During Christmas break, I had these delicious cookies at Joe’s grandmother’s made of chinese noodles coated in butterscotch. Since I’ve always loved a little East-meets-West, I asked for the recipe and found that it’s one of the easiest snacks to make!

What you need
2 x 12oz butterscotch bits (you can find this in supermarket baking or
desserts/candy section)
2 cups nuts (peanuts work best, but other nuts can also be used)
2 cups Chinese noodles (the crunchy yellow kind)
Toasted sesame seeds

What to do
Melt the butterscotch in a double boiler – that is, bring a pot of water to a boil  and sit another bowl in it and whisk the bits.
Stir in the nuts and broken bits of chinese noodles.
Scoop out onto wax paper with a spoon and sprinkle top with sesame seeds.
Let cool, and enjoy!

Why haven’t I heard of Cloud Cult until today? It’s okay. I have the rest of my life to listen to the playlist, I suppose.

From Neurocognitive Consequences of Sleep Deprivation by Jeffrey S. Durmer, et. al.:

Table 1 Summary of Broad Cognitive Performance Effects of Sleep Deprivation
- Involuntary microsleeps occur
- Attention-intensive performance is unstable with increased errors of omission and commission
- Cognitive slowing occurs in subject-paced tasks, while time pressure increases cognitive errors
- Response time slows
- Both short-term recall and working memory performances decline
- Reduced learning (acquisition) of cognitive tasks
- Performance requiring divergent thinking deteriorates
- Response suppression errors increase in tasks primarily subserved by prefrontal cortex
- Response perseveration on ineffective solutions is more likely
- Increased compensatory effort is required to remain behaviorally effective
- Tasks may be begun well, but performance deteriorates as task duration increases
- There is growing neglect of activities judged to be nonessential (loss of situational awareness)

#1: The Limousines – “Internet Killed the Video Star”

#2: Yeasayer – “ONE”

#3: Matt & Kim – “Daylight”

#4: Metric – “Black Sheep”

#5 Major Lazer – “Pon De Floor”

Pon De Floor featuring Afro Jack & VYBZ Cartel from Mad Decent on Vimeo.

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Besides than the endless conversations, the whole trip was a blur of food, friends, desserts, movie trailers, more food, freebies, dancing pirates, snacks, and even more food. I haven’t quite gotten over the feeling of being stuffed. Maybe I’ll recover sometime next month. Maybe.

Anyways, Kitky did a great job recording almost everything we ate in her blogpost. Frankly, after reading through the post and looking at the pictures, I’m surprised none of us ended up at a hospital with a ruptured stomach. We ate that much. So much for developing nations, poverty and starvation eh?

Coulton is also wildly popular amongst the World of Warcraft crowd, apparently.

On a side note, Cataclysm comes out tomorrow. Guess who’s not playing…

(Much thanks to Joe – who seems to provide me with an endless stream of content.)

You’ve now been infected by the explosive awesomeness that is chip music and The Pixies.

(Thanks @Joe!)

Discovered the BBC’s 2003 “Best Loved Novels”. A couple important revelations:

1. I’ve not read a great number of these books – and I should, just so I might find common conversational ground with the average person who has read about six books on the list. Also, less of those “OH. MY. GOD. You haven’t read [insert book here]?” exclamations of horror.
   
2. I’ve always wanted to read many of these books – but put them on the backburner while I read fodder, played way too many computer games, knit (I assure you, I can’t read and knit at the same time), made up various excuses that I soon would, etc.
3. This list doesn’t even include the books I want to read that aren’t popular enough to make the top 100
4. It might help me overcome my struggle with this … “English” thing - not my first (nor second) language.
5. I should read more fiction, in general.
6. The list of books I want/should read is growing exponentially longer each year - if I keep this up, I will have a list long enough to wrap my entire body with. Like a mummy. Except wrapped in tissue-thin paper, not expensive linen.
7. I’m almost a quarter century old and I better get cracking
8. Why no Graham Greene in the list? - Clearly, no one appreciates angry men.
   
9. I’ve not read Alcott, Austen and (some of) The Brontes - Though I’ve seen the movies. Yes, I can feel you judging me already.
10. By listing down what I have not read, I will expose myself to public ridicule and will therefore be more motivated to read all of it and prove myself – I work best under peer pressure.

And now, the list:

• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
• Catch-22, Joseph Heller
• Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
• Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
• Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
• Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
• War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
• Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy <Removed due to (un)popular demand!
• Middlemarch, George Eliot
• A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
• The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
• The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
• One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
• The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
• David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
• Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
• A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
• Persuasion, Jane Austen
• Emma, Jane Austen
• Watership Down, Richard Adams
• The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
• Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
• Animal Farm, George Orwell
• Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
• Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
• The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
• Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck.
• The Stand, Stephen King
• Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
• A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
• Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
• Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
• Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
• The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
• The Magus, John Fowles
• Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
• Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
• Perfume, Patrick Süskind
• The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
• Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
• Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding
• The Secret History, Donna Tartt
• The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
• Ulysses, James Joyce
• Bleak House, Charles Dickens
• Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
• I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
• Holes, Louis Sachar
• Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
• The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
• Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
• Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
• Magician, Raymond E. Feist
• On The Road, Jack Kerouac
• The Godfather, Mario Puzo
• The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
• Katherine, Anya Seton
• Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
• Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
• Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
• Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie

Other books not on the BBC list that I should also read:

• The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
• Atonement – Ian McEwan
• Life of Pi – Yann Martel
• Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
• The Secret History – Donna Tartt
• The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
• Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
• Possession – A.S. Byatt
• Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
• The Color Purple – Alice Walker
• The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
• Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
• Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
• The Color Purple – Alice Walker
• The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
• Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
• A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

It’s going to be a long, long year.