Completely Unnecessary

No, no, no, no!

I live, what, 500 metres from the Melbourne Museum (ah, but in which direction, stalker-types?), and I missed the public dissection of the giant squid?

Oh, had I but seen The Dark Knight at the IMAX, I might have seen the announcement. I blame Avi.

I also blame you, Gus Steph, for no reason more compelling than that you should have known knew about this.

I also blame the annoying people living above me who are either hammering or repeatedly dropping something at 10:30 at night. I’m giving blogging a go, since reading about Alaskan Jews (pretty sure I can be describing only one book here) is becoming difficult through the red mist of rage.

I also blame Itunes, which is on a Green Day kick. 6400 songs in my Itunes, 20 of them Green Day. Second one in 30 minutes. Shuffle, my ass. And now onto the second Unicorns song in the same time period. Seriously.

But back to the squid.

First, the researchers learned that it was a girl. And then I learned that I do not want to be reincarnated as a female squid:

Male giant squids have a penis of one-and-a-half metres, which they use like a nail gun, with the sperm placed under the skin of the females in their tentacles and head, Dr Norman said.

I’m tolerant, but that is a dating no-no in my book.

Also the multiple locations implies several different… nailings. I imagine female giant squid must be even more dubious than female lions. (And that’s the kind of knowledge a childhood of PBS nature shows yields.)

I feel like, “I have a headache,” probably doesn’t adequately cover the desire not to have sperm injected into your head.

So, in lieu of squid dissection, the most exciting part of my day was learning that the sushi place next to Sinbad’s will make you salmon handrolls without mayonnaise.

Actually, that information is probably more vital than anything I would have learned at the Museum. I don’t know what it is, but I find Vegemite is preferable to the mayonnaise here.

To sum up - see what distractions do to my writing (and thought process)?

Link:
Giant Squid a Huge Attraction [The Age]

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• Squid and Polar Bears
• Also - Extremely Large Squid!

How great are figs? I’ve been tentatively eating them more and more. At the store the other night, I selected them over dried apples to feed my fiendish need for carbohydrates these days. My father would be proud.

I am about to tell you a charming family story:

My family used to have part of a timeshare in Palm Springs, and we’d go there when work called my father out to LA. When I was four, my father spent a good part of his vacay concerned (my mother might use the term ‘obsessed’) about the apparent constipation of his young (and adorable) progeny.

That’s me.

To the head-shaking bemusement of my mother, my father became convinced that feeding me lots and lots of figs was the only way to solve this pressing problem. (Again, my mother might dispute the severity of the problem, and perhaps also the use of the word ‘problem’ to describe the situation.) My father, however, was not to be dissuaded, and I was handed fig after fig after fig.

I really did not like figs. It was not a fun couple days.

My father’s consternation grew as my system seemed wholly unaffected by the absurd amount of fibre he was pumping into it.

Only when we started cleaning the apartment in preparation for leaving did my continued constipation become clear: they began finding figs everywhere.

I had hidden them in plants, behind the phonebook, between couch cushions - they’d gone pretty much everywhere except my mouth.

My parents were shocked - my father by the subterfuge, my mother by the number of figs I’d been given (and she didn’t know the half of it; in my memory, I chucked a good number of them off the balcony).

My parents spent the next half an hour attempting to get their young (and somewhat less-adorable-seeming) progeny to detail the locations of quietly rotting figs.

It was the most food/father-related head shaking I’ve ever seen out of my mother. (Aside, of course, from the night she went to Springfield and my father fed me so much red cabbage and mayonnaise that I vomited. That, however, is a story for a different day.)

Despite this background, I’ve found in recent years that I quite like my Palm Springs nemeses. And, on occasion, my father - provided he’s not on a mission.

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• Why I’m going to be an orca
• To Be Young

I’ve been wanting to do one of those lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper cleanses for about a year now. Aside from the fact that maple syrup is your first born child per bottle in Australia, I just never seem to find 3-4 days that I can spend drinking juice every two hours. So I’ve decided to spend the lull between Christmas and New Years doing just that.

It’s been a little under 24 hours (I started at noon yesterday), but I’m already starting to see some amazing results. Allow me to share them with you:

12:12p: Drink glass of cleanse juice.

12:23: Want a piece of salami.

1:07: Want a piece of zucchini bread.

1:35: Longing for stuffing in refrigerator increases.

2:00: Drink a glass of cleanse juice.

2:40: Want ice cream.

2:42: Want ice cream.

2:44: Want ice cream.

2:45: Want pasta with salmon, capers and cream.

3:30: Drink small glass of stuff.

4:18: Realize yet again that Vanessa is the most underutilized actor/character on Six Feet Under.

4:40: Want.

5:02: Doze.

5:50: Squeeze more goddamned lemons on the small juicing thing my mother managed to procure. Bend finger the wrong way whilst distracted by Christmas cookies on counter.

6:14: Drink glass of stuff whilst trying to pretend that it tastes like flautas or enchiladas suizas.

7:22: Feel bad for my sweet potato pie languishing in the fridge.

7:34: Cleanse outside of body, which is covered in lemon juice.

8:00: Drink small glass of the crap.

8:30: Take travel mug full of crap over to Jeremy’s with me. Secretly hoping he will offer chips and salsa like last time.

8:51: Jeremy does not offer chips and salsa.

9:19: Desperately want piece of bread Dylan Moran crumbles in the episode of Black Books where Manny’s parents visit.

9:42: Jeremy still unable to intuit desire for chips and salsa. Also unaware he’s lost the Christmas gift he hasn’t yet been given.

10:11: Leave Jeremy’s den of unspeakable selfishness for Jessica’s. Finish off travel mug of crap.

10:34: Quietly contemplate raiding Jessica’s fridge for goat cheese, hoping she interprets my look of eagerness as ‘listening.’

11: 32: Leave Jessica’s before eating her face.

11:36: Nearly cause collision on Western when I realize that Los Napoles is still open.

11:47: Remember that gyros exist. Spirit lifts.

12:02a: Pour another glass of filth.

5:15a: Have dream about going to buffet table with Becca Lord and Jessica. Then creatures from I Am Legend attack.

10:00: Want sushi for breakfast. Drink glass of crap.

And that pretty much brings us up to speed. As you can see, it’s been a full day of learning about my body. In addition, I am also able to locate every food establishment between Jeremy and Jessica’s houses. And now I’m going to juice lemons.

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• Re: The Migraine Diet
• Why I’m going to be an orca

Judith Warner at the NYT recently wrote a column about her experience attempting to regulate her migraines though her diet.

I get the occasional migraine, and let me tell you - do they suck. In June I got one so bad that I vomited every time someone spoke to me. If I’m asleep when I get the sparkly crosshatches in my left eye that warn one is coming, I can be knocked out for most of the day. So I was looking forward to reading Warner’s article in the hopes that her diet modifications would be less draconian than the ones my doctor suggested.

They weren’t:

I stopped drinking caffeine and alcohol and stopped eating chocolate, cheese, M.S.G., nuts, vinegar, citrus fruits, bananas, raspberries, avocados, onions, fresh bagels and donuts, pizza, yogurt, sour cream, ice cream, aspartame and all aged, cured, fermented, marinated, smoked, tenderized or nitrate-preserved meats.

So, pretty much everything I love to eat - except for chocolate; that’s the one I could actually do without (and aspartame).

I remember asking my doctor if I could just carry Excedrin in my bag instead of ridiciously restricting my diet for something that usually happens once a month or less. We agreed that this was a better solution.

Seriously, how insane is this list? Can you imagine trying to cut out all of these items? I reckon I’d have scurvy (citrus), a yeast infection (yoghurt) and horrible cramps (bananas) within a month.

Also, since my dream is to die in a pool of guacamole - it’s just not going to work out.

Vaguely Related

• Liveblogging the Cleanse
• Why I’m going to be an orca

I read a headline about billionaire Warren Buffett, ‘What Makes Buffett Great’, as ‘What Makes Buffet Great.’

My reaction?

Oooh! Because you get to pick what you want to eat and can go back for more!

There was also a picture of an old man (Buffett) lying on a bed. I just wondered why the buffet wasn’t in the picture.

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• Continuing Food Crisis in Haiti
• To Be Young

Sometimes I feel kind of old. I’m 26.5 as of last Saturday, a night when all I really felt like doing was watching The Island and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. I didn’t feel like going out; I felt like loudly abusing Ewan McGregor/the TV for his shit American accent.

Then, tonight, I realized that this is a perfect age. This is how old you are when you think - ‘Oh, I’ve been dropped off in the CBD and it’s 11pm. I know my friends are at a bar around here somewhere.’ And then they are, and you have fun. And you find yourself, as usual, walking along the streets, looking for your typically inconveniently-parked bike. You’re old enough not to have to report to a mom and young enough to innocently flirt with skeezy 20-year olds.

This is the life - and many of us are lucky to have it.

Anyway, where I was before the CBD was a Thai cooking class out in the bufu suburbs, a birthday present from the dearest, and onlyest of the brothers I have. I don’t know what Chicago suburb you would wind up in after a 1/2 an hour Metra ride and a 15 minute suburban bus journey, but I guarantee it would look exactly like where I was tonight.

Anyway, it was really fun, but it was in this woman’s house - and she was vaguely terrifying in a sweet way. It was mostly like, “No, no, no, no, no! Don’t do it like that!”

We were all a little nervous.

I think the high point was when I’d been put in charge of thinly slicing some palm sugar. I picked up the container to look at the sugar, but the lid wasn’t on tightly and it fell from my hands. Embarrassing. The woman, whose name, charmingly, was Pip, said, “Oh no, leave that alone!” I backed off quickly, bumping my elbow into a glass container of vegetable oil, knocking it to the ground and shattering it.

That was a proud moment. I had trouble for the rest of the session, some two and a half hours, keeping a straight face. I kept feeling like ‘Dropsy Girl’ - which I feel would quite obviously be my superhero name.

Anyway, we made two curry pastes, fish cakes, dumplings and a curry - all of which were delicious.

I had a great night.

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…because when I’m avoiding reading about Hillary Clinton, I bake. And then I give all the cookies away so I don’t devour them all like a monster.

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