et cetera

The Making Brooklyn Bloom gift bag contained six paper white bulbs. Unfortunately, this is the only flower I actively dislike. They smell of the crypt, a hallucinatory, claustrophobic perfume redolent of Baudelairian rifts on E.A. Poe. Great ideas, those decadents, but I don’t want to live there…. I’ll start them off, and then exile them outside before the flowers emerge. Speaking of emerging, the flowering dogwood and crabapple in Cobble Hill Park are just budding.

Lately I’ve been drinking fresh-squeezed blood orange juice and bourbon, with a touch of maple syrup. Over ice.

Ever get turned off by all the liquid that forms once you’ve opened a quart of yogurt? M taught me years ago to drain it with those paper coffee filters, maybe 30 minutes or so, for a thickly textured result that melds extremely well with honey or maple syrup. You can drink the resulting liquid too, of course, quickly.

Another politician with feet (or dick) of clay? In the midst of the Spitzer crash and burn. Hookers? How Republican of him. So far, the tenor of the reporting is that happily married men never do things like this. Uh-huh. Unlike Senator “Diaper” Vitter, Spitzer’s probably out, with Patterson coming in for the remainder of the term. Bruno, his corrupt hold on the State Senate probably now secure, wins (and becomes, evidently, the new Lt. Gov, while maintaining his Senate seat). This is the trouble with investing too much in leaders, caped crusaders, and hopeful heroes. We end up the fools. We should be the leaders, the politicians followers, doing our will. I didn’t vote for Spitzer in 2006 because he supported the death penalty, and I will not support a politican who seeks votes with the bait of (state) murder.

Low tide under the Manhattan Bridge yesterday and in the Gowanus this evening. Gowanus muck is dark and nasty, expressing its toxicity with a slick greeny grey sheen, but a dozen gulls were hanging out on it.