It was the pineapple. Pineapple is one of the most excruciatingly delightful things God made way back when God made all the foods we know, and so sometimes I would peel a whole pineapple and eat it. All. At once.
A few years ago, I got very ill, and after about a week, learned that pineapple poisoning had started it. I read that in the past, women would pop unripe pineapples to induce abortion. In my case the baby was, a scary giant object from my digestive tract. After which I was very weak. After which I had a cold and sore throat. After which I had too many Strepsils, which caused vomiting. After which I had all types of illness and strangeness for days before I figured out what the original cause had been from typing all those symptoms in my little phone and studying like crazy.
So generally I wouldn't eat a whole unripe pineapple nowadays.
I caught a bad cold / sneezy ticklish flu last week. The weather's been odd; it's been hot out, and I got in air-conditioned situations once or twice, which is usually a bad idea for me. I was exposed to people with bad colds too. But I still expected to escape catching it.
For many years I caught colds a lot - practically the only illness I get often, but I've been relatively strong and healthy for years, probably because my life is quite stress-free, change-free, the weather's tropical, and I can usually afford the time to rest, eat, and do all those self-care things when a cold seems to be near. Oh, and I live in a CAVE.
I ended up catching it, but now I think back and see that it was pineapple that "caused" this. Again I ate the whole thing. It was very sweet but very acid, and even while I was eating it I felt the danger, it was too acid in my mouth and in my chest/tummy.
Now after the whole disequilibrium experience (I suppose that's what a cold is, sort of), I studied a bit about what happens - mucus overproduction/oversecretion, ... and the cardinal example of that experience, the genetic disorder called CF (Cystic Fibrosis). It's helping me understand my health. For instance, some exercise would be nice for moving the mucus along, but I never really do that. Saline (salt water) and inhaling steam does good things for relaxing the hyper-secretion thing. I've been hungry and tired all the time because nutrient absorption is broken down when the mucus linings (they're not only in your respiratory tract) are acting crazy. So I've been attracted to slightly salty, fatty, meaty things (I usually have like zero of these in my diet) and even felt a need to drink sweet stuff and sugar (again, usually not my thing.)
I was feeling lazy about writing this, and yeah, I could have done a better job writing...with relevant links and such. My main point is that to understand what's up with influenza/flu/colds/catarrh, we can draw from CF research.
For me, I now understand a bit better the connection between acidic food (vs salt) and dehydration (used to get dehydrated a lot too) and the mucus response which may lead to a cold.
By the way, if the genetics of CF are so similar to those of sickle cell (autosomal recessive, as they call it in biology), then I wonder what, if any, benefits caused CF to be retained in the population. That is, are carriers (people with one inherited CF gene, not two) in some way at an advantage, say because they withstand cold/dry/mountain/winter better with their mucous-y superpower? As you know, sickle-cell is common in the tropics and in terms of genetics (natural selection) it's a thing that exists because carriers have some immunity to malaria...then in a fraction of those cases, the sickle cell genes are doubled and the "too much of a good thing" is a bad thing, i.e. the disease/syndrome. Just as SS is a black-people thing, CF is a white-people disease.
For me, I need heat and humidity.
Explains why I was withering even in Southern California. Someday, I may try living there again, but a half-hour coastwards, the real Los Angeles, with better humidity. Of course I loved New Orleans too. Florida is nice weather, but too many ass-holes live there lol, it's really a pity.
Explains why I do well provided I do NOT have air conditioning...I go to great lengths to avoid an a/c lifestyle.
Explains why Lagos rocks! but not Jos.
Why I'm afraid of white-people countries :)
Why Washington DC was actually better for me, weather-wise, than Cali.
I feel sure that another possibility would be to be a big eater, lol, to be so fat that there's always some sort of reserve (of salts and fats) to balance out the environment lol. But nah, I'm not willing to do that. Puerto Rico, anyone?
I feel good now. My ear tickles a bit, and the cold is not 100% gone, maybe 96 lol. I hope after this goes away that long term my susceptibility actually really goes away :) like it did before. And hope I can resist the temptation to overdo it with pineapple in future. Like, I should try new excitements - tomato! carrots!
One last thing, some years ago I learned that blowing heavily when you have a cold only makes EVERYTHING worse. I seem to have forgotten that this time, and got back to my highly-entertaining (or annoying) elephant trumpet noises. Which explains why my ear got infected too. So yeah, if you have a cold, don't blow so hard, it creates all these pressure differentials so you just fill up with more mucus and probably fill up new spaces - like in your ears - with more mucus.
One more thing - I tried to avoid this bit for modesty's sake, but hey we're medical people so let's say it. About the mucus linings in 'za other room' ... how they respond to diet - they do!, and how their hyperactivity is correlated (positively) with the propensity to get a runny nose.
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Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Wednesday, December 07, 2016
Sometimes, adults really have something to teach us
My father phoned yesterday (December 6) but I didn't really feel up to talking, even with the promise from my horoscope that it might leave me feeling more grounded.
I'd better go and phone him now/today before the astrological magic wears out lol. Love you, dad.
--
In other news, the mental prisons of female so-called beauty are broken down by a girl named Amy Schumer.
The backstory is she has been cast as Barbie and people are annoyed because she is fat compared to their beloved Barbie idea.
I love comedians for this: like modern-day court jesters, they are experts in the ridiculous, and related to this superpower, they have terrific bullshit sensors. They are people I can trust to teach me something about truth and falsehood in human beings and relationships. Which beings me to the meat and potatoes, the main course, of this blog post:
Watch the 'dinner party' conversation as Chelsea Handler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Trevor Noah, Julianna Margulies, and Morgan Spurlock discuss relationships in the context of that multidimensional life that has some work relationships, family relationships, present and past favourites, all recognized and given due respect. Details. Alternative video link.
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An older person offers words of wisdom that will leave you feeling more grounded. More: https://t.co/5akNFxN5wW— Astrology.com (@DH_Taurus) December 6, 2016
I'd better go and phone him now/today before the astrological magic wears out lol. Love you, dad.
--
In other news, the mental prisons of female so-called beauty are broken down by a girl named Amy Schumer.
The backstory is she has been cast as Barbie and people are annoyed because she is fat compared to their beloved Barbie idea.
I love comedians for this: like modern-day court jesters, they are experts in the ridiculous, and related to this superpower, they have terrific bullshit sensors. They are people I can trust to teach me something about truth and falsehood in human beings and relationships. Which beings me to the meat and potatoes, the main course, of this blog post:
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Friday, December 02, 2016
I want to read everything
I enjoyed this history of global cities and find the Guardian UK's 'The Story of Cities' series very inviting. Pity I can't read everything.
Aside: Nick has a point :)
I've been not-writing. But reading everything. Not books so much as 'the internet.'
The other day I watched Ran (Kurosawa). One of the best films I've ever seen, in that it would fascinate anybody...from art-snob to clue-less. It should totally be remade as a Yoruba film.
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Aside: Nick has a point :)
I've been not-writing. But reading everything. Not books so much as 'the internet.'
The other day I watched Ran (Kurosawa). One of the best films I've ever seen, in that it would fascinate anybody...from art-snob to clue-less. It should totally be remade as a Yoruba film.
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Monday, November 21, 2016
darkness, drought, little flowers sprout, don't worry about a thing
When the world ends
Collect your things, you're coming with me
When the world ends
You tuckle up yourself with me
Watch it as the stars disappear to nothing
- Dave Matthews Band
We'll be two souls in a Ghosttown
...
When it all falls, when it all falls down
We'll be two souls in a Ghosttown
- Madonna
And the bridges they all buckle
And everybody's packin' up their station wagons
There's a number you can call
Like a breast that you can suckle
And we quietly will exit as it all is happenin' again
//
'Cause there's a river runnin' underground
Underneath the town towards the sea
That only I know all about
On which from this city we can flee
- in Rufus Wainwright
Listen/Watch
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Collect your things, you're coming with me
When the world ends
You tuckle up yourself with me
Watch it as the stars disappear to nothing
- Dave Matthews Band
...
When there's no one, no one else aroundWe'll be two souls in a Ghosttown
...
When it all falls, when it all falls down
We'll be two souls in a Ghosttown
- Madonna
...
When the rocket ships all fallAnd the bridges they all buckle
And everybody's packin' up their station wagons
There's a number you can call
Like a breast that you can suckle
And we quietly will exit as it all is happenin' again
//
'Cause there's a river runnin' underground
Underneath the town towards the sea
That only I know all about
On which from this city we can flee
- in Rufus Wainwright
Listen/Watch
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Wednesday, November 09, 2016
The morning after the US elections, I say we quit trying to analyse the senseless and take Trump down now
"It is disastrous that a racist with fascist tendencies has come so close
to taking over power in this country, a man who appeals to hate, greed
and the basest of instincts, an agitator who plays people off against
each other, who abhors losers and who adheres to the credo: might makes
right. An authoritarian, narcissistic, manic, manipulative and dangerous
liar who is capable of anything."
Source: DerSpiegel
This is what we're really dealing with.
Not a right-wing Republican. Not an anti-free-trade businessman. Not a populist maverick. Not an archaic Buhari or a dumb-and-dumber George Bush. Not a rude-mouth or a brash hustler. But an inscrutable piece of shit.
Keep this guy away from the office of the President of the United States or be prepared for the jaw-dropping consequences.
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Source: DerSpiegel
This is what we're really dealing with.
Not a right-wing Republican. Not an anti-free-trade businessman. Not a populist maverick. Not an archaic Buhari or a dumb-and-dumber George Bush. Not a rude-mouth or a brash hustler. But an inscrutable piece of shit.
Keep this guy away from the office of the President of the United States or be prepared for the jaw-dropping consequences.
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Monday, October 31, 2016
Moving on from Coursera, passing through The School Of Life
Late 2013 to Early 2016, I was a Courseran and Coursera-addict.
I'm now a follower / adherent of a video channel called The School Of Life.
Isn't it just excellent?
I now work in Yaba, Lagos, not far from my former workplace of Unilag and right in Sabo, the nascent tech startup hub.
I'm considering checking on options for learning more math and/or learning Chinese a bit, either at the university or someplace cleverer.
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I'm now a follower / adherent of a video channel called The School Of Life.
Isn't it just excellent?
I now work in Yaba, Lagos, not far from my former workplace of Unilag and right in Sabo, the nascent tech startup hub.
I'm considering checking on options for learning more math and/or learning Chinese a bit, either at the university or someplace cleverer.
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Saturday, October 29, 2016
Steal this idea
Check out:
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Tunneling through on the back of the creative economy
This is how we will MAKE it till we make it - from individual artistry to indu$trial production
School should be FUNPut them together and you have a sense of what we need to do: put Africa's entertainers to work creating the future of education.
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Sunday, October 23, 2016
Monday, September 26, 2016
The music of my life
O come let us adore him, Rufus Wainwright.
After all these years, his voice is in my life, and his art still moves me to...art.
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Thursday, August 25, 2016
Retro
To Pimp A Butterfly is, was, and remains forever excellent, excellent.
We're still celebrating.
I'm also watching British comedy from 1980s NTA (Nigerian Television)
including
Every episode of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em (Frank Spencer) and Fawlty Towers.
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It's the worldwide Frank Ocean festival this week and probably next week too. It's beautiful how through his music, we have had to slow down. Not consume-and-dump, not analyse, speculate, hail, or rant, but
just let some music play in the background of life;
just work or chill or build a frigging staircase to nowhere (or in my home these days, learn about mold allergies and bedbug infestation)
and let music do its thing.
We're still celebrating.
I'm also watching British comedy from 1980s NTA (Nigerian Television)
including
Every episode of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em (Frank Spencer) and Fawlty Towers.
Advertisement: Read my books. ###Three Sisters, novel #1 here###
It's the worldwide Frank Ocean festival this week and probably next week too. It's beautiful how through his music, we have had to slow down. Not consume-and-dump, not analyse, speculate, hail, or rant, but
just let some music play in the background of life;
just work or chill or build a frigging staircase to nowhere (or in my home these days, learn about mold allergies and bedbug infestation)
and let music do its thing.
Friday, August 19, 2016
African spirituality and the late-summer festivals
Tis the season...
to travel the Nigerian SouthWest
indulge in Yoruba culture
drink palmwine, eat goat-meat
and check out cultural festivals :
I know of the Badagry festival
and I've been at the Osun Oshogbo festival.
This year's August festival dates and schedules:
Badagry Festival 13th to 27th August 2016 (Grand finale next weekend!! And the roads are relatively nice and free - no more crazy traffic and construction - so you should get out to Badagry, Lagos and catch the very colourful sights, see the museums, the beach, the masquerades, ...)
The Oshun-Oshogbo festival 8th to 19th August 2016 (Grand finale just happened today and you can catch the frenzied photo-coverage on Nigerian news sites Naij, Vanguard, PM News, and more. Learn about the Arugba, the sacred grove and shrine, the river and the worship of Osun, a fertility goddess and patron of Osogbo town. You can also find tourist tidbits from Osogbo for 2013, 2014, and 2015 at REALbubbler)
Out in Accra, Ghana too, there's an annual festival in mid- to late-August. It's an artist's dream just a few hours' drive from Lagos, but it seems I'll have to wait till next year to see it live. Called the Chale Wote Street Art Festival, this year it's themed "Spirit Robot" and holds from August 15th-21st 2016.
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to travel the Nigerian SouthWest
indulge in Yoruba culture
drink palmwine, eat goat-meat
and check out cultural festivals :
I know of the Badagry festival
and I've been at the Osun Oshogbo festival.
This year's August festival dates and schedules:
Badagry Festival 13th to 27th August 2016 (Grand finale next weekend!! And the roads are relatively nice and free - no more crazy traffic and construction - so you should get out to Badagry, Lagos and catch the very colourful sights, see the museums, the beach, the masquerades, ...)
Out in Accra, Ghana too, there's an annual festival in mid- to late-August. It's an artist's dream just a few hours' drive from Lagos, but it seems I'll have to wait till next year to see it live. Called the Chale Wote Street Art Festival, this year it's themed "Spirit Robot" and holds from August 15th-21st 2016.
IT IS TIME #ChaleWote2016 @Accradotalt 💃🏾💃🏾💃🏾💥💥💥👊🏾👊🏾🎉🎉 SEE YOU THERE ..!! pic.twitter.com/7LS2C9S0M3— EFYA (@EFYA_Nokturnal) August 17, 2016
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Saturday, July 16, 2016
Opera: Sorrowful Mysteries
Lifted, by Palmistry
Every Breaking Wave / The Troubles, by U2
Solomon, by IKON
The Renaissance, by Tomi Thomas
Bittersweet Symphony, by The Verve
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries:
The Agony in the Garden // The Scourging at the Pillar // The Crowning with Thorns // The Carrying of the Cross // The Crucifixion
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Friday, July 15, 2016
Concert: Chemistry's Mysteries
Lady Jay - Oh My My My
James Blake - The Wilhelm Scream
St. Beauty - Holographic Lover
A side-note on referrals:
I don't always remember the history of how I "discovered" a particular track, album, or artiste, but for the above three I have names and dates: Tec, Ghost, and Janelle Monae - beautiful discoveries yielding beautiful discoveries.
@LadyJayLives like the new jam 'oh my my my'...Dope...More Vim Lady!!— Show Dem Camp (@ShowDemCamp) September 4, 2014
🎵wilhelms scream - James Blake— TheLoveMovementSdc (@kingluu) November 9, 2015
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Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Embossed
Stopped by this little store near my house to buy (a bag of pure) water.
The owner also stocks greeting cards - birthday cards and such - remember those?
Remember the pure pleasure of the thick card paper and embossed pink flowers and sparkly lettering on the front of the card, to start with?
The preferably-not-icky poetry inside.
Cards were Hallmark or budget or something nice-and-in-between;
or (starting in the late nineties) sometimes afrocentric and handmade.
Real cards were just such a great idea, before e-cards, before no-cards.
I'll have to find an excuse to give a card again sometime.
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P.S. To everyone who loves me (yeah, you), thank you for loving me.
The owner also stocks greeting cards - birthday cards and such - remember those?
Friday, July 08, 2016
Come on, Andy. Let's go, Roger.
Another one of the best tennis stories I know is Andy Murray. He worked/works super-hard. He was too little at first, then he became strong; then he was ruthlessly criticized for not feeding his country's enormous hopes and dreams, but he ate all that up and in return won big at home: Wimbledon, and Olympic Gold.
On his own terms, I would say. And this is life.
Some of the best writing in the world is about tennis, and indeed I've said (written) this before, some of these guys should win a Nobel Prize. The campaign is on - Steve Tignor and Peter Bodo of Tennis Magazine, for a major literature / writing award. It's not an entirely selfless campaign: if a tennis writer can win the Nobel, then so can a blogger like me, right?
Read this, please.
And remember this.
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On his own terms, I would say. And this is life.
Some of the best writing in the world is about tennis, and indeed I've said (written) this before, some of these guys should win a Nobel Prize. The campaign is on - Steve Tignor and Peter Bodo of Tennis Magazine, for a major literature / writing award. It's not an entirely selfless campaign: if a tennis writer can win the Nobel, then so can a blogger like me, right?
Read this, please.
And remember this.
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Sunday, June 26, 2016
New Normal
Was there daylight savings ( ) or something? I think I lost a day this past week. Watching Korean drama series - again! - would do that to you.
I have also rediscovered sleeping for about 8 hours daily. It doesn't feel like enough sleep yet. I'll try to improve. Sleep is the answer // sleep is the future. Don't second-guess yourself.
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 |
| Life on Pause. |
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Monday, May 23, 2016
Learning new things from old writings
My sister had this blog in 2007-2008, a fun, flighty, conversational breezy diary called Fausset, accent on the e, but it might as well have been named Confetti.
Raj had his Prithvi and I was one of his fans, and I kept a little us-blog called Duniya / enta Raj too.
You may also find it fun to mine the earliest months of BellaNaija and NotJustOK, and see too Sergey Brin's little blog from that era.
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Raj had his Prithvi and I was one of his fans, and I kept a little us-blog called Duniya / enta Raj too.
You may also find it fun to mine the earliest months of BellaNaija and NotJustOK, and see too Sergey Brin's little blog from that era.
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Friday, May 20, 2016
Ma chérie, mon cher
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What am I supposed to do -
sit around and wait for you?
Well, I can't do that...
- Cher, in Believe
If I had far more than the one or two dozen gigabytes per month to play/live on the internet, I would watch most of these little tennis videos a few times. I just watched #32 and it's a match I remember well. I call it Black-On-Black-Violence. Both Roger Federer and Andy Roddick showed up in black. Dressed as The Undertaker, I said, as in, somebody is going to leave in a coffin today. Andy himself was a perennial top 4 player and a one-time world number 1. He had Jimmy Connors coaching him and had gone through hell to put himself in a position to challenge Roger, who had become a mountain-sized problem to him and everybody.
Oh Lord, the bullets came pow. Pow. Andy with the fastest serve in men's tennis. Power. Heart. Fire. Everything. Read about it read about it, let me know if you watched it.
Roger won.
I don't know if I cried but I felt Andy's heart. That was when he became my guy, because before that...ehn, he's American, so, too...uncomplicated.
Omg another match I just remembered: Andy Roddick winning at Queens - pure, unadulterated beauty. First of all the courts at Queens make you - I mean if you're the kind that gets visceral reactions to beautiful things - you'll lose your breath for a bit. It's so dirty-yellow green and red. And Andy respecting the space because it's England, yet being such a giant, so fit, hard, and American. And then doing his job, whacking the ball, and winning and being happy.
I usually cheat by using my internet overnight (12-6 is free in the contract), but the internet company cheats by charging for the first and the final 45minutes or so, that is you're only safe from 1-5am. Then I usually call monthly when I run out of 'data' to complain about all the lost gigabytes and they usually apologize and tack them back on, but I'm sorta getting tired of the dance. And maybe having too many all-nighters watching gossip videos and music videos while downloading edu/Coursera recordings and all the films and music albums I want, and getting really tired from the jetlag :) is not always the way to live.
Federer: amazing!
Rafa Nadal: mi amor. I fell in love at first sight.
I wonder if when I'm 99 and dying my only regret will be all these years I'm spending NOT watching tennis.
Because think about my life without the 2008 Wimbledon final - the excitement leading up to it, the experience of seeing it, alone, undisturbed... The thing is I wouldn't even know what I didn't know, that I had missed out on the whole joy of life.
Or my life without the drama of Ana Ivanovic - the beauty, the hustle, the rise, the fall, - or Anna Chakvetadze (A-Chak, the psychologist and book-lover, just kept placing the ball and placing the ball and many times, that was enough to win) in those days.
Or life without taking a snapshot of a body like Martina Hingis' and wondering what it means. For many years I've struggled to describe it without thinking of horses horses. I think it's how pronounced the balls of the shoulders are, like mine. And since anatomically hips and shoulders are close kin, she's a bit more a collage of different structures fit together and less one compact aerodynamic mass.
(Yes I just figured it out. It has these exaggerated balls (1) and it reminds me of me (2). So I was utterly captivated, and now it turns out I'm just crazy about myself? How narcissistic. How pathetic. )
I thought to use the word gangly for Ms Hingis. I know gangly is usually a Venus Williams tall-with-limbs-flying-here-and-there - you should watch Venus play, she is a tall, beautiful child - not a not-so-tall, non-flailing, sexy mama; but what I was thinking was actually GANGLIA, GANGLION, gangly in that sense, and after some work I've found there is support for relating ganglia-ness / gangliness to the knobs of her shoulders, the knobs/orbs at the hips etc. Ganglia Origins: From Latin - swelling; From Greek - cystic tumour.
She walks like a bow-legged horse. :) Or maybe it's my imagination.
I don't think to use gangly for myself. For myself, I think Bantu, rather short/squat and explosive at least in the lower-body, contrasted with the slender-tall Sudanic type. (Map) No I'm not actually short. But I look like someone who really should be stronger. Except that I don't like to move. I'm basically like Martina. She's a professional athlete, so I must be wrong about her not liking to move so much? I think she's a bitch, definitely. I don't think she's a person who gives too much of a _ ; I definitely from-a-distance like her. Very much.
Hey.
If she was gay
and I was gay
I'd stay away
Cos it won't be ok
You know she'd wipe
the floor with my aaaassss
And she would break my heart
Yes she would break my heart
Stomp on the littler part
Save the rest for breakfast
fried eggs and rare girl-heart
line of coke for dessert
That bi* would fu* me up
That shi* would be so crae
No shrink could fix all that
So better not to start
...
But I'm not gay
Nor is she gay.
Crae.
For the melody, you know If You Were Gay from Avenue Q, right?
I haven't really watched tennis since 2008. Maybe I watch three matches a year nowadays. And not even full-attention. Then again, Novak Djokovic has been number one for a few years. I was happy for him to be a top three player behind Roger and Rafa, but not happy when he started beating Rafa. I don't want anybody beating my Rafa, don't you hear me?
I never thought Novak would become so powerful, and while I'm sure he's a great guy and great player and all, I don't really want to watch him. And that's not fair at all.
I have to mention Andy Murray. Or it won't be fair. I like Andy.
So maybe it's ok to not watch tennis to spite Novak? My friend Bala has been a Djokovic fan since whenever. He's not getting any from me with that kind of attitude :P Haha just kidding, that's just one of ten good reasons.
Always thought that if I was 99 and dying, one of my regrets would NOT be that I didn't have a kid or two, so why bother? Especially when I know how much I hate my life when it's filled with chores. It's like dying, dude, when you have to constantly do silly things that you would rather not do and can't find the importance of doing. I remember having my Chemistry book in front of me, while this little baby wanted to play. Yeah it's fun to play with you for a few minutes but then I have to get back to regular eleven-year-old life. I remember poo-poo. (OK, diapers nowadays, thank God.) There's laundry and connecting (because if you're going to parent you'd better do it well by paying attention and connecting with them) and the other day somebody reminded me about school, yeah, kids go to school, and I remembered: shit there's also the morning routine wake up brush teeth get to school on time nonsense to deal with? I hated being woken up rudely to start the day with a bath, like what's so wrong with waking up when you feel like waking up, naturally? And now I'm supposed to wake up somebody else?
School itself was great. It's efficient. You're with people your age so learning and play come naturally. The adults have enough to do to keep them happily engaged. They cook for a lot of people at a time and get it over with. I can't even feed myself, too lazy, and now I've got to feed somebody else on a schedule? Why mess things up in my life? Why now when everything is so perfect?
If only I could be a dad.
Because I love you, future kids, I just don't want all this mommy shit.
And if you knew how stupid life was, you might consider staying unborn too. There's nothing here.
So yesterday I learned one new way to be a dad: I was at my amala woman's place buying some food to eat there and some to take home, and found out her kids are in boarding school. The younger is eight years old. Really? You don't have to wait till secondary school to cart them off? Awesome. And she's a super-intelligent woman in my opinion, a Christianly-doctrinely businesswoman; she says she visits them often, maybe twice a week, husband too. She says they live in a nice private hostel just outside town. They eat well. I'm thinking wow they don't have to deal with traffic; they can step right from schooltime into lunch, siesta/nap, sports/play, prep time, sleep. This is magic. I was in boarding school from age 9 too and always wondered about the hellish traffic and crappy lifestyle of day (commuting) students. Unnecessary stress going back and forth.
You never know though, what you think is best may not be what your kid prefers, but my preference has always been for kids to have lots of room to grow, lots of interactions with various interesting people, lots of space to play.
Those conditions were there in most of my own life and I see them as very positive. I would hate to crowd my kid or be crowded in by them.
But it's probably not my calling to create all these healthy kiddie-developing conditions in this current concrete jungle with new modern cloistered life (can't talk to neighbours), small nuclear families (I think of those as hell, children need space), money-centered lifestyle (and getting very little value in exchange for the money.) It is not my calling; I like twenty-year olds, I like to talk to people like adults, I like to teach in a respectful laissez-faire manner, I like to interact and go, I don't like the full-time-hands-on thing with a tiny little baby ... and so having kids has seemed to me like a passport to hell, at least if not well managed. Maybe when I was 18 and busy it would have fit in as a nice side-gig. Now I'm, oh Lord, I'm a grown-ass woman, and it just seems like it would be such a change from a grown-up life, if that makes sense. Can't do it. Definitely outsourcing. Give me your college kids, I'll give you my toddler.
What shifts the balance?
Boarding school - Oh Yes. Especially since it's not even these big-money arrangements where I dunno, you're paying for the kids to basically network with rich kids and sleep under duvets with constant air-conditioning. They're in Africa, what's all the rubbish about pretending it's Scotland?
The alternatives I've considered before -
Very flexible work (beyond what you think of as flexible. No, I will not be one of those harried adults. Nope. Not happening. Unless there's a war or something.) That's part of my life now.
Rural living or a semblance of it, like a job back in the 'country', or living on a nice university campus with everything. I know people who had that - academic parents, staff school - and hated it, they claim they grew up poor. Oh well.
Communal living, like multiple little families, like Rafa's extended-family house, so someone can baby-talk and pull my baby's cheeks and teach them drawing or stories and it doesn't fall to just two unfortunate souls to do everything. I mean who came up with this whole isolated couples idea - it's so inhumane.
I really had everything as a kid:
We were for a time too poor to be isolated and Lagos was 20 times less crowded. Kind neighbours, low stress levels. I was always talking.
Lived on a gorgeous island for a few years, even. Maybe 200 people in 64 little houses on well over 10 hectares (so maybe 10,000sq.ft. per person) with no fences. Amazing.
Then not sure what happened, stress level rising, maybe because of the extra kids - twins, maybe it's just hard after a few years of marriage to pretend life isn't frustrating, maybe it's just luck - sometimes a life is easy sometimes it's fraught with ... the mind/soul is not happy, but thankfully school was there for me. So many people at school from whom to learn so many things. I couldn't sleep my first night even long after lights-out, it was so exciting. The biggest problem was holidays from boarding school. Most people don't feel the same way, I'm sure.
So kids, I know you want to be born and everything. Help me figure out the logistics of it, get yourself a daddy or two - maybe he's always wanted to be a mommy or maybe he has a nice extended family to feed us, because you know I love food, and I will take time out of my not-so-busy schedule to get knocked up and you know, do the whole nine months in the oven and two years carrying you on my back like a smiling peasant before you move on to General Relativity / Quantum Mechanics.
If I was 35 and dying, how much would I regret not having done novel #2? Not very much. Now I thought of a new way to constrain the work - make it about children, the four main characters' ages are pushed down under 16, maybe even around 10, throughout. To make that work well, I really should hang out with young people, and there are many schools about, and I have no job keeping me from doing it, so why not do it? If I was 35 and dying though, I'd remember that it was supposed to be just one novel and I've done that. These extra writings are beyond what's required, so hey, good job. Do whatever you want. Hang out with kids and write something amazing, or don't hang out with kids and write an irritating writerly piece. Your business.
I'm tired. I hate writing. Yeah, right. Time to shower. 11:11am, it's nice and warm.
What am I supposed to do -
sit around and wait for you?
Well, I can't do that...
- Cher, in Believe
If I had far more than the one or two dozen gigabytes per month to play/live on the internet, I would watch most of these little tennis videos a few times. I just watched #32 and it's a match I remember well. I call it Black-On-Black-Violence. Both Roger Federer and Andy Roddick showed up in black. Dressed as The Undertaker, I said, as in, somebody is going to leave in a coffin today. Andy himself was a perennial top 4 player and a one-time world number 1. He had Jimmy Connors coaching him and had gone through hell to put himself in a position to challenge Roger, who had become a mountain-sized problem to him and everybody.
Oh Lord, the bullets came pow. Pow. Andy with the fastest serve in men's tennis. Power. Heart. Fire. Everything. Read about it read about it, let me know if you watched it.
Roger won.
I don't know if I cried but I felt Andy's heart. That was when he became my guy, because before that...ehn, he's American, so, too...uncomplicated.
Omg another match I just remembered: Andy Roddick winning at Queens - pure, unadulterated beauty. First of all the courts at Queens make you - I mean if you're the kind that gets visceral reactions to beautiful things - you'll lose your breath for a bit. It's so dirty-yellow green and red. And Andy respecting the space because it's England, yet being such a giant, so fit, hard, and American. And then doing his job, whacking the ball, and winning and being happy.
I usually cheat by using my internet overnight (12-6 is free in the contract), but the internet company cheats by charging for the first and the final 45minutes or so, that is you're only safe from 1-5am. Then I usually call monthly when I run out of 'data' to complain about all the lost gigabytes and they usually apologize and tack them back on, but I'm sorta getting tired of the dance. And maybe having too many all-nighters watching gossip videos and music videos while downloading edu/Coursera recordings and all the films and music albums I want, and getting really tired from the jetlag :) is not always the way to live.
Federer: amazing!
Rafa Nadal: mi amor. I fell in love at first sight.
I wonder if when I'm 99 and dying my only regret will be all these years I'm spending NOT watching tennis.
Because think about my life without the 2008 Wimbledon final - the excitement leading up to it, the experience of seeing it, alone, undisturbed... The thing is I wouldn't even know what I didn't know, that I had missed out on the whole joy of life.
Or my life without the drama of Ana Ivanovic - the beauty, the hustle, the rise, the fall, - or Anna Chakvetadze (A-Chak, the psychologist and book-lover, just kept placing the ball and placing the ball and many times, that was enough to win) in those days.
Or life without taking a snapshot of a body like Martina Hingis' and wondering what it means. For many years I've struggled to describe it without thinking of horses horses. I think it's how pronounced the balls of the shoulders are, like mine. And since anatomically hips and shoulders are close kin, she's a bit more a collage of different structures fit together and less one compact aerodynamic mass.
(Yes I just figured it out. It has these exaggerated balls (1) and it reminds me of me (2). So I was utterly captivated, and now it turns out I'm just crazy about myself? How narcissistic. How pathetic. )
I thought to use the word gangly for Ms Hingis. I know gangly is usually a Venus Williams tall-with-limbs-flying-here-and-there - you should watch Venus play, she is a tall, beautiful child - not a not-so-tall, non-flailing, sexy mama; but what I was thinking was actually GANGLIA, GANGLION, gangly in that sense, and after some work I've found there is support for relating ganglia-ness / gangliness to the knobs of her shoulders, the knobs/orbs at the hips etc. Ganglia Origins: From Latin - swelling; From Greek - cystic tumour.
She walks like a bow-legged horse. :) Or maybe it's my imagination.
 |
| I looked up 'gangly' and found this person so named... |
Hey.
If she was gay
and I was gay
I'd stay away
Cos it won't be ok
You know she'd wipe
the floor with my aaaassss
And she would break my heart
Yes she would break my heart
Stomp on the littler part
Save the rest for breakfast
fried eggs and rare girl-heart
line of coke for dessert
That bi* would fu* me up
That shi* would be so crae
No shrink could fix all that
So better not to start
...
But I'm not gay
Nor is she gay.
Crae.
For the melody, you know If You Were Gay from Avenue Q, right?
I haven't really watched tennis since 2008. Maybe I watch three matches a year nowadays. And not even full-attention. Then again, Novak Djokovic has been number one for a few years. I was happy for him to be a top three player behind Roger and Rafa, but not happy when he started beating Rafa. I don't want anybody beating my Rafa, don't you hear me?
I never thought Novak would become so powerful, and while I'm sure he's a great guy and great player and all, I don't really want to watch him. And that's not fair at all.
I have to mention Andy Murray. Or it won't be fair. I like Andy.
So maybe it's ok to not watch tennis to spite Novak? My friend Bala has been a Djokovic fan since whenever. He's not getting any from me with that kind of attitude :P Haha just kidding, that's just one of ten good reasons.
Always thought that if I was 99 and dying, one of my regrets would NOT be that I didn't have a kid or two, so why bother? Especially when I know how much I hate my life when it's filled with chores. It's like dying, dude, when you have to constantly do silly things that you would rather not do and can't find the importance of doing. I remember having my Chemistry book in front of me, while this little baby wanted to play. Yeah it's fun to play with you for a few minutes but then I have to get back to regular eleven-year-old life. I remember poo-poo. (OK, diapers nowadays, thank God.) There's laundry and connecting (because if you're going to parent you'd better do it well by paying attention and connecting with them) and the other day somebody reminded me about school, yeah, kids go to school, and I remembered: shit there's also the morning routine wake up brush teeth get to school on time nonsense to deal with? I hated being woken up rudely to start the day with a bath, like what's so wrong with waking up when you feel like waking up, naturally? And now I'm supposed to wake up somebody else?
School itself was great. It's efficient. You're with people your age so learning and play come naturally. The adults have enough to do to keep them happily engaged. They cook for a lot of people at a time and get it over with. I can't even feed myself, too lazy, and now I've got to feed somebody else on a schedule? Why mess things up in my life? Why now when everything is so perfect?
If only I could be a dad.
Because I love you, future kids, I just don't want all this mommy shit.
And if you knew how stupid life was, you might consider staying unborn too. There's nothing here.
So yesterday I learned one new way to be a dad: I was at my amala woman's place buying some food to eat there and some to take home, and found out her kids are in boarding school. The younger is eight years old. Really? You don't have to wait till secondary school to cart them off? Awesome. And she's a super-intelligent woman in my opinion, a Christianly-doctrinely businesswoman; she says she visits them often, maybe twice a week, husband too. She says they live in a nice private hostel just outside town. They eat well. I'm thinking wow they don't have to deal with traffic; they can step right from schooltime into lunch, siesta/nap, sports/play, prep time, sleep. This is magic. I was in boarding school from age 9 too and always wondered about the hellish traffic and crappy lifestyle of day (commuting) students. Unnecessary stress going back and forth.
You never know though, what you think is best may not be what your kid prefers, but my preference has always been for kids to have lots of room to grow, lots of interactions with various interesting people, lots of space to play.
Those conditions were there in most of my own life and I see them as very positive. I would hate to crowd my kid or be crowded in by them.
But it's probably not my calling to create all these healthy kiddie-developing conditions in this current concrete jungle with new modern cloistered life (can't talk to neighbours), small nuclear families (I think of those as hell, children need space), money-centered lifestyle (and getting very little value in exchange for the money.) It is not my calling; I like twenty-year olds, I like to talk to people like adults, I like to teach in a respectful laissez-faire manner, I like to interact and go, I don't like the full-time-hands-on thing with a tiny little baby ... and so having kids has seemed to me like a passport to hell, at least if not well managed. Maybe when I was 18 and busy it would have fit in as a nice side-gig. Now I'm, oh Lord, I'm a grown-ass woman, and it just seems like it would be such a change from a grown-up life, if that makes sense. Can't do it. Definitely outsourcing. Give me your college kids, I'll give you my toddler.
What shifts the balance?
Boarding school - Oh Yes. Especially since it's not even these big-money arrangements where I dunno, you're paying for the kids to basically network with rich kids and sleep under duvets with constant air-conditioning. They're in Africa, what's all the rubbish about pretending it's Scotland?
The alternatives I've considered before -
Very flexible work (beyond what you think of as flexible. No, I will not be one of those harried adults. Nope. Not happening. Unless there's a war or something.) That's part of my life now.
Rural living or a semblance of it, like a job back in the 'country', or living on a nice university campus with everything. I know people who had that - academic parents, staff school - and hated it, they claim they grew up poor. Oh well.
Communal living, like multiple little families, like Rafa's extended-family house, so someone can baby-talk and pull my baby's cheeks and teach them drawing or stories and it doesn't fall to just two unfortunate souls to do everything. I mean who came up with this whole isolated couples idea - it's so inhumane.
I really had everything as a kid:
We were for a time too poor to be isolated and Lagos was 20 times less crowded. Kind neighbours, low stress levels. I was always talking.
Lived on a gorgeous island for a few years, even. Maybe 200 people in 64 little houses on well over 10 hectares (so maybe 10,000sq.ft. per person) with no fences. Amazing.
Then not sure what happened, stress level rising, maybe because of the extra kids - twins, maybe it's just hard after a few years of marriage to pretend life isn't frustrating, maybe it's just luck - sometimes a life is easy sometimes it's fraught with ... the mind/soul is not happy, but thankfully school was there for me. So many people at school from whom to learn so many things. I couldn't sleep my first night even long after lights-out, it was so exciting. The biggest problem was holidays from boarding school. Most people don't feel the same way, I'm sure.
So kids, I know you want to be born and everything. Help me figure out the logistics of it, get yourself a daddy or two - maybe he's always wanted to be a mommy or maybe he has a nice extended family to feed us, because you know I love food, and I will take time out of my not-so-busy schedule to get knocked up and you know, do the whole nine months in the oven and two years carrying you on my back like a smiling peasant before you move on to General Relativity / Quantum Mechanics.
 |
| I'll get a unique 'oja' for your royal ass, not this towel. |
I'm tired. I hate writing. Yeah, right. Time to shower. 11:11am, it's nice and warm.
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
Celebrate in advance
Get to know
The popular Show Dem Camp (SDC):
Feel Alright ft. Poe and Boj
Happy Weekend ft. Kid Konnect
Ewele ft. Ms. Iye
The venerated rap-duo Show Dem Camp - Ghost and Tec:
Clone Wars 2
with Jesse, MI, BlackMagic, The Collectiv3, Falz, many great African women in music...not to mention The Dreamer Project
The Afropolitan ShowDemCamp.
The...
They have more sides than a geometry test :)
Get caught up on their work - really some of it is hard to find because dropped all over the place like goat pearls but if you're like me you'll enjoy the challenge - and get ready for their next project.
I think it's this summer, and I think it's a Clone Wars Volume 3 tape or something?
Now get caught up on OluwaJesseJagz. I think his next album is this summer too; I just know. The last one was a surprise and it was super-duper-awesome. Just, really, a feast, in every way.
Jesse Jagz of the thousand nicknames and fittingly, Gemini, is the greatest: the only artist to appear twice on my top-five music video feature.
No seriously. Fela - dead. Bob Marley - murdered. By this skinny kid from Jos, Nigeria named Jesse Abaga.
Nothing left to prove, in my opinion.
What will he do next? Maybe go for the sound of
AdVertIseMent: Read my books.
The crazy thing is omgggg so much great music and art in Nigeria. I can't wait for the rest of this experience.
The crazy thing is omgggg so much great music and art in Nigeria. I can't wait for the rest of this experience.
This is one video that didn't move me at first.
So while it's great fun, it's not even his best.
S h u d d e r.
Tuesday, April 05, 2016
My Nigerian Brewery
All sorts brewing in my freezer at the moment:
I drank a boozy mango-ginger drink last night - it was ordinary spiced puréed mango when I bought it.
Then I tried my usual watermelon-pineapple drink today and of course that was mildly fermented too, pineapple takes very little time to start - acid, something like that. You can explain it to me. Sugar, little things (bacteria?) feed on it and release alcohol/ethanol? Yeast for bread?
I still have some delicious zobo in there and maybe one more bottle of pineapple-watermelon.
Zobo is bright red, so when I open it, have to be careful not to spray the whole room. I once sprayed my backpack and furniture with kunu. Sprayed a man on the bus with zobo :( just a little bit.
To the best of my knowledge, I had power at some point yesterday, maybe 24 hours ago, so it appears the freezer has thawed out fast. It's also interesting that it builds up water and ice nowadays...I looked online for that problem but didn't understand the explanation...some sort of blockage in some little pipe and that stops the built-in defrost mechanism, sounds easy enough.
I learned the other day that my fabulous plumber is a wack electrician. Yeah he can change a lightbulb, but once I had him change a light-switch (months ago when he was doing this and that about the house) and he did it upside down.
So now for two of my switches 'on' is 'off'.
He is a terrific plumber though. (Experienced. Excellent, logical, etc. Very orderly mind. Good process. You know how much I love a beautiful mind and hate how girls/women often neglect logic. ) I've heard two people who use plumbers a lot and on large projects say similarly good things about him.
But he's taught me an important lesson about specialization, else I would have someday asked him to check out the wet fridge. Leaving it that way for now just means I have to empty the defrost tray once or twice a week before it starts leaking water into the fridge and onto the carpet - that happens a lot, and it's not a huge problem, bigger things in life...
For now there's no electricity so no worries about frost.
All I have to do is keep eating so I can empty the place out.
It's only been about one day without, so of course it could be that there's no problem. I mean, power could return before I hit the full stop at the end of this sentence.
Or not.
The great development is that for once we have some sort of warning: Power supply in more danger as Ikeja Electric exits talks with Labour, in yesterday's news via NewsBuka. No seriously, this is a move in the right direction, warn us of impending woes. I've always felt like news organizations should tell us exactly these things. Are we gonna have power? When? Publish a schedule.
For those who are now frightened and will like to run generators to disturb the nights and share their pain, here's a warning for you too: FG lied, fuel scarcity to end in May also via my NewsBuka, subscribe.
So at least you can plan:
Buy a pack of candles. Book a month in a hotel. Oh wait: 'Hotels' sometimes literally 'home away from home' hehe. Make friends with $erious people, or just jet out to, I don't know, Cotonou, Lomé, Accra? I recommend taking up new hobbies, like farming in your backyard. You don't have a backyard?
Good luck, everyone. It's never as bad as it seems. Back to re-watching my Legal/Political Philosophy videos.
Advertisement: Read my books. ###Three Sisters, novel #1 here###
I drank a boozy mango-ginger drink last night - it was ordinary spiced puréed mango when I bought it.
Then I tried my usual watermelon-pineapple drink today and of course that was mildly fermented too, pineapple takes very little time to start - acid, something like that. You can explain it to me. Sugar, little things (bacteria?) feed on it and release alcohol/ethanol? Yeast for bread?
I still have some delicious zobo in there and maybe one more bottle of pineapple-watermelon.
Zobo is bright red, so when I open it, have to be careful not to spray the whole room. I once sprayed my backpack and furniture with kunu. Sprayed a man on the bus with zobo :( just a little bit.
To the best of my knowledge, I had power at some point yesterday, maybe 24 hours ago, so it appears the freezer has thawed out fast. It's also interesting that it builds up water and ice nowadays...I looked online for that problem but didn't understand the explanation...some sort of blockage in some little pipe and that stops the built-in defrost mechanism, sounds easy enough.
I learned the other day that my fabulous plumber is a wack electrician. Yeah he can change a lightbulb, but once I had him change a light-switch (months ago when he was doing this and that about the house) and he did it upside down.
So now for two of my switches 'on' is 'off'.
He is a terrific plumber though. (Experienced. Excellent, logical, etc. Very orderly mind. Good process. You know how much I love a beautiful mind and hate how girls/women often neglect logic. ) I've heard two people who use plumbers a lot and on large projects say similarly good things about him.
But he's taught me an important lesson about specialization, else I would have someday asked him to check out the wet fridge. Leaving it that way for now just means I have to empty the defrost tray once or twice a week before it starts leaking water into the fridge and onto the carpet - that happens a lot, and it's not a huge problem, bigger things in life...
For now there's no electricity so no worries about frost.
All I have to do is keep eating so I can empty the place out.
It's only been about one day without, so of course it could be that there's no problem. I mean, power could return before I hit the full stop at the end of this sentence.
Or not.
The great development is that for once we have some sort of warning: Power supply in more danger as Ikeja Electric exits talks with Labour, in yesterday's news via NewsBuka. No seriously, this is a move in the right direction, warn us of impending woes. I've always felt like news organizations should tell us exactly these things. Are we gonna have power? When? Publish a schedule.
For those who are now frightened and will like to run generators to disturb the nights and share their pain, here's a warning for you too: FG lied, fuel scarcity to end in May also via my NewsBuka, subscribe.
So at least you can plan:
Buy a pack of candles. Book a month in a hotel. Oh wait: 'Hotels' sometimes literally 'home away from home' hehe. Make friends with $erious people, or just jet out to, I don't know, Cotonou, Lomé, Accra? I recommend taking up new hobbies, like farming in your backyard. You don't have a backyard?
Good luck, everyone. It's never as bad as it seems. Back to re-watching my Legal/Political Philosophy videos.
Advertisement: Read my books. ###Three Sisters, novel #1 here###
Monday, April 04, 2016
I don't know what I'm doing
...I don't know what I'm saying
I don't know why I'm watching all these white people dancing
- Rufus Wainwright (This Love Affair, alternate video)
Advertisement: Read my books. ###Three Sisters, novel #1 here###
Forgetting to sign my latest paintings/drawings, uh-oh.
I don't know why I'm watching all these white people dancing
- Rufus Wainwright (This Love Affair, alternate video)
 |
| #3 - black skin tone |
Advertisement: Read my books. ###Three Sisters, novel #1 here###
Forgetting to sign my latest paintings/drawings, uh-oh.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Tips for old people at concerts
I had fun at GidiCulture yesterday.
Basically I love the outdoors and I'm always indoors, so it was fantastic and chill to be out on the beachsand doing nothing. People-watching.
Then the main event started
and this hyperactive em-cee and his 500 minions decided to kick me out: in their bid to get the place more, urr, pumping (oh God why do people say turnt turnt turnt) they turned up the volume till iii was vibrating.
I stepped back and back and back till I was out on the street. :D
The end.
Advertisement: Read my books. ###Three Sisters, novel #1 here###
If you're old like me, the way to handle these things is:
Basically I love the outdoors and I'm always indoors, so it was fantastic and chill to be out on the beachsand doing nothing. People-watching.
Then the main event started
and this hyperactive em-cee and his 500 minions decided to kick me out: in their bid to get the place more, urr, pumping (oh God why do people say turnt turnt turnt) they turned up the volume till iii was vibrating.
I stepped back and back and back till I was out on the street. :D
The end.
Advertisement: Read my books. ###Three Sisters, novel #1 here###
If you're old like me, the way to handle these things is:
- Go early, maybe a few hours early, and leave when it gets noisy i.e. when the main event starts?
- Afterwards, definitely bitch and complain (call your friendly radio station, start a letter-writing campaign...o right, they have email now - do that too) so that the concert world will change to accommodate the needs of the sane and still-hearing in society.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Saturday, March 19, 2016
These are amazing lines, every time I hear them
Advertisement: Read my books.
###Three Sisters, novel #1 here###
(So...hopelessly tragic.)
(It's the way he sings it that is so moving, searing, touching, haunting. He really does sound so pitiable.)
Call it magic.
Time for bed, little bee, little bee.
I will always love you more than you love me.
- Sarah McLachlan, in Little B
Every breaking wave on the shore
tells the next one there'll be one more.
Every gambler knows that
to lose
is what you're really there for.
- Bono/U2, in Every Breaking Wave (So...hopelessly tragic.)
Tell me you love me.
If you don't, then lie, oh lie to me.
- Chris Martin/Coldplay, in True Love(It's the way he sings it that is so moving, searing, touching, haunting. He really does sound so pitiable.)
Call it magic.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Back to back...HITS
I just watched Ordet (The Word) a 1955 Danish film by Carl Th. Dreyer.
And
1. I can't keep it to myself.
2. My life just changed: "if you had prayed to God, He would have answered your prayers." Ah, true. Ask, for a change, stoic one. The answer is yes, really, only maybe sometimes the answer is not yes. (a paragraph of personal stuff I just deleted.)
Now I really wish to see Rams.
And be a judge at Cannes or the Oscars or any large international film festival / awards programme.
Yesterday, I watched the zen film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, ...and Spring.
Please, treat yourself to this film.
Raise The Red Lantern, from the day before that, was also a complete masterpiece.
In very related news, I decided on the title for Novel #2 - it has changed a few times, but maybe this is the final one, the best one - cutting it down from a bevy of twelve main characters to just four. That way less rambling, more story. It will be short and verrry good. And I'll do a rework of Three Sisters (Novel #1) too.
It's been many many years of thinking about these people, and I've not been writing, but hey, the book is practically reality.
I've been letting all these other works soak in and influence me and so it's really going to be something wonderful. Yeah, I'm going to shit a pearl.
There'll be many unused characters (and drafts) and they'll get recycled into short-stories and maybe one or two into novel #3. Then no more novels hehehehe. Just kidding, once you pop you can't stop.
Thank you for feedback on novel #1 so far, I need the feedback, I'll use it, so please send more. Thanks again.
I've been swimming in muse-ic. Jill Scott this morning. India.Arie yesterday. Madonna. Great. Great. Great. Lorde. I want my writing to feel like the Lorde album - heady, pure. Guess what the Lorde album is called? Pure Heroine. Did I just describe it as heady and pure!? Hey, Cannes? The ghost of Roger Ebert says...Tosin's really good at this.
Great films too: you want to see what I've been watching? HERE. It's hard to keep these things to myself. Boring books, I'm reading a Jane Austen-y novel titled The Third Sister, by Julia Barrett. It's clever, it's slim, it's not going very fast. If you want to see what else I've been reading - go here.
Also going slow slow slow - anything on Coursera, math-for-myself, Arabic and the languages I want to learn.
No job starting next week, maybe for a couple of months. Colleague says I'm actually going on maternity leave, pregnant with a book. Maybe I'll write one chapter of it, more likely I'll write close to ten chapters. Then start a job again somewhere gorgeous. Awh, I'm going to miss my kids.
Did you ever see Avenue Q? You absolutely have to listen to the audio. And you have to listen to the award-winning audio for Hamilton, the Broadway musical too. And tell me which other musical-theater audio I have to get, please, because three shows are better than two.
These things are amazing. They are simply at the pinnacle and that's the best water from which to drink.
And
1. I can't keep it to myself.
2. My life just changed: "if you had prayed to God, He would have answered your prayers." Ah, true. Ask, for a change, stoic one. The answer is yes, really, only maybe sometimes the answer is not yes. (
Now I really wish to see Rams.
And be a judge at Cannes or the Oscars or any large international film festival / awards programme.
Yesterday, I watched the zen film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, ...and Spring.
Please, treat yourself to this film.
Raise The Red Lantern, from the day before that, was also a complete masterpiece.
In very related news, I decided on the title for Novel #2 - it has changed a few times, but maybe this is the final one, the best one - cutting it down from a bevy of twelve main characters to just four. That way less rambling, more story. It will be short and verrry good. And I'll do a rework of Three Sisters (Novel #1) too.
It's been many many years of thinking about these people, and I've not been writing, but hey, the book is practically reality.
I've been letting all these other works soak in and influence me and so it's really going to be something wonderful. Yeah, I'm going to shit a pearl.
There'll be many unused characters (and drafts) and they'll get recycled into short-stories and maybe one or two into novel #3. Then no more novels hehehehe. Just kidding, once you pop you can't stop.
Thank you for feedback on novel #1 so far, I need the feedback, I'll use it, so please send more. Thanks again.
I've been swimming in muse-ic. Jill Scott this morning. India.Arie yesterday. Madonna. Great. Great. Great. Lorde. I want my writing to feel like the Lorde album - heady, pure. Guess what the Lorde album is called? Pure Heroine. Did I just describe it as heady and pure!? Hey, Cannes? The ghost of Roger Ebert says...Tosin's really good at this.
Great films too: you want to see what I've been watching? HERE. It's hard to keep these things to myself. Boring books, I'm reading a Jane Austen-y novel titled The Third Sister, by Julia Barrett. It's clever, it's slim, it's not going very fast. If you want to see what else I've been reading - go here.
Also going slow slow slow - anything on Coursera, math-for-myself, Arabic and the languages I want to learn.
No job starting next week, maybe for a couple of months. Colleague says I'm actually going on maternity leave, pregnant with a book. Maybe I'll write one chapter of it, more likely I'll write close to ten chapters. Then start a job again somewhere gorgeous. Awh, I'm going to miss my kids.
Did you ever see Avenue Q? You absolutely have to listen to the audio. And you have to listen to the award-winning audio for Hamilton, the Broadway musical too. And tell me which other musical-theater audio I have to get, please, because three shows are better than two.
These things are amazing. They are simply at the pinnacle and that's the best water from which to drink.
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###Three Sisters, novel #1 here###
Bonus films:
Sometimes the reviewers don't know what they're talking about: these products were really great experiences for me - Home (2015 animated film and soundtrack album with Rihanna) and We Are Your Friends (2015 DJ-music-culture film), ignore the poor reviews.
Sometimes the reviewers don't know what they're talking about: these products were really great experiences for me - Home (2015 animated film and soundtrack album with Rihanna) and We Are Your Friends (2015 DJ-music-culture film), ignore the poor reviews.
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Of Birds and Bees
Ju: I want a little baby too…everybody I know has one.
Po: Ask your mummy.
Ju: Mummy, why do you always say no babies?
Mo: (Keeps ironing shirts.)
Ju: If you don’t want to do it, I’ll have a baby myself.
Po: Uh oh. How do you plan to do that?
Ju: (Hands Po the phone.) Now, help me write it in the search place.
Po: Write what? “Where do babies come from?”
Ju: Yes. How to get a baby.
Po: Oookay. Google…search…pornography...ah, here: March of the Penguins. I think this film will tell us. Should we put it on the big screen? Join us, Mummy, and we can make an egg after.
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Po: Ask your mummy.
Ju: Mummy, why do you always say no babies?
Mo: (Keeps ironing shirts.)
Ju: If you don’t want to do it, I’ll have a baby myself.
Po: Uh oh. How do you plan to do that?
Ju: (Hands Po the phone.) Now, help me write it in the search place.
Po: Write what? “Where do babies come from?”
Ju: Yes. How to get a baby.
Po: Oookay. Google…search…pornography...ah, here: March of the Penguins. I think this film will tell us. Should we put it on the big screen? Join us, Mummy, and we can make an egg after.
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Friday, February 12, 2016
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And you already know that God had said don’t eat that apple and all, but enlightened beings could easily tell it was a setup.
Like the children in the marshmallow test, Efa was not so enlightened.
Compared to the angels for instance, she was a baby in years of existence.
Given this, and the fact that she was not even promised a reward theoretically exceeding her indefinitely long wait to explore the bright red apple,
I mean what eggheads might call a poor incentive structure,
you can already guess what happened to her, her male mate, and the fruit of the Garden.
Now when God returned from his stroll, knowing full well that for sure the apple was gone, or one might say instead of God to say that she was tired of sharing the fine garden with these overly-intelligent human creatures,
he/she sought an excuse to kick them out,
Wherefore God put on his scary God voice and thundered at them – what!?! where is the shiny apple that I left here, I must be going blind, for I can't see it.
Music videos can be a corrupting influence on anyone, no matter how young, because the first words that came out of the woman’s mouth were “It wasn’t me.”
Straight out of the Shaggy song.
All this time, Adam tarried in a corner, trembling.
Shuoooe! said God. If it wasn’t you, then who was it, Baby Gehl?
Adamu gave Efya this look like, she would be in trouble if she dared implicate him.
Smooth Mummy Eve was indeed about to name her man as the culprit, but fear gripped her heart, because Adamu as gentle as he looks, is dangerous when angry,
and very strong.
Eve saw one snake slithering by, she pointed at that damned soul, “it was the serpent.”
God was amused, suppressing laughter really. "Oh, child, you think I was born yesterday?" thought he.
while Adam was amazed pondering when in all his days naming and counting animals he'd ever observed a snake to eat a red apple.
In all, the residents of Eden and heaven were amazed that she would tell such an improbable lie.
and even took a piece and dropped it in my mouth.
That’s why we’re in this predicament.
It wasn’t me, remember it was you that put the snake here and this daft Adamu too.
But I really blame the snake.
God was speechless.
Wow.
Audacious.
Crafty.
Very sexy in spite of.
Because of. In spite of. Not really sure right now.But God is wise which makes H God. Hence did he consider the best course of action which had been known to Her since the beginning, end, and middle of time.
If it was only the man, I might overlook the sin, thought God.
But this Lai one over here, at this rate she will soon swindle me out of my own garden, or knock me off my throne.
The time is now to send everybody packing.
Let them go therefore and be gods over their territory. They will soon come to respect what a difficult job I have.
And let snakes eating apples remain the symbol of the illuminati.
And so God pretended once again to be very angry and He said “I banish you.” But secretly he was proud of them.
Behind the beard he was smiling.