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The Da Vinci Code has managed to sell an incredible number of copies in the past few years though I must be one of the very few people on the planet who have not purchased or read the book. Over Easter weekend, we watched a 2-hour special on the fact and fiction of the premise of the book largely because there was nothing else worth watching and the teaser mentioned something about the Catholic church being a bit pissed off about the whole thing. If the Pope is upset, it must be worth watching at least once. It was interesting to see just how far people are willing to go to believe something that is either ridiculous or highly improbable. Since then, there have been two other special programs on the National Geographic Channel's "Secret Bible Week" about the Templars and the apocalypse. And, now that the movie has been released, there are a whole slew of programs with Dan Brown and talking heads trying to look scholarly and thoughtful while thinking about what's for dinner tonight.

Having been through Catholic schools and a Jesuit University, I remain a recovering Catholic but retain some sense of humour at the thought of the Church getting its hackles up over a third-rate novel written by an author whose earlier books were not very popular or critically acclaimed. Throughout the centuries, the church has remained rather touchy about being reminded of its bloody past. The premise that Jesus and Mary Mag were married and had a daughter is entirely plausible, if not probable, but where the suspension of disbelief enters the picture is where Mary and the child disappear without a trace after the crucifixion well before there was a Catholic church whose misogyny their existence might cause problems for. The whole quest for the Holy Grail, a.k.a. Graal in Medieval literature, becomes the search for the lost bloodline of Jesus? I think the UFO abductees have more proof of LGM probing their anal cavities than the idea that the Holy Graal was in fact Jesus' long lost daughter whose descendants became the Merovingian bloodline 300-400 AD. Well, ok, maybe Jesus having a sex life instead of spending a few decades as a human male without jerking off or never having an erection is a little more credible than alien anal probes. There is no parish named "Our Lord of the Blue Balls", is there? I rest my case.

Then there is the idea that the Templars were the guardians of the secret that Jesus and Mary had a daughter and the subsequent bloodline. The Templars have been accused of just about everything imaginable given that a lack of information about something leads to a whole range of crap that people fill the gaps with. Now it is speculated that the Masons are the modern successors of the Templars after they were eradicated in 1307. Trying to imbue Masons with so much mystery is, well, amusing. My grandparents were Masons and every damn Christmas I had to get dressed up and be a bearer of gifts in some cult-like ceremony where each point on a giant 5-point star had some old prune in a different shade of chiffon sitting in a chair waiting for me to arrive after the appropriate incantation. I just figured that it was a social club much like their bridge club where everyone was ancient and had lots of time to kill. Creepy? Yes. Cultish? Yes. Mysterious? No.

Now the movie is out and, wow, what a boring three hour movie it is. Given the choice of what few decent movies seem to be around these days, it was either MI:III or DVC. There are a few amusing parts like the latin speaking killer albino monk and the Soprano cast of Vatican white guys trying to snuff the good guys. I mean, in the 70s when The Exorcist came out the Church had reasonably good grounds to get huffy and ban the movie, thereby ensuring its timeless popularity, as it was based on a true story and involved the arcane practice of exorcism which only the Jesuits in St. Louis seemed willing to attempt in defiance of the Vatican. The Exorcist also had a fabulous score with lots of the scary apocalyptic choir music so often associated with evil or doom whereas I can't even remember if there was any score in DVC. It provided Halloween costume ideas for years and years afterwards, too. What are kids supposed to do now, get into genealogy and trace their family back to French nobility? Boring. With The Da Vinci Code the whole story is fictional, even if parts of it might be plausible. It's not like Dan Brown inserted bits about Jesus preferring his right had to jerk himself off claiming them as fact thus refuting the long cherished belief that every sperm is sacred and that masturbation causes blindness. Think of the chaos that would cause amongst the faithful. What's so blasphemous in suggesting that this son of god guy might have been a regular Joe?

One would think that, after all these years, the Church would have figured out that there is no such thing as bad publicity and that by banning something it nearly guarantees that it will be an international success. Even in Finland, where they wisely ran off the Catholics early on, the movie has been sold out for much of the last week or two and I don't think it's because Tom Hanks is considered a hottie here. I'm sure Dan Brown is thanking the Pope and all the other religious freaks in a huff about the movie every time he looks at his rapidly swelling bank account.

Maybe it's time I wrote the novel about Jesus' wild teenage years and sexual coming of age, Jesus is Coming!.

And those with 10 minutes to kill will enjoy giggling at, The Albino Code, which is both shorter and cheaper than DVC. :)

permalink Ω 29 May 2006, Helsinki

Bon Appétit!

« A creepy anthropomorphic representative of the two most popular foods in Finland; sausage and catsup. »

I noticed a lot of the foodie folks have recently been reading and commenting on Julia Child's new book, My Life in France. I had to wait a month for the book to arrive by slow boat before I could read my copy. The food aspect of Julia's life never really interested me as I've always regarded French food as too heavy, too rich, too gamey, too full of itself and drowning in sauces. Instead, I wanted to read her story as an expat since I was always intrigued by her obvious presence and character from the first time I saw her cooking show on PBS so many decades ago. It seems doubtful that people tuned in to make French food in the 1970s, a time when velveeta cheese balls and bundt cakes were all the rage, but who could resist a woman who cooked with such flair and drank from the sherry bottle as she cooked? And the light, high voice from a 6'2" amazonian woman bidding her audience "Bon Appétit" at the end of every show was also strangely endearing.

Julia was 36 when she left the US to live in France, just as I was 36 when I came to live in Finland. Although Julia had the advantage of being part of the US consular machine which provides quite a network of advantages for the expat when compared to the spouse who expatriates without an organization to support them, I found her experiences familiar. I was particularly jealous of her claim to becoming fluent in French within a year of arrival, something I attribute to French being a romance language, and I wondered how she might have fared with Finnish. But, like her, learning all the food words first for reading menus and grocery shopping was a priority for me.

She, too, was a liberal living outside the US in a time of political discontent back home; McCarthyism. It is interesting that she mentions that McCarthy was largely supported by "Texas oil millionaires." So much, yet so little, has changed over the decades. And, too, she became somewhat alienated from her family because she held such radically different political views. Her father was a staunch Republican who supported McCarthy and thought that the leftist college professors and socialists in Europe had brainwashed his daughter. She wrote a letter in defense of several accused professors at Smith (her alma mater) who had fallen into the path of the McCarthy witch hunt that is remarkably current and patriotic:

In Russia today, as a method for getting rid of opposition, an unsubstantiated implication of treason, such as yours, is often used. But it should never be used in the United States... I respectfully suggest that you are doing both your college and your country a disservice... In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and freedom; for our Constitution and the due process of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion and politics. I am convinced that in your zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are fighting for.

Aside from her going from mere consumer to gourmet in four years, her decision to take on the cookbook project and the attention to every detail she lavished upon it from verifying authenticity to American kitchen equivalents to fool-proofing the recipes was a surprise. So few cookbooks these days bother to test their recipes much less give a damn whether the ingredients are readily available to their target audience. I completely understood her desire to make French cooking as authentic and as easy as possible using what would be reasonably available in the local American grocery. Few cooks who have never left the borders of their own country can appreciate how frustrating it is to cook elsewhere when many of the ingredients simply aren't available. Try making Kraft mac&cheese with franks (often mocked by those who have never eaten it :) or green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup or anything with velveeta or marshmallows or Helmann's mayo, etc. in Finland and you'll be left with an empty plate. Even basic things like sour cream and buttermilk have to be substituted for which is only done by trial and error. Her diligence saved a lot of cooks the frustration that only the expat can truly understand.

One particular story in the book went into great detail about her determination to perfect the recipe for crusty French bread. At first I read the recommendation about using an asbestos tile as a baking stone and gasped given that asbestos was public health enemy number one in the 1970s, but later she mentions the panic she and Knopf had when the news about asbestos first came out and how they switched to ceramic tiles just before she was to do the baguette show on TV complete with footage of her baking with an artisanal baker in France.

The only part of the book that left me wanting was how little of her she really allowed the reader to see. We get a few glimpses here and there of how her collaboration with Simone "Simca" Beck was turbulent at times, but these are rather breezy and don't really tell us what was really going on. Clearly she was a very bright, colourful, vivacious, driven perfectionist, but that's all we really get to know of her in this book. There was one particular quote that made me smile amidst all of her effusive comments about French food and how much she loved France that confirmed that she was still real, still American.

In the meantime, we'd be going back the the US for a couple of months of home leave... I couldn't wait to see them and get my feet on US soil. But what I really looked forward to was eating an honest-to-goodness American steak!

So, I may reconsider my years of avoiding her cookbooks now that I know she put so much effort into perfecting each recipe for the average American cook. I had always admired her as an entertaining TV chef, but I have a new respect for her cookbooks.

permalink Ω 4 May 2006, Helsinki

Microserfs 2.0

« The noble beast, Otava, watches a ferry push through the sea ice. »

These days, I think the dead lead more thrilling lives than I do as, other than sleeping, eating and going to work, I've just not had the energy to do much of anything in the past few weeks. The highlight of my day is walking Otava and going to the puppy park where it can get pretty 'exciting' now that it's spring. I think much of the hormonal fervor is due to a very large percentage of both male and female pet dogs are not neutered/spayed in Finland as they are in the US. I'm not sure if it is an issue of cost or an issue of people wishing to breed their pets, but I don't remember HB going this berzerk with the twice-yearly rush of hormones. I mean, what do you do when your enormous dog jumps the fence to rumble with a male dog of similar size whom he used to play with rather well and then cowers at a dachshund who is snarling and biting at him? It's spring, even though it's snowing to beat the band.

What's the deal with Helsinki real estate prices lately? One 80-ish sq. meter attic apartment is asking 650,000 euro. It's not in a jugend building or anything fancy like that and the tiny circa 1930s lift doesn't even go up to the floor the apartment is on. I just cannot fathom who is buying these fantastically overvalued apartments on salaries that are, on average, well below 50,000 euro per year (before taxes). It makes me wonder if and when a real estate 'correction' will come as either the prices will fall thereby decreasing equity overnight or the interest rates will rise (you can't get a 15-30 year fixed rate in Finland) and there will be a lot of sales and foreclosures for those who purchased at the limit of their available cash. Even for those who could afford to buy these overpriced places with cash, why do it?

One bit of deeply depressing reading over the weekend was a Seymour Hersh column, The Iran Plan, in The New Yorker. I suppose I had given myself some comfort thinking that the US was either smart enough not to or fiscally unable to consider invading Iran but this piece makes me want to buy a bunker somewhere far, far away from the Middle East and Israel. Too many wackos pushing for the apocalypse with fingers on the button. What ever happened to the checks and balances that would prevent this sort of insanity?

On the bright side, Douglas Coupland will be releasing a new book, JPod (Microserfs 2.0) in Mid-May. Supposedly Microserfs meets the Google generation. I loved Microserfs so this should be an equally entertaining read. The book's website also mentions a 'special edition' of the book that is boxed, signed and packaged with a special editon of cube figures, presumeably of the characters from the book. I wonder why the book hasn't gotten more publicity as I only found it while browsing the humour section of Amazon.co.uk and it was on the 6th or 7th page of the upcoming titles.

permalink Ω 10 April 2006, Helsinki

Conelandia

« It's that time again for more pictures than you ever really wanted of something that goes blink in the night: See Pylons in the Night, a.k.a the Valopylväs. »

For those who are about to either stalk Conan O'Brien upon his arrival tomorrow afternoon around 3:30 or loiter downtown in hopes of rubbernecking or getting on the show, I feel compelled remind you that Finnair does fly non-stop to NYC daily (for less than 400 euro even) where you can get free tickets to the show to see him in person without having to freeze your ass off while hoping to bump into him at random. I live in the center and, while I love Conan and am looking forward to seeing the Finland segments on the show, I'm dreading the throng of people who don't have anything better to do than bunge up the city all weekend long. I'd love to see him but I figure that he isn't flying several thousand miles to visit with expat Yankees and I get enough time out in the cold with Otava. But, Conan, if you and your crew are in the neighbourhood on Sunday evening and feel like coffee and a freshly baked seasonal treat, I'll be baking so feel free to drop in as long as you don't mind a little hair and drool from our 75kg canine greeter. :)

Those staying indoors and away from the throng might find this recent article in The Morning News,The Bear in Helsinki, amusing. There's also an interesting photo exhibit starting on the 14th at Laterna Magica, panoramic photos taken 77 years apart of the same scenes by Alfred Nybom and Christian Westerback.

Over the past few months, between all the usual 'hurry up and wait' parts of my job which make it hard to concentrate on any one thing for very long, I've been casually surfing Amazon for a few minutes here and there. I think I must be shopping mostly in the afternoon when I'm hungry as, well, I do seem to have chosen a few cookbooks.

• Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor ϖ Looks promising. I was always interested in flavour chemistry, even if I still can't stand the smell of banana after one too many freshman chem lab experiments put me off of it.
• A Swedish Kitchen: Recipes and Reminiscences ϖ Since so many Finnish dishes seem to have Swedish origins, I thought it might be interesting look into it a bit more.
• The Swedish Table ϖ Excellent cookbook written by a Swedish-born woman who moved to the States since her Father was American. It's aimed, I think, at the snobbier end of the foodie crowd, but the recipes are well done and her narrative is very interesting given that she was a black girl growing up in Northern Sweden.
• The Chocolate Connoisseur ϖ I like chocolate, but thought it might be nice to know more about it in a market that has a lot of overpriced crap.
• The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread ϖ I love baking bread and am rather bored with the pre-made varieties lately.
• How Baking Works: Exploring the Fundamentals of Baking Science ϖ Informative. I keep thinking that someone should write a book for GKP, Good Kitchen Practice, in the same vein as GLP, Good Laboratory Practice, that research labs have to adhere to.
• The Simple Art of Perfect Baking ϖ Normally I shy away from books that have 'perfect', etc., in the title but I tried a recipe or two and this book is excellent for baking techniques.
• American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza ϖ When faced with a choice of local or Pizza Hut pizza, the tough make it themselves.
• Democracy in America: And Two Essays on America ϖ I need to reread this for the book that follows.
• American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville ϖ Oh, I can hear the right-wingers freaking out over a snobby educated Frenchman commenting on America already. :)
• Right, Wrong, and Risky: A Dictionary of Today's American English Usage ϖ And one of these days I might actually use proper punctuation.
• Fanboys and Overdogs: The Language Report ϖ It would appear that OUP is making this report annual.
• Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land (Sloan Technology Series) ϖ I've always wanted to read this as the books from the STS are excellent. I'm not really sure why they stopped the series.
• Company: A Novel ϖ A book making fun of corporate America by the author of the Jennifer Government.
• Johnny and the Dead ϖ More Pratchett.
• Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles ϖ More from the Canongate Myths series.

permalink Ω 11 February 2006, Helsinki

Oracle of Gravity

« The triple energy bolt logo of Helsingin Energia on one of their older buildings in Töölö. »

Finland's presidential elections were held yesterday and, because there was no clear winner with 50% of the vote or better, there will be a second round of voting for the top two contenders in two weeks. Of late it seems that major democracies around the world have been having more frequent troubles in selecting clear winners in elections, e.g. Germany, the US, etc. Does it mean that we are becoming more divided in our political views or, perhaps more likely, that our choices of leaders in just sucking more and more often?

The AP has a stringer up here who likely gets this kind of top fold excitement once only every six years or so, unless someone blows up a mall or gets a $500k speeding ticket. The wire story this morning had this to say about the important and solemn task of selecting a new leader in a sovereign country:

She bears a resemblance to the redheaded late-night talk show host Conan O'Brien, who has been promoting her re-election bid on his show as part of a running joke about their supposed physical similarities.

In one show, O'Brien presented a mock ad for Halonen in which he and two Finns discussed the election while ice fishing.

When they talk about Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, a rival candidate who finished third Sunday with just under 19 percent, a dead fish shoots out of the hole in the ice, prompting a joke about how the mention of his name makes fish commit suicide.

"Fish recognize a bad leader," O'Brien says in broken Finnish, to laughter from his studio crowd.

I was, like, bitch, what? Fish can recognise a tired, tired, absolutely overdone joke, too, but obviously the media cannot. For those who neither know nor care who Conan O'Brien is or have no idea why anyone interested in the outcome of the Finnish elections might be, there's a joke that O'Brien looks like Tarja in the same vein that Austin Powers assaults Basil's androgynous mother exclaiming, "She's a MAN baby, yeah!" It was cute at first, but it has gone too far when it enters the election news reports. What will Conan do when he's here in Finland in early February if Tarja loses? (He is apparently coming only for filming, not a studio show. Maybe the Quebequois fiasco put him off of hosting shows elsewhere.) Gads, is Finland so desperate for media attention that it will go to any lengths, including making a big joke out of a late night talk show host from the US and their president to do it?

Jarkko got a bathroom scale over the weekend. One of those snazzy digital jobs that not only tell your weight, but your water and fat percentage, too. I've not weighed myself in at least 10 years, but there's something so alluring about a scale as though a voice in the back of your head is shouting, "Oh! Great Oracle of Gravity, tell us our number!" If only it would print out my fortune and award me with a cupie doll when it is wrong it would be perfect. I don't suppose the special carny edition of bathroom scale would be terribly popular though. I did, of course, succumb to my curiosity and was surprised that I weigh less than I feel like I do, but more than is comfortable in my jeans. When 'relaxed fit' jeans are more like 'snug fit', it's time to face reality that, well, your size has incremented by one or two. I guess it's a bit better than the 'suck it in and don't breathe fit' or 'painted on fit'. :) So, maybe I'll start bringing my lunch to work more often and taking the stairs instead of the lift to try and decrease my gravitational mass. In the interim, I think I'll avoid the bathroom oracle of gravity.

And in the tradition of Greek oracles of gravity, et al, there is a new series of books from Canongate Publishers that is really quite good. I've just finished The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, that is a tale of Penelope, Odysseus' wife, during the years of the Odyssey which was quite an entertaining read. The next one I intend to read is The Helmet of Horror which is a retelling of Theseus and the Minotaur. The Canongate Myths Series is apparently a collaboration between 32 publishing houses and promises 100 titles by 100 acclaimed authors over the next few years. Authors from around the world are being invited to reinvent a myth of their choosing in 25,000-35,000 words. It is one of the most imaginative and original ideas in the publishing world I've seen in a long while. I wonder if any Finnish contemporary writers would deign to write an English retelling of the Kalevala from, say, Louhi's point of view? :)

permalink Ω 16 January 2006, Helsinki

Petrosexual

« This isn't Stockmann's Halloween window, but it could have been. :) The theme was California children having a party...or something. The boys were dressed as pirates, too. I'm not sure if people who have never been to the states and/or lived there get all their impressions from the imported TV shows believe that we all live, dress, eat and behave like the folks in TV-land, but I've been away so long that I'm starting to wonder which version of America is right or if they all are. »

I finally bought tickets home for the holidays after much procrastination and masterful subliminal avoidance tactics. Now begin the nightmares filled of fun scenarios like having the plane turn back because I'm on the no-fly list or being sent to Gitmo upon arrival. Perhaps a bit irrational, but it has been three years since I've been home and I am both eager and reluctant to go as it may be awkward, much like seeing a friend you've lost touch with after a few years. When you're an expat, you're a bit estranged from both sides of the equation since you were not born in the country you live nor are you living in the country in which you were born. You don't have a choice but to keep trying to assimilate in the country you live, but time passes and you loose touch with the daily news and ephemera from home which accrete and distinguish you from the tourist, cryogenically frozen man of mystery or overly astute kids on the internet who could probably list more trivia about America than most natives, but wouldn't know that 12th street in St. Louis has a different name, Tucker, used only by the locals. Landscape and language are both integral to identity and when you are separated from them physically, and possibly mentally as well, your identity in that landscape and language changes, though it doesn't disappear. It's sort of like Austin Powers being thawed out in the 90s after being put in cold storage in the 60s and the hilarity that ensues afterwards from his out of context adventures. I really need to dig up my copy of Bill Bryson's, I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away, and re-read it soon.

A few random odds 'n ends....

The GAO has released their report on the 2004 election and though the mainstream press hasn't picked it up, Powerful Government Accountability Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings, makes for predictable and depressing reading.

Kallio Vice - If Miami were a lot colder and had more problems with booze than with pastel fashions and handguns. In this vein, on a slow news day a reporter from the BBC has a night out in Helsinki tagging along with the cops and looking for drunks. He writes that it took until 10pm to spot their first drunk which makes me wonder if it was a slow night or if the cops were avoiding them as they're generally around downtown anytime of the day or night. Helsinki gets another superlative for its collection: Largest 'drunk tank' in Europe.

And some books of the strange, odd and interesting variety.

• The Planets by Dava Sobel ≈ Essays on each of the planets by the same author who wrote Longitude.
• Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History, from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie ≈ Looks like a good book, especially with the recipe for creamed onions.
• The World in a Phrase: A History of Aphorisms ≈ Aphorisms are one of the finest forms of the English language.
• The Elements of Style Illustrated ≈ Apparently a remedial edition for the people who don't function without pictures. Looking at the illustrator's self-description on Amazon is both funny and sad given the book. On the upside it's hardbound.
• Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Language in Your Life, the Media, Business, Politics, and, Like, Whatever ≈ Language has a posse and they are coming for pop language.
• The Great Stink ≈ The Victorian sewers of London.
• The Home Spa Book for Dogs: Nose to Tail Treatments to Soothe the Soul and Age-Proof Your Canine Companion ≈ Who knew my home could double as a canine-care retreat?
• Cooking the Three Dog Bakery Way ≈ For your dog's after-spa and yoga liver pâte.
• Bones: Recipes, History, and Lore ≈ For the dog who loves bones. :)
• The Complete Petrosexual ≈ A brilliant 'how in the fuck did that get published and did they just say furry fashionista and faux paws?' moment. Hurr.
• Planet Dog: A Doglopedia ≈ Looks possibly interesting and useful, but it better have an entry for "Owned: You."

permalink Ω 2 November 2005, Helsinki

Landscape of the Mundane

« The Jaskan grilli - giving drunks garlic breath for the past few decades. »

Thursday night was Taiteiden yö, a.k.a. Night of the Arts, which is something like First Night on New Year's Eve in the US only you don't have to freeze your ass off to enjoy the variety of events around town. I mustered the energy to participate in the Fotomaraton again this year which was more of a challenge since it was shortened by two hours with the same number of clues. They mete out 12 clues, four every two hours which you have to return to the office to collect, that you then think of something to take a photo of that might represent the clue and you must take the photos in the order that the clues are given. It's a lot more difficult than it appears since six hours of running around town racking your brain for ideas of what to take pictures of requires a lot of stamina to finish. I was at a loss for inspiration for a number of clues so it's unlikely any of my photos will be selected, but it was a fun game nonetheless.

One of the students in the office who was handing out the clues fondled the Leica and mentioned that he he has an upcoming show in Lasipalatsi of his street photography. I'll have to go and check it out since it seems like the vast majority of Finns are either nature photographers or prefer nature photography in the extreme. I enjoy nature photography in small doses, but after a while the entire genre becomes a cliche of itself since you see the same subjects over and over only with different seasons and light. Finland has a lot of nature, true, but it also has a lot of blight from humans just like everywhere else. The EU has cited Finland for abandoned cars on the sides of the roadways, which I can confirm from my limited driving through the Finnish countryside that there are a curiously high number of derelict cars, but I've yet to see a series of photos of these cars challenging the Finnish vision of a bucolic pastoral. In the mundane lie many uncomfortable truths. Finland could use more photojournalists with a critical eye and a willingness to expose the things we all like to pretend don't exist.

It has been a long summer of not so many great new books, but as September approaches there are a few to be excited about.

• Anansi Boys ≈ Neil Gaiman's new novel, in the same vein as the last, about ancient gods living as ordinary mortals in modern times. I'm not sure why, but I find this strangely apocalyptic.
• The Diviners ≈ Rick Moody turns his sharp observation of people to the media and the navel-gazing society that goes with it. He's one of the few authors that can pull off social commentary cloaked in the humourously absurd.
• Oh Pure and Radiant Heart ≈ I collect most books on the history of the bomb and a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction, but this is an interesting twist by merging the two.
• Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy ≈ Depressing reading from Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's, the best US magazine that doesn't make it this far East. It's even more deeply distressing now that the stupid debate over scientific evidence vs. divine magic as the origin of life has returned.
• Landscape And Images ≈ John Stilgoe makes me regret not taking a course of his at Harvard while I lived in Boston as he challenges those who don't observe and reflect, those who have been consumed by modern hustle and bustle. I once wrote to him, he doesn't do email which I find very praiseworthy, inviting him to talk at a Boston perl monger meeting since programmers could learn a lot from him. Photographers, too.
• The Clumsiest People in Europe: Or, Mrs. Mortimer's Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World ≈ I thought this book was a parody until I read the introduction which mentioned how the author was popularly read and, though she had a fixation for describing the poor and non-protestant countries as vile, didn't even travel as far as Ireland. The sentences are short and simple suggesting she wrote for children or the not terribly literate who likely would never travel and dispute her outlandish writings. Funny, yet sad in a Victorian-with-a-poker-up-her-arse kind of way.
• Field Guide To Meat and Field Guide to Produce ≈ Both books look like they're full of random bits of knowledge and trivia about produce and meat in handy rounded-corner volumes.
• The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century ≈ Food fads and classics likely tell more about a culture than all the usual history books combined.
• Rare Bits: Unusual Origins Of Popular Recipes ≈ This is an interesting book filled with some very unusual recipes and the stories behind them.
• The Good Cookie: Over 250 Delicious Recipes from Simple to Sublime ≈ Since the Cookie Sutra was a massive disappointment due to it being nothing more than a few tame illustrations of cookies fucking with only one recipe, I need another book for cookies. The ginger fortune cookies in particular sound great. We don't get fortune cookies with chinese food in Helsinki which is a bit of a letdown so I'll just have to make my own. :)
• Another Day In Paradise: Postcards ≈ Hilarious postcards in a continuing series from Anne Taintor.
• Acts of Charity ≈ A photographer goes into the NY charity scene and highlights the ludicrous and the ghoulish aspects of the people therein. Been there, seen that. He is disturbingly spot-on and almost cruel. A few sample images from the book.
• Fuck This Book ≈ An entire photobook containing only images of public signage that has been embellished with the word 'fuck'. :)
• Expletive Deleted : A Good Look at Bad Language ≈ One can never have too many books discussing 'bad' words.
• Doggy Days Journal: The Story of My Puppy ≈ Finally, someone has published a nice looking, non-cutesy, non-cloying puppy scrap book.

permalink Ω 28 August 2005, Helsinki

Betty Crocker Exposed

« Pilvipaimen by Merja Ranki at a gallery on Uudenmaankatu. The kind of art that looks really cool but would look completely absurd at home. »

I've not been baking much lately but I ran across the Pi Pie at some point yesterday and thought that it was really cute. The last time I thought about Pi was during the boom days, I tagged along with a friend to a party in Cambridge hosted by a dude with a lot of VC cash and a boner for someone known to me only as the "Pi Chick" whose claim to fame was that she memorized a large portion of the digits of Pi. Well, that and having a fairly public affair with the boss, a.k.a. the dude with the VC cash, who just promoted her to head of development or somesuch. It was a lavishly catered affair with cookies, cakes, petit fors, sumptuous desserts and food of all kinds, etc. either in the shape of Pi or adorned with its digits. Pi had nothing to do with the start-up, at least as far as I know. The start-up, of course, failed and the guy would eventually get sued by the investors. Maybe I should try doing a Chicken Mole with Avogadro's number or a round cake in the shape of a mole for Mole Day. I might even try to work in the Co-Fe ring chemist gag for extra nerd points.

More interesting books are being released this spring than in the past year or two although I don't know that anyone needs three different books on the life and times of the honeybee. How is it that when there is one book on some obscure historical topic that there's bound to be one or two more on the same topic from different publishers released about the same time? It makes me wonder if publishers think that if we'll buy one book on some boutique subject that we'll buy all three of them so they all get on the bandwagon and try to cash in. Is there some random topic generating program somewhere that claims to be random but spits out the same topics to all the publishers using it? If only I didn't need sleep, the pile of unread books would be so much smaller.

• Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time π Someone finally puts the smackdown on the perpetuated stupidity that is DST. Revolt and sleep in for a change as we're not living in Victorian times anymore! Damn cheerful morning people punishing us night owls. *grumble*
• Leica M: Advanced Photo School π A new edition of a rather expensive classic that's hard to find. Something every Leicaphile will deny wanting, but go out and buy a copy to hide under their pillow for late night reading. :)
• 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos π Aside from the science and the scientists building the bomb, the small city that sprang up around the project is rarely discussed in much detail and is likely as fascinating as the project. A place like this could never happen today which also adds to the curiosity.
• Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America's First Lady of Food π At some point when I was a kid, I noticed that two Betty Crocker cake mixes my mother had on the shelf had two different pictures of the famed Ur-Martha and I knew right then that I had been duped, that there was no such cheerful baking homemaker that I secretly wished my mother was like instead of a driven career woman putting her patients first. I need to read this if only to have closure on the feelings of childhood violation at the hands of marketing wanks.
• Freddy and Fredericka π Mark Helprin's upcoming novel that is a satire featuring a, but likely the, royal family. Helprin is one of the few brilliant fiction writers left out there.
• A Long Way Down π A new novel from Nick Hornby that will, hopefully, not make me write him off as a hack still coasting on the success of High Fidelity.

permalink Ω 26 April 2005, Helsinki

End of the Line

« In the fog, at the Arabia terminus of tram 6, is Light X by Kazushi Nakada which was unveiled on 25 January 2005. »

There is no X in Light X and there is precious little light as well. I was lured to the end of tram 6 just to see something glow in the dark by a blurb I saw in a neighbourhood paper and I was sorely disappointed. Why bother spending some outrageous amount of money on a bit of public artwork that involves light if you place it in an area where street lights drown out any light it might actually be emitting which, in this case, was scant? The fog and the black and white film make it look a lot more interesting than it actually is. [Apparently there is quite a lot more public art in store for Arabianranta. The site is a bit stale, but it's nice to wander around in. There's even a project blog. It seems strange that neither of the sites mention the Light X project (#8).] And anyone with a camera in the area might consider giving the Arabianranta photo album some love. :)

The apartment building next to the big flickering fluorescent tube of Arabia was a nice surprise. On two sides of the building there were some lights that vaguely suggested a caduceus, but the roof had a really funky, brightly coloured, spinning air vent that could have been designed by Gaudí. I didn't take any pictures of it as I was on my way somewhere and didn't take my tripod with me, but its uniqueness in a sea of boring modern glass and brick featureless buildings certainly made me very curious to know more about it.

And, a few new books of interest. I'm going to be very sad when shipping costs make it just too expensive to bother ordering books from Amazon at 25%-50% less than Akateeminen prices with the exchange factored in. I think that will be very soon.

• Superstud: Or How I Became a 24-Year-Old Virgin ∞ More comedy goodness from the guy who wrote Freaks and Geeks which has such stunning realistic detail from the era of my own childhood that even if it sucks it'll be a lovely bit of nostalgia.
• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything ∞ Me and George Carlin ask goofy questions like this all the time so maybe there's a new career waiting for me as a brilliant economist.
• Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping ∞ Everything you always knew about Eschelon but didn't feel like asking the NSA about.
• Assassination Vacation ∞ Sarah Vowell, I love you. I miss crazy road trips to random US destinations like carhenge. I wish I would have thought of something as morbid as this. :)
• Culture Smart! Finland ∞ A natural progression from the Culture Shock! series, the Culture Smart! guides look to be cashing in on the business traveller market. It'll probably be great comedy, like reading Virtual Finland's website after living here for a while, since it has sections titled 'Sex and the City' and 'High Culture'. Maybe because it's written by a Finn the hyperbole won't be quite so thick. I'm an optimist actively seeking disappointment.
• Black and White Photography, Third Revised Edition ∞ Finally, after a year of waiting....
• Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove ∞ Teller was a very strange and interesting man.

permalink Ω 11 April 2005, Helsinki

M is for Malmi

« The red and green neon Malmintori Saloon directly across from the Foreigner's police station. If you don't need a drink when you enter, you most certainly will by the time you leave. The station used to be downtown, but last year they moved it to Malmi which has to be in the top 10 list of most depressing places in Helsinki. »

I bought a copy of Suomesta, rakkaudella a week or two ago when I was cruising through Akateeminen looking for another book. I was surprised to see that both the English and the Finnish versions are included in the same book. The 24 euro cover price was a bit steep, but I was curious and thought I'd give it a try since Herr Schatz isn't much older than I am and moved here almost 20 years ago so I figured he'd have a whole host of amusing vignettes for those of us who are still rather new to Finland. I must admit that I was disappointed by the book mostly because it's a fairly brief collection of essays on well trodden topics without much depth, the opposite of what I was expecting to find. I also must have been reading too much Tom Wolfe, Neal Stephenson and Joe Queenan recently as I found the English a bit too straightforward and plain.

I'm not sure who the audience for the book is as it likely will only be sold in Finland and I don't think too many Finns are going to be so curious about what a foreigner thinks of Finland to pay 24 euro for a small paperback book that covers the usual topics and can be read in about 20 minutes while hanging around the stacks. Some of the new arrivals to Finland may be tempted, but the sarcasm in much of the writing is really only appreciated after they have been here for a year or more. And those of us who have been here long enough to appreciate the humour have already been there, done that.

I suppose that I was hoping for a personal narrative or collection of stories about the author's own experiences from being an expat in Finland for two decades instead of something more closely resembling a travel brochure for the long-term tourist. After the meltdown of the expat bulletin board which I dubbed the wailing wall, where commiseration in our collective alien condition was very rare, I had optimistically anticipated something different that might mix much of the personal struggle of being a foreigner in this country with a bit of humourous observations and anecdotes to lend a genuine and intimate picture of what it is to actually live here rather than cover the usual tedious bits about sisu, sauna and santa. Leaving the land you once called home for another, no matter what the reason, is rarely just a 'change of scenery' and far more than just moving house, finding out where they sell the peanut butter and learning the local clichés. Vera has been here nearly 10 years and I enjoy her frank and honest tales about the Finnish condition. It's easy to be isolated here well beyond what you might expect when moving to a strange land and a book full of breezy humour is not quite up to the task of bridging that chasm.

In spite of my disappointment, the author has some very good advice, primarily that if foreigners intend to stay in Finland they should learn the language or be forever a tourist in their own home. Sadly, I don't think those who need that particular clue the most will be reading his book. The book also has a talented illustrator, Maarika Autio, whose stylized pen and ink drawings add a bit of comic relief to the text. There is one essay where Schatz lists ten bits of survival advice to the new arrivals and one bit piqued my curiosity enough to go around asking people to count to five on a hand.

Learn to eat ice-cream in winter. Learn to speak while breathing in. When counting with your fingers, start with the little one [pinky].

Not one of my victims started with the pinky, except Jarkko, so I'm wondering if this is a trait of the over-30-something set as most of the people at work are a bit younger than Jarkko. Perhaps it was taught only in schools in the late 60s in some parts of the country? It's weird and obscure oddities like this that I find interesting.

There is one thing I will not forgive Herr Schatz for and that is contained in the description of how to make Carelian Pies:

Wrinkle the edges of each pie to make it look like an aging Carelian vagina.

Jarkko wondered if he had heard of some colourful Finnish joke that also makes this association and after 20 years I suspect he has even though the Finnish half of the book doesn't mention it. You know, I used to love those little warm pies, but now all I can think about when I see them in the bakery is a gunky vagina in desperate need of some Vagisil™. Erk.

permalink Ω 24 February 2005, Helsinki

Patois

« Boring as Fuck - the band correction, the festival. »

I managed to read I Am Charlotte Simmons while on the ferry and, in spite of my utter adoration for Tom Wolfe and his writing, it was a thoroughly disappointing read. Of course, his writing style was as elaborate as ever but it was tough to plod through a book with such a narcissicistic protagonist and a carnival of painful stereotypes. Anyone who went to an American private university will find it a vivid reminder of younger, dumber days frought with promise before grim reality set in. The book seemed less a snapshot of current college life than a caricature of the stereotypes as a form of social critique, a satire. The one part of the book that was thoroughly entertaining was the treatise on 'fuck patois' and 'shit patois', which amuses more than it shocks since both fuck and shit have become so hackneyed that they have been reduced from the profane to the pedestrian.

The frat boys and the sorority girls sang songs-all of them seemed to know all the words to everything-they shared gossip-the two bitches were superb at filleting people's reputations while seeming to be merely adding little details-they turned whatever they could into sexual innuendo-they indulged their predilection for Shit Patois. Charlotte had been aware of Fuck Patois from the day she arrived at Dupont, but it was not until spending hour after hour after hour cooped up in this SUV that she reliazed how cool it apparently was to use shit in every way possible: to mean possessions ("Where's your shit?"), lies or misleading explanations ("Are you shitting me?" "We need a shit detector"), drunk ("shit-faced"), trouble ("in deep shit"), ineptitude ("could play point guard for shit"), care about ("give a shit"), rude, thoughtless, disloyal ("really shitty thing to do"), not kidding ("no shit?"), obnoxiously unpleasant ("he's a real shit"), mindless conversation ("talking shit", "shooting the shit"), confusing story ("or some such shit"), drugs ("you bring the shit?), to egest ("take a shit"), to fart in such a way that it becomes partly egestion ("shart"), a trivial matter ("a piece a shit"), unpleasantly surprised ("he about shit a brick"), ignorance ("he don't know shit"), pompous man ("the big shit", "that shitcake"), hopeless situation ("up Shit Creek"), disappointment ("oh, shit!"), startling ("holy shit!"), unacceptable, inedible ("shit on a shingle"), strategy ("oh, that shit again"), feces, literally ("shit"), slum ("some shithook neighborhood"), meaningless ("that don't mean shit"), et cetera ("and massages and shit"), self-important ("he thinks he's some shit"), predictably ("sure as shit"), very ("mean as shit"), verbal abuse ("gave me shit"), violence ("before the shit came down" or "hit the fan", "dont start no shit", "won't be no shit"). ....

It's almost like a South Park episode only no one kills Kenny and the dialogue is far less entertaining. Somehow, I don't think the man in the flawless white suit was going for that effect.

permalink Ω 25 January 2005, Helsinki

Are Pork Chops a Euphemism?

« What a difference a letter makes....I see a new marketing campaign for Crowmoor in this; "Drink More. Grow More. Crowmoor!" »

When looking to the shelves to find a slimmer and lighter book than the current titles I was reading before leaving for Tunisia I found and decided to take When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, George Carlin's recent book filled with deliciously funny cynicism that I can relate to. It was only when riding the train to Tunis, in a car containing mostly Tunisians save for two very chatty German women who found endless amusement in the train timetable, did I start to think that maybe carrying a book with "Jesus" in the title and a slightly altered illustration of the last supper on the cover might not have been the wisest choice for reading material, especially when I kept laughing while reading it. :)

George, I know you're just like every other egosurfing author on the internet these days and if you read this, I loved the euphemism bashing and want more. [I nearly wet myself laughing at the HBO special where Carlin goes on at length about 'servicing the customer', but that's probably TMI.] I might also add that you forgot to take on the weather. Finland has a fabulous word, räntä, that sounds as unpleasant as the weather it describes. It's a short Finnish word, too, something to be cherished in a Finnish word. In English, we get sleet, snain [snow + rain], freezing rain, wet snow and, lest we forget, "wintry mix". What the fuck is "wintry mix" anyway? Something the weather people came up with to say 'well, we have no clue what will fall from the sky today so let's just use this vague term to cover our asses no matter what?' I miss those low-tech days where a guy would stand in front of a board with a happy sun icon over Florida and a giant snowflake over Chicago and tell it like it was; if you weren't in Florida, your weather was likely cold, crappy and grim. Nowadays they have 3-D 'fly through', 5-day forecasts, doppler radar and tons of new words to describe the same bloody thing the fat smiling guy in front of the wooden cut-out of the lower-48 states would; the weather where you are sucks and will remain that way until you move to Florida, dimwit.

The word folks will enjoy WWJBTPC as George has frequent rants on euphemisms in English that tend to have little purpose other than replacing another word or words with others that aren't as clear. George takes no prisoners and even though it's very amusing it's rather disturbing to realise that it has reached self-parodying levels of absurdity. The poem A Modern Man is an anthem for the wired jet-set who would have died at thought of a week without any information appliance nearby. And, Prepositional Phrases, made me think of most Finns who complain about English and its arbitrary use of them.

We Americans love our prepositional phrases.

Out of sight, off the charts, in the groove, on the ball; up the creek, down the tubes, in the dumper, out the yin-yang; off the wall, 'round the bend, below the belt, under the weather.

And of course...under the table

Table Talk

But rather than under the table, let us begin on the table. That's a phrase you hear a lot in the news, especially from Washington. In negotiations of any kind, certain things are said to be on the table. Implying that other things are off the table. And sometimes, regardless of what's on the table, a settlement is reached under the table.

The table seems important. If a person is highly qualified, we say he brings a lot to the table. Unfortunately, those who bring a lot to the table often have too much on their plates. Still, they're guaranteed a seat at the table, because they think outside the box, which puts them ahead of the curve.

Now, if the negotiators agree on what's on the table, then they're on the same page. Personally, I don't like people on my page. If someone says to me, "We're on the same page," I say, "Do me a favor, please, turn the page; I'd rather not be on that page. In fact, I'd rather be in a completely different book." Buat that's beside the point; I've wandered off the track.

Returning to negotiations, if the sides are getting close, we're told they're in the ballpark. This often comes from people in the know, speaking off the record. And in Washington, many in the know are also in the loop because, after all, they work inside the beltway.

Now, there are other government people, outside the beltway, who, nonetheless, remain in the know and in the loop. They function in foreign countries and we say they're on the ground,. If they're CIA, they're under the radar and paid off the books. Much of what they learn is picked up on the street. But they don't always need to be on the street, because a lot of information comes in over the transom.

Hey, we don't make the rules, we just make fun of them. :)

permalink Ω 3 January 2005, Helsinki

A day of un-ness

« The "puunhenki", the tree spirit, in Kaisaniemi Park. It sorta has that Carmen Miranda look with the block of uncarved tree on top of his head. :) »

Not much excitement here a Casa de Ævil, unless you consider laundry a fun activity, but a few cool sites and books are worth noting.

• The absolute coolest election photography I've seen in ages, and certainly this year, is the Guardian's Documentography which is following 5 American families for the next week. It's brilliant.
• PDN mentioned Snapshot Magazine in the latest issue but....anyone know anything about this publication? The call for photos made it sound really quite interesting.
• The brand new Camerapedia looks like it has some promise to be useful and I'll probably add in a bunch of Leica info when I get to it. I can't think of any other site that would have so much information on cameras in one spot that would be useful for anyone shopping for a camera or wondering what camera is best for them.
• I could barely sit through both seasons of The Office so I'm wondering if The Office - The Christmas Specials will just make me start weeping uncontrollably for humanity. I'm a masochist, but somehow I adore this series in spite of the excrutiating pain of watching it straight through.
• If snopes took on the English language, they'd write something like Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends.
• Cook's Illustrated has two new books out that look terrific: Cover and Bake which is a book of casseroles and other baked dishes and The New Best Recipe, an updated/new version of the original which is beyond damn good.
• Creative Canine Photography as everyone should have a decent photo of their dog. I really regret not having a camera when HB was a puppy or getting an annual portrait since I think they would be a wonderful comfort to me now.
• The Dog Owner's Manual from Quirk Books, publishers of such fine books as Kung Fu for Girls and The Baby Owner's Manual. These books are a scream for nerds since they're written in the style of a technical software/hardware manual only for the baby or the pet.

permalink Ω 28 October 2004, Helsinki

Books are the real magic

« I saw this while waiting for a movie and it took me a second or three to figure out what was wrong with the display; someone had ripped off the heads of the Thunderbirds. Seems to be a trend around the world these days. »

I cringed recently when I read a fawning review of a new book being touted as "Harry Potter for adults" since I tried and failed to find Harry Potter remotely interesting and previous experience has shown that anything getting that amount of hype is an Oprah book club "suburbanite special" selection. I can't remember a title that has gotten more glowing reviews from even the usually harsh and bitchy critics so my curiosity was piqued enough to order a copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I almost didn't order it since I'm waiting for Stephenson's new 900 page tome to be released next week but reading is one of the perks of being an unemployed slacker with too much time on my hands.

Just from the first few hundred pages I can verify that the book deserves all the literary kudos it has been getting as well as the narrative being irresistibly addictive. Susanna Clarke's mastery of English is truly a joy to behold in an age where I have nearly given up on fiction due to lackluster language and plots. I remain rather curious about the 'retro' fad of Napoleonic or Victorian novels lately and a general trend of fiction set in some past romantic timeframe. I suppose that it is because books about the present or the past 100 years are less able to transport us to a time where things seemed to make sense, even with the element of magical fantasy. It's like an 800 page time machine where CNN and beheadings in Iraq have no context or place. It is likely to be an instant classic as so many have commented and WSOY has already licensed the rights to the book although I don't envy the Finnish translator given the richness of the English. I'll bet the book burning fundamentalists who torched countless Potter books for their 'witchcraft' will be stocking up on the kindling and matches for the Strange & Norrell book, too, which can only do marvelous things for sales. :)

Another book, from the creator of Maus, In the Shadow of No Towers; a lavishly illustrated, scathingly critical comic on 911 and its aftermath in the US. It has rightfully stirred a bit of controversy and I wish it were more freely available to the voting public before the elections.

permalink Ω 22 September 2004, Helsinki

You are what you eat

« A predictable and amusing porno spoof on the GIGO Monkey. »

We went to see Supersize Me on Friday night at the Espoo Film Festival which was the Finnish premier and featured an introduction and Q & A session after the movie with the director Morgan Spurlock. It was an interesting movie and I really enjoyed his attention to the medical data from three different medical professionals as well as a dietician. I don't know that anyone would be crazy enough to eat McDonald's for every meal for 30 days but it really was a surprise to see the dramatic degradation of his health in such a short time.

Perhaps the most important message of the film is directed to children and their parents in the US. The budgets for schools in the US has been cut so much in the past decade that they are being forced to allow for commercial advertising and for selling soft drinks, candy and fast food to help raise money for such things as books and, well, education. How sleazy or desperate do you have to be to allow your schools to pimp themselves out to the fast food and candy industries? And, to cut to the chase, the US is overflowing with supersized, fat, morbidly corpulent people. It is. I used to be a teenage fatass or, as they called it back then "husky", but I wasn't as enormous as kids are these days and I was almost a singularity in a whole gradeschool of skinny kids. I remember when I was about 10 when I saw a woman go by in the hospital where my mom worked whose kneecaps, her kneecaps, had folds of fat that flapped as she walked almost to the middle of her shin. She was like a circus freak since I had never in my life seen anyone so incredibly obese, but these days all it takes is a trip to any shopping mall in America to find such a person. It's a serious problem, especially for the children who will have a lifetime of health and weight problems. Of course, people think you're being mean when you point this out and I know firsthand how it feels to be on the wrong end of the stick but, then again, I don't weigh 400 pounds these days either. People feel free to point out that smoking kills and I wonder how long before it's common for people to approach the morbidly obese and start hassling them for the same reasons.

Is McDonald's to blame? No, I still don't think Spurlock explored the connection well enough and it would be far too easy and simplistic to point at them and name them as the cause of obesity in children. Even as a contributing factor I still wouldn't go as far as allowing people to sue the corporation for catering to what people seem to want as it is the American Way, isn't it? I suspect that the answer is complex and is probably far more related to the changes in lifestyle since the 1970s where people are just too busy to cook or share a real meal at home with each other. My mother worked full-time but damn if we didn't have dinner with the family, every night, at 7pm which was usually cooked by one of my sisters or me. I hated it as I got older but perhaps there was an ancient wisdom there that once cast aside has led to the current epidemic of obesity. These days both parents often work and fast food is a quick and easy solution to feeding the family. Portions are enormous. Noone walks anywhere. People get fat. There's a lot going on in this pressing issue and it's not just contained in the US as the UK is quickly catching up. It could happen here, too. It's a good movie but don't eat a Big Mac before watching it as we did as I felt sick as a dog for a day afterwards. :)

And, it's almost September with a bunch of exciting new books coming out in the next month or three.

• The Future Dictionary of America ~ The concept of what a dictionary might look like in 30 years sounds intriguing.
• The Algebraist ~ I hope this book is as good as the synopsis and first chapter sample suggest it will be. I'll forgive Iain for his sad whisky tour book if it is.
• The System of the World ~ The final book in the saga cannot get here soon enough. I'm almost sad to see the end nearing.
• The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers ~ A collection of HCB essays.
• Slightly Out of Focus ~ Especially now with all the journalists in Iraq being targeted, noone says much about the photographers who have to get close to their subjects. A memoir by one of the original photojournalists should be a good read.
• Waiting for the End of the World ~ A photoessay of fallout shelters. I always wanted to buy an old decommissioned army shelter and silo in Kansas just for the comfort factor.
• Extreme Measures : The Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galton ~ Another in the long list of 'forgotten' scientist books on the man to blame for the nature vs. nuture Victorianism.
• Portuguese Irregular Verbs ~ Academic novel/mystery that looks entertaining.
• The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs ~ The sequel to the above.
• Lonely Planet Say What?: Comparing Funny Expressions From... ~ This could be terrific if it's done well.
• The Penguin Book of Facts ~ Reference books filled with all sorts of useful and useless information are wonderful things.
• Accomodating Brocolli in the Cemetary ~ I looked at this book just for the title and the topic of spulling is a sore point for all those familiar with English. The title is clever not only for making you curious enough to look but it incorporates three often misspelled words, too. :)
• Molvania: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry (Jetlag Travel Guide) ~ A spoof of modern travel guides that looks pretty hilarious.

permalink Ω 30 August 2004, Helsinki

Meet Irene

« A picture of a sentraalisantra [telephone operator] from Lapijoki, a small town in western Finland just north of Rauma, in the late 1930s or so. You can just feel the telephone wires burning with gossip. The deckled edge of the photo is especially nice since such touches aren't offered in modern photo prints. »

We went to Vammala with Jarkko's parents on Saturday for a big book sale, the Vanhan Kirjallisuuden Päivät. It was possibly the most crowded old book sale, outside of the Hay Festival, that I've ever been to as it was pretty mobbed which wasn't helped by the crappy rainy weather that kept everyone indoors. It's an annual event so I'm looking forward to next year's sale as we had a great time pawing through the tables of books when we could get close enough to them.

I think there must be a healthy number of postcard collectors in Finland judging by the number of booksellers who had a rather large selection of vintage postcards and paper ephemera to choose from, including the picture of Irene, the sentraalisantra in the center of Lapijoki, above for a euro. I picked up 2 interesting collections of postcards from Czechoslovakia and Pärnu, Estonia for just under 2 euro and a number of other Finnish postcards from the early 1900s. A particular series of postcards printed by Suomen Kuvataide Oy in the 1950s has consistently caught my eye but I can't seem to find much out about the company or the postcards from that era. I added to my collection a postcard of the Rautatieasema which still looks much the same today.

permalink Ω 5 July 2004, Helsinki

The Future solution for SPAM

It's the doldrums of summer when everyone is off on holiday or surfing for porn on the internet with their laptop out in the park. I've got a short break between Finnish courses and I've been catching up on my reading a bit. I thought I'd read a bit of fiction for a change so I gave The Zenith Angle a try. This book was so bad that I would feel a pang of pity for Sterling if it hadn't wasted a few hours of my time reading such a pathetic excuse for a book. Oh, how I mourn the days of wonderful sci-fi with authors like Clarke, Verne, Wells, Burroughs and E. E. Smith who never, ever wrote crap like this:

We are attacking that Iridium satellite, said Tony. Right now. There is no visible beam. It is a very energy-efficient process. The adaptive beam has to penetrate miles of atmosphere with as little signal loss as possible. We don't even generate the laser pulses locally. we amplify them and collate them. We are beaming Internet traffic up into the sky, from the telescope, right now. Those Internet signals come from all over the planet.

Don't the people miss their Internet when you throw it up into outer space? said Sanjay.

It's all spam.

No.

Yes, I am attacking a satellite with laser spam.

No.

We are running a major Internet backbone across the Rocky Mountains here, said Tony patiently. We have spam filters. Nobody ever asks where the spam goes. We beam the spam into outer space.

Insert a Dr. Evil-esque RRRiiiiigggghhhhT in there, call it the "Alan Parsons Project" and it could almost be a comedy. And this is as good as it gets in the book. There is a glue gun that gets so much air time in the story that it becomes a motif and I think maybe that Sterling had been huffing the glue pretty hard while writing. Sure, it's peppered with references to people in this reality and, of course, 911, but this book is so bad I hope there is a way to deploy the remainders against the terrorists instead of vicitimising the unsuspecting bargain hunters at B&N with this monumentally craptastic attempt at a story. I think I'll just go back and re-read the classics instead of wasting my time and money on these horribly disappointing books.

permalink Ω 29 June 2004, Helsinki

Berries, Beans and Birds

A few fun and odd summer reading titles. Finnish class is over and we have a week off before the next class begins so I'm glad to have a bit of a break and I fully intend to read something completely fluffy without any fuzzy a's or disappearing k's. :)

• The Berry Bible : With 175 Recipes Using Cultivated and Wild, Fresh and Frozen Berries ≈ Berries are big here. Real big.
• The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters ≈ I hope that there's an appendix for ways to deal with deciphering what the popular dishes really contain.
• Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Controversial Times ≈ There could probably be an entire book written on the usage of the word "Freedom" over the past 4 years alone. :)
• Field Guide to the North American Bird ≈ To complement The F-Word book.
• Vanilla: Travels in Search of the Ice Cream Orchid ≈ The micro-topic history books just keep on coming.
• Twentieth Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape ≈ The US Interstates revolutionised travel in the US as well as altered the landscape of small town America forever.

permalink Ω 23 June 2004, Helsinki

Bamford gets in the game

I've refrained from buying one of the hundreds of books about 911 and the "war on terror" over the past several years because I think much of their content is speculation and conjecture. However, James Bamford has recently published a book that has my full interest: A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies. Bamford is an excellent researcher and superior analyst which is apparent in his previous books on the intelligence community. Especially now that the 911 commission appears to be making more progress in getting at the truth than I had hoped, I am looking forward to reading this book and watching the 911 reports expose the largesse and corruption which ultimately are responsible for the success of the attacks and support for a war that should never have been allowed to happen.

On a side note, my connectivity has been about as zippy [when it's actually functioning] as sucking cold molasses through a straw lately and, along with Finnish classes and spam clogging my .mac inbox, if you've sent me an email and I've not responded yet please don't despair as I'm not ignoring you. :) We're getting ADSL in a few weeks so this may help things along.

permalink Ω 20 June 2004, Helsinki

Non-bestseller books of spring

If you aren't into books about war, corrupt politicians, oil, intelligence [or lack thereof], Iraq, Islam, the Atkin's Diet, the Chicken Soup series or some variation on the theme of horseracing ala Seabiscuit there are precious few new books to interest or excite. One bit of good news is that Tom Wolfe's upcoming novel has finally been given a title and a publication date.

Tom Wolfe has a title for his next novel - "I Am Charlotte Simmons" - and Farrar, Straus & Giroux said it'll publish the book in November.

Wolfe's last novel, "A Man in Full," came out six years ago. There was an 11-year gap between that one and his classic "The Bonfire of the Vanities."

Wolfe said his new work grew from his poking around several college campuses.

An article on Wolfe's book and his research for the story.

I spent a little while combing through about a dozen publisher's upcoming books and it looks like it's going to be a slow summer for good books.

• New Words ~ New words from the OED.
• Shakespeare's Words: A Glossary and Language Companion ~ Looks interesting since he coined so many new words and new uses for old words.
• Language Death ~ Coming soon to a language near you.
• The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusion ~ But the question is, will the skeptic's believe the definitions? :)
• Freedom Just Around the Corner : A New American History: 1585-1828 ~ Apparently the first of a series, this book is getting rave reviews from even the most snobbish of American History academics.
• Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World ~ An empire revealed as far more civilised than history has previously led us to believe.
• River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West ~ The story of the man who pioneered the moving picture.
• I am Charlotte Simmons ~ The new Tom Wolfe college novel is finally due out in November.
• Window Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air ~ Now this book looks really interesting as the author attempts to tell you how to identify things on the ground from the air.
• City Walks: Paris: 50 Adventures on Foot ~ This is a brilliantly simple concept since seeing a city on foot is the best way to get to know it and the 50 walks on cards are terrifically portable. A great idea for other cities.
• Underground London: Travels Beneath the City Streets ~ A very entertaining travelogue through the undergound :)
• What's in a Name?: Origins of Station Names on the London Underground ~ Should be full of useless but interesting facts about the underground station names.
• Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim ~ A new David Sedaris book of collected essays.
• Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America ~ A history of the modern space age frozen dinner.
• Perfection Salad : Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century ~ Victorian women who revolutionized food preparation but were forgotten by history.
• Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking ~ The author studied at the Sichuan version of the CIA and produced this book from what she learned there. I keep fantasizing that I'll cook more often instead of just getting take-away.
• Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America ~ A man, an addiction, a charleston chew and a typewriter.
• Bicycling Science : third edition ~ A new edition of a classic.
• Position of the Day Postcards ~ Priceless.
• Buzzin' Fly Vol. 1 ~ Ben Watt of Everything But The Girl returns with a new album on a new label.

permalink Ω 27 April 2004, Helsinki

The scenery is here, wish you were beautiful

I'm a big fan of Martin Parr and I was lucky enough to get a boxed copy of his retrospective postcards last year. Parr is an avid collector of postcards himself and has published several collections of them which have been reissued in paperback recently: Boring Postcards USA, Boring Postcards and the new Bliss : Postcards of Couples and Families collected by Martin Parr.

I have a small collection of postcards I've found over the years and wonder what people will make of them in 50 years. The postcard is one of the most underappreciated art forms, especially nowadays with email and 'e-cards' making people who take pen to paper and lick a postage stamp a rare breed. Postcards of hotels and motels and restaurants and diners are fascinating in their composition, their optimism and the message they attempt to convey to the present as well as to the future. And they are fun to collect as well as being an easily concealed addiction that doesn't require frequent dusting. American Postcard Art has quite a nice assortment of postcards to browse if not all that unusual or ecclectic. I've also been an active participant in the postcards for mom project since I think it's a pretty fun idea to have people from all around the world send your mother postcards with recipes and comics and whatnot on them. I'd love to see the collection put up online after they decide to end the project.

A fabulous book recently published by Nemo, Terveisiä Kaikille! Postikortteja Suomesta, is filled with wacky and weird technicolour postcards from all around Finland from the 1960s through the late 1990s. [I will note here that the book is only 12euro down at the main post office shop while they last.] I'm hopeful that there might be a forthcoming volume of older cards as well. There are no drive through trees, no carhenge, no jackalope or world's most giant pecan postcards but that can always be fixed. There are, however, plenty of reindeer as you head north. Finland would be a perfect place for the world's largest reindeer or most gigantic bit of salmiakki. What about a Rye Palace fashioned after the legendary Corn Palace?! :) Build it and the postcards will come. I've been putting off a visit to the Korttien Talo [house of cards/postcard museum] up in Hämeenlinna, a city about 50 miles north of Helsinki, until the weather warms up a wee bit more and the castle and other attractions have longer opening hours.

permalink Ω 27 March 2004, Helsinki

Books of Spring

Since last October, I've not bought many books. A few here and there have been interesting, but not enough to fill my Amazon shopping cart to purchasing fullness. Overseas shipping isn't cheap even when it's via slow boat so I have to balance the ~$120 [including shipping] price point where the tax people become interested with the level of my desire. Spring always brings new books to reel in my interest and my wallet though so I thought I'd list the ones that have caught my eye so far this year. :)

• The Confusion
• Little Children ~ Fantastic author who is one of the few who make me believe that fiction is not a lost art.
• The Radioactive Boy Scout : The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor ~ I read the original short story about this in Harper's and it's an engagingly good story if a bit of a sad tale about modern family and society.
• After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American System ~ This author wrote about the Fall of the USSR back when it wasn't popular. His words are worth reading and thinking about.
• Poplorica : A Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, and Lore that Shaped Modern America ~ Putting fads and pop culture into historical context.
• The Great Game : The Myth and Reality of Espionage ~ An ex-CIA agent picks apart modern spy fiction which should prove to be very entertaining.
• The Linguist and the Emperor : Napoleon and Champollion's Quest to Decipher the Rosetta Stone ~ The Rosetta stone was an immensely important historical find and was the key to the later decipherment of the heiroglyphs.
• Word Spy : The Word Lover's Guide to Modern Culture ~ A compendium of Word Spy words.
• New Words ~ New words in the OED which should be really riveting reading.
• The Elephants of Style : A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English ~ Cute pun in the title and an ambitious topic.
• Subwayland : Adventures in the World Beneath New York ~ Subways will be the place where humankind goes when the surface of the planet is no longer hospitable.
• Lonely Planet St.Petersberg City Map
• A Traveller's Companion to St.Petersburg ~ If I litter the house with enough books about St. Petersburg, Jarkko might really get the hint that I intend to go with or without him later this summer. :)
• Prague Pictures : A Portrait of the City ~ Excellent writer and a city I'm curious about.
• Postfix : The Definitive Guide ~ I'm still a Sendmail devotee but Postfix has begun to tempt me into switching.
• Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition ~ The 1st edition was good and if this one ever makes it into production it might still be up to date by the time it's printed.
• The Camera ~ A classic.
• The Negative ~ I'm seriously considering building my own darkroom.
• Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs - Ansel Adams ~ I'm not interested in landscape photography but this should be filled with techniques I'm not aware of yet.
• Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Man, the Image and the World: A Retrospective ~ The Ur-Photojournalist.
• Here and There ~ NYC street photography collection.
• Leica: Witness to a Century ~ A history of Leica which should be interesting.
• Wanderlust ~ I loved the postcard series so this promises to be good.
• Potsticker Chronicles : Favorite Chinese Recipes and Family Fables ~ Looks interesting for the stories behind the recipes as well as dishes the less culinary might be able to make.
• Baking Illustrated: A Best Recipe Classic ~ Cook's Illustrated are the best cookbooks anywhere. I didn't go into food chemistry, but if I had I'd want to work there. Baking chemistry is fascinating
• Global Warming - Laika and the Cosmonauts ~ Strange yet cool Finnish surfer punk music.

permalink Ω 16 March 2004, Helsinki

The Confusion

The Confusion is almost here. Amazon UK has a 1 April release date and Amazon US has a 13 April release date, but it's coming soon and I'm eager to continue reading the saga. The UK book jacket artwork is so much more colourful and interesting than the rather plain US edition. I've often wondered why there is such a tremendous difference between many US and UK book jacket designs, especially when there isn't really anything in the title or the design that might offend.

permalink Ω 9 March 2004, Helsinki

Just a little bit of history repeating

Stephen Bury is the nom de plume of Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George. I found a copy of the little known The Cobweb on Abebooks a while back and purchased it since I enjoy his books. The Cobweb reads like a novel written yesterday, not 10 years ago. It's a novel about the last war in Iraq, the intelligence people who have information of potential terrorists acts on US soil, and the people in politics who cobweb them into inaction. While the novel isn't brilliant, it is a fun read and is a fairly good analysis of how people with good information and intentions at the lower levels of the FBI and CIA couldn't stop, and likely still can't stop, terrorism.

Hennessey laughed ruefully. "Your problem with this Iraq thing is that you've got tangled up, unwittingly, with people who long ago decided it wasn't sophisticated to be sincere, that sincerity was for fools, that sincere people were put on earth to be manipulated and exploited by people like them--for the greater good, of course. This is currently the most common character flaw in the Washington establishment--attempts to be Machiavellian by people who lack the talent, the panache, to pull it off. So here you are, good old Clyde Banks, desperately trying to deal with this very real problem here on the ground, and it's as if you're in a nightmare where these fucking bush-league Machiavellis listen to what you're saying but don't really understand."

"That's pretty much what it feels like," Clyde said, frowning at his corned-beef hash and nodding his head.

"You and I know that something is going on in Forks County, and we would like to do something about it," Hennessey said, "but between the two of us are about ten thousand of these people who are too busy looking down their noses at us to actually grasp the problem and take action. You must know that taking action is looked down upon, Clyde. This is the postmodern era. When events come to a cusp, we're supposed to screw our courage to the sticking place and launch a reanalysis of the eleventh draft of the working document. Actually going out and doing stuff in the physical world is simply beyond the comprehension of these people. They're never going to do anything about the Iraqis in Forks. Never."

Politics is the definition of putting a good face on raw selfishness. An organisation will always fail when the personality, feelings or agenda of one or a few people are more important than the mission of the organisation.

permalink Ω 18 February 2004, Helsinki

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs

From the how-did-I-miss-this-book department is an utterly fabulous treat, ella minnow pea: A novel without letters. Considering all the linguists I know and how efficient Amazon is at pushing books in my direction, I am at a loss to explain how or why we all managed to escape reading this book and immediately buying a copy for everyone we know. I got lucky when the editor of the English edition of the local paper suggested I go and get a copy from Akateeminen.

The story is in a similar vein to Thurber's The Wonderful O as it is a lipogram told around the familiar pangram 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'. It is one of the most brilliantly clever books I've read in years as it combines cunning linguistics with political allegory in a epistolary novel. Language lovers must get this book. I need to go find a hardback copy so it can find a proper place next to my old, but dignified, copy of The Wonderful O. :)

permalink Ω 18 January 2004, Helsinki

Less is More

American marketing and commercialism is a well-oiled machine that produces the world's best consumers. George Carlin has a bit in one of his more recent works where he talks about choice and how grocery stores may have 80 different kinds of mustard to choose from but the US still only has a 2-party political system. The perfect storm of consumerism meets meaningless choice leaving the shopper distracted in an infinite loop while more important things, such as a totally corrupt government, pass without notice.

When I showed Jarkko's mother around the giant grocery store I used to shop in back in Boston, the first question she asked was how I found the time to navigate all the aisles and choose which products I wanted. It was an astute observation, one I didn't have an explanation for other than I had grown accustomed to the ever increasing size of the US grocery stores for a decade or two. The market was small when compared to some of the larger ones with book stores, video rental, liquor stores, dry cleaning and other services included under the same roof as the groceries; shrines to the meaningless choice culminating in the final, "paper or plastic?". Shopping often left me so drained that asking me which kind of bag I wanted evoked only a blank stare or my asking the clerk to choose for me.

One of the things I like most about Finland is that the groceries are small and while there may not be 80 or even 8 kinds of mustard to choose from, I am not constantly taxed to ponder the differences between 5 brands of French Dijon vs. 4 brands of Dijonnaise. I've been known to stare at the wall of yogurt but aside from that I am happy to have enough variety without a deluge of mostly similar products to pick from on the usual shopping trip. If I want something weird or unusual I can always walk over to Stockmanns and wander aimlessly for an hour. If I want Cheez-its and M&Ms and ginger Altoids, I have family send me care packages and savour every morsel which is a welcome change from having anything and everything available at all times. Less choice is liberating.

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz is a new book that explores the problem of how so many choices we are forced to make every day can leave us far less happy than what the Citizen Consumer mantra promises. The Wal*Mart shoppers of America won't read this book nor will they stop buying all the stuff they can fit into their carts, but I am finding some of the studies on the consumer society being published in the past few years to be a chance to understand how I, and the rest of the US, was molded into a Citizen Consumer and perhaps even hope for slowing down the mad embrace of unbridled want all over the globe.

permalink Ω 14 January 2004, Helsinki

Matka Suomeen

While waiting for Tennispalatsi to open the doors to the theatre for the Return of the King I noticed a photo exhibit which was likely placed there for the RotK crowds. The exhibit is promoting a new book from Otava Press, Matka Suomeen, Journey into Finland, by Pekka Luukkola [ there is a sample pdf at the bottom of the page ]. The text is in both Finnish and English with photos covering all regions of Finland. The photos are beautiful and the details of Finland throughout history complement them to make the book a very pleasing whole. The price is about 50€,ISBN 951-1-18925-5, but I think it's a worthy investment for anyone who enjoys excellent photography, loves Finland or who has family elsewhere on the globe who imagine Finland as something a bit like a post-glasnost ex-Russian province. I've had people in the US ask me if we can get UPS or Fed-Ex in Finland so embrace your denial and send a copy to the family back home who think you live in a hovel next to the red factory.

permalink Ω 21 December 2003, Helsinki

Raw Nerve

I love single malt scotch so when I saw that an author I love, Iain Banks, was to write a non-fiction book about scotch I waited impatiently for it to arrive at the posti. Sadly, Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram is possibly one of the most disappointing books I have ever awaited anxiously for publication.

You would think that a terrific author and scotch drinker approached by a publisher to do what any scotch drinker only dreams of, to drive around scotland drinking scotch and writing about it, would be a winning combination but you'd be wrong. He mentions rather frequently the envy of his friends as he writes which gets rather annoying after a while. I admit that I am jealous as I would have loved going along on the tours but what scotch drinker, his audience, wouldn't be?

The most aggravating and inappropriate part of the book is the frequent insertion of Banks' commentary on the US invasion of Iraq. I fully agree with his anger, his frustration and overall distaste for everything involved with the war in Iraq but this is not to say that I want to read about it while trying to enjoy a tour through Scotland. It gives one the idea that it was written very quickly without any editorial control and it shows. Had I been the editor, I would have ripped out nearly everything about the war since such things tend to either alienate people of other opinions or bore those of the same opinion when the subject of the book is about Scotch not war. Not to mention the pages and pages he devotes to his gas guzzling Rover without any sense of irony in bitching about a war for oil. Guess where the fuel to power your Rover comes from Iain.

Banks also has a very irritating tendancy like many bloggers to talk about something and then stop abruptly with a parenthetical remark to the reader that more will be coming (but more about that later). Either write about it or don't and let the reader get on with the story instead of propping up your lazy writing style with such evil stylistic crutches.

The reader is regaled with everyone in his family, all of his friends, boat, cars, and just about everything but an entertaining meander through scotland with detailed remarks about the distilleries and their history. There is some terrific content but it gets so lost between the story about his boat, grumping about the war and frequent asides that don't always add to the journey and leaves you feeling cheated that you had expected so much from such a promising book. A map of the many trips and locations of the distilleries would have been a nice touch as would have a few pictures of one of the most beautiful countries on the face of the planet.

I will say that Iain and I at least share the same snobbery in single malts by strongly preferring the Islay malts. While I really didn't enjoy the book I can still respect the man who had a very short time to cover a broad topic without a strong editor. Iain, if you're just like all the googling obsessed authors I know and come across this give yourself more space to organise your thoughts better and more time to research for such kinds of books as I wanted desperately to love this book. I'll be happy to buy you a few drams of scotch and rant about Bushistan since I even left the country partly due to my strong opinions but keep it out of your writing unless you do a book about politics.

permalink Ω 16 December 2003, Helsinki

Carrot Cake

I adore the Cook's Illustrated cookbooks. I don't have many cookbooks but I have nearly all of the CI series and subscribed to the magazine for a number of years. Their most recent addition, Inside America's Test Kitchen: All-New Recipes, Quick Tips, Equipment Ratings, Food Tastings, Science Experiments from the Hit Public Television Show, is another wonderful book full of reliable recipes borne from testing and research. What I find most attractive about these cookbooks, aside from their being utterly reliable, is that all of the recipes are for foods that most people could realistically imagine themselves making and eating regularly. The books also appeal to the chemist within since many of the recipes, ingredients and kitchenware are discussed in detail.

Recently we had dinner at a nominally American-style restaurant and for dessert we decided to split a slice of carrot cake. I love carrot cake so I was a bit bummed when it arrived smothered in caramel sauce. Oh, and no cream cheese icing. Finns seem to enjoy things SWEET when they have something with sugar which I can appreciate except in alcoholic ciders but, not everything tastes better with more sugar. Carrot cake is lovely on its own so leave the pineapple in but lay off the karamelli kastike, ok? :)

So, I was really happy to find that CI has a terrific recipe for carrot cake in the new book. They emulsify the vegetable oil for a lighter cake and adjust the carrot portion to keep it from being either soggy or dry. And they didn't forget the cream cheese icing. :)

Simple Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

carrot cake

• 2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon gound cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 pound ( 6-7 medium) carrots, peeled
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 1/2 cups safflower, canola or vegetable oil

cream cheese frosting

• 8 ounces cream cheese, softened but still cool
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened but still cool
• 1 tablespoon sour cream
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar

For the cake:

1. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350F. Spray a 13X9 inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment and spray the parchment.
2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves