Pot, Pan, Skillet - Gas, Electric, Charcol

I always thought the cover was quite fetching with its photography by Anthony Denney depicting a cupboard well-stocked with pots and pans, copper, enamel, ceramic.

I kept returning to a phrase that granted permission for substitution. (with in my mind the plethora of cooking gear and the whole opening section on batterie de cuisine). In the game-bird recipe for "Les Palombes à la Béarnaise" Elizabeth David with a note of reluctance concedes that something else might do as an appropriate bed:

Failing artichokes, a purée of broad beans or of Jerusalem artichokes or of celery will serve quite well.

I was initially captivated by the permutations that were possible. But upon further reflection it is the form that they assume that makes the passage memorable. It is all structured around an If-Then relation which lends the statement the indubitable air of a logical deduction. If none, then any of this. This concluding sentence with its enumeration flows in an opposite direction to the opening of the recipe where a variety of birds are described but only one method worthy.

The wild doves and the wood pigeons of the Landes and the Béarn are particularly delicious little birds. The ordinary pigeons which one buys in England are rather dull and dry, but cooked à la Béarnaise they can be excellent.

The poise is in the prose.

Elizabeth David French Country Cooking

And so for day 2359
29.05.2013

Swing Shift

Annie Lowrey Smart money: Why the world should embrace universal basic income in the Globe and Mail

So easy to miss the negation

These studies - as well as many others - counter many of the most common objections to a UBI. Such policies do not turn the safety net into a hammock, for one. People still work, particularly if the payments are not too big. Indeed, one benefit is that such payments do not penalize people for working and earning more, as many other welfare programs do. [our emphasis]

Would love to conceive of a world where relaxed swinging would be valuable day dream option for all — just a wee bit of time to listen to a berceuse.

And so for day 2187
08.12.2012

Rinse and Repeat

"Dear Living Person" John Russell in Blast Counterblast edited by Anthony Elms and Steve Reinke. (First appeared in Mute Feb 16, 2011)

It has a put down that functions by way of repetition.

In this context the curator is the key performer — as organiser, collector, cataloguer, archaeologist, manger and guardian. And for instance, Rancière is the philosopher par-excellence, as the philosopher of aesthetics-in-general and the generalised interdisciplinary. In a world where there are no categories, we are left to experiment with the senses. A meta-politics and framing of a common sensorium, rearticulating freedom and equality in relation to new relationships between thought and the sensory world, between bodies and the social distribution of bodies. Rancière is the writer of this position, an extra-institutional relational aesthetics. He's not very good, but then this is not a very good position. With the dissolution of genre he offers us a generalised reorganisation of senses in general in general in general in general.

In general, it works as polemic. Less so as persuasion.

And so for day 1881
06.02.2012