Metrospeculative

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Vegan Scones

Too easy. No butter.

Tomato Rosemary Scones (adapted from Vegan Brunch, Isa Chandra Moskowitz)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

3 cups flour
2 Tbsp baking powder
Up to 2 Tbsp brown sugar/honey (Less is more)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Mix. Make a well.

1/3 cup olive oil
14 oz. tomato sauce (1 1/2 cup)
1 tsp cider vinegar
2 Tbsp chopped/crushed rosemary (fresh if possible)
Pinch thyme
(Options: chopped olives, peppers, or nuts, grated lemon rind, chili flakes, ?)

Add. Mix gently, as little as possible to make a wettish dough.

On floured surface, with well-floured hands, divide in two. Pat out each ball of dough to make six-inch wheels. Cut into slices. Put on greased/ nonstick baking sheet, bake 400 degrees for about 15 minutes til they are firm enough for your taste.

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Cloud control

Annalee Newitz for Gizmodo on the future of google.

I'm slowly reading Terms of Service, by Jacob Silverman. Slow because I'm reading on the light rail 30-40 minutes a day, and because there's a lot of information packed into each page.

I've been waiting to read more science fiction that tackles the kind of issues raised in these books/articles. Mostly there's a lot of vague handwaving towards a totalitarian scenario, or it's a metaphor for oppression. Detailed tech-savvy analysis of where the social media, data as the monetizing factor, no privacy scenario is headed, not so much.

Guess I'm gonna have to write something this summer...

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Sunday, May 31, 2015

Purge

Purge (Puhdistus), an older novel by Finnish-Estonian writer Sofi Oksanen, is a real tour de force. It's hard not to use cliches to describe a book that powerful. She pulls few punches, and there are tons of little details planted here and there that layer the ironies and macabre humor thick enough to keep the horrible stories of women's lives in times of war and under totalitarian dictatorships moving fiercely forward.

And backward. Time jumps and skips in this novel, a structure which heightens the suspense and emotional impact. Lola Roger's translation from the Finnish to English is excellent- she is batting 1.00 by my reading of 4 translations so far...

As Oksanen's website notes:
Narrated through a polyphonic choir of individual voices, Purge tells the suspenseful and dramatic story of Aliide Truu, an old Estonian woman whose hands are soiled with the crimes she committed during the Soviet era, and Zara, a young trafficking victim who in the present has managed to escape and has come to seek shelter at Aliide’s countryside home.

Also:
Purge became a runaway success, and Sofi Oksanen’s major breakthrough: No. 1 bestseller in Finland with sales exceeding 200 000 copies, Puhdistus has won its author numerous literary prizes, including Finland’s premier literary award, The Finlandia Award, as well as Nordic Council Literary Prize, the biggest literary prize in Nordic Countries. Purge has also won the 2010 FNAC prize in France. It was selected from 300 works published in France. This is the first time the award has gone to a foreign author.

Well deserved awards. This book really blew me away. Another cliche, but true. I'm on to her recent release, after reading Kameron Hurley's new series opener and Arto Paasilenna's The Howling Miller, because due at library. Still working on Terms of Service, during the commute. It's dense, in a good way. Information rich.

The range of different covers says it all. As a review said of the American cover, where are the maggots to tip off the reader that this is not a pastorale?

Interesting talk by Oksanen . And interview.

Enjoy the beach while we can

The Sound

OBX

Kite!

Currituck lighthouse

Tiny spit of land still there despite the crazy weather.

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Saturday, May 30, 2015

Oh, Meeker County

Library of Congress

This article tosses around a bunch of different cans of historicist worms, and leaves them writhing, but: Lobdell article in Strib. Meeker County not as easy to disappear into as the Wild West, not surprisingly. Gonna have to take a deeper look.

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Sunday, April 26, 2015

Behind on books

I've got stacks and lists of books to read, and I've made some headway but not in blogging about them. Which is important solely because it's the only way i'm going to remember what I read over the year...

I just finished a Finnish thriller, Leena Lehtolainen's The Bodyguard in its English translation by Jenni Salmi. The bodyguard is Hilja Ilveskero, who is a lot like Griffith's Aud Torvingen except she has a soft spot for bad boys.

Readable and I found it interesting for the parts about Russian and Finnish politics and economic intertwining as much as the plot, which is pretty standard fare. I liked Hilja despite not liking her kinda dull and overplayed choice of love interest. That part bogged down a little. But there are a lot of lynxes and lynx lore, as well as food and nature talk that made me hungry and want to go hiking, mushroom picking, and baking.

I can't remember what else I read, ha. Working on Terms of Service as my non-fiction book, a little too much information about social media and the present and future of data privacy. Just started Christopher Bram's In Memory of Angel Clare. Promising start.

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The Girls of Summer

Went to see a Lithuanian lesbian movie at MSPIFF, "Summer of Sangaïlé," directed by Alanté Kavaïté. The lead actors, Julija Steponaitytė and Aistė Diržiūtė, were really good in an understated way. One shot held on a gaze said much without being trite or stale like that technique sounds. The girl meets girl plot also worked surprisingly well, fresh yet familiar.

I was skeptical before seeing the film at MSPIFF, because of lukewarm reviews by dudes and what seemed like a weak trailer.

The synopsis was suspiciously bland/BTDT:
"17 year-old Sangaïlé, is fascinated by stunt planes. Afraid of heights, she has never dared to even enter in one of the cockpits. At a summer aeronautical show, nearby her parent's lakeside villa, she meets Austé, a local girl of her age, who unlike Sangaïlé, lives her life to the full with creativity and dare. As the two girls become lovers, Sangaïlé allows Austé to discover her most intimate secret, and finds in her teenage love the only person to truly encourage her in flying."

Turns out a few clips could not do justice to the cumulative effect of the film's languid, quiet but at least subtly motion-filled scenes. At first the main character is drifting, then shifting this way and that, thrashing, and then riding hard towards her chosen destination. It was a little cheesy at first that she wants to fly planes, then not.

The water, grass, sky, even building exteriors are beautiful and meaningful in this film, with few wasted backdrops, costumes, props. The often-used-in-queer-film conceit of a character who.makes clothes for offbeat fashion photography is still effective here.

I liked the many shots where the Earth and nature is still, containing the people who are in motion, fighting, wanting, taking,never content just to be. Except in rare moments. Really well done.

Trailer for "Summer of Sangaile"

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Wednesday, April 22, 2015

MSPIFF

It's that time again. The Minneapolis St Paul International Film Festival is in full swing.

I missed a few things for AWP 15, catching translated poetry and discussions of book reviewing imstead. Saturday night after AWP, however, we caught "The Royal Road, Jenni Olson's latest film. Being Minnesotan in origin, she was there for the showing with her daughter in tow. An added plus.

"The Royal Road" used still shots of San Francisco and Los Angeles street scenes, held for two to three minutes, and voiceover to tell stories about CA history and butch longing. It was surprisingly effective, and affecting, though maybe because I have nostalgia for those sights. And for butch, the concept/identity that had a different and more solid meaning than its more recent uses.

I caught "52 Tuesdays" midweek, an Australian film about a 16 yr old (IIRC) girl whose mother transitions and makes her live with her formerly distant dad for a year. Family roles change, girl rebels in a bipoly teen drama, and videos get made. Situation implodes.

The film was trying very hard to be quirky, but it succeeded and moved along at a good pace to real emotional and plot-point destinations. This is always welcome to me in queer cinema, as are high production values. "52 Tuesdays" had good sound, lowkey visual flair, and decent music. Win win win.

"The Russian Woodpecker" was sold out, being the recent Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner and in Russian to boot. (Big Russian speaking community here that shows up for MSPIFF.) We had tofu and pickled eggplant instead.

This Sunday, we got the last few seats for "The Grump," a Finnish comedy about a grumpy old farmer from the sticks who has to stay with his daughter-in-law in the big city. She's trying to woo Russians as real estate clients. The old man earns his title. It's really funny, at least for us Nordlanders who know this guy all too well.

The comic timing was perfect, especially between him and the daughter-in-law, and the Russians, with one of them translating for the others. The father-son fight in his tiny antique Ford car was painful and hilarious.

"Why would anyone go to Belgium?"

Here is The Grump/ Mielensäpahoittaja Trailer. Directed by Dome Karukoski, based on a novel by Tuomas Kyrö.

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