tasty cake

had me a birthday two days ago -- look at the fabu cake p made me!a yummy pistachio cake with lemon icing and chopped pistas on top. so good!

friday catblogging: meaty flecks edition

if it's not obvious in the video, that's a huge glob of RAW MEAT oscar got on his ear while licking out the bowl after we made him a batch of food this week. siiiiiiick! clean yourself up, son! but the best part was that after he'd finished, instead of immediately cleaning his befouled ear, he just gave his head a big shake, and a little meatwad landed on p's face! can you imagine anything grosser?

guitar hero randomness

there's been an odd amount of chatter here at fortress narasimhan this week about the video game guitar hero 3 -- so it feels like quite the coincidence to have stumbled across this oddly compelling blog post today.

the grand finale

a final capstone to the christmas market madness, dug up by priya on youtube, totally random (this was taken at the bonn market):

more christmas market awesomeness

we left germany for the holidays almost a week ago, but there's still so much i feel i have to say about the christmas markets in bonn and cologne! i've just never seen anything like them. it's hard to know which aspects to focus on to really capture the essence of them. i think one of the most incredible things is the atmosphere at these places -- germans know how to do christmas! the various markets all open around the end of november or beginning of december, and they're basically packed with people throughout the entire month leading up to christmas. i usually leave max planck around 7 or 8 pm, and even at that time on a tuesday evening the streets are choked with people going about their shopping or enjoying glühwein (hot mulled wine) or just soaking up the general festivities. p has observed that christmas in germany is not so much a big lead-up to a single climactic day, but a whole season of sustained merriment and celebration (and she's right).

so what else to say? speaking of glühwein, i have to mention all the appealing christmas beverages on offer at the markets -- in addition, there's hot mead and eierpunsch (egg punch) and on and on. this place was especially tasty:
in some sense, it's not so different from a good bar -- nice selection of drinks, hip music, good vibe. but the mix of people is especially great -- hipsters and middle aged women and old fogeys all crammed together (and i do mean crammed, as it was always packed), all enjoying warm drinks against cold hands. and the propeller moves! actually, so many of the physical booths themselves are incredible, filled with fantastic embellishments and intricate details. it's hard to believe they're all temporary structures.and the items for sale are great too! i feel like most similar "festivals" i've been to have at least a 90% tchotchke rate, but it's more like 50% here (which is damn good if you think about it). so many of the vendors are genuine artisans -- you can watch them blow glass or carve wood as you walk the aisles. one of the bakers even had a small stack of firewood piled outside to fuel the oven.
and yes, the ferris wheel is great too. so sad to think it'll all be gone when we return!

pyrotechnics chez narasimhan

check it out:

the video is of a floating lantern sudi brought back from thailand -- basically a big tissue paper hot air balloon, powered by a slice of a roll of toilet paper suspended at the bottom and lit on fire. the thing carried on for quite a bit after the video cut off -- eventually it looked just like a bright star in the night sky, and then it twinkled out.

here's the same thing on an incredibly massive scale in chiang mai, thailand. whoa.

a better garfield

look, i know it's not exactly cool to blog about garfield (though i confess i did have a soft spot for him when i was a kid, and he is voiced by bill murray, the funniest man in hollywood), but this is pretty damn funny. h/t joe.

flaming pudding

from last weekend's (wholely badass) festivities.(it's a delicious christmas pudding from the illustrious merton college, oxford, hand-delivered by teru and samantha -- danke schön!)

der vokuhila*

anyone who knows p's family probably knows that they harbor a bit of a, erm, fascination with all things mullet. (and sorry, but if you didn't know that, then i say you don't really know them.) members of the family maintain a high level of mullet vigilance during communal outings. when one is spotted, the rest of the family is subtly (and often not so subtly) alerted, and a curious mixture of evaluation, mockery, and appreciation (again, often not so subtle) follows. there has at times been a fervent devotion to the website mulletsgalore.com.

surely, part of the appeal is that people have largely realized that mullets are actually completely ridiculous, so you just don't see them much anymore, and that makes it weirdly exciting when you do.

everything is different in germany.mullets are EVERYWHERE. this fine specimen was documented last weekend at the bonn christmas market. but there has simply been no end to the number of times p and i have been out and seen incredible mullets and either not had our camera with us or been too slow on the draw. kids have them. punkish young lads have them. just friday we saw a fantastic femmullet while going through the security line at the airport. i think the most jaw-dropping (and offensive) one was a super aggressive early 20-ish looking guy last summer whose t-shirt featured a silhouette of a woman next to the text (in english) "i only sleep with the best".

this post is the first in a series.

*that's "the mullet" in german: it stands for vorne kurz, hinten lang, which itself literally means "front short, back long". mostly i feel like the german language and i don't get along too well, except for times like this, when i love it.

last weekend

part of our aforementioned busy-ness was a delightful visit last weekend from our old chicago pals dave, teru, and samantha, all of whom now live in britain. such a nice time! on friday we spent the day in cologne with our pal (and native cologner) corinna. and i just gotta say, what a lovely city cologne is! here we are at the middle ages christmas market there (which i guess is like a really cool renaissance fair, if such a thing exists). clockwise from the upper left, that's me, corinna, dave, teru, samantha, and p. props to teru and his steady hand for the self portrait.

friday catblogging (on saturday): high as a kite edition

hoo! sorry for the long blog silence -- we been busy kids. yesterday we made the trip back to the states for the holidays. that meant a 15-hour turn in his carrier for poor oscar, but the little champ made it through with nary a cry of complaint! so here he is enjoying a well-deserved feast of catnip upon arrival.

it took germany to bring them together

new jersey's finest, united at last.

Ah, Europe

...where purple velvet pants on a middle-aged man signify nothing more than a fondness for haberdashery. Ordinary men here put American metrosexuals to shame. And it's not just men - I've seen quite a few pairs of black leather pants on proper middle-aged women. People here wear these things so well, you sort of don't notice until a minute later. You kind of do a double take - like, was that man actually wearing mustard yellow fine wale corduroy, or am I dreaming?

Biermobile!

I took this photo in Cologne over two months ago, and I can't believe I'm only posting it now. This, dear ones, is the most awesome vehicle of them all: the Biermobile. Powered by bicyclists facing a bar with a duded up gent serving beer in the center, festooned with an oversized steering wheel behind the barrel in front, and made for good times. Love!