Pub's a bit quiet. I'll have a small hot sake, please. Life Updates Probably moving within the next two months. I'm on a research project until then, so job search had been put on hold. Given project/graduation/lease ends all on the same day, I'm moving some extras down to the 'rents this weekend. Entertainment Review I finished Death Parade last night. The show's short at 12 ep./20 min, sweet, and a hint of dark. The show's a take on how souls are judged upon death. If the first episode is watched without interest in continuing, then I encourage you to power through to the second. Episodes 1 and 2 really should have been combined into a long pilot. Premise: two souls without memory of dying enter a bar to play a game - darts, bowling, cards, etc. The bartender is a non-human who seeks to understand humans while judging the souls' behavior as the games progress (sometimes with distressing twists). Despite the 'heavy' setting, the show does a good job of not making pretentious, sweeping statements on the subject of death. In fact, writing does well to uphold life and living through au devours of others' memories in each episode. The final two episodes drive home the underlying conversations about life through one of the main character's persistent guests. In one of the few sequences that has made me tear up in a long while, no less. More on the topic of pretentiousness, the show feeds just enough information to hint at power structures and levels in the afterlife, but only enough to indicate to the viewer there is considerable thought behind the story without delving further or taking the focus too far from character development/revelation via unnecessary power struggles or blind-sided power creep. All-in-all, Death Parade is a nice drama-esque snacc. It only helps that the animation style is so clean, with a subtle flex of muscles here and there. Not to mention a slick OST. Check out this opening song: Catchy opening for an anime, eh? There was more to speak to in my eyes for how they approached 'judgement' through a dynamic between two people, rather than a dude with a dog head and a banana hammock weighing you against a feather. Erm... read as: 'It's just you, your life's worth and God now, Bucko' vs. expressing who we've become at our core. Moreover, is the core of who we are really that complex to start? Tangent Time Solo quarantine is a downer. I'm looking forward to the excuse to see family irl. Even if socially distanced. [Insert segue to moving possessions that ties into Death Parade and the following media excerpts] This panel from Sandman runs so ridiculously in-line to why Avatar Kyoshi from the Avatar: the Last Airbender universe lived for roughly 230 years. From The Rise of Kyoshi: “Sifu,” she drawled. “Oh, please, impart upon me the mysteries of immortality, for I wish to watch eras pass before my eyes like the grains of an hourglass.” “Of course!” Lao Ge said brightly. “Anything for my dear student. You see, it all comes down to maintaining order. Keeping things neat, clean, and tidy.” “Excuse me?” This was genuinely offensive to Kyoshi, as a former housekeeping servant. She’d let go of her standards for cleanliness the first morning outside of Yokoya, after waking up covered in Pengpeng’s shed fur. But with his drinking and aversion to changing clothes, Lao Ge toed the line of rancidity. What did he know about tidying up? “Aging is really just your body falling apart, on the smallest, most invisible levels, and neglecting to put itself back together,” he said. “With the right mental focus, you could take an inventory of your own body and place each little piece that’s not where it should be back into the correct order.” Kyoshi had to assume he was tailoring his lessons to her background and that the real process was much more complicated. “The way you describe it, you’d have to decide what version of yourself you’d be stuck as, forever.” “Exactly! Those who grow, live and die. The stagnant pool is immortal, while the clear flowing river dies an uncountable number of deaths.” “Is that another proverb of Shoken’s? Because it doesn’t sound like any spiritual lesson I’ve heard.” “It’s my proverb,” Lao Ge whined, his feelings hurt again. “All this fretting about spirits. I’m trying to teach you about the mind. An infinite world that’s been neglected by far too many explorers.” My follow up food for thought would be how to do this (holding on to 'little things' of you) without fossilizing. Anywho, here's to livening up the place around here. Quarantine plus extended not-interacting got me in old isolating habits for the worst. But it feels nice to word-vomit/type it out. Yeah, the U.S. is "re-opening" but FL broke its record for single-day covid19 spike in cases this past Saturday. Otherwise, a night out with the cohort would be a very welcome reprieve. I'm kinda amazed at the friend group I've made here. Take it from me in a post 112 days ago: I'm not looking forward to the prospect of moving to another city, knowing a good chunk are planning on staying here. Which is weird to me. You know for a long ass time I've been good moving about since I generally find detaching as my go-to. This town is actually a great size with residents that give quite a few fux about their home turf. In other words, it'd be a nice place to hang around longer, if only to have more bonding time with those I care about. Pooey. Food Speaking of pooey, here's what I've been cooking: Challah and Jam. Turns out jam is suuuuuper fast AND easy to make. Jam Recipe - I've never bought jam before. My mom always had store-bought around the house. I'm sure as hell not going to buy now, though. Maybe it's the insane amount of sugar needed for the recipe (spoiler: it is), but I'm making it for every bread baked here-after. Tip from a friend: put hot pepper seeds in the jam. The kick is a good twist. Pizza (and its dough) can be made from scratch in under 45 minutes. Pizza Dough Recipe - the story is a nice read for once, too. -- Not pictured b/c I ate it all just now: stuffed cabbage... oops. :-) Recipe. Only used as guidance for cabbage/stuffing prep. Sauce was what I had on-hand. Still came out great. Misc. There have been morning birds singing from 1 AM to 4 AM in the morning around here. It's disorientating. See y'all 'round, and don't forget to eat yer fruits 'n veggies.
First, she didn’t believe he was anywhere near as old as he claimed. And second, desperately grasping for more power and control over life was what people like Jianzhu did. Te too, probably.
3. Leaning on friends is nothing to be ashamed of. All of last semester I went out of my way to help the others in my classes. Not to network, but because I wanted to do grad school different than undergrad. After the second or third flop, I was invited out of the blue for dancing with my cohort. Was able to balance 'a good time' with venting, and was lent an air-mattress for a night over with a friend in the end. Been having movie nights after weekend labs on and off since.
At the start of the pandemic, our managers/leadership at the bank sent us care packages. I think it's always hard to come up with good things to send for these sorts of packages. Anyway, one of the things they sent us was a collection of recipes that are, purportedly, favorites from each of the managers. I'd scanned the packet, seen a few too many recipes that called for things like "ranch flavor packets," and put it in my pile of recipe print-offs. I came back to it while organizing this past week. Here's the thing, recipes can be really personal and honestly the printed package was the most touching part of all the things they sent. Even if there was no way in hell I was making some of these recipes and even if the content of certain people's "favorite recipes" certainly seemed to correlate with, well...their tendencies towards inactivity, shall we say? OK, yes, I mean that the fat person on the leadership team had 3 different recipes for dips among her contribution. What I'm saying is that the recipes and the effort they represented were touching regardless of how much you could snark at them, if you wanted to. So the other night I made "Ronald's Favorite Sheet Pan Chicken With Potatoes, Dill, Arugula and Garlic Yogurt." The garlic yogurt is really a toum,, and the recipe called for harissa -- I've never used harissa in a recipe before, actually, wasn't familiar with it outside of the context that I'd seen harissa flavored olive oil at a speciality shop. For the first time in my life I had reason to shop at the local Middle Eastern/halal grocery store. A small can of harissa goes for $1.49. It was worth it. And besides that, the recipe really was pretty delicious. There are a few more out of that packet I'm going to try to make over the next few days/weeks. And I am gonna let each person know when I've tried one of their contributions. I feel like they tried hard to be real people for us, and I want to acknowledge that and recognize it in return.
Sending a care package with a personal recipe is kinda cute ngl. Hope they sent some snacks with it, too. Placing this on my to-do list. Leaning into more white meats recently, and my dislike of turkey has me looking for more ways to spicy up chicken recipes. Usually, there isn't much value in the stories attached recipes that necessarily make the meal better preparation-wise. BUT, they are nuggets of substance making the end product a little more personal. Respect.So the other night I made "Ronald's Favorite Sheet Pan Chicken With Potatoes, Dill, Arugula and Garlic Yogurt." The garlic yogurt is really a toum,, and the recipe called for harissa -- I've never used harissa in a recipe before, actually, wasn't familiar with it outside of the context that I'd seen harissa flavored olive oil at a speciality shop.
And I am gonna let each person know when I've tried one of their contributions. I feel like they tried hard to be real people for us, and I want to acknowledge that and recognize it in return.
Now that's a Pubski. That pizza reminds me of an old flame used to make. Those were good times, and that was a good pizza. Thin base, I'm guessing? Solid or kinda flexible?
There was a good uptick leading up to and at the start of quarantine. Could be projecting here, but it's calming down a long way, re: pubskis. Thin and solid. It's a vegan crust that has no moisturizing ingredients, nor are you supposed to let the dough rise. Placing cheese, then sauce, then cheese + topping again is a good tip from the recipe.
> nor are you supposed to let the dough rise Pizza dough from the Russian recipes is bread. :P Thin and solid. Yep, those are the memories. When you talk about the order of ingredients: are you saying you're supposed to start with cheese?
It's still bread, no doubt. Flour, yeast, water and all. Just a step removed from matzah somehow. Don't want to learn the difference - lest I can't spare relatives from a homemade batch next Passover. From the chef himself: [After adding the sauce] Cheese, sauce, toppings, then cheese is another variant I'd been doing. At that point, you better have built a nice crust to hold in the lactose lava.When you talk about the order of ingredients: are you saying you're supposed to start with cheese?
Add a little cheese before the toppings. This was a trick I learned working at the pizza place. Starting with a very thin layer of cheese helps the toppings stick. It also creates like a cheese-topping sandwich on top of your pizza, which is just amazing .
Oh, I meant like quarter of the loaf tall, in jest. In reality it's closer to 0.75 inch. Neat, thanks for the tip!
Fresh start. My Hubski career didn't exactly skyrocket with the last two accounts I've had here.
I figured you must've had more important things to do than anxiously consider replying to that one guy on the Internet. It's all good. Hope you're well.
My mental health has really been thrown a curve ball with this whole Corona thing. The utter lack of concern for the lives and wellbeing of our most vulnerable being displayed by my neighbors horrifies and disgusts me. I seethe with rage near-constantly. Guess I'll go carve more spoons.
No but it can do a lot for your anger and anxiety. The world on the internet is a funhouse mirror version of the world as it exists. Admittedly, it's been spilling into real life in alarming ways recently, but for the most part just shutting off all social media, at least, will improve your outlook in ways you can't even anticipate. Anticorporatist you are, you of all people should recognize that online media companies make money by not letting you look away. That's their superpower and it's fucking malevolent, plain and simple.
I posted a map on Twitter yesterday, and now I'm gonna be in the local newspaper tomorrow! Huzzah. I calculated the centroid of all the households in my city over time to see how the population shifts, and apparently that's fun enough to feature there. Including a photo op where I push measuring tape on the street because how on earth are you otherwise gonna make a tidbit of data analysis into a photo. Cheesy af but who cares, it was fun to do. Went to the office yesterday for the first time since mid-February. The numbers are going pretty good over here - we're at less than 5 hospitalizations per day for the past weeks. So slowly and steadily. It was good to go back there. Today I took the day off, so it feels like Saturday to me. I have as much paid off days left as there are weeks in the year, so I'm planning to work less and am starting that with taking Wednesdays or Thursdays off. Love it so far.
The conversation that led to that was something like this: "so we were gonna do a two page spread with you meeting the person living there, but that guy didn't want to cooperate. Can you go there at 1pm and bring something to show, like your calculation on something?" "uh that's not really possible but I can bring some stuff for the photographer to work with, like rulers n shit. Or is that too cheesy?" "no not at all! People love cheesy." I was thinking of creating a cross on the pavement, but the photographer wanted some depth so he came up with this. It makes little to no sense but it's a fun picture.
https://www.ad.nl/utrecht/dit-adres-is-het-exacte-middelpunt-van-utrecht-en-anne-26-legt-uit-hoe-je-dat-bepaalt~a3e9dd72/ I tried throwing the page into Google Translate, but that doesn't work because of cookie settings. But it's very simple Dutch so it shouldn't be too hard to get the gist.
Out of lockdown for 4 weeks now. Life is relatively normal so far but there are a number of shops in town that have simply closed/emptied which is sad to see. I certainly don't miss lining up for groceries, even though that was always an impressively civil encounter for all involved. With some new cases being announced this week after 28 days of no new ones, the political posturing has begun again and fuck me I'm sick of it. I designed our undergrad exams to be taken online and they all went smoothly thank goodness, only 3 of a few hundred didn't take the exam, about what we'd expect in normal exam settings with the odd student deciding not to attend at all. Now.. Until this week I had never had Mac and Cheese. I don't particularly enjoy cheesy things, and it's never made it's way into my cooking repertoire. Normally I do the cooking in our household, my partner isn't a huge fan of cooking and I really like it - but this week she wanted to make Mac and Cheese so she set to it. Lawd. It was amazing. I had three servings that first night. Goddamn it was just lovely, and she had leeks, spinach and leftover bacon fried up as a laughably makeshift but delicious salad. I am converted. Oh I also found this delicious spiced rum called Moko, I'm not a rum guy but holy shit this stuff tastes like a vanilla liquer and it's delightful. I feel like a new man.
your laughably makeshift salad There are a lot of liquors that get a bad rap because the basic bitch exemplars are terrible. Gin and Rum are probably their most prominent members. Technically, "rum" is fermented and distilled cane sugar. That covers a lot of ground. I couldn't figure out why everyone gave so much of a shit about Bacardi until I had Cuban rum and went "...oh yeah Bacardi used to be Cuban and is now Puerto Rican and they've had to cope since Castro came to power."
Hah it exists! I did think it was suspicious how readily she put it all into the pan.. It was excellent. Yep Rum for me just reminds me of my 18th, where my brother poured 2 beers down a funnel for me, and poured straight Bacardi in as a chaser. I don't remember the rest of the night but I've steered clear of Rum for all my years since. Since learned in different ways that Rum does not start and end at Bacardi, and that Bacardi was also not really the culprit of that night.
My COVID antibody test came back negative. it's the Lab Corps one without any titers or anything; you get a go/no go. So either I never had COVID or I had COVID but my body doesn't have the immune response that Lab Corps thinks implies immunity. I was sure fuckin' sick tho. Hollywood is currently trying to figure out how to shoot again. Bold & Beautiful did a day yesterday and then decided they needed a week off in order to rework their testing protocols. The recommendations, you see, call for daily nasopharyngeal swabs for everyone within six feet of a performer and thrice-weekly nasopharyngeal swabs for everyone who so much as listens to the same walkie channel. The recommendations, however, have fuckall to say about a camera department of 48 people sharing 7 cameras and 3 dolly tracks. Everyone in Hollywood is basically splitting between oh holy shit I'll sign any waiver it's just the flu and I need the work and nothing we've seen indicates that there's any reasonable hope of this working. I don't even know if I can make it down. Things are busy AF up here and based on the recommendations I've seen, I'll need to sign a sworn affidavit every morning attesting under penalty of dismissal and substantial legal action that I have no COVID symptoms. But I've got a lingering cough from that-which-apparently-wasn't-COVID. I wouldn't let me on set. Fuck.
Sorry the cough is lingering... and I think I'm sorry the test was negative... but at this point, I imagine you'd rather have it over with for how miserable you felt. I think it's fair to say it extends beyond tinsel town. It's like one more hot topic for Americans to hate each other about. And it's making strange bedfellows.Everyone in Hollywood is basically splitting between oh holy shit I'll sign any waiver it's just the flu and I need the work and nothing we've seen indicates that there's any reasonable hope of this working.
Ford Fischer provided compelling coverage of the D.C. protests, broadcasting live on Periscope. "This is Edison Carter coming to you very much live and direct on Network 23." Ford was live when he got hit in the forehead with a rubber bullet, and again later when he was caught in a police kettle. I waited until a calm Sunday afternoon to bike downtown and have a look around. Not every day you see military police on the streets around FBI headquarters. The new Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute was newly decorated with four-letter anti-Reagan slogans. Apparently there is a sniper team on the roof.
I was in a mood yesterday, so I scheduled some yats. This is my DE tattoo, for my upcoming leaving DE. This continues my series of "conspiracy theory" inner fingie yats. I think it's starting to get to me that basically all I've done over the past few weeks is work. I think my knee might be feeling better enough that I can try running again soon. I'm just frustrated and have been for the past few days. I'm watching "Blow the man Down" on Netflix. God damn, if that redhead isn't the most annoying as shit character. It would help me like this movie a lot if she wasn't so flat dumb.
