The Ryndex

That is, if you have a new iPod Shuffle.

I have a discman — a very nice one. It was offered to me by the members of my old workgroup before I left for France, and I use it all the time. It’s fixed beside my bed for night-time snoozing melodies.

Nope, it’s been years since I’ve walked around with music playing in my ears. Then I realized that my mobile phone (which is better than your mobile phone) was capable of functioning as an MP3 player. So I bought a cheap SD card, loaded it up and had music.

Hours that would have been filled with metro coughing, screeching and ringing are now filled with the likes of:

Caribou – The Milk of Human Kindness: Dreamy, driving Canadian electronica that you can tap your toes to.

Squarepusher – Ultravisitor: Experimental jazz-influenced noise music that you can push a nail file under your toenails to.

INXS – Kick: Revisited from the grand old years, they sound more together and yet more human than they did in junior high. In those years, I remember dancing to INXS with a really nice girl — she leaned over and commented “you don’t listen to this type of music much, do you?” I don’t know what that was supposed to mean, but years later when I got a car, we cruised around the city for hours listening to INXS.

Green Day – American Idiot: Like the Scissor Sisters, this is an album that sat around unlistened to for ages — then burst into one of my favourites of the day. It’s a rock anthem to apathy and manipulation.

Jack Johnson – In Between Dreams: He used to be a pro-surfer, and he has a lazy, laid-back folk style. A bit bluesy, but in a good-natured and cheerful way. Like The Beach Boys, this is music for optimists and can be a bit too sweet. Unlike The Beach Boys, it doesn’t completely suck, constantly and across epochs.

Feist – Let It Die: It sticks to the inside of your mind. That’s not a judgment about whether she’s good or bad, talented or irritating. But she sticks and will not be scraped off.

Anyway, to get back on track, my mobile phone is much better than your mobile phone. For Roggles P. Naysayer, who claims that not having a phone is better — I can boast that my phone only receives calls half the time, if I did a soft reboot recently. And to make up for it, it sometimes makes calls that I didn’t even know needed making!

One of the only disadvantages of having such a genius master-of-all-trades device is it’s size. I can’t run with it. So I bought an iPod Shuffle.

This is a little device, slightly larger than a USB key or a pack of gum. It looks delicious, but must not be eaten. It weighs but a pittance, and it plays music — oh sweet music! — that comforts me in my travails.

The disadvantage is that you must use iTunes to manage the little bastard, even though it functions otherwise like a USB data key. Also, it doesn’t have a screen, which didn’t bother me at first. However, given that I have a terrible memory for music, this means that I will never know who’s playing when I autofill.

Autofill is auto-awesome, however. I plug the thing into my computer, and it automatically fills it with random music, taking into account my ratings (if I’d ever bothered to rate something).

In conclusion, I posted a travel log about Amsterdam on my other blog, and you should go read it.

Tin Foiled Technology

I started this trip to Amsterdam by taking the first-class train — rubbing elbows with high-powered businesspeoples, celebrities of wit and glamour and the latest stars of pornography, only without touching elbows because the seats were far too large and spacious. That didn’t prevent us from hobnobbing, however, smoking our cigars and sipping cognac around the fireplace, exchanging bon mots and throwing back our heads in peals of laughter. Oh, the first-class times we had!

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Tin Foiled Travel

Sure, and life is full of cross-therapeutic activities. If I’m not the most well-adusted person you know, then you must know pretty well-adjusted people, for I have had extensive dinner therapy last weekend.

It started with a cookbook of elegant apéros — finger foods and hors d’oeuvres. I suggested to The Italians that it would be interesting to put together a dinner party of only well-prepared (and well-adjusted) pretty little things to munch on. They agreed, and so we divided up the tasks over beers.

The therapy comes from finishing the chores that have been dragging out for weeks in the apartment. Vacuuming, picking up papers and putting them away, shopping for groceries, shaving, dusting and scouring. All of the neglected picking-up is picked up and placed — or at least hidden, which is a sort of therapy on it’s own.

And that’s not even including the cooking. I made parmesan lace chips, which are simple enough for any idiot while looking impressive. Mix grated parmesan cheese with a few chopped walnuts and drop pinches on parchment paper. Top with thyme and put in oven (setting: hot) until golden. Take out of oven. Anyone can do it and everyone should, it’s exciting!

I was also responsible for the bread, so I headed out to buy the best baguette in Paris. Literally. It’s not just a sale pitch; there’s a yearly contest and the winner supplies bread to the President of the Republic. Last year the boulangerie Le Four d’Augustin won. It is, in fact, noticeably good bread and it’s not significantly more expensive than other not-best baguettes.

I also finally bought a toaster, to make little toasts for Antonio’s sauces. He was making a tapenade which is a black olive and garlic paste, a creamy cheese spread, and a spicy vegetable dip.

I prepared the vegetables, and I prepared the hell out of them. I made a colourful roaster full of raw vegetables — celery and carrot sticks, broccoli, peppers of all colours, radishes, mushrooms and cocktail tomatoes. Vegetables take a long time to prepare, but you’re waving a knife around (and screaming like a howler monkey) so it counts as therapy. As does nanaimo bar preparation, thanks to the proximity to chocolate.

I killed a second bird with the same chocolate stone for the nanaimo bars, by preparing glasses for the dessert cocktail. The goal was to have carefully drizzled chocolate inside the glasses, but they turned out mostly smeared. I figured out the trick at the end — use a large wooden spoon dipped into the molten chocolate and let it start to slide off in a thin thread of chocolate. Then whip around the thread, not the spoon. That’ll drizzle your chocolate real good.

I put the glasses to chill in the crisper and mixed the mudslides (Kahlua, Bailey’s, vodka and cream in equal amounts).

I made 36 toothpicks of green olives, mozzarella and half tomatoes served with pesto on the side. A good pesto will list the percentage of basil, and will not contain potato or any oil but olive oil, or any nut but pine nuts. Amusingly enough, the best pesto I found was a French brand (Gault-Millau) — all of the Italian imports had cheaper replacement ingredients at the same price! I had some fresh basil, so I chopped it up and added it to make super-premium pesto, which is a totally cheating way to make your store-bought pesto look home-made.

The mozzarella was not just real mozzarella, but real REAL mozzarella. I found a little place that sells mozzarella da bufala, which means that it’s not made from cow milk.

And finally, grilled chicken skewers with satay sauce or teriyaki sauce. I had to borow the indoor electric grill, but it was so nice to use that I might end up getting one of my own.

The Italians also brought a zucchini tart, three spaghetti pies, which are delicious and can be eaten with the fingers, and a tuna spread (a family recipe!)

We were seven in total, and barely made a dent on the food. This part is my favourite, the conversation therapy. I like these people, the wine was nice and the ambiance was very warm. It feels really good — quite an accomplishment.

In conclusion, some of us took the leftovers to a picnic on the Pont des Arts the next day, which was much the same thing but with singing German students.

Tin Foiled BlahBlahBlah