I have gotten into donghua!!! Or Chinese animation.
The one I am watching now is Link Click, and the first episode deals with some darker themes, but it really held my attention. I am only on episode three- episode two made me cry in a heart-warming way, and I am really excited to continue the series. Each episode feels fresh with a different trajectory. Sometimes I can simply tell by a cover whether I’m going to like it. I felt similarly with The Millionaire Detective. I might update my review later and I’m not looking to say much about it at the moment to not give it away, but give Link Click a try – or better yet, let’s watch & commiserate together once it’s over.
I also started and am up to date on a new Webtoon, Eros Conquers All. It follows the story of Eros, the god of desire who feeds off the various faces of human’s love, leaving them devastated and shattered once he’s gotten his fill. Some he shows a bit of ‘mercy’ to and doesn’t drag on the love affair that long. Those feedings look more like whetting your appetite with a lollipop vs. holding over your hunger with a giant, juicy apple. A bunch of other gods and otherworldly beings are featured too and it’s very satisfying following their arc. Eros also has an asexual, aromatic personal assistant to help him along the way, and their dynamic is oh so precious.
Here are some of my favorite captures from it.
Seems incredible right? I had so much more to say, but I have been sitting on this draft for a little too long, and it’s time for it go out because silly me held back on watching the next episodes of Link Click until it was published… I didn’t want to update my post in case there was an exciting development, nor did I want to lie. 😭 At the end I’ve included a playlist I was listening to when I first began writing this post!
Let me know how you liked these!
Sometimes I look at the Instagram accounts of small biz owners that have built it up to the point of servicing only business and their release parties, advertising promotions…(e.g. everyone’s favorite jelly cake…) I think how exhausted they must be. Behind every 5 figure following account that didn’t buy out their followers is someone who ‘hustled’, who busted ass, who probably is a generator that gets their life satisfaction out of work. I get it – my girlfriend is one too and she works 17 hours days for multiple days in a row for some reason. She cites ‘passion’. It couldn’t be me. My projector ass will stay at home and watch anime thanks.
My acupuncture session ran late – my acupuncturist left her coat in the car, seemed like she had only arrived to the office once I got there, maybe took lunch. I told her that I’m tired lately, that it might be because my body is doing a lot of internal work as the medicines are working on it. Mostly my diet and sleep hygiene is kinda garbage. She said “Imagine you have 10$ in your bank account. If you want to buy something for 50$, that’s you expending out energy and getting tired. It’s a signal for your body to rest.” I agree, and I’m at a point where I Think I am confident enough to differentiate between feeling tired from over expenditure versus feeling tired from depression and lethargy and I better get my ass up to make myself a meal and drink some water before it gets worse type exhaustion. I Think. Towards the end of the session, since the bed’s heat was on, I was burning up way too much. I was also tired of resting. I wanted to get out and move. I wonder what it would be like for someone who doesn’t have a lot of down time to do acupuncture regularly. I think they would have a hard time being still for so long. Fortunately, I am a professional ceiling watcher.
I went grocery shopping right afterwards because leaving my house more than once a day is a no-go for me. If my mental health didn’t deteriorate rapidly because of no fresh air, actually if I had a balcony, I would probably go outside at most once a week and that would be to the farmer’s market. I haven’t gone hiking or spent any significant time outdoors in a good while and anyway, for those us who are housed and don’t have to work outside😟, it’s the current reality under multiple, unrelenting heat waves. I bought two bags of Kettle chips on sale (2/6$)- the crinkle cut truffle and barbecue. I inhaled the barbecue one for ‘lunch’, it was the first thing I ate today – so glorious I know. And I am working through the second bag now with Calcium and Vitamin D fortified organic orange juice. I ate enough to take my Chinese herbal medicine now. (for strategy purposes, I learned that I don’t need to take them after ‘proper meals’. My stomach simply needs to be working on something already like a banana or yogurt before I take it). Wow, I really have an incredible diet y’all. It’s cool, I don’t normally eat like that, but I wanted something to hold me over for now and I am a pretty compulsive snacker, growing up in a household where if you didn’t get to it FAST, you’d never get to it at all.
I got a bunch of fresh summer produce and heirloom tomatoes that I want to cherish while it’s still their heyday. I bought a grain mix with buckwheat, amaranth, teff, quinoa, millet and chia. I probably could have made it myself cheaper, but nobody got time for that. There is one vegan ranch product specifically that I will cherish to the end because it actually gets me to eat my greens regularly on the side on a daily basis – I am simply that excited for the dressing. I buy frozen pizzas pretty regularly these days too and dress them up with my own fresh veg ingredients like asparagus, string beans, spring greens, alliums like garlic, red onion, etc., nightshades like halved cherry tomatoes, peppers, sweet potato, eggplant then hit it up with EVOO, basil, whatever is on hand (not all at once unless you freaky). It works beautifully. I went on for a while there didn’t I. FOOD BLOG NOW!
I was going to write my little rules to live by that I wrote up in my moleskine a couple weeks ago , but I never seem to be able to shut the fuck up. I really thought oh, why do YouTubers make vlogs of their daily life when they could write about it? It’s so much easier? Haha, I’m a great person. Without further ado, thee unbreakable, unshakeable rules:
Remember that anything and everything is possible. If you can dream it, it can happen.
Always take the small step, the small decision, that would make for a better tomorrow.
Keep kindness and love at the forefront of everything you do. If you cannot muster it for others, then muster it for yourself that day and keep it going the next.
Listen to your body and your intuition for all the larger points that matter in life. The inconvenience will come first and the peace & happiness next, but move in spite of inconvenience.
Enjoy the road, ride, and scenery (the how, what and where).
These are the ones I wrote up for MYSELF and of course are subject to fine-tuning and revisions in time, but I wanted to put them up here in cyberspace to sediment it even further and not forget my intentions for me, by me. Maybe they can inspire you to find something you want to live by too. Some folks might not trust their intuition and that’s okay – find what works for you for where you are at now. I got a defined spleen. Alright, toodle LOO.
I’ve still got the writing itch I got to scratch. I’m sitting on a blog post that I’ve meant to write for a couple days now that has a broader public appeal because it’s not ONLY matters of my heart and daily life. I couldn’t get out of work fast enough tbh. I wanted out as soon as possible to do anything else.
I said I was going to put my wall of text stories into blog form and I still got wall of text stories. It chilled out for a few days before I was back at it again. I really cannot help the circumstances around that. It’s usually something that’s been a constant in and around my mind for years, and when the time is ripe to make its debut, it will.
There was a video I wanted to share about an Anthem patient who couldn’t get covered for a Botox injection procedure that would help her involuntary vomiting from gastroparesis. I never worked at Anthem, but I will say there is little to no comparison to the kind of joy I experienced seeing the offices I used to work at being vomited on. I’m not sure how they managed the clean up, but this was incredibly satisfying in at least one aspect.
There are some updates!
This video made me take my earrings off. 💀 I didn’t notice at first. I gotta shower before I run off to my now twice weekly acupuncture treatment. I really spent so much money lately on my healing from endo until I can figure out what my next steps are. I don’t have a gynecologist appointment until late September. It will be my first since I was 22? 23? 24? A doctor-in-training friend in Hong Kong initial reaction was that that was really fast (over a month wait time for an appointment) – their system is overloaded. I don’t know where I would get the surgery. Would I get it once I move or would I come back here? There are apparently only a couple hundred qualified surgeons for it… I have no idea what kind of procedure is required yet or what the cost of it is gonna look like/if my insurance will cover it. All factors to consider. For now, I need to add ‘endo tea’ and my herbal medicine to my habit calendar for September so I can be on top of my shit mitigating the mass from getting any worse and its side effects till resection. I am also considering buying a Kindle so I don’t have to take books with me abroad, but it feels really unappealing. I want to buy that endo book from Dr. Orbuch. It will probably tell me most of what her 90-minute 1,675$ no insurance accepted consultation would.
I only have around twenty minutes beginning to end to write this post before I have to go to work. Shit’s been busy in my head and my head only.
I really got to understand last night the two sides of Mercury that Gemini and Virgo represents. I am working on a song with a Gemini stellium and our approach is so different, even with the power of Mercury on both our sides. I like to workshop, edit, revise, edit until I get to the best possible configuration (Virgo, or consider the classic stereotype of tropical libra ‘indecision’ as sidereal Virgo). She won’t hesitate to dig her feet into the mud with Hermes under her wing and wants to move forward as soon as she hears something she likes. We represent both sides of the messenger, one deliberate and calculating and perfectionistic the other… well, I’m not a Gemini but a Gemini MC. I think it’s a power couple if I do say so myself. Unless otherwise specified I am referring to our tropical placements. I got Virgo in my moon or rising whether it’s sidereal or tropical – and this blog too has both tropical and sidereal Virgo placements.
It is my first time too to write melodies to lyrics. I typically get a feel for a song first and lyrics come last based on whatever feel comes up (my Pisces sun and Mercury there at play). The feel is highly dependent on my mood. Maybe why I never finish songs because I don’t bother with the form, don’t bother with the lyrics, change moods all the time. She is really exceptional at all those things – lyrics, song structure and moving a project along. I told her for everything ELSE she’s written so far we can take that approach where she grabs the first take of mine she likes. I’ll learn to let go later. 😂
The dream I had last night was atrocious. I was making my habit calendar for the month of September (I began it last night before bed) and after meticulously drawing the lines to box the days of the months, I got to my favorite part, the title. Before I could finish the lettering, a friend of mine with significant Gemini influence comes in and writes in their name in a different bubble text on the top right hand side. It was going to be added for sure, but I didn’t even finish writing September. I got to ‘Septem’. You might laugh at this story, but only I know the relief I felt upon waking that my calendar wasn’t actually desecrated by anyone else’s ununiform handwriting. We were going to go to a festival later that headlined by Basement Jaxx over multiple days. It was written on the flyer as Basement Saxx. That part I’m a little bummed over. I never got to see them live at the height of their career when everyone else around me would be hype too. Pandemic is still a reality in my dreams, but it’s always accounted for somehow.
Time for work! Did I make it? Yeah, I wrote most of what I wanted ~500 words.
i would like to petition for an editor. I said what about a flash in the pan romance with a literary agent but that’s so messy, too messy.
This iteration of being human is trash. I felt better waking up, but you know that parallel world in Everything Everywhere All at Once where we had long sausage fingers? That’s real actually. I had a brief glimpse at least a million years into the future and that generation of human was thriving! Haha, but basement the sun is going to swallow up the Earth by then. Shut up, what the hell do you know as if this ‘material’ iteration is the only one. We have gotten so used to our conditions, we forgot how grueling and restrictive they are. Last night made sure to remind me of that 😒Those people were commiserating over our miserable we were.
It’s not about innovation. I think all of those worlds are available to us. It’s not about academic research or revelations from a prophet either. It could be but more often than not both the researcher tucked away in their lab and the proselytizer have a lot more in common than they are led to think. They are on the same path but one’s got the holy rosewater setting spray and the other got the waterproof no smudge mascara. They got the same goals even if their approach is different, but ultimately they still keep everything in the same place that it was.
I feel a little unsettled, a little pressure. I want to be liked. I also want to have my own voice. It’s not that they’re mutually exclusive, but the likelihood of one drops with the other. I want to write in a way that touches people and keeps them engaged to read more. Underneath that, I want to be understood. I want to be understood by some ‘external’ force outside of myself. This is my truth now. My truth undermines the idea that I am you and you are me, if we are to accept only one [truth]. Even if I work on accepting all of myself, what if all of who I am is in direct opposition to everybody else? Is it a life still worth living then? I feel like the person I become when I write is someone who wants to influence and manipulate others to join my side, like a Sith Lord. I won’t sugarcoat my dark side cookies, they’ll be full of amaranth and magnolia flowers.
CN: fictional domestic violence, m*rder
I started this webtoon that only has three episodes out now called “Marry my Husband”. It’s about a cancer patient who catches her husband cheating on her with her best friend. The husband physically assaults her during the confrontation leading her to an early grave, supposedly. She comes back to inhabit her body from ten years prior where she is working alongside her to-be husband, and best friend who has eyes on him. Some bad bitch shit ensues I’m sure.
There was a quote in there about the moment before your death, you will wish you had a day like today. It made me think if I had the knowledge of a ten years older me, what would I even do now? I don’t know what I don’t know unfortunately, but I can at least say what I would have done differently ten years ago. The thing is I wouldn’t have been able to. I wouldn’t be able to have the knowledge I do now if I had not experienced what I did. I assume the advice I would give myself then would be eternal to the now and later. I think that advice would be to not doubt myself so much. To dig out the smallest current, the smallest voice of opposition and blow it out of proportion. Thinking about it, if my ghost followed this voice, I can’t blame him for doing what he did. If he hadn’t done so, I would have never probably met my girlfriend. I would have never probably got the opportunity of a lifetime that will soon unfold in this hyperspace. Maybe I’m a narcissist, but I always did feel that outside a select few, I never received my flowers from those around me. They got to witness me growing up with my heart on sleeve, and I willingly gave that out – it was something that was important to do regardless of who recognizes it for its grace (I am going to definitely say that, because what I would do differently is stop erasing my own contributions.) I want to laud myself, but I can’t erase the seed of doubt that tells me: am I understating my negative impact too?
There is this fine line balance between cutting someone off and working through contradictions. If I could have it my way, I would cut out at least half of the dead weight hanging out around me now. I already distanced myself, it’s more a matter of definitively removing those energies from my space. Do I tell them? I was left behind without any explanation. How do I go about it? Should I hope that the relevant people of my life read this blog and take it as a sign that I feel wronged by them? It doesn’t seem very courageous, but I am fighting for my life every day as it feels, as it seems. What’s the proper timing for that? My friend is pregnant. I hate that. I would hate myself to come up with a beef during what should be one of the happiest times in her life. If I cannot support her in these moments, I need to simply get out of the way. How do I tell her that I feel so wronged by something so childish as her telling me that I wasn’t a chef but a baker when I told her my dreams to open a café? How do I tell her that I still remember the time that I was bullied into submission by her and my two other ‘friends’ to add so much butter, ginger, garlic and salt to the rice? (I love and regularly make this type of rice too; it has its days, but I thought it was best not to add anything for the Thai curry we were making. In the end, that’s all they let me ‘do’ but then they took over and did it their way anyway. It was an overpowering taste that I still remember now.) How do I tell her that I feel the sting of every time I was misgendered, every time I was asked why I don’t use ‘they/them’ pronouns if I’m non-binary after all. How do I say that I remember your gaze when you doubted my expertise over my own experiences. How do I tell her that I remember every single time she had an opportunity to stand up for me, but didn’t? She is the last line, the last connection I have to that group. I already explicitly cut ties with one, and left the other a package of goods I collected on my vacations for her but never had the chance to hand over with no letter, no card, no regards.
I’m sure if these folks have such a tie to their memories with others, they would have memories of the same pained feelings with me as the perpetrator. I don’t know what to do about that. I guess I never gave them the chance back then to come correct. They didn’t feel like a safe space for me. I could talk about Saturn in my 7H here per sidereal calculations, but it’s co-present with the Sun and Mercury. What a joke to have so many of my self-definitions tied in with other people and also display so much restraint.
Sometimes it’s easier to start over because you have all the skills you wish you had back then to stand up for yourself when you were being slighted. You can set the new boundaries of how you expect to be treated in working relationship without much fuss or ado. It sounds attractive. Maybe you’re not actively being slighted anymore, but it still stings to have those old wounds unaddressed and unresolved with the one who poured salt in them by your side. Could I muster an apology myself? Let’s see what our protagonist decides to do.
A lot of you may not know this about me, but I am actually a male history bachelor’s of science with a focus in ‘male-derived humor’.
Today, I’d like to feature “big chungus”, a too too obvious oxymoron co-opted from non-binary fat fem originator Jim Stephanie Sterling’s modest ‘chungus’. “Big chungus” ‘chungus’ and all of its variations are most commonly used by scrawny heteroflexible men who spend their down time† scouring Reddit for free nudes, whenever they want to feel the sensation of a dick in their mouth without triggering their gag reflex.
† Up-time is exclusive to semen retention that requires full uninterrupted focus on basketball rosters with some give for Dwight Howard draft pick.
It is their secret clubhouse language to signify to another initiated scrawny but boneless male† that they have a significant ‘chungus’ available within reach to widen the jaw and correct any structural irregularities from incidental mouth breathing without risk of tonsil irritation.
((Interestingly, the first usage of ‘chungus’ never bore any resemblance to external facing appendages but that of a chunky anus.))
The tonsils must be kept intact at all times (figure 2 for further detail). This is because men are eugenicists. That’s correct – they social engineer alleles to maximize abuse apologia quotient and maintain their frequencies in any given population though their long-time passions‡, phrenology and stoicism.
† This sometimes interjection sometimes qualifier everytime all-purpose seasoning is not exclusive to the speech of boneless males; however, the ‘chungus’ canon is steeped in fat antagonism. Fat men will propagate ‘big chungus’ at their expense in favor of tradition. Men love tradition (“This is about legacy. I will not let myself be cursed by my recessive memes”). They continue [their own] tradition.
‡ Not to be confused with a hobby, but when men refer to ‘hobbies’, this is what they mean.
That’s all for now! Love you.
I have a couple drafts in progress. One is somewhat satirical, and another is a brief overview and my initial thoughts of the media I consumed this past week. I realized I made the rash n00b mistake of hosting this domain on WordPress.com instead of WordPress.org. I will try to do the transition while I can still get a refund within the thirty days, and there is apparently a popular site that offers to do the migration for you for free as long as you purchase a host domain like Bluehost through an affiliated link? The site is wpbeginner. I am a little sus, but my preliminary research says it’s okay. I am very hesitant to learn any web skills for some.. many reason even if it makes my life more convenient. I can’t ask my go-to website person cuz she just delivered a freakin’ baby. She had nothing to do with the set-up of this blog💕but I am sitting on another domain for my pottery business that I never formally launched. Wonder if I can use that host and keep this name. 😐
I played with the layout a bit on Sunday and added this shitty Sky: Children of the Light slideshow to my footer, but that’s a placeholder of possibility for me. I really wish I could have seen the website I designed for Pots actualized. I don’t make pots anymore. Not since the lockdowns began. I know it will be a good opportunity for me to continue while I am in Japan, but I am not sure with my new job if I will manage to make the time. It’s not even about the time anymore. I don’t have a limitless supply of energy. It’s really physically taxing on the body. I thought I could maintain many pursuits at once as long I kept at them consistently day after day, thirty minutes to an hour at a time would suffice. That might work for music, but I don’t know how well that works for pottery. Sometimes you can’t leave that quickly. You have to clean up. Many steps in the process are time-sensitive: spraying the pot, trimming the pot, glazing the pot, firing the pot, picking up your reclaim from the plaster board before you get yelled at. I would be in the studio from night to morning at times.
I stopped right about when I was finding my voice, my own personal style. It was really only beginning from there. I imagine it would be like riding a bicycle, but a little more time consuming to get back onto the paved road. I get scared when I think about how I probably had a bunch of micro sprains in my wrist from wedging clay. I realized the extent of the injury when I started drumming. My teacher pointed out (maybe with less slurs) that I had a lame right hand. I am actually right handed, but I was convinced when I first started drumming that I was a left hand lead. I think this could be attributed to the injury; I can’t say for sure. Eventually, I think drumming might have helped alleviate some of the injury funny enough and my right wrist caught up. It feels much stronger than it used to – stick control and all.
Everytime I, a Luddite, write into the digital ether, I feel how momentous and how important it is. I really need a record like this of my own history. I can’t say why other than I am self-important, but I know it will have so much affect outside of myself and who I am. Who I am and my exploration of it is part of the unravelling of the quilt that put us on opposing squares. Is that an astrology joke.
Uuuuuuuauauahhhhhhh can barely open my eyes.
I have not yet told the story, but I was pretty severely ghosted mostly out of the blue last year by who I then had considered to be my best friend. We would contact each other throughout the day for months, and I think if memory serves me right.. talk for hours at a time, especially in the beginning, but the contact leading up to the ghost was getting sparse. I guess in retrospect it was more one-sided than I thought it was. I think I was the one constantly brimming with anticipation to spend time together, and invested in our relationship, friendship or otherwise, progression. I had what I felt was a reciprocated crush at first that turned into a fixation because well, with an Aries Venus… the chase… would be both the most exhilarating and excruciating thing, the more unattainable the better. I got to experience what I set my eyes on from the get, and it wasn’t that satisfying. It was fun, but only a raunchy, mostly questionable gossip story of my ‘younger days’ would come out of it and no real satisfaction. Maybe I wanted a consolation prize for the residual shame I felt. Maybe there was enough distance to yearn – yesterday, liminal; today, limerence. The weather for it was great. I would stay in that state for much longer if it wasn’t so abruptly and inexplicably dissolved. The fall out was not all cute. I lost my vice, my consolation that all was right with my love life, therefore the world. Should I be thankful? I never anticipated wanting more than what I did, but that’s what happened the last time around too. The heart of the matter is much simpler yet contentious. I didn’t like hearing “no”. Instead I heard “not now”. What do you mean you’re not in love with me? It doesn’t matter as long as I can maintain that romance in my head. You, yes you, you’re perfect. Still… ow. what was all that for? I did want to believe there was enough of a genuine connection to at least say goodbye.
So my dream last night was of the ghost. I had put signs up in the city on park benches overlooking the beach of how terrible this guy is and he bicycles past it as I was updating the sign. I sat on an opposing bench and put my feet up to cover it up. His bandmate was there who seemed to also have a one-sided crush. They sat on both sides of me. I was telling her how cruel he was and she agreed with me casually. Somehow, Taiwan came up as a topic and I remember the ghost mentioning he was free to go there next untethered as he was, despite seemingly being in an active engagement with the free spirited person on my left. She was nice. He said all this with his feet in the sand and water. Then I’ll never forget, I saw what I thought was a baguette end sticking out a paper bag but was discretion advised hairless newborn puppies buried in the sand. A larger dog had birthed many puppies, some passed, others latched onto their parent. I did not think the dogs that were shallowly buried were totally dead by then. I wanted to save them but it erupted into a heated discussion with the stranger responsible. There must be a better way. Any way.
There were other parts of my dream that included my dad drinking not remembering when I had a flight (can imagine the incoherence but couldn’t imagine him unreliable in this regard), a student winning a ‘study’ scholarship to study in a luxurious home filled with amenities like…. Hot cocoa powder and a measuring cup. The bag of citrus was almost all spoilt too. Empty, vast space. It reminds me of how even the rich will eventually feel the effects of their careless disregard for their surroundings. Celebrities… They’re just like us. Sometimes they too get handed a moldy tangerine on their private flight.