Y4

( Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba // Master KG's Jerusalema )

Previously, 

Y3, etc.

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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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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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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 😊 

More:  One-word astrology.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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That too is love

Along the daily way of the cross, we meet the faces of so many brothers and sisters in difficulty: let us not pass by, let us allow our hearts to be moved with compassion, and let us draw near.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) March 30, 2021

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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SHOPSHOPSHOP HERE http://lifelib.blogspot.com/p/shop.html 

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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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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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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)

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A post shared by Amplify Africa Inc. (@amplifyafrica)

3. 

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

My previous Year-End Lists: 

- 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
- 2018 - my top music+videos
- 2019 - my best music+video experiences

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happy as a clam at high water

I'm "happy as a clam" 

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

Feminist twitter about to have a field day with this Burna Boy gist 🤦‍♂️

— Peng Man 🔥 (@pengmanmodel) December 2, 2020

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

 What else?

Here's the whole Burna Boy , Stefflon don and Joy pearl gist
Issa thread pic.twitter.com/nGWbzIBYvB

— Naija (@Naija_PR) December 2, 2020

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 

I just want free booze & turkey. before the system fail. 🌴 🎵

— godfather. (@primebllr) October 16, 2018

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A post shared by King Davies (@showdemcamp)

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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Korean Drama series

Do you have a favourite k-drama?  

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#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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