PAULA WHYMAN
curiouswriter

In which we wonder about writing, food, music,  
& random curious events. 

I am a sucker for cooking p*rn, that has been well-established. However, I'm conservative (my All-Clad and Le Creuset were bought at half-price, thank you very much). I'm also strongly aligned against single-purpose kitchen tools. You will never see, for instance, a corn kernel cutter or a pineapple wedger in my kitchen. I don't like gimmicks, generally, so when I bought a nylon micro-cooker (for steaming vegetables in the microwave), I ended up using it to wash my kids' hair in the bathtub. (It has a spout, which is perfect for this job, whereas a glass bowl works fine for the vegetables...but not for washing hair.)

So what was I doing at a Pampered Chef party today?

Buying stuff, of course.

I came with a list, and it did not include a new can opener. Then the rep punched up her demonstration by announcing, "This can opener will change your life."

How will it change your life, you ask? It opens the can without leaving a sharp edge, so you can remove the lid with your fingers and not cut yourself.

Obvious metaphor alert: Remove all the sharp edges from your life. An appealing idea, isn't it? If only it were that easy.

But is that really what we want? Bloody fingers are painful and messy, and no one wants that, of course. But what part of the experience do we miss by eliminating danger? I use 16,000 btu's for wok-cooking (more would be even better), and then I get burned, but if I don't do it, everything cooks too long, and it's bland and boring.

Still, if all it took was a can opener, who could resist?

Which is to say, Reader: I bought the can opener. The metaphor only goes so far.


For more on my favorite kitchen toys, see my guest blog at Madam Mayo's site.

One we didn't hear on the Scripps National Spelling Bee finals today:

FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION

It means "the act of estimating something as worthless." (Can you use that in a sentence?)

In response to numerous requests, here's the pronunciation:

  flok-suh-naw-suh-nahy-hil-uh-pil-uh-fi-kay-shuhn

Credit to Lucas, friend of CuriousProgeny, for this information. And I sincerely regret my initial suspicion that it was not an actual word.

When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women, edited by poet Andrea Hollander Budy, is the first significant anthology of poems by American women to be published in more than 30 years.

If that's not enough reason to read it, stay tuned. It features 460 poems by 96 accomplished poets including Kim Addonizio, Natasha Trethewey, Robin Becker, Lia Purpura, Hilda Raz, Tracy K. Smith, Chase Twichell, Marilyn Nelson, Marie Howe, Sharon Olds, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Martha Collins, Jan Beatty, Maxine Kumin, Naomi Shihab Nye, Claudia Emerson, Lynn Emanuel, Mary Oliver, Jane Mead, Mary Ruefle, Kay Ryan, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, and Pattiann Rogers.

On Tuesday, May 19, Andrea will read with featured poets Claudia Emerson, Laurie Kutchins, Natasha Saje, and Sue Ellen Thompson at the Goethe Institute, 812 Seventh Street NW, Washington, DC. Chapters Literary Center will sponsor this free reading. For directions, call the Goethe Institute at 202-289-1200 or ww.goethe.de/washington.


Here are a few excerpts:

From Andrea Hollander Budy's

Firmly Married

is what he said but as he said it
swayed a little in my direction,
the hair on his neck so like
my son's, barely there, but golden
if you bothered looking.



From Linda Pastan's

The Almanac of Last Things

but I choose The Song of Songs
because the flesh
of those pomegranates
has survived
all the frost of dogma.



From Ada Limon's

The Fireman Are Dancing

O and the firemen are dancing. My favorite part is how
they are dancing so close.

One is pulling the other to his hip and one with the hat is laughing
and tossing his head back as if they were seventeen or, even, as if they
were alone.



And one of my personal favorites:

From Jane Mead's

Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty

What struck me first was their panic.

Some were pulled by the wind from moving
to the ends of the stacked cages,
some had their heads blown through the bars--

and could not get them in again.



Full disclosure: Andrea and I shared quarters at VCCA and gave a reading together on my last night there. I liked her poems so much, I bought her book. And then I bought another one for a gift. I think you'll like it, too.

You might notice that I now have a real contact page. (I feel like Steve Martin in The Jerk, when he gets listed in the phone book: I am somebody!) Anyway, please try it out. I will always respond, unless you're selling something. And then I'll still respond, just differently.

In addition, I'm now able to fit more characters on the menu bar headings. Still not enough room to call this page Curiosities: The Blog, so it's CuriousBlog, for now. And, the old "Bake Write" page is all grown up into "Baking for Writers," what I intended from the start.

More to come. Like maybe they'll fix this weird spacing? As always, we welcome your feedback.

Ah yes, the Oompa Loompas have been messing with my site again. Where did all the photos go? I haven't a clue. But they promise they'll have them back online before bedtime. If not, I will be whining like Veruca Salt, and no one wants that. Really.

Today is Bruce Chatwin's birthday, so I thought I'd quote from Songlines, his book about Aboriginal "Dreaming-tracks" in Australia:


"Without religion, in Dostoevsky's famous formulation, everything is permissible. Without instinct, everything would be equally permissible."


More on instinct: "If the desert were home; if instinct were forged in the desert--then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison."


And, here he quotes Kipling: "...there are only two kinds of men in the world: Those that stay at home, and those that do not."


My story, "Sand People," is a little bit about this, the instinctive pull of home, of returning to the familiar, while at the same trying to escape from it. (That story's forthcoming in the anthology Gravity Dancers, edited by Richard Peabody, June '09.)

You can now buy postage stamps commemorating The Simpsons, the longest running TV comedy at 20 years and counting.



James L. Brooks, the executive producer of the show, told Reuters, “We are emotionally moved by the Postal Service selecting us rather than making the lazy choice of someone who has benefited society.”



I could not have said it better. It is always heartening when quasi-governmental organizations do something that's not boring.



Now, I'm going to get in line for my stamps before they sell out, because the alternative is for me to sit here and write 2,000 words of my novel, and goodness knows I need to find more ways to avoid doing that.



As Comic Book Guy says, "I've wasted my life."

Man attempts to smuggle songbirds into U.S. by hiding them in his trousers.

At any given moment, CuriousDH would rather be biking, so he'll be pleased to know that, as this photo from the AARP website clearly demonstrates, you can do extreme sports at any age!



An 83-year-old cyclist right before he crashes and breaks a hip.




See Bill, you've got 60 years before you have to worry about that! Happy Birthday!

In the "it was only a matter of time" category...


In case parents are wondering how to keep the kids busy if their school happens to be closed for two weeks (!!), there are alternatives to running screaming into the night.



The CuriousProgeny Duo has already found this on Miniclip, the Stop Swine Flu video game. The object is to control sneezes to prevent the spread of the flu. They report, however, that the game is "more fun" if the flu spreads...

Stop Swine Flu Help to prevent the spread of the swine flu by catching your sneezes with a tissue.

Play this free game now!!