Platypus of Truth

I finished There's Treasure Everywhere last night and began It's a Magical World .  About half way through the first book I began to feel apprehensive.  As my reading progressed, it became harder and harder to turn the page.  The reason is simply that it's coming to an end.  I already know what the last comic will be and can picture it clearly in my mind.  After that, there's nothing more.  The dynamic duo sled off into the morning sunlight and are gone. The art and imagination evident in the last three Calvin and Hobbes treasuries is astounding.  Here is where Watterson finally has enough creative control to go all-out with his vision of comic book excellence.  In truth, he probably had a few years of creative productivity still to go.  His decision to end Calvin and Hobbes at its peak is bittersweet.  On the one hand, what we have is pristine -the work of art as it was meant to be.  On the other hand, there is the Iliadic sen...

Inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's Leaf by Niggle , Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes , and too many summer afternoons playing The Legend of Zelda .  Picture by the author of this post.

I've noticed a few things as my experimentation with bread continues: 1. After you've made the same thing a few times you want to branch out.  I'm sure this is how new forms of bread came to be, but the itch to experiment strikes me as also the luxury of someone who isn't dependent on the bread they make to feed their oikos (household).  Would bread-making be fun if I had to make the same loaf most days of the year and save an frills for holidays? 2. Any sort of stream-lined bread baking requires routine and routines require stability.  A trip to San Antonio threw my entire process out of wack and it was absurdly difficult to start up again considering how little is actually involved.  This is why when most humans farmed very few of humans traveled.  Farming only works when a strict routine is kept by all the members of the household.  That routine creates its own momentum that's extremely difficult to recapture once it's lost. 3. Following point tw...

Some things stay with you. I'm planning on seeing two old friends this summer.  One of them I haven't seen in fifteen years (though we have spoken via email and post).  It's a sort of homecoming -or maybe just touching base.  The problem is there's a lot of dirt under my shoes.  I've been walking the world a bit since '99: L.A., Houston, Oxford, Ireland, Italy, Cameroon, Mexico.  I guess that may make it sound like more than it is, but I've been places and seen things.  They've been walking the world too, but always with that return to home plate in New England.  They're New Englanders.  But what am I?  Will I look like a Californian in my Hawaiian shirt?  How many Calafornianism have crept into my vocabulary?  Have I developed a noticeable twang?  Are the smatterings of Spanish, Pigeon, and English slang mere affectations?  My accent will come back.  It always does.  Maybe I'll hyper-correct and sound more l...

A thought occurred to me while going over my previous reviews of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories: "how does The Hour of the Dragon show Conan's continuing moral evolution?".  Howard's first story, The Phoenix on the Sword , depicts Conan as an enlightened monarch who has delivered the people of Aquilonia from oppression.  As Howard transitions in the stories that follow to discuss Conan's younger years, his hero becomes increasingly selfish, violent, and lustful.  This "Conan the Reaver" was meant to sell, but it also created a plausible moral trajectory for the character.  By the time we get to The Valley of Lost Women , we see that Conan does have moral compunctions that grow out of his primitive "warrior's code."  As Howard pushed on to writing longer Conan stories, this moral germ began to grow.  In The People of the Black Circle we see Conan feeling a genuine sense of responsibility for the tribesmen he governs.  He has learned ...

It's been a while since I began reading The Bloody Crown of Conan , volume two of a three-part annotated anthology covering Howard's most memorable creation.  This volume contains three of the longer stories including The People of the Black Circle , which I've review here .  The second story in the collection is Howard's Conan novel The Hour of the Dragon .  This piece was originally written in an attempt to bring Conan to British audiences and serve as a sort of debut for the character across the pond.  We don't know how well it would have been received, but I do remember one Cornish professor in Oxford remarking dryly that "Conan the Barbarian is an ethnic slur".  With that as a preface, let's take a look at the novel. The Hour of the Dragon presents us with Conan as the aging ruler of Aquilonia fighting against a conspiracy to dethrone him and replace him with a survivor of the old dynasty.  When the conspiracy succeeds with the help of a long-d...

My baking spree continues with this pretty little whole wheat loaf that looks like a spice cake.  Below is a picture of a simple boule. Moving on from bread to other things, here is home-made Mediterranean feast. So lots of fun here in the kitchen this past month.  If I'm able to turn out anything else that's inspiring, I'll be sure to post pictures of it here.