Thank you so much for mentioning me with Richard Becker's little wangy

Oh no! I have been linked by an elderly man! Is this the beginning of a tumultuous loss of innocence? Depravity beyond several very wild dreams???????????

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Or words to that effect.

Atboth mentioned my three Lolita posts in a link-dump on Friday.
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2009/09/everything-fits.html

Three quotes:

ONE
"I am thrilled to bits that a thirteen-year old is reading Nabokov. Perhaps it isn't healthy, but I shan't say anything. I started reading Nabokov when I was thirteen, and knew all about the nictitating grasses by the time I was fifteen."

We all know how you turned out.

TWO
"Vladimir Nabokov is food for developing minds, nourishment for the soul."

Rich and fatty.

THREE
"Just avoid the depressing second half of Ada - it isn't nearly so sprightly and joyous as the first half, in which Van and Ada first mutually frustrate, then obsessively conjugate."

I am SO not going there.


You mentioned my posts after talking about Snooky's underwear and Grant's thing for Richard Becker's penis. Thrilling company, but, um, disturbing? I'm sure that panties are a metafor of something, deeply symbolic, but Grant and his penis-envy are NOT entirely normal.

I myself have utterly NO INTEREST in Richard Becker's small penis. I'm sure in it's own way it is quite charming. But I'm not curious. I've seen photos of Richard Becker. I'm just not into fossilized old poops. Yes, I like some things that are small and cute. But absolutely not if they're attached to dried-up ancient cheeses.

Grant, if you read this blog, please remember that.


周小燕

Charlotte Haze and her dishy daughter

He should've seen that coming - Lolita will undoubtedly grow up to be physically like her mom. At twelve she's already showing signs of a dulling of the curves due to plumpness. No, that only looks like baby fat.

Charlotte Haze almost raped poor Humbert earlier on in the book, but his innocent little Lolita, the unspoiled little angel, proved more "vestigal" virgin than 'vestal'.
She had it on with a lump at camp.

Nabokov doesn't really make clear why Lolita "seduced" Humbert. Perhaps she simply wanted to get it over with, but more likely she though of it as a way of getting her hooks into the man. He proves a willing victim. Overkill. The merest of hooks would've been more than enough.

She's cunning. Knowing in one sense, but she doesn't really know. She is simply showing off her superficial awareness of a new party trick to an appreciative adult.

Of course, Charlotte's only hook for Humbert was her daughter, and though enormously strong, it wasn't enough. Charlotte never caught Humbert, he simply swam into the boat. She lost her grip, lost her life, and Humbert was still hooked.


They drive all over the country in Charlotte's car, heading further west. There's something twisted about using the dead mother's vehicle as the device that binds them together in perpetual shuddering motion. Especially as this is the second time they have done so - a journey to recapture her lost innocence, his lost enchantment.

She was never innocent (just rather ignorant), and he exchanges his glib cynical attitude for paranoia and disillusionment.
Things will happen soon. I sense an impeding gloom called Clare Quilty.


周小燕

Nabokov and Lolita - Nymphets in the bellfry

One third of the way in. So far, this is very European. Professor Humbert plays his old-world intellectual cards for all they're worth, the black widow, Mrs. Haze, oohs and melts and drips all over him, and Dolly Haze just flashes her sweaty adolescent attributes with studied innocence.

Humbert describes the appeal of the innocent-seeming girl in wildly over the top terms, almost as if he's writing filthy poetry. When Lolita speaks, it's dull and flat, like someone who hides everything inside of her, even though Humbert is the one who has to keep everything secret. Mrs. Haze is efusively dull, vibrantly boring.

Humbert sees curves where there aren't any, Charlotte Haze couldn't find anything curved on her own plump body if it came up and bit her in the guts.


I wonder if the name 'Beardsley School for Girls' is a deliberate reference to Aubrey Beardsley, whose ink-drawings are decadent and obscene, and often show prepubescent naked girls - except when they are filled with delicious big breasted harlots. Or odd sexless pudgy man-boys.
He was a man of Catholic sensibilities, so I'm sure he would've loved to have done the illustrated or manga version of Lolita.


周小燕

Lolita

Stuff about Michael Jackson has been on television for the last two months, reaching a crescendo yesterday when they finally buried him.

The news has been full of that man who kindapped a ten year old and raped her for eighteen years. Two solid weeks of sordidity.

So this past week, the local public televion station broadcast the 1962 version of Lolita, starring James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers and Sue Lyon.


Perhaps after all the bad press, they decided that society needed a refresher course on how pedophilia is really supposed to be done. Or maybe they simply wanted to show the classy upscale version. Tweedy intellectuals seduce teenagers so much better, yes?

However.


Humbert! Humbert! Humbert! Humbert! Humbert! Humbert! Humbert!

Sue Lyon does NOT look like a twelve year old. Not unless bovine growth hormone was all over the dairy industry back in the sixties.
Humbert Humbert dithers and waffles, no guts whatsoever. Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers) is an extremely irritating man, you wish Humbert would just shoot him at the beginning, but nO!!!!!! he just allows the idiot to talk and talk and talk! Shelley Winters is a cow.
Lolita is a chip-eating coke drinking round bottomed slut. And there is no sex in the movie.

It's not very realistic.

But it is very entertaining.
I'm gonna read the book next.


周小燕

It smelled like shrimp!

Or maybe lobster. I like lobster and shrimp, so I was alright with the aroma that came in from the Bay. Fishy.

Somedays the air is moist with 'fishy'.

On Stockton Street between Pacific and Washington it is ALWAYS moist with 'fishy'. There are several stores there with live seafood and gawking tourists (those are NOT for sale, you can have them free!), and several more which specialize in dried intensified hoisien flavors, such things as gon pui (dried scallop 乾貝), ho si (dried oyster 蠔豉 or 蚝豉), ha mei (dried shrimp 蝦米). And many others.

These are all delicious added to food.


*** 蠔豉 * 乾貝 * 蝦米 ***

Dried shrimp are used for their sweet and savory flavor, not at all the same as fresh shrimp. Mostly in soups and braised dishes, as well as dimsum.
Both dried scallop and dried oyster are often used in rice soup and slow cooked dishes. Especially some vegetable dishes where a touch of 'fishy' is necessary. What you do is soak them in a little warm water till softened, then add them before closing the lid.

The best qualities can be expensive, but the difference is enormous. So it is worth it to buy top notch 'fishy'.
Ask the merchant if you are curious.


周小燕

Fighting over a dead man

My uncle lent me a book to read. Funeral Games, by Mary Renault. Difficult. Mostly because of the names. One might think that names aren't THAT important, but these are all Greek.

I think that many of the people in this historical novel snuff it throughout the latter half of the book. Probably okay, as I am less vested in them than in their environment. This is like a whodunit in which one by one they go to the woodshed, and don't return.

The author doesn't like women - Alexander's wives Stateira and Roxanne are dull and conniving, vengefull and vicious. None of the other women in Alexander's life are pleasant either. They're bitches, bitches, just bitches.

At least his scheming generals and friends are fairly emotionally honest about their greed and their hunger for power, brutally honest. Their honesty destroys everything Alexander achieved.

The nicest and most likeable character is probably the one man who dominates the tale by not being there - he's been dead since the beginning. Because his friends, lovers, and soldiers have such intensity for him, they remain rather human, and the story stays gripping.


周小燕

Racist New Zealand pig woman!

This statement I found on the BBC site proves that some white people need an attitude adjustment.


"It's not like Vietnamese or Chinese cultures where dogs are farmed for food. "

[Robyn Kippenberger, Chief Executive of New Zealand's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals]

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8218534.stm


Say what?!?

You mean vicious bigotted biased poisonous BITCH!

Firstly, most of us have NEVER eaten dog.
Secondly, we were civilized for centuries BEFORE you people stopped eating each other.
Thirdly, you tofu-snarfing vegetable loving racist, you guys invented systematic cruelty to animals - chicken farms, fur farms, modern pig ranching, veal, and force fed ducks.

So take your oh so superior white trash attitude about other people and stuff it in your ear, you offensive old cow! You stink!


周小燕

Mooncakes, yay!

I love mooncakes! Every year I can't wait till the mid-autumn festival rolls around, so that I can pig out on lots and lots of mooncakes. I really like the double yolk refined lotus seedpaste (雙黃白蓮蓉月餅 seung wong pak lien yong ywet beng) or the bean-paste (豆沙月餅 dow sa ywet beng) mooncakes, which can be found at Mee Mee (美美餅食公司) on Stockton, or at the Eastern Bakery (東亞餅家) on Grant.

The mid-autumn festival (中秋節 chong chau jit) is the fifteenth day of the eighth month, which is on October third. There's a whole lot of story about it and what it means. All you need to know is MOONCAKES!
Which are starting to become available now.


Lotus seed is lotus seed - does it NEED an explanation?
Dow sa, (豆沙 "bean mud") is ground boiled azuki beans with sugar and oil used as a filling for pastries. If you're white you probably won't like it once it's been explained to you, so eat it before someone tells you what it is.
There's also Ng-yan (五仁 five nut-kernels: pumpkin seed, melon seed, sesame, almond, and walnuts or peanuts) which has chunks candied wintermelon (糖冬瓜 tong tung gwa) mixed in. But you have to like it, otherwise you wasted your dollars!


MEE MEE BAKERY 美美餅食公司
1328 Stockton Street (between Vallejo and Broadway)
San Francisco, CA 94133.
415-362-3204

EASTERN BAKERY 東亞餅家
720 Grant Avenue (btwn Sacramento and Clay, corner of Commercial Alley)
San Francisco, CA 94108
415-433-7973


Six whole weeks of mooncakes. It just can't get any better. Yay!


周小燕

Chinkiness and tinsel

On beautiful sunny days in San Francisco the European tourists bloom. You can tell that they are European, as they look different. And smell different. Sometimes very different. And be different I mean something else.
It's probably all that walking they do. Busts out a sweat.

But, speaking of smelling different, I've often wondered if the tourists like Chinatown for its colorful quantness - overflowing garbage cans, colored lanterns, Chinky-winky decorations, plastic and tinsel Chinesey decorative touches, or merely for the fact that a large number of yellow people are in evidence.

Probably isn't the large number of yellow people in evidence - Daly city got the same, so does Mountain View. But NO BUGGERY TOURISTS!!!!!!!!!!!!! In fact, the Mountain View downtown area is almost entirely yellow people. Not even the guey low from the surrounding area go there much. It is far TOO Chinese.

But here in SF, we have just the right balance. Cute, colorful, exotic fripperies, plenty yellow people, and lotsa overflowing garbage cans (cause there are too many yellow people and not enough garbage men). So we get ALL the tourists. Who take pictures of the frip, the garbage, and the yellow.

Oh we are so lucky.


周小燕

Smells like flowers

It is strange what happens when it is summer in San Francisco. The smells change. Many of the downtown streets, which normally smell of pee, now smell of sewers. And some of the Chinatown alleys smell of incense and garbage.
The further down hill, the worse the smell. Horrible.

There is an alley near my house that smells of moss and sweet flowers, because it is overgrown and too far uphill for the street people (we mustn't call them bums!) to come. And the beer-drinkers haven't discovered it either. It is very nice in the morning when the sun comes out, which is around ten or ten thirty, after the fog.

I do not want to go in there any other time, only when it is bright. It is scary at other times. Sometimes somebody is sleeping under the bushes there. But you can't smell him if you don't come too close. I think he probably has somewhere to shower. He must like the flowers, I hope.


周小燕

Kimura Sensei

On another blog I found mister Kimura - Kimura Sensei (木村先生) in Japanese. Mister Kimura is the teacher in an anime about seven girls going to a highschool in Japan. The anime is called Azumanga Daioh (あずまんが大王), meaning Azumanga 'great king'. Dai oh (大王) is the name of the magazine in which the manga on which the anime is based first showed up.
So the name of the anime is wrong, it should be Azu-anime Daioh (あずま アニメ 大王).

Also, Azumanga is a combination of the author's surname and the word manga (or anime). The author is Azuma (あずま or in Kanji: 東 but could also be written 吾妻) Kiyohiko (きよひこ or 清彦). He also drew Hentai manga and anime. Hentai means sexy or perverted. I have not seen any of those.
Azumanga Daioh is not about sex, and there is nothing depraved anywhere in it. Except for mister Kimura. Who isn't really depraved, being really rather innocent. And sweet. In an innocently sweet and totally pervy fashion.

The objects of his peculiar affections are the girl-students Kaori (かおり), also known as Kaorin, Ayumu Kasuga (春日 歩, Kasuga Ayumu), who is nicknamed Osaka (大阪), Chiyo-chan (美浜 ちよ, Mihama Chiyo), Tomo Takino (滝野 智, Takino Tomo), Koyomi Mizuhara (水原 暦, Mizuhara Koyomi), miss Sakaki (榊) , and Kagura (神楽) .
Mister Kimura is married. And myopic. His glasses make him seem a worse pervert than he probably is.

Kaori is sweet, short, and shy, and has a crush on Sakaki which is unrequited. Mister Kimura has a crush on Kaorin which is also unrequited. Thank god.

There are two other teachers, both female. Yukari-sensei (谷崎 ゆかり, Tanizaki Yukari), the English teacher; Kurosawa-sensei (黒沢 みなも, Kurosawa Minamo?), also known as Nyamo (にゃも) who teaches phys ed.
Yukari Sensei is not soundly based in the real world, or entirely emotionally stable. Nyamo is pleasant and po-faced.

The series is very amusing. Much of it is available on youtube, and Wikipedia has a lot to say about it too. That's where I found all the Kanji and stuff.


周小燕

Bouganvillea

All along the streets of Nob Hill and Russian Hill the bouganvillea is in glorious color. Pinks and reds and purples, nice violent hues. It faces south. Bouganvillea only grows in south exposure.

These are very beautiful flowers, and there ought to be more of them in San Francisco. They make the summer seem special. I like to dawdle while walking home because I like being near them. So nice! Better than roses.


周小燕