Deep breath before the plunge...

Deadlines are rushing at me like fear-affected suburbanites rushing towards a truck full of H1N1 vaccines. My stomach is in knots almost all waking hours of the day and I am not sleeping. I am so fucking caffeinated that my hands shake, even though I don't really need caffeine to keep me running - adrenaline and a fear of letting other people down usually takes care of the rest.

Happiness?

Yes, happiness.

I just spent five days (five glorious, glorious days) in Vancouver visiting friends and setting up an academic research conference. Man, that place is epic, although 5 straight days of non-stop rain and greyness was a little wearing. I'm pretty grateful for any occasion I have to take five days off to ride bikes, party like a student (because, you know, I'm much more responsible in Calgary), get excited about academia with other young academics, record music, get intimated some of the most opulent real estate in Canada, get intimidated by the worst urban squalor Canada has to offer, have heart-to-hearts, make new friends, and ride bikes. But...

Five days off has crippled my academic process. Or at the very least hobbled it, in a similar way to how Russian peasant used to pay people to break their ankles so they couldn't get conscripted to fight on the front lines in World War I. Or maybe in the way Duane Allman (and probably quite a few others) shot himself in the foot so he could keep playing music and not get drafted for Vietnam. People with foot fetishes might not make good draft dodgers based on these experiences. I don't know. Maybe?

The gerbil racing around powering the wheel in my noggin is going at Mach speed. I like all of this, actually. I like being wired on grindcore and coffee and new knowledge, and I think that a little forlornity and confusion and heartache makes those end-points so much more satisfying. I like sitting down and writing something like this, a letter to the void, with no preparation, just sincerity that stream of consciousness writing provides. This might not make sense now, but in a few months, it will.

Currently enjoying: Lock Up - Hate Breeds Suffering, Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock and Roll, Patton Oswalt - My Weakness is Strong, Various Artists - This Comp Kills Fascists, Vol. 1, Femme Fatale - Fire Baptism, Venetian Snares - Filth, Thomas Pynchon - Inherent Vice, and my ongoing successes with French cuisine.

Food and Jedis

A couple days ago I promised some friends I would give them a recipe that I used to cook for them the other week. This seems like a good space for that sort of thing, so I will probably use this in future to upload some of my favourite recipes, because the only thing I like more than cooking (and eating) is sharing knowledge.

Anyway, there is just one problem: I don't really measure when I cook. Measuring is really more for baking than cooking, and I think that an important part of cooking is learning how to get a feel for your ingredients, kind of like Luke Skywalker learning how to deflect laser bolts with his lightsabre with that helmet on in the first Star Wars. That's right, I cook like a goddamn Jedi.



So here is a recipe that is quick, easy, and a good way to maximize the use of a cheap cut of beef. Pomegranate juice is super fucking expensive, and I am assuming this recipe would probably work with blueberry juice (good concentration, lots of antioxidants) or maybe cranberry juice in a pinch (lots of antioxidants, similar tartness, but concentration is a little lower). If you are going for cranberry juice, I would probably recommend springing for the good stuff (read: anything but that gross, sugary Ocean Spray cran-cocktail stuff).

Without further ado...

Striploin With Pomegranate Reduction

You'll need the following:

Two medium-sized striploins
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Rosemary
Pomegranate juice
Brown Sugar
Arugula
Black pepper (or a peppercorn melange, if you can get it)
Good salt (kosher salt or better)

1. Chop a couple sprigs of rosemary. Coat the striploins with the rosemary, salt and pepper (and when I say coat, I mean really rub that stuff in there).

2. Heat olive oil (a tablespoon or so) in a frying pan to a medium-high temperature. When the oil starts to lose its viscosity and smoke a little bit, it's talking to you: throw the steaks in. Remember, you want to sear both sides to get a nice crisp texture. For medium-rare, it will be about three minutes or so per side.

3. Remove steaks from pan, set aside. Add 2 cups of pomegranate juice, 4 cups of brown sugar and 2 and a half tablespoons of balsamic to the pan. DO NOT throw out the juices from the steaks - that stuff is like liquid gold. Bring content of pan to a boil and then simmer until reduced to desired thickness (approximately 5 minutes or so). Keep your eye on the pan - if you let it reduce for too long it basically caramelizes.

4. In a seperate bowl, toss arugala with olive oil and balsamic (a tablespoon and a half of each, perhaps, pending on how many servings you are preparing). Add salt and paper.

5. Slice steaks into strips and drizzle reduction overtop. Plate with argula mixture and a big chunk of bread.

Reccomended pairing: a good New Zealand Pinot Noir will make this one sing. An entry-level Villa Maria pinot, for example, should have the right balance of acidity, herbaceousness, tannin and fruitniness to make this dish work out.

Enjoy with two friends, depending how big your appetites are.

Indulgences: Guided By Voices - Human Amusements at Hourly Rates, Jay Reatard - Matador Singles 06-07, Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein, Aphex Twin - Hangable Auto Bulb and Windowlicker, Grand Belial's Key - Judeobeast Assassination, Thomas Pynchon - Vineland (finally finished this one!), Manuel Castells - The City and the Grassroots

Cargo Cults

There are two Tim Hortons right beside each other in Mac Hall. As in, less than 20 feet away from each other. Apparently one of them is owned by the Student's Union and one is owned by the University. These two Tim Hortons are competing with each other, and both establishments are totally lined up at all times. This is the sort of coke or pepsi "choice" that is slowly driving me insane.

I have never bought a coffee from either of these places, and I never will. For an extra 20 cents or so I can buy fair trade coffee from a locally owned business. Sure, my 20 cents isn't changing the fucking world, but if it can help me feed my caffeine addiction without completely selling myself out to the system I hate, then that should be enough.



Also, I've written a ton of songs lately. Like six or so. What the hell? I haven't been writing for months, and all of a sudden I've had a weird rush of creativity. What new thing or person in my life is causing all this creativity? Some days not only do I not know the answer, but I don't think I really know the questions either.


Support: Lightning Bolt - Earthly Delights, Daughters - Hell Songs, David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, David Harvey - The Right to the City, HEALTH - Get Color, Horse the Band - Desperate Living and the 1987 Ridge Monte Bello Cab that made last night so fun for me (and is making this morning excruciating).

A Question of Degree

Everything I know how to do well, I know from my experience drinking wine. That's where I learned how to deconstruct things around me and reconstruct them in way that makes sense to me. It's where I learned how to practice restraint when necessary, but also how I learned that when appropriate, to always tend towards indulgence.

Indulgences - No Age - Nouns, J Dilla - The Shining, American Music Club - The Golden Age, We Are Wolves - Total Magique, Fugazi - Repeater, and wine, good lord, wine. Villa Maria 2006 Cellar Selection Pinot Noir tickles my fancy right now.

Going Off the Rails on a Swayze Train

I will seriously never understand our culture's obssession with celebrity death (as a quick side bar: for anyone reading this who has already picked up on the self-defeating irony of this first sentence, please respect my right to contradict myself every once in a while. After all, it's necessary to breach this subject anyways). I suppose that if we celebrate the life of a celebrity it is only logical that we pay them their respects after death, but Christ on a bike, the amount of attention that film/TV/music stars recieve upon death is disproportionate bordering on farcical, even worse so than the attention they recieve during life. The fact that Michael Jackson was nothing less than lionized immediately following his death (which of course was tied into a massive marketing campaign for Jacko paraphenalia) is a little revealing about a cultural response we seem to be conditioned into, wherein we seem to be justifying to ourselves that these figures are worth paying so much attention to in the first place.

So, Patrick Swayze. The fact that man dies of cancer may indeed by tragic, but it is perhaps more tragic that this death is like to grab front pages across the world, while buried on page A26 lies unread news about issues that should be of real concern to us. The death of celebrities is painted more often as the death of an ideal rather than the death of a person, and it is shameful that we should have our ideals about issues such as social justice or environmental stewardship so tightly wrapped up in people who often unqualified to address these same issues. Perhaps this is the result of culture that has become acutely delocalized and can no longer fix its gaze and attach its ideals to community leaders, but rather to a large and grandoise body of jet-setting celebrities upon, whom we can collectively imprint our values.

Here I turn to sarcasm, to ridicule. Certainly we are worthy of healthy amounts of it. So please, when I crack a joke about Patrick Swayze over the next week, don't look at me like I'm some kind of monster - after all, why should a man who lived most of his life as a wealthy playboy capture our gaze when there are far more needy people still living that require our attention? I'm just holding up the mirror so we can see how stupid we look.

The goods: Encounters at the End of the World, DJ Shadow - Endtroducing..., Madvillain - Madvillainy, Deep Wound - Deep Wound 7", Siege - Drop Dead, Liars - They Were Wrong So We Drowned, Charles Bukowski - Ham on Rye, John Coltrane - Coltrane, Fugazi - In on the Killtaker, Sun Ra - The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra Vol. 1

Heart is Everything

Where are all the people who aren't afraid to be sincere? We're socialized into it early enough, on schoolyards and in sports locker rooms - mask your sincerity behind thick walls of irony and sarcasm. It's much easier deal with the put-downs that follow when you declare that, yes, I really do like Band X, with a sly wink and a "just kidding" than to bear the full brunt of these assaults on your taste and character with honesty. If there is one thing nobody wants to be thought of as being, its boring (or a leper, I suppose, but that's neither here nor there). Of course, the ultimate irony is that over-reliance on the handy crutch of irony itself is possibly the most boring form of self-expression there is!

Your sincerity is not boring! Your honesty is not banal! Let them dismiss you lazily as a bleeding heart, let them chastise your tastes for being threatening. If it helps, maybe try the strategy I've been using: don't be scared to return their scornful gaze with a mirror to show them how fucking stupid they look. Is it stupid to listen to music with screaming in it, or is it stupid to ignore the screams of the most desperate social strata? Is it it silly to refuse to own a car, or is it silly to be party to the construction of cities that are undeniably vulnerable to energy shortages? Can your philosophical underpinnings be any more questionable than those of an socioeconomic world order that coopts dissidence and protest as quickly as they are produced and transforms them into shallow ephemeralities?

I, for one, am ready to be judged on my readings of my environment, for my expressions and for actions. Activism is the only honest response I can fathom to the inequities that assail the integrity of our social networks and environmental life-support systems from all concievable angles. I'm talking about an activism that eschews irony and stabs at the heart of uncomfortable and difficult issues. I'm talking about sincerity, I'm talking about direct, honest dialogue. If you care enough about my expressions to be reading this, surely you care enough to participate. If you contact me at tom.howard@urbancsa.org I promise I will do everything I can to coordinate your own activism.

Refuge: Converge - No Heroes, Burnt By the Sun - Heart of Darkness, David Foster Wallace - E Unibas Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction, Robert Kirkman - Walking Dead vol. 10, Mare - S/T, Jesu - Lifeline, Robert Putnam - Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

Staying Naive

OK, so anyone who knows me is pretty aware that sometimes its difficult for me to live in Calgary - I find the arts sluggish, the politics insane/suicidal, the popular (and "indie") culture self-involved and superficial, and the city itself to be a monstrous, sprawling behemoth that is propelling us towards an unhappy future indeed. Judging from the first sentence of this post, you may have sensed a massive "but" coming. If so, good for you! You are correct. In spite of these shortcomings, summer in Calgary has a special appeal to me. Staying out late without a coat, reading in the city's handful of reasonably well-appointed parks (Riley Park, looking in your direction), people-watching by the river, driving a car down busy downtown streets with the windows down and Agoraphobic Nosebleed cranked to 11 - yeah, it's the simple things, isn't it?

I've experienced some truly wondrous things in some truly wondrous places over the last few months, not the least of which involved early-20th century expressionist galleries, copious volumes of dunkel, making new friends, making new friends over copious volumes of dunkel, riding bikes, hallmarks of modernist and postmodernist architecture in direct proximity to one another, picnics on the steps of the worlds most prestigious art galleries and narrow, winding streets that twist in an organic, mystical logic/illogic. The depth and scope of these experiences defies my ability to relate them here, and they were all fine and well, but there are things about Calgary too that entrance me. I am sad that it will probably be a decade or more before I can eat meatballs in Sweden again, but there is something to be said about staying up late and gorging myself on Canadian beer while watching The Big Lebowski with best friends. I mean, the Swedish meatballs were reeeallly good, but there is a certain amount of timelessness and transcendance attached to the things I can do here with the people I care about the most, and I think that if I dig deep enough under all the ennui this city has to offer I can find most of the things that are good and right and "fuck yeah" about the world.

I'm headed out of some truly inspiring places and I'm launching myself back into all the placelessness that Calgary has to offer, hoping to land softly in soft coccoons of forlonity, earnestness and all-out sincerity. Hopefully I'll be able to abscond from responsibility for a little while longer and savour the fleeting gratification of being young for a little while longer.

Substance - The Big Lebowski, Aura Noir - Black Thrash Attack, Amesoeurs - Amesoeurs, Peste Noir - Ballad cuntre lo Anemi francor, Japandroids - Post-Nothing, Thomas Pynchon - Vineland, Cobalt - Gin, Liars - Liars