Snacklog

A reminder to all of those Presidential hopefuls in the wake of debate-time. Big ups to Willy Shakes for laying it out loud and clear.

Subject: A Rebirth of Snacks

Originally Sent June 20, 2008

Snacks on Speechmaking:

-Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.

-Do not saw the airtoo much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

-Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

-O, reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.

-Go, make you ready.

fotografia courtesy of reuters.

Snacklog

Subject: A Rebirth of Snacks

Originally Sent June 20, 2008

Snacks, Literally

cheese fondue

Recipe from Gourmet Magazine, 1966.
Servings: About 6

ingredients

1 garlic clove, halved crosswise

1 1/2 cups dry white wine (preferably Swiss, such as Fendant)

1 tablespoon cornstarch

2 teaspoons kirsch

1/2 lb Emmental cheese, coarsely grated (2 cups)

1/2 lb Gruyère , coarsely grated (2 cups)

instructions

Accompaniment: cubes of French bread on fondue forks or long wooden skewer

Special equipment: a fondue pot

-Rub inside of a 4-quart heavy pot with cut sides of garlic, then discard garlic.
-Add wine to pot and bring just to a simmer over moderate heat.
-Stir together cornstarch and kirsch in a cup.
-Gradually add cheese to pot and cook, stirring constantly in a zigzag pattern (not a circular motion) to prevent cheese from balling up, until cheese is just melted and creamy (do not let boil).

-Stir cornstarch mixture again and stir into fondue.

-Bring fondue to a simmer and cook, stirring, until thickened, 5 to 8 minutes.

-Transfer to fondue pot set over a flame and serve with bread for dipping.

fotografia courtesy of googlegooglegoogle

Snacklog

Subject: A Rebirth of Snacks
Originally Sent June 20, 2008

Snaicku:

Most Ev'rybody

Loves Somebody, so why not

Call them, and tell them?

Snacklog

One of my recent Snacks was actually a Snack Package- a Snackage, if you will! Many snacks, compromised of events, snagged poetry, et cet.  I shall break it up into a few manageable bits for these reentries.

Subject: A Rebirth of Snacks

Originally Sent June 20, 2008

Tiny Snack

I don't know who Jelaluddin Rumi is but his birth name was Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi and he said

"Reason is powerless in the expression of Love."

an unLogged and quasistrange additive to this idea:

How to Love.

Snacklog

Originally emailed February 26, 2008

Subject: A Snack I Found in Baackstage Magazine

"creative capital, a new york-based nonprofit orgaization, is accepting grant applications for work in emerging fields, innovative literature, or the performing arts. The deadline is March 4th. Submissions must include an inquiry form regarding your project and how, in conjunction with the grant, it will be catalytic for your artistic and professional growth; the influences that inform your work and how it takes an inventive and original approach to form and content; a basic budget; the audience for your project; and only possible presenting venues. For more information and guidelines, visit www.creativecapital.org/application. "


The interesting thing about this snacklog- it pertained to a deadline, and upon my further investigation, a grant provided for artists 25 and older. well, gee golly shucks.

Snacklog

Originally emailed January 17, 2008

Subject: A Snack for Others

http://www.freerice.com/

fotografia courtesy of googlegooglegoogle

Snacklog

Originally emailed November 8, 2007

Subject: Midnight Snacks

"We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts- not to hurt others."

-George Eliot, Middlemarch

fotografia courtesy of me

Snacklog

Originally emailed November 29th, 2007

Subject : one of these snacks is not like the other

there are three snackies in this giant grab bag. i'm not sure how they're related, but somehow i feel a connection. munch on them as you will!

Snack One: Ambiguity
"The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won...man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure and outrageousness, to save his existence...So it is with any activity; faillure and success are two aspects of reality which at the start are not perceptible. That is what makes criticism so easy and art so difficult: the critic is always in a good position to show the limits that every artist gives himself in choosing himself; painting is not given completely either in Giotta or Titan or Cezanne; it is sought through the centuries and is never finished; a painting in which all pictorial problems are resolved is really inconceivable; painting itself is this movement toward its own reality; it is not the vain displacement of a millstone turning in the void; it concretes itself on each canvas as an absolute existence. Art and science do not establish themselves despite failure but through it; which does not prevent there being truths and errors, masterpieces and lemons, depending upon whether the discovery or the painting has or has not known how to win the adherence of human consciousness; this amounts to saying that failure, always ineluctable, is in certain cases spared and others not.It is interesting to pursure this comparison; not that we are likening action to a work of art or a scientific theory, but because in any case human transcendance most cope with the same problem: it has to found itself, though it is prohibited from ever fulfilling itself. Now, we know that neither science nor art ever leaves it up to the future to justify its existence. In no age does art consider itself as something which is paving the way for Art...it has, however, always wanted to be a total expression of the world, and it is in its totality that in each age it again raises the question of its own validity. There we have an example of how a man must, in any event, assume his finiteness: not by treating his existence as transitory or relative but by reflecting the infinite within it, that is, by treating it as absolute. There is an art only because at every moment art has willed itself absolutely; likewise there is a liberation of man only if, in aiming at itself, freedom is achieved absolutely in the very fact of aiming at itself. This requires that each action be considered as a finished form whose different moments, instead of fleeing toward the future in order to find there their justification, reflect and confirm one another so well that there is no longer a sharp justification between present and future, between means and ends."
-Simone de Beauvoir, "The Ethics of Ambiguity"

Snack Two: Ambivalence
"There has been a thunder-storm; the ground, as far as they eye can reach, is covered with white hail; the clouds are gone, and overhead a deep blue sky is showing; far off a great rainbow rests on the white earth. We, standing in a window to look, feel the cool, unspeakably sweet wind bloiwing in on us, and a feeling of longing comes over us-- unutterable longing, we cannot tell for what. We are so small, our head only reaches as high as the first three panes. We look at the white earth, and the rainbow, and the blue sky; and oh, we want it, we want-- we do not know what. We cry as though our heart is broken. When one lifts our little body from the window we cannot tell what ails us. We run away to play.So looks the first year."
-Olive Schreiner, "The Story of an African Farm"

Snack Three: Audacity?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikOWQ9YIb-A&
- Destiny's Child, "Eight Days of Christmas"

Snacklog

Good Monday, fellow snackers!

While thinking upon my new blog, I realized that the forum through which these snacks are now being transmitted is quite different from the mode former. The very first snacks I shared with others were simply snackful emails sent to friends.

How important, then, to share those snacky beginnings with the burgeoning snack populace! And how important for us old snackers to remember these humble beginnings.

Therefore, I will begin posting a few Snack Backlogs...or, Snacklogs.

Here is one of the first, from October 9, 2007.

"Mr. Skimpole having 'nothing to live upon but love, fell in love, and married, and surrounded himself with rosy cheeks.' His good friend Jarndyce and some other of his good friends then helped him, in quicker or slower succession, to several openings in life; but to no purpose, for he must confess to two of the oldest infirmities in the world: one was, that he had no idea of time; the other, that he had no idea of money. In consequence of whch he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and never knew the value of anything! Well! So he had got on in life, and here he was! He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of making fancy
sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond of art. All he asked of society was to let him live. That wasn't much. His wants were few. Give him the papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. He was a mere child in the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. He said to the world, 'Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue coats, lawn sleeves, put pens behind your ears, wear aprons, go after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, and object you prefer; only-- let Harold Skimpole live!"
-Bleak House, by Charles Dickens.