Photoblog---Oregon Chipmunk

Lady Gaga----Alejandro

Well, I do quite like the new Lady Gaga "Alejandro" video and music.

It's certainly all very creative and imaginative.

Catchy tune.

Interesting costume. The one with goggles reminds me a bit of the Queen of Hearts (was it?), in "Alice in Wonderland".

Cute sexy dancers. Plenty of homoerotic imagery, too.

Smoking a pipe seems poor advice to the young and impressionable; and she mimes ciggie smoking as well. Sings about it. Not a good idea.

Her voice and singing style remind me, not a little, of Madonna. As do some of her dance moves. But I read, somewhere, that Madonna was one of her inspirations. As were Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson.

Cheeseless, no-cook pasta sauce...

Let me tell you of a new recipe I invented/discovered at breakfast this morning!

It's a sorta cheeseless, no-cook pasta sauce. Made with peanut butter--so I suppose it's a bit satay-ish. Here goes:

Take

• roughly 2 heaped dessertspoonfuls of smooth peanut butter
• a couple o' good dashes of tomato sauce/ketchup
• some granulated garlic
• some dried coriander leaves
• crushed black pepper
• some capers
• 2 sheets of nori seaweed paper--all ripped up
• some hot water

Simply stir up the peanut butter and tomato sauce. Add the spices and capers and seaweed. Stirring in as you go. Finally add a bit of hot water to make a good "slurry" and to help moisten the seaweed. Stir well.

Then just stir the warm sauce thru some hot pasta. I used spiral wholemeal pasta cooked for 5 mins in the microwave--with hot water. Not from scratch with cold.

Yeah! I know I'm a lazy cook. But this was very tasty--not like some of my experiments which can often end in disaster!

Climate Change and the Economy

Well, as we get warmer drier winters, year after year. I've noticed that my hayfever isn't so bad.

Of course, dry winters mean less grass; and hotter spring temperatures, too, mean less spring growth. Less spring growth means less pollen.

Less pollen, and that means less hayfever. Less hayfever means I go through less hayfever pills and less boxes of tissues. Kerchoo!

I am not the only one to have found that the lower pollen count has improved my hayfever. A Melbourne friend told me the same. I suppose, too, that asthmatics may benefit. (And that's a huge pharmaceutical industry, too.)

So climate change is already affecting the economy. At least, mine anyway. Also, too, now that I think of it, there is less grass to mow, with these drier winters. So that means less lawnmower and petrol sales.

Oregon Wildlife Photoblog

My Blue Bottle

Let me tell you about my wonderful blue bottle. Well, it's more of a deep purple bottle, really. You see, my boyfriend had this bottle of vitamins--yes, it's plastic!--but the purple colour was so beautiful, when the light shone through it, that I just had to have it.

As soon as the vitamins were gone, I gave the bottle a good soak and eventually--after much rubbing--was able to get off the dreadful sticky adhesive from the label. (Perhaps a rub with metho would have made things much easier, but, years ago, I once wiped a plastic clock-face with turps, and the hydrocarbon just ate into the plastic--making it all cloudy and ruined.)

Anyway, this bottle is now one of my most prized possessions. So very pretty. I've got it in my casement window--which already has some stained glass--and each morning the bottle is filled with the most wonderful purple light. I know it will eventually fade, as the dyes used in plastic will not endure for years like the metallic salts--such as cobalt compounds--used in stained glass colouration and in oil paints. UV light will destroy the colour. Nevertheless, it sure is wonderful, and to intent and purpose, it is, to me at least, a beautiful glass bottle. (I can pretend!!!) I've a good mind to ask at the chemist if they have any empties I may avail myself of. I shouldn't mind a whole host of pretty coloured bottles to cheer me from my window.

Ciggies contained floor-sweepings!

A friend once told me that, in the early 1950's, she worked in Rothman's cigarette factory in Sydney.

One day, as she was doing her usual floor-sweeping work, the foreman insisted that she add the floor-sweepings to the tobacco mixture, to be turned into cigarettes. Of course, in a ciggie factory, there would be tobacco shreds dropping on the floor; but the floor would, also, have had any old detritus that was walked in on people's shoes, and any other litter and dust, hair etc, that was dropped on the floor.

Well, my friend left in sheer disgust, after payday, and also immediately gave up smoking, knowing that the manufacturers respected the customers so little that they put floor-sweepings into the cigarette formula--including the cancer-sticks she'd been smoking!

The foreman may well have been under pre$$ure, but, clearly, someone higher up was pu$hing him to $queeze out every penny po$$ible--even if this involved adding floor-sweepings to cigarette tobacco.

I'm glad I don't smoke.