Verschiedenes

[muckefuck]

Nope, still don't have it in me to put together a proper entry. So rather than post nothing for days on end, why not bullet points?

• The likelihood that I will sing along out loud to songs on my iPod in public is directly proportional to the obscurity of the language of the lyrics.
• I've reached the tail of Evaluation Hell! Four face-to-face meetings and we'll be all finished--and ready to begin work on next year's forms!
• Yay spring! Crabapples, hawthorns, "mountain lilacs", and even true lilacs coming into bloom with snowballs and viburnums not far behind!
• Does anyone know what the Japanese name is for those aburaage pouches you use to make inari-zushi?
• I'm several stories into the Mistry and I'm enjoying it, his liberal use of Indic words in English being more of a feature to me rather than the bug it is to monshu. The Hobson-Jobson's not much use, probably because he seems to be using as much Gujarati as Hindi in spots.
• Met Nuphy for gin-flavoured hydration at Sidetrack last Sunday, followed by dinner at Yoshi's. A really nice way to spend the day until the inexplicable gas pains started kicking in.
• I love the fact that I can tell my boyfriend, "I spent the day cleaning up the Bucolic Poets" and be met not only with comprehension but unfeigned sympathy.

Incidentally, I'm now two posts away from my 2,000th entry. Any ideas for a suitably self-indulgent way to mark the occasion? I've thought about a quiz on past entries, but it seems like too much work just to annoy the few friends loyal enough to read this crap for this long.

Comments

[bwillsouth.livejournal.com]

For your 2000th entry you could do like ZBB folk do and just make a post called 'OMGZ 2000 POSTS!!!'.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Wie fad!

[grunter.livejournal.com]

Well, nothing says "special" like gratuitous pornography . . .

I'm just sayin'.

I fain would swoon...

[monshu.livejournal.com]

How could I not have unfeigned sympathy--all those farmers or shepherds swooning amid love's entanglements while the bees buzz and the sheep cavort? PLAEEEEESE!

By the way C from the 136 Group says that abuurage is the term she and her mother both use for the fried bean curd skins and the little pouches in inari sushi. All I can say is thank Inari that he/she is so fond of fried bean curd!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Remember what I said about Homer? Today was the day that I discovered that I hadn't actually finished Plutarch when I thought I had. 3,425 copies of Vitae parallelae later, my arms are ready to fucking fall off.

Re: Foxes and Food

[clehrich.livejournal.com]

On the inari side of things, i.e. the fox-spirit side, there are two theories about this, but there is one that is more likely. One theory says these are inarizushi because they look sort of like foxes, being brown and sort of rumply (=furry), but this is unlikely. The other is that they are tricksters: they look like one thing but really they are another, thus inari. This is (as I understand it) the probable solution, if a bit simplistically stated.

If you want thorough information about the linguistic provenance of abuurage Sarah can provide it, but you have to tell me what exactly it is you're asking. Get technical. She'll roll her eyes, but she'll figure it out (she did go to U of C, which you may have heard of...), and if she can't we have a pal in the anthro department who can.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Aburaage is perfectly transparent: "in oil (abura) fried (ageru, lit. "to lift"). But thanks for the offer of someone else's time and effort!

[chrislehrich.livejournal.com]

(blithely ignoring the little swipe...)

Since as you apparently know aburaage are fried tofu skins, and inarizushi are one end-product, the question becomes (I presume) what you call aburaage after you steep them in syrup a long time but before you put them around rice. So far as Sarah or her colleagues know, these things aren't really called anything as such. But when you buy them in cans, they are called inari or alternatively "inari pouches." The point being that they aren't really any use for anything except making inarizushi.