vital functions
May. 5th, 2019 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. More slow progress on Tales from the Inner City, and dipping in and out of recessional's your blue-eyed boys (because I needed the reminder that it's okay to be me, which ybeb does a really thorough job of).
Film/TV. Dosage V, Rodden and Meltdown: oh no Tommy's little FACE. He so BADLY wants her to DO THIS. Aaaaaaaah. Oh no her face when she sends it. (Gosh it is... a thing, knowing what all else was going on in their lives at the time.)
And we finished Leverage! I... really want to care about them, but it just didn't quite gel for me. (Happy to discuss this in more detail in comments! Do not actually want to squee-harsh, though.)
Music. I got home from Cornwall to discover that Adam had pre-ordered hurts 2b human (P!nk) for me, after we'd spent a little time the week beforehand watching music videos (I particularly love what she's doing with Walk Me Home). I love the way it's a concept album about Being P!nk; I love the way it threads a narrative with references and allusions that don't prevent the tracks standing alone; I really want her to be okay. Happy in particular is written Specifically For Me, obviously.
Which has also brought to mind the part wheresciatrix has been talking recently about "ASMR", which is apparently a thing now. Like sciatrix, that sensation (or at least the sensation I think is being described) is one that's absolutely just... been part of my life for as long as I can remember, and that unlike the various videos set up to provoke it is... mostly associated with what I'd loosely classify as religious experiences, which sometimes show up in connection with music, and indeed did with part of this album.
(Relatedly: I love Pink Floyd. I have a... lot of emotional response absolutely hardwired to Pink Floyd, such that I really can't actually usefully listen to it while attempting to do anything else, because it just entirely hijacks my brain. Which means that of all the music I've played to Adam, Floyd isn't yet on the list, because I want to be lying on the ground in the dark and just Having An Experience, where most of the introducing-Adam-to-music I've done has been in the general spirit of putting on background music, or playing him a couple of tracks, and I just can't do that with Floyd: it's got to be the whole album, start to finish, without distractions, or my emotions and thought processes end up upended across the floor and it takes me hours and a sleep reboot to properly recombobulate them.)
Culinary adventures. I went to a knife skills workshop!
Additional notable cooking: baby's first attempt at home-made refried beans, because (1) I had a burrito craving, and (2) I realised that the Instant Pot made this actually fairly trivially achievable. I poked around the internet a bit and found some advice, and also I decided to have a go at sweetcorn salsa.
Ingredients
500g pinto beans
1 shallot
Some Garlic
a bay leaf
some oregano
some cumin
some chipotle paste
1l vegetable stock
500ml water
salt (to add at the end)
Method
Stick all of the above in the Instant Pot, set it to 30 minutes of Cooking A Bean, and leave it to decompress under its own steam. (As it were.) Then: fry up an onion and some garlic, dump in the beans, and mash them a little. Once they've heated through some and combined their flavours, add salt and mash. Optionally additionally add lime juice.
These were better after they'd sat for a day.
Sweetcorn salsa
Make a tomato-based salsa (onion/shallot, garlic, tomato, herbs to taste, oil and lime juice and seasoning to taste, chilli to taste) and... add a tin of sweetcorn. And also some cubed avocado, if you're feeling super enthusiastic.
I absolutely spent the train ride back up from the mouldering ancestral pile looking up recipes instead of wrangling my to-do list, but there we go.
In summary, I had a craving for burritos that I didn't have to pay someone for, and now I've got proof-of-concept for at-home burritos, and my only sense of mild impending peril is regarding the risk that I'll start actually making tortillas at home. ("We might need a bigger crêpe pan," I said to Adam, mournfully.sebastienne apparently thinks this is incredibly on-brand for me.
Final culinary-adventure-in-potentia: I'm tentatively considering having a go at panettone, and I tracked down (surprisingly easily) wahaca's black bean soup recipe, which I am excited about because I Particularly Enjoyed That. And, again, Instant Pot = I'm actually willing to cook dried beans.
Notable wildlife. First swallow! Also a splendid red kite at rest on the power lines on the way up to Oxford on Sunday.
Notable Pokémon. My very first Mesprit raid had 100% stats, and I actually caught it, which... WELP. No new shinies this week (!), but A indulged me to the tune of spending a lot of yesterday evening Trading Pokémon, which (1) got me a lot more Pokébox space (I'd been saving a bunch of things for him, either because they were from Far Away or because they were potentially interesting), and (2) several Lucky Pokémon. I am delighted about the Togepi and the Piplup; I'm rather more dubious about the Primeape and the Delcatty.
recessional's your blue-eyed boys (because I needed the reminder that it's okay to be me, which ybeb does a really thorough job of).Film/TV. Dosage V, Rodden and Meltdown: oh no Tommy's little FACE. He so BADLY wants her to DO THIS. Aaaaaaaah. Oh no her face when she sends it. (Gosh it is... a thing, knowing what all else was going on in their lives at the time.)
And we finished Leverage! I... really want to care about them, but it just didn't quite gel for me. (Happy to discuss this in more detail in comments! Do not actually want to squee-harsh, though.)
Music. I got home from Cornwall to discover that Adam had pre-ordered hurts 2b human (P!nk) for me, after we'd spent a little time the week beforehand watching music videos (I particularly love what she's doing with Walk Me Home). I love the way it's a concept album about Being P!nk; I love the way it threads a narrative with references and allusions that don't prevent the tracks standing alone; I really want her to be okay. Happy in particular is written Specifically For Me, obviously.
Which has also brought to mind the part where
sciatrix has been talking recently about "ASMR", which is apparently a thing now. Like sciatrix, that sensation (or at least the sensation I think is being described) is one that's absolutely just... been part of my life for as long as I can remember, and that unlike the various videos set up to provoke it is... mostly associated with what I'd loosely classify as religious experiences, which sometimes show up in connection with music, and indeed did with part of this album.(Relatedly: I love Pink Floyd. I have a... lot of emotional response absolutely hardwired to Pink Floyd, such that I really can't actually usefully listen to it while attempting to do anything else, because it just entirely hijacks my brain. Which means that of all the music I've played to Adam, Floyd isn't yet on the list, because I want to be lying on the ground in the dark and just Having An Experience, where most of the introducing-Adam-to-music I've done has been in the general spirit of putting on background music, or playing him a couple of tracks, and I just can't do that with Floyd: it's got to be the whole album, start to finish, without distractions, or my emotions and thought processes end up upended across the floor and it takes me hours and a sleep reboot to properly recombobulate them.)
Culinary adventures. I went to a knife skills workshop!
Additional notable cooking: baby's first attempt at home-made refried beans, because (1) I had a burrito craving, and (2) I realised that the Instant Pot made this actually fairly trivially achievable. I poked around the internet a bit and found some advice, and also I decided to have a go at sweetcorn salsa.
Ingredients
500g pinto beans
1 shallot
Some Garlic
a bay leaf
some oregano
some cumin
some chipotle paste
1l vegetable stock
500ml water
salt (to add at the end)
Method
Stick all of the above in the Instant Pot, set it to 30 minutes of Cooking A Bean, and leave it to decompress under its own steam. (As it were.) Then: fry up an onion and some garlic, dump in the beans, and mash them a little. Once they've heated through some and combined their flavours, add salt and mash. Optionally additionally add lime juice.
These were better after they'd sat for a day.
Sweetcorn salsa
Make a tomato-based salsa (onion/shallot, garlic, tomato, herbs to taste, oil and lime juice and seasoning to taste, chilli to taste) and... add a tin of sweetcorn. And also some cubed avocado, if you're feeling super enthusiastic.
I absolutely spent the train ride back up from the mouldering ancestral pile looking up recipes instead of wrangling my to-do list, but there we go.
In summary, I had a craving for burritos that I didn't have to pay someone for, and now I've got proof-of-concept for at-home burritos, and my only sense of mild impending peril is regarding the risk that I'll start actually making tortillas at home. ("We might need a bigger crêpe pan," I said to Adam, mournfully.
sebastienne apparently thinks this is incredibly on-brand for me.Final culinary-adventure-in-potentia: I'm tentatively considering having a go at panettone, and I tracked down (surprisingly easily) wahaca's black bean soup recipe, which I am excited about because I Particularly Enjoyed That. And, again, Instant Pot = I'm actually willing to cook dried beans.
Notable wildlife. First swallow! Also a splendid red kite at rest on the power lines on the way up to Oxford on Sunday.
Notable Pokémon. My very first Mesprit raid had 100% stats, and I actually caught it, which... WELP. No new shinies this week (!), but A indulged me to the tune of spending a lot of yesterday evening Trading Pokémon, which (1) got me a lot more Pokébox space (I'd been saving a bunch of things for him, either because they were from Far Away or because they were potentially interesting), and (2) several Lucky Pokémon. I am delighted about the Togepi and the Piplup; I'm rather more dubious about the Primeape and the Delcatty.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-06 01:02 pm (UTC)That's sort of the depth of total "....I didn't realize that wasn't a thing assumed, interacted with and part of the landscape of life" disconnect. Not in a judgemental way, just in a purely " . . . . yes, and also there is a qualitative thing called 'colour', and it can have a significant impact on how you feel about things."
To the point that I'm . . .a bit? sure? I must still be misunderstanding? But also, apparently not?
two monks invent asmr
Date: 2019-05-06 01:32 pm (UTC)Oh! Okay, I think... so I haven't dug too deeply into ASMR meta, but from what I have read (which tbf was 101 level and at least some of it was written by someone who was lowkey actually addicted, so I might have a biased view) it's more like if they'd discovered that (for them) they could reliably produce a feeling of intense awe/connection/wellbeing when looking at certain shades of the colour green in certain lighting. And had gone into considerable detail about the specific physical sensations with which those emotions manifested. But weren't talking as much about generalising that further to "other colour/lighting combos might produce other sensations" or "maybe this is already a studied phenomenon" or "is this a thing people work on in art school?"
And were explicitly not interested in exploring "what if we made that feeling the focal point of a whole complex and balanced emotional/aesthetic meal of other feelings and sensations instead of slamming back that same flavour over and over again?"
So I think you're probably not misunderstanding so much as focusing on the forest and also not as interested in the specific trees they're interested in.
Re: two monks invent asmr
Date: 2019-05-06 01:36 pm (UTC)Ah! Okay. That would make more sense.
. . . .I mean it also seems extremely . . . wasteful? is that the word? And also has anyone told them that they may in fact be able to get the exact same thing from other things than, well, sounds?
Probably not.
People are very strange. >.>
Re: two monks invent asmr
Date: 2019-05-07 04:28 am (UTC)They worked it out for themselves. I've heard hair-brushing mentioned in particular.
And it's not like everyone who enjoys the thing enjoys only that thing ever. It's like sex or drugs or gaming or perfume or food or fanfic or any other hobby. (I mean both it's like that because it's that category of thing, but also in that it has all the signs of being a fandom itself.)
Some people find one specific niche that they enjoy because it invokes one particular feeling or experience, and then hyperfocus on that thing in their free time and are happy just consuming more iterations of the same ad infinitum. Other people aren't that obsessive but are sometimes in the mood for a particular sensation and if they know where there's a source for Just That Thing, why not go there?
Like... suppose you (generic-you, not you-M.) like vanilla-based perfumes. You like other perfumes too, but sometimes you just feel like vanilla in particular, and there are people who produce one-note vanilla fragrance oils. So you buy some of those and diffuse/wear/smell them when you want some vanilla. And there are other people who only wear vanilla, smell vanilla, want to talk about vanilla. And if you can't relate to that level of obsession, you still might be glad they're doing their thing and maybe hit up their perfume review site if there's a new vanilla-based perfume you're thinking of trying.
Or maybe you're a fanfic reader and your favourite thing is fake dating with mutual pining. And you'll read fake dating without mutual pining, or mutual pining without fake dating, or one-sided pining, or -gasp- other romantic tropes, or established relationships, or even gen... if it's in fandoms you already like, or it's by authors whose writing you like.
But if it's fake dating with mutual pining, it doesn't have to be in one of your fandoms just as long as it hits the right notes and beats. And if you find communities of people specifically working on fake dating with mutual pining and discussing what makes it work and how to make a more satisfying fake dating with mutual pining fic, then that might make you really happy. (Or maybe you might feel weird about it, or indifferent, or embarrassed, or repulsed. But I don't think being happy would be an unexpected response.)
. . . .I mean it also seems extremely . . . wasteful? is that the word?
What are they wasting?
Re: two monks invent asmr
Date: 2019-05-06 02:06 pm (UTC)Thank you lots for doing a bunch of unpacking/explanation having done way more reading than I'd got around to thus far!