Cyndi Lauper was right!

Apparently girls really do just wanna have fun, or at least, according to The Sexual Paradox by Susan Pinker, they do! If you can't be arsed to buy/read the book, try this article from the Telegraph or this one from the New York Times.

Playing Dress Ups

A couple of weeks ago Baptiste's creche had a Carnivale, which basically means the kids get dressed up in costumes, they play games (well, I suppose games different to the games they normally play) and they eat lollies and cake. Baptiste's costume was an International Red Cross doctor -- a good choice because a) it was a fairly easy to make costume for his parents and b) he's visited the doctor often enough to know how to pretend to use a stethoscope, needle and thermometre (though with babies when you take their temperature, you put the thermometre up their bottoms... which of course Baptiste tried to do with his toy version!)

Chocolate and Strawberry Cake

This recipe was taken from some random French cook book -- the mother of the family asked me if I could make a cake for Easter lunch. I quite enjoyed making it, though it pissed me off that she kept interfering -- if you want me to do something, then let me do it MY way!! The chocolate covered strawberries look a bit like poos, don't they? (They were her idea.)

Chocolate Cake Mousseline
5 egg whites
150g chocolate
150g castor sugar
75g butter
40g flour
40g corn starch

Melt the chocolate and butter in a bain marie, then add the sugar. Mix well for 10 minutes, than add little by little the flour and corn starch. Beat the egg whites until stiff white peaks form, then add the chocolate mixture, stirring as little as possible with a wooden spoon. Cook in a moderate oven for 30 - 35 minutes in a well greased tin.

Decorate with whipped cream, fresh strawberries, chocolate covered strawberries, grated chocolate... or whatever you want, if you don't have someone telling you what to decorate with!

Racist

When a woman says her son is not allowed to go near Muslims because Muslims are dirty and crazy and ugly, (didn't the Nazis say similar things about the Jews?) she is racist. She even went as far as to postulate that her son allergies were caused by him playing with Muslim children. What utter stupidity. How disgusting.

I'm Dreaming of...

Portuguese Custard Tarts!! There's a place in Bethlehem, Lisbon, that sells these kick arse sweet little treats and I totally gorged on them last time I was there. I'll be meeting my mum in Lisbon at the start of May, so guess what I'm getting all excited about in the meantime!!



Image courtesy of http://totallyaddictedtotaste.blogspot.com

The score so far...

Blogs I have written on the subject of

Other people's art: 8
My own art: 42
Being an au pair: 11
Design: 3
Food: 9
Miscellaneous: 95
My Online Exhibition: 1
My poetry: 6
Other people's poetry: 1
Travel: 66

Looks like miscellaneous wins -- I should rename this blog Various Assorted Miscellany and Rhetorical Tautology...

Incidentally, is tautology only possible in English? It often seems as if we don't have single words for describing something exactly, but instead some blanket term, which can then be made more specific by adding modifiers. For example, go out, go back, go up -- all using the word go, as compared to French, which uses entirely different words for each action (sortir, reculer, monter). And because we get so used to adding words for more specific meaning, we sometimes add redundant words (how many times have I hovered over a weblink for it to tell me if I click it, I will "return back to the previous page" ?

I should add that I'm aware of the French influence on English, and of the existence of words that are a little less vague and require less modification -- reversing, exiting (technically from Latin, I think), mounting...

Languages are fun!

As an aside, I didn't waste some grey afternoon tallying up my innumerable blogs (215 so far); Blogger does it automatically for me!

Schematics vs Impressionism

Images courtesy of http://www.b737.org.uk and http://marksquires.com

A simple and straightforward person thinks thusly: If I'm hungry, I eat; if I'm angry about something, I try to resolve the problem; if I want something, I go get it.

Complex people (there are infinitely more of these) think in mad, crazy zig zags with loop-the-loops and a triple-change-double-three-backwards-serpentine, something about well I feel like eating but what, and should I really, after all I had that extra bagel at lunch yesterday and I feel like a blimp -- it's probably that time of the month, am I late? -- and for God's sake Mark didn't help matters when he made that crack about horizontal stripes, how dare he, I paid $79.95 on sale for this top and it's a Gucci!

And yet, for all their annoying, unpredictable irrationalities, I think the complex people of the world are more beloved (by other complex people, naturally, but beloved all the same). Life is definitely more difficult and frustrating with complex people, or as I like to call them the Insane. But they're more accessible to the general public (I guess, most of whom are also of the Insane). It's like the difference between a schematic diagram and a piece of Impressionist art.

Which one, more often than not, do we find beauty and meaning in? The one based on logical principles and designed for a specific purpose; or the slightly blurry doodad that you'd never get a theory out of and never in a million years reproduce exactly from scratch? In the end, I think maybe we're all of the Insane...

Woop woop woop!

Check me out! I've been doing some volunteer translation for a website and they've put me on their list of credits!



Yay me for Frenchiness!

Superficial

I'm generally in favour of the careless school of beauty -- ie, get up, wash face, check that hair doesn't need to be brushed, get dressed and that's it. I'm definitely against spending hours in front of the mirror doing my hair, makeup, jewellery, choosing an outfit and the rest of it.

Benefits to careless beauty:

1. More time in the mornings to snuggle in the warm cocoon that is my bed;
2. Less money spent on superfluous makeup, jewellery and clothes means more money for travel and yummy food;
3. Given my normal, slightly dishevelled appearance, if ever I do decide to get dressed up (it happens about three times a year) the end result is a knockout.

However, given the general standard of stylishness I see on the streets of France, I think I'm in the wrong country for promoting this world view -- even the children wear matching outfits and accessories! Baptiste has three times as many clothes as I do, despite being ten times younger.

The Everyday

Well, it's got to happen at some time, doesn't it? In fact, I think it happens every day. After all, life's not all globe trotting, meeting exotic people in foreign places and obnoxious photo taking, it's also doing the dishes, bickering about who should take out the rubbish bin and clipping toe nails.

So I find myself in a relatively slow patch of life at the moment, where, not only are interesting things not happening around me, but they're not happening inside my head either. I think the most interesting thing I've thought about in the last week or so is, "I wonder what the neighbours are going to plant in their garden now that they've finished turning over the soil?" Hardly worthy of Immanuel Kant, or if I was feeling a bit more humourously inclined, Oscar Wilde.

It's a bit of a relief, actually, kind of like getting into your warm comfy bed after a night (and far too much of the morning) out on the piss. And, I think, at least internally if not also externally, there's been far too many nights out on the piss (metaphorically) and not nearly enough warm, comfy bed, so I'm taking my recent and incredible boringness as a good sign. Although, it's probably a bad sign that I can still blather on about it for three paragraphs, heheh...

So, there you have it.

Spring

It's sprung. Well, actually, it sprang about a week ago, but there was a fire in Toulon which took out our internet server -- at least, took out regular access to our internet server whilst they fixed whatever was burnt (and are still in the process of, I believe, seeing as right now is the first internet access I've had all weekend). Anyway, that's beside the point!



The point is, flowers are blossoming, candidates for "most likely a dead stick" are suddenly pushing growing shoots or buds or whatever they are (never have been the most well endowed in green thumbery), birds and bees are all active trying to have sex with each other and there's a pleasing bit of fresh green action happening where the grass was six months ago.

Spring has sprung! (As an aside, I really like the fact that you can make that kind of dumb pun in English. Hooray for English!).