Do you have a New Year resolution?

They're usually not my thing.  I usually resolve to be much the same as ever.
That said, I could work on creating the habit of exercising and the habit of (I'm not sure) not not having a job-type income-thingy. 

Aquagym:
I don't get enough exercise, since all I do is sit and read things.  Taking a sports/exercise class would bring some fun physical and social activity into my life.  I actually took a reasonably-inexpensive weekly yoga class late last year, a five-minute walk away, and it was good, so now I'm going to see if I can find (or request) another class, with a different form of exercise that I prefer, like dance or swimming or, like, aquagym.

Edu or Strategy or what?
If I had a job, coupled with needing to take a little public-transport (as opposed to door-to-door chauffeuring) and walking, I would not be complaining about needing to exercise.  Which brings me to - oh yeah, as always, it seems I once again acknowledge a need to get a job.  Except that I don't...  Many jobs actually don't need doing lol.  And many times I start on a job and find I have too quickly eliminated the need for the job, or for my income.
Which is actually a problem.
I mean, I could teach again?  (Yes, I plan to do that when I grow up, like, my 50s, 60s, ...)  I could work in education for more money somehow?
Well, I've been saying how I want to be on boards.  But there again, the problem.  Example, you see a way you could intervene to make things better, but notice that it should properly be the workforce taking ownership of the functions and not the egghead-board-of-outsiders, and you (hypothetically) find that the intervention to get the workforce up to speed is in the works, or not in the works and never going to be, or ... I mean, at some point, life is one huge shrug - whatever.    ( Alright, I'll express that in a more positive/hopeful way: work-life is one learning experience after the other?   See?  Positive - I earn, you gain, I learn.  )

Less ginger 
In other news, I just isolated the source of my biggest health problem - how I get dizziness and symptoms of low blood pressure all the time?  It's the excess of ginger in my food.  My mother has fallen in love with ginger and been adding chopped fresh ginger into everything everywhere all the time - hopefully we can stop.  She also used to love garlic and put it everywhere. Both of these things are potent blood thinners, like aspirin.     Lord have mercy.
FYI ginger is very good for you, just not good for me.
Actually, one time in the past 2 years or so, my mother had a doctor-recommended daily aspirin that I thought might be useless or harmful.  That's not what I said to her directly, I only suggested that she maybe observe the effect just in case she found it unnecessary.  It must be that these things don't harm her and actually offer her benefits.  I on the other hand keep feeling I need to thicken my blood so to speak, to add a little fat to my diet for instance - my brain gets hungry.  Now I need to tell her about the ginger and to try to feed myself better going forward.
I got vitamins the other day, bought a bottle of multivitamins - oh, yeah, maybe I should take a swig of that now.
I'm really happy to have figured out the ginger thing, I was starting to get worried that I'd damage my brain or something.  Now I have the hope of exploring foods that make me feel more robust and alright.

This whole blog post is cheesy.  It's time to dance.


(One hour later) My mother is back from work, and we've spent the past hour talking about food - ginger, garlic, and their amazing medicinal properties and side-effects.  She says that just for me, of course she's going to stop cooking with both.  I'm lucky, eh.

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Two words I saw for the first time today, online...

agroecology  

aquagym  

Nice! 

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This year's picks :: Best music+video experiences of 2019

Baby by Joeboy (with the sequels) * Juice by Lizzo (that girl owned 2019) * Good Morning Riddim by Sarz  







Bonus: Previous lists
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untitled

Every year I post my 'top 5' music+video experiences. 

My selections usually have
excellent-to-superlative music/sound,
an exemplary-or-masterful video,
and,
in the best cases,
both the song and the visuals work very well together. 

I'm working on this year's list - of maybe three items/songs/videos. 

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omg I'm discovering apps

I just tried this one called "Paint By Number" and painted my first picture.

It was a delightful experience (if you ignore the problems with apps, like how it stalled my phone on the first attempt to use it)

I'm going to do another one now.

And another one.

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Legacies

Guess what I've been re-rocking?

Ice Prince - Jos To The World
Jesse Jagz - Royal Niger Company

J2TW was released 36 months ago, and I remember being astounded that this work would not get a lot of listens relatively, while for example Drake's work did get attention and make the creators money, and how that was just a function of ... oh well, I won't bore you with social justice talk.  You just grab the music for yourself and enjoy a dance-and-a-half. 

RNC from March 2014, well you know that album made my life lol.  It's sonic excellence, exuberant and brilliant work, and includes SDC Tec's "I don't spit on the mic, my guy, I baptize" which just "bursted my brain" again, even though I know the whole verse.  It's Tec's birthday today. 
As usual, Jesse is working on something new, even though he really doesn't owe us anything.   

LEGACY - An Album By @Jessejagz Wowww 👑❤️💯🤯

— Iceprince (@Iceprincezamani) October 13, 2019

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Guess who is getting married?

So Nadal is really going through with this wedding tomorrow...? pic.twitter.com/Vic6eBurT2

— QuiQui (@Seqsi) October 18, 2019

Rafa: Will you marry me?
Xisca: Yes 🤗
today is #WeddingDay 19.10.2019
Nadal and his childhood sweetheart Mery Perello#NadalWedding
Maria Francisca Perelló 👰🏻💍🤵 Rafael Nadal Parera #XiscaPerello #RafaNadal #RafaelNadal #Nadal #Xisca #Love #HappyWedding @RafaelNadal pic.twitter.com/lh8ZfOGQOU

— nene__nadal (@NadalNene) October 19, 2019

Meanwhile,

Buhari's marriage to Sadiya: A hoax | The Guardian Nigeria ...

https://guardian.ng › news › buharis-marriage-to-sadiya-a-hoax

Oct 12, 2019 - Several hashtags have been trending on Twitter on the premise of the wedding and the “sudden” return of Mrs. Buhari to the country to stop the ...

Here is the full story.

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Here are two beautiful words

1. ephemeral 
2. ethereal 

What do they mean? 

The first is brief in terms of time - here now and soon gone, while the second may be hard to pin down in terms of location or space. 

The first may be an attribute of concrete things, or in religious language "the things of this world" while the second may describe the things of God, or of Spirit. 

In the language of physics, the first represents the particle and the second is the wave... 
in other words, matter and light. 

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On the one hand, philosophical societies

If you love math(s),
one way of looking at this is, ah, ok, we can
integrate, I think, like subsume/embed the fractured parts in a higher-dimensional space where the parts cease to contradict each other.  In this case, interfaith.  What jurisprudence?  Work on one law that works for all.  Build an even bigger religion.  Or dump it entirely, to build a thing even bigger (in its capacity for consistency) than religion.   Philosophize ad nauseum.  We are human after all.
Or,
AND,
We can differentiate, ignore the larger shape to interest ourselves only in the edges, get hyperlocal and extremely granular, and that leads to something too, at least the edges get less bloody sharp.  In this case some hyperactive individual thing - a bet.  A bet.  Daily bets.  Dancing competition - no, can't do that, or can you do that?  Rap battle.  Tweet-battle.  Twitter wars.  Shopping.  Money, commerce.  Subdivide to meaninglessness.  We are human, after all.

Inspired by mathematics
I think what happens after you differentiate is that you can put together the results from the little bits to see the result for the whole.  This overall result may  not have a name, may not be easy to describe or possible to name, it may be discontinuous, inharmonious and messy, but for the application, it gets the job done.  Oh, and it can also be realized in a rather rote, uncreative, unthinking manner after the method is understood and implemented.  Also known as automation.  Here is the whole field of computational (i think differential equation solving, like say nonlinear solvers).  Or the whole field of just collecting grains of data and using AI to make decisions, rather than seeking to describe a whole thing, just subdivide, subdivide and let activity do the work.  

.

On the other hand, 

I think what happens after you integrate, no, I mean when you embed for the purpose of solving, 
for example I think using the "weak form" of a problem in (again, differential equations, advanced topics), 
but there are easier examples, like finding the roots of a simplest type of quadratic equation is hit-or-miss if you only know normal numbers but it's jokingly easy if you use complex numbers, 
or for example when you use a general, overall, average, or approximate idea of something to analyze it, that is, when you integrate (since averages are integrals)...
and there are advanced examples that probably have nice pictures, like: to make sense of the world in astronomy they had to come up with string theory which uses not three-dimensions but more - how many more?    

They'll tell you when they figure it out, looool

What happens when you embed, one advantage of the embedding thing is that the solving is easier, I mean, first you have to embed carefully and succesfully in a way that includes all the situations that you've been given - all the fractured parts - but now you have a simplified description which is another advantage actually; then at this point you have the great freedom of a bird's eye view that lets you see/find solutions, easy, easily, in this newly expanded framework, oh, everything is so easy; then you just have to select solutions that meet the restrictions of the original problem, real-world, constraints; those ideas/solutions that are most acceptable.   
You grab?  Understand?  



These mathematical methods are analogous to the philosophical concepts of
a. Transcendence and  b. Nihilism.
I think.  You think?

Slightly delayed thanks to Brexit news sucking the oxygen out of everything but the first of our yemen stories is on the Guardian’s front page today, with photos by the amazing @azavallis https://t.co/lEMGlvNnKo pic.twitter.com/mSFz0TtbkZ

— Bethan McKernan (@mck_beth) September 30, 2019

Roles for merchant-folks; roles for eggheads.  
Roles for party-folk; roles for stodgy-peeps.



Why is ego talking?

Whatever did Fatima say to Ali?

 Who are these people?   Can I watch them in a play? 

The Early Irish Christians, like the ancient Celts, also saw God as a giant.

Here on the Kells market cross, God is depicted as a gigantic warrior; Spear in hand, he leads the guardian deities of the Twelve tribes to battle. #Irish #Giant https://t.co/hrcasiis6K pic.twitter.com/JZnf8e3F28

— Folklore of Ireland (@DarkCloudBeing) October 1, 2019

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How do I say this without using a swear word?

Bras are no-good?
Lol.

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Actual things that I did, saw, bought, and so on.

I remember this from my last post:

If I really mean to practise concreteness, one supporting practice could be to write in this blog daily for a while, recording actual things that I did, saw, bought, and so on.  A first-order, direct experience journal.  (There are no actual things or so it would seem.  Hmmm, maybe there are some. )

So here are some quick notes on such actual things:
I have actually been quite social.  We've just had a four-day weekend for Sallah, so everyone at home more.
I have really been quite social, come on!
I visited these people Monday, took a road trip to a meeting out-of-town on Tuesday, got a little sick with a cold by Thursday, also had a meeting and took public transport and walked back home and visited mum at work and met more people and she bought me plenty food and I found super-mild medicine at home to use for my cold.  First I tried once again to buy Panadol Cold and Catarrh, cata is such a hard word to spell, but I find they don't stock it anymore or who knows maybe they don't make it anymore, maybe it's too simple lol, too inexpensive, too common-sense.  
The medicine is called Lemisip - it has paracetamol like the equivalent of 1 tablet of Panadol and a dot of the actual cold medicine phenylephrine hydrochloride.  It's black-currant flavoured and you make it in a tea with hot water.  I've used it before but this time it was better because 1. I lowered the dose even more, used half of the sachet at a time - first half in the evening and the other half the next morning, and 2. I didn't drink a straight Lemisip tea, but a sweet and sexy full packet of ginger-lemon or was it ginger-honey tea with the half-sachet blackcurrant Lemisip in it.  Yummm.  It worked and without the pain-and-suffering aka side-effects.  I suspect it's not very good for your stomach.
I just put all that in small print because the main point of this post is to enumerate actions and concrete things, not ramble with details of cold medicine?  I guess.  I'll soon end this concreteness experiment lol.

On Sunday and again yesterday, I visited people and visited people, there was fun and laughter and food.  And different ages of people o, there were always older than my parents people and older than me people and sometimes younger than me people and everyone having a laughing-good-time.  And I guess, great advice for me, something like that.
Also yesterday, dad helped me change the light in my room.  I'm the electrical engineer.  But.  Funny.

I am trying to get a job so I need to email and do things like that.  Specifically, somebody gave me some people to email to connect me with a job abroad.  Somebody told me recently that I had a "fantastic" CV and that has given me such a nice feeling.  I did the fantastic CV because an old friend asked me to use a résumé-building website so I did.
I spoke with a former colleague on the phone and he's connecting me for a job in Naija and he also told me how to do things to put "affiliate marketing" on my books or blogs but I checked out the sites and got confused.
I'm highlighting the impact of people because this is my concreteness post, isn't it?

I noticed my phone getting a mind of its own so this morning I looked at things about hacking and found out that I haven't changed my google password like since the beginning of time.  I will have to change it.  Maybe in a changing ceremony with tears of an era passing.
Then I found that something called clearing the cache of your phone operating system could help bounce off the hacker(s) so I pushed myself to do that rather than just sit back and say whatever it's not like I have money for them to steal looool.
Then I started becoming more hyper, started doing more: changed my phone device security from the minimum default pin code to (I'm not telling youuuu) and then tested it and then found out about SIM card PINs and debated whether to lock my sim and then I pushed myself to not be all-contemplation and no action then I decided to change the sim pin then LOL I locked myself out of the sim because I didn't know it and used the wrong things three times.  So now I had to get the PUK to unlock it, so I found out that it's something that's printed on the plastic packaging of the sim that this awesome girl at the phone shop had said I should not throw away.  (I really like the phone shop customer service girl so I'm going to go back to phone shop just to make friends.  She's really into phones, technical stuff about phones, and yeah, I don't think she'll be doing 'just' customer service for much longer.)  
So now I had to find the PUK, an eight-digit number.  It took many minutes because it wasn't in the old cellphone box where I keep old phone stuff or in the tiny purse where I once kept sim card fragments.  Hmm, I was thinking I'd have to use customer service (phone or much better go to the office) then I remembered I kept it somewhere REALLY VERY EASY to find, yay, then I found it then I entered it and now could lock, unlock I mean, and then I ended up deciding not to use the lock sim in the end, because - long story, but basically more password-using and it's not adding very much new safety anyway.  I may change my mind and activate the sim card pin and all that.   
While I was sorting these phone things out, maybe 1-2 hours this morning of reading help pages and forums, I had a notepage (Sticky Notes) on my laptop where I wrote out what I was doing and deciding to do, what I was trying and deciding to not try -- to keep track and not get muddled.  
For example: 
what i did: cleared cache 609MB, change device pin - it prompts twice, test startup pins,   also wanna: change google password since April 2006.  not doing: add sim card pin because too much pin-pin and sim card stolen in other ways.  update - tried to and now locked out until i can add 8digit puk. 
And at the end I wrote:
OK.  I feel like i was 'busy' this morning.  Not necessarily productive, but definitely morally hardworking aka up-and-doing.  Whether or not I improved security in my digital life, I learned a few things about my devices.  Now to stop before I make things worse.     

Actual things that I did, saw, bought, and so on...
Well, now you know that I hung out a bit, had a bit of a concrete existence/experience of life.  
What did I see?  Usually my room.  Also the roads and places and stuff.  
What I "bought" was supposed to be a joke but hey, as it turns out, I'm on the market for a Benzoyl Peroxide thing to drop on pimples when they appear.  

It must have been 10, 12, nooo more like 18 years ago my former secondary school mate who became a biochemical engineer and is now like a pharmaceutical researcher said those words to me and since then I've kept one, then another Benzoyl Peroxide ointment/cream - the second one was a little tube of Mary Kay stuff and I kept it for many years - my First Aid for "acne" aka pimples.  I haven't had one for many years now but I haven't usually had pimples.  Nowadays though, well, I got one big one yesterday, and I remember I got a few - one or two at a time - in the past few months and had nothing to use on them and tried things I had on hand - mostly menthol balm - that I knew wouldn't work.  I've tried a number of pharmacies over the years - casually, like when a pimple appears and I think about it - and they don't have stuff with that active ingredient.  But now that I remember that it could be a cosmetic, I should check like perfume and 'beauty' stores for a lucky break.  I looked online and oxy-10 contains it.  Then I was scared of the brand from bad publicity I remember from a really long time ago I think about how they used celebrity influencers (before they were called influencers) to advertise with personal testimonies that were false testimonies i.e. they actually used doctors but claimed it was this facewash or whatever that cleared their dramatically severe acne.  I don't want a facewash anyway, I need a thing that I can apply to the affected area, and I guess keep for 10 years to use whenever I need it.  Oh, I just checked and it was Proactiv that had the bad PR and/or bad practices.  Oxy-10 is good and fine.  I see online that it's popular, with other brands like Clearasil, Neutrogena, Clean&Clear, etc, etc.

And I should stop stressing about things: no stress, no pimples.
Also, no fast-food, no pimples.
But it's when you stress that you get attracted to junk food lol.  And it's when I stress that I don't sleep enough and drink enough water and then I eat groundnuts or whatever hahahaha. 

I'll do laundry today or tomorrow and check out the beauty-related shops for the ointment thing.  Laundry is another concrete thing - I like the laundry place.
Oooh, money is another concrete thing - I am nearing zero with money now but someone's going to lend me some, payable when able, that's the good life y'all.  I'll pay back when I get back to doing a job whether bigly paid or acada-paid, like, in a few months.

I did things that I usually do, of course: watch Colbert and lots of late-night comedy on youtube.  Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah, Jimmy Kimmel, that whole crew lol.  But this week I also watched a lot of Jim Jefferies' and watched a few more Bill Burr comedy bits.  And probably I read a lot of internet news and stuff and tried to read a book or two (cue the song: The Best Book To Read is the Biiiible).  Ah yes I went to church and I liked it.  Very much.  2 Chronicles 20 - the basis of Sunday's sermon - is good stuff.

Now I'm yawning.  It's time to add some pictures and stop boring myself, stop boring you.

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It was always dance

Year One, one of these dancers was me.  Guess which one? 
Ballet - Swan Lake


Year Two, I was a girl again.
Music - "Los Toreadors"
Dance - Not a paso doble.

 ~  *  ~  

It is always metaphor with me these days, isn't it?
One of the things I'm suggesting to myself these days is to try concreteness in life as an antidote to excessive abstraction and even mysticism.
Concrete things like, I don't know, speaking directly with people, working directly with people, fighting directly with people lol, and so on.

If I really mean to practise concreteness, one supporting practice could be to write in this blog daily for a while, recording actual things that I did, saw, bought, and so on.  A first-order, direct experience journal.  (There are no actual things or so it would seem.  Hmmm, maybe there are some. )

But that's not often what I do here:  I write (1-3 times a month usually, and have done so for so many years) and the writing is often about ideas, art, thoughts, impressions - a higher-order recording of events in my life (and liberty and happiness.)


Metaphor is great and all, but sometimes the mind wants to rest and the body wants a workout.  It would be nice to actually dance, you know?  Then the body gets what it wants.  Instead of talking about how it was always dance and diving into metaphor, again.


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Some people have a fear of failure.

I feel differently: failure (whatever that means) only extends the adventure; it presents the opportunity to experience a broader variety of gems, presumably including the so-called success.

Does that make sense to you?

I was thinking the other day about my considerable fear of success.  Why would anyone want to put success-blockers in their own path? 
For me, it's
1. An awareness of how success provokes Jealousy and
2. An awareness of how Disappointing achievement can be sometimes.
As a remedy, I try to First define success rigorously so that maybe it is broader, you know, in harmony, and leading to more happiness all around.  That's not the only way to do it, for sure.

I'll be back.  Peace.

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Is this TIMELESS or is this DATED?

An essay on Wisdom.

I saw this image and it struck me as so...correct, right, and true; and at the same time as so ~not~ what is done in 2018 or whatever crazy year.

For example, people are expressing spontaneously and not valuing pre-thinking what you express.
People are saying in essence, don't think before you speak.
People are saying up is down.
People are clowning.
They're zeitgeist-y and ever-new. 

Well, how about you?
Do YOU think before you speak?
What is your advice?

------------------------------
Dictionary:
Timeless,  Dated,  Zeitgeisty

------------------------------
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I just watched Game Of Thrones

 a condensed version: a richly-packed five-minute summary. 

No time 😂

+ this blog is fifteen years old.  See, May 2004 start.



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A movie about the very nosy Kinsey

Life story of Alfred Kinsey, a man driven to uncover the most private secrets of the nation, and a journey into the mystery of human behavior. In 1948 Kinsey irrevocably changed American culture and created a media sensation with his book "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male". Using the technique of his own famous sex interviews, story recounts the scientist's extraordinary journey from obscurity to global fame. Rebelling against the rigid piety of his home life, and drawn to the world of the senses, Kinsey becomes a Harvard-educated zoologist specializing in the study of gall wasps. After being hired to teach biology at Indiana University, Kinsey meets and marries a witty, freethinking female student, Clara McMillen. In the course of his teaching he discovers an astonishing dearth of scientific data on sexual behavior. When students seek him out for advice about sexual concerns and problems, he realizes that no one has done the clinical research that would yield reliable answers to their questions. Inspired to explore the emotionally charged subject of sex from a strictly scientific point of view, Kinsey recruits a team of researchers, including Clyde Martin, Wardell Pomeroy and Paul Gebhard. Over time they refine an interviewing technique, which helps people to break through shame, fear, and guilt and speak freely about their sexual histories. When Kinsey publishes his Male study in 1948, the press compares the impact to that of the atom bomb. But as the country enters the more paranoid Cold War era of the 1950s, Kinsey's follow-up study on women is seen as an attack on basic American values. The ensuing outrage and scorn causes Kinsey's benefactors to abandon him, just as his health begins to deteriorate. At the same time, the jealousies and acrimony caused by Kinsey's attempt to create a private sexual utopia threaten to tear apart the research team and expose them to unwelcome scrutiny.

It is worth watching. 

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Question: Where do you see yourself 500 years from now?

 Or 5000?

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16 personalities (Myers-Briggs)

I'm INTP today.

details of 'logician' personality

As you know, these things change.
However, about 5 years ago, I was scored INTP in 3 of 6 personality tests I took on the same day.
About 15 years ago, I was xNxP, with the x being a very mild extraversion over introversion and a very mild feeling over thinking bias i.e. ENFP.

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These videos are the most edutaining things, lol

If you enjoyed Newspaper Movie (2018) and White Savior (2019), see the late night comedy sketch that started it all: 
 Oscar Bait (2017), "a story of redemption, racial tension and latent homosexuality shamelessly timed for award season."  Featuring Seth Meyers and friends.

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Words and songs and words and songs of experience

 I want to listen to stupid people.  I want to listen to crazy people.  I want to listen to irrelevant people.
What I mean is that I want to bloody know something about something before I start to think I know anything.  Call it research.

My teachers promptly appeared, thank God:
Inscape, a short story by Yaa Gyasi, for Guernica
and
an essay by A. Igoni Barrett in The Guardian
while
I've built a bit of a reading list (my FOMO reading list) of contemporary literature mostly by Africans now in like their 30s, 40s.  Igoni's books, On Black Sisters' Street, and I haven't even read something called "White Teeth" that everybody has read.

I have good ears, yes, but I don't listen to my mother.  It's one minute, or ten minutes, or sometimes, rarely, an hour, and then I disappear to listen somewhere else - to The Guardian, to comedian Stephen Colbert's show, to musical artistes, and so on.

    If you like boring gist, this is me overanalyzing: oh, I see, what my mother is trying to say is that she's passionate about food preparation.
Ok.  I'll try to build on that knowledge next time instead of fleeing the scene when she starts to make small-talk with a complaint about some food or the other that she did not eat, not buy, not try because she suspects that it is bad or full of sugar or full of oil or full of overcooked oil or bad chemicals or fat or full of salt or dirty or not good or not well cooked or...

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The things we used to want (to do, to be, to have?)

I found an old list of the one hundred most popular 43things. 

Yes, I had at least one of those goals on my own list: "Be happy" 

 It seems that you can do similar goal-tracking things on the DayZeroProject site. 

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a hopeful song

الحق ما بيموت 

 
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obit for Erik

My darling blog friend @ Erik's Choice: eriklerouge.blogspot.com , also here and here

(very) good, better, best - my 2018 top music+video list

We'll start with the best:

Poverty Die (animated vid), by Olamide

and

Make Me Feel by Janelle Monae

The A**/A++ list:

It Runs Through Me by Tom Misch

and

Beyond by Leon Bridges

The A+ stuff:

Rocket by En Vogue

and

Your Father by M.I. and Dice Ailes

Previously:
2013 - my A++ list
- 2014 - my top-five experiences
 - 2015 - my top five music+videos 
  - 2016 - my top five music + videos
    - 2017 - my top five music videos  
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Bonus:
 

Enjoy.

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~ teach

 #TeachersMatter

 #of course

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Nourish with musicbooks

Today, I've 'hung out' a lot with Martha Wainwright's youtube items like a grown woman (which I am).  Martha is Rufus's little sister.

Now I'm listening to a fantastic 2015 musicbook by Kelly Clarkson.  It's titled Piece by Piece, and right now she's singing "I'm A Whole Lotta Woman" with all that blackish sassish vocalwork oooh yeah. 

A few days ago, I was rocking with Craig David especially his 2010 collection of Motown-music covers he calls Signed, Sealed, Delivered.

Wholesome good food, Taurus-style 
 - all three are Taurean musical artistes, 
 and incidentally I have eight albums for each of them, I just counted. 

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DOOR test

You have to try this!

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Freshly Vibely

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A post shared by King Davies (@showdemcamp) on Nov 24, 2018 at 2:33pm PST

I'm a definite homebuddy all day, and week, and season long
but I go out for my SDC - Show Dem Camp and supergood live music. 

It's soooo good for the heart. 
I end up falling in love with, like, everybody, or at least with how beautiful everybody is, so happy and so kind.  For example, this spectacular lady that wrote a review.  This handsome knight I met at the food place nearby.  The superfans that hugged - all the hugs. 

The clips above are from Friday night, there's another mini-show tonight and a big show planned for 29th December - all 'Palm-Wine Music' theme and so supercool. 

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You make sexytime?

They make sexytime:  

HUMAN SEXUALITY AROUND THE WORLD  

Unpublished manuscript by Dennis WERNER, University of Santa. Caterina, Florianopolis, Brazil, 1986.

They no make sexytime:  

THE SEX RECESSION: WHY ARE YOUNG PEOPLE HAVING SO LITTLE SEX?

Culture article by Kate JULIAN, in The Atlantic December 2018 issue. 

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You've just got to be patient

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1.
How to write a hit song?  

2.
My next poetry collection is called Go-go, the now-and-changing counterpart to last year's collection of more enduring anthropology that is titled Caveman.  Yaaay.

I do not consider this new one my best; Big Girl and Big Boy from many years ago had similar theme and style, so what's new here?  Then again, that's just like pop - I mean it's just like today, effing 2018, a year ruled by stupid; a time to not do your best.  Maybe Go-go will be my first big-seller as a reward for its excellence in half-assing mediocrity hahaha.  Without the hyphen: Gogo.

You'll see the new book on amazon say in November.  I have been not-working on it all year, need to get on that; to re-arrange, re-edit, re-read, re-fix, re-view, all of that, then do up the cover - in a style counterpoint to the Caveman cover of course, and I have the photo I want to build that around...

3.
I've been so lazy that I think I experimented and learned why you should probably not sleep as much and as hard as you can - it results in hormonal changes, I think, and they cascade and you may end up a little ill.
I'll try again someday.
On the personal level, woah, sleep is GREAT for you, great for the mind, great for the body, repair, ... but what I really suspect is that sleep is even more amazing if it becomes popular, like it's what the world needs now, you know?  Sleep is the future.  You should sleep.

4.
You know I like astrology.  It's Moon-Uranus in Taurus now - full moon - so a perfect time to be comfortable about being weird.  You didn't know this, but I've become a student of another ancient science: Palmistry.   And on the opposite end, I'm learning about the whole Ethereum-blockchain thing.

I found it!

I finally found the 'takin' one step at a time' song, yes, but also the whole album.  Haven't heard this stuff in like 25 years.
Woah, I feel joy.

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plan bee

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If I were King of the Forest 

Not queen, not duke, not prince 

My regal robes of the forest 

Would be satin, not cotton, not chintz 

 I'd command each thing, be it fish or fowl 

With a ruff and a ruff and a royal growl - woof 

As I'd click my heel, all the trees would kneel! 

And the mountains bow and the bulls kowtow! 

And the sparrow would take wing - 

If I - If I - were King! 

Each rabbit would show respect to me  

The chipmunks genuflect to me 

Though my tail would lash, I would show compash 

For every underling! 

If I - If I - were King! Just King!

Source: The Wizard Of Oz // Lyrics: Genius.com

Beyond

by Leon Bridges

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Alternatives to facebook

I just read 8 Best alternatives (Fossbytes)  , and  7 Smaller Social Networks (PopSci) and now have a few actions to take.  Maybe Not add Vero (it's for photo-sharing and I barely share on the popular instagram), but maybe I'll try Tumblr and Ello.

I've used facebook for more than ten years and it has been almost perfect for my needs, especially for autosharing my blog posts.  But now it is changing in ways that make it less convenient to autopost and reach my peeps.



You can help:
Add any of my blogs to your facebook, twitter, instagram, whatsapp groups, and so on.
We're on twitter:  bloggity-blog @REALbubbler or self-y @tosinbird
In case you were wondering, yes I was on myspace , no I never tried snapchat, and true, I share on google+

Any more ways you can help?  Comment.



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Beautiful faces

I usually judge a book by more than its cover.  I like a good review or reputation, a synopsis or a preview skim, that opening paragraph that is ok or the description on the back that has the right keywords - oh wait that's on the cover, isn't it?  The back cover.
That said, I once bought a music CD based on the colours on the cover art - no regrets at all, the music was just as pink - effusive and beautiful - as the image that teased it.

Play full album here :) 

I recently became interested in my face - in judging or perhaps engineering what people see, say in a photo.
I've usually not been interested in my face in this way.  I usually just think of my face that "it is a face" - it does what it's supposed to do, I'm sure, medically/biologically, so I am glad.  That's my response to body image stuff for the most part - whatever, I'm gorgeous, whatever, it works, what--ever. 
Girls are supposed to (are pressured to) care more.  In Nigeria for example, I would sometimes throw on some lipstick and almost always wear earrings to fulfill the societal requirement that female faces cheer the world like a flower.  On days when I care, I'd wear mascara - the slightest extra definition of your eyes makes photos work.
I know the tricks, for using makeup to create cheekbones and slim-noses for example, especially thanks to Kevin, fabulous! LA makeup artist and consultant for our play The Misanthrope back in the day.  (I remember he was on standby/retainer for Sharon Stone for the Oscars and had to leave us with bags of makeup and lots of instructions because he would not be around to help us anymore...wow, like over a month of dedicated work to sell one face at one show.)
Anyway, you learn about facial light, lines, and colour for theater.  I just refuse to throw away my 3D, 5D, 10D life to play a daft character lol.  Girl. 

Photo composite: Man at 5 and 50

A few years ago, I looked in a passport photo of mine and thought - wow, no wonder people respond to me in such manner at work - with a bit of distance and a bit of awe.  In that period I looked smart, a little too smart in the manner of a pickpocket or something - someone in search of an opening or a shortcut.  Yoruba: eni ti ori 'e n s'ise bi aago - my head (brain) going at a quick pace like a clock.  Also I was pretty, again in the manner of a pickpocket or something.  A fresh face, smooth, youthful and unremarkable, fake-innocent, to blend in with the wood, sand, stone, brown, and activity in the hypothetical town - a pickpocket wouldn't be someone with a distinctive monster face or they would get nabbed, right?  Oh well, the job I then got was to train engineers, so I guess my darting eyes didn't put people off too much.
I have many passport photographs saved over many years of visa applications, bank and job applications, and such nonsense.  I should look at them all sometime.

I've heard, mostly from my parents, about my nose being big.
It is a copy of my father's nose, so I am glad - because I like the guy.  I'd better tell him again - it's been a while since I said something mushy like that.  Like, yesterday I checked out his WhatsApp messages to me and there were some funny ones in there.  I coulda shoulda said these are sooo funny dad, but they were by now week-old messages and I would ... too complicated.   I don't often look at my phone or the messages it may contain.
I'm also glad because I think when a kid (a girl at least) has a big nose, she is less likely to 'throw her life away' herself since she does not think she's pretty (like an ornament, a flower), and she's more likely to be taken seriously in the public sphere because she's a little ugly like many serious leaders that the people know.
I remember also that my parents fretted over the crater in the middle of my nose which I got from nurturing and then popping a giant boil when I was 11 years old in boarding school.  I used to have a lot of pimples and disturb them constantly, and with the germs or whatever we were dealing with in boarding school, it was a short step from pimple to boil - then I got the biggest I'd ever had, that grew over a week or two to maybe 1cm^3.
The boil was excavated in an extravagant ceremony led by classmate and boil-popping hobbyist Inyang.  She now goes by her English name and photographs people for a living, let's protect her identity loool.  That day there was pus, there was a solid rod of caked pus-like material (at the instant when she dislodged that, tore it away from the tissue beneath, my days-long headache vanished) and of course there was blood.  And a lot of pap/cheese-like, watery-sometimes, yellowing and greening and graying and whiting rubbish pus.  It was fun.  Left a hole on my nose.  The hole is long covered-up naturally of course - nothing is forever - but the special contour on my nose remains.

I used to pick my nose.  And eat the flakes/chunks/goo.  I used to have an often-running nose.
Now I never ever eat it.  But I still sometimes pick.  Don't tell anyone.

Almost a year ago when I started to care - yes, this is about a boy that I like looool - I noticed my chin.  I have a real chin.  It has a droop of fat on each of its two halves.  It's not a girly chin.  It's a chin that wants to be noticed.  It's a chin that wants to punch and break your jaw.  A chin that makes you want to add on a Persian beard and braid the rich, dark hair and decorate the fat braid with a royal blue ribbon.
Haha, like they said, I should have just been a boy.  Lol.

I don't take many photographs.
One because - why the face?  Why not the ear?  Or the palm or an arm?  To represent a person.  So, no, I don't believe.  You can read this as me being ashamed of my face but you would only be a little correct.
Two, because I don't use photographs and usually lose them anyway.  Like the box-full I left in California with all my belongings while I moved back to Africa with two suitcases - all gone.
Three? I have more than enough.  One photograph is fun, as in fifty years ago.  Ten is a great and enjoyable variety and I have far more than ten.  But ten thousand photographs is junk, a landfill of garbage, or in 2018 of instagram, just data to be mined lol.
Four, relating to the fact of not using photos in life, is the fact that institutions just use photos to note that I am African/nonwhite/darkskinned so fuck off, and I am maybe a female yet annoyingly not a cheering flower so definitely fuck off.  I mean, if I'm a great painter, the point is not my face, right?  The point is my painting.
I am a great painter.  You fuck off.  LOL.

That said,
Yesterday I was looking to learn how to pose for photographs of my face that would look pretty or at least not alarming, because if you just capture this fantastically complex sculpture in 2D without a plan you end up with something that does not look like what people want to see - look like a grandmother or older, or a professor, clergy member or politician, or generally like an amoebic monkey - delete delete!
There was light from a window on one side of my experiment.  My face in the mirror tilted at a three-quarter-frontal grabbed the light on the bridge of my nose in a way that continued the arch of my brow and was very black-and-white-movies-professionally-shot.  Oh yeah, I really looked like a girl here, like someone's Casablanca female-movie-star fantasy.  The nasal arch highlit, there was also a dot of light in the middle of my nose, which I liked then thought sadly would always be wiped off if one ever did a professional shot.  They would call it a blemish and airbrush it away.  There would be no excuse to leave it in.

This whole charade with faces, who is really deceiving who?

In the past week I made my best discovery yet about my face: that it does not have two perfectly equal halves.   Ah, this explains why I look alluring from many various angles but usually not straight on, and it's related to this stuff I found online about how when normal people (like you) judge attractive faces (again, with this most popular of angles - the face straight at the camera, passport photo type) it's symmetry they're judging, with less symmetric faces being judged less attractive.
Anyway,
I found that my eyes are different.  Even my cheeks below the eyes are different.  In fact, looking 3/4 in the mirror on my right side I look remarkably more like my mother and doing the same on my left I look like my father.  Yep.  My right eye just pops more, it's bigger, bigger white and bigger dark part, sometimes not the same shade of white, slightly higher in my face and higher front-to-back too, with a more raised perky eyebrow over it even, and a chunkier cheekbone and fatter cheek below the eye.  My left eye is a little tired, relatively speaking, just seeming like a cooler, more thoughtful or easygoing person.  Looool.  That's how I've managed to trick everyone, eh, and to look like my mother and like my father and have people argue who I resemble.

Photo collage from "How Faces Change With Age"

Faces keep changing - I could hear my face shift as my mouth healed last year when I got a tooth removed.  I can feel my head shift when I learn a lot or work my brain hard.  I have a big head.  It will change some more.  You know, the left/right side will learn more about what the other side is doing and come to an agreement.  Or something.  Or not.

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