Now Put on Your Shoes

And hie yourself hence over to the "Hark! A Vangrant!" blog or Kate Beaton's actual site to check out the latest series of one-off comics she's making, based on a list of historical figures the general public submitted. The consensus was as follows:

1- Soren Kierkegaard
2- Benedict Arnold
3- Agnes McPhail
4- Mary Shelley
5- Queen Elizabeth I
6- Emperor Norton
7- Benjamin Disraeli
8- Nikola Tesla
9- Genghis Khan
10- David Hume
11- Henry VIII
12- Thomas Beckett
13- Jerry Thomas
14- Pope John Paul II
15- Geoffrey Chaucer
16- Marcel Duchamp
17-Sylvanus Griswold Morley
18-The CBC
19- Jean Baptiste Lamarck
20-Heritage Moments

Here is one of her little autobiographical comics.

(click to enbiggen)

So far, so amusing. I have to admit I love Kate and her quirkitudes. She writes and draws charming comics about life in the Maritime provinces, and other such goodness. She hasn't been an internet presence for all that long, but I can see her going far. *waves* Hi Kate! Do well!

Kitchens around the world

Here's an excellent resource for international recipes. I do a lot of Thai food, so this will be very handy for extra recipes there, as well as letting me branch out.

We finally got a mortar and pestle the other day, so that'll let me use things like the whole cardamom leaves we have other than to just drop whole ones in soup.

The Darkest Night of the Year

So, it being Christmas-time, and this being Cincinnati, this Saturday we made the first step in what we hope will be a long-standing tradition of yearly attendance at the homecoming (from tour) show put on by Over the Rhine at the Taft Theater. The show was breathtakingly lovely, as is the norm for OTR, though I hadn't seen them in several years.

It's been so long since we've been to a proper show. There are several potential opportunities coming up, though, so we'll have to get off our duffs and go to one or more. Yo La Tengo, the Bravery, Band of Horses, etc. We're lousy hipsters. Not that that's anything new.

Speaking of musics and such-lot, I've added a last.fm player to the blog here. I'm having a bit of fun with that, since it logs everything you listen to, making it possible to create playlists and "radio stations" of your songs online from whatever ones they also have in the Last.fm library. I have high hopes, though undoubtedly the player will pick out some random embarrassing song and just play that over and over. I'll regret forever looking up the theme song for "Hong Kong Phooey" or whatever. Actually though, I'm sure what you'll find is a big chunk of Christmas music, since I just loaded the player this week, and have been listening to a lot of Sufjan Stevens holiday songs. Hopefully you'll find it gets more diverse eventually.

New Music Alert!

The ways of the internet are mysterious and convoluted. Sometimes in a conversation, one will try to figure out the string of conversation that led to the current topic--In the same way, I've been trying to figure out exactly what brought me to the Myspace site of Rich Aucoin and his lovely music.

I think there may have been a conversation involving babies on Fark, and someone mentioned the Halifax comedy troupe Picnicface, and their "Harness the power of 400 babies!" sketch, which somehow led me to Youtube and one of their other sketches, which had Rich Aucoin's music during the credits, and that led me to his videos on Youtube, which led me to his Myspace page. Whew. I think.

Anyway, I suggest you check out his stuff. It's lovely melodious indie pop and you will enjoy it. You will. I friended Rich on Myspace and he wanted to know how in the world someone in Ohio had heard of him. It's the world wide webs!

And since 'tis the season, I'd also like to offer this sync'd version of the How the Grinch Stole Christmas, with music by Rich Aucoin. He did a pretty amazing job of writing and working the music to go with the film.

Plus, the man rode his bike across Canada to raise money for cancer research. How about that?? He's a bike-riding, music making machine.