Thursday, October 21, 2021

haha, sexy


This man - Abdularazak Gurnah - wins a Nobel Prize for Literature, and I really wish to someday read and enjoy his work, he seems to be "into" poetic prose. 

And these days I think of another Nobel Laureate, our very own WS, and a good word for his output is exuberance.  As in, those exuberant plays and his exuberant days.  You should find some of the most famous Wole Soyinka's plays and watch/perform/read them.  Well, try all of them.  His autobiographical works would wow you also.   
Aside, I have been watching some of the many plays attributed to William Shakespeare - what a bequest and how well-tended and reproduced and enjoyed!   Talk about influencers, these are influencers!    



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Sunday, October 10, 2021

Red room


Or, what would you call that wall?  Terracotta?  Ochre, Ombre, ...Coral.  
Anyway, the focus of the recording is Kodak Black age 11ish.  
People keep saying Pray for Kodak.  True.  He needs it.



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Saturday, October 02, 2021

another favourite movie and my first playlist sort of

- film: 
I just watched Wolf Children.  I'll so watch that again.  
Found it mentioned somewhere on the web in a list of bests, and so glad I decided to try some of the recommended films because indeed I've found something to love.  

- music+video: 
A long time ago (Undergrad) this, Love Is In The Aire was one of my first music CDs ever (listen here 🎧🎶)  Before then I had tapes, and even a "walkman" but I was now in the US and the technology had changed so I finally got a "discman" and CDs.   
I seem to remember that this music CD was sold in a pick-three-of-these for one low price at the music store in Yankee.  I did my best, got the ones I thought would be nice, but this one turned out not to be the actual songs as advertised but just the instrumentals of the songs, which was probably at first disappointing but I ended up really liking my funny instrumentals, as I really liked all my music back then actually.  

The news is that I took time out of my busy media-consuming schedule to create something...Not just the instrumentals but the full audio experience, with video, it's classic, it's classy, it's cool, it's HERE, ENJOY
👆
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Friday, October 01, 2021

Saturday, September 25, 2021

Epiphany

I don't mean to use such a big word - forgive me.  

I have a story about one time I just stopped and sat still and thought ... now I'm thinking it was nonsense that I thought, but it is a thing that has made me live like a mad person for many of the maybe eighteen years since.  The general idea was - no, I'm embarrassed to say it now, even if I was right and my madness has not been in vain.  

Here is another thought.  Black people have done well to go deep into all kinds of people's ways.  Why not go deeper?  Why not find ourself / ourselves?  Who are we, who were our parents' parents and where were we ten thousand years ago?  Are such things important?  

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Sunday, August 29, 2021

sex and the city, village editions

Two readings: 

Promiscuous Girls, Good Wives, and Cheating Husbands: Gender Inequality, Transitions to Marriage, and Infidelity in Southeastern Nigeria.  A paper by Daniel Jordan Smith, published (2010 Winter) in Anthropology Quarterly.  

Polygamy and its role in Nigerian tribes - Hausa / Igbo / Yoruba polygamy.   A "culture and entertainment" article published (February 2020) in Folio.ng online.  Also see Harms of Polygyny for a Western-legal response.  

If you like this topic, you will love my fiction work in Three Sisters ...  Read my books.

Thursday, August 19, 2021

quotable

You can't get a fu*k without giving a fu*k 
Put my name on this early 21st century proverb 😉   

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Tuesday, August 03, 2021

Pray what is the gospel according to you?

Back in secondary school one of my classmates shared this quote via the classroom's notice board at the front-left wall, near the entrance.  I really liked it then and just remembered it now: 

You're writing a gospel, a chapter a day 
By the things that you do, by the words that you say...
People read what you write, whether faithless or true: 
Pray what is the gospel, according to you? 



  
(Pictures from the internet) 

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Thursday, July 22, 2021

Y4


( Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba // Master KG's Jerusalema )
Previously, 
Y3, etc.

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Saturday, July 17, 2021

Where do people find the time?

This week has been delightful, and as if it heard me it responded with a quick waft of delicious breeze just now.  
I feel it went by so fast.  In fact, between reading The Guardian and watching Youtube (mostly music and comedy) it felt like I had (not 24 hour days but) 24 hours in five days.  

Is there a trick that I'm missing?  
It is true that I also wrote things in that time, but it seems that some people read and write more things somehow.  Anyway...I am reminded that vlogging is a full-time job, even a burn-out job, a multi-employee job, so I guess blogging is very non-trivial work activity too.  Who is going to pay me o?  

I just mentioned to someone that I might go and meet up with them today at a music event but now I'm thinking cost-benefit* analysis it would be far easier if the event would come to me...which I suppose is what wasting spending time online effects - the show comes to you on a screen.  *Cost here being that I could rest and recharge instead of taking the risks of going out: traffic mostly - I could be there in minutes or it could be crazy, it could be flooded out there since it has been raining, then also I could get cold if there's air conditioning.   

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Saturday, July 03, 2021

Action flicks and Good times

There's nothing like just watching good, gripping entertainment.  Two yesterday: Extraction and The Old Guard, and Hors de prix (English:Priceless) the day before.  

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Monday, June 28, 2021

One-word astrology: Marry The One

ARIES+SAGITTARIUS 
GEMINI+LEO 
LIBRA+AQUARIUS 
PISCES+CAPRICORN 
TAURUS+CANCER 
VIRGO+SCORPIO 
© Tosin Otitoju, 2021

Yes, it over-simplifies 😊 

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Wednesday, June 23, 2021

author not person yes

how does google know and assign the title 'author' to my name?  
how long has it known that this is suitable, acceptable?  i'm impressed.  

now, do I have to accept it?  not really: i mean, i remain...interesting, flexible, blasé, hyphenated, as ever. 
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Sunday, June 13, 2021

Carbs from cabbage

I love food.  Right now I'm eating, before 9am, a large bowl filled with this mixture of warm-hot veggies mostly: Heinz-brand baked beans, cucumber, cabbage, tomato with eggs.  I woke up this morning and soon thought of food.  I could have chugged some yoghurt quickly but my body was not looking forward to getting more sweetened yoghurt, more sugar.  So then I decided to put in the time to fry an egg or two.  But my body was saying it didn't want the sweetness from bread either, so I got a large tomato and a section of onion to use in my now complex fried-egg idea.  I got a clean tiny pot, probably washed it again, then added a little oil, some salt, + ground pepper, did the onions and put them in, then actually whisked the egg a bit before adding, to make what some people called scrambled egg but we just call egg, fried egg.  I usually just do the fastest and simplest thing, which is to not whisk, especially since we learned that there was such a thing as not-mixed fried eggs - I said I love eating food not cooking food.  

Served my egg mixture in a plate and thought I would warm some sliced bread in a toaster.  Well, I just really could not bear to think about eating two slices of bread, somehow my body was saying no no, so I didn't warm the bread anymore, I put the whole thing away and decided to find something else.  I found rice, leftover boiled white rice in a pot.  I love leftovers because that's good food without the effort to cook, but the rice was frozen solid.  So I decided on the best thing - leftover veggies in the fridge.  Turned on the gas again, and did all the veggies I could find.  First I put the excess egg liquid from my food plate back in the same little pot, then cleaned and peeled, then added the stash from the fridge: spring onions, two old carrots, like 1/8th of a cabbage, like 1/3rd of a cucumber, then got from the store the can of beans, poured that on.  Got bored while it simmered so tried to move my body, dance, do warrior moves, think about stuff, then it was ready to pour.  My plate looked pretty, plate still looks pretty, I better hurry the food is getting cold.  I decided to make what we call tea but what some people call hot chocolate because it is a beverage made from cocoa not from tea at all, which meant turn on the heater thing and wait, mix the Milo and powdered milk - no added sugar - in a big mug and add some water which was still cold so I had to stillll wait, probably dance a bit because trying to cook is the most nonsense boring thing in the world, then finally, hot water.  

I guess you could say I eat consciously, with low salt (sometimes too low), low sugar (not punishingly, just by generally avoiding, even disliking, sugar-bombs), low oil (although sometimes I actively need more good fats because I have a big brain loool).  I got it from my mother and I think she probably got it from her mother who was a big-time nurse that worked in maybe every Yoruba town back in the day.  Her mother, that is, my mother's grandmother, I understand died a few years ago in her early 100s.  Let me go and check the bucket - souvenir from the burial, it's upstairs - for the details of her life/death.    
Yummm, I just ate a little more.  I'll be back.  She was 107.  Let me add pictures.  
Mrs. C.B. Olateru being my only surviving grandparent, and this woman being her mother.

I'm sure my food is cold by now but still delicious.  I eat in bed.  
Almost every meal...I spend almost all my whole life here - I sleep here and I read all the things I read here.  That's not the most active, physically healthy lifestyle, and besides the aerobic problems I should really worry about my fantastic, award-winning (in my head) bum going out of shape from lack of exercise (such as walking - what kind of exercise were you thinking?) but I'm sure it will be ok.  I wish us all good health and even better health.  Amen.   

When I made the hot chocolate I didn't feel ready for it, like I said I was not seeking sugar, but now after a bit of exertion - the effort to run around and take pictures, I guess I could use the sugar-energy from a cocoa drink, maybe not now but soon.  
Oh, you want to meet grandma?  Here's a 'selfie' from November 2020.  

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Saturday, June 12, 2021

Things to do when I grow up

1. Have friends over to watch tennis.  I don't watch now but I used to love watching tennis, I mean, I could watch the sport professionally, all day, all night, for a living.  If I have like a family living setup someday, and we get bored, it might be nice to have house "parties" to watch tennis.  Although instead of hosting properly I'd be that fanatic focused on the screen.  Friends, be warned.   

2. Study young people.  The only thing my papa wants me to do as much as he wants me to marry (and have babies and live happily ever after) is to, like he sometimes says it, complete my PhD.  To which I sometimes say he should feel free to go do one himself, leave my matter alone.  
😅 😁
I would like to do a PhD but I still don't know in what.  I like everything, I mean, is it maths-of-like-physics I should do, or like philosophy itself, or like literature and language, with a bit of history and like psychology, or something else in applied maths with like economics or engineering - sort of the obvious choice if you consider what I studied in my Bachelors Degree and PhD attempt - or what?  

I can't commit, I can't "forsake all others" to "marry" one thing in a PhD program, and I always want more freedom, and I just hate how the pursuit of a PhD requires extreme limitation for a long stretch of time.  What if I want to care about something else, while I've already started...I mean, that level of sustained focus on one really little thing is not my taste.  

  And I was speaking with a friend yesterday - my friend is 10+ years younger and I was hearing from him interesting things about dating-and-sex culture today - and after we talked it occurred to me that another PhD option, but a more specific one, would be to answer a sub-question of the question: What are the kids doing online.  To be honest, and if you know me you won't be surprised here, the idea first came to me as something to suggest to him, as what he might like to do now, to study contemporary "culture" in one of these academic -ologies.  

I've long cared about young people, age twenty-ish, and I tend to honour and revere their way, their tentative, inventive way, maybe even more than I respect "normal" adult people.   
Now again if you know anything about me, you know to not look for my thesis just yet, or even my university enrolment.  You know that my interest will change, it will change even today.  You know that I'm only saying that a possibility, for when I'm like sixty years old or something, if I haven't decided on something to study #alltheway by then, and after I've had all the careers and the writings, and the lives that I need to live, and maybe after I've ruled out more of the professions and the studies and the new things I could embark on, ... that maybe I'll stumble upon a structured, academic, anthropology or sociology gig and decide to do something research-wise about the culture of late adolescents or something.  I also recently considered (I forget what it's called) the thing where you just take a lot of notes about animals.  I thought maybe lizards.  
So, hey, I'm a work in progress, permanently under construction, and all that.  
Did I mention that I love astrology?  And my astrology in part can be read precisely as 'though possibly obsessed with and yet ambivalent/wishy-washy about highest-level-higher ed, that tendency may lie unseen beneath the surface, and this may be a late bloomer who may in fact get a late-life PhD'  

Although instead of PhDs and higher education, the area of interest could be esoterica and seeking, in-depth studies, radical new truly new barely-known foreign knowledge codes and philosophies, deep dedication to a truly new, yet to be appreciated, definitely yet to be exploited at all, cult of method in computing for instance, or highly immersive foreign travel...but for now I'm not like that at all.  Oh I am like that a bit.  Hmmm, I am like that and maybe it's more than a bit.  

Anyway, for now, and this is shown separately and emphatically in my astrology, I like surface knowledge or information or communication, and in what manner? With diversity/wide-range, strength, purpose, enjoyment, and possible profusion.  A delightful teacher too.  In my case, everything about elementary knowledge and information - words in the news and in songs and in books, popular or good or usable ideas, all the subjects in a university or in the library, but not the ones that lie undiscovered to scholars - that is where I spend my time.  In my case, I'm not today a busy talker, or texter, or even writer-of-many-words, actually a writer of few words :-) but perhaps a reader of many more words.    

And for now I may be more knowledge-finder than seeeeker.

More things to do when I grow up:  
3. Definitely cruise.  Post-coronavirus get on a ship with a lot of people and a lot of germs, yeah Baby!   When I picture my good life, yes, it's on a trip on a ship and I'm standing alone enjoying some quiet and a view.  I am old (by 20th-century standard) but life is youthful-good.  Cheers.    

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Thursday, May 27, 2021

Death and health and cleansing horror

It's 5am.  I just killed a mosquito with insecticide, then a cockroach.  Well, the cockroach is still dying, rustling about for the past few minutes.  It was in that plastic bag struggling already and then the chemical spray made it more frantic.  
The thoughts I have are of Syria, yes the war and everything, but before the actual chemical weapons, all the activity that brought the sadism out to play - abduction, torture, sometimes disposal.  
One minute - I am really going to kill that cockroach now because I assume that would be better than ... this.  Oops, but it hides, goes still and quiet so I can't find and spray it, so I tie the bag and remove the whole package from here.  
Do these chemicals cause cancer?  I wash my hands with soap, feeling like a murderer.  If you kill as part of a regime, in doing your job, are you a murderer?  A real surgeon would wash her/his hands too, but with the big difference that they did their work to impact kindly on their patient.  

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Tuesday, April 06, 2021

So now you know it's serious like that :-)

It was this dream this morning, in my second half-night of the night, and I guess the marriage question was quickly settled: some young man was about, gloriously dark-skinned, strapping and excess-limbed and long-back-ed, handsomer than really necessary, quiet-ish and unknown, and my father was reclining surrounded by me and a few people, and to me, near his head, to his left he said, "he is good for you" or "he'll be good for you" - something like that, and I said to be sure "who?" as there was another young man to his right, and he replied "behind you" and I was happy and said "me too" to mean that yes, I had thought too that he was, you know, nice (wink!), 

and so I turned to the young man, probably not so young but that he was physically not aged, and said in my way of using complete openness to create humour that - everything we had just said, that my father had said he was good for me and I had said me too.  

And that was that.  Good vibes.   
Well, maybe a few more scenes: 

He had an earnest exchange with my dad in which he explained that he was not a person with money, you know, and my father said it wouldn't matter.  

Another scene in which, well, that same day, he was going to go home, but he ended up sleeping over because he strangely remembered that he had no place to go.  And then there was my mother and other people swirling about, and my mother was back to check on us in the morning too, and there was a general tranquil.  

And instead of a house, it seemed as if all this happened in train cars, but a car/cabin/room we used was in part like the room I'm sitting in now, with a tiny sink and bathroom.  And among the things I learned or knew about him was that he travelled, long, quirky trips, like weeks in some backwoods of China for instance.  His back was turned to me in bed, while I sat up and talked and asked if I was talking too much or saying the wrong things or if all was right and good, 
and one of the things I wondered later was whether it would be good to ask if I was good for him too, not just the other way around, and, you know, if he had other dreams, other plans, other interests, other tastes, a girl in his heart or mind, and yet, when you ask those things (and I am very comfortable with asking and being ruthlessly truthful about such ... preferences) you usually make the "relationship" disappear.  Because maybe he liked a different girl or a different type of person, or maybe he liked to not know, about himself or about me.  Or maybe in addition to being reserved, he was secretly pleased (he was), or maybe he was overwhelmed (yes, a little ridiculous how quickly it happened.) 
I've forgotten the name now, but possibly a sorta Hausa dude, maybe like Hakeem?  something with an M but not Mohammed or Mahmood I don't think, and not a long name, probably two syllables, which is funny to think that my father would try someone foreign, but I still sorta expected him to be culturally adept, sufficiently Yoruba, and I suspect not Muslim, and I suspect competently intelligent, (enough to accept me is what I usually look for, less about intelligent actions or expressions, more about how the intelligence in them creates an easy tolerance, capacity, understanding, and mutual trust) 

and also after I'd thought about it for an hour or so I also sort of expected it all to not happen.  I mean, unless he really wanted it, like, I don't know, no need to tie anyone down, even this imaginary brotha.   
But then if my father had showed up later in real life and said, "ahem, what do you think about, ..." naming some guy I don't even know, I would not have been shocked that we had had the same, dream, thoughts.  

Nowadays people care about sex a lot, it seems, but we didn't do it ok?  We slept, we liked each other, and I can tell you about his back but I don't know below the waist and you know I tend not to be extremely curious about the particular anatomy, you know?  Like if we're similarly interesting and disinterested in sex and so on, it will be alright.  Or it won't.  He'll be out travelling in rural Saskatchewan anyway, maybe I want to join him?  Not?  Ohhh, ohhh nooo.   

Oh, I had another one.  It was days ago, maybe weeks, very tall thin boy man and was possibly Ethiopian-like features, so not that absolute black skin.  It was exciting to care enough about getting married to maybe start putting a face and/or body to the idea.  Maybe this Obama book next to my bed is responsible for the East African highlander herdsman genes in the guy.  And for the newer guy, I was watching movies and reading happy things late last night and someone mentioned sweet dreams to me or something of the sort.  So I went on to have sweet dreams.  In another one I was on a crowded train in like, Asia, with tropical heat, a cross-country train with many youthful students or intellectuals.   

Conclusion: I am really not a marri-er and yet I'm still trying.  Same with having children, I'm somewhat sure it's not meant to be and yet I would be happy if it was.  Although I think one child is a no from me, there have to be multiple children so they can interact with one another because I'm not very interested in interacting that much.  If that makes sense.  If it doesn't, don't worry, my actual kiddies will understand.    

Tips if you want the good and crazy dreams: Eat well and sleep extra. 

I would like a palm-reader, a palm-reading.  (That was also in a movie I was watching.)  

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Thursday, April 01, 2021

Can I share conspiracy theory and propaganda on this one day, please?


THE BEST OF CORO-CORO


Two funny videos I stored in my phone one year ago. 


Congratulations to all pandemic survivors.


 
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Wednesday, March 31, 2021

That too is love


Are there many ways to love?  

Thank you, 
to all who draw near.  

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When they ask "what do you do?" and it really bothers you

I am finding it helpful to use this framework: BE.  KNOW.  DO.  Some people and cultures have more interest in one of these than the others, and so you end up in the room of "do-ers" in which "what do you do" "what do you do" is practically a greeting, while to you it's practically hell.  You hate the question.  Ahhh.  

Anyway, I am learning that I am not all do, or not even mostly do, or maybe I do nothing, and that is a strength.  


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Thursday, February 25, 2021

Living it up!

Haha, if you know anything about me, you know I've not been quite living it up.  Now, who was it that said ( a Naija man-in-the-street interviewed on TV): you can not be working like an elephant and eating like, like, a tambolo.  

So...yeah.  Maybe I will try to get hip, get large and complex and ... modern.  For example, banish old clothes, find shiny ones.  I think that's what people do?  Banish old, get change-crazy.  Banish slow, get frenzied.  Cocaine and caffeine and rage and money, money, money.  

Or yawn. 
Or go halfway - get exercise, up the energy, pretend a little more excitement!  At life!  Live it up!  Now!  While you have, I don't know, health, breath, joints?  
  
Now, the pandemic - did you notice that although the USA, the UK, and many other countries suffered a lot from the virus (and since we get their news, we get their 'feelings' too), many countries did not suffer very much as they took adequate public health measures to reject the epidemic; they did lock-downs that worked.  The USA, the UK, did more, in the manner that a dancer or an acrobat does more maybe?  I mean, more things happened - including more deaths - when compared to the China, New Zealand axis of covid-freedom.  

If I had more energy, I would write more about this (such as how: what makes the bias between the doing of more and the doing of less to accomplish the same result is how much ENERGY there is in the system, sometimes youthfulness, simple exuberance, lack of knowledge, or lack of experience, but usually just the energy, the excess of it, and that extra must go somewhere...)  
   
If the US had "less energy" one possibility would have been to shut down the pandemic early, by judging it unaffordable.  Instead, it did all the madness of expressing every view and trying every style, especially ignoring its expertise, and all that chaos has now contributed to vaccine science and all that health and science stuff, which you can say is positive?   I mean, a lot of diseases are going to be impacted, to be honest.  Potentially.  Potentially.  

Writing this is making me see that  I do have more energy, because I feel that understanding the word 'potentially' could be a fun pursuit, and I feel like discovering what is known - and what is becoming known - that relates to energy, and I feel like testing the truth of the things I have written in these paragraphs, and I feel how I would find joy in the language and the journeys that have revealed these interrelationships between concepts.  In essence, I feel again that there might be more maths and physics in my future.  And literature, and library time (reading time, internet time.)   

This does not paint a picture of "living it up" because that usually alludes to gregarious interpersonal exploits, and also consumption - maybe careless, conspicuous, fashion-forward.  Spending and socializing?  But "living it up" as a reader doesn't quite have the same flash to it.  Living it up as an unknown person.  Living it up with no money.  Living it up while being boring. 

You probably have more energy too.  In what areas?  Maybe it's physical, but maybe it's not, and you feel "called", "restless" in a different dimension - emotional, mental, social, other?  

Do you remember this saying (actually from a Bible verse): an idle mind is the devil's workshop?  
 
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Sunday, January 31, 2021

It can't really be that I have nothing to say...

Say, or write.  
I do have things to say.  

People are dying.  There is a pandemic on, you know this.  
Vaccines are now available and already many, many thousands of people have been vaccinated in many, many countries.  

There is a lot of focus on death these days, now, let's add some perspective: the "excess deaths" in 2020, can you guess the percentages?  

...although millions of people have died in the pandemic and many more have been ill and otherwise harmed, the overall excess deaths, (the increase in death over the deaths of a non-pandemic year, like 2016, 2017, ...) were not close to 100% (that would be twice as many people dying than in a typical year), the increased death toll was far lower than that.  

So, maybe overall, in the whole world, human death in the 2020 pandemic year was 5% or 10% greater than it would have been without the whole covid/coronavirus thing, like, maybe just over 90 million people would have died in the year (including childhood deaths to old-age deaths, disease, accident, and so on) and instead nearly 100million did, something like that.  (Is this estimate reasonable?)  

We should all be doing the "public health" things that inhibit transmission, and we should be working on science and other developments to make life better, and ... we should get vaccinated as well, as soon as possible.  
The thing is seasonal, the thing is tricky, the weeks that are bad (in the epidemic) are really bad and can feel terrible.  
Hugs to everyone who is still here.  :(  


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Thursday, December 31, 2020

List - My best music+videos of 2020

1. 
SAME SO, by Protoje 


2. 
BLACK IS KING, by Beyoncé 
(Visual album, over one hour long, but not free online)


3. 
RODEO (remix), by Lil Nas X (featuring Nas)


My previous Year-End Lists: 


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Sunday, December 06, 2020

happy as a clam at high water

because I am (in my nature, in my heart, not in actual employment) a librarian, who now has the internet.  
It's an all-you-can-read buffet!  
I am (right this instant) listening to music and downloading a few movies to watch in future.  
The joy of having all of this abundance of media, for me, it never gets old.  

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Wednesday, December 02, 2020

Dedicated to...the gist of this morning as e dey hot


It's Girl-Boy Drama.  Same thing I am passing through so of course I'm with HER
 What else?


Ok, to be honest I only watched part of part 1 and all of part 10.  Maybe later I'll finish it.  All I have to say is, she's alright.  She'll be alright.  It's nice to love and all that fun stuff.  
Ok, better option: read the story with pictures, here.  

Music: 
Ocean Drive, by Lighthouse Family 
System Fail, by Show Dem Camp 





In summary, today is  
A good day to #SoroSoke 
and also 
A good day to #ReceiveSense 
For instance, this Nonso Amadi, is he single?  Joy Pearl.  Come and see something.  There are many fishes in the sea abeg.  fish in the sea.  

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Tuesday, November 24, 2020

Sunday, October 18, 2020

#JeSuisProf

1. A September 2020 essay in Al-Jazeera online: Reprinting the Charlie Hebdo cartoons is not about free speech...but about using speech to reaffirm domination.

2. A 2015 feature in BI: 16 Bold Covers From Charlie Hebdo, The Magazine That Was Attacked In France. 


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Tuesday, October 13, 2020

My latest tweets on @tosinbird



My main twitter account is @tosinbird, but I delete all the tweets every month or so, mostly out of habit, and because I don't feel the need to save what are essentially bursts of re-tweeting activity, that although time-focused (I mean if you consider them in the short time that they were made, you can find a theme and/or understand the tweets), are certainly from haphazard and diverse topics and styles over the long term. 
 But also, maybe it's to hide, for example when one has said something political for which one could be witch-hunted someday? (Because human beings are crazy.) 

 But mostly because I deleted all before and got in the habit of doing it. I mean, because my tweets, being worthless when they've passed their use-date, deserve to be deleted. And perhaps by twitter's nature many old tweets are worthless too. Although collectively, this is not true, and it is a good thing that the twitter archive exists, a gargantuan library of gibberish and some gold.  

Anyway, I have this secondary twitter account @REALbubbler where tweets are more permanent; I have never deleted all here. So, to make this blog post, I let @realbubbler echo my latest tweets on @tosinbird so I could embed the more permanent objects. I hope you enjoy the mini-project.








This is my "pinned tweet" at @REALbubbler. The one that I've kept at the top of my page/feed for some years to give it more prominence and help people notice my product - the poetry book.



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I just created even more tweets (re-tweets): about protests to End SARS, and other matters.  Please click and see the array.  


Saturday, September 12, 2020

I feel lousy. I think post-period dehydration is one way to describe this?

The great thing is I just ate.  (I have made a habit of never taking food for granted, or the small privileges like time-freedom.)  The other great thing is that I did not eat all of the food - the half that was signalling to me that it would make me feel terrible.  Another great thing is that I'm free to drink water, rest, or do whatever I want.  The half of the food that is good is the boiled yam.  The half of the food that is poison is egg-sauce.  I just ate the yam, and the salt on it felt great on my tongue, and the starch in it is familiar and soothes whatever emotional problems I may have.  The egg though, even before it was made, the kitchen smells were annoying me.  And you know I love food and would often just eat the food with joy, but today I had some sense and threw the egg thing away without even tasting it.  I could see ginger fibers in it, and the crazy kitchen smells had included onions, and I'm not talking about moderate quantities here.  And the physiological state I'm in now is probably low blood or something, yesterday was the last day of a mildly lively menstrual "period"/flow, not far out of ordinary, just that it felt like it had started a full day before it started enough that I assumed it was and used a tampon that I didn't need - I usually do that "after" the flow has started, yes?, and then I had PMS during the first day of bleeding instead of the day before the first day - by PMS I don't mean there is pain and cramping, just that I might act bitchy - in a text message perhaps, with a boy perhaps - and not know why until the day after when I say hahaha I did that yesterday and it was definitely pms.  Anyway, the other reason I would call this period a little lively is that say the usual flow is sorta normal or heavy in the first 24 hours, on day two it may be normal then it fades away like it's giving up, then it sorta comes back for a semi-normal but usually light fadeout on day three, I think?  But this time, it may have been that day two was a full day like day one, I think.  Either way, the thing I do not want now is onions and garlic and ginger or such nonsense while I rebalance.  When there was (very present) coronavirus, yes, definitely onions, and I have treated myself to another onionsvaganza extravaganza even recently who knows maybe I was getting a cold - these things happen almost by instinct.  And maybe by instinct my mother is needing to infuse her life with these aromas and foods right now whereas I already have a headache and (right on cue, right now I notice my leg and foot tingling painfully, which relates to hampered blood flow) well the headache for me is a very rare - very rare - occurrence and I noticed it one or two hours ago but it's half-gone now, and what I'm saying is low blood, hence no need for the blood-drain foods right now, and - smart girl me - I resisted the urge to eat anyway.  

And I was also wondering why I do not speak up.  But after writing this I see that I do not speak up because it is not clearcut and easy.  These items are not unmitigated poisons, they are medicines actually, for the right person at the right time.  I am not one hundred percent against them, in fact I recommend them to myself when an antiviral need arises.  I am not forever and always responding negatively to these things, and my response to them is not clearly negative like, I don't drop dead or anything.  Who knows, maybe if I spoke up, it would turn out that the food feels bad for somebody else and the overall effect would be to solve a shared problem, although I suspect that the food is very good for my mother and possibly good for somebody else, and maybe in some different pathways it is very good for me as well.  Also, I suspect that (I should be looking to try asking, not suspecting - eyeroll) the somebody else's don't care about how their function might be changing in such seemingly minor ways in response to food.  It must be something going on with my mum, I mean in her body; we had been out of this for a while now and eating well, but now we're back.  (Edited one hour later: Now I remember, yes, she went to the dentist five days ago, she had a procedure - had a whole tooth removed, and has been taking medicine since and also likely managing pain, without showing signs outwardly.  And a piece of the mystery is solved!)

Now I feel well, no headache.  I'll eat a little more yam, drink a bit more water.  One of these days I'll buy myself some of the foods I need.  Actually, I already have stuff around the house that I like.  I made a spice paste weeks ago - contains Indian-style dried beans and spices aka masala powder - that I haven't been using.  Actually, the first thing I thought this morning had been to warm a can of cream of chicken soup for myself.  I'm no longer in the mood for that now, but you can see the direction my appetite is leaning - chunky foods, fats, skins - chicken skin, fish skin, creamy, normal, a little salt and sugar not excess - up from my usually close to zero salt and sugar lol, hmmm, it just occurred to me now that the medicine I need is a bottle of tomato juice, that would rehydrate me right back to life...although it's easier to not go shopping now, since rest is medicine too, another thing I would want is like a cup-a-noodle thing - you know, with rice or noodles and spices and you do hot water with it to make a broth yummm the salty spices at the end make you feel your joy restored, ... and maybe cheetos.    

Even before the period though, and don't read this if you don't like "too-much information" about bodily functions, I'd noticed 1. pooparella, as in I don't normally shit/poopoo/"use the toilet" often, I poopoo infrequently in normal life, but I noticed I poo-poo'd a few times, maybe once daily a few days in a row, not that I was ill or that it was diarrhoeal or anything, I attributed it to my having eaten a lot of granola (raw grain, oats stuff) and I'm sure there was another reason.  And it occurred to me that I should eat more things like granola, and that such things make me happy, and that although I love milk and milk products, my body was probably not liking it.  Guess what, thanks to the yam, and the water, I'm due to poopoo again now.  Nice.  I hope I don't become an average poopoo-er, I was proud of my identity as a no-poop soldier.  Hahaha.     2. The other thing I noticed was a ginger chunk, in my food some days ago but I just ate the food anyway but I wasn't happy about it but maybe forgot about that.  3. Also I'd been feeling dehydrated for many days, like for instance, I'd been cracking my joints/bones - how do you say it - not only in my feet, ankles and so on, but also now in strange places back, shoulers, neck, hips, if I'm remembering this correctly.  Terror: does that mean I'll have bad posture when I'm old?  
After this post, I'll be more aware and rehydrate. The things I'm writing about may be relatively minor shifts in a body's program.  Also, I assume that they are shifts for the better, even though in reality they may be neutral.  
The weather is back to normal, yippee.  We have rain, we have sun, and the incredible cold of the past months seems to be over - it was maybe 2*Centigrade below normal daily range of 27 degrees +/- 4, but for a sensitive babe like me, that is cold at night.  (Editing one hour later: it is still cold.)  Soon I'll start to feel uncomfortable with the heat.  Hmmm, should I remove these curtains?  They were nice when it was cold, but now I want nature and ventilation, and maybe that is what my body is trying to tell me...I need fresh air?  YES.  and more light.  Adjust to the changing weather and throw the curtains open?  yes to that too.  Because they are linked, how you're breathing (and I think I don't breathe very well because my body is protesting the nonsense air quality essentially of the world so it just tries to operate without air) and your metabolism, your blood activeness and your general hydration levels.   And digestion and mental function.  I'm stopping now.  One Love.  
 
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Friday, September 04, 2020

Baby-name consultation

The boy-twin names you should totally use now: Kendrick and Chadwick.  
The girl-twins, obvvviously, should be Venus and Serena.  

In Yoruba culture, twins automatically get the names Taiwo and Kehinde.  
The child born after them is named Idowu, which also works for the third-born of triplets.    

Well, if you need a baby name, anywhere in the world, I guess I can help you?  CONTACT

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Monday, August 31, 2020

Caine Prize, Booker, Commonwealth, NLNG Nigeria Prize...

When am I going to read all these books (or short stories)  
and not just the final winners but also the finalists/shortlisted like I once used to do.  

and the PDF books on my laptop, and the ones I'm halfway through right now... 
and the small piles of books on the arm of this chair 
and the books that I have not bought or the ones I bought and lost? 
and the re-reads!  

Mmmm, I look forward to a beautiful life.  

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Monday, August 24, 2020

Meaningfulness, senselessness, and dance.

Three years in, 
it turns out that:  
OMMMMM
and 
 
Let's Face The Music, And Dance.  🎵🎶🎶
Year One and Two here: It was always dance.  

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Sunday, August 16, 2020

Words, like idiocracy

Sturm und Drang - as we now live in a world of children.    
Doom and Gloom - a different kind of vibe.  

I'm looking forward to watching this famously idiotic movie.  

It better not disappoint.  

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Friday, July 24, 2020

Dark humour

I've watched this so many times, and shared it a few times...
It's about how different personality types (the 4-letter /16 personalities /Myers-Briggs) handle the pandemic-apocalypse.  
Tell me.  
Is it funny?  True?  A little weird?  

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Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Not saying I'm going to post daily - I'm NOT - but here's another quick one

I claim to hate cellphones but my phone finally gave up the ghost this morning and by early afternoon I had gone off to try to get it repaired.  In between I had an online event/meeting/session about education in Lagos.  If my sister hadn't gone and got separate internet at home I would have been unable to join in the call since my smartphone was dead.  So I joined the call on my laptop then went for a walk and my repair guy said what was wrong and that he couldn't fix it but told me what to do and so on.  I normally would not do a post like this one that says (almost says, I'll skip that part) where I will be tomorrow because I'm not comfortable with the security risks.  That said, haha.  
Meanwhile I saw another sister that was on a videocall with my sister-at-home and that was nice, and she told me that she felt connected (I think was the word she used) to me because she had read my last post.  Yes, I have sisterzzz, plural. 

People who write minutiae, how do they do it?  Yes, I know how they do it, I did it in a novella and so on, with close-ups on people's lives, but I don't do it in my life - sweet God, just sit here and tell you rubbish about: what I ate and who has corona and how I liked the meeting and who gave me some money to try and repair the phone and details about how I asked the phone guy what his specialty was, and he said iPhones and Samsung phones to which I replied that I had honestly forgotten that I didn't possess a high-end phone, it's true.  Oh my, oh me.  Carrying my cheap ass phone around trying to get it repaired, and also my cheap ass second laptop which has a motherboard issue.  
What I do know about my phone is that there are even way cheaper smartphones than mine, swear to God, like they have some things like internet browsers and downloads and music players but they're ... ok I don't actually know sha.  But I know that the security guys, people working low income (aboki is not the perfect word to use here, political correctness, even though it's not a mean word) they all have phones, some of them large-ish phones, but they don't have the range of normal apps available to them.  I should check and learn more about that.  
Now to talk about my second laptop, I'm sad to see it go, but it always did have heat-management problems and considering that I bought it for very little way back when, and got to use it quite a bit esp when I had jobs in recent years that needed you to bring a laptop to work, so of course I lazily kept my little cheap laptop on-site and didn't have to carry heavy load about.  Like, the work is not even that serious.  The most serious part of some of those jobs was the acting serious.  LOL.  Or maybe I missed the point of the job(s).  Also used it when this laptop I'm using right now was down, for example earlier this year.  Also in the past I sometimes used it when I felt like taking a laptop to my food place to chill, sometimes I took both and now I can't remember why; (UPDATED one day later: I remember now - to charge all my devices when there was a prolonged power outage) and also sometimes when I had the back-in-the-day teaching job (which I somehow consider more serious) and did not want the weight of my main laptop and felt sure that I only needed to show something minor that baby-laptop could handle.   And sometimes when I needed two laptops, especially I think before I had all the smart-phone stuff going; say main laptop had crashed and I needed to study online how to restore it to life.  

O, Baby-laptop, I will try to save your ass.  You have value to me. 
I paid less than 20k (when the exchange rate was about 160 naira) 
 
And it occurred to me as I walked back home today that I was anxious about the future because I had one laptop and no second laptop, and what would happen if...if, I mean, main laptop is ten years old now, and, I don't know?  And I tried to tell myself something from the Bible, that I should "be anxious for nothing."  The likely thing I will do with Baby-Laptop is dispose of it - the repair guys buy it, I understand, for close to zero, while I ask them to remove the hard drive first, or somehow remove the browsers and whatever few personal files I may have saved on it - or risk having the next user just open it and have access to my email and all that.  You would think I actually had stuff to protect, the way I care about security lapses.  Hahaha.    


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Raw-blogging

It's time for me to exceed my former standards in honesty.  It's time to try blogging that strains toward a deeper honesty, or to try rawer posts for a while.  

Raw things on my mind: 
One of my blogs won't post to facebook anymore.  It is very annoying.  At first it was maybe all of my blogs, then I complained and then it was just one.  That one - NewsBuka - has been banned for several months now and I must have complained a dozen times.  

I'll return with more, uh, info.  It will be boring stuff like how I once again did the Values Exercise, and how today I got the name for my next poetry collection, and how...that's all for now.


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