Escaping the Trunk

From Food

Please excuse the blurry, stalker-esque photo. And yes, I know, today is not Friday. But I’ve been in love with chana dal since attending a Hindu wedding last summer. I first tried the dish during the mendhi celebration, when the groom’s mother prepared it for the women in his family. Instantly, I realized I would have to learn how to make it for myself. Although I had come to enjoy Indian cuisine since moving to Toronto (where the influence of our significant South Asian population has trickled into the grocery store freezer aisle, home of the tandoori chicken fingers), I had never until this moment wanted to try it for myself. I had looked at the recipes. I knew how complicated they were. I knew there was no way I would buy a separate spice grinder, or start pan-frying whole cumin seeds in the final five minutes of cooking, or culturing my own paneer. But this dish, with its soft bursts of mellow flavour punctuating a sweet, silky, spicy stew — I had to have that, over and over. (With naan. I’m a sucker for naan.)

This dish makes no claim to authenticity. I did not learn it from the woman who first served it to me. It has no ghee, the clarified butter that helps the dish achieve that Oh God more please now sensation that it should have. It also has no chickpeas, because I had no desire to a) soak chickpeas, or b) render canned ones into mush with my slow-cooker. I chose real chana dal instead: the dried yellow split peas that gave the dish its name. In place of clarified butter, I used light coconut milk. Ordinarily, I would have gone with the full-fat variety, but this week I endured the Cronenbergian body horror that is trying on new jeans, so low-calorie it is.

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From Food

This dish came about with wish to bulk up my blood’s iron supply. Thus the lentils and kale, both of which are chock full of iron. I added pork because I had to use up a chop in my fridge, but you could easily go meat-free to make the dish entirely vegan, or deploy some tiny, sweet bay scallops in the final moments of cooking. I also wanted to use up the rest of the tamarind sauce in my fridge. Since the sauce came from a small local producer, I’ve suggested a substitution of tamarind juice and Worcestershire sauce. You might also try jerk sauce, if you have some around, but result will be spicier. The measurements for spice are approximate; I don’t recall exactly how much I used, and your tastes might be different. But I think you’ll find that you won’t need much, because the flavours of the other ingredients are strong enough on their own. If you do this right, you won’t be able to taste a single specific ingredient. My final result was silky, tangy, and filling. Enjoy.

You will need:

• 1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes, plus 1 can water
• 200 mL (half a can) coconut milk
• 1 cup green or brown lentils
• 1 bunch kale, stemmed and roughly chopped
• 1 TB olive oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 large carrots, chopped
• 1 cup dried banana chips
• 1 pork chop, cut into bite-sized pieces (or go meat-free, or try scallops instead)
• 1/3 cup tamarind juice
• 1 TB (at least) Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tsp curry powder
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in a large stock pot. Add onions, sweat for five minutes, then add garlic. Sweat for another moment, then add tomatoes, water, coconut milk, and lentils. Bring to a boil. (Be patient with those lentils. They need time to soften and cook properly. As in: at least an hour, more like ninety minutes.) Lower the heat. Add banana chips, carrots, and pork. Then season with the tamarind juice, Worcestershire, curry, and cumin. Cover and simmer on medium-low heat. When the curry has cooked for an hour, test the lentils. If they are soft, add the kale (if using scallops, add them now). The kale will need at most five minutes to wilt and brighten appropriately, at which point you can pull the stockpot off the heat, and give it a good stir before salting and peppering. If you need more heat at this point, some red pepper flakes will do.

Nick Simmons, son of Gene Simmons, apparently writes comics. And apparently, those comics flagrantly plagiarize panels, character designs and dialogue from Tite Kubo’s manga Bleach. The parallels are so close, Simmons’ publisher has halted production on his comic, pending an investigation.

Pro-tip: if you plagiarize (jackass), make sure you go after small fry, and not, say, one of the top-selling manga in Japan and North America. And not copy the design of, say, one of the most popular cosplay characters ever. Seriously. I know Bleach is awesome and everything, and we’d all love if we could draw half that well and write characters that compelling and build worlds that complex. We’d all love to have Kenpachi Zoraki — that spiky-haired fellow laughing insanely, in the panels linked above — wandering around inside our heads. After all, he’s an indestructible badass who bears a striking resemblance to Ian McShane, and his best friend is a cute pink-haired girl who rides around on his shoulder, occasionally steering him toward “play dates” that involve obscene amounts of blood and pain. Evidence:

Unfortunately, Nick Simmons didn’t come up with Kenpachi himself. And while there is an argument to be made for the long history of pose grabs and tracing in comics (you can read about it in the comments thread at this Comic Book Resources post), the truth is that if Simmons were half as talented as the manga-ka he lifted those poses from, he’d have come up with something that could stand on its own merit. I’d have no problem if Simmons were at Comikket, selling Zoraki doujins for the cost of printing just like everyone else. Then he’d be a fan artist. Then his position in the creative ecosystem would be perfectly obvious and, strangely, more secure. In fact, he could forge an apprenticeship out of his fan works, and move on to commercial material if and when he was ready. He’s just not ready, yet, and the editor who approved these drawings should have recognized that.

Because really, what self-respecting comics editor doesn’t know at least a little something about manga, these days? What, there’s this whole wave of material out there that’s devouring the youth market and the female market and Simmons’ editor didn’t know about it? Really? Really? Well, maybe. Radical, Simmons’ publisher, is no stranger to copyright suits. Maybe it should come as no surprise that someone waved these drawings through. But it means that if, on the vanishingly small chance that Simmons did this unwittingly, his comics career will have been tarnished from the very beginning by accusations of plagiarism. And not just plagiarism, but stupid plagiarism.

From Food

This is the dinner I prepared after finishing the first draft of a novel called The von Neumann Sisters. My agent is reading it, my workshop is reading it, my husband is reading it. The title is taken from a comment Peter made in a Starship Sofa podcast, when talking about it. He mistook the title I had in mind, but when I thought about it, I realized it was a better fit. But that final moment reflects the beginning of the process: Peter’s the one who told me to write this one. I already had five chapters and a ton of research done on another novel, but that novel was fighting me every step of the way. In the middle of one of our afternoon anime and beer binges (did I mention that my life is great?), while we were talking about another short story I had written about robots, Peter squinted at me and said: “Why don’t you just write about them, instead?” When I told my husband about this conversation, he said: “You have something really special, here. I think you should do it.”

I am nothing if not highly suggestible.

That other novel is still in me, and I think about it every day. But it’s a big, rough book. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to tackle it, yet. There were moments writing vNS that stymied me completely. At one point, I had to turn right around and start over, editing from the first sentence on down until I could get my momentum back. This really hurt, because writing is the thing I do all the time, and if I don’t have a story with me I feel not just naked, but empty and alone. Since finishing this draft, I’ve got the DT’s: I’m alternating between the sense of my head clearing enough to get some damn homework done, finally, and the gnawing absence of what was once a regular, if not always productive, activity.

With that sentiment in mind, please enjoy this video:

It occurred to me this morning that yoga is a lot like writing. There are a hundred tiny movements in one single transition, and you must be aware of all of them to execute the total process (the series of transitions) to its best effect. Unfortunately, each of those tiny movements can be draining if not outright painful, and your awareness of this fact does nothing to build confidence.

Maybe you’ll understand if you try it:

The thing I both love and hate about yoga is how aware it forces the practitioner to be of all her failings. It can be easy to hurry through other workouts: when I lifted weights, I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth and refused to breathe as I counted out each chest press. This is part of why I never got anywhere with it: the pain was negligible, but I deliberately made it unpleasant for myself. I put myself in competition with everyone around me (yes, I’m the psycho at your gym who stares at your toned shoulders and silently resents you for them, that’s me) for no reason. I made it impossible for myself to succeed, much less enjoy myself. I was focused on the numbers, raising them every week, but didn’t gain any sense of accomplishment from doing so. That’s because I hadn’t accomplished anything but putting additional pressure on my spine.

My spine and I have a weird relationship. You see, it’s curved. It used to be more curved, and when I was younger there was some debate as to whether I should be put in a back brace. I wished and hoped and prayed that this would not be so, and then it wasn’t. Now I wonder if maybe I should have just worn the damn thing. Orthodontic braces fixed my molars, after all — maybe a prescription corset could have fixed my posture. Today, at 26, I’m plagued with persistent lower back pain and occasional neck pain. Part of that is my inability (or unwillingness) to sit up straight as I’m typing. To date, yoga and Pilates are the only semi-permanent fixes I’ve found for these issues. Painkillers and hot packs work in the short term, but they do nothing to relieve the tightness in the muscles or the misalignment that creates it. To fix the problem, you have to address the root cause, and re-align from within.

I’d love it if yoga sculpted my body into something I could enjoy looking at. I’d love it if it made me measurably healthier, if it slowed my pulse or improved my circulation. But the real reason I do it is so that I won’t hurt any more.

I write for basically the same reason. I get the same sense of accomplishment from both activities: that awareness of incremental progress, the once-difficult stretches slowly becoming more fluid, the Hey, I kept my balance, this time, when it all works. By no means am I proficient, but I have a definite sense of improvement. I know I’ve succeeded if I can stretch just that little bit further or bend that little bit deeper. It has nothing to do with numbers. It has to do with me, alone on the mat, trembling. In the end, the blank page is not so different.

There’s a poll up at Escape Artists asking which the best episode of Escape Pod was in 2009. Vote for “βoyfriend” (and Tina Connolly’s awesome reading of it) there.

Via David Forbes, I found this post by John Haffner. It’s a strictly philosophical (read: Kant gets name-checked) discussion of rights and freedoms as they pertain to immigration, a summary of a panel on the subject held at Sophia University in Japan. Japan’s stance on migration is problematic to say the least: for a variety of reasons, it has always resisted granting citizenship to foreigners. Instead, it relegates them to a labyrinthine system of visas and second-class rights. However, the population of Japan is declining as the economy dies out (Roland Kelts describes that phenomenon here) and as feminism gains a stronger foothold*, leaving a rapidly aging population with a shaky tax base to support them and only temporary workers to care for them. Naturally, this has brought up discussion of immigration as a means to solve the problem.

The first obstacle, as pointed out by philosopher Mathias Risse, is that historically the right to international migration has been largely defined as a right to leave one’s own country. According to Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to leave or return to their country, and a right to movement within their country, but there is no established right to settle outside one’s country. As such, Risse pointed out, the right to move—as it exists now—is more akin to other liberty rights, such as the right to marriage, than to claim rights, such as a right to emergency medical attention. Just as people have a right to marry, but no right to demand that any given person marry, individuals now are widely recognized to have a right to leave their own country, but no right to demand to be let in somewhere else. They must first find a partner willing to accept their claim.

It’s an interesting discussion that might be of interest to anyone who enjoys learning about Japan’s position internationally or about the migration discourse in general.

*Note: I don’t want you to think that I’m blaming feminism for lower populations, because I don’t think there’s anything blameworthy with lower populations whatsoever. Our planet is over-crowded, and in all likelihood, you could probably be doing lots more to contribute to the greater well-being of your fellow humans than simply making another one. I mention feminism here because statistically, better-educated women have fewer children, and career women have children later in life. Since educational and workplace equality are goals of feminism, ones which are being accomplished in Japan, I felt clear to bring it up.

As of today, I have lived in Canada for four years.

Before you ask, I’ve only been a Permanent Resident for a fraction of that time. I’m not a citizen, yet. I can’t vote here. I’m still getting used to the idea of parliamentary democracy, although I’m fascinated by the idea that there’s such a thing as a vote of non-confidence. As Jon Stewart said: “You guys can do that?!”

The person who sat at this desk four years ago to tell her friends and family that she’d landed here okay is much different from the one sitting at the desk now. I consider that a good thing. That other person was not okay — she was depleted, wrecked, hollowed-out. I had endured a moment not unlike a psychotic break, only I was painfully aware of every second of it. My first days in Canada — my first months, let’s be honest — were spent mostly in a little ball on the couch, watching broadcasts in languages I’d have to pay a premium for in the States. (Hindi movies! Chinese wu xia dramas! French cooking shows! And a lot of decorating programs in English!) At the time, I had no concept of how my life was going to change. I had no idea that three thousand miles was exactly how far I would have to travel to find exactly what I needed.

When I used to tell people I was American, they would blink twice and say: “Really? You’d never know.” Then I would tell them I was from Seattle, and they said: “Oh, so you were Canadian all along.” This year I went back to Los Angeles and saw the hospital where I was born, and the first homes my parents lived in just afterward, each situated close to the house where my mother and all her siblings grew up. “People used to stop on the street and tell you how cute you were,” my mother said. “Not much has changed,” my husband said. This year was his first visit to California. This year was the first time he saw the Pacific.

This year I also did a quintessentially Canadian thing for the first time: I went skating. I held tight to my mother-in-law’s arm as she guided me across the pond. (It was a real pond, with real water under it, and real kids playing hockey on it.) She used to be a skating instructor once upon a time, so she knew how to be patient with my constant clinging. “The others are saying you’re very brave,” she told me. “I have no idea why,” I answered, and whimpered a little as I teetered momentarily.

They have been a dense four years. Denser than university, in their own way. Not better or worse, or even more exhausting, but thicker. My temper is, if possible, even shorter. My patience is diminished. The hurt and anxiety that filled me when I first came here has been replaced by anger, and occasionally (like when my friends get arrested and beaten, for example) that anger catapults me back to that moment when I first came here — completely exhausted but equally stubborn, determined to stay here and spite everyone who’d ever told me I didn’t really have the right, or that I was doing it all wrong or that I could have made it easier on myself if I’d just been a little nicer, a little meeker, a little more patient or calculating or insert-your-value-of-choice-here. I didn’t get here because I was brave, or clever or strong. Sometimes I’m still not sure how it happened. But I know it wasn’t because I was smooth, or charming, or unafraid, or even nice. I suspect it has more to do with giving up on my pride. In that respect, it was excellent training for a career in writing.

Speaking of which: back to work.

I had a really interesting meeting today. I talked with Justin Ferrato, a student of the Canadian Film Centre Media Lab, about a project that he and his fellow Media Lab students are working on for Nuit Blanche 2010.

I don’t want to give away the content of the project, but it sounds really interesting and I’m excited to see the final result. I was asked by a Media Lab faculty member, Susan LK Gorbet, (who I know from OCAD’s Strategic Foresight and Innovation program) to talk about SF anime, something that I’ve discussed at length at other blogs. It was one of the first times I’d been asked to share my expertise anywhere outside the contexts of academia or fandom. I realized this halfway through explaining the visual metaphors at play in a specific and beloved film clip. By that point I was really enjoying myself: my meeting felt like all the fun parts of teaching (which I really miss, sometimes) wrapped up with all the best parts of panel discussions at cons (without the sleep deprivation). I always forget how much niche data I have stored until I watch someone taking notes on what I say. It’s a nice feeling, like suddenly realizing that the ground underneath you really is solid after all.

At WorldCon in Montreal, I said that the best part of workshopping is when someone tells you that your suggestion is a helpful one. I hold with that sentiment. There’s something really affirming about alleviating someone else’s creative frustrations so they can go ahead and solve the rest of the puzzle on their own. It means that their own contributions make it into the public eye that much faster, enriching the community as a whole. Being part of that process — or being asked to be part of it — is really special. I hope I get asked again, soon.

Yeah, I said it. Wu-Tang Clan vs. The Beatles. 27 glorious tracks of it, in fact, collected in Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers. So far it utterly pwns The Grey Album, but maybe I just like Wu-Tang better than I like Jay-Z. Your mileage may vary. Special thanks to Kay Thaney, she of Science Commons fame, for recommending this.