Orwar

Yes, how'd I forget to mention the cheese?! When serving, I usually put a little bit of pasta on the plate, then cut a slice or two of cheese on top (aged, fatty cheese - 18 month aged 'priest' cheese is the best!), and then a bit more pasta on top to let the cheese smelt in the middle. Alternatively, if I have like a small lump of cheese left in the fridge, I'll just cut off the wax and shred it, and put it in the pasta pot once I've taken it off the heat.

Remember that awful milk stewed pasta you got in school, that didn't really taste much of anything and was so overcooked that the texture reminded you more of rice porridge than pasta? Whenever you saw the menu for the day and that's what they were serving, usually alongside Falu sausage so dry it would be better employed as doorstops than sustenance, you knew you'd come home starving in the afternoon. Well, to be fair, if you were a schoolboy, chances are you were pretty much always hungry. Growing takes effort, you know! Now, instead think back to when you meandered out into the kitchen and inquired what was for dinner, and your father said 'milk stewed macaroni and Falu sausage'? The joy! The anticipation! Not only would the primary ingredient of the sausage actually be meat rather than whatever was scooped up from the slaughterhouse floor like in the sausage served in school, but the pasta was soft, creamy, decadent, but still held texture to it. Of course, when I moved out, I quickly decided that it should be a staple food of the Orwarian household. But, as with everything else, you can't just cook the way it's supposed to be cooked without first experimenting a bit - especially if you're a bit lazy and usually knackered at the end of the day. Thus was born the recipe for milk stewed macaroni I refer to as 'the student's variant'. Why? Because there's less washing up after as you refuse to employ a colander and put any effort into half-cooking the pasta first. Later in life I came across a wildly different variant of milk stewed macaroni through a friend, and I've since tried it, and it's fine, but it's not 'quite there' in my opinion - and in stark contrast with the student's variant, it takes even more washing up afterwards as you use two pots. I shall now describe each recipe, starting with the lazy student's variant. You'll need: Milk. Pasta. Salt. Nutmeg. White pepper. Simply put the milk in a pot, along with salt, nutmeg and white pepper, bring to a boil (carefully - you're boiling milk, and the usual rules of boiling milk applies!). Once the milk is bubbling nicely, pop the pasta in the pot, bring it down to a simmer, stir frequently, and just keep doing so until the milk has turned into a thick, creamy sauce and the pasta is softened. Easy, right? And it's not bad, but it's not really 'there', and if you skimped out on the milk (because as a lazy student you neither kept track of how much milk you had, or felt like going out to get more) it can turn out pretty dry. Now let's look at the third variant of my friend's method, you'll need: Pasta. Milk. Butter. Flour. Salt. Nutmeg. White pepper. For this you'll need two pots. In one of them, you'll boil the pasta - I shan't insult your intelligence by giving a detailed description of this process, but I will write a sentence probably longer than that to explain how I shan't do so, thusly. In the second pot, we're making a simple Bechamel sauce. Whilst I seriously think that this shouldn't require any instruction either, I suppose there may be the occasional person who is unfamiliar with such basic cooking techniques - in which case I suppose I may also have to point out that an easier way to fill the pasta pot with water than dragging it through a puddle in the street, you could employ the tap over the kitchen sink. So, Bechamel sauce: put butter in a pot and let it smelt (through heat - turn on the stove!), once the water has evaporated from the butter, but before it has gone brown, add an equal amount of flour (by weight, to the butter, jeez), and cook it for about a minute to a minute and a half whilst occasionally giving it a little stir - once the flour is cooked (i.e. no longer raw) and smells like pie dough, you're ready to add the milk to the roux (i.e. the thing in your pot that smells like pie dough. That is roux). Here, I shall chant the white sauce mantra of Chef John; hot roux, cold milk, no lumps. Dunk the lot of the milk in there in one go, give it a good stir. Once the sauce comes up to a simmer it'll thicken. Add salt, nutmeg, and white pepper to taste. The final assembly is as easy as pouring the Bechamel over the pasta and stirring it together. Note that before doing so you should pour away the pasta water. We aren't making soup. So there's nothing wrong with this method, but it is a bit more work than the classical method, and to me it just feels as if the Bechamel and the pasta are two separate entities that have been combined. In the classical method, just like the student's method, you create the white sauce through the starch of the pasta, meanwhile letting the milk soak into the pasta, which is sort of where the charm is at, in my opinion. The classical method, I've found, feels faster than the other two and create by far the most pleasing result. For that you'll need: Milk. Pasta. Salt. Nutmeg. White pepper. First, bring some water to a boil and add your pasta to it - as always, the pasta water should be well salted ('as the sea') for the best results. Now if your macaroni's cooking time is 7-8 minutes, you're going to cut that time in half and only boil it for about 4 minutes, before pouring off the water. Now you'll have a pot of half-cooked pasta, and to this you'll add milk (about enough to cover the pasta) along with a pinch of salt, some nutmeg, and white pepper. Bring it to a simmer, stirring frequently (again, you're cooking milk), and once the milk has turned into a nice, creamy coating that doesn't run like a liquid at the bottom of the pot, you're done. As for serving, there are two traditional things that go with milk stewed macaroni; the aforementioned Falu sausage (which I suspect may be difficult to find outside of Sweden, but can be substituted for with just about any mild beef sausage), or meatballs (which I hear are actually available abroad, although obviously in inferior quality to proper Swedish meatballs, but that's life for a non-Swede, I guess). You could make your own meatballs, of course, to ensure the quality - but then home made meatballs should always be served with potatoes, brown sauce, lingonberry jam, and pickles. Ordnung muss sein. No exceptions. It's in the law, probably. Of course you're not following tallriksmodellen without any greens, but a green leaf salad on the side just doesn't do it for me for this dish. Personally I go with some oranges. As in, carrots, obviously. Not the fruit oranges, that'd be extremely silly. Simply peel and shred yourself a carrot or two and you're rocking. Or three, if, like me, you really like carrots. And there you have it. Cheerio.

Post-shoot snap for funsies. Primary shot posted here.

There's blood red rain coming down on your bed tonight. Blood red rain's on your face. Close this dark romance, as we dance down on danger lane, whistling the symphony of pain.

What I find interesting about the world, is how the most commonly viewed category of pornography in China is 'Japanese'.

I know, right. Perhaps I should have you tagged or something, then I might be able to actually catch you in-world on occasion even!

Remind me to never leave you unsupervised around any of my spoons.

I arrived at today's pet peeve after finding myself writing some rather harsh comments that never ended up being posted, on random threads here and there, where people just . . . Failed at English. People who starts their topic with an opening statement, and add a question mark on the end. "I'm looking for ...?" - well, is it a question? Is that the question? Did you start this topic to inquire as to whether it may be so, that you seek that which your title suggests you are looking for? Yes, I get that there are the occasional reasons for people not communicating in brilliant English; but if you can't even employ a question mark properly, what on earth are you doing on an English forum? Why were you ever even allowed to proceed from third grade? Is that why 'everything else failed' and you turned to the forums to try here; that your utter ineptitude made it impossible for anyone to communicate with you, to offer that which you were looking for? This shocking misplacement of a question mark raises much too many question marks! Aardvarks! Gah!

I'm not a fan of the visual changes. I'm sure I'll get used to it in time, but for now it just appears alien. As far as reactions go, I feel like most of them are superfluous already. If you don't like or agree with what someone is saying, you're free to inform them of this. If you want to show your support, clicking a 'hug' button just feels lazy.

Pouts.

Well, if Jordan's meme didn't do it, perhaps the ensuing rambling did.

That would suggest that 97.789% of the Swedish population observe Halloween. Which would have to include a whole lot of infants and people so old they can't chew cotton candy. The typical Swedish Halloween pretty much means there's a discount on candy and that there's going to be some horror movies on the tellie, I wouldn't call that 'celebrating'. We do, on the other hand, have Allhelgonadagen (All Saints' Day) which coincides with Halloween (well, the day after - putting Halloween on Allhelgonaafton - 'All saints' eve'). Which frankly all Western Christian nations probably have in their calendar and observe to some extent or other. Here it's a day where you go to the graves of lost loved ones to tidy it and maybe leave a flower or candle. As for observing Halloween in SL ... Nah. Not a fan of commercial holidays. As a fan of horror I'm quite glad there's a bit more focus on 'spooky' stuff coming out for events and such, but as a snob I tend to look at most of it as the themed trash it is - but occasionally there'll be something decent around.

But did you ever notice how whenever it's raining heavily, we seem to lose framerate?

Not necessarily, no. But I would argue that the norm is that people make babies with people they have love for. That doesn't mean that all people who love someone make babies with them, or that there aren't people who make babies without love. Again though, the definitions would need to be established first. You do have a point, but, I feel you aren't being misanthropic enough in that analysis. People in 'the west' also used to spawn children in great numbers, because the infancy mortality was so high that to maximise the chances of one's genes making it to adulthood, one would have to bake a few extra biscuits. Then we were introduced to the concept of microbiology, better medicines and the correlations of health and hygiene, and whilst there was an initial boom as the old convention still hung over us, we adapted to produce fewer children within a few generations. Many of the places in the world where such concepts are still new or spotty are where much of the global population boom is happening, and in our rather half-arsed attempt of supplying medicine and healthcare supplies to these parts of the world we've merely turned it into a cruelly drawn-out joke which only increases the demand for supplies. We've stepped in and blindsided the process of natural selection, upped growth, often whilst not doing nearly enough to provide stability and sustainability. But look at how 'good' we're being. There's no shortage of people to laugh at. Vegans, Christians, well any religious people to be honest, designers, artists, Americans, people who consume avocados and/or bananas, people who cultivate almonds in California, self-help philosophers, influencers, politicians who put a punitive tax on plastic bags to promote the use of paper bags - or worse, textile bags - that have an even larger environmental impact than the alternative, people who purchase imported dairy goods from Finland, people who purchase imported meat products from Germany, Poland, Brazil, or New Zealand, people who consume red onions produced in Egypt, people who import soy from southern France to 'produce Swedish tofu', people who purchase 'oat milk' (that isn't a thing to begin with) from companies partially owned by the Chinese government ... And on the list goes. Don't worry, we live in a hilarious world!

Which is all well and good - it would be unreasonable to expect all people to read all works of philosophy, especially in their original languages. But, to adhere to a tidbit of philosophy to which you have no other context just becomes awkward. Take Carpe Diem, for example. To translate those two words isn't very difficult, and to project meaning onto them isn't any difficult, and to use the phrase to promote just about any philosophical perspective isn't any difficult. But what exactly was Horace trying to say when he wrote those words? Who was he, and what was his perspective on life? Horace was a classical cynic, a concept which I dare say most people today will misunderstand because the meaning of cynicism has changed since the Hellenic period. Whilst there are many ways in which the philosophy could be presented, a brief summary of some of the cornerstones are: The goal (and thus, purpose) of life is eudaimonia (happiness). The path to eudaimonia is achieved through self-sufficiency, to be indifferent of lucid human emotions (including love). Rejection of wealth, fame, and power - asceticism - is the most virtuous path to eudaimonia. Rejection of shame, social convention, and law. One of the most popular stories wherein the virtues of classical cynicism is displayed, is the meeting of Diogenes of Sinope and Alexander the Great. Alexander sought out Diogenes to ask him to impart some of his wisdom on him, and offered Diogenes 'anything he desires' - which, coming from Alexander the Great, is a pretty generous offer. Diogenes at the time lived in a barrel in the marketplace, owned no clothes, and was known to urinate on people to express his disdain, and when Alexander made his offer, he asked Alexander to 'move aside, you're standing in my sunshine'. Whether or not this is historically true, the story pretty much embodies the 'ultimate expression of cynicism'. So when we read Horace's Odes: Which in English translates as: So whilst the concept of 'living in the moment' does strike true, and that it is for the sake of eudaimonia (i.e. happiness), it does not imply 'treat yourself', or 'submit to your emotional fancies', but to reject everything material and emotional, and to be at peace within yourself. Also that life is short and fickle, we're all going to die, and you're not to be bothered by it. People who tattoo 'Carpe Diem' on their skin, who aren't ready to piss on people who displease them, are no better than the morons who tattoo Chinese symbols on their body without realising they've carved 'Shrimp Soup' onto their buttock. The misanthrope in me would rather see that these people never find love or happiness, so that they may never breed and raise more idiots into our society.

"How does your avatar look today?" - started off without any 'instructions' past the title itself; most people figured it was just about posting pictures wherein their current getup is displayed. Which is pretty much what the thread has been used for by most attendants. "The Vanity Thread" - basically the same. Except photos were mandatory. Some people have used it a bit like a blog, listing all the things they're wearing. Others just use it for double-posting, or in lieu of the "How does your avatar look today?" thread. "How does your avatar look now?" - was created in response to the rampant re-posting and commentary of the "How does your avatar look today?" thread, explicitly asking for people not to do that there and let people just post, browse and 'fave' pictures without the inflammatory debates and pseudo-political self-proclaimed 'art critics' who'd attack anything perceived in slight of the populist vogue of the correctness crowd. Of course, people are either too idiotic to realise they're on a different thread than usual, or blatantly don't care about those who felt unwelcome in the 'usual' thread due to the drama - or simply feel themselves 'above the rules' - and so a fair few people have simply quit sharing their pictures on the forums at all. Which reminds me, did I ever officially congratulate the 'inclusiveness crowd' for making parts of the forums completely inhospitable to certain members of the community? Whilst I'm not aware of any 'actual' convention wherein posting the same picture in both (and sometimes more) threads is considered spamming properly, it's frequently remarked on in private conversations with various forumites, and whether it's a majority or a minority, there certainly isn't appreciated by everyone.