George is not Yeastfree, and he’s not even George, but Gyro (??) Gearloose, and he exists on the WorldWideWeb, and he exists in other languages:
(Danish: Georg Gearløs)
Norwegian: Petter Smart
Swedish: Uppfinnar-Jocke
Finnish: Pelle Peloton
English: Gyro Gearloose
German: Daniel Düsentrieb
French: Géo Trouvetou
Italian: Archimede Pitagorico / Giro Rotalibera
Portuguese: Professor Pardal
Thank you, mother.
I’m going to share a brainwave I just had. I’m going to share it because I can’t make much use of it seeing as I am not a scientist. The idea (how good is this?) is for non-melting ice cubes.
I’m at that stage of my sundowner (Debored’s Second Vice) where the ice cubes have melted just enough to cool the whole thing down and dilute it enough but not too much. The ratios of temperature to strength to taste are perfect and from here on it’s downhill. Helas! A fleeting moment.
That got me thinking about what it would be like to be an inventor, and the only one I could think of was Georg Gærløs, and actually this is just something for him. GG is a character in Donald Duck, but the Danish version (I’m talking old-fashioned comics here). I never read many Donald Duck’s in English, so I have no idea what GG’s anglo-double is, or if he even exists.
I googled Georg Gærløs just now but the phrase did not match any documents. Neither did the other possible spelling – Gærløse. I find this very hard to believe, but the ice cube brainwave may just have led to the first instance of the phrase Georg Gærløse on the WorldWideWeb. Never again shall Google come back empty handed.
The name is difficult to translate. Georg is easy, that’s George. But the surname is nonsense and would literally translate as Yeastless. (It could also be one of those Danish nuances I miss because I don’t have the nuance radar). Yeastfree? That sounds too healthy.
I digress. I also googled non-melting ice to make sure no one had already been as clever as I just was. And this is what I found:
It’s a non-melting ice lolly. The first one ever was from Iceland, and was unfortunately photographed for its press release:
But the other one is made by Uhmapko (Inmarco), a Russian ice-cream company, and comes in cherry and pear flavours and the superimposition of three lollies into one is meant to represent what happens instead of melting: it droops. Or, in market speak, it takes on ‘a funky shape’. Then it becomes something between marmalade and jelly.
A rival manufacturer has a similar product under the label NFO (UFO) and their sales pitch is better: “NLO is a fruit ice with cherry taste enriched with special stabiliser avoiding melting. If to store NLO in warm place for a long time it will become a jelly-like paste reminding a representative of extraterrestrial civilizations on vacation.”
Still, I don’t see any non-melting ice cubes for sundowners. (Those little plastic shapes you put in the freezer don’t count because they don’t melt at all and therefore don’t affect the taste. They are impostors).
Where is Georg Gærløs when you need him?
Just finished Rome. Like all the best things, it is brilliant and sad. So very sad. The end of the empire. The end of the comfort of my cursed television (what shall I do tomorrow?).
I think I’ll go cry myself to sleep now.
And to tune out from this evening in the Mother City, we’ll be going to sleep to the smooth midnight sounds of The Temptations, with My Lady Soul…
Sitting in the wine shop this morning I am reminded of a man who came in last night. He’s a regular in the shop, a burly man with gentle eyes who we call Dr.so-and-so because that’s his name. I always see him on my Monday shift, and he always buys one bottle from the fridge, typically the same as last time. I imagine this is his bottle for the evening, and I imagine that he looks forward to the end of his Monday so he can go home and enjoy his wine. He probably has a wife, but I imagine he drinks the man portion of the bottle. He looks like someone who will drink the man portion of a bottle of wine over dinner and then move to his favourite armchair with a brandy and the paper. His wife will wake him when he starts snoozing and he’ll tell her he was just closing his eyes.
When the doctor came in last night I offered him a taste of a bottle we had open, a wooded chenin blanc. He wasn’t fond of the wine – he prefers something easier on the palate – but when he saw the label, he said “Oh, do you know the owner of this estate?”
Me: “Hmm, no… do you?” (I guess it was a leading question)
Dr.: “Yes, he’s a Russian Jew”.
Me: “Oh.”
Then he paid for his usual bottle, we bade each other a good evening and he went on his way. Nothing more was said of the Russian Jew.
I had no idea then and I still have none of what was meant by that exchange.
I dreamt of great irritation because someone had stepped on and broken my sunglasses. As I was picking up the pieces I realised my actual glasses were lying there broken too. The ones I need to see with. I started getting desperate because I don’t have a second pair and how would I drive home? How would I pay for new ones?
Then it occurred to me that I could actually see. I don’t wear contact lenses anymore but someone must have slipped a pair on – or in – without my noticing. Or maybe I didn’t need the glasses anymore? Perhaps, indeed, the god of eyes had been kind to me and restored perfect sight.
OK, the part about the god didn’t really occur to me in the dream, but the rest did and it was all pretty confusing and comforting at the same time. Been thinking about the Romans and their gods though (as one would, after watching 8 hours of Rome in one day…). I remember being fascinated by how mundane Greek and Roman “religion” seemed when I was studying Classics as an an undergraduate. Gods for doorways, gods for hearths.
Mundane in a good way. In a functional way, and of course the gods then had the function that shrinks and happy-pills have these days: somewhere to turn when things go pearshaped. And who knows, they may have been more effective. When Caesar dumps his mistress Servilia she invokes some deities (I only recognised Nemesis, goddess of divine retribution; the others are presumably equally useful) and curses her lover:
“By the spirits of my ancestors, I curse Gaius Julius Caesar. Let his penis wither; let his bones crack; let him see his legions drown in their own blood. Gods of the inferno I offer to you his limbs, his head, his mouth, his breath, his speech, his hands, his liver, his heart, his stomach. Gods of the inferno, let me see him suffer deeply, and I will rejoice and sacrifice to you.”
It’s a brilliant scene, full of hate and spite as she spits the words out while stabbing and scraping a thin sheet of lead. The curse is now carved into the lead, which is rolled up and, in the dark of night, deposited in a crack in the wall of Caesar’s palace.
After that, things are in the hands of the gods, and Servilia can get on with her life. Forget about three years of psychotherapy.
It turns out that there are plenty of eye gods: in China, Ming Shang, Chu Ying and Yanguang Pusa (healing and eyes); the Greek Ophthamitis; the Roman Oculata (good name, also healing and eyes) and Lucina (light and eyesight). The latter is closer to home than I would have thought. Apparently she was converted to St. Lucy, the candle-bearer, by the Catholics and is to this day celebrated in the Swedish Lucia festival (13 December) where girls dress in white and wear crowns of candles.
Confession: I have been a Lucia girl.
even I would go to.
Prince, last night at the Superbowl. Catch it on Youtube. Damn, that man makes me tingle.
Other good diversions: HBO’s Rome. Borrowed the first season from a friend, and embarked on it at 2.30 this morning instead of wallowing in insomnia. Well, I didn’t notice the sun rising, but suddenly it was up.
there lived a little pig. She did not have a very long or eventful life, but many things happened after she died. Some of her became bacon, chops, and ribs which were enjoyed by people who could afford them. Those who could afford less ate her trotters and tail, and a lucky dog got to chew on her dried ears. Her belly was slow cooked by a gourmet chef and served with hasselback potatoes and a cranberry jus. When what was left of her bones had been put aside for gelatine, the rest went into a huge vat, got churned up and became, variously, boerewors, polony and salami.
Some of the salami from that little pig ended up in my refrigerator and I was happy to find it there yesterday after a glass or three of cold white wine in the middle of the city. Here’s what I did: chopped it up into little pieces (faux lardons, I suppose), into a hot pan with chopped onion and a good handful of fresh sage. When things started hotting up and smelling good I threw in a couple of halved yellow cherry tomatoes, a decent glug of vermouth and when that was bubbling and boiling I seasoned with salt and pepper, gave it a stir and turned the heat way down.
In the meantime I was cooking spaghetti and by the time that was done (9 minutes), the sauce was ready and I turned it off (adding a little blob of butter for glaze), drained the pasta, put the two together, added a bit more sage and let that rest while I loaded a dvd. Final step: into a bowl, onto a tray, sprinkle of parmesan (the packet stuff), and pasta presta. Including chopping time, I estimate that took under fifteen minutes. As they say at elBulli, fast good. Thanks to the pig.
I finished that off with a chocolate I had bought for a friend and then I fell promptly asleep.
The End.
Yesterday started with three hours of staring at bottles in an empty wine shop (I was behind the counter), but that was redeemed by the lunch that followed. We were going to go to a coffee shop, but decided against small, public spaces and having to pay for something you can do much better at home.
So at a friend’s kitchen table I was served a good, simple meal: sliced mushrooms with a hint of olive oil, lemon, pepper (from Elizabeth David), a salad of leaves from the garden, avocado, mini corn, more olive oil and lemon, and bread. There was conversation which, with the food, restored me to some sense of self. The powers of a kitchen table are something else.
Later I returned for more from the same kitchen: roast lamb, steamed green beans with garden leaves and Danish blue. Piece incroyable: baby leeks braised in red wine (also Elizabeth David). The meal was not at the table but in a garden with herbs and a fig tree, and there were parents and children and some bottles of wine consumed.
Driving home I thanked myself for resisting the temptation to see no one and do nothing but stare at a television screen and I also wondered about the stars that I care little about. Not only the real ones (I had been chided for showing no interest in the comet that is in our skies these days) but also the mumbo-jumbo of horoscopes. Traits of the Cancerian are sometimes all too obvious in me: the comfort of home, family, a fig tree (knock yourselves out, Freudians).
And then of course there’s Eliot:
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
So, in response to my previous post, Mr. 302 said the “best [he] could come up with was Buck Fizz: champagne and orange juice”. Well I don’t know about your fridge but any day that that’s the best mine can offer is a good one.
Speaking of champagne, and dinner with friends, I had the privilege of being invited round to partake in a special kind of bubbly: it was a Nitida Shiraz champagne. Yup. Red bubbly. It was actually lovely.
The problem with red wine in the summer is the heat, so you end up drinking reds that work well chilled, like Sangiovese or Carignan. Being light reds, they like the fridge, but they still have that “red” edge, slight tannic bitterness that in the end make whites preferable.
The bubble element takes that away and makes this the perfect wine to share with friends on a Sunday evening. The dinner that followed complimented the occasion beautifully: gnocchi with home-made pesto and a salad of rocket, basil, feta, olives and tomato. All the herbs had been picked from the garden during the first glass of bubbly. Talk about organic. And clean, homemade food with company to match.
It has been an unexpectedly lovely conclusion to a dire few days where friends have been good to have.
Gnarls Barkley:
I remember when, I remember when I lost my mind
there was something so pleasant about that place
Even your emotions have an echo
and so much space
…
hahaha bless your soul
you really think you’re in control
Gnarls is great to funk up any time. But it is not great to lose your mind. It just happened to a friend and it has been the most twisting experience to see someone you know disappear, even if for a few hours. We must guard our saneness.
Signe Rousseau
Cape Town.
