Synesthesia

Allow me to take you one a tour through the mind of a synesthete (well, kinda sorta. I'm not really very synesthetic, but I kinda sorta am, and I think it's interesting). So, to begin with, I'm gonna explain synesthesia, even though everyone reading this probably already knows what it is. Synesthesia is a kind of cross-wiring of the senses in a person's brain. So they can hear colors, and see tastes, and smell sounds, etc etc. (And I think this is really cool because 1) it's a cool psychological concept and 2) it's fun to have and think about it, which is what I was doing this morning, and continuing to do now). A very common type of synesthesia is applying different attributes to numbers, which I do, and that is what I'm going to give you a tour of.

0 - Zero is strange. It has an almost lack of personality, but it's still really important. For some reason, when I think of zero, I think if the opening credits to Brother's Grimm, and also the part of Nightmare Before Christmas where Jack is falling into the Christmas door. Zero's kind of a big, dark, void. But it's not scary or mean or imposing. The more I think about it, the more I like it.

1 - One is like an old, wise, wizened guy who knows what he's doing, and is stable. That's a major part of one for me. One is also white (the color, not the race). Like Gandalf or Dumbledore (hooray nerdy literal references!)

2 - Two, firstly, is blue. Like a dark, basic blue. But two is also like a ten year old boy in knickerbockers and a newsboy cap. Like Oliver Twist, but not an urchin .

3 - Three is kinda strange, because it's almost exactly the same in my mind as six. They're sisters. Both are green, both are young adult age, and they seem like twins, but aren't. It's kinda weird.

4 - Four is one of my weakest numbers. I can tell that it's yellowy-orange, and might be female. But that's it, really.

5 - Five is one of my strongest numbers, but not personality-wise. But for me, the number 5, the letter B and the color red are all very closely related. Like, so much so that when I was describing something as being red, I held up five fingers. Personality-wise, 5 is a big jovial guy (kinda like the Ghost of Christmas Present, but without the whole message to get across).

6 - See number 3.

7 - Seven is kind of a strange number for me, because it doesn't really have a color, or really a set personality, but it is intensely my favorite number. It's a kind of vague yellow-ish/orange-ish color. It has a very amiable kind of disposition, but even though it's so vague, I'm still very strongly attracted to it. Maybe it's just my favorite number. Who knows.

8 - Eight is also kind of vague. It has both male and female qualities, it's a dark color, and it's either really nice (the female part of it) or kind of off-putting (the male part of it). Yeah, eight's kinda split personality.

9 - Nine definitely has my favorite personality. Nine is a wizard (but not like Dumbledore or Gandalf, a silly wizard) in a purple robe with silver trim and a purple pointy wizard hat (including silver stars). Nine is kind of a goof (kind of unintentionally). I like nine.

And that completes my comprehensive tour of single digit numbers. As I get into multiple digits it gets kind of strange (sometimes the numbers' personalities combine, and sometimes they don't, and it's just too complicated for me to easily describe). So I hope this was interesting for you, and not too boring (because basically, it was just me talking about myself, but whatever).

And if you think that synesthesia sounds cool and you want to learn more about it, here are some links:

You can never go wrong with Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

An interesting-sounding paper I just stumbled upon: http://www.dovepress.com/acquired-auditory-visual-synesthesia-a-window-to-early-cross-modal-sen-peer-reviewed-article

And you can never go wrong with Steven Fry and Alan Davies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqQIL4nuB-g

Coffee confusion

I think that the situation of coffee drinkers in the US is very strange. The majority of the population regularly drinks coffee. But few people actually like how coffee tastes. Which isn't surprising, because coffee has a strong, bitter taste, and most people don't like bitter things. But if so many people don't like how it tastes, why do they still drink coffee? Yeah, I know that some people need their caffeine fixes in the morning or else they're useless to the world, but there are other ways to get caffeine. How did coffee turn in to such a big thing?

Like, when coffee was first brought back to Europe, it was MASSIVE hit. Which I think is weird, because when I wouldn't think if it as being something you would take a sip of and say “Oh, yeah, I need to drink loads of that stuff!” (Granted, as you can probably tell, I'm kind of biased, in the fact that I don't really like how coffee tastes, and can't stand it without some milk and substantial amounts of sugar. I'm a tea-girl, all the way). Maybe our tastes have changed, but I can see no rational reason as to why that would have happened.

And coffee just confuses me in general. Like, who, in the first place, would see this normal looking bean/seed/thing growing on a tree and say to himself “I think that if I pick this thing, let it ferment, then let it dry out, and then roast it, and then grind it up and stick it in some hot water, that would make something I would want to drink.” That just seems absurd to me. But then again, the origins of many common foodstuffs seem strange and unlikely to me (bread, cheese, etc).

So guess, if I were to generalize this whole post down to a sentence, it would be “I don't get coffee”. I guess it would have been simpler to just say that instead of ranting on about it for a while, but if I have done that, I wouldn't have a blog, now would I?

Rain seems to make me rather poetic

Oh my god, I love this weather! If, every day, it could be this wonderful light grey light, and every so often just pours with rain, I would be the happiest person in the world. This kind of weather always brings out my childish impulses. I just want to run through the rain with no shoes on, jumping in huge puddles and playing in the mud. Or, if I'm feeling more restrained, just sitting out and letting myself get soaked. Or even just sitting inside, all dry and clean, listening to calming music (which is what I'm doing right now. Iron and Wine is my favorite rain music).

But in a few days, I'm going to college in a big city, and it's all going to change. There's going to be no place for me to even think of running around barefoot and playing in the mud, because I don't really want to go running around barefoot in the city, and any “mud” that I could play with would probably be made up of some sort of city sludge (well, probably not, because Toronto is a freakishly clean city, with cute little trash devouring machine/car/golf-cart things. But, I digress). And I'm not going to be able to just sit and look out at my window at the rain in the trees, and the wonderful color that tree's leaves get when it rains on them (I should probably explain that, to describe my yard as “overgrown” is a great understatement. There are trees and plants everywhere. I love it). I'm just not going to experience rain in the same way in the city.

And I fear that, in Toronto, my view on this lovely kind of weather is going to change. That I'm going to stop thinking of it as beautiful and calming, and more like most other people do, like a miserable damp grossness that you just have to endure until it becomes sunny again. And I really hope that doesn't happen, because, while the sun is nice, this is so much better.


However, one thing that I won't miss is my rain-soaked dog (also often covered in at least one layer of mud) running in and deciding that the only comfortable place for him to sit is in my lap. That is not quite how I want to interact with the rain.

A Post of Essay-like Proportion

So, there is a reason this post is so long. I was tired when I wrote it. And that means I was just thinking and typing whatever the hell I thought. And I think a lot. So sorry about the length. I'll try to be more concise later.

So, before you read this, it would probably be beneficial to know that I'm studying psych (well neuroscience) at university, and I tend to think about stuff kind of like this rather often.

But, I was thinking about whether there are patterns in people's preferences, and if these patterns are caused by a person's environment or by some sort of biological setting in your brain. For example, I am a big fan of the science fiction genre, and I'm also a big fan of movies and cinematography. If you think about it, these seem like interests that go together. And there are a lot of people with these same interests, of science fiction and movies. But is this liking of different things a psychological thing or a social thing? Because, if you think about it, there doesn't have to be something in common between the genre of science fiction and movie making. But there often is. And so, I get to thinking about why these interests seem to make so much sense in being related.

(Disclaimer: I apologize to anyone who has some actual information on any of the stuff I'm talking about here, because I'm just kind of musing and writing down things that come to me and seem to make sense.)

Is this related liking a social thing? Is is based on what your friends and people you know like? That you like thing A and you see someone who likes both thing A and thing B, and you think “Oh, thing B looks interesting” and you end up sharing interests that way (or something like that). I'm pretty sure that isn't the case, based on my experience. Most of my friends aren't fans of both sci fi and movies. Actually, most of my friends aren't as big fans of either as I am. Sure, there are people that I know that share these interests, but it seems like I would be influenced most by my friends. But now that I think about it, I have similar interests to people in my family, which either supports this social hypothesis (because you tend to be around your family more than your friends) or it could imply that what you like is influenced by genetics.

But there's another kind of social hypothesis for the kind of shared liking, and it's based on cultural stereotypes. For example, when you think of someone like me, who likes sci fi and movies, you most likely envision some sort of nerd who loves Star Wars etc. And this is why we think of these interests as being related, because they so often are in these well known stereotypes. But this kind of knowledge requires mass media (movies, television, internet) for those types of stereotypes to become so well known. But the “well-knownness” of these stereotypes still doesn't explain why so many people share these interests.

Which is why I feel like there might be some sort of biological reason that someone who like sci fi might also like film. This first raises the question of “What, biologically, makes you like something in the first place?” I really wish I knew the answer to this question, because that would be cool. I don't even know if the answer to that question is known by anyone, and I'm kind of too tired right now to look it up, so I'm just gonna leave it at that.

It would be REALLY COOL if, if there is a physical connection between liking one thing and liking another thing, you could try to kind of predict what people would like based on what else they like. And if you could see this kind of physical tendency towards liking something in the brain of a child, you could try to use that information to make their lives more enjoyable by introducing them to things that they have a high likelihood of liking. But now I'm kind of getting into sci-fi crazy futuristic possibilities stuff, so I'm gonna stop.

So, I hope you weren't too bored or overwhelmed by this, because I had fun writing it (I love just thinking about stuff like this).

Wishy Washy

So, I'm having issues sticking to this whole "food and music" thing, because, even though I keep cooking and listening to music, I have ceased to feel the need to post about it. So, I'm thinking that I'm gonna give up on that, and return this to a more general blog about whatever the hell I feel like posting. So, I'm being all indecisive (oh, the horror! Get used to it), but whatever. I doubt anyone really cares. And if people really were looking for cooking and whatever, I'll probably get around to posting some more of those at some point, because I love cooking and listening to music, and maybe I'll post about it again. I dunno. Whatever.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Again, I'm making cookies. It's just it's so rainy where I am that I'm just in to cookie making mood. So, deciding on a recipe was an interesting process. For instance, I first thought I would use the recipe on the inside of the oatmeal carton. Then I saw that it wanted 3 cups of oatmeal (and I didn't have 3 cups of oatmeal), so I looked for another. I found a number of recipes that resulted in crisp oatmeal raisin cookies. Who wants a crisp oatmeal raisin cookie? They're supposed to be chewy. But then I finally found what I was looking for in the good old Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

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Cape Cod Oatmeal Cookies

1.5 cups flour

.5 tsp baking soda

1tsp cinnamon

.5 tsp salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 cup sugar

.5 cup melted butter/shortening

1 Tbsp molasses

.25 cup milk

1.75 cups oatmeal

.5 cup of raisins

.5 cup chopped nuts

Preheat the ovent to 350 F. Mix the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt together in a large bowl. Stir the remaining ingredients. Arrange by teaspoonfuls on unbuttered cookie sheets and bake until the edges are brown, about 10-12 minutes.

Don't you just love a cookie recipe that simple? I, however, made some little changes, just for my taste. I didn't put any nuts in, because I don't like nuts in my oatmeal raisin cookies. I also added 1tsp vanilla extract, .5(ish)tsp almond extract, .25 tsp allspice, and a small pinch of gound cloves. I tend to do this a lot because I love messing around with spices.

So, similar to last time, the weather is dark and cloudy and rainy (again! It is raining too much for it to be summer). But today I didn't go for chill music, I went for more dreamy music. So I chose School of Seven Bells, and shuffled through their music for a bit, then Wired for Light instantly triggered a connection to Electric Bloom (R Ingall Remix), so I listened to some Foals remixes, then moved on to Foals themselves on their Myspace page.

Baking Playlist:

Half Asleep - School of Seven Bells

Connjur - School of Seven Bells

Chain - School of Seven Bells

Prince of Peace - School of Seven Bells

Wired for Light - School of Seven Bells

Electric Bloom (R Ingall Remix)

Gold Gold Gold - Foals

Red Sox Pugie - Foals

Olympic Airways - Foals

Glaciers - Foals

Post Baking Analysis:

I was looking for chewy, and I got deliciously chewy cookies. Slightly crisp edges surrounding chewy (but not gooey) centers. I love oatmeal raising cookies.

Jam Thumbprint Cookies

So today I decided to make cookies (I had been thinking of making some sort of berry-y custard, but the I realizes 1) the recipe I was going to use wasn't as light as I thought it was, and 2) I didn't have half the ingredients, and I didn't feel like going to get them. So I decided cookies would have to be a good substitute). Cookies are some of my favorite things to make, because they are easy to distribute, and that makes my life better because 1) I get to spread the tasty goodness around, and 2) I don't end up eating all of the cookies by myself. Usually when I decide to make cookies, I just end up making chocolate chip cookies , I just end up making chocolate chip cookies, from the recipe off the back of the bag of chocolate chips. But, as it's summer, I wanted to do something a little fresher and more summery than chocolate chip cookies (I always associate chocolate chip cookies with fall for some reason). And I wanted to incorporate fruit in some way, so I decided on jam thumbprint cookies.

So after looking online for a recipe that didn't sound bogus, I found one on Food Network.com (hooray food television!)

Recipe by Ina Garten (Barefoot Contessa)

3/4 pound (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash

7 ounces sweetened flaked coconut

Raspberry and/or apricot jam

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until they are just combined and then add the vanilla. Separately, sift together the flour and salt. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar. Mix until the dough starts to come together. Dump on a floured board and roll together into a flat disk. Wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. (If you have a scale they should each weigh 1 ounce.) Dip each ball into the egg wash and then roll it in coconut. Place the balls on an ungreased cookie sheet and press a light indentation into the top of each with your finger. Drop 1/4 teaspoon of jam into each indentation. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the coconut is a golden brown. Cool and serve.

I decided to skip out on the coconut, simply because I didn't feel like putting coconut on my jammy cookies. I also just used whatever jam I had in my fridge that needed using (I actually mixed two kinds together, "fruits of the forest" and raspberry, because they were both open).

While making these cookies, I wanted my music to match my mood. While making the dough, it was kind of cloudy and dark, and that always makes me want to listen to relaxing music, so I put on Enya, then got bored of that so I changed over to Fleet Foxes. But after the dough had cooled off in the fridge, it had gotten lighter, and I wanted more upbeat music, do I chose Ratatat, which ended up being a good choice, because I found myself, while rolling out the cookies in my hands, falling into the rhythm of the music, which made my cookie formation go much more smoothly.

Songs Played:

Boadicea - Enya

Tiger Peasant Mountain Song - Fleet Foxes

He Doesn't Know Why - Fleet Foxes

Quiet Houses - Fleet Foxes

Sun It Rises - Fleet Foxes

Seventeen Years - Ratatat

Loud Pipes - Ratatat

Everest - Ratatat

Cherry - Ratatat

(I "choose" what songs I listen to by plugging my ipod into my speakers, going to the artist I've chosen, then shuffling through their songs).

Post-baking update:

After some worrying about being able to tell when the cookies where done, I apparently (luckily) took them out at the right time (hooray). If you do it right, they are very tasty (little shortbready, sugary, buttery cookies with a little dollop of jam in the middle, just enough to sweeten it up a little).

Food and Music Combine

So I really didn't know where I was going with this blog. I started it on a whim (mainly because of my "hypocrisy" thing), but now that I've started, I feel like I should continue with it. However, I didn't really know what to say. That is, until I thought of what it is that I like to do, which is cook and listen to music. So I think that I'm going to try to combine those two into some sort of interesting thing for all the internet to see. Now we just have to wait and see how it turns out.

Meandering Thoughts On Music and Hypocrisy

Just so you all know, one thing that I absolutely cannot stand is hypocrisy. It really pisses me off when someone says one thing and then goes straight on and contradicts themselves. That being said, I'm not really "pissed off" about what I'm about to write about, but it's still kind of hypocritical and, therefore, annoys me.

I was recently reading a music magazine who's feature article was about Bruce Springsteen playing at Glastonbury festival this year. The article went on to talk about the songs that have been in the set of Springsteen's current tour, how they have been chosen to resonate with the current economical climate. But it seems to me that someone who is as rich and famous as Bruce Springsteen doesn't have any place singing about how hard life is. I'm not saying that Springsteen is lying or anything as extreme as that, I just think that any recent songs he has written about hardship cannot really come from recent experience. And I'm not saying that I don't like Bruce Springsteen, because I do, I'm just saying that I think it's weird that people who are having trouble in their lives turn to someone like him, thinking "Now here's someone who understands what I'm going through" when really he's a high-paid celebrity, flying between gigs in his own private jet.

And the people who are willing to shell out the money for a Bruce Springsteen concert (I just looked up ticket prices and they are exorbitantly expensive. $976! WTF!!!) obviously aren't having that many economical issues. So the whole process is surrounded by an aura of hypocrisy.

Now, I realize that this makes me sound like an insufferable critic, not happy with anything if there is any kind of hypocrisy or falseness about it, which isn't true. Not all music can be entirely sincere (acutally, most of it isn't), and that's ok. A little fantasy and imagination is a great thing. I'm just saying that I think that the kind of people that listen to music like Bruce Springsteen (especially live in concert) and think "This guy really understands my misfortune" are kind of missing the point.

Hi

So, I guess that I should have some sort of opening, because this is my first post (not that there's anyone really reading this, whatever).

Soo....... hi!