Finch Scout

A pretty little brown finch came by the birdfeeder today. In its honor, I am posting my potato frittata recipe. Frittatas are often described as "Italian omelets," but this is BUNK. An omelete's honor and delicacy depends on it being cooked quickly (if your omelete is on stovetop for more than 45 seconds, you're fucked). Frittatas are cooked slowly, over low heat. This makes them totaly different in every concievable way.

This, with some green beans, serves three people dinner and then two of those people lunch the next day.

Quarter and boil like 3 normal-to-large brown potatoes. Takes like 30 minutes, I'd say.

Sautee some onion if you have one around. One onion? I used a half, even.

Drain the potatoes and mash them up with the onion. Sautee the whole thing for a minute like you are making hash browns. Turn heat off.

Mix eggs (I used eight) with some salt, pepper, maybe some leafy fresh herbs if you have. I used thyme. Basil would be way good, too. I would advise against rosemary, since I think rosemary w. potatoes is kind of trite. Also, not leafy.

Pour egg mixture on potatoes, swirl the whole thing up. Let it sit for like 10 minutes.

Cook over low heat until it's all solid except for a runny layer on top. This can take surprisingly long bc. we're used to eggs being fast-cooking, but WRONG. Don't be surprised if it takes 20 minutes, even. The heat should really be really, really low. The consistency thus achieved is key.

WHEN this is done, layer a semi-hard cheese (I used some Argentinian Edam, which gets 3.5/5) on top and cook the whole thing under the broiler until bubbly.

CHEEEEEEESE.

Dear Men,

How is it going? I bet it is great having all that upper body strength! Wow! Gosh, I wonder how many heavy boxes of books and dishes you could lift. Oh that's just great! It looked to be as easy for you as casting a feather aloft. You're really good at lifting stuff! Obviously you need something more challenging, something worthy of your mighty biceps. How about... gee, how about this futon? That's a good start, right?

Oh my! The whole futon! I guess there just isn't a thing a Hercules like you can't lift. Oh I have an idea! Do you think you can carry it all the way up these stairs? Wowzas! Why don't... why don't you see if you can make it all the way to... um, let me see... apartment 4F? How's that? Under the window in the front room? No, over a couple of feet. Ok, thanks.

Love,
Real Name oops! Violet

The Beatdown Magazine relocation extravaganza begins 6/18/07

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

Okay. So. I write in Starbucks sometimes. I tried to support my local independent coffee shop, but every time I did I got yelled at by a local independent crazy lady and it was deeply unpleasant. Here are a list of 11 more reasons why I feel totally secure in my decision.

1)Today in Starbucks, this guy comes in with a jeweler's loupe in his eye.

2)His girlfriend, following, starts putting mugs and stuffed monkeys (which are there why?) in to her bag.

3)Off-duty cop yells at them explaining that he is off duty cop.

4)Theif Lady puts things back, rolling her eyes the whole time. I mean, jeez.

5)Russian mob guy who looks like that guy from Fargo who was also on Prison Break immediately ceases mob activities/leering at me in my sexy sweatclothes and hightails it out of Starbucks.

6)Guy comes in and just starts rolling joint. Just hey, I'm in Starbucks, rolling a joint. It was NOT a hand-rolled cigarette, believe me. He took out a film cannister full of pot and everything.

7)Cop kind of looks and is like "?" and looks like he is weighing the options, then leaves. Girlfriend of loupe guy re-steals stuffed monkey.

8)Someone alerts staff, who kind of mull it over, walk by her table and loom for a bit, then decide to let it slide.

9)Thief/loupe couple starts making out,

10)Joint guy leaves, having purchased nothing.

11)Theif/Loupe proceed to sit down over foamy drinks and peruse a flyer offering discount magazine subscriptions - like something a kid working a school fundraising drive would hand out, or something. As they peruse, he removes a jewel from the loupe (still in his eye), looks at it with his loupe-less eye, and puts it back in the loupe.*

*I know this is not how your normally use a loupe, as a jewel-carrying eye-cup, but this is what he did. Maybe it was a fake loupe.

Real Estate

I live in the big city. It doesn't matter what big city - let's call it Flu Spork for the sake of convenience*. I've lived in Flu Spork my whole life. When people meet me, they say "you don't seem like you're from Flu Spork!" I guess they think this because I don't shiv them?

The other thing people say when they hear I grew up in Flu Spork is "wow, there's nowhere to really go after there!" They mean that all across this grand nation, the young and ambitious dream of moving to Flu Spork, but where do the young and ambitious of Flu Spork move to? I'm young(ish, now) and more ambitious than I'd admit on a first date with a traditionally-minded man whom I nevertheless wanted to roger, but I swore up and down for the longest that I was OUT OF HERE. It's silly and expensive and there's just no way to really build a life for yourself, unless a life for yourself = a moron carnival paid for with credit. My parents carved their niche out when things were less rough, when it could be argued that Flu Spork was a good, cheap, interesting place for a young couple to be (not that there were not the lean times when I was a bitty Vi). Comparing my experience with theirs, my possibilities in Flu Spork seemed even more limited. It keeps pulling me back, though - the skills and priorites and proclivities you gain here bind you ever closer to the city. It's not that you're unfit to live anywhere else, exactly, leaving just seems harder and harder until it doesn't make any sense at all.

The couple we saw in Providence this weekend, beaming and newlywed, don't have jobs that different from mine, or Hazzard's. They live, paying the same amount we pay for a little place in a walk-up in a peripheral neighborhood, in a enormous loft with bamboo floors and a wall of ten-foot high windows. Their building is a converted department store full of chatty young people who knock on each other's doors and met on the rooftop patio for drinks. (I know, barf. But let's just examine the SIGNIFIED here. Besides, it would be nice if I had someone other than my parents to dogsit.) It was a little plastic, and lord knows Providence, a neat town, is not Flu Spork, but it felt like a life. Not transient. Not a holding cell. They seemed content, or at least I imagined them to be, as I fiddled with their track lighting and admired their view. They were reaping already, whereas I feel like Hazzard and I just sow and sow and sow and wait, where we put off everything we truly want. Which isn't track lighting, really.

*NB - someone should make and market cheap sake in six-packs or something and call it sake of convenience.

Petticoat compunction

I'm going to a wedding in Providence this weekend. I love it when people get married, because that means I'll have something to talk about with them. It's not that I don't like single folks, I just can't relate. Always on about their dates or their drugs or their jobs. It's charming in its own silly way I guess, but so immature! I just don't have time for that sort of thing anymore, you know?

Anyway, what I do have time for is wanting a petticoat or crinoline to wear with the (effing excellent) dress I have selected for the event. I'm not sure why one is so hard to find - you'd assume that some would have entered circulation the summer before last when full skirts were the thing. Fuck. How am I going to steal the bride's thunder NOW?

Ask Violet

Dear Violet,

I would like to build a simple bird feeder with my children as a fun springtime activity. Do you have any ideas how I could go about that?

Yours,
Sue Etts

Dear Sue,

The joy of encouraging fledgling ornithologists!* Instructions for a simple coffee-can bird feeder are as follows.

Poke three holes in the bottom of a coffee can with a can puncher.** Be sure to remove stray shards of metal with bare fingers.

Bleed.

Poke three holes in the top of the same coffee can.

Get a big plastic plant saucer.

Nail a hole through the center of the plant saucer and the center of the bottom of the coffee can. Don't accidentaly shatter most of the plant saucer, which is probably pretty hard plastic.

Take plastic shard from dog.

After consideration, decide to let the dog eat the plastic shards after all.

Repair saucer with duct tape.

Insert a screw through to attach the can to the plate. Fail to find washer. Remove screw.

Run some duct tape through the bottom of the can and the hole in the saucer. Put balls of duct tape on either end of the duct tape connecting rope, so everything is joined by a duct tape barbell.

Correct imbalances with duct tape weights.

Run a bungee cord through the three holes on top of the can.

Date a few men seriously, with supercrazy dangerslut periods in between until you are able to marry someone tall.

Make him hang the thing from the cross-beam on your balcony.

Fill with birdseed.

Replace lid.

Find washer next day, prepare to make it in to a proper birdfeeder that birds can potentially balance upon.

Realize you've constructed the thing is such a way that it is literally impossible to modify without disassembling your entire balcony.

Eat tortilla chips.

Blog.

I hope this helps!

Yours,
Violet

*Ornithologist joke.

**Different from a can opener. Who knew?

Injuries Sustained During The Crafting of The Antonio Gramsci Memorial Birdfeeder

Beatdown Magazine's Antonio Gramsci Memorial Birdfeeder

Birds TK.

Let's Teleport To My Closet!

Fashion is something that can be acquired. You too, be it male or female, can be very fashionable.