This is the food of paradise- 0f Baudelaire's Artificial Paradises: it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR. In Morocco it is thought to be good for warding off the common cold in damp winter weather and is, indeed, more effective if taken with large quantities of hot mint tea. Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter; ecstatic reveries and extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost anything Saint Theresa did, you can do better if you can bear to be ravished by 'un evenouissement reveille.'



Take 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon coriander. These should all be pulverized in a mortar. About a handful each of stone dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together. A bunch of canibus sativa can be pulverized. This along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded together. About a cup of sugar dissolved in a big pat of butter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient. Obtaining the canibus may present certain difficulties.... It should be picked and dried as soon as it has gone to seed and while the plant is still green.



So reads Alice B. Toklas' recipe for haschich fudge, of which she wrote "anyone could whip up on a rainy day."



There's no better read than a well-written cookbook.



The Swedish word for the day is mellanmål. It means, more or less, snack.



- by Francis S.

Happy second birthday, you old blog, you. Old as far as blogs go, I suppose.



- by Francis S.

I like to think of Sweden as a kind of tolerant utopia, but I'm forced to rethink things when neo-nazis show up and throw rocks at a bunch of homosexualists - we knew there was something wrong when the parade was held up and suddenly seven or eight police cars come whizzing by.



I guess there is no such thing as a tolerant utopia.



The Swedish word for the day is besvikelse. It means disappointment.



- by Francis S.

I think I missed my calling. I should've been a drag king. I could definitely make people believe I was a man, oh yes.



Sadly, I don't think I could quite carry it off as a woman anymore, not that I ever could. Although once, when I was 19, I did get up in drag and showed up with a friend at a Denny's restaurant in Urbana, Illinois. Another friend of mine happened to be there on a first date with a guy he had the hots for, and my other friend and I did it just to make him crazy. It was a most bizarre experience because I definitely looked like a 19-year-old college boy dressed up as a woman, and everyone stared at me and although I didn't notice it at the time, afterwards I was told that every single waitress in the joint took turns waiting on us.



The Swedish word for the day is stolthet. It means pride, and is not considered a particularly desirable thing to have, which may be why Stockholm Pride is not Stockholm Stolthet.



- by Francis S.

As Swedes debate the appropriateness of a Stockholm Gay Pride keynote speaker who happens to be a political leader from the Moderaterna (one of Sweden's right-wing parties, which would be somewhere to the left of the Democrats in the U.S.), George W. Bush is publicly saying that he believes "marriage is between a man and a woman, and I believe we ought to codify that one way or the other and we have lawyers looking at the best way to do that."



I guess the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act [sic!] just doesn't do enough to keep homosexualists in their place, now that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that we're no longer criminals.



Isn't America great?



The Swedish word for the day is inte. It means not, more or less.



- by Francis S.

Do you want to know what it’s like being gay in Karachi, Pakistan? There are, according to Jalal, at least two bloggers of the homosexualist persuasion there, a guy called Danial and Jalal.



It sounds as if being gay and 22 and single and in the thralls of one’s family and a less-than-accepting society in Karachi is only slightly different from what things were like for me in Washington, D.C. when I was 22, in 1982. Basically, it’s just a matter of desperately wanting to be in love. At least, that’s how it sounds from what Jalal writes.



So, go give him good advice if you can.



The Swedish word for the day is stöd. It means support.



- by Francis S.

If I were of a more, um, heterosexualist bent (to coin an oxymoron), I think I would fall in love with Amy Sedaris and start stalking her. She really makes me laugh until I cry. Plus, she actually makes and sells cheeseballs and cupcakes to her neighbors. What a gal.



I'm not sure whether it was such a good idea to buy that DVD of the first season of her sitcom "Strangers with Candy", because I've can't stop watching it. Over and over. And until I saw my husband laughing at it, I would have thought it couldn't be funny to anyone who hasn't seen shows like "Dawn, Portrait of a Teenage Runaway" and "Alexander, the Other Side of Dawn."



The Swedish word for the day is besatt. It means obsessed.



- by Francis S.