adventures

posted by Eve at 10:26 PM

 
DOWN, DOWN, DOWN!: Two reviews of The Descent... Final Girl.

The Horror Blog.

Labels: horror

posted by Eve at 1:50 AM

 
YOU WILL GO DOWN IN DARKNESS BEFORE YOU DIE: Wow, I loved The Descent. edited!--I've moved this review to the other blog, the one where I post spoilery stuff.

ARGH edited to add actual link! Sorry!

Labels: horror, unskilled at childhood

posted by Eve at 12:25 AM

 
HURRY UP DAY JOB: MarriageDebate! This week, IVF mistakes and what we mean when we say a child is "ours"; adoption and parental investment; fathers, and whether family-resource centers tend to assume that they're irrelevant.

Last week, marriage in the movies, a CNN debate about monogamy, a chewy Newsweek piece on the future of abstinence-only sex ed, libertarianism and culture, "your brain without Dad," Stephen Colbert, and much much more.

I know I don't post there regularly enough. But believe me, even if you have signed up (as I hope you have!) for the IMAPP weekly newsletter, you're still missing interesting marriage- and family-related links, if you don't check in at the blog. (The weekly newsletter does give you the more scholarly stuff, so if your time is limited, consider signing up for that. The site itself is a bit more freewheeling, basically whatever I feel like throwing into the hopper plus whatever the IMAPP overlords consider interesting plus occasional flotsam. That can be a real advantage, though, since the blog addresses a wider range of issues and perspectives than the newsletter.)

I am not being paid to tell you this! I just think we've got stuff up there now which would interest many of the readers of this site.

PS: As always, send me links! As you can see from the cornucopia above, the site deals with marriage, family, parenting, and gender issues, and we're willing to publish pretty much anybody's perspective as long as it's well-written and/or intriguing. Our job is to advance the debate.

Labels: marriage

posted by Eve at 8:58 PM

 
A GIRL ON A BEACH: On October 30, I watched Nosferatu at the AFI Silver, with a live score by the Silent Orchestra. There are a lot of things one could notice about that experience (SOMEDAY I will own the SO-scored version of Alla Nazimova's Salome!!!!) but I will just pick one.

This movie is very long, for a silent movie, and it does have bland stretches. But it also offers lots and lots of scary ship upon a scary ocean. And it also is only the second movie, after Barton Fink, where I've found an image from my personal horror iconography presented in all its beauty and terror.

The Mina Harker character--I can't remember her nom de ripoff, but you know which one I mean--sits out on the beach and waits for her husband's ship. The waves crest black; the grasses shake in the wind. Crosses are planted here and there around the bench where she sits, memorials to sailors lost.

This one scene twists in my gut. It takes the hope, the memory, the sense that once there was a place where we were at home--all the things I associate with this scene of a beautiful girl on a beach--and studs it with crosses, with death and heartbreak.

I have been here before
But when or how I cannot tell;
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

--Dante Rossetti, "Sudden Light" (more from me)

Somewhere I have heard this before...

--Nirvana, "Drain You"

Just a beach and a pretty girl,
If you just take this potion

--The Levellers, "Fifteen Years"

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;

--Edgar Poe, "Annabel Lee"

Labels: a beach and a pretty girl, all knowledge is memory, district of chaos, horror

posted by Eve at 8:30 PM

 
Oh life looked so rosy in the blogwatch,
But I'll be a friend and I'll tell you what's in store...

Belated Halloweenery edition.

Camassia on Synetic Theater's Dracula adaptation. I strongly second her belief that Synetic should've stayed wordless; the best moments of the production were all dance, from the snaky vampire women to the eerie invisible horse. (That horse really should NOT have worked--it should've evoked memories of Monty Python members banging coconuts--and yet the amazing lighting work and the actor's total commitment to the moment made his galloping seem terrifying, not silly.)

Dresden Codak: 42 Essential Third-Act Twists. FOOD STARTS EATING PEOPLE.

Pumpkin Gutter: This may be the most fabulous thing ever. Iron Pumpkin, embryo pumpkin, American Gothic pumpkin, braces pumpkin, scary eye pumpkin, tarantula pumpkin... there's something here for everyone (in the Addams Family). Sadly, I forget where I found this.

Sean Collins: Reviewing Al Columbia's Pim and Francie:

But moreover, these scary stories and disturbing images are all so gorgeously awful that they appear to have corrupted the book itself. They look like they've emerged from the ether, seared or stained themselves partly onto the pages, then burned out, or been extinguished when the nominal author shut his sketchbook and hurled it across the room or tore up the pages in terror.

MORE.

Plus, he reviews Paranormal Activity. While he ended up with a different overall stance on the movie than I did, I really liked a lot of his review, e.g.:

...For some reason, the lights being flipped on and off really got me. They weren't flickering--something was walking around turning lights on and off. Not only was something else present in the house, it was basically using the house the way we would--only it was nothing like us in nature or intent. I dunno, that creeped me out pretty bad.

But best/worst of all were the two scenes where somnambulist Katie got out of bed, turned to face it, and just...stood there, for hours and hours. That's pure automaton Freudian uncanny, of course, and a monumental horror-image par excellence. ...These are actions that really have no inherent emotional or psychological content whatsoever. They're purely neutral. But when you have no idea why someone's doing them, even totally neutral actions can become sinister, almost intolerable.

(whole thing--plus comments-boxing!)

Basically, the buzz around PA has made me really want to rewatch The Blair Witch Project--especially since I am in the minority who really liked the Heather character!--so that's probably good.

Labels: Camassia, comics, horror, Sean Collins, Synetic Theater

posted by Eve at 8:14 PM

 
THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT: If you don't check out the Kindertrauma Jukebox... well, I reckon we don't like your kind 'round here.

The Specials provide my favorite tune by far.
posted by Eve at 12:50 AM

 
The function of the advance guard in military terms is exactly that of the rear guard, to protect the main body, which translates as the status quo.
--Donald Barthelme, quoted in the American Conservative, of which more later

Labels: against bourgeois sodomy, all of life is a choice of genre

posted by Eve at 12:44 AM