Spem in Allium*

Je suis Logicien, et je vais aller au Paris, afin d'assasiner la langue francaise.

Or something like that. I am giving a talk with the grand title "Towards Identity of Proofs, via Herbrand's Theorem". I haven't written any slides yet. Bum.

I have strong hopes of taking my friend and colleague Kai to Au Pied de Cochon tonight, as we will arrive in Paris after 10pm, and so won't be eating 'till 11ish. Plus, Kai is such a hardcore meat eater that he eats rare pork, and uses supermarket minced beef as steak tartare. He grew up in Dresden, and I think he was maybe part of some Cold War project to protect the population in case of biological warfare.


As to the punning title, last Monday was the Zibelemärit, or onion market. The people of the outerlying villages come to Bern and set up onion stalls, and then the population of Bern get up at 4 in the morning, and go out into the streets to drink beer and mulled wine, eat a traditional onion cake that's basically a quiche, and (in the case of children and youths) throw confetti at each other and hit each other with squeaky hammers.

I'm not joking.

We arrived at 6:15, and the streets of Bern were fuller than I had ever seen them. Of course, it was completely dark outside, so it could have been 10pm (except theat Bern's streets are empty at 10pm.) I bought some onoins and made french onion soup. Yum.

After Paris, I have Munich, and then Burton-on-Trent, then Southern California, then London, then home. I feel tired already.


*Hope in Garlic, Onions, etc

All the rage

Bachelor boy...

...well, not quite. But Mary is in the 'Bridge at the moment, getting her CELTA (Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults), leaving me with all the downsides of singledom (sole dominion over issues such as cleaning, tidying, laundry) without the upsides (busy social whirl, venereal disease...). The situation has, however, allowed me to really get to grips with Crane Wife, The Decemberists' new album. I heartily recommend the heady mix of prog rock (The Island -- a 12 minute epic of Yes-style laser syth and allusions to The Tempest), Zepplin stomp (When the war came) and Talking-Heads-Groove (The Perfect Crime #2). And they're coming to Switzerland next February! All I have to do is ask Mary if I can go...see, none of the benefits of bachelorhood.

Additionally, I have been experimenting culinarily; I had my first try at cooking gnocchi recently, to great success, and also have been playing around with Jerusalem Artichokes. Tonight I'm going to stew beef with qunices and cinnamon. I hope it tastes nice, as I'll have enough for four or more portions...

In other news, I have been invited to Paris to give a talk at a workshop, which is exciting, but not as exciting as the 250 euros our host has allocated to me for meals while I'm there (for three nights).

Finally, since it's nearly Halloween:

Food update

• A couple of Fridays ago, we visited the Chästeilet; an annual festival where the farmers go into the mountains and divide up the year's cheese output, according to how much milk their cows produced. I bought a Kilo of some very nice Alpkaese, and is de rigeur on such occasions, I drank some beer and ate a sausage, as well as some raclette.

• I discovered quinces at our local market, which as all good food luddites know may be made into a paste (called membrilla, and oft served with cheese). I have made some of said paste, and very good it is too (quite easy to make, to boot). It goes quite well with my Alpkaese, but would go better with some Manchego.

• Passing through Paris on the way back from my England trip, I stopped off at one of Les Halle's crazier food equipment stores to get a Le Creuset Doufeu, which is just like a normal Le Creuset casserole, but you can put ice in the top and it starts self-basting. Made a great roast chicken/risotto thing in it, and also offset the slight gitty smugness factor of owning the thing by making an irish stew in it.

Holiday

Holiday Pics 082
Originally uploaded by Omission.

Since I'm not really on holiday any more, I should post about my holiday. And then I won't have this great blog-dread hanging over me any more.

Thanks publicly to Adam and Elaine, who won the "first to visit Bern" prize of being repeatedly attacked by wasps, and with whom we spent many a happy hour in Bern and Paris. In Paris, I ate the fantastic "La Tentation de Saint Antoine" (pictured), which is a collection of random pig bits, fried, and served with Sauce Bernaise, which I suspect might have mollified the unrelenting fattiness of the dish. Still, it killed four random pig bits (cheek, tail, trotter and ear) with one stone.

In Brief: Rest of the Holiday:

• The Drew Nuptials, which you all know about already;
• Delays on the Cambridge-bound train;
• Breakdown of the sleeper train, meaning that instead of waking up in Cornwall we had to get off the train in Plymouth and get on a coach for three and a half hours;
• Wonderful St Ives, including Lobster (pictured) Seal watching, House of the Dead 4 (there really weren't this many last time) and Barbara Hepworth (art, not dead person);
• Successful sleeper to London, and free visit to the First-class lounge in Paddington (very nice);
• Missing Eurostar (misread tickets) and nearly having to pay 300 pounds for new tickets until the nice lady took pity on us (we still had to pay 80 pounds).

Phew. That's quite enough of that.

Hey man -- it's, like, Don and Walt

Steely Dan go to Corpus Christi* and clearly get very bored.

*Not that Corpus.

Update: Owen Wilson rebuts.

Same as it ever was...

With apologies for the hiatus: I trust you coped. I am now officially a doctor:

I now have a cheap little digital camera, so expect more photos.

I know my place though: you (that's Tom and Adam, mostly, I guess) expect me to bring childish ephemera to your attention. To whit, Kermit sings 'Once in a Lifetime'.

Zuton Fever

I saw the Zutons on Tuesday, and I can highly, Highly, recommend them. Damn good music, and I haven't danced like a fool so much in ages. Can't say I appreciated their new stuff as much, but it might be that I just enjoyed the tracks I knew more. The club we saw them at (Fri-Son, in Fribourg) was a hilarious hole of a place, complete with a giant skull-shaped mirrorball.

Project Sakrileg is almost ready to go live, as I've nearly finished the prologue (this thing is much harder than I'd anticipated) but it'll have to wait until next week, as tonight I head off to Poland to see my brother. Since tomorrow is the start of the World Cup and Poland's first match (against Ecuador). I don't know what the best thing that can happen is, but wish me luck.

Derrida=Columbo

That is all.

New tricks

After finishing Gravity's Rainbow, I decided to set myself an even tougher task in ergodic fiction. Read about my progress at Project Sakrileg.

All the cool kids have two blogs now.

Vote for the Winner!

Well, we did "vote for the winners", but Lithuainia didn't win.

Of course, I can't help but be happy about the winners, but remember Norway's entry from last year (which stirs up memories of Richard's leaving party)? Much more deserving of a win in my book.

Noel

Someone foolishly mentioned Deal or no Deal, and I was going to "go off on one" about it, and how it's shit, but compelling, and then I remembered this article by Charlie Brooker , and I guess it says most of what I wanted to anyway.

`Every afternoon, Noel's basically taking part in an improvisational drama workshop in which he plays the hysterical id of a man arbitrarily flipping a series of coins.

`"Christ, I hope it comes up heads. If it doesn't come up heads we're in serious trouble. I do NOT want to see heads now. Not heads. Please God no ... IT'S TAILS! HOORAY! Well played! How skilful! OK, time to flip the next coin ..."'

I would pay good money to see someone take the first money offered and then play the "let's see what would have happened game for the rest of the forty minutes.

Jens Lekman

Are you aware of him? Download some songs at

http://www.secretlycanadian.com/mp3/index.htm

I've been meaning to blog about him for some time, and then he was weirdly on MTV Germany. Like the Magnetic Fields, but perhaps less artful.

Speaking of MTV, I have become a big fan of Pimp my Ride, which is genius to begin with, but massively improved by German subtitles. I now know that the phrase to drop amongst "the kids" when attempting to express approval is "Das ist der Hammer!" As in "Den neuen CD von David Hasselhof? Das ist der Hammer!"

New digs

We moved into our new place on Monday, and we've spent the last week acclimatising to our surroundings. The area is much more promising than our previous place; requisite bloggable landmarks in the vicinity include: organic butchers (which I shall visit tomorrow in the hopes of procuring calves liver for dinner), scary shack (sadly not scary church), several second hand/charity shops (items of furniture bought: 0, suits purchased:1; priorities clearly in order), a highly recommended cafe (which we haven't visited yet) and Big Ben's English theme pub (which we visited last night).

Big Ben's has some serious potential. It's an English pub in Switzerland, yet has more Belgian beers than English and Swiss put together. In fact, the choice of English beers (all served in cans) is woeful; this is where sinful readers of What's Brewing go when they die. However, the pub does have splendid genuine imported English decor (including flock wallpaper) and the best selection of pub books I have seen for a long time.

I'm bunking off work this afternoon to go to Bern's agricultural fair with Mary. This should prove more fun than it sounds, as amongst the threshing machines and cattle there should be copious wine tasting and such. It would have rounded up the day quite nicely if we could have got tickets to see the Alan Parson's Live Project, Jethro Tull and Barclay James Harvest (never heard of them -- should I have?), who are playing there tonight, but they were sold out. I have consoled myself by buying tickets for the Zutons next month.

My hovercraft is full of eels...

Mary's ill at the moment, with a nasty cough, so, being the gentleman that I am, I checked in the dictionary for the word for cough. Husten. Unfortunately, my brain gets bored on the way and decides to play chinese whispers with itself, whereupon Husten becomes Hutten, then Hütten.

"Excuse me", I said to the pharmacist, "what do you have for cottages (Hütten)?"

"Pardon?"

"My wife watched (Hüttet). What do you have for her?"

Never mind. I started German lessons again yesterday. Everything will be fine...

Meltdown

So, apparently the swiss obsession with matters nuclear is not not a fear that they will be maliciously blown up, but a more rational fear that some lazy nuclear physicist will accidentally blow them up. As a precaution, when I registered with the swiss government I was given a pack of potassium iodide pills, which I'm assured will save me from the worst of a fallout.

Those of you living in less cautious countries can purchase commercial potassium iodide (in the form of raspberry flavoured Thyroshield if you so wish) from the good people at nukepills.com

Are friends flexible?

So, I've got my visa (so I can start my job properly), and so does Mary (so she can actually come and live here). Today I have to go and see the Fremdpolizei ("Stranger Police" -- stranger you say? stranger than what?) and register my presence. I'm sure it'll all be fine.

Apologies again for the bad sub-title pun (which is, it's a fair cop, the obvious one to make). I tried in vain to come up with a better one than Ealing Tragedy's, but failed. Any suggestions?

New Leaves

Here endeth the time of piecemeal updates at sporadic intervals...

As the dreadful pun in the title of this organ should indicate, Bath Time is over. I feel strangely liberated -- the process of writing a thesis and having it examined took its toll on me. I find myself with time on my hands to do all the things that have escaped me over the past months, such as updating this blog frequently (which SpiritOfTheTin advises lest the Great Rambling One expunge me from his recommended reading for this semester). More monumentally in the world of achievements, I finally finished Gravity's Rainbow, the experience culminating in a mad dash for the finish spread over the entirety of Sunday.

So now I am inhabiting a weird, prison-like building in the south of Bern, photos of which I will attempt to provide shortly. Well, to be fair it's a pretty bourgeois prison, but it does have scary metal blinds, and a really disconcerting cellar. I'm sleeping on an air mattress, and cooking with only one frying pan. Life is odd.

Over

Well, nearly. I had my viva on Friday. I passed, pending minor corrections. We've also found a flat in Bern, and all sorts of other exciting things, but my brain just wants to rest for a while.

By the way, Spiers and Boden were fantastic.

Spiers & Boden

Very excited; we're seeing Spiers & Boden at our local theatre tonight. This is their first gig since winning best duo in the Radio 2 folk awards, so they should be in high spirits!

A challenge for Tom

Do for the mandolin what this man does for the uke:more weeping guitar.

With added Wilberries goodness

I've never really liked Prince before, but perhaps that's because no-one told me he was an Axe Man. (Apologies to Adam if he can't watch this at work.)

(First video is Prince, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and George Harrison's son Dhani, playing "While my guitar gently weeps".)

Another trailer

Back to the Future
, as you've never seen it before. (Via BoingBoing)

Peg

Random supplementary trivia: I have tracked down the a portion of the De La Soul track that samples the Dan: here.

I'm yearnin' to be done with all this measuring of proof...

Ugh. Proofreading.

Big news is, although everyone who's anyone already knows, we're moving to Switzerland. I'm hoping that once there I'll have the time to ressurect my culinary face-off with Tom, who in the meantime has been getting on quite well without me.

I'm confident that my move will profit well in this venture. If nothing else, the Illinois penal code is on my side; the 225 ILCS 635/ Illinois Horse Meat Act will stop Tom from muscling in on my equine dining (unless he has himself reclassified as an "exotic animal") , whereas in Switzerland I need only nip to the local supermarket, or indeed the local Pferdemetzgerei (horse meat butcher).