broken_form

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 07:35:19 GMT

Steak and Lobster at the cafeteria. That was awesome. Thank you, whoever came up with that. It made me feel like I should have been wearing a top hat and a monocle.

Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 00:27:01 GMT

Fan of Orson Scott Card? Check it out! Classic critical essay by Elaine Radford, on "Ender's Game" and sequel "Speaker for the Dead", just placed online yesterday. Difficult to find in real life - originally published in now-extinct Fantasy Review, followed by republication in Contemporary Literary Criticism - if you like digging in library basements go ahead. Yesterday, Elaine Radford was kind enough to post this classic critical essay online, and all Orson Scott Card fans can now enjoy and revisit the controversy of whether Ender Wiggin was, in fact, Adolf Hitler.

Link:
http://peachfront.diaryland.com/enderhitlte.html

I imagine that this posting was due to Roger Williams, a friend of Elaine Radford's, who some time back started quite a major discussion about this essay on a certain discussion website - and there was discussion - despite the sad fact that only a very few bothered to actually find a copy of the essay to read, this inhibited the debate not in the slightest. Yeah, I did myself, a lot of folks didn't though.

Orson's rebuttal was originally published alongside the critical essay. However, due to copyright reasons, this is not available online. Ms. Radford can publish her own work online if she likes, but Orson Scott Card hasn't seen fit to release his rebuttal the same way. Perhaps he will, if harassed by enough fans. But it isn't worth it anyway. His rebuttal is pretty much, as I remember, "No, there's no way that Ender Wiggin is Adolf Hitler. You're a crazy bitch." Only in a lot more polite words.

Ms. Radford has obviously read every book on Hitler. But Card might have too! Who knows what's in his library.

This is all before the later books, with creepy Trinitarian Ender and all that.

Check it out if you like OSC's Ender series.

Rick Brant Electronic Adventure series #1-#3

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 06:18:54 GMT

Originally posted to bookish, here.

I read some of the 23-volume (actually 24-volume) Rick Brant Electronic Adventure series when I was young - they had originally belonged to an older relative. Spanning the late 40's to the 60's, they are easy-reading juvenile science fiction but display good writing and prescient plotlines, and are basically pretty good examples of sci-fi of the era. Anyway, I have had the delightful opportunity to somehow come into possession of the entire series, even the mysterious #24 which was never published until 1990 and only in a limited edition then, and I do plan to read them all. The ones I've read before, and the ones that I haven't.

In this installment, I cover volumes 1-3 in a hopefully spoiler-free manner.

So far, I have read (reread in 2 cases) Volumes 1-3. "The Rocket's Shadow", "The Lost City", and "Sea Gold". Each of these books involves a scientific project which succeeds despite mysterious opposition, due to the mystery being solved and the culprits apprehended/neutralized, so they're all detective stories. Of course the good guys always win. As is classic for sci-fi, it's the technology showcased in each volume that matters. And, as in all good sci-fi of the era, the technology was a step beyond current technology, it was forward-looking.

The setting is a group of well-funded scientists who are led by Hartson Brant, the father of the hero, Rick Brant. They live on an island off the New Jersey coast, "Spindrift Island", where the Brant family residence is also located. It's not really an island, there are rocks that can be crossed at low tide, but mostly it is an island. Despite the proximity to the shore, there is no bridge or anything, trips to the mainland are made by boat or small plane. Helicopters haven't been invented yet, at least not by the part I've read so far. The scientists research "Electronics", which seems to not be so much about electronics itself, but is really about interdisciplinary technology development that incorporates electronics along with physics, chemistry, or whatever seems to fit in well with the story. As of Volume 3, nothing resembling a digital computer has made any appearance. However, radio communications are a major part of the technology described, and elaborate electronic control systems for mechanical and chemical devices are hinted at although not entirely made clear. They're almost certainly analog. Everything runs on vacuum tubes, and portable equipment requires piles of batteries. The working part of the device is often more of a "plot device" than anything else.

So all in all, very much like classic Star Trek.

In Volume 1, "The Rocket's Shadow", the project is launching a rocket to the Moon. It's an unmanned rocket, the goal is simply to set off a huge explosion when it gets there so that the scientists can prove that they succeeded. Then they can win a $2 million grant, sort of a precursor of the X-Prize, except that $2 million was probably a lot more money back then than it is today. Still, it seems like not much money to build a Moon rocket on, especially as the rocket must be built in advance. The rocket does have elaborate electronic guidance systems, which makes it an "electronic adventure". It also runs on a powerful nuclear engine, which is entirely unspecified except that it might be fatal to screw around with the fuel. It's a post-Hiroshima publication, so radiation poisoning was known of at the time (prior to the Bomb, nobody really thought it was that big a deal. Marie Curie's early death? Unfortunate illness.) Yet there is none of the modern caution which has prevented the construction of nuclear rockets to this day (the technology is there). Fair enough! But I wanted to hear more about the engine. Not all that "electronic", but it is cool to read about a Moon rocket in a book from 1947. Yeah, other authors did it first, I know, I know.

Volume 2, "The Lost City", is all about doing a proof-of-concept experiment for moonbounce communications. The idea is that long-range radio communications can be relayed by bouncing them off the Moon, and this would have military and civilian applications. This actually was an area of research at the time, and was demonstrated shortly after this book came out. Today, thousands of radio amateurs have done it, and with the availability of shortwave and microwave equipment it's really not a hard thing to do today. Modern radio hams also use meteors to bounce signals off of, it's not just the Moon. Back then, though, I see how this was futuristic. Thanks to communications satellites, there's no need to do Moonbounce communication today for anything but a hobby, and as far I know it never really became mainstream (probably due to the Earth only having 1 Moon, which isn't always there at any time of day when you'd need it). I could be wrong, though, like I said, the military really did work on it. They might have used Moonbounce every day, for all I know.

Anyway, that really is all about electronics, I think that's a total "Electronic Adventure".

I don't understand why they need to put one of the base stations in the Himalayas, but neither do most of the characters, it's not explained very well except to say hey, cool setting for adventures!

Volume 3, "Sea Gold", is mostly about chemistry. Electrochemistry, to be specific - a commercial operation which profitably harvests gold and other metals from sea water by electrolysis. There's a lot of handwaving about how this can be accomplished specifically, with electrodes tuned to each element, as a chemist I don't get it, sorry. Some weird sort of preparative voltamnetry? But hey, cool adventure. This one doesn't actually involve much of the Spindrift team, just Rick Brant and his partner Scotty. There is mysterious opposition, it is solved by the heros, plenty of adventure. And I guess it's sort of "electronic". There's lots of soldering wires and stuff involved in setting up the plant, where Rick and Scotty have found summer jobs.

So time to talk about the characters:

Rick Brant, son of Hansor Brant, is the one who flies the plane around and runs errands and builds little gadgets of his own and solves the mystery every time so that the project can succeed. In Volume 1, he picks up a recently-discharged Marine, Don Scott or Scotty, who becomes his sidekick from then on. There's a hint of romance between Scotty and Rick's sister Barbry, but this is juvenilia so the usual emotional drama isn't allowed. Fair enough, considering the genre. In Volume 2, Rick and Scott go to India and meet up with Chadha, who becomes the third member of their team.

There's a bit of proto-Scotty/Spock conflict already showing up. Scotty is Scotty, he's tough and a fighter. Chadha isn't exactly Spock, he's quite emotional (main emotion? Cheerful!) but he is far more intelligent than Scotty and, to Scotty's chagrin, knows it. While from a deprived background, Chadha is self-educated, mostly from reading an old World Almanac and memorizing it. He also calls people "Sahib" a lot. So he's a bit of a stereotype, but actually pretty mild considering that this came out of the 40s. Chadha is not somebody to screw with. Despite his meek attitude and constant cheer, he is extremely tenacious and never lets go of what he starts. Scotty is more the kind of guy who kicks ass and is good at kicking ass. But Scotty respects Rick, because Rick can fly planes and cool stuff like that. Both Chadha and Scotty have pretty much been adopted into the Brant family unit. In Volume 3, though, Chadha is off going to college so we don't see him. I've started Volume 4, and it's good to see Scotty and Chadha doing the whole Scotty-Spock thing right from the getgo.

Interesting how these books remind me of Star Trek.

I'll probably update as I read all 24 of them.

Has anybody else every read these books?

The Voice that Samuel Heard

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:32:08 GMT

bookish crosspost, here

Libertarian Bait-and-Switch Pseudo-Novels

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 08:26:16 GMT

Originally posted at bookish, here.

I often read books pretty much at random. A hint from someone in real life or online that a certain book might be worth reading, and I'm very likely to read it, assuming that I can get it at the library or using IRC and don't have to pay. And I have been known to grab random books at the library, as well. This is usually a rewarding activity. However, sometimes I get a book which seems to be a story, but turns out to be a political tract instead. Quite often any semblence of storytelling falls apart at this point. And Libertarian/Objectivist writers (please do not ask me to differentiate these, although I know many people would) are especially guilty. Heinlein was cool, because he'd tell the dumb story anyway. And Rand - she was the real thing, whatever it was that she was. However, I wouldn't say the same for most such authors. Has anyone here ever accidentally read a Liberatarian pseudo-novel?

Two books that tricked me that way are "The Great Idea" by Henry Hazlitt, aka "Time will run back" in subsequent editions, and "The Rainbow Cadenza" by J. Neil Schulman.

When I grabbed "The Great Idea" off the shelf and scanned a few introductory paragraphs, it looked like a really fun read. Somewhat stilted narrative style, but the setting ruled. A totalitarian Soviet-style state, a hero from outside (and, we soon find, an heir), a prole woman who the hero is infatuated with, how bad could this possibly be? It seemed like a great way to start a real ass-kicking novel. I had no idea this story had any politics to it other than that Russia is a crummy place to live with evil leaders, and you don't have to be a particularly political person to think that.

But before I knew it, the story had been forgotten. Our hero had been installed in a convenient government position where he basically spent all his time debating economic and social policies with other bureaucrats. Given the opportunity to start a form of 'glasnost', although this novel far predated Gobachev's party secretaryship, the hero does so. He doesn't just do it. He talks about it with his foils. And when good things happen, they talk about that. And when bad things happen, they talk about that, and they always conclude that the reason for all the problems is that they just aren't 100% Libertarian. 99.9% Libertarianism doesn't get you a good society, although admittedly it'll be better than a Bolshevik dictatorship. 100%, the Gods themselves come down to Earth and bless you with plentiful cargo. And they debate, and they debate, and ...

oh, the prole woman? She died during all of this, real quick, like we were told between economic rants. At least I think she did. The hero does get a girl in the end but I think she's a different one. I don't remember, and I bet Henry Hazlitt wouldn't remember either if he was still alive. The book's attitude was pretty much, that woman? Let's not waste any ink on her. And now, a rousing debate upon the evils of fiat money!

So I guess I feel that I was tricked into reading this book under false inducements. Sure, there's some action later on. But it all seems secondary to the economics. Reading this book as a story would be as pointless as reading Knuth's "Surreal Numbers" as a romance and getting mad at all the endless mathematics! Except that Knuth's book is filed in the Math section of the library and is obviously a math book from the very start. "The Great Idea" seems to have been designed to sneak a discussion of Libertarian policies and economics into a thin adventure story wrapper. Hazlitt reminds me of someone trying to write a book that will be 'good for kids' and neglecting all else in pursuit of the moral message. Only I'm not a kid, and don't like being bait-and-switched.

Your views may differ, I guess. That's just how I feel about 'The Great Idea'.

"The Rainbow Cadenza" seemed to be a science-fiction novel. I like those. It did not, upon deeper reading, appear to be a Libertarian novel at all, but a work of erotica. In this respect it differs greatly from "The Great Idea". I guess Schulman was probably thinking that Heinlein is great, but would have been even better if he'd put more emphasis on sex into his books. I don't think it worked.

One interesting thing about the Rainbow Cadenza is that it was apparently rejected by Playboy Books because the sex was not gratuitous enough, but was an integral part of the story. That's what Schulman says. I'd guess that Playboy rejected it because erotica is something that they do, and the Rainbow Cadenza is bad erotica. It's pretty much bad fetish erotica the whole way through. I'm not going to describe the particular acts here because as far as I know #bookish is a family LJ group for all ages. Let's just say that if you find a woman shoving pencils up her nose attractive, or sticking pencils up your own nose, it might be moderately entertaining. If you want to take that all the way to sexy, I totally understand you. I might not myself be turned on by a woman sticking pencils up her nose, then again I might be, that's my own business, and I think it's okay for you to have your fun anyway you want so long as nobody is getting hurt, and that's fine.

But if you write a book, your characters should not constantly be accidentally shoving pencils up their nose for no reason at random times. I can see that happening occasionally. And I can see someone discovering that this is a thrilling activity to them. But, in a life-and-death action sequence, this is no time for a character to discover her love of shoving pencils up her nose. If one accidentally gets there, she ought to just yank it out and get back into whatever it was she was doing. She shouldn't be standing there playing with her pencils while important action sequence is going on. Nor should some character be exclaiming "oh my god, i just stuck a pencil up my nose" every single chapter! It doesn't make sense. The author probably likes it, but it doesn't make a lot of sense for the reader.

It reminds me of a certain novel (trying not to spoil it) by Jeffry Archer, where one character simply cannot walk onto the scene without endless rumination about how attractive she is and what sort of underwear, if any, she is wearing. She is a close relative of the character who narrates the story, and it seemed like I wasn't reading what her close relative thought of her, but I was reading what Jeffry Archer was thinking of some girl he liked and was modeling a character after. Similarly, I got the idea that Schulman really likes shoving pencils up his nose. And he likes girls to do that to themselves too. But that has nothing, nothing to do with his characters. It just weakens the characters, and the story.

So ... the story? Isn't much to it. It's pretty much Libertarian social policies. Plot is very similar to that of the White Plague or the Handmaid's Tale, with the difference that Libertarian politics can totally solve everything. The primary focus of the Rainbow Cadenza is not so much on economics, but about how people should be free to live the way they want to. That's a good message, but it doesn't leave a lot of room for the story. It's like "now let's all take a break and discuss how Rand's teachings could be modified to accomodate Christianity". Yes, I'm sure we'll all need to discuss that in a future Libertarian society. But for now, let's talk about your story - only there isn't much of one. Well, at least it has erotica in it.

I'd say that the Rainbow Cadenza was a double bait-and-switch. Is it science fiction? Nope, it's porn. That's cool, I like porn. Oh wait it's bad porn. Oh, it's Libertarianism! Well, THAT explains why somebody bothered to sit down and type it out. Either that, or the porn part. At least Hazlitt's "Great Idea" doesn't require you to wonder why the author bothered to write it down. You know why. He's trying to get you to support laissez-faire capitalism and total Libertarianism, because it'll create a wonderful utopia.

No novel is written in a vacuum, but necessarily will reflect the values of the author and his/her views on the nature of society. Even "Don Quixote" had a message or two in there, it wasn't all Sancho and Quixote performing slapstick. It couldn't have been, an author has to draw upon his own life experience and relate to the experiences of his readers. All the same, I think that an author should be able to work the messages into the story without just wadding them up and tossing them at you. At least, I think so. If I read thinking it'll be a story and start finding John Galt-like speeches, I'm likely to feel ripped off. Unless I'm reading Atlas Shrugged.

So will I be bitten again by a Libertarian pseudo-novel? Who knows? And how many more of them are out there, lurking on library shelves to snatch the attention of the unwary and lecture them?

281 Zen Koans with Answers

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 06:39:22 GMT

originally posted to bookish

A review of a very odd book, "281 Zen Koans with Answers" by Yeol Hoffman, which consists of a commented translation of the 1911 work "A Critique of Modern-Day pseudo-Zen" by a pseudonymous monk Ha Ho U-O.

What is the sound of one hand clapping?

Master: In clapping both hands a sound is heard: what is the sound of the one hand?
Student: The pupil faces his master, takes a correct posture, and without a word, thrusts one hand forward.
Master: If you've heard the sound of the one hand, prove it.
Student: Without a word, the pupil thrusts one hand forward.

........ long Q/A sequence omitted ........

Master: The source of the one hand, what is it?
Student: "On the plain there is not the slightest breeze that stirs the smallest grain of sand.
                All communication with places north of the
                White Wolf River is disconnected,
                And south to the Red Phoenix City,
                autumn nights have grown so long."

Ok, so everybody knows the answer now. That's cool. There's a whole book full of lots more, just waiting for you to read it. Well, unless you happen to attend the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in which case you'll have to wait for me to return the library's only copy. Which I swear I will do as soon as I remember to. And you get the rough idea - a koan isn't so much one riddle as it is an illustrative anecdote or point to ponder, followed by a sequence. Question, answer, question, answer, request for a quoted poem, student quotes a poem at the end. And student advances further within the discipline of Zen.

"Why did Bodhiharma come from India to China?" This phrase is common in the book and means many things. It means - why does Zen exist? A Buddhist discipline travelled from India to China and founded Zen, which was then eventually transferred to Japan (in some sort of political way similar to how the Kuomintang ended up in Taiwan). Why is Zen there in Japan? It also means "what is the meaning of life?" And the answer - the answer cannot be expressed. For life is here because it is here. And Bodhiharma came from India to China because that's what he did.

But now it's time to backtrack. Is this whole book a joke? Since when do Zen koans have answers? Isn't the whole point of Zen koans that they have no answer, but the mere pondering of them can induce enlightenment? Isn't this book a hoax, and a silly one at that? And what about if a tree falls in the woods, but there is nobody to hear it, does it make a sound?

We'll talk about the tree more later. For now, let's talk about the book.

The book claims, as I stated in the intro, to be a commented translation. Yeol Hoffman is the translator. He has some friends who help him out, including an actual Zen master who writes the introduction to the book and justifies the publication. Apparently Mr. Hoffman was in Japan, learning about Zen, when he came across a bookshop that a bunch of Zen novices were visiting. The bookshop sold Xeroxes of a set of Zen koans - with answers! - naturally Mr. Hoffman was shocked to see such a thing. The copies were of a 1911 work, "a critique of modern-day pseudo-zen" by a renegade monk who had grown frustrated with the direction of Zen particularly as practiced by the main Rinzai sect of the time, with the instruction consisting of rote learning and no real enlightenment - to be short, a fundamentalist monk. I know that many people distrust fundamentalist religious types, but here is a good example of one who works to open knowledge rather than suppress it, and we owe the pseudonymous Ha Ho U-O a debt here.

It turns out that Zen masters don't accept some random evidence of enlightment from a novice, but rather expect certain answers. These answers indicate mastery of the Zen philosophy - and the master will ideally guide the novice to them, without directly giving the answers. As a sometime teacher myself, I totally sympathize. And of course some small number of the students, as in any field, will become teachers themselves. As such, they keep good notes of their koan answers, and if someday they leave for a teaching post they run their notes by their master to make sure they're all there and in line with the tradition. To do that, of course, they'd need to take the degree of Zen Master, which involves lots and lots of fairly advanced koans. But if you can manage "one hand" or "mu!" that oughta qualify you for a post as a village priest, which probably isn't that bad a job and most students will be happy to stop there. Plenty of room for political "just pass him" manuevering too. What's not to like?

As far as enlightenment, apparently that's something you just don't ask a Zen monk if he's got and that he doesn't brag about if he has got anyway.

Why do most Westerners imagine that Zen koans have no answers? Well, the answers are naturally kept somewhat secretive. And Ha Ho U-O has not managed to blow that impression wide open, despite his best efforts, as the public image of Zen as a mystery is so greatly old that even today, nearly 100 years after his 'critique' came out, we still believe the public front of Zen as just too, too out there for little people like us. Also, Zen koans have no answers that can be deduced logically, by our Western ideas of "logic"! They are solidly monistic and deny the two-valued syllogistic logic of science inherited from the Greeks They also deny the analogy logic originally of the Middle East, used mainly today within legal proceedings. But Zen monistic logic has a sense of itself, and does hang together. Read this book, you'll see what I mean. Maybe you'll learn some of it.

What is a "koan"? It's an anecdote of a situation. Many of them describe conversations between Zen monks and masters from even older times. The task is to analyze the situation according to Zen logic. And the student shows his understanding by knowing the answers, when to say this and when to say that and when to make a certain gesture or action. And usually the student caps his recital with a poem. Sometimes two poems! The master might ask for a "classical quote", meaning one of the poems of classical Chinese literature. Or for a "popular quote", meaning something from Japanese literature. Then he passes the koan. A koan is pretty much a final exam.

Why a poem? Well, "Why did Bodhiharma come from India to China?"

This is just my theory right now, but I think it fits the facts better than any other possible explanation.

Classical Chinese civilization used a system of standardized tests in order to select the most intelligent youths to staff the government bureaucracies. These jobs paid well! The highest of them required castration, which meant no descendents. Still, though, a son with a civil service job would raise the perceived status of any peasant family, and they all wanted their sons to pass the exams. This ensured that hereditary classism would not keep the men with ability from the seats of governmental power. Government men would be intelligent. This would help keep China stable.

Exams are still a big deal in East Asia. There's always stories on the news of how seriously the youth take them over there. Chinese girls late to an exam due to traffic, denied entrance, and then committing suicide. Japanese boys who never leave their desks from morning to night, and - I can't write that here. This is a family website isn't it? Stories like that. The exams. Still a huge deal over there in China and in Japan.

Ambitious peasant families in old China would push their most promising children to study for these exams. The teacher of these exams - well, where could a village find a teacher? It would be, almost certainly, someone who had already taken the exam and failed it. Maybe multiple times. Anyone who had passed that exam wouldn't be hanging out in the sticks anymore. But at least he had been one of the bright kids in a previous generation - he could help some. And what was the material for the exams? The Chinese were testing for "intelligence", after all. A very fuzzy concept that is really hard to define in real life. But it has been empirically observed, over many cultures and many years, that some kids do well on tests and some don't. Those who do well on one kind of test - like an SAT or something - will do well on another - say an IQ test. An IQ test doesn't test anything directly except for being good at tests. The material of the test - well, just use something convenient. For us it's pretty much word and number puzzles. For the Chinese, the material was obvious - their millenia-old literature of poetry.

Chinese poetry is preserved by the writing system. While spoken Chinese language has changed greatly over the millenia, the written language has changed hardly at all. Each written symbol is not a sound, but a word or concept. Chinese writing is almost a language of its own, which can be used to write many spoken dialects such as Mandarin, Cantonese, or even Japanese. If any of us had the time to care about it, we could probably use it to read and write English.   Some Taiwanese students, even today, still study Chinese poetry. None of the poems rhyme anymore, because of the drift in spoken language, yet people are pretty sure that once upon a time a lot of them did. The culture continues on, thanks to an exceptionally resilient non-phonetic writing system.

And into this situation, a country largely composed of peasant villages, each one with a failed exam taker who teaches a new batch of children the old poetry in the hope that they will do better than he did, into this country strolls Bodhiharma. A Buddhist monk with begging bowl in hand. And soon the exam teachers realize that there is more open to them than trying to help someone younger succeed where they failed. They realize - they can become Buddhist priests! They were the segment of Chinese society in the most convenient place to become a new priesthood, and many of them did so. Soon every village had a Buddhist temple.

When Zen migrated into Japan, the old teachers brought their Chinese poems along with them. And they kept the heavy emphasis on memorizing of poetry. Hence the persistence of poetry in Zen koans. Hence the whole system of Zen novices, initiates, priests, and masters, all ranked on passing an exam on koans.

And hence the need for some serious cheat-sheets! Why DID Bodhiharma come from India to China?

So Ha Ho U-O, though helpful to those of us who want to know the secret Zen koan answers, was a fool. He was trying to remove something from Zen that lay at it's very root, something that had been present long before Bodhiharma came from India to China. Ha Ho U-O was trying to remove a core part of the entire culture he lived in, to regain an "original faith" that never existed in reality. Many fundamentalists are like this, today, in every era this is common. Rewriting history to excise unwanted concepts and bring about a more pure faith, one based on a personal connection to things greater than oneself - on the purest enlightenment.

Yet his book is useful to us. Although it pulls down Zen's pants a bit, it does allow more people to get a sense of Zen thinking than they could otherwise. The exam system was the tool that Bodhiharma had to work with, when he came from India to China, but is not sacred in and of itself. The answers are out there. The way of thinking that gets one there, it's out there. And someday, some century or millenium, we may all be enlightened, we may all be Buddhas. Zen looks at things long-term. The Zen master who opens the book has nothing against the answers getting out, obviously. Nor does the author. Nor should we.

The tree falling in the woods? Not in the book. Not in any other Zen compilations that I've ever seen. I suspect it to be a Western interpolation. But if a Zen master asked me, I'd go "creeee---aaaa---aa----kkkkkk. paaa-WUMP!"

And then again, I could be totally off base here. I could have been taken in by a clever fraud. It's all a hoax. Zen koans don't have answers. Only a naive person who believes everything he reads could ever think so.

That's my book review for the evening. Hope you all enjoy. And I do hope that someone reads this and decides to check out the book. I promise to return the UMass Amherst library's copy as soon as possible.

Flounder, flounder in the sea

Sat, 13 Jan 2007 02:34:39 GMT

I guess as long as I made a LJ account so I could make comments, I should have a LJ myself. So this is just another lonely Friday night. Just got paid tho, so I am cooking a very nice meal. At least I hope it'll be a nice meal. I'll find out soon.

When I cook, I like to just go to the store and see what's on sale that looks interesting. Tonight Stop N' Shop had whole flounder. It was $4.99 a pound, which is kinda a lot compared to their other whole-fish offerings (such as tilapia), but it's a cool-looking fish that I've never eaten before. It has both eyes on one side, the poor thing, and I guess it lays on it's other side most of it's life. God knows how it catches food. Maybe it has a roommate that brings it to it. It looks like a real lazy fish that just lays there all the time. While I was at the store, I got myself other things to go with the flounder. A bunch of green onions, a lime, a small ginger root, and a can of coconut milk. Also a bottle of Coke, to drink with this fine meal. Total expense $10.50, so this meal had better be pretty good.

Upon getting home, I put some butter in a frying pan and sliced up a couple cloves of garlic. I had those items already. Chopped up the green onions and put them in there too. Then the lime, just washed it and cut off the knobbly end bits and sliced the rest real thin with the peel on, why not, put that in the pan too. Also made a half-ass effort at peeling the ginger root (with a potato peeler) before slicing it up and putting it in there too.

Then I inspected the fish. Washed it off, it seems to have been cleaned through the belly so there's a bit of a divot there - the scales feel real rough if you rub them the wrong way across your hand. They're totally smooth if you rub them from the head-to-tail direction, though. Guess this is a fish with a serious directionality. So it swims and is streamlined? Beats me. Like I said, it looks like one lazy-ass fish, but maybe it swims sometimes. Maybe to look for the TV remote or something.

Oh well. In the pan with you, flounder. Soft side down, I assume that's the side I'm eating so better make sure it gets cooked enough. The short little tail didn't quite fit in the pan so I let it hang out. Let the whole mess sizzle for a while, and then dumped the "coconut water" onto it. Oddly enough "coconut water" has little white chunks of coconut in it, but that's cool. This made the sizzling stop, I turned up the heat and got it to a mild simmering boil. Let it go like that for 20 minutes or so.

Then I figured I should turn the fish over. Tried to pick it up by the tail but the tail came off. Oh well. It looks just as tasty without the tail. Used a spatula to flip it instead. The soft side is looking real good. Just let it sort of simmer there, laying on it's hard side, like it never did during it's lifetime.

Time to disassemble and eat! Pretty tricky getting the meat off the tiny, deadly little bones. Taking special care not to scatter them about the pan cuz I want to safely enjoy the veggies too. Turns out the soft-side skin is edible too. Oops, almost got some little bones. Being careful ----

You know, this would be real good with a pot of curry rice. I think I'll make that next and eat them together. Definitely this is good. The quantity of meat - well I dunno if this is a $10.50 QUANTITY of food, but the quality is good. I guess flounder is worth trying.