Thorn Wilde

Yes, I still can't say kumquat without giggling. Makes me think of.... I don't think I really need to say it, do I?

I dunno, bad taste sort of works in Brighton... I mean, you've got that HORRIBLE, ostentatious Royal Pavilion (which, yes, Magpie and I actually paid to enter when we were there in March; the tea room was nice, though), and the gaudy Brighton Pier... It's that kind of city.

Tonight we've made the kumquat compote to go with the ice cream, the dipping sauce for the gyoza and the broth for the tom ka gai soup. The latter is currently simmering down. 2,5 litres of liquid is being reduced to 1 litre. This is going to take a while... But now I know how to make Thai chicken broth from scratch! Yay! Waiting for the chicken to cool so I can get it off the bone and put it in zip-lock bags in the fridge until I'm making the actual soup on Friday. Tomorrow we'll make the kimchi salad and possibly the filling for the gyoza, and on Friday we'll do everything else.

...Of course, having a bit of style helps. That's.... well.

I like Björk. I think in the end I have a lot of respect for people who have the guts to express themselves in a way that's so entirely out of the ordinary.

Great tune! Have a cover on cellos, by Rasputina: And one embarrassing parody:

See, that just isn't sanitary. Ew...

Reading now. Loving it already!

I think it's a cultural thing, really. Smoking is still kind of seen as a 'bad boy' thing to do in Japan, and Japanese people don't really drink that much. Only 'tough guys' can be expected to have much of a tolerance for booze. They looked at us weirdly when we ordered a bottle of beer each in Japan instead of sharing one between the three of us. When my friend Edd lived there, people told her she drank like an old man. She's Irish.

I dunno, I can understand this... I know some fairly militant vegetarians, of the punk and hippie variety. I could see several of them ending up homeless at some point (they live fairly bohemian lifestyles to begin with, and I know several who have, over certain periods, squatted in abandoned buildings), and I doubt they would give up their principles for that reason. Of course, most of them are resourceful enough that they'd dumpster-dive for food (restaurants and supermarkets throw away all sorts of perfectly edible food), so if they were to beg, it would more likely be for something other than food (saving up for a sleeping bag, maybe?), but that probably doesn't go over well when you're panhandling...

I agree with Miles, Zach was kind of an arsehole about the whole thing. And, oh, what a horrible moment faced with Alex! How come some people get so bitchy and hold grudges? Not that Alex owed Bay anything at all, and I understand why he said what he said, but you'd think he'd be over it by now... OMG, only a few more chapters to go!

Oh, ow, my heart! Bay, you silly, silly boy! I'm just glad I already know how much better he gets... Still, though, I think outing him was a really shitty thing to do on Zach's part. I understand that he was angry, but that really isn't okay...

My friend had those books. We used to leaf through them for inspiration before we went shopping. That was another life.

Oh, my... Doesn't leave much to the imagination, does it? Anyone ever been to Hel Looks? Some pretty weird and wonderful (mostly just weird) fashion choices right there... Lots of vintage, many many hipsters. Stuff like this: And this:

I can imagine... Just the way we did it was a lot of work all on its own.

We made two huge batches for new years, one with pork and one vegetarian. My friend has a party every year where she does a tapas kind of thing and everyone brings a dish. The gyoza was Magpie's idea, but I ended up doing most of it as he had to work. We bought the wrapping frozen, but did everything else from scratch, including a really tasty dipping sauce. It took hours, I pan fried 60 dumplings, but it was so worth it! Tastiest food I ever made.

I was about to say as well...

Om nom, bunny! We spent the evening making ice cream. Ginger and lime ice cream. It's currently in the freezer getting done. Before serving, we're rolling it in coconut flakes. It's gonna be dessert for the dinner party Magpie and I are throwing on Friday. Asian theme. Starter will be pork gyoza, soup will be Thai tom ka gai, main course will be Korean bulgogi with kimchi salad and rice. Out of all these things, the gyoza are the only part we've made before, so this will be interesting. We're going shopping tomorrow. Magpie's currently sat making a shopping list. He cooks recipes. I usually cook by gut feeling.

Well done, Bay!!! Oh, I love him so much right now! <3

As someone who has visited the country twice and spent most of their teens as a Japanophile, I can say that Japanese culture is beautiful, exciting, stimulating and completely bonkers from a Western perspective. It's a culture of extremes. There is no middle ground. Traditional cultural expressions are fascinating and beautiful, but when they take a Western expression (be it our art, food or porn) they make it their own in a completely unique and mostly incomprehensible way. They take all the sweets we make and make them sweeter. They take extreme forms of culture and make them more extreme (from pop music to heavy metal, high fashion to subculture). It has resulted in some of the weirdest and some of the best art and entertainment on the planet, IMO. This is in no way a bad thing. It is simply a true thing.

We had SO MANY recorded movies back in the days of VHS... At the most, I think we had over 300 tapes with well over 400 movies on them. My mum made a register in Excel over all the movies we had and which tapes they were on, as some of the tapes had more than one movie on them, and then organised them numerically in the shelf. There was a handful of tapes that had a red mark on them, which meant they were movies I wasn't allowed to see (such films included Rosemary's Baby, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, The Silence of the Lambs, Taxi Driver and The Shining, among others). My favourite tape was the one with Roger Waters doing The Wall live in Berlin. I was a weird kid.

It was, until the British came up with Geordie Shore.

Yeah, see, that doesn't bother me in the least. It's gotta be one of those weird cultural things... Like how most of us have no problems eating chicken periods, or the muscles of large, grazing herbivores, but the idea of eating a small fluffy feline is completely unacceptable.

I love Zu now. I didn't like him at first, but I fucking love him right now. Listen to him, Bay, this is one wise motherfucker right here! Glad to see Bay finally making some progress of sorting his shit out. Now, if only Issac will swallow his pride and forgive him...

Zach must have been something very special... Wonder how that story ended. Will be interesting to find out.