Discworld Ranty Goodness (And a Bread Recipe).

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Soooooooo...

Birthday party this evening. Whee! :-D

I made bread on Thursday evening. It has turned out quite well. :-)



Combine:
1C milk,
1C very hot water
1 tbsp yeast
3 tbsp honey

When yeast is frothy, add:
2 eggs (beaten)
1 tbsp salt
3 tbsp oil
2C white wheat flour

Blend until smooth and allow to rise.

Add
1/2C super-fine corn meal
1/2C rolled oats
1 C white wheat flour

Mix until smooth.

Add more white wheat flour, until the dough can be worked by hand without getting stuck all over you. (probably another 1-2C. :-)

Knead.
(Optional: Allow to rise, then knead again, adding more flour as needed)


Grease a loaf pan (or two).

Place kneaded dough into pans and allow to rise again.
Pre-heat oven to 350F.

Place loaves into the oven and allow to bake for a good hour or more.

In my case, because I only made one loaf (which was huge), I then turned the oven down to, say, about 200F and let it cook for another two hours before turning the oven off and leaving the bread in the hot-but-cooling oven over night, to make sure that it cooked all the way through, but didn' burn or singe.
It worked out remarkably well. :-)

I baked it for about two minutes (out of the pan) at 400F (by-which I mean in a rapidly heating oven) the following morning, just to make the crust stronger, but otherwise it was all good. :-)


Mmmmmmmm... Bread. :-D


In other news:
1) LotR 1 = my favourite of the three. :-) No idea why, but there you have it. :-)

2) Youtube = Heaps of Fun. :-) I'm sure you've *all* seen this happy little piece of slash before, but: Hungry Eyes (Aragorn/Legolas) is just heaps of fun. :-)


Lastly, a micro-rant on the subject of my favourite MR character (Two guesses as to who that is, and here's a hint: This one probably wouldn't go off to war in order to track down a missing sibling).
Definitely contains spoilers, so if you haven't read the book, and don't want the end blown, you might not want to read this bit. :-D


Okay.
Because I am a little (read: great, big, hulking), squeeing fan-girl, I am prone to occasionally doing google-searches for Mal/adict/a. :-)
Naturally, more than half of what comes up are bits and bites from the Cheesemongers comm. or Against the Trumpets (Hyel, aren't you proud? :-)

But, there are other things that pop up, too. :-)

And one of the things that tends to pop up is this: discussuions about how Everyone Turned Out to be A Girl in MR, and why this is a Bad Thing.

Of this group, there appear to be two sub-groups. The ones who wish Jackrum had been male all along, and the ones who wish Mal had been male all along.
It is the latter group which I wish to rant about today. :-)


See, I find that the folks who are griping about the fact that Mal turned out to be female, tend to be complaining specifically because they were (A) quite definitely hip to the chemistry between Polly and Mal and (B) were also quietly crushing on Maladict -- right up until that final 'a' sloshed over them like a bucket of cold water. :-)

Comments on this subject tend to go like this:
"Mal should have totally stayed a guy[1] because, I admit, I was thinking that he was *my* kind of guy..."
Oops. :-)

I can just hear the mental breaks squealing at the sight of those fateful words:
"...Er, Poll?"
"Yes?"
"I'm actually Maladicta."

And they find themselves thinking: "But, but, but... What does that say about meeeeeeeeee???"

And I find myself rolling my eyes, and asking "What, are you fourteen? All of you? Ye gods..."

'Cause, see, hello. Mal is fictional. A character (much beloved or otherwise) who exists solely on paper and in your imaginations.
What I'm getting at here is this:
Fictional characters have no hormone signatures.
Much as I, personally, like to incorporate smell into my fanfic, I know damn well that paper isn't going to give off female or male pheremones to trigger sexual reactions in anybody reading the story. (Unless book sellers have suddenly gotten *really* clever -- although MR isn't likely to be a target for that kind of marketing ploy...)

Basically, all these idiots people who are loudly decrying Mal's femaleness in order to - what? - cover up their sudden insecurity about their own sexuality? Are freaking over nothing.

They fell for a character.
The character turned out to be female.
So?
They fell for a personality, not a hormone signature.

Also: I've got at least one het-female friend who is capable of being titilated by woman/woman porn. That hasn't actually changed the fact that she's not interested in participating, and is quite happy to stick with her fella.
And lesbian erotica is a hell of a lot more explicite than, say:
"I just thought you'd want to know someone saw you[...]"
[...]At least I was someone watching the enemy, Polly thought furiously as she walked away. I wasn't someone watching another soldier. Who does he think he is? Or she is?

You follow me?

Either they're bi, after all (in which case, you'd think they'd have figured it out by now), OR they're not. In which case, they should just chill out and stop kvetching. :-P

Anyway. Not much of a rant, just something that bugs the hell out of me every time I see it cropping up. :-)



[1]"Stayed" a guy? Excuse ME, but it's hard to 'stay' a 'guy' when you've got two X fucking chromasomes and a cunt!!! You ninnies! :-P



That is all. :-)

I'm having black berries for breakfast. :-D

- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-D