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it was marvelous and mesmerising, but i managed to tear myself away. we have a new washing machine, see, after finally giving up on the seven-year old beast that for the last year and a half has never quite made it through the final spin cycle, especially when a towel is involved, instead making groaning noises for fifteen minutes before opening the door to a sodden pile of tangled clothes. on tuesday it valiantly rattled and clunked through the spin… and then the little laundry enclave quickly filled with a smoke that smelt of industry burning.

so now. there’s me, crouching in front of our shiny new appliance, watching towels and other bits being gaily tossed about. when it reaches the final spin, it sounds like an airplane preparing to takeoff. tops.

but what i dragged myself away from the laundry for, what i really wanted to tell you about was a flyer i found on a rack in the visitor information center in young (as you will remember from a previous post, the cherry capital of australia). so without further ado, and verbatim:

Cherries
History Sweet cherries were named after the town where they were first grown, Cerasu in Asia Minor (Turkey). They’ve always been a favourite fruit with the stones found in many Stone age caves in Europe and cliff dwellings in America. In Australia cherries were brought in by European migrants and grown. Cherries were first grown in the Young District in 1847. They realised that the Young district was ideally suited to the growing of the high quality sweet cherries and today the district produces about 60% of Australia’s cherries, producing approximately 4500 tonne. The cherries are shipped throughout Australia, Asia, Middle East and Europe.

Handling and storage Cherries are picked in the cool of the day and cooled as quick as possible, packed and sent to market. Most cherries are in the market within 24 hours as the fruit is best eaten fresh. Cherries if stored should be kept at 0-2 deg and with very high humidity, they must also be mature, as it’s the sugars that keep fruit. Immature fruit or green fruit will not keep and like all stonefruit doesn’t ripen after picking.

Varieties There is a large number of varieties to choose from to extend the season. There is Red, Black and White varieties of which are all sweet to eat. It is the late season varieties that are sort after being larger, sweeter and harvested around Christmas. Although a smaller cherry is sometimes sweeter than the larger ones. The Rons seedling has always been a favourite for people, and is on the market end of November, early December.

Nutrition Cherries are low in kilojoules and contain many vitamins, minerals and are high in potassium helping with cramps. In the U.S they have been putting a cherry powder in with hamburger meat to help lower cholesterol and it has been known for many years that cherries are an aphrodisiac and have been sought after for that reason.

How to choose the right cherry Cherries must be firm, shiny, well coloured and most of all have a fresh green stem as this is a sign of well looked after cheries in the orchard, packhouse, and retail outlet.

Cherries are a fruit that has always been admired and sort after by people for 1000’s of years. It is one of the few fruits that are truly seasonal and are better value per weight than chocolate.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 8 January 2005 at 8:58 am

permalink | filed under bookshelf, trip

so i looked over at the still-unwrapped chocolate bar on my bookshelf, and along the spine of it, next to “extra creamy milk chocolate” in gold print, were the instructions “open here”.

ok, mr chocolate bar.

my bookshelf is now much closer to my desk — which explains why i managed to read the tiny type on the side of a chocolate bar despite near-legal blindness — since i moved it over from the opposite side of of the room, to make space for the crib and change table for the new person who will soon be upon us, holy fucken crap.

aside from moving furniture around, the mammoth magazine cull continues… the last couple of days i finally made it to my pile of “juice” magazines. if you read the previous post about cutting down the swathe of “spin”s and detected a faint poignancy about the exercise, this new challenge has been a few notches more melancholy. because these, i actually worked on.

i have issue one, and two, and three (you get the idea), from when i had to buy them at the newsagent… through to a couple from around issue ten when i did a spell of work experience there in third year uni, and then a bunch more, and then every issue from march 1995 when i was deputy art director for a couple of years, and then the year’s worth from november 1997 (issue 57) when i became art director, to october 1998, when i went postal and had to leave the company, and then a random few from after. yeah, i have a lot of issues.

now there’s a pile, facedown, at the top of the stairs, awaiting transfer to the recycling bin downstairs. it feels like i’m throwing out a chunk of australian publishing history, and every time i walk past i wonder if i’ve been too brutal. of course, i did keep all mine, and took clippings of choice layouts from the rest, where “choice” includes both the aesthetically pleasing and the “what the?” ludicrousness of that heady mid-nineties period of cutting edge magazine design. but aside from a very select few from the very early days (issue three, with evan dando in love beads and nothing else on the cover; issue eight: nirvana; issue 18: eddie vedder “on kurt’s death”), there they are, facedown, top of stairs.

sigh. there’s a feeling not so far back in my head that if my entire stash had not been so dotted with cockroach shit (just the outside covers, but still a misadventure in storage if there ever was one), i would have blogged instead about the extremely delicious watermelon i procured this week from the supermarket at a bargain 95c/kg.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 8 October 2004 at 12:53 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, snacks, werk

what better way to start the week than plunder the magazine cupboard for another stack of old magazines to cast upon the steadily growing pile by the door. after a lengthy bout of procrastination, the cull finally began in earnest mid-last week.

started off with the “wallpaper”s and “the face”s, which were easier than i expected. and then a stack of those trendy, purposeless magazines out of LA or new york — easy. then the “esquire”s, which were a bit harder because there are actual articles in there that i found myself re-reading, including a trio of david sedaris stories, and a 1999 interview with osama bin ladin, and a bunch of randomness by ted from “queer eye”, like the one where he gets a fragrance made up especially for him, called “ted” . still, nothing i couldn’t add to the pile by the door.

this morning though, i have unearthed a couple boxes of ten year old “spin”s. the stacks of pulpy paper covered in grainy grungy photographs of kurt, the stories about river phoenix dying on the sidewalk, the introduction of alanis, the reviews of “pulp fiction” and “bakesale”. so now i’ve got “bakesale” on the CD player as i speedread courtney love’s lollapalooza diary and bloody hell it’s like a trip down memory lane.

a few days ago the boy was mocking “all those memories” but he has little idea of what’s tied up in these boxes of “spin”s. it’s all about the waking up in the middle of the night to pearl jam songs on the radio, the university work experience at a pop (culture) magazine, the design school major projects about rock music and junk food, the graduating and getting a job at the pop (culture) magazine, the shameless ripping off of other magazines for design tips… the design award, the gradual boredom and disillusionment with working on a magazine, the exiting the industry, the occasional yearning to be moving those slabs of words and pretty pictures around a page again…

posted by ragingyoghurt on 27 September 2004 at 10:55 am

permalink | filed under bookshelf, boy, soundtrack, werk

it’s good to have a plan, because then you can be quietly pleased when everything falls into place. in this case, tuesday, the nori rolls were a perfect balance of salty and sour and sweet and umami (there is no place for bitterness in my life), “donnie darko” (apart from the arty digi-montages) was still good, and the coco loco mocha freezer (while too damn watery and ice chippy in texture) was a powerful chocolatey force. for about ten minutes into the film, the number of people in the cinema was one — me, and then sadly four teenagers arrived and took out the back row, and giggled when cherita chen gets told “go back to china, bitch”, and received phone calls on their mobiles, and giggled some more.

teenagers. feh.

having a plan with a bit of leeway on either side is especially good, because then you can duck into kmart before for a pair of new underwear, and pop into harris farm after for beans and asparagus and a tub of raspberry yoghurt.

—

completely unplanned was the sudden waking at 2.30 this morning, the lying awake for an hour before rolling out of bed and the resigned heading downstairs with a handful of pillows and “the new yorker” food issue. having over the last couple of days already read about the struggles to develop a superior ketchup and some guy’s obsession with pasta, 3am seemed a perfectly alright time to learn about the commercial production of salad greens.

here, look:

it took … until 1989 … to mass produce the first retail bagged salads. salad spinners were perfected, shredding knives sharpened, battalions of chemists subcontracted to create the perfect polymers. today’s bags are a triumph of practical ingenuity. their plastic is made up of five to ten layers, each with a different function. some are designed to make the package shiny or crinkly, others to carry print well. together, they have to be just permeable enough to keepthe bag’s artificial atmosphere in balance — the wrong ink alone can suffocate a salad. as the lettuce sits on the shelf, the gases in the bag are constantly consumed, released and replaced. oxygen, nitrogen and carbon-dioxide molecules bond with the polymers on one side of the plastic and are released on the other, diffusing from high concentrations to low. every type of salad requires a different type of bag, tailored to its respiration rate by gas chromatography and computer analysis. every bag is a miniature biosphere.

from salad days: how a lowly leaf became a high-end delicacy
by burkhard bilger

yesterday, at a luncheon in which everyone at the table turned out to be with child (way to go, my fertile friends!), what i ordered off the specials board was a grilled haloumi salad. it wasn’t just slabs of grilled salty cheese; there were lightly dressed baby rocket and mint leaves, cucumber ribbons, fresh beetroot, roasted eggplant, and on top, a dollop of herby yoghurt. there were also two bits of bread which in the end were used to wipe the plate clean.

oh cook + archie’s, i am privileged to be fed by you.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 September 2004 at 12:10 pm

permalink | filed under around town, at the movies, bookshelf, drink, kid, lunch, snacks

the mammoth task ahead of me this week, besides regular werk and meeting friends for luncheons, is culling my decade-old stash of magazines. i try and do this every few years, and it involves spending h o u r s sitting in front of the magazine shelf leafing through old spins and rolling stones and details and esquires and rayguns and bikinis, trying to decide which ones can be chucked out. remember that issue of details from 1991, with pretty young keanu all ted-like on the cover? that one is never even considered for the chuck pile. but the thing is, hardly any of the magazines seem to end up on the chuck pile. maybe, like, two.

so this is probably a really bad week to start my 30 day free dvd delivery trial; i don’t know which will be more distracting, from each other as well as other werk at hand. but you, maybe you don’t have such pressing matters as decade-old magazines to cull. if you live around these parts, you too could get free dvds for 30 days. i mean, when else is telstra gonna give you anything for free?

posted by ragingyoghurt on 6 July 2004 at 4:28 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, misc

oh how distracting. just as i was about to put an end to the day’s procrastination, my doorbell rang and a postman handed me a large brown padded envelope. inside, “optic nerve 9” and “summer blonde”, a collection of “optic nerves” past. i am joyous and lucky, and at the same time, doomed.

thank you, nellie.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 February 2004 at 4:49 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, nellie, werk

sometimes it’s nice when clients take their time getting back to you, because that means you can take the morning off and see the shag exhibition at the opera house and the tracey moffat exhibition at the mca, and in between, a show of sydney object design, in what was up until a few months ago, some secret walled-up space underneath the sydney opera house. cool.

the moffat show was particularly worthy because it included every piece of her various series [what is the plural of ‘series?’] of photographs. whenever i;ve seen her stuff in the past it’s usually been just one picture out of a set, so today was the first time i experienced the full narrative element of her work. i felt better for it.

i’d usually rather see a drawing show than a photography one, but goshdarnit i like that tracey moffat, especially her “scarred for life” series. i’m even going back in to see the screenings of her films (there is only so much art a girl can see in a day), which is saying a lot really, because my standard reaction to the phrase ‘experimental film / video art’ is… not a pretty sight. i think the key is ‘narrative’. so call me linear, dammit.

lunchtime midafternoon saw me perched at a counter in a foodhall with three nori rolls, popular music from vittula and a gloria jeans tim tam iced chocolate. everything was tasty and extremely satisfying.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 3 February 2004 at 10:21 pm

permalink | filed under around town, bookshelf, lunch

this from our correspondent in new york:

the national cattlemen’s beef association… is hoping to inject some red meat into the american snack food diet with cheeseburger fries. the fries, which look like a squat version of standard french fries, are made of a meat-and-cheese compound that tastes — as the name suggests — like a cheeseburger. and while the taste is not distinctly beef, biting into one does impart the lingering flavoring of processed cheese.

mmm… fries. read the complete story here.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 24 September 2003 at 7:24 am

permalink | filed under bookshelf

See, even when yer boyfriend, who you quite like, suddenly picks up and goes on a 6 month epic Indiana Jones journey to exciting bomb-riddled sub-emailable countries like India and Pakistan and Iran and beyond, there’s half a packet of fun, bite-sized reasons why you should be pleased:

1. Nellie’s coming!!  Finally.

2. The new Eels album.  It’s so pretty and lo-fi.

3. Pale green peppermint ice-cream studded through with mini m&ms.  Sure, it’s got that non-creamy, skim milk texture… but it shore is funny though.

4. Orange fur-covered bookshelf.  It’s orange. It’s furry. You don’t even need books.

5. That scab on your knee from when you fell over unassisted in the street has grown crusty and ripe for the picking.  Meanwhile the tiny cut you got while hoicking yourself out of the swimming pool, has become mildly infected – not helped at all by the fact that your big metal watch keeps chafing. You’d think it would have taken a far shorter time to arrive at the idea to switch wrists. But, no. Really.

And so on. And so forth.

– – –
before i had a “blog”, i used to write a sporadically updated letter on the front page of my website. this is one of them. i am consolidating it into these archives, because i can.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 April 2000 at 10:24 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, boy, drawn, ice cream, nellie, soundtrack

Home Improvement

All of a sudden it’s the other side of winter. 5.30 in the afternoon and the sun’s still up. On the downside, those same golden rays stream through my bedroom window by about 7am, illuminating the blood in my eyelids. Literally, I see red.

After putting it off fer months, I’m finally painting my walls. Over the weekend, the first one… grey. No, nowt an ode to winter – there’s a bigger plan afoot. If the weather stays clement over the next week, two more walls will succumb to my trusty (rusty) roller. This time… orange. Yes, the very colours of Future2000™ come to life. Incidentally the official names of these colours are “sardine” and “turmeric”. Tasty.

And so to celebrate, a free coffee table for all valued customers. Print! Cut! Fold! Fun fer everyone!

Incidentally, on the laminated plasticwood surface, a copy of the magazine “Speak”, my favourite magazine of the last many months. Bursting with vernacular fun, Chris Ware comics and everything and nothing in particular. And now it is n’more. One of the things that made reading (or perusing) “Speak” such an excellent experience was the absence of ads, or rather, the graceful ebb and flow from page to page uninterrupted by generic cosmetic or tryhard cigarette ads.

Tragically the latest issue contains a bitter bitter diatribe of an editorial (another reason I like “Speak” is that the editorial is never just three paragraphs summarising the contents page) heralding the impending demise of the magazine. Something about what happens to publishers when they are “not inclined to help merchandise product or design editorial to be more compatible with advertiser’s campaigns; or when he is not inclined to pay public relations companies… instead of writers.”

Sigh.

Just what we don’t need right now, especially when magazines with names like “Gear” and “Stuff” spring up, with no other purpose than to tell you what you can spend your money on. It sucks! It all sucks!

Anyway (and believe me – in the light of that last paragraph, the irony of this statement is so clear to me), go out and buy “Speak” because in a couple of issues it’ll be extinct, and then we’ll see who’s sorry.

Well, ok. Probably not you.

The speak website is nowt a patch on the real deal (web:0, print:1 – woohoo!), but drop by anyway eh?

– – –
before i had a “blog”, i used to write a sporadically updated letter on the front page of my website. this is one of them. i am consolidating it into these archives, because i can.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 2 August 1999 at 3:38 pm

permalink | filed under bookshelf, drawn

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