Thus: I shall post a Photo of the Day on days when I don't feel like posting anything else. I will simply keep several of these posts drafted at all times, for those occasional - er, sometimes often - non-bloggy feelings. Let it hereforth be known! Etc.
2. My Rebecca is in town! YAY! Though she's been living in San Diego since last summer, neither she nor I have been able to visit each other, not since MB and I drove through SoCal on the 4th of July. I'm not sure y'all are aware of this, but, uh, California is big. She had to drive nine hours to get here. She arrived just in time for dinner, bearing a basket of comestibles, the kind geared toward the creation of... mojitos!
Although we did have wine with dinner. For the meal, I prepared vermicelli with goat cheese, mushrooms and onions (sauce prepared with skim milk, tarragon sprinkled over browned mushrooms and tender onions cooked in olive oil on the stove...hell, I really just need to post the recipe here sometime). For the side, a salad of romaine, tomatoes and cukes. Your basic Amanda Salad. (Not a big raw spinach fan.)
After dinner, R, MB and talked and had drinks in the livingroom for a couple of hours, before R and I decided to put her DVD of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse in the DVD player, at which point, MB exited the room with his book. My review: The film was improved by the commentary of Rebecca! I actually thought that the film version of New Moon was a much better-paced film (however, with the book versions, the quality is switched around). Eclipse was Edward, Bella and Jacob all sulking in some form, for two hours. Overall, not enough werewolves, not enough of the Edward-Jacob closet bromance.
But it was still fun to watch!
3. Okay, Voltaire was not a Feminist in the modern sense of the term. But I think compassion for prostitutes, including giving prostitutes a voice in the 21st century, much more so the 18th century, is quite the Feminist act. There's this, from Candide, from Paquette, the former chambermaid turned prostitute:
"I was soon...obliged to continue this abominable occupation which seems so amusing to you men and which for us is but an abyss of misery. I went to Venice to practice the profession. Ah! sir, if you could imagine what it is to be obliged to caress indiscriminantly an old merchant, a lawyer, a monk, a gondolier, an abbé; to be exposed to every insult, every outrage; to be often reduced to borrowing a skirt in order to go have it lifted by some disgusting man; to be robbed by one of what you have earned by the other; to be forced by the officers of the law to buy protection, and to have in prospect nothing but a frightful old age, a hospital, a dunghill - you would conclude that I am one of the unhappiest creatures in the world."
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