Many men wince slightly at the mention of interior decorating, but why is that? For me, it's because it's an unfamiliar rulebook. I don't want the wrong secondary colour accenting my cabinets, but I don't have enough of a colour vocabulary to know the difference between "spiced pumpkin" and "autumn flight". Hesitant to make the wrong choice, I instead stick with the primary colours.
That's exactly why I was dreading the move so much -- new carpets, new curtains, new couch, new cabinets. How was I going to fit my choices into the framework?
The answer? Find a vocabulary you understand. I picked out some curtains that didn't look too bad, and the salesperson complimented its rustic charm.
Rustic? I can do rustic.
And just like that, things fell together. That couch there, with the fish and canoe pattern? That's rustic. I'll take it. The end table, the deck chairs? Wood is rustic -- give me wood. The wall decorations? Let's put some aboriginal carvings up there. That's not just rustic, that's rusterrific.
It was like that for pretty much the entire weekend. Finally, though, I hit a problem: the entertainment stand. The electronics were all sleek and black. The only place the TV would fit was above the fireplace. Rustic, yes, but the fireplace was also white, as was the moulding around it. The problem, then, was that everything was spiralling towards sleek, not rustic. I'd already stained a pine shelving unit to hold everything, but the contrast was still off. It was just too much black... but then, I put my Wii next to the DVD player, and something clicked. It wasn't enough, though. I still needed something else. Something white... something electronic... something rustic. Something charming both despite and because of its years, something still practical, if no longer ideal...
And then it hit me: I still had my old Dreamcast.
And so, I learned that Interior decorating's actually a breeze -- you just need to have the right vocabulary.
That, and a decent games library. If you know anyone willing to sell their copy of Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram, send them my way, would you?
Showing posts with label aesthetics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label aesthetics. Show all posts
11.2.07
Yes, I speak-a your language.
Back when I worked at the venerable Saskatchewan Provincial Water Laboratory, I saw a lot of ugly samples. Lagoons. Dugouts. Livestock farms. Hospital sewage. After a while, you just learned to breathe through the mouth, and get the samples bottled back up as quickly as possible. But there was a sample, once, the size of a medicine bottle, and even when it was opened up ever-so-quickly in the very corner of the building, it nearly caused an evacuation. Hands down, the worst odour anyone there had ever experienced.
Where was it from? Molson Breweries. Take everything that goes into brewing beer -- except the beer -- and leave it under the boiler until spring. Now, I don't want to disparage the company or the product. This was unrelated to the chain of production, and they got the mess cleaned up, but still... I've never forgotten that one sample.
Which brings us to the jar of Vegemite I bought this week on an impulse purchase. According to Wikipedia, it was actually created in a waste-not-want-not effort to do something with the by-products of Foster's plants. Not only did they invent Vegemite, they managed to market it... you really have to give credit where it's due.
Especially since they managed to market it to me. So, without further ado:
1. Try not to think about the first two paragraphs of this post.
2. Try not to think about the Australian slang, "Vegemite Valley". Hilarious, yes, but that's not helping right now.
3. Use the best bread possible -- fancy multi-grain stuff. This won't help the taste, but if you have to eat a Vegemite sandwich, why make it worse? This is akin to the concept that if you have to drive a 1978 Corolla, you should at least be able to have a Slurpee while you're driving it.
4. Toast the bread so that it's nice and crispy, then butter it up. This actually has two purposes. First, the smooth creamy taste of the butter goes a long way towards neutralising the taste of Vegemite. Secondly, despite being invented as an edible spread, it actually spreads very poorly. If you just smear it on bread by itself, it'll all glom onto one spot and refuse to move. This results in a thick and uneven distribution. This isn't just aesthetics, though...
5. When you spread on the Vegemite, make sure it's a thin, even distribution. An area of concentrated Vegemite is the equivalent of biting down on an anti-personnel mine in your pizza. Note that I'm not using a simile there. It's not an "anti-personnel mine of bad taste", it's an anti-personnel mine. Avoid this.
6. Read the ingredients. No, really. Right after the preservatives and right before the vitamin supplements, there's the line "Vegetable Extract (Contains Onion)". Onions! Onions taste good, right? In fact, Onion soup is good, and it's brown and salty. Just like Vegemite! In fact, maybe Vegemite tastes like onions! That wouldn't be so bad, would it?
7. Take a bite, and when that first taste of Vegemite kicks in, scream out loud: "ONIONS! IT TASTES LIKE ONIONS!", until you believe it.
8. Condition yourself for stronger and stronger concentrations of Vegemite in future sandwiches. You will eventually build up a tolerance to it, although the analogy is closer to arsenic than hot sauce. Why would you do such a thing, though? Simple: You've still got an entire jar to get through, and if you've ever worked in the Saskatchewan Water Lab, you'll be utterly terrified of simply throwing it in the garbage.
Bon Appetit.
Where was it from? Molson Breweries. Take everything that goes into brewing beer -- except the beer -- and leave it under the boiler until spring. Now, I don't want to disparage the company or the product. This was unrelated to the chain of production, and they got the mess cleaned up, but still... I've never forgotten that one sample.
Which brings us to the jar of Vegemite I bought this week on an impulse purchase. According to Wikipedia, it was actually created in a waste-not-want-not effort to do something with the by-products of Foster's plants. Not only did they invent Vegemite, they managed to market it... you really have to give credit where it's due.
Especially since they managed to market it to me. So, without further ado:
Denton's Tips On Vegemite Sandwiches
1. Try not to think about the first two paragraphs of this post.
2. Try not to think about the Australian slang, "Vegemite Valley". Hilarious, yes, but that's not helping right now.
3. Use the best bread possible -- fancy multi-grain stuff. This won't help the taste, but if you have to eat a Vegemite sandwich, why make it worse? This is akin to the concept that if you have to drive a 1978 Corolla, you should at least be able to have a Slurpee while you're driving it.
4. Toast the bread so that it's nice and crispy, then butter it up. This actually has two purposes. First, the smooth creamy taste of the butter goes a long way towards neutralising the taste of Vegemite. Secondly, despite being invented as an edible spread, it actually spreads very poorly. If you just smear it on bread by itself, it'll all glom onto one spot and refuse to move. This results in a thick and uneven distribution. This isn't just aesthetics, though...
5. When you spread on the Vegemite, make sure it's a thin, even distribution. An area of concentrated Vegemite is the equivalent of biting down on an anti-personnel mine in your pizza. Note that I'm not using a simile there. It's not an "anti-personnel mine of bad taste", it's an anti-personnel mine. Avoid this.
6. Read the ingredients. No, really. Right after the preservatives and right before the vitamin supplements, there's the line "Vegetable Extract (Contains Onion)". Onions! Onions taste good, right? In fact, Onion soup is good, and it's brown and salty. Just like Vegemite! In fact, maybe Vegemite tastes like onions! That wouldn't be so bad, would it?
7. Take a bite, and when that first taste of Vegemite kicks in, scream out loud: "ONIONS! IT TASTES LIKE ONIONS!", until you believe it.
8. Condition yourself for stronger and stronger concentrations of Vegemite in future sandwiches. You will eventually build up a tolerance to it, although the analogy is closer to arsenic than hot sauce. Why would you do such a thing, though? Simple: You've still got an entire jar to get through, and if you've ever worked in the Saskatchewan Water Lab, you'll be utterly terrified of simply throwing it in the garbage.
Bon Appetit.
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