A new work process.

My one like 12,000-word paper was burning me out, since I had a full draft, but I then had to go back and densely add in all of these footnotes combining all of these different areas of scholarship and all of these books and articles in all of these different languages that I needed to go back and re-consult.

Meanwhile, I had a big list of potential blogposts and articles that were driving me crazy since I had the major ideas and various subpoints outlined in my notebooks, but I was making no progress on them at all beyond having those outlines.

So, for a like a week-and-a-half, I was just like "Fuck it," and I just used my weekly writing hours to go and pound out rough drafts for my long list of potential projects, since that's the writing that I felt like doing, and if I did that, I could then keep them in a folder to tidy up and footnote later.

 And, that writing went quickly, which was very, very nice.

But, I now have like 30,000 words of draft that need various levels of footnoting.

Erp!

Protein developments:

1) The bottom of my second bulk-bag of protein mixes a lot easier than the protein from the first bag, or the top half of the second bag. 

Perhaps it dried out, and that leads to easier mixing when I add water?

2) My thighs are getting noticeably thicker, where if I kneel down I can start to feel the back of them hitting my heels like they never did before.

Presumably, this is the same muscle development like you see in high school cross-country teams, where a lot of them look like sticks, and then their thighs are just like big and meaty?

I have been doing a weekly jog for a while now, after all.

Some post-Halloween levity.

So, I was texting with the one (gay) (Colombian) graduate student who I know from around town, and it turns out that he dressed up as Avril Lavigne for Halloween, and he sent me a picture, and it was him in military pants and a white shirt that showed his little belly and a dark tie with a Canadian flag pinned on it, all in addition to a long dark wig and darker eye shadow.

Basically, he had seen a picture of that costume somewhere on social media, and when he was shopping at Goodwill for potential costumes, he came across all the necessary ingredients, and he decided to go for it.

It was quite something -- he actually took a picture of him without the wig, and he said he was Green Day-era emo punk, and believe it or not, he actually pulled that look off quite well -- but overall, it really did remind me of a social media feed pic put out by a trans woman, particularly because it was like he had a big poor-quality flopped-on wig where maybe he was in women's clothes, but overall he was still quite visibly male.

So, I took his picture of him as Avril Lavigne, quick-edited it on my phone, and sent it back to him with the overlaid caption -

Girl Dick Adventures

FOLLOW MY INSTA

- to which he wasn't sure at first if I had posted him online as a prank, but I assured him that I hadn't, and I then sent him another edited version of his trans-like photo that said -  

Daddy, you know there could be a surprise for you in my panties... ♥😘

 - to which he was like -

Hahaha sure 

- and lastly I sent him one final version of the edited photo that said - 

Ask me about

Coding

South American fauna

The beauty of a femme top

Python Python Python!!!!! ♥♥🌈😘

-  about which he hasn't been checking his WhatsApp messages lately (he starts suddenly flaking like that a lot), and so I have no idea about his response, at all.

A recent interaction with a(n Irishman)...

...when I sent to an old (Irish) friend an article about a (British) guy who got hospitalized from eating too many Haribo coke bottles, along with this comment --

British people aren't always the brightest...

- to which he replied -

 lol. Funny name though.

- which made me revisit the article and realize that the guy's name is Nathan Rimmington, which led me to reply -

I didn't even notice that lololololol

- and a bit later -

If you etymologize it, at some point it was Rimming Town

 I would think

- to which he replied -

 Even better, lol

- to which I replied -

His mother accidentally consuming fecal matter when licking hairy assholes probably led to his lack of mental capacity... Another Rimmington Brit doomed in utero.

- to which he responded with a laughing emoji, and then we never talked about that topic ever again.  

Historic and present problems of 2 foreigners:

1) The other week at work at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, I mentioned ping-pong, and my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker told me this long story about the first time that she was in the U.S., when someone mentioned "paintball" to her, she was like, "Ping-pong?", and they were like, "No, paintball," and she was like, "Ping-pong?", and they kept going back and forth like that, because she really couldn't understand what they were saying.

But, when she mentioned that confusion, you could totally see how it could happen, linguistically -- the /t/ in "paintball" surfaces as a glottal stop and so might be invisible to her, and its /l/ is darked and backed like a /w/ and so is in the same articulatory place as the "ng" of "ping-pong."

So, they really could easily sound alike to someone, and I get it.

2) My one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM post-doc) friend was saying that he'd like to stay at the local college in town for another year, but it all depends on how much his coordinating advisor likes the results of his research.

"Maybe you should suck his cock," I was like.

"Yes," he was like, thoughtfully, in that cat-like voice that (Brazilians) have. "I would do this."

A reflection on some younger (trans-identified) people.

Something I've noticed about some younger (trans-identified) people -- usually the early college ones, and a bit into their early 20s, and I'm talking especially about the (fatter) (neurodivergent) ones, not the (gay) ones who got tracked into that because of overly-conservative or overly-credulous, overly-supportive liberal parents -- is how much they like dressing up outside of social norms.

There's at least 2 resonant parts of (gay) culture that feeds into that -- some Judith Butler-derived something-or-another about queering gender norms, and also the "larger than life" style-fest of drag.

Somehow, though, when they do it, it feels like stunted development, where they dye their hair blue and it's like Halloween for them, but they can pretend it's also somehow related to their sexuality, even as that behavior serves as a substitute for actual sexual things.

It's all just very odd. 

Addendum.

In the crime blotter of the local paper a few months ago, I saw a notice that police were dispatched mid-morning to an eldercare facility, because a staff member beat someone in the memory care unit.

Why would you put yourself into staffing situations like that?

That particular place is notorious in the area and I never even considered applying there when I first moved to the one (college town) that I now live in, but even the one resthome in the city that I used to live in is having a hard time attracting and retaining quality staff, I heard, where all the new ones come, don't do a good job, and just leave, and it's like that over and over and over again.

Just a destabilized sector, because of wage growth from the bottom.