Monday, August 03, 2009

back to things

12. Crosswords and other word games found in newspapers. I just love 'em. Back when I subscribed to the Modesto Bee (their motto: One Of America's Newspapers?), I did the crossword, the Jumble, the cryptogram, and the anagram games every day. Now that the Bee is far less a part of my life - which is almost entirely a good thing - I do the online crossword from the San Francisco Chronicle (their motto: San Francisco Is Hipper Than Anywhere Else, And Even Though There Is No Real Proof Of This, And Indeed A Lack Of Evidence Showing It's Any Hipper Than, Say, Portland, We Will Continue Our Policy Of Smug Use Of The Phrase "The City" To Refer To San Francisco, As Though No Other Place Even Qualifies As A City. I know - unwieldy, ain't it?). I've looked but cannot find any other of the daily word games online.

13. Strawberry tarts. I just love 'em. I happen to make a mean strawberry tart, and I happen to have made one yesterday, which we sampled last night as dessert. Boy, howdy. (I'd post a picture to brag and to create envy/hunger, but we left our camera in Hayward.)

Whenever I make a tart, we run lines from an old Monty Python sketch, in which a Pepperpot (a Python in drag) offers her husband a series of desserts all including rat as an ingredient, ending the list with "strawberry tart." It turns out the strawberry tart also has rat in it, three of them, so the husband asks for a slice "without so much rat in it." Subsequently, a church police officer (it's complicated) refers to it as "rat tart," which is funny, but also the more accurate description of any strawberry tart with three rats in it. Consequently, we refer to strawberry tart as "rat tart."

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