About Ramblings of a Hopeless Khowaga
Welcome to my Web site. My name is Chris, and I’ll be your host. I\'m an opinionated, snarky, gay academic with a predilection for the history, the Arab world, languages, photography, food, and music. I live in Austin, Texas. You can read more about me, learn 100 random things about me, and if you’re wondering what the heck a khowaga is, click here. Feel free to browse, read, and leave comments!
Merry Christmas, everyone! Unless you’re Jewish, in which case I wish you chag sameach. Unless you’re neither, in which case, go have a drink ‘cos I told you to 
This post really is just an excuse to share some of the photos of the decorations in downtown Round Rock that I shot the other night with my new lens. Have a good one!
I got my first hit from Greenland today! (We’ve discussed my inner stats whore earlier, so never mind that creepy bit.)
See, there it is on Mint:
What on earth brought my Greenlandic visitor to my site? Well, I click on the little icon and I discover that what’s on the minds of today’s Greenlanders is:
A la Dr. Evil: Riiiiiight.
I get my first hit from Greenland, and it’s someone looking for gay porn. Fabulous.
Well, then I got to thinking. Like most of the rest of the world, what I know about Greenland is as follows: it’s not as big as it looks on maps, being the main victim of distortion put about by the Mercator projection. It’s ruled by Denmark, as I have known from the fifth grade when we had to research it as a class project after several of us more literate types questioned our teacher when she said it was an independent country while the map in our social studies book clearly labeled it as a possession of Denmark.
Oh, and there’s some sort of asteroid on the west coast that could power the universe if only extraterrestrial worms weren’t eating peoples’ brains. I got that last by reading Smilla’s Sense of Snow (the book being far, far better than the movie which now airs regularly on Lifetime as part of their court ordered Julia Ormond quota). I also recall something about Greenland having low humidity (“I’ve been colder in Denmark than I ever have in Greenland”), a high rate of both alcoholism and suicide (has something to do with the long hours of night in the winter–as I recall Smilla’s brother had committed suicide), and Greenlanders being rather resentful of their forced inclusion into the Greater Danish Sphere (Smilla herself being a prime example).
And since I’m sure that author Peter Høeg is an expert on Greenland, this must all be correct…
So, I pulled it up on the Interwebz, and I discovered that Nuuk (formerly Godthåb) is one of the smallest capital cities in the world by population–right around 18,000, which comprises one quarter of Greenland’s entire population.
Which leads me to the following thought: no wonder my Greenlandic visitor was seeking out gay porn on the Internet. The most accessible gay bar is in Copenhagen–six hours away by plane (among my other random knowledge is that it is far, far easier to fly from Greenland to Denmark than to either Canada or the U.S., even though they’re closer). Can you imagine what it must be like trying to find a date on a Friday night?
One can imagine the drama that would ensue in the small dating pool: everyone knows everyone else’s business, that’s for sure. Plus, it’s that part of the year when there are a scant few hours of daylight. Who wouldn’t want to hang around the house and surf the Interwebz?
Sure offers a new lens to the concept of being the only gay in the village, don’t it? (BTW, the title of the post is “the only gay in the village” rendered into Danish by Google translate, and I’d be happy to change it if a real Dane happens by and wants to correct it … )
*photos by Peter Løvstrøm. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
I was a bit stunned to realize that it’s December already! Winter has moved in somewhat, as evidenced by the blizzard we got a week ago down here in the ATX, but listening to NPR, I was shocked by the realization that it’s only been a year since Bernard Madoff entered the lexicon – indeed, it’s only been a year since the word “bailout” was introduced as well.
Does that mean it’s been a long year? Or a short one?
This is my 11th 12 of 12 for the year—my perfect record was ruined because I didn’t manage to do one in October (it would, frankly, have sent me ‘round the bend). Bah.
9:41 am: Coffee
Cafe Yaucono, imported personally by yours truly from Puerto Rico, where they know what coffee is supposed to taste like. (I brought back five pounds of the stuff and vacuum packed it). Cafe Yaucono was chosen as the unanimous favorite by five out of five supermarket employees quizzed by yours truly as they walked by and were asked, “Cual de estos cafes es lo mejor?”
10:20 am: Time to make the jelly
As I lamented the other day, shortly before the hard freeze that hit last weekend, I ran out to salvage what was left of the crop off of the chili and pepper plants that started to produce again in October. What this did was stick me with a half pound of habanero chilis, which are ridiculously hot – most salsas that use them call for half a chili, whereas I had over 30 to do something with. While I like to make my own salsa, the prospect of using all thirty up half a chili at a time was not one that I found attractive.
My Facebook pal Claire – haven’t seen her since high school, but that’s the beauty of Facebook – found a solution online in the form of a recipe for cranberry habanero jelly. Over the years, one of the taste combinations that I’ve grown to love is spicy/sweet. Not coincidentally, I’m a big fan of the locally produced raspberry-chipotle sauce, and its cousins that combine mango, ginger and habaneros, and peaches and habaneros. Problem is, when peach season hit (and it hits nicely in the Texas Hill Country – you can buy a bushel at a roadside stand very cheaply), I had no habaneros. Now that I have habaneros, the peaches are out of season. Cranberries are a nice, seasonal alternate.
10:58 am: Simmer down now
Admit it. You’ve always wanted to see what a slurry of 3 cups of white vinegar, two cups of seeded, diced habaneros, three cups of diced red bell pepper, and a cup each of fresh and dried cranberries looks like when it’s simmering in a pot.
11:11 am: My Smart Stick is Smarter than your Disco Stick
I don’t use my immersion blender nearly enough. This was right before I added the 14 cups of sugar.
11:30 am: A Wet Dog is an Unhappy Dog
I know I’ve mentioned this before, but Mocha hates water and getting wet. But she smelled, so it was time for a bath, which involved much sulking.
11:57 am: An Unhappy Dog is a Sulky Dog
Not to toot my own horn, but this may be the best photo I’ve ever taken of Mocha.
12:17 pm: The haul
Back at the stove, with the fruit pectin mixed in and the jelly all ladled out into individual jars. It’s heavy on the spicy, that’s for sure. I bought a bunch of small jars that will be used as office gifts.
12:54 pm: Boil, dammit
It took forever for the water to come to a boil so that I could start sealing the jars. What they say about watched pots is true.
3:20 pm: Can we go now?
Lunch and a couple of shows on the DVR later, Mocha starts getting a little restless because it’s time for her W-A-L-K, and she’s not going to let us forget it.
7:51 pm: At the Cajun Christmas Party
Ray’s coworker Elisa throws a Cajun Christmas party every year, ‘cos she’s a born and bred Louisiana girl. And let’s be honest: Etouffe is just another way of saying “in lots of butter.” There’s absolutely no bad there.
For much of the evening, I was seated in front of the rum cake and other desserts. I was very good … although the yogurt coated pretzels did prove to be my weakness. Whatevs. I just won’t eat tomorrow.
10:07 pm: Homeward Bound
I don’t know why it is that I like playing with long exposures when I’ve been drinking (this one was a 2 second exposure … and, no, I wasn’t driving – give me some credit), but I do. I think it matches my state of mind.
And that was MY 12th. How was yours?
Khowaga is having a bit of a rough Monday morning.
I woke up from a bizarre dream in which I was in the company of Lisbeth Salander (the anti-hero and “girl” referred to in the titles of Steig Larsson’s best-selling novels The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire (and next year’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest)) being pursued around Stockholm (a city I’ve never been to) by the police. And, yes, and one point we did go to IKEA.
On my way out of the house this morning, I grabbed oatmeal and a couple of things that I needed for work, among them a Tide pen (I had to throw out a Brooks Brothers shirt over the weekend because I finally had to admit that a stain acquired at work was just never going to come out). And I’ve managed to misplace both.
It’s frustrating, because I have pretty clear memories of putting the oatmeal in my jacket pocket, but it wasn’t there when I got out of the car–nor did it appear to still be in the car. As for the Tide pen–God knows. I put everything down on the antique card catalog file outside my desk (which bears absolutely no resemblance to the collection that may or may not be on the reading room shelves). When I went back, it was gone. I checked the drawer in my desk where I intended to put it and it’s not there. What did I do with it? Beats the crap out of me.
Am I starting to wonder if there’s a connection between the shell-shocked heroine I dreamt about last night and my newfound forgetfulness? Yeah, just a little.
On another note.
My silly post liveblogging the “blizzard” on Friday earned a lot of hits, thanks to the newfound power of the Twitter. I went from my usual 50 or so readers each day to over 600. Nice for me! Sadly, my attempts to popularize my Egypt theme for Windows 7 were not as successful, and there was scant interest in my crop of habanero peppers, so I am back to my handful of dedicated, loyal readers who hopefully aren’t there just because they haven’t gotten around to clearing their newsreaders of the feeds they don’t actually look at in a while.
Last but not least in this Monday morning roundup of things before I set my sites on worthier (and more work-related goals): Ray and I watched Brüno on Saturday. While it was cringe-inducing, as I had suspected that it would be, a good number of the cringes came from people other than Sasha Baron Cohen (and I’m not talking about the obvious ones). There’s an extended scene of Brüno attempting to cast a baby photoshoot, and the parents of the babies who are auditioning are just freaking insane.
“Your child will be in an SS uniform, holding a wheelbarrow containing bodies in front of an oven,” Brüno tells one mother.
“Great!” she says.
“How do you feel about that?”
“I’m happy she got the part,” the proud mommy says.
If The Daily Show hasn’t picked that up as its moment of Zen … it ought to.
And on that note … happy Monday, everyone!
