Towse: views from the hill

Tagged by arkadianriver

Do this:
Grab the nearest book.* Open the book to page 123. Find the fifth sentence. Post that text and the following three sentences, along with the stuff below on your blog, along with the instructions.

[*] ‘nearest’ means you can’t rummage around for a ‘cool’ or ‘intellectual’ book. Really, whatever your hand falls on first.
_______

To freeze a sprinter, the shutter must open and close before the image of the runner perceptibly changes position on the camera’s image plane. Therefore, the faster the subject runs, the faster the shutter speed you will need to stop the action and avoid a blurred image.

A second factor affecting the final image is the camera-to-subject distance.

One elevator door was half-open on an empty shaft, from which drifted hissing wind. The door was coated to look like wood, but a dent at kneel level showed it was black metal. While he squatted, fingering the edge of the depression, something clicked: a second elevator door beside him rolled open.

“Hey, good-lookin’!” the blond driver yells, her hair flapping in the wind. “Don’t go! I think I love you!” Laughing, her friends pull her hat off.

Several people put their arms around me and said keep coming back!

Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794), the revolutionary leader, was himself executed in July 1794. This destruction came not from outside the system; it was produced by the system. As in the later Russian Revolution the revolutionaries on their humanist base had only two options–anarchy or repression.

In a large skillet brown meat, half at a time, in hot oil. Drain off fat. In a 3 1/2- to 4-quart slow cooker combine undrained tomatoes, beef broth, onion, jalapeno or serrano peppers, garlic, cornmeal, chili power, brown sugar, oregano, cumin, and black pepper.

Let anyone who will not believe it, go thither and inquire for himself. There was once an ass whose master had made him carry sacks to the mill for many a long year, but whose strength began at last to fail, so that each day as it came, found him less capable of work. Then his master began to think of turning him out, but the ass, guessing that something was in the wind that boded him no good, ran away, taking the road to Bremen; for there he thought he might get an engagement as town musician.

The bus company? They got another one. Line coach Douglas Fowlkes recalled that the media wrote about the losing streak so much that it was always at the forefront of the players’ minds: “When are they going to win?”

There are also V-shaped dividers that are smaller than the frames; these go in front, to allow a deeper decolletage. In 1958, with the sexual revolution only a few years off, some of the customs inherited from the nineteenth century still survived. Despite the fact that most women now wore girdles, there were still corsets being worn — and not simply by a few elderly ladies, since Mademoiselle Etienne;s handbook contains instructions for making children’s corsets.

Roxane: Les roseaux fournissaient le bois pour vos épées…
Cyrano: Et les maïs, les cheveux blonds pour vos poupées!
Roxane: C’était le temps des jeux…
Cyrano: Des mûrons aigrelets…

Darwin’s ideas are so much a part of our world view that we take them for granted, so much that we actually read the Origin, it does not seem fresh and iconaclastic, but dreary and derivative.

The androgynous beautiful boy has an androgynous sponsor, the male born Uranian Aphrodite whom Plato identifies with homosexual love. While the Archaic kouros is virgorously masculine, the early and high classic beautiful boy perfectly harmonizes masculine and feminine. With the Hellenistic tilt toward women, prefigured by Euripides, the beautiful boy slides toward the feminine, a symptom of decadence.

Praxiteles registers this shift in his ephebic Hermes (ca. 350 BC), which misaligns the elegance of classic contrapposto.

Her demeanor was oddly melodramatic, and she consciously tried to meet the eyes of all of the mourners before she spoke.

“You’ve heard from Pastor Robbins about the life of Lamar, and I’m here to let you know that he didn’t die in vain. No Sirree Bob.”

No Sirree Bob? Joe felt Marybeth squirm next to him. And he felt it again when Melinda Strickland paused and forced a blazing, inappropriate smile.

[Three sentences after the first; "No Sirree Bobs" not counted. WINTERKILL by C.J.Box]

Added: I posted a variant of this back in January 2006.

These are the “winners” of Miss Snark’s Third Irregular Crapometer for which she promised to critique one hundred (+/-) 750wd entries comprised of a query letter and first pages.

I’m bummed. I took a chance, but I’m not one of those who made the cut with the random submission generator. (She had 459 entries! Yikes!)

Still. Miss Snark’s Crapometer challenge kicked my sorry butt and had me revising that critical first page.

I’ll continue on from there. I’ve promised the youngest sprog that a ready-for-critique draft will be ready by the time he gets home from his Americorps stint in Alaska: late October.

Kick yourself in gear, Miss Sally.

Here’s something worth checking out: Helix :: a Speculative Fiction Quarterly.

This magazine is supported entirely by donations.

Editors: William Sanders and Lawrence Watt-Evans

Jim Macdonald’s post on TNH’s Making Light covering AVPU and other basic EMT protocols is one of the most useful things I’ve read in a long while.

Be sure to read the comments tail too (currently at 83 comments and rising), for added info, including a link to the Vial of Life Web site.

Spun through the list of publishers that accept direct queries, proposals, manuscripts from writers and cleared out dead links, moved publishers who now will not accept work directly from writers to the bottom of the page, added additional publishers and otherwise updated the publishers list at Towse’s Links to Online Guidelines.

Japanese censor pregnant Britney (Photo) – Pravda.Ru

plus +++

Sexual contacts with aliens occur frequently.

(Yes, I know. Old news. Still …)

Lenin must be spinning.
Khruschev must be spinning.
Heck, Gorbachev must be spinning.

We visited three close-by restaurants within the last week or two and all are worth a repeat visit. This doesn’t happen very often, folks. In fact, I don’t think it’s ever happened that we ate at three new-to-us restaurants and came up with three repeatables in a row.

Impala [caution: soundtrack]
501 Broadway (just W of Kearny on the S side of Broadway)
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 982-5299
Open Table reservations

Good Mexican food. Fresh ingredients. I’m not saying that the food’s better than the tamales at Lucy’s on White Road in San Jose, but I am saying I’d be happy to make a return visit. The salsas weren’t very spicy, perhaps a nod to the tourist trade. We ordered the Monday-night-special half-price pitchers of margarita. Impala doesn’t water down the margaritas just because they’re serving them half-price.

I just checked the site and see no mention of half-off bottles of wine or half-price pitchers of margarita, so maybe that was a time-limited offer to draw in the locals.

We were upstairs in the restaurant. A record release party was happening downstairs in the VIP lounge. Our experience might’ve been different if there’d been a crush or loud music, but the night was relatively young and it was Monday. We were able to enjoy the food and the margaritas without stress.

The Helmand Restaurant
430 Broadway (just W of Montgomery on the N side of Broadway)
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 362-0641

Afghani food. I’ll lift the descriptions from the menu.

We walked in on a Monday night and had a table without waiting. The restaurant was near capacity. After we ordered, a basket full of Afghani bread was delivered to our table with three pots of sauce: green, white and red. The red sauce was sweet, spiced tomato. The green sauce had cilantro as the base, I think, and was my favorite. The white sauce was a typical yogurt and mint concoction.

We shared appetizers: Aushak (Afghan ravioli filled with leeks and scallions, served on yogurt-mint topped with ground beef sauce) and Kaddo (Pan-fried then baked baby pumpkin seasoned with sugar and served on yogurt garlic sauce, topped with ground beef sauce). Both were scrumptious.

For my entree, I ordered Qabelee (Pallow baked with chunks of lamb tenderloin, raisins and glazed julienne of carrots). Pallow is boiled rice mixed with oil, nutmeg, cinnamon, cardamom, cumin and black pepper, then baked.

His nibs had the special: Lamb Lawand (Leg of Lamb sauteed with onion, tomatoes, garlic, mushrooms, fresh cilantro, capers, hot pepper, yogurt and spices served with sauteed spinach and challow rice.) Challow rice is boiled rice mixed with oil and cumin, then baked.

Both of the entrees were super. Both types of rice delish. The portions were far larger than we’d expected for the price on the menu. I couldn’t finish my Qabelee and took it home to heat up for breakfast yesterday.

We shared a dessert: Sheerberaing (Rice pudding, served with pistachio and cardamom). The rice pudding is not my grandma’s rice pudding or even the rice pudding at Sears Restaurant. This rice pudding is not a creamy pudding with raisins and cinnamon but more a rice gruel (think “rice” as in a Balinese rice breakfast) sweetened, and served with pistachio and cardamom. Delicious, I thought.

We plan to go back some weekday for the lunch buffet, so we can try a wider variety of items off the menu in one swell foop.

Our third keeper …

Da Flora – A Venetian Ostaria
701 Columbus Ave. (NW corner at Filbert)
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 981-4664

We ate here last night for the first time. We’d keep walking by on our way somewhere else. We’d sometimes think of it on Monday nights when we wanted to go out to eat, but Da Flora isn’t open Mondays.

We hadn’t realized that the restaurant was subtitled “a Venetian ostaria” and has a Venetian vibe with pictures and lighting and menu items that reminded us of our visit to Venice in June. We walked in and were seated immediately. The menu, which is handwritten, says “we strongly prefer cash” but the staff just waved her hand nevermind when we told her we hadn’t brought much cash with us.

Took a while for the staff to get back for the order, but we didn’t mind. The place is a haven for people watching. Be sure to ask for water, if you want some. Delicious focaccia with kosher salt topping comes after you order. We drank a Tedeschi valpolicella with our meal.

I had carpaccio for an appetizer. The meat was so tender and sliced so thin that it just fell apart as I scooped it up with my fork. Served with drizzles of creamy horseradish sauce, capers and bits of argula. The best. His nibs had the sweet potato gnocchi with pancetta and a sherry cream sauce. Superb. To die for.

For the main course, I had duck livers, served Venetian style, with caramelized onions, sage and pancetta. The livers were served with polenta that was soft but fried on one side to create a crusty top. I be a happy camper.

His nibs had veal rolled up with a stuffing of breadcrumbs, shrooms, etc. The veal was still pink, not overcooked. There was not a lot of stuffing (less stuffing than meat). The veal was served on a bed of orzo and pesto. (At least I think it was orzo.) The pasta was very rich and, lucky me, his nibs shared his portion with me.

Dessert was pistachio cake with vanilla cream, which we shared. I asked for a double espresso. No espresso. No coffee even, they had no coffee. They hadn’t flagged down the coffee merchant that afternoon to get more coffee. They’d make me a pot of tea! Um. No.

I ordered a glass of a Sicilian dessert wine which went perfectly with the dense pistachio cake. Not too sweet, but a heavy enough wine that you would not want to share a bottle with a meal.

***
So there you have it. Three restaurants, all within a half mile walk, all worth repeating. Of the three, choose Impala if you have a hankering for Mexican food, or margaritas. We don’t have much Mexican food in North Beach. Taqueria El Zorro (at Columbus and Broadway) serves up Mexican food, and we on occasion stop by for Dos Equis and burritos, but Taqueria El Zorro is more a lunch place.

If I wasn’t hankering for Mexican, I’d be hard pressed to choose between Da Flora and The Helmand. Both are good in their way. They serve totally different sorts of food. Both are white table cloth. The Helmand is quiet and subdued and has seemingly effortless service. Da Flora felt more like the neighborhood trattoria with staff that doesn’t feel a need to compete with the Relais & Chateau staff down at Gary Danko.

Don’t get me wrong. The Da Flora folk seem like nice people who love their food but they also seem like they would give back any attitude they got. Added note: Da Flora closes up shop relatively early. A couple came in at 8:45 p.m. and were told that they’d just told the kitchen staff they could close up. Sorry! (The couple said, “This is the third restaurant we’ve gone to. Can’t you serve us?” One of the other diners said, “Maybe you should’ve stopped at the first restaurant.” Hm. Maybe the clientele has attitude too.)

Air at MSP airport being tested after 19 fall ill inside
Pepper spray or Mace was likely to blame for closing the area around a checkpoint.

by Chao Xiong, Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St.Paul, MN)

Discarded pepper spray or Mace was the likely culprit in a chemical alarm Tuesday morning at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that sent 19 workers to area hospitals.

Patrick Hogan, speaking for the Metropolitan Airports Commission, said, “They could find absolutely no sign of air contamination. It’s important that people recognize that we don’t have any indication that this was a deliberate act to disrupt airport operations.”

No, not deliberate, but disruptive anyway. Boy howdy.

Incidents like this shouldn’t be a huge surprise, should they?

ing commented on this recently, maybe at a blog that recently moved, leaving all comments behind. Maybe not, but in any case, I can’t find her comment, so, paraphrasing ing — from memory.

ing said something to the effect of so you’re not allowed to take certain gels and liquids and what-not on planes because you might be intending to mix certain gels and liquids together and “all go BOOM!” so instead you’ll take all the gels and liquids and toss them together in a big bin and later the TSA will dispose of this large glob of goods … where? how?

Um. Right. Just saying.

[heads up courtesy of John M. Ford]

I got here, the way I usually get somewhere.

I was off tracking down whether Caitlin Blasdell (former Harper Prism editor, now agenting with Liza Dawson Agency and, it turns out, Charlie Stross’ agent) had a Web site.

She doesn’t, but I came across Kathryn Cramer’s Web site which had a collection of links to “literary agent info” which had a link to Neil Gaiman’s Journal and a post titled Everything you wanted to know about literary agents….

I’m reading through Gaiman’s post which includes a long and detailed response on the getting of agents and agenting that he’d solicited from Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

… and somewhere in the bits of information and list of resources, in a category labelled “Miscellaneous,” TNH mentions Internet Resources for writers, describing it as “an oppressively compendious list of writers’ resources.”

I’m sure she meant “oppressively compendious” as the bestest of compliments.

Ah, the sweet fragrance of laurel leaves.

San Francisco Daily Photography, San Francisco Photos by Manuel Guerzoni

“this site is about photographs. i add a little bit of information with each one but i’m always careful about not giving too much away: i really want for the photos to speak, not the words. all photos were shot in the city of san francisco, there has been no photos posted from surrounding areas (maybe some day i will, but for right now, this site is about the city). no archive photos are being posted, each photo posted was taken the day before, or occasionally, a few days before. all photos are candid and undergo post-processing as i shoot almost everything in raw format. except for the few photos where i experimented selective coloring, only white balance is being adjusted during post-processing, or conversion to black&white with adjustment of contrast on some of them. photos can be browsed using the browse link in the top right corner.”

“Browse” is sorted by architecture, abstracts, people, black and white, and scapes.

Some photos are titled. A map click shows you approximately where the photo was taken. Use the labelled arrows to click through the day-to-day or simply click on the photograph to move one day backward.