S.KRAUSE

Putting the ars back in arse

It is only Wednesday, but it is a shopping day, a baking day (that is usually Thursday), a picnic day, and a coding day. Not much in the way of pit bulls, popes or weird yahoos.

My brother emailed today to see if I wanted to go watch the new (and final?) Star Wars film with him in a few days ... I guess neither of us has an overwhelming urge to see it on “opening day”

• A StarWars “Acccesory” (this one is for the dogs)

Last night I met Corina at the Terrace. Getting out the house (apartment) to watch the sunset was nice. While chatting I mentioned a quote from Douglas Hofstadter’s Fluid Concents and Creative Analogies, which plays an important role in my dissertation. Hofstadter, in an appendix of sorts to a chapter, cites Bipin Indurkhya’s Metaphor and Cognition: An Interactionist Approach (1992), which references Stephen Spender’s poem “Seascape,” “in which sunlight reflecting on waves is likened to someone strumming a harp.” (Hofstadter 295). For Indurkhya this sort of metaphor is a similarity-creating metaphor, versus the standard similarity-based metaphors. Hofstadter takes issue with this, for he sees Indurkhya distinguishing between metaphors that invent and those that discover relationships, and for Hofstadter “all analogies (and metaphors) are cases of discovered rather than invented similarity, with some similarities simply being harder to recognize than others.” (Hofstadter 295) I do not necessarily agree with Hofstadter’s position, which happens to be a bit too platonic for my taste, but de does reference an earlier work of his where he goes into the question further, so I will not yet judge.

From the terrace we moved on to Espresso Royale; or rather, after a walk down the shore a bit and a discussion of deep fried cheese curds, the target became State Street Brats. But as her stomach was not up to it, we settled for coffee, tea, and pastries, and the talk turned to movies, for she was returning my brother’s copy of Ronin. I launched into a massive discussion of Alone in the Dark, one of the worst movies I have seen in ages (but I did not pay for it, so I am only out my time), but watching it was worth it in a sense ... it was bad, but had hints of interest ... as if in other hands and in a context relieved from the movie’s video game origins it might have explored its metaphysical and scientific baggage and allowed its actors to do more than collect paychecks. I will write more about this movie at a later date.

• Alone in the Dark (movie review)
• Alone in the Dark (“commentary tracks of the damned” by The Onion)

I got to Alone in the Dark by way of its terrible car chase, which I contrasted with that in Ronin ... a car chase that one could enjoy not just for its role, its semiotic value, but for its construction and execution. From Ronin it was on to The Crimson Rivers, which also features Jean Reno, along with Vincent Cassel. Vincent was in Brotherhood of the Wolf, which Corina had not seen, so we packed up and headed off to my place to watch it, and shortly after leaving Espresso Royale we encountered Andrea, Alyssa, and Katie (spelling), Alyssa’s rooomate (the former two being from “Der Vogelkopp”) and there was a brief discussion of movies, French actors, and this website. They went their way, we went ours, and the movie was watched. Animals were killed, but it was fiction, though the brutal nonchalance of the hunt inspires disgust and moral outrage on the part of the viewer.

After the film much discussion was conducted about said movie. Eventually I had to give my mouth and mind a rest.

I awoke late today and after showering and eating and catching up on the daily websites I checked my email and discovered some glitches in my comment submission system. It is a home-brew system, a topic upon which I have touched before.

Because of the threat of SQL injection, no user-supplied information should be trusted and passed unfiltered to the database. Moreover, no user-supplied data should be passed on to the logic of the script without first being checked. I already had a function to strip out all but a few allowed HTML tags. I used a few built-in PHP functions to deal with quoting, but they were not quite doing the job I wanted. In particular, single quotes in a comment were not being handled properly and were thus being rejected (quite properly, I might add) by the database, causing an error. I eventually just wrote my own little regex function to strip all quotes and replace them, based on context, with escaped-smart-quotes. So far, so good.

Soon another error will appear, but it is a fun learning experience.

I use PHP and SSI to meet my file-inclusion needs. If server-side scripting is not available to you, the iframe might be a (client-side) solution. It does not have the browser compatability of PHP or SSI (since they are browser neutral), but it works well for the majority of viewers out there today

• Scripting Iframes: Tutorial and Examples

I left shortly after noon to go shopping. I hopped on the 5 out to Woodman’s, where I purchased eggs, cheese, sugar, dried fruit, and a few other items. Corina arrived at 4pm, we made cornbread and bread pudding, and at 6pm we headed next door to the international co-op for a party/picnic—I suppose it was in celebration of Katherine’s (spelling) graduation. Brats were consumed; chicken was grilled; veggies were sliced, diced, and even spiced; beer was tapped; and dessert was provided in great quantities—bread pudding, cake, cheesecake, and berry torte. Once the weather turned a bit sour and everyone retreated inside for cake, some dancing occured on the floor, both to ABBA and to hip-hop. I merely observed; Kim, too, stated that she does not dance. After 10pm we left; I collected my pudding pan and the remains of the cornbread.

Bread Pudding with whiskey sauce:

• 2 cups milk
• 1/2 stick of butter (1/4 cup)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon or nutmeg (or both!)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs (slightly beaten)
• 6 cups dry bread cubes (8 slices)
• 1/2 cup raisins
• Whiskey sauce

1. Heat oven to 350(F).
2. Heat milk and butter over medium heat until melted and hot.
3. Mix sugar, cinnamon/nutmeg, salt and eggs in a large bowl until blended. Stir in bread and raisins. Stir in milk mixture. Pour into an ungreased baking dish (e.g. 8“x8“). Place into rectagular pan (e.g. 13“9“) and pour boiling water into rectangular pan until 1 inch deep
4. Bake uncovered 40 to 45 minutes (or until knife inserted comes out clean).
5. Pour whiskey sauce over the top.

To prepare the whiskey sauce, combine 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, 1 cup of brown sugar, and 1/4 cup whiskey in a sauce pan. Bring to a boil and stir constantly until the mixture is smooth.

Word of the day: opprobrium: (noun)

1. Disgrace arising from exceedingly shameful conduct; ignominy.
2. Scornful reproach or contempt: a term of opprobrium.
3. A cause of shame or disgrace.

Translations:

Nederlands (Dutch)smaad, schande

Français (French)
opprobre, mépris

Deutsch (German)
n. - Schande

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. υβρεολόγιο, επιτίμηση, όνειδος

Italiano (Italian)
obbrobrio, vituperio, infamia, orrore

Português (Portuguese)
n. - opróbrio (m), injúria, desonra

Русский (Russian)
негодование, презрение

Español (Spanish)
n. - oprobio, deshonor, ignominia

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - smälek, vanära

中國話 (Traditional Chinese)
n. - 恥辱, 咒罵

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 汚名, 恥辱, 軽蔑, 非難, 不名誉

العربيه(Arabic)
‏(الاسم) عمل مخز‏

עברית‬ (Hebrew)
n. - ‮גידוף, עלבון, בושה‬

For more information see answers.com.

Music by Emir Kusturica and the No Smoking Orchestra.

—May 18 2005