January 2006

The Great Vodka Experiment

Posted on by Patrick

More New Year’s pho­tos on flickr

So, it worked. That’s the first thing you need to know. I’m start­ing the sto­ry at the end, but some­times you can get away with that.

Quite some time ago, I read this sci­en­tif­ic paper on the fil­tra­tion of vod­ka. The gist of it is that you can fil­ter a cheap vod­ka through a char­coal fil­ter (such as, for instance, a Bri­ta water puri­fi­er) and get it to taste like a very expen­sive vodka.

I passed the link around to some friends, since it amused me, and then thought no more of it.

New Year’s Eve, my friend Kevin shows up at my place with three part bot­tles of flavoured Abso­lut (one rasp­ber­ry and two vanil­la), his Bri­ta jug, and a fresh fil­ter. He does­n’t even have to say any­thing to me. I know this is my fault.

I start smiling.

So after four fil­tra­tions, the rasp­ber­ry vod­ka was sig­nif­i­cant­ly smoother. Kath­leen’s the­o­ry was that the Bri­ta was leach­ing alco­hol from the vod­ka, which I thought plau­si­ble, but I fig­ured it was more like­ly that impu­ri­ties were being pulled out of the drink instead.

We also fil­tered one of the bot­tles of vanil­la, but with one thing and anoth­er (you know, New Year’s), we nev­er drank it. After the par­ty I put it in the freezer.

Where it froze solid.

So it appears that Kath­leen was right; it looks like the vod­ka los­es alco­hol, but tastes bet­ter, when it’s fil­tered like that.

Brrr

Posted on by Patrick

Well, it’s cold­er here today than it has been in a month or more, but at least the Sun was out all day.  The tem­per­a­ture was about ‑11C, which is real­ly not that bad, unless you’ve got­ten soft in a win­ter where the tem­per­a­ture rarely dipped below about ‑4.

Every­thing seemed more slip­pery today, too.  I lost my foot­ing about a dozen time, but I did­n’t fall, at least.

Mmmm, weath­er.  Is there any­thing more Cana­di­an to talk about?  (Well, I guess there’s the election…)

Freezing rain

Posted on by Patrick

We had freez­ing rain last night. It’s a lit­tle weird, since that’s usu­al­ly an Octo­ber and April phe­nom­e­non, with Jan­u­ary being the part of the year where it’s reg­u­lar­ly cold­er here than it is at the north frig­gin’ pole. This win­ter is beyond mild and into the spooky-warm category.

The car was glazed this morn­ing; it took near­ly ten min­utes to scrape holes in the ice big enough to see through. And walk­ing on the side­walks was treach­er­ous; every­thing was cov­ered in peb­bled ice that offered about as much trac­tion as a sheet of curl­ing ice.

Crazy.

Lat­er–And now it’s snow­ing. Just a light snow, but who knows? It could devel­op into some­thing heav­ier, or it could move on and leave us with min­i­mal accumulation.

Capote

Posted on by Patrick

So I showed Capote at the Evans tonight. I knew essen­tial­ly noth­ing about the man before I watched the movie. Nor­mal­ly I have a hard time watch­ing a show where the main char­ac­ter is unsym­pa­thet­ic, but some­how this show was quite com­pelling. Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man did a fan­tas­tic job in his role as Tru­man Capote.
The film’s Capote was a self-serv­ing, loathe­some, manip­u­la­tive lit­tle bas­tard; I can’t speak to the real, flesh-and-blood ver­sion, because like I said, I knew basi­cal­ly squat about him going into the film. I sure hope that being a lit­tle turd isn’t a require­ment to be an author. I don’t think I could live with myself.

Also fas­ci­nat­ing is the fact that part of it was shot on loca­tion here in Man­i­to­ba. I was sur­prised to dis­cov­er that lit­tle fac­toid, but in hind­sight, I should­n’t have been. After all, what’s flat­ter than Kansas (where about two-thirds of the movie took place)? That’s right: Manitoba.

On the whole, it did­n’t suck. But I don’t know if I could watch it again. It’s not the grat­ing voice; I got used to that fair­ly ear­ly on. It’s the way Capote uses every­one and every­thing around him, and then denies doing it, even to him­self. There’s a scene, late in the film, where he breaks down and cries, but after every­thing that led up to that point, I had to won­der if they were real tears or if he was try­ing to get some­thing from some­one with them.

Brief movie reviews

Posted on by Patrick
In the last week and a half I’ve seen two movies, Thumb­suck­er and The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. What did I think of them? Well, Thumb­suck­er was an ado­les­cent-angst movie that proved to me that while Keanu Reeves may not be a bril­liant thes­pi­an, at least he can act like some­one oth­er than Ted Theodore Logan. Also, just because you fill a movie with Big Names does­n’t mean it’s going to be great. The film was solid­ly OK in my book, though a cou­ple of the char­ac­ters were full-out unsym­pa­thet­ic and the teenage hero gets toyed with by more than a cou­ple of peo­ple. It was a decent film, but I don’t know if I’d watch it again.Narnia was well-done, with some stun­ning visu­als and great act­ing, espe­cial­ly from the kids that went through the look­ing-glass wardrobe into the Oth­er World. The ani­mals were all bril­liant­ly done, and ran the gamut from cute and cud­dly to regal to down­right spooky. The White Witch (played by Til­da Swin­ton, who was also the moth­er in Thumb­suck­er) was cold and cru­el. There were moments when I could tell that it was based on a chil­drens’ book, moments where things went a lit­tle too eas­i­ly or took a lit­tle too much on faith for my taste, but it was still a good, sol­id movie. I’d prob­a­bly watch it again.My friend Kevin has a sim­ple bina­ry scale for movies: It sucked or It did­n’t suck. Nei­ther of these two movies sucked, though Thumb­suck­er had me con­cerned for a while there.

Look­ing for­ward now to the new Under­world film. I just hope I’m not expect­ing too much from it…

Ramblin’ man

Posted on by Patrick

Well, the Evans starts up again soon, so my week­ends are get­ting crowd­ed again. We had cof­fee with a bunch of the Evans crew tonight, after sup­per (home-made lasagna–mm mm good).

It’s a lit­tle weird. In the sum­mer, when the Evans does­n’t run, I rent movies every week or so, but when the Evans is on, I usu­al­ly don’t both­er. Maybe it’s not so weird, giv­en that I vol­un­teer at the Evans, which means my movies are free…

How many more times will I type Evans before I put this one to bed? About that many, I guess.

G’night. I’m tired and maybe a lit­tle stupid.

O wait, one more thing. I had an epiphany tonight, a moment where things in one of my projects sud­den­ly rotat­ed, and a piece I did­n’t even know was miss­ing slid into place, and the whole thing, for a moment, shone like sil­ver. Tomor­row, I’ll start out­lin­ing; I think I have enough to at least start. I have an end­ing (which is usu­al­ly a mov­ing tar­get, but I’ve learned that with­out an end­ing, even a ten­ta­tive one, I should­n’t write the begin­ning), and now I think I have a coher­ent theme. And of course I have a title: Every­thing that Nev­er Hap­pened.

Et main­tenant, bon­soir, mes amis et mes amies.