Posts
Monday, April 13, 2026
What's a Picaresque?
“Picaresque” is an eely tag. The Spanish word picaresca came from picaro, first used in the early 1600s and which in English can mean rogue, bohemian, adventurer, rapscallion. We took picaron, the augmentative of picaro, and made the accusatory-sounding “picaroon,” a lovely synonym for “picaro” that Merriam-Webster will tell you also means “pirate,” although Picaroons of the Caribbean doesn’t have the ring it should. The picaresque novel—the term wasn’t coined in English until the early nineteenth century—has shape-shifted since its first known incarnation in Spain, the anonymously authored Lazarillo de Tormes, published in 1553. But most picaresque novels incorporate several defining characteristics: satire, comedy, sarcasm, acerbic social criticism; first-person narration with an autobiographical ease of telling; an outsider protagonist-seeker on an episodic and often pointless quest for renewal or justice.
Sunday, April 12, 2026
Diced Tomatoes & Green Chilies Spiced up My Rice and Beans
We added this to dinner last night at it was fantastic. I had home cooked chick peas and home cooked brown basmati rice and we added my home made cilantro sauce on top (cilantro garlic oil vinegar blended). It was out of this world.
Saturday, April 11, 2026
Friday, April 10, 2026
Brian Eno
“Beautiful things grow out of shit. Nobody ever believes that.
Everyone thinks that Beethoven had his string quartets completely in his
head—they somehow appeared there and formed in his head—and all he had
to do was write them down and they would be manifest to the world. But
what I think is so interesting, and would really be a lesson that
everybody should learn, is that things come out of nothing. Things
evolve out of nothing. You know, the tiniest seed in the right situation
turns into the most beautiful forest. And then the most promising seed
in the wrong situation turns into nothing. I think this would be
important for people to understand, because it gives people confidence
in their own lives to know that’s how things work. If you walk around
with the idea that there are some people who are so gifted—they have
these wonderful things in their head but and you’re not one of them,
you’re just sort of a normal person, you could never do anything like
that—then you live a different kind of life. You could have another kind
of life where you could say, well, I know that things come from nothing
very much, start from unpromising beginnings, and I’m an unpromising
beginning, and I could start something.”
―
Thursday, April 09, 2026
When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everyone will respect you.
―
Tao Te Ching
A leader is best
When people barely know he exists
Of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will say, “We did this ourselves.”
―
Tao Te Ching
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