Despite my professed intentions, another spin-off posting from the 31st motss.con in Montréal a week ago. All about poutine, specifically about poutine fans — poutineurs — and about one of poutine’s three crucial ingredients, cheese curds, especially the highly valued quality of their squeakiness.
(#1) Personal Facebook page of a poutine fan
One more visit to the Gay Village of Montreal, after yesterday’s posting “The Gay Village, Swiss Chalet, poutine”, in which #1 provided an aerial view “of Rue Ste-Catherine E. in the Gay Village, with its overhead rainbow-colored balls”. The reference is to a huge public art installation on Ste-Catherine (which has, inevitably, spawned lots of “We’ve got balls!” joking). The installation as experienced on the ground (as intended by the artist):
(#1)
Further notes on the 31st motss.con in Montréal (which came to an end with a stragglers’ breakfast on Monday); background in my 8/3 posting “The rainbow pillars of Montréal”. And further explorations of things Swiss, or at least things called Swiss, in particular that Canadian institution, the Swiss Chalet restaurant chain. Motssers on holiday in Québec, food: that means poutine, (by report) consumed often and by many during the con.
Brief visual background on the con’s location, the Gay Village of the city:
(#1) Aerial view of Rue Ste-Catherine E. in the Gay Village, with its overhead rainbow-colored balls (from Chris Ambidge)
It started back in April, when I acquired a small succulent garden (of mostly silver-blue plants) at Trader Joe’s and re-planted its five crowded inhabitants in a more suitable pot. They quickly grew too big for that space, so in May I bought a considerably larger turquoise pot for them to live in (and added a silvery creeping sedum and some ornamental stones). Now it’s early August, and most of the original plants are huge; one is blooming, another has a flower shoot blasting skyward, and two more look like they’re planning on blossoming. It’s all a bit alarming. When their mania for reproduction has run its course, it will be time for a much larger pot. Or something.
Today’s Rhymes With Orange combines two cartoon memes, Psychiatrist and Elephant in the Room:
(#1)
Not the first time this combination has been drawn.
Texties are cartoon-like compositions in which a pictorial component is entirely absent or merely decorative, not essential to the point of the composition — in effect, words-only cartoons; they can be intended as humor, like gag cartoons, or as serious commentary, like political cartoons.
Two have come to me via friends on Facebook recently — both funny, both taking off on specific registers in modern printed English: the lost and found poster (in the texty “FOUND:CAKE”, or F:C), and the amazing-fact texty on the net (in the texty “[plant facts!]”, or pf!). F:C is an elaborate translation, in detail, of an item of popular culture; pf! is an undermining of the amazing-fact texty form itself.
(There will be talk of men’s bodies, among a number of other things, so you might want to exercise some caution.)
Yesterday was National Underwear Day (utilitarian garments elevated to objects of play, desire, and fashion display), today is Hiroshima Day (remembering the horror of an event of mass destruction, death, and suffering). An uncomfortable, even absurd, juxtaposition, but there is a link in the symbolism of the two occasions. In my comics feed for these occasions: four language-related cartoons on familiar language-related themes, none of them having anything to do with either underwear or nuclear holocaust, probably for good reason.
Cartoons first, then the underwear and atomic bombs.
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At Palo Alto’s Gamble Garden this morning, two sort of familiar plants — a big upright succulent just coming into bloom, a small tree (or large shrub) with silver-green leaves and still green berries. The first a new (to me) variety of the familiar spectabile species (‘Autumn Fire’ rather than ‘Autumn Joy’ — hey, fall is coming fast), with a unfamiliar (to me) genus name (Hylotelephium instead of Sedum). The second both like the familiar olive (Olea europaea) and like the familiar Russian-olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia), but not quite either of them: a merely olive-like Elaeagnus rather than an actual Olea, and commutata ‘silverberry’ rather than angustifolia.
Following up on my “Creams” posting yesterday, about names for gay bars, Betsy Herrington wrote to say that when she lived in NYC (in Chesea) in the late 90s, “there was a wonderful gay toga bar down the street called Vidi Vici Veni”. A bookish joke (playing on the slogan Veni Vidi Vici ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’ attributed to Julius Caesar, and using the slang sense ‘ejaculate’ of the English verb come) familiar to me, but not as the name of a gay bar. On a t-shirt:
(#1)
A friend in the UK writes on Facebook:
It just occurred to me that Creams would be a great name for a gay pub.
(but he hasn’t found a pub by that name). Then I discovered that this musing was posted on the occasion of his visiting Creams Cafe (a dessert shop specializing in Italian gelato) in Liverpool.