Sculpin

With both Canyonwren and Kill musing about mythological matters, I’ve been thinking about that stuff myself. And I’ve been thinking about sex changes in classical mythology. Three come to mind:

• Tiresias, who was transformed into a woman when he hit some mating snakes with a stick. After seven years as a woman, she ran across another pair of mating snakes, hit them with a stick, and became a man again. Zeus and Hera went to him to settle the question of which sex enjoyed intercourse more. Never be the mortal to whom the gods go to settle a bet.
• Iphis, a girl raised as a boy, who fell in love with a girl and was transformed into a young man on the day before their wedding.
• Caenis, who was raped by Poseidon. After the rape, Poseidon turned her into a man at her request, and also granted her invulnerability.

ETA: Wim mentions Siproites below. (Good catch!) And in the Metamorphoses somebody named Sithon is mentioned in passing: “Neither will I tell you how, the laws of nature conspiring to alter, Sithon became of indeterminate sex, now man, now woman.” (Or Humphries’ translation: “Nor do I think I will tell you about Sithon, who alternated being man and woman.”)

Does Hermaphroditus count? I’m not sure. It’s a good yarn, though.

From Made from Scratch: Reclaiming the Pleasures of the American Hearth by Jean Zimmerman:

Rabid Twinkies fans flood Planet Twinkie, the product Web site, with recipes. Representative is one for Twinkie Pie, which calls for twelve Twinkies, one premade pie crust, one spoon, and one bowl: place the Twinkies in the bowl and stir “until the desired consistency is reached”. Pour it into the pie crust, and your dessert is good to go. The more gastronomically sophisticated might prefer the recipe for Kahlua-drenched Twinkie-misu.

Not to mention Twinkie Tacos with warm marshmallow whip. Olé indeed.

Via Mike Whybark’s blog, a loving reminiscence of the Last Exit on Brooklyn at Seattle Wiki.

I spent a lot of time there as a highschooler in the late eighties, just quietly sipping my espresso and watching the crowd.

The Exit was the first place I saw anybody do latte art.

I’m glad I got a chance to hang out at the Exit while Irv was alive. I still miss it. Overcome by nostalgia now.

You know what else I miss? The Jean-Paul Sartre Memorial No Exit Rooming House. I never knew anybody there, but it was near my house and I got a kick out of the sign.

Melanie McFarland, the P-I TV columnist, is slogging through the summer press tour. She reports that FOX hosted a “Family Guy”-themed lunch with a martini bar. Ms. McFarland grabbed a cocktail menu to share with the world. (Scroll down for the menu.)

The cocktails actually sound pretty good to me. They appear to tend to the sweet and girly, but with such names as “World Domination”, “Evil Monkey”, and “Victory Is Mine!” Maybe you cocktail-knowledgeable people out there will recognize them under some other name. “Victory Is Mine!” sounds the best to me; it’s basically a vodka gimlet with raspberries.

Incidentally, I have some strong feelings about the vodka gimlet. I like them a lot, but I never order them in bars because people do such terrible things to them. Powdered sugar is right out. Egg white is also right out. Geez. Rose’s Lime Cordial is classic, but I prefer fresh lime juice and simple syrup. (If I wanted classic, I’d be drinking gin.) And did I mention no egg white? Okay.

Update: Mia and Josh point out that the menu is pretty repetitious: vodka and this juice, vodka and that juice… And Brian’s martini is all wrong. That dog’s a gin drinker. So, how would you construct drinks with those names? My answer’s in the comments.

I’ve had an awesome day. This morning I chatted briefly with Paul Sorey, the artist who’s putting in an enormous, delicious metal sculpture just off Lake City Way. You may know his work from his sculpture, Salmon Waves, at the Ballard Locks. (Did you know that it has LEDs that generate images of swimming fish? I didn’t. Time for me to head down to the Locks.)

And tonight I wandered down to the Picardo P-Patch to see for myself whether there were really honeybee hives down there. I’d gotten some bad directions to them, so couldn’t picture where they might be. The guy I asked about them just happened to be Picardo’s Bee Guy. (There is also a Bee Lady who has two hives of her own.) Andrew the Bee Guy offered to show me the hives and let me take a look at them. On Saturday I’ll meet up with him when he works on the hive; he’ll bring an extra bee suit for me. Hooray!

I was interested in bees for years, but the local regulations about keeping bees on one’s property were difficult for me to work with, especially when I was a renter. But here might be an opportunity within walking distance for me to learn from experienced beekeepers and eventually keep some bees. And even if I don’t wind up taking that opportunity, Saturday should be fun and interesting.

By the way, “bee fever” usually refers to beekeepers’ obsessive enthusiasm, but it turns out that beehives can run a fever. And Japanese native honeybees can attack an invading hornet by surrounding it in a tight cluster and raising the temperature in the cluster until the hornet dies.

There’s a fun anagram thread going on over at Peter Pereira’s blog. The starting phrase is “The New Sincerity”. I wish “nice when I tryst” had one more ‘e’! Oh, well. I was happy to come up with “tiny secret whine”. I think my favorite may be Peter’s “sneer then, icy wit”.

Malora mentioned a while back that it’s easy to get ADVO/Shopwise to stop sending you that big batch of weekly circulars. Thanks, Malora!

I called Seattle’s Shopwise subsidiary and got the number of the office that’s responsible for taking me off mailing lists: 1-888-241-6760, open 8 to 5 eastern time. You can also cancel online.

I do occasionally check out grocery circulars, but only on the web.

According to the Center for Development of Recycling at San Jose State University, “Individually, an average of 41 pounds of junk mail are sent to every adult each year, 44% of which goes to a landfill unopened.” I’m pretty sure we’ve gotten that much from American Express alone.

I bought a hummingbird feeder on Friday, and within a day the little guys had found it and were feeding at it.

But I’m going to have to take a second look at its construction. A similar model has caused hummingbirds to get stuck and sometimes die. Some simple modifications can make the feeders safer.

Delores’s gift of the Halloween Tarot (thanks, Delores!) led me eventually to the fine Museum of Talking Boards: “the history, lore, theory, and use of the Ouija board.” Not to mention the galleries, both vintage and modern.

I believe I’d be at least a little squeamish about this Evergreen Monthly notice even if I were a Christian:

Thu 28: Authors David Paul and Candace Doyle
If you wish to hear God’s voice as a distinct and conversational voice within you, join David Paul and Candace Doyle, authors of “The Journey That Never Was: A Guide to Hearing God’s Voice Regardless of One’s Faith, Religion, or Personal Beliefs.” They will share their personal stories of coming to hear this voice, discuss the barriers to hearing it and help you hear this voice for yourself. 7-8:30pm, free. East West Bookshop, 6500 Roosevelt Way NE. 206-523-3726 or www.eastwestbookshop.com.

Yes, please, sign me up for allegedly supernatural voices inside my head. Yeeghh.

If you check out their website, you’ll see that the Holy Spirit now has an advice column. No kidding. “Click here to read the Holy Spirit’s reply.” Apparently the Holy Spirit likes to say, “Blessings to you precious one,” and encourages the broken-hearted to “take this time to focus on you.”