Pickled cabbage

No need to fight -- they're both good

I love my kimchi and have developed a deep respect for sauerkraut, which ought to have a standing in Australian culture like that shown by Koreans for their "pickle" (but that might be a subject for another post).

One of the things that surprised me about Sandor Katz's book The Art of Fermentation is how he listed kimchi in the sauerkraut section.

Of course, it makes sense after he linked the process of cultivation of lactobacillus.

It also has me pondering what other cultural traditions might be brought into flavouring brassicas. 

Faraway faraday cage

Does this involve electrocuting a colleague?

Maybe engaging in some archaic hazing practice?

You might be entitled to compensation, but all I can offer is compassion.

Bogong guitar

Started another guitar

My partner says I should paint a ciggie hanging from its mouth and call it a bogan bogong!

Ode to Troy

Thinking of Nolan's Odyssey, I thought this meme was funny

Crow guitar

Started painting a new guitar

There's a young crow that visits my yard, who likes to talk with their reflection.

So of course it gave me an idea for a new design.

An Odyssey

I'd like to see this version of The Odyssey 

I mean, sure, Christopher Nolan's film looks fun; but how cool would it be to follow the Seven Sisters across this ancient sea? 

Finding faith

Couple of people recently introduced me to Rene Girard, called both the Einstein and Darwin of the human sciences  

He described the role of imitation in human life in a book called The Scapegoat (1982), about how it leads to status rivalry. 

This argues that conflict is avoided or stopped by creating these circuit-breaking roles that unite the crowd. 

Girard came to believe in God through his study of this imitative rivalry and scapegoating mechanism. 

He thought Christ was divine intervention, becoming the ultimate scapegoat, to make the mechanism visible to humans.  

That led to centuries of social progress, led by Christian institutions. 

Girard's ideas gave me an understanding of why C.S. Lewis moved from being an atheist to adopting faith through his conversations with J.R.R. Tolkien, and came to call Christianity the myth that became fact. 

Religion is a good mechanism for managing anxiety, but the scapegoat is only part of the process as those ancient institutions play a broader social role.

Actually, maybe I need a caveat to recognise that churches have shown they have a way to go in recognising individual rights -- particularly for women and children. 

His Girl Friday

One of those films that I've been meaning to watch for years since it interested me as both a film student and wannabe journalist

I first attempted to watch it decades ago on DVD, but found the audio was too quiet.

When I saw that it was now streaming, I decided that I could use the subtitles to keep up. However, it's surprising how many errors and gaps appear in the text on Prime.

That this romantic comedy is set in a newspaper is so clearly out of date, but so too are the references to American socialism and also a joke about Hitler that are interesting in how they give a glimpse of attitudes that quickly shifted within a few years as the US joined WWII and moved into McCarthyism.

For a film student there is a strange sensation while watching it of how the performances from Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell make sense of those seen in other movies.

Tony Curtis famously modelled his character of Junior in Some Like It Hot (1959) on Grant and it's difficult to see the original without thinking of the imitation.

Similarly, Russell's performance is mentioned on Wikipedia as inspiring the character of Lois Lane in Superman, although she appeared in 1938 and the film was released in 1940, but for me it kept bringing to mind Jennifer Jason Leigh's role in The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) -- which is one of my favourite films.

The script is remarkable for showing how a good story will travel through swapping the gender of a character and into various remakes over the years, including Switching Channels (1988).

 

A lot of the humour is still funny and there's so much of it that, if you get your ear in, the jokes flow in a way that moves easily from smirking to producing a laugh.