January 2005

There were 50 posts published in January 2005 (this is page 5 of 5).

Lasagna for Dummies

I made the most delicious dinner tonight. It’s lasagna, but with cheese ravioli instead of the noodles. Simplifies the process a whole bunch.

Line the bottom of the pan with the ravioli, mozzarella cheese, sauce, and other toppings (meat, etc). Repeat the stack as tall as desired. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Voila!

It doesn’t hold together quite as well as ‘real’ lasagna when dishing it out, but it gets the job done. Plus I have leftovers for a week.

Quite a handy recipe to have on hand for the lazy bachelor who is tired of microwave meals.

It may be hyperbole, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like it

“What a vapid job title our culture gives to those honorable laborers the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians variously called Learned Men of the Magic Library, Scribes of the Double House of Life, Mistresses of the House of Books, or Ordainers of the Universe. Librarian — that mouth-contorting, graceless grind of a word, that dry gulch in the dictionary between libido and licentious — it practically begs you to envision a stoop-shouldered loser, socks mismatched, eyes locked in a permanent squint from reading too much microfiche. If it were up to me, I would abolish the word entirely and turn back to the lexicological wisdom of the ancients, who saw librarians not as feeble sorters and shelvers but as heroic guardians. In Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian cultures alike, those who toiled at the shelves were often bestowed with a proud, even soldierly title: Keeper of the Books.”

~Miles Harvey, The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime

McRorie – One Man Live

I’ve been waiting to mention this till the site came back up. This link was already mentioned on a number of other blogs and such, and is just too good to miss. It was offline for a while, but is back and ready to go:

McRorie – One Man Live!

If it weren’t for the video, I don’t think I’d believe this was for real…

The clip itself used to be longer, including a duet with Celine Dion before she was really well known. That seems to have been edited out for some reason. I’ll see about putting up the original.

Sin City

I went and saw “The Aviator” on Sunday with John. Good movie, very interesting, just a tad long.

Before the film, we were treated to the trailer for the upcoming movie “Sin City”. As an aside, I just have to mention that I love movie trailers. There’s just something artful in managing to cram most of a movie into a minute or two. When it’s done well, anyway. The Sin City trailer qualifies.

You can see it for yourself here. Unfortunately it’s a very small, lo-res version, but you’ll get the idea. I’m hoping a larger version pops up online soon.

I haven’t read the (supposedly excellent) comic books it’s based on, but the visual style seems to capture perfectly the art I have glanced at from the comics. And the cast: Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Mickey Rourke, Kate Bosworth, Josh Hartnett, Benicio del Toro, Brittany Murphy, Elijah Wood, Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson, and others. Worth seeing just for that alone.

The music in the trailer is amazing too. Thanks to the internet, I’ve figured out that the song is “Cells”, by a British band called The Servant. I’d love to get my hands on the instrumental version used in the trailer, but for now the $.99 cent track I got from Napster will have to do. You can hear it streaming here, in the right column of the page.

Behold… the power of The Internet

I have a usenet account at Easynews.com. They’re highly recommended, by the way. In the aftermath of the tsunami disaster in Asia, they’ve really stepped up to the plate. For every gig of data that users give up from their download quota, Easynews is donating 50 cents to Red Cross relief efforts. The maximum donation of $50,000 was hit a few days ago. Just over 100 terabytes of downloads were donated. 20gb of it was mine I think. Simply amazing! The number of deaths in this tragedy is enough to boggle my mind; I just can’t comprehend it. Thankfully, this 100TB figure hits the same level.

New for ’05!

Thanks Brandon for the inspiration.

’04 has come and gone. I was going to write a part V entry of my favorite TV shows from the year. Instead, I’ll just list ’em. Lost, Stargate: Atlantis, and Battlestar Galactica are three quality new shows. My current favorite on TV, including non-new shows, is still Arrested Development. Nothing else makes me laugh as regularly.

New Year’s Eve was fun. Kirsten and Brandon showed up on the 30th (mere hours after I returned to Oakland), we had dinner and visited Dave and Buster’s. Then on the 31st a large cadre of friends joined in: Amber, Justin, Dan, Brandi, John, Chris, Jesse and Tiffiny were all here at one point or another. Revelry was had by all. And the pepperoni bread was much delicios. Got so wrapped up in revelry that we almost missed midnight. And I am now in possession of far too many half empty bottles of various types of liquor.

Weather has been chaotic recently. New Year’s Eve soared into the mid 50s, even past midnight. I had the heat off and windows open. Very surreal. Today cooled off a bit, but still no sign of snow or anything resembling it. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.

I graduate in just a bit over 7 months. Then a job! I can’t wait really. But I’m gonna enjoy my few days before classes start up again this week.

Anyway, that is all. Gonna go catch some shut-eye. Less rambly in the future, I promise.