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I'm A Virgo; Cloud Atlas; Setting Intentions
Oh my, what a week it's been.
The three-day weekend was nice and restful! On Saturday we finished up "I'm A Virgo" with our regular TV-watching crew. The ending was a little underwhelming but it also "felt" right if that makes sense. The Oakland crew is growing into their nascent powers, and I like that the season as a whole felt like characters figuring out the power they have and how best to use it. The very last shot contained a stinger for season 2 I'm not sure we're going to get, so that's disappointing. Still, overall I highly recommend it. Boots Riley has a singular vision that always gives you a lot to think about!
On Sunday, E. came over for our long-awaited hangout day. We had a lunch of box mac and cheese, sloppy joe, and lemon bars. The sloppy joe was soooo simple, it's crazy I haven't been making this the whole time! Basically just brown ground beef with a bunch of ketchup, a little bit of brown sugar, mustard, and spices; add some green pepper and onion if you want. Serve on toasted buns. The whole thing couldn't have taken more than ten minutes to put together. This is a recipe I'll keep in my back pocket for a Kashra weekend, though I'll have to try it with ground turkey for the folks that don't eat beef.
The lemon bars were the most difficult thing, and even they weren't TOO hard. The shortbread crust was surprisingly easy to make, and once I finished with the lemon zest the filling wasn't too bad either. The crust feels a *little* thick compared to the rest of the dessert, and the filling sometimes taste a little watery. I'm not sure if that's the lemon juice or a pocket of filling that wasn't incorporated well or what. Still, it's a solid B for the dessert. The recipe is good, and it wasn't too hard to make, but I'd like to change a few things for the next iteration.
We watched the final Starkid musical for the first bit of our double-feature, called "Nerdy Prudes Must Die". Starkid is this theatre troupe(?) that puts on crowd-funded Halloween-themed musicals, each based in a town called Hatchetfield. The first one is "The Guy Who Doesn't Like Musicals", and I think it might be the best one. "Black Friday" is the second, and while it's very good it also feels like the least focused. "Nerdy Prudes Must Die" is a really fun slasher homage that finds you rooting for some unsympathetic people pretty often. I have to admit, I was impressed by that. Honestly not a bad trilogy, especially if you're a hard-core theatre kid.
I showed him "Cloud Atlas" for the second part of the double-feature, and I'm not sure he liked it. I warned him ahead of time about the "yellowface" bits of Neo Seoul, and he was kind enough to give it a go. He talked about how no one would have tried to do this with blackface no matter their intentions, and I have to agree. Even though the Wachowskis were well-meaning with the gambit, it does highlight how Asians are often forced to swallow slights that Black Americans have shouted down.
That makes me think about where we stand with racism as a country, and should have been a clue that the folks who claim to "get it" really don't. The problem with blackface isn't just that Black Americans will shout you down for using it; it's that trying to imitate the lived experience of another culture always opens you up to perpetuating harmful stereotypes or flattening a meaningful feature into a simple affectation or personality quirk. And that's not OK no matter which race you're imitating. E. brought up a very good point that there was no need for the actors dressed up as Korean to be so, especially since the setting is that of a dystopian one-world government. If Unanimity really does aim to gather the collective human experience under its boot, why wouldn't people of all races be comfortably represented there? It's a stumble that, I think, will age poorly as time goes on. And that forces me to rethink Cloud Atlas as a whole. As much as I love that movie, it's hard to recommend without taking time to discuss that big blind spot.
Monday was a bit of a rush job. I stayed up late playing Final Fantasy XIV so I slept in late. That didn't give me a lot of time to clean up from hosting the day before, but I did what I could in time for two more friends -- R&J. They live practically across the street from us but we barely interact for a few different reasons, but I thought it would be nice to have them over, get a bit of lunch, and play some Magic: the Gathering. They're both giant nerds about it and have been itching for someone to play with in the Bay area. They're also both very very cool guys that I really enjoy hanging out with, but they clash a little bit with the husboo (well, R does anyway) and K is intimidated by them. I think R's reputation as a judg-y sort hurts my ability to absorb them into our friend group, but I'll keep trying.
Overall this week will be...kinda busy, but not overwhelmingly so. I'm working on being present and intentional with my time so it feels like I'm wasting less of it through the day. I'd also like to restart setting down my intention for the day, so I train myself to imagine what a successfully productive day looks like.
Today I'd like to sort out my finances for the rest of the month. I got paid on Friday, so I'll need to finalize my budget, pay my bills, and look at what will be leftover for the last little bit. I'd like to build the habit of eating in for breakfast and lunch, so figuring out how to stock my fridge and pantry for that would be nice. I'd also like to make some progress with the 2nd Wolftown novel; we critiqued it last night in the Unreliable Narrators group even though I hadn't finished it. I'd love to have it done this week so I can give Tim some written, thoughtful notes.
After work it's gym and then Kobold game, so practically no time this evening until bed. Anything for cleaning the burrow will have to wait until tomorrow, but I can carve out some time to write for "Swiftie's Intergalactic" and the D&D game. Not much...but some.
The three-day weekend was nice and restful! On Saturday we finished up "I'm A Virgo" with our regular TV-watching crew. The ending was a little underwhelming but it also "felt" right if that makes sense. The Oakland crew is growing into their nascent powers, and I like that the season as a whole felt like characters figuring out the power they have and how best to use it. The very last shot contained a stinger for season 2 I'm not sure we're going to get, so that's disappointing. Still, overall I highly recommend it. Boots Riley has a singular vision that always gives you a lot to think about!
On Sunday, E. came over for our long-awaited hangout day. We had a lunch of box mac and cheese, sloppy joe, and lemon bars. The sloppy joe was soooo simple, it's crazy I haven't been making this the whole time! Basically just brown ground beef with a bunch of ketchup, a little bit of brown sugar, mustard, and spices; add some green pepper and onion if you want. Serve on toasted buns. The whole thing couldn't have taken more than ten minutes to put together. This is a recipe I'll keep in my back pocket for a Kashra weekend, though I'll have to try it with ground turkey for the folks that don't eat beef.
The lemon bars were the most difficult thing, and even they weren't TOO hard. The shortbread crust was surprisingly easy to make, and once I finished with the lemon zest the filling wasn't too bad either. The crust feels a *little* thick compared to the rest of the dessert, and the filling sometimes taste a little watery. I'm not sure if that's the lemon juice or a pocket of filling that wasn't incorporated well or what. Still, it's a solid B for the dessert. The recipe is good, and it wasn't too hard to make, but I'd like to change a few things for the next iteration.
We watched the final Starkid musical for the first bit of our double-feature, called "Nerdy Prudes Must Die". Starkid is this theatre troupe(?) that puts on crowd-funded Halloween-themed musicals, each based in a town called Hatchetfield. The first one is "The Guy Who Doesn't Like Musicals", and I think it might be the best one. "Black Friday" is the second, and while it's very good it also feels like the least focused. "Nerdy Prudes Must Die" is a really fun slasher homage that finds you rooting for some unsympathetic people pretty often. I have to admit, I was impressed by that. Honestly not a bad trilogy, especially if you're a hard-core theatre kid.
I showed him "Cloud Atlas" for the second part of the double-feature, and I'm not sure he liked it. I warned him ahead of time about the "yellowface" bits of Neo Seoul, and he was kind enough to give it a go. He talked about how no one would have tried to do this with blackface no matter their intentions, and I have to agree. Even though the Wachowskis were well-meaning with the gambit, it does highlight how Asians are often forced to swallow slights that Black Americans have shouted down.
That makes me think about where we stand with racism as a country, and should have been a clue that the folks who claim to "get it" really don't. The problem with blackface isn't just that Black Americans will shout you down for using it; it's that trying to imitate the lived experience of another culture always opens you up to perpetuating harmful stereotypes or flattening a meaningful feature into a simple affectation or personality quirk. And that's not OK no matter which race you're imitating. E. brought up a very good point that there was no need for the actors dressed up as Korean to be so, especially since the setting is that of a dystopian one-world government. If Unanimity really does aim to gather the collective human experience under its boot, why wouldn't people of all races be comfortably represented there? It's a stumble that, I think, will age poorly as time goes on. And that forces me to rethink Cloud Atlas as a whole. As much as I love that movie, it's hard to recommend without taking time to discuss that big blind spot.
Monday was a bit of a rush job. I stayed up late playing Final Fantasy XIV so I slept in late. That didn't give me a lot of time to clean up from hosting the day before, but I did what I could in time for two more friends -- R&J. They live practically across the street from us but we barely interact for a few different reasons, but I thought it would be nice to have them over, get a bit of lunch, and play some Magic: the Gathering. They're both giant nerds about it and have been itching for someone to play with in the Bay area. They're also both very very cool guys that I really enjoy hanging out with, but they clash a little bit with the husboo (well, R does anyway) and K is intimidated by them. I think R's reputation as a judg-y sort hurts my ability to absorb them into our friend group, but I'll keep trying.
Overall this week will be...kinda busy, but not overwhelmingly so. I'm working on being present and intentional with my time so it feels like I'm wasting less of it through the day. I'd also like to restart setting down my intention for the day, so I train myself to imagine what a successfully productive day looks like.
Today I'd like to sort out my finances for the rest of the month. I got paid on Friday, so I'll need to finalize my budget, pay my bills, and look at what will be leftover for the last little bit. I'd like to build the habit of eating in for breakfast and lunch, so figuring out how to stock my fridge and pantry for that would be nice. I'd also like to make some progress with the 2nd Wolftown novel; we critiqued it last night in the Unreliable Narrators group even though I hadn't finished it. I'd love to have it done this week so I can give Tim some written, thoughtful notes.
After work it's gym and then Kobold game, so practically no time this evening until bed. Anything for cleaning the burrow will have to wait until tomorrow, but I can carve out some time to write for "Swiftie's Intergalactic" and the D&D game. Not much...but some.