Korokē manene

Pork Chili Verde

Andrew — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 06:33:40 +0000

My adaptation of Margarita Carmona’s chili verde recipe from Osteria Stellina in Northern California. This recipe was featured in a GQ article about the food that the osteria’s cooks make for each other.

Prose Poems from the Ancient Present

Andrew — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 08:57:13 +0000

I often observe that H.P. Lovecraft is the single largest influence on my writing, but I don’t talk or write as much about Charles Baudelaire, specifically how his collection of prose poems, Le Spleen de Paris, completely changed the way I thought about story telling.

Although famous for the lovely and wicked Les Fleurs du mal, Baudelaire’s unusual experiment into the world of short prose remains, for my money, one of the most bizarre and beautiful collections of short fiction.

I know: technically, the 50 prose poems — or petits poemes — in Le Spleen de Paris are not short stories. They are often only two or three hundred words in length, with notable longer exceptions. They do not follow the rules of a short story in that they are unconcerned with an arc, or with the beginning/middle/end model hammered into us from a very early age. The characters are often strange, sometimes ephemeral simulacra of a mood or tone rather than people with whom we should identify. Often, the requisite conflict is poetic rather than narrative; meaning it is symbolic and almost never mundane.

These qualities of Baudelaire’s prose poems endeared him, well after his death, to H.P. Lovecraft and Andre Breton, two men with the intellectual vigor to recognize the beauty in the terror of dreams. In 1927′s Supernatural Horror in Literature, Lovecraft wrote:

Of the former class of “artists in sin” the illustrious poet Baudelaire, influenced vastly by Poe, is the supreme type; whilst the psychological novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans, a true child of the eighteen-nineties, is at once the summation and finale.

Baudelaire, smitten by Poe’s power as a writer of short fiction, contributed to Poe’s popularity in France by translating everything he wrote. It was the golden age of the French novel, and Baudelaire wanted to master it. But, as Rosemary Lloyd points out in her introduction to the 1991 Oxford University Press edition of The Prose Poems and La Fanfarlo:

His critical writing reveals a determination both to understand the mechanisms used by novelists and short-story writers, and, typically, to make better use of those same mechanisms. But while his ambitions were boundless, the pragmatic difficulties of completing a full-scale novel seem to have been beyond him, partly for practical reasons associated with the chaotic and often sordid life-style his financial position forced him to adopt, and partly, there can be no doubt, because of his own temperament.

When I wrote before that in Le Spleen de Paris characters are often strange, sometimes ephemeral simulacra of a mood or tone rather than people with whom we should identify, I was thinking of Huysmans, mentioned also by Lovecraft in his passage. Huysmans’ À rebours is a challenging journey through the mind of Jean Des Esseintes, a decadent to rule all decadents. In the novel, Huysmans uses his astonishing vocabulary and command of French to paint grim and pessimistic events in a way that are, in themselves, a decadent joy to read. On a much smaller and more accessible scale, across the length of 50 short prose poems, Baudelaire achieves much the same thing. The DNA strand is there: Poe influences Baudelaire, who influences Huysmans, all of whom influence Lovecraft.

Which brings us to me. You knew it would.

I can’t tell you exactly the first time I read Le Spleen de Paris, but it was in Chicago in the very early ’90s. Shortly after reading it, when I was still in the magnificent throes every young writer goes through — nothing is impossible, I am a sponge, what came before me is food for the muse — I began writing my response to Le Spleen de Paris. The first prose poem I wrote was called “A Flower Fell” and was a direct reference to Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal. The title was meant to be a short sentence, and it was some time before I realized I had actually evoked in my title a tone that would largely embody everything I wanted to do with this response. A man down, a woman aggrieved, a country divided, a flower fell.

It was incredibly important that I show my own voice despite the stylistic fealty I at the time felt to Lovecraft, Poe, and Baudelaire. From “A Flower Fell”:

A form, lost now to memory but which was once vivid when my mind was bright and alive to the things children see, blossomed from the fading orange ash and offered its gullet to the stars.

Eventually, I decided that my collection would be called A Flower Fell. I wrote about fifteen of these poems, many of them pastiches or outright experiments in the use of language to create an effect (rather than to tell a straightforward story). Baudelaire’s “A Hemisphere In Your Hair” inspired my “There’s a Sidewalk in your Face.” His “The Generous Gambler” was a tonal foundation for my “Dumb Doors and Windowpanes.” But after time, I felt I had exhausted the experiment, so I lost interest in it.

Fifteen years later, reacquainting myself with Le Spleen de Paris, I found a new well of stories to be told. So, I wrote another dozen or so prose poems. The differences between those poems I’d written as a young writer and those I wrote after acquiring wisdom and cynicism are, while not stark, tonally distinct. The latter works are, perhaps, less whimsical, although they are better written. Several of the former works read like startling amuse-gueule, while the latter ones favor the gluttonous palate.

Looking back on these prose poems from the ancient present, I can’t help but think of Virgilio Piñera, the Cuban writer who died in obscurity after being censured by Castro’s government. It is unlikely that you will find many readers familiar with Le Spleen de Paris, and even less likely that you will find fans of Piñera, author of the unforgettable short-story collection, Cold Tales.

1984 vs Brave New World

Andrew — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 10:45:38 +0000

I quite like this comparison of the two novels by author and critic Neil Postman:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.

Make Batman stop

Andrew — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 06:36:32 +0000

I have several problems with Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies and I’m just going to clear my head of them.

1) Nolan’s work is 100% cerebral testosterone. He and Guy Ritchie are cast from the same cloth, with the key exception that Nolan is actually a visionary, a superior director, and doesn’t irritate. More on this later.

2) The black & gray palette with punches of high-contrast white gets old.

3) The self-important seriousness tires…it’s Batman, for Pete’s sake. Even Frank Miller understood this in his grim but indisputably comic-y Dark Knight magnum opi (opuses?). Alan Moore also understood this. Nolan substitutes austere grandiloquence for dark poetry. He sees the Conrad in Batman, which is great if you’re a lit major, but fails to see (or just doesn’t care about) the far darker Kierkegaard themes inherent in the material, i.e., dread.

4) I’m still just not buying the magnificent Christian Bale as a seminal Bruce Wayne. That gravelly thing he does with his voice lacks any silk, any menace. It’s Bale being too controlled, too much pebble in the throat, not enough motor oil.

5) Could there be more guys in these movies? More guys being guy-like? It’s that testosterone thing. Nolan flirted with the macho chick in Memento and his remake of Insomnia. He made tiny Ellen Page seem like a little kick-butt dream spitfire in Inception. It was even amusing that the most feminine presence in The Prestige was, um, Hugh Jackman. But if you’re not going to temper Batman’s monotonous darkness with a logical feminine foil like a teenage boy wonder, then Batman’s just a guy flick.

6) Military fetishism. Batman Begins was a terrific piece of storytelling until that moment when we are introduced to the new Batmobile (a tank, void of all style or class), followed shortly by Batman’s casual assault on pursuing police cars, cars so incredibly mauled that one wonders if the cops inside were killed. At that moment, I realized that Nolan doesn’t care about Batman as a character. He just wanted to push Batman into the fist-pump realm of blowing shit up real good…including human beings.

7) The trailer for the new movie includes several seconds of coppers in SWAT-like uniforms, with infrared headgear and kick-ass power gun rifle thingies. Really? This is what Batman has come to?

Speaking of the new movie, Bane has never been a terribly interesting foil for Batman. That’s all I have to say about Bane. In the trailer, I spotted the Scarecrow, Bane, Two-Face, and Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. Plus Mork from Mork & Mindy, apparently still finding work. I guess the time-worn formula of overloading movies with multiple villains because you don’t have enough ideas to sustain one of them persists to the present. Sad, that.

I’ll pass. In fact, I’ll go read some stories by Jim Aparo, or tales illustrated by Gene Colan. Remember when Batman was more of a detective than a one-man war machine psycho? Thanks to Nolan, the answer is probably — of course not.

Signs of the times

Andrew — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 13:09:24 +0000

When people ask me why I moved to New Zealand, I have all sorts of canned answers. Today, I have a very concrete and unique one: because the scale of things here allows thinkers to wrap their heads around complexity at the level of society. American society, especially when you get into urban planning, regulatory law, and interstate systems, dwarfs the common person. Even the very smart common person. Let me be more specific…

I’m fascinated by this kiwi road sign.

You drive here on the left side of the road, so you see this sign all the time. Two discs stacked on a pole and usually found at the tip of an obstruction, such as a curb island separating the left and right sides of the road. What you’re supposed to do is clear, right? Stay to the left of the obstruction. OK, so what about this sign?

This sign, like the one above, serves precisely the same purpose. Why do kiwis need two signs to do the same thing? I set out to see if I could solve the mystery.

About 20 minutes of internet searches led me to NZTA (New Zealand Transportation Authority) pages and a couple of sites for commercial manufacturers of road signs. Along the way, I even learned a thing or two about ISO 9001 (quality management standards) and ISO 14001 (environmental management standards).

A terminology pattern began to emerge. I kept running into terms like ‘level 1 road,’ ‘level 2 road,’ ‘level 3 road.’ Perplexed, I dug further. Why? Because the description on one site for the twin keep-left sign said that it was suitable for level 1 roads, while the larger single keep-left sign was suitable for level 2 — and sometimes level 3 — roads.

Here’s what I found:

Levels of temporary traffic management (TTM)

All state highways are classified as a particular TTM level dependent on the traffic volumes. Four levels of TTM are described within the code and, in increasing order of complexity, these are:

Level LV - Low Volume Roads (AADT less than 500 vpd)

Level 1 - Low to Moderate Volume Roads (AADT 500 to 10,000 vpd)

Level 2 - High Volume Roads (AADT greater than 10,000 vpd)

Level 3 - High Volume, High Speed Multi-lane Roads, Expressways and Motorways (AADT greater than 10,000 vpd and speed greater than 75 km/h)

It should be noted that all state highways are classified as Level 1 TTM unless shown otherwise on the maps listed.

And where are these roads? Is there a key? Yes. If you’re not familiar with Auckland, this key is simply pretty, but if you live here and have driven enough of its roads, then the key makes flawless sense.

The TTM table above was like the primer for my puzzle. The twin sign is suitable for L1 roads. The single sign, while also suitable for L1 roads, is suitable for L2 roads. There is an even larger version of the single sign that’s suitable for L2-L3 roads. Although I haven’t seen anything explicit to support this, I think it all boils down to visibility, speed of traveler, and night-time lighting. I plan to confirm this with someone at NZTA (yes, you can actually call a bureaucracy in New Zealand and talk to a person who answers questions directly). I also hope that the bureaucrat can answer the single most nagging question for me — who decided that two small stacked signs were even an option? Why not the smaller single sign in every instance where a twin sign is used instead?

I wrote this post because Richard Saul Wurman, sharing a post on Google+, got me thinking about information versus knowledge. I will be the first to agree that access to awesome amounts of information hasn’t made us smarter (how many Wikipedia articles have you read that you are unable only days later to cite or even remember?) or more informed.

My post was to simplify an argument and see if a single data point — one commonly observed sign — could lead, without a terrible amount of effort, to knowledge. Everyone knows how to obey a sign (well, almost everyone). But how many people know why signs are used the way they are, or how they came to be, given their specific and un-creative lots in life. This sort of understanding may seem banal and beneath notice, but it speaks to the value of knowledge, which, after all, is simply the embodiment of understanding the intersection of information points. And their application thereof.

You have to admit, if you’ve got an eye for design, that solving the simplest mysteries is always good mental squat-thrusts for tackling the presumably more complex ones.

Creating compost II

Andrew — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 03:39:42 +0000

My backyard compost is now 6 weeks old. It’s dead of winter right now, so the bin doesn’t reach the very hot internal temperatures that accelerate composting. Something proper, however, is happening because the waste is breaking down at a surprisingly rapid rate. My guess is that it’s still 6-8 weeks away from rich, sweet compost.

I got some bonus content for the bin when my next-door neighbor had a tree torn down and the remaining stump shredded to very tiny chips. He was going to just throw it all away, but I asked him if I could have a couple of bucketfuls for the bin. Small wood chips are the perfect foil for the amount of lawn clippings I add (which collapse and become anaerobic).

Today, I noticed three things upon opening the bin. First, the whitefly and budding fruitfly presence had subsided nearly to nothing. Second, the compost’s surface had lowered by several centimeters. This could be a sign of anaerobic compaction or of efficient deterioration. Upon mixing the compost, I realized that it was actual deterioration. Third, there is a healthy presence of earthworms (yay!).

So, I added a layer of crumpled newspaper and about a liter of kitchen waste (coffee grounds, a dead lemon basil plant, tomatoes, cabbage, etc.). On top of that I added about a centimeter or two of the wood chips from my neighbor’s yard.

Now, I leave it alone for a couple of weeks.

New Zealand, defy your government

Andrew — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:11:39 +0000

It is astonishing to me that New Zealand’s parliament, by a vote of 107-10, today increased the powers of the SIS, or Security Intelligence Service. They used the World Rugby Cup as a catalyst for this. The powers include improved ability to deal with high-tech communications like computers and mobile phones. In short, they have existed in a world comfortable with the deplorable PATRIOT Act for so long that the idea of fuzzily defined surveillance is now given as a necessary evil.

I am reminded of Thomas Paine’s timeless observation. It goes something like this: if something wrong has been around and accepted long enough, it takes on the appearance of seeming right, and conjures violent defense on its behalf even if it was originally rooted in nothing noble, just, or wise.

This is the problem with any movement by government that puts security before freedom. And to use the ostensibly silly Rugby World Cup as a motive for increasing intelligence powers is patently and obviously dishonest.

Does New Zealand expect an invasion of security threats from the surge of tourism? Does it really think that anyone gives a shit about its unimportant place in the geopolitical scheme of things?

The beauty of New Zealand is that it is unimportant. Nobody wants to conquer, occupy, or destroy it. Nobody resents it because of its venal foreign policy, or its attempt to aggressively export its culture to foreign lands. That disgusting honor belongs to the United States.

So, what were 107 ministers thinking? Why is NZ media so passive in digging into the truth about this? And when will kiwis stop confusing modernization with conformism. Why are people sheep?

(I will admit that I am reacting to a shallow and uninformative NZ Herald article and don’t know the history or context of this surprising vote. I will absolutely return and update this post as I learn more.)

Skyline vs. Battle: Los Angeles

Andrew — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 06:16:38 +0000

Two big budget alien-invasion movies came out earlier this year. Skyline came out first and did poorly at the box office, being roundly panned by critics. Battle: Los Angeles came out later and did gangbuster business at the box office, although it too was roundly panned. Both movies focus on Los Angeles (what a surprise from the City of Self-Absorption). Both movies involve technologically sophisticated invaders who just arrive and wreak havoc. Many special effects are involved.

I’ve seen both and I’m perplexed as to why Skyline did so poorly and Battle: Los Angeles did so well. Hands down, Skyline is a vastly superior movie. Its story is just interesting enough to hold your attention and the special effects, alien ships, and monsters are of the highest quality. The characters are incredibly annoying and often stupid, but what would you expect of a movie that centers around people living in Los Angeles…richness and depth? I’ve seen Skyline twice, and while I have a reputation for watching trashy movies more than once, this one is actually rewatchable. Why? Because it’s got a lot of cool stuff in it. Duh.

Battle: Los Angeles is just an offensive mess, the worst sort of military porn, filled with dumbass soldiers, lots of guns and bullets and grenades. Whooppee! It’s a movie that wants to marry Blackhawk Down with Saving Private Ryan and select dumb scenes from Transformers 2. It’s a noisy, visually uninteresting bore. It amazes me that in 2011, it’s actually possible to make a boring alien-invasion movie.

Where Skyline takes enormous glee from showing us alien ships and monsters as they clobber LA, Battle: Los Angeles shows us practically nothing, and stages all that smoky, foggy, hazy nothingness as if we’re at the Battle of Normandy or some other iconic WWII location. In Los Angeles. Yeah, right. Battle‘s approach would be fine if the characters weren’t all precisely the same, if they weren’t all just dumbass soldier hicks doing that American rah!-rah! nonsense that American moviegoers seem to crave. Sometimes, I wondered if the Marines/Navy/Air Force/Army hadn’t funded this movie as the most expensive recruiting commercial in history. It really is that stupid.

Movies about war have to be about more than war. Platoon, Casualties of War, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, you name it — those movies are about human beings in one state of hell or another. Battle: Los Angeles, which could have been as silly and empty headed as Skyline, instead tries to be (gag) poignant. It’s a pretentious piece of shit and I hated every second of it (please note that after 90 boring minutes, I just turned it off).

So, looking for pretty lights, great destruction and death, and humans getting stepped on by giant armored aliens? Stick with Skyline. It doesn’t have a self-important bone in its CGI body. Maybe that’s why it works so well.

Creating compost I

Andrew — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 08:29:56 +0000

Today, I set up our new compost bin in the back yard. It’s the first time I’ve ever composted, so — as is my well-known habit — I researched the living hell out of the process. This afternoon, between the late afternoon sun and wee bits of drizzle, I got it all set up.

Backstory

Over the last couple of weeks, I bought some principal supplies:

250 litre compost bin ($55 NZD)
Box of compost starter ($19)
Bag of Bokashi mix ($10)
Garden fork (pitch fork) ($12)
Bag of soil ($4)
TOTAL SUPPLIES: $100

Because autumn is here, I also started collecting fallen leaves, Camellia blossoms, grass clippings, and branches, which I today snipped into 1-2cm pieces. Over a month, after three rakings and two lawn mowings, I had about 15kg of garden matter. I had also just started to collect kitchen waste: egg shells, salad waste, bits of fruit, etc.

Establishing the bin

I created layers about 10cm deep of garden waste mixtures. On top of each, I placed a few tablespoons of compost starter and a light layer of soil. I then sprinkled with water from a watering can. Repeating this created about four layers. Every other layer received a tablespoon or two of Bokashi mix. I finished it all with the kitchen waste and Bokashi.

The entire bin, which is perhaps a third full, is probably 40-50cm deep. I sprinkled the top with water and placed the lid on top.

If my research is accurate, I shouldn’t really have to do anything for two or three weeks except stir the mix with a pitch fork every couple of weeks.

Fuck loyalty cards

Andrew — Sat, 28 May 2011 13:03:22 +0000

Let’s all take a deep breath and take a look at what loyalty cards do.

They identify us and our spending habits to companies who want us to spend more money at their stores.
They lure us into believing that if we spend more, we will get some sort of freebie or another. A bit like taxation — the more you surrender, the more services you get in return.

If you take a look at most loyalty programs, what you are getting are one — or perhaps both — of two things.

A discount on an advertised price.
An aspirational reward after you’ve spent some arbitrary amount of money.

In the first case, loyalty cards make lots of sense. Until you step back and wonder why anyone would pay $2 for a product when, with a card, he could pay $1.80. Is the $2 price real? Or is it just part of the total marketing package that makes loyalty cards so attractive.

Think about it. If 100% of buyers owned and used loyalty cards and bought 10,000 units of a product advertised as $2, then the retailer would make only $18,000. The loss of an additional $2,000 might be considered — by shareholders — a particularly damning risk. But marketers will turn around and tell you that customers — addicted to this sort of perpetual savings scheme — will eventually spend far more than the the $2,000 that was originally lost. If, of course, there was any loss to begin with. In short, are prices slightly inflated to convince us that we are saving through loyalty?

In the second case (aspirational reward), the bunk of loyalty is much more evident. I have a card that gives me 1 point for every x dollars spent. Once I have 5,000 points, I “earn” a toaster oven. Let’s say that a toaster oven costs $100. It would make beautiful sense if, after spending $100 dollars, I earned a free toaster oven. But that’s not how the aspirational reward works. I may receive 1 point for every $50 spent, which means that my $5,000 worth of products purchased earns me a $100 toaster. Is that a reward? Or a poignant love letter to my gullibility?

People love to believe that they are saving money. It’s an obsession. But loyalty cards, in addition to waving their hands about their worth, are largely useless. Unless you want 20 cents off of an overpriced product, or believe that some device you already have or don’t need is worth “earning,” or are comfortable with corporate databases — and the IRD — knowing precisely where your money goes.