Books for Dinner

This is the coolest idea ever, so I'm passing it along to everyone I know. "Cook the Books" is a bimonthly blog for everyone who loves to read and cook, but never though the two would marry well (Sure, we may have occasionally thought that they'd get together for a hook up now and again, but the violent splatters that come from spaghetti sauce just seemed like a deal breaker for the witty yet very sensitive pages of our Terry Pratchett books.). 

The club picks a new book to read every two months. Once you're finished reading, you're given a deadline by which to blog about the book and cook a meal inspired by the book. I idea is great and the food photos look delicious!

The books seem a bit too girly for me (I tend to read less steamy bedroom scenes and deep conversations with girlfriends, and more comedy and comedic gore.), but it made me think what I would end up cooking... I just finished Christopher Moore's book "Bite Me" about vampire humans, cats, rats and parakeets in San Francisco. Hmmm... blood sausage? :P

Whether you're a fan of the books or not, I highly recommend checking out the site. It's definitely a way to everyone cooking and reading more.

Chocolate Quote of the Day

There are two kinds of people in the world:  those who love chocolate, and communists.  ~Leslie Moak Murray

Vampires Can't Bellydance

"You know, I'm curious."

"Hey! I've got the best idea ever!"

"You know what would be really cool?"

It was the first of these phrases, all of which portend doom, that led me to discover this little horror. 

A fellow dancer and I were working on our duet choreography when we had a bit of a mental shut down. Smoke hands are neat and everything, but they can only take you so far into a piece before your audience finally starts to realize the filler. "Hey... I think they've been doing the same move in different directions for three minutes..." So when bellydancers get brain farts we do what every other bored and worn out human being with access to a computer does - we watch Internet videos.

Somehow I got it in my head that typing in the phrase "vampire bellydance" would produce some hilarious results. Oh. And it did. Oh, how it did. Were I to list the things this woman does wrong, I might actually produce a page's worth of ranting. So, leaving aside the fact that she's trying to do veil AND candles, the fact that her music is a mix of everything from folkloric Evanescence  to what sounds like German rap, plus the fact that she's wearing contacts and fake vampire teeth, I have chosen my top gripe with this apparent bellydancer: The woman humps everything in sight! The floor! The air! The audience (Thank the gods, from a distance.)! She gets down and dirty with so many objects that I feel sorry for the curtains for getting left out of the action!

For those of you who don't normally see bellydance, this is NOT bellydance. This is a stripper wearing a bellydance costume. ...And I hope you all find it as wonderfully entertaining and hilarious as my friend and I did when we were grasping at our sides and doubled over laughing (At 2:30 when she's flipping her veil up with both arms: "Oh, God! It's a beached whale! Quick! We must help it flail  back to the ocean!").

I'll be posting a Yule bellydance move for you guys tomorrow, and I leave you with this piece of advice until then: If I ever see any of you on YouTube, blogs, Myspace, Facebook, Photobucket, etc. dancing like this outside of a spooflah, I will hunt you down and make you watch your own video while professional bellydancers berate you.

...but if anyone is bold enough to spoof this, I have no quips or qualms. :P