Blog Rampage Pt. 1: Sexy Circuitry

I'm going to spend the next few days catching up on my posts so bear with me.

First off, let's go waaay back to Welcome to the Monkey House. I'll start with "EPICAC," which I took to the most mainly because I'm a sucker for robot love stories. It really is the robot that shines here, isn't it? The narrator has little charm, and the means by which he attains his love wins over no reader. So why shouldn't EPICAC get the girl? We discussed in the colloquium that people need both the physical and emotional aspects to have a relationship, so I suppose the tragedy of EPICAC is the placement of a beautiful soul in an unable vessel. Though what if EPICAC were humanoid?

Okay, shoutout to mah nerdcore BSG fans: can cylons love? To those too cool for school, the science fiction drama Battlestar Galactica features some pretty sexy robot (cylon) ladies searching for love, and at least one makes a pretty convincing case for deserving it. I mean, I used the word "soul" just now pretty presumptuously, but the way that cylon Sharon/Boomer (played by the Grace "2hot4tv" Park, pictured) looks at her man, it makes you at least consider acknowledging she has one. What it comes down to in this example is whether or not she still can love because she was engineered or whether her human-like vessel would make her a viable love interest to any of you.

For those merely skimming, my concluding query: that robot, would you hit it?

(Oh God, it's 5:44, I'm late for this week's reading group. Hahahahaha.)

Halfway through

Enjoying the book thoroughly so far, but it's definitely some dense stuff. I really enjoyed the Mahound chapter and am happy the narrative is shifting back toward it. I didn't really care for the Rosa portion, it kind of seemed like a pointless tangent, but who knows maybe it will become more important or poignant down the road. I really enjoy Rushdie's scatterbrained almost overly adjectival style, it makes for a very interesting -- albeit slow -- read.

A bit of "home"

So I'm half done with "Satanic Verses" and I have to say, it's a bit nostalgic, for me, to read about Rushdie's Bombay. In many ways it's the Bombay of my youth (India is slow to change and ageless in that way) - and also the India of my parents' childhood stories. I'm working on getting the vocabulary translations up - they'll be up before the next meeting, I promise!

As far as the story goes - the magical realism reminds me of "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" by Garcia-Marquez - and the way Rushdie invents words, meshed together in a very Nordic/Germanic linguistic manner is probably an influence in Roi's "God of Small Things." I had no idea what the "satanic verses" of the title were, and only by reading the book was I inspired to more digging into the theological metaphor.

Well, it's a pretty blatant metaphor - Rushdie has no qualms about who his characters are meant to represent. Hell, there's even a character named Salman in the story.

This is a short blog post for me mostly because a) I want to talk about a bunch of things at the meeting today and b) I need to read more of this story before I can comment on it.

Satanic Verses

This book is very interesting, even though I can't follow all that I've read. Amrita translated some words throughout the text, which was very helpful, plus we got a little history of Islam, which also helped. The style of Rushdie's writing in this book is very fast paced (Rushdie can fit a lot of action in a sentence), but it seems like it takes me a long time to read. I am interested to see what else will happen, because the events seem random to me. The book started with Saladin and Gibreel falling out of the airplane, then went to their childhoods as they grew up, but then I feel like Gibreel stories seem jumpy and I don't always understand the historical significance of them. I am sure that we will talk more about them when we meet. All in all, I really like the style of the book and the history that I am learning through it and I am intrigued to see where it goes from here.

Satanic Verses-part one of many many

Language is certainly an issue-I can figure much out from the context, but it's the culture and religion that builds barriers. My religious education is patchy at best, unless you count my assertion that I am a fake Catholic-unbaptized and unconfirmed. My knowledge of other religions and the history/origins of those faiths is even worse. As such, I can't quite connect with the Islamic influences, the Hindi, and really whatever comes next in the great possibly hugely sacrilegious text.

I may not understand all of what I read, but the text is hugely compelling-I can't seem to stop reading once I start. I'm loathe to put the book down for classes, homework, or any other novel.

Perhaps it's because the central characters of Gibreel and Saladin are actors that I feel a connection to the text, or maybe the religious influences that draw me in, seeking an alternative view of the faiths that hold such power in the world, and have fascinated me. Either way, this is one of the best books I've begun reading in the last few years.
In some ways I compare this to the works of Umberto Eco-although Rushdie seems to be questioning the foundations of faith itself while Eco only challenged the structures that grew out of faith. Eco protects the mysteries of origin, fighting against the inventions of humanity-and thus far I have read Rushdie playing with notions of devil and angel-ancient concepts. Kim raised the best point for me- the comparison to "Good Omens": again the devil and angel, but not fitting the notions set up by thousands of years of tradition.

I think I have made very little sense this post, but it's still too early for me to have come to a solid opinion of what I am reading, but I'm eager to read on.

Recipes!

Chocolate and Chili Soup
10 oz heavy cream
5 oz milk
2 dried chilies (chopped)
2 tbs. marshmallows
2 tbs. croissant croutons
2 tbs. chocolate flakes

Method:
In a medium size pan place the cream, milk, and dried chili, bring to a gentle simmer and strain. Add the cream to the chocolate and stir until the chocolate melts. Pour soup into bowls and garnish with chocolate flakes, marshmallows and croutons.

There were also Chocolate Pretzels: melt chocolate in a double boiler, dip pretzels, let cool and enjoy!

The choices here were related to the previous sessions discussion on the issues of identity raised by Kurt Vonnegut, and which continued into the next session. Epicac struggles with the knowledge of love and his own reality of being a computer. Reality prevents it/him from fulfilling the desires planted by definition, and the identity created out of that knowledge.

Now, how does identity fit the food choices for this session? It comes down to a question of the identity of flavor. Oh, yes, that certainly sounds like the most B.S. rationale ever, and really just an excuse to make chocolate soup (and as a note, use the seeds of your chilies, adds more flavor). And yet, there's legitimacy: Food is culture- it defines a society with the same power of language. In the modern age, food is more powerful than language: think of any Italian restaurant, French, Indian, Chinese. From personal experience, I'm third-generation Polish, can't speak a word of the language but I can spend hours waxing poetic on the subject of pierogies and kielbasa. As much as it defines our cultures, food has it's own identities: oranges are citrus and sweet, potatoes are starchy, chicken tastes like everything else. So we play with flavor: combine the perceived sweetness of chocolate with the spice of chilies or the salt of pretzels.

Chocolate is a great blender; the sweetness and mildness of the finish product is easily changed: levels of sugar or milk in the process create dark, bittersweet, milk- all the wonderful variants of flavor. That inherent variance in a basic ingredient creates a blank slate to build with. Like so many of the characters we have read about, we are presented with a flexible identity-there's enough to function as a character, but the potential to build allows for the chance to surprise everyone with the end result.