a stream

I suppose I could just fill up a notebook with random stuff all day.

I suppose I could just fill up the internet with random stuff all day.

Standalone post link: ''randomstuffallday''

So I have digital and physical notebooks and a phone and computer filled with photos and random things from the last year that I haven’t shared or done anything with, and I’m seriously considering just starting to go through and post backdated stuff on this website, and on the various social media channels. We will see if I have the guts to be that consistent and that obnoxious.

Standalone post link: ''backdated''

Coming out of social media retirement to tell you about the Tandoori Chicken Tin I had for lunch today from O’Falafel Etc. Wish I had taken a photo of this dish, because the picture on their website doesn’t do justice to the masterpiece of fresh take-out I received.

If I had taken a picture, what you would see is this yummy grilled chicken (just a little bit spicy) mixed with grilled onions and zucchini in a pink, creamy sauce (I think pink from paprika and maybe tomato), served over the most beautiful yellow long grain basmati-ish rice, with a fresh green salad, a cucumber-yogurt-salsa-type thing, a creamy green cilantro salad dressing, and an optional spicy salsa. I think it might be something like harissa but they just call it “the spicy sauce.” I like to just mix it all up together in the tin. One of the best lunches I’ve had in a long time, sitting alone in my car in the parking lot of Fairmont Park chowing it down.

Some meme I saw a local business share on Instagram one time said that one of the best things you can do for businesses (besides buying their stuff, of course) is post good things about them, so this is me trying to start doing that. I’ve liked O’Falafel for quite a while, but I’ve only ever tried three or four things from their extensive menu; those three things have been so good that I generally just want to get one of them again. My other favorites besides the tandoori tin are the falafel sandwich and the smothered chicken shawarma tin.

Standalone post link: ''ofalafeltandooritin''

Kicking myself because I just missed being able to buy/download this collection from Nyege Nyege (now it is 666 Euros to buy and it can’t be streamed.)

But I found a decent mixtape based on the collection on Soundcloud.

Only problems are:

1. I’m not really supporting the label or the artists by listening to it this way
2. I don’t really know which artist or track I’m hearing at any given time to go seek it out

It is certainly an electrifying listen, though. Think I’ll be digging through more of this label and related artists for the next while.

Standalone post link: Listening: L'Esprit de Nyege 2020

Started reading The Selected Works of Audre Lorde last night. Wow.

Think I’ll have more to share later once I have read more and thought through it more.

I’ve been wrestling with the words of a certain dead Mormon apostle in my head today, and for reasons not entirely clear to me yet I’m tempted to put him and Lorde in a dialogue with each other. If that goes anywhere I’ll share it here.

Standalone post link: Reading: The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

Making some little moves again on my website in prep to possibly come out of social media retirement.

Been like a year - remains to be seen whether I can finally dissuade myself from getting distracted, disheartened, disinterested, dispirited, or otherwise discouraged.

Maybe I need to disco for it.

Yeah, I did that.

Standalone post link: ''makingmoves-disco''

I watched Born in Flames (1983), written, directed, and edited by Lizzie Borden.

(Actually mainly just testing to see how this post looks in micro.blog and on my website without a title. But I did watch this movie last night.)

Standalone post link: ''borninflames''

I watched the movie Soul last night, and I loved it.

Loved this movie, with one complaint: it really was a missed opportunity to not get an actual jazz or jazz-adjacent musician to do all of the soundtrack. The Reznor and Ross pieces were nice and quite serviceable, but when I imagine what Flying Lotus, Kamasi Washington, or someone/anyone in jazz might have done instead I start to get a little angry about it. I’m therefore taking off 1/2 star for the failure to fully commit to jazz.

https://letterboxd.com/jdwhiting/film/soul-2020/

Standalone post link: ''soul''

Here are some of the things I’m working on and thinking about now…

• Finishing up a two-week winter break where I truly didn’t think much about work and just spent time with my family.

• Despite the break, something I was focusing on at work and will again is the development and curation of our school district’s Sora/OverDrive collection of ebooks and audiobooks. You need to be a student or staff member to access these, but you can see some examples of what we are doing here.

• Reading whatever I want, and tracking it faithfully on Goodreads again. Maybe I will start sharing things about my reading on this site and other social media as well.

• Watching movies again. About to do a deep dive into New Korean Cinema. (I track my movie-watching on Letterboxd.)

• Pondering making a concerted re-entry into social media and updating this site for the first time in months, starting with this ‘now’ update. I feel like, if nothing else, I should be sharing more things that I like, do, read, see, eat, etc., so that I can give a little more promotion to businesses, artists, creators, authors, etc. I’ve gotten as shy online as I have always been in person, and I’m ready to push back.

This page was last updated on January 3, 2021. See my prior ‘now’ updates here.

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. I had envisioned a page of this sort for my new website, but my concept was vague and I didn’t have a clear way forward until I happened upon someone with a ‘now’ page and followed the trail back to the source. I think you should make one too.

Standalone post link: Now (January 3, 2021)

Did I somehow call forth the winds and fires by listening to this album so fervently last week?

I was just excited about fall, and autumnal black metal…

And despite my one percent superstition about this, I’m listening to it again - the present storms demand this fury.

https://thetruepanopticon.bandcamp.com/album/autumn-eternal

Standalone post link: ''autumneternal''