Gazpacho

It's getting toasty here, and what better to have on a hot day than chilled soup? Gazpacho is one of the simplest things to make - you simply chop up ingredients, dump them in a blender, and add seasoning to taste. Doesn't get much easier!
Now, I won't claim to make the best gazpacho I've ever tasted, but I'd like to think that my years living in Spain ensure that the taste and consistency is accurate.

To make a blender full of gazpacho (enough for the whole family), you'll need these ingredients:

2 pieces of toast soaked in water (stale bread is traditional)
7 medium-sized tomatoes
2/3 cucumber
1 red pepper
1/2 red onion
1 large garlic clove
1 gram pepper
olive oil, sherry vinergar, white wine vinegar and salt to taste.

Basically, just blend all the chopped-up ingredients together and add as much of the other ingredients as you like! Start with small quantities and work your way up. Set it in the fridge to chill, and enjoy! Delicious and simple.

Glaikit and Other Scottish Vernacular

Glaikit is a Scottish word meaning stupid, foolish, thoughtless or vacant. Here it's specified as being used often "of gadgies, minkers and schemies". It seems these nouns are used for people characterised by a lack of intellect, dress sense and money, and generally living in the Central Belt (the area of highest population density in Scotland, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, among others). They are not very kindly described in the above link, and a similar term, "midgie raker", is described as being "a manky, mingin, barkit, bastirt gadgie". From what I could tell, most of those words mean "smelly"!
I highly recommend skimming through the rest of the Scottish Vernacular Dictionary - it's hilarious and wonderful! I particularly like this entry:

Cow:
The worst, the VERY WORST insult you can give a Scots woman is to call her a cow. All other sweary words pale into insignificance beside this most-powerful of derogatory terms.
"Please Miss Magrit-Anne said a bad word"
"What did she say Condoleeza?, you can spell it out if you don't want to swear."
"She said ah wis a fuckin C.O.W. Miss."

Chutzpah

Apropos nothing, the word chutzpah - meaning audacity, self-confidence, courage, temerity, nerve, cheek, effrontery, impudence, presumptuousness, gall - derives from the Hebrew word ḥutspâ (חֻצְפָּה), meaning "insolence", "cheek" or "audacity". The first known use was apparently in 1883. (That's quite a few synonyms there, huh!)

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!" he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

The Charge of the Light Brigade, which has another five stanzas beside the one quoted above, is a poem by Alfred Tennyson concerning a charge of British light cavalry against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava in 1854. Apparently due to miscommunication in the chain of command, the Light Brigade was sent on a frontal assault against a well-prepared artillery battery, and was forced to retreat with heavy casualties. The poem quoted above was published just six weeks after the event and praises the valour in bravely carrying out orders regardless of their suicidal nature.

I was surprised that beside being one of Britain's most popular poets, Tennyson also originated the well-known phrase, "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all".

Abbot and Costello

Today I was introduced to this comedic gem! If you haven't seen it, you really should - it's certainly entertaining!

Psychopomps

Existing in many religions, a psychopomp is a figure that escorts newly deceased souls to the afterlife, and has been portrayed in many different ways. In Egyptian mythology, for example, Anubis is a jackal-headed god, being depicted as a protector of graves, an embalmer, and the god who not only ushers souls into the afterlife, but also weighs their hearts to determine whether the soul will be allowed to enter the realm of the dead.

Depicted (clockwise) above are several psychopomps: Hermes, an Olympian god from Greek mythology, Mercury, the Roman deity, Anubis, mentioned above, a horse, raven, whip-poor-will, cuckoo, owl, crow, sparrow, and hart. There are many other psychopomps (such as the Welsh Gwyn ap Nudd / Arawn), and in several cultures dead relatives (parents, siblings, forefathers) function as psychopomps.

The word psychopomp originates from the Greek word psuchopompus (ψυχοπομπός), which literally means "guide of souls", and when the depiction is of birds, they are often seen in huge masses, waiting outside the home of the dying. On perhaps an unrelated note, feel free to take a minute to read The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe. One could imagine that the raven is a psychopomp who carried away the soul of "the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore"...

The Board Game of Thrones

Anastasia and Marius playing the Game of Thrones board game; Dominic was sitting outside the frame. 5 hours later, they're still working on it! What an involved game. They seem to be enjoying themselves, though!

Animal Paintings

I'm not sure why I'm so into drawing animals lately, but it's a lot of fun! After the Stag Terms post a few weeks ago I sketched a few more animals, and today I started putting them together with texturing and color in Photoshop. More to follow!

Ashikaga Takauji

That's the name of the founder and first shogun of the Ashikaga shogunate. (The name is pronounced Taka-u-ji, with emphasis on the U and all A sounds pronounced "ah".) A Shogun, which literally means "military commander", was a hereditary military governor in Japan and the de facto ruler of the country, despite officially being appointed by the emperor (Tenno, 天皇, "heavenly sovereign"), and a shogunate is a dynasty. The Ashikaga shogunate is also known as the Muromachi period of Japan, which followed the Kenmu Restoration.

Takauji's rule began in 1338 and ended with his death in 1358; he was a descendent of Emperor Seiwa, the 56th emperor of Japan. According to famous Zen master and intellectual Muso Soseki, Takauji had three qualities: First, he kept his cool in battle and was not afraid of death; second, he was merciful and tolerant, and third, he was very generous with those below him. It seems that Ashikaga Takauji was rarely called by name in contemporary chronicles, but referred to as "great shogun" (Ō-gosho, 大御所).

However, the man's reputation is not quite so clear-cut, for he based his shogunate on betrayal. Japan was in restless times, the Emperor Go-Daigo having been exiled from the imperial capital, and Takauji was sent by the Kamakura shogunate to quell the unrests in Kyoto as they reached the level of a civil war. Disillusioned with the Kamakura shogunate, Takauji joined forces with the banished emperor and began fighting against the shogunate. With the downfall of the shogunate, Emperor Go-Daiyo became the de facto ruler of Japan, beginning the Kenmu restoration. This was an attempt to bring the Imperial House back into power, thus restoring a civilian government after almost a century and a half of military rule, but the restoration failed rapidly. The samurai clans were unhappy with the reestablished imperial court, and Takauji switched his support from the emperor to the rebels, allying himself with several clans and seizing Kyoto with his forces. After Emperor Go-Daigo fled, Takauji installed Emperor Komyo on the throne and was soon named Shogun.

This had the result that there were two emperors at once - Emperor Go-Daigo in the Southern Court, and Emperor Komyo in the Northern Court. This came about because after fleeing Kyoto, a very weakened Go-Daigo agreed to a cease-fire and handed over the Imperial Regalia to Ashikaga. Once he was safely esconced in Yoshino, Go-Daigo loudly claimed that the Imperial Regalia Ashikaga had used to enthrone Komyo were in fact forgeries, meaning that Komyo wasn't in fact the legitimate successor to the throne. The Southern Court is considered the legitimate sovereignty, but later Japanese sovereigns were descended from the Northern Court, which is also known as the "Ashikaga Pretenders". (The current Japanese imperial family is descended from the Northern Court.)

Takauji himself is one of the most controversial figures of Japanese history, often seen either as a great soldier and a charismatic leader or a traitor, opportunist, and villain. You can read a thorough and extremely interesting account of the battles, political situations and people the man found himself surrounded by here, and while his shogunate was one of the weakest in Japanese history, Takauji is considered one of Japan's greatest samurai figures.

Also, his name is AWESOME, and the entire reason why I started reading up on him to begin with.

Der Mörder ist immer der Gärtner

For something completely different from the last post: A German classic about a murdering employee. Lyrics here!

Vocaloid

As put on the official website, "Vocaloid is a technology for singing voice synthesis developed by Yamaha, and the name of this software application. The software allows users to input melody and lyrics in order to synthesize singing. In other words, with this technology, singing can be produced without a singer.".

Luka, Gumi and Miku, three of the most popular Vocaloids.

This software started out small, but had a huge boom in popularity when Hatsune Miku was introduced, a female singer with two very long blue pigtails. Her voice is sampled from Japanese voice actress Saki Fujita, and her name can be read as meaning "first sound future" (hatsu 初, ne 音, miku ミク (a nanori reading of mirai 未来)).

By now there are many, many songs online created by using one of the various digital singers, with some very prominent songwriters, producers and illustrators in the community. The video below, with music and lyrics by Nem, vocals by Vocaloid singers Gumi and Kagamine Len, and art by Tama, is really fun. It has English subtitles, so check it out! The song style is not for everyone (it really does sound synthetic), but the animation is so sweet. It's called "Ah, It's a Wonderful Cat Life":

Now, there are a bunch of artists who cover these songs, and they go by the name of Utaite. However, I'm not very familiar with those artists yet, having only heard a few covers, and the only one I really know is 96neko (96猫), pronounced kuroneko. She has a rather deep voice, which is pleasant (and a bit odd) after listening to high-pitched synthetic singing. It's easy to find compilations on youtube - here's a 1 hour compilation of some of her covers (with videos):

There's also some very good fanart out there, so I've been having a lot of fun exploring in the past few days! I have some more "serious" tabs open, too, so you may next hear about Gilgamesh, sakko (a Japanese geisha hairstyle or German men's jacket, depending on the language you speak), or even flight tickets. Finally booked my flight to the States today, after much poking around. I suppose music's a more interesting topic to post about, but maybe I'll point out the top websites I use. For now, I leave you with vocaloids!