1/7/2021: Black bean tacos + guac + watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (wanted something mindless to escape current reality to watch but forgot about the disturbing rape scene which no 1 needs to watch x2).

1/8/2021: Already broke 2 of our resolutions... we found some chicken shumai deep in our freezer so had those w/ tempeh, mushrooms + veggies in a chili/peanut/tamarind sauce over rice. We still have some chicken broth too so either way our birdless 2021 was ruined, but we won't buy anymore chicken going forward. We also had a beer w/ our meal since it goes so well w/ Asian food (+ we'd already broken 1 resolution). Then we had a bottle of beaujolais cuz we'd already broken our dry spell + to celebrate Georgia's result + Biden's confirmation. Watched Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1st time rewatching since the 80s)... what's with these movies about Stockholm-syndromesque relationships between British prisoners of war + their Japanese captors? Like Bridge Over River Kwai (which we also rewatched recently) but focuses more on the homoerotic undertones of dominance/submission. Bowie + Ryuichi Sakamoto are not great actors but sure are easy on the eyes + incredible that Tom Conti doesn't speak a word of Japanese, he had us convinced. Sakamoto also did the soundtrack (which is great), guess that was the condition, he would only act in it if he could do the music.

1/9/2021: Also broke our intermittent fasting this morning + don't think we'll be doing it anymore, we're not losing weight + it seems to make our Ménière's worse. Gonna focus more on moderation, eating more often in smaller portions. The problem w/ fasting is u get really hungry + overindulge when u do eat + same goes w/ drinking, when u don't drink + then let yourself drink u tend to overcompensate as a reward mechanism. 1 or 2 drinks seems to be good for the digestion + for balancing out dinner, that's usually when we feel + sleep best.

Started working on a new book a few days ago. Originally we were just gonna publish this book of art by our friend but he only has around 50 of them in this series (not enough for a perfect-bound book) + they're these smeary screen prints that remind us of Gerhard Richter + also like Rorschach ink blots that seam to invite associative text. He had 52 of them actually (made during covid self-isolation) + it occurred to us we had ~50 dreams in 2020 so we're pairing them up w/ his images, both in chronological order as a sort of record of what covid, Drumpf + all this other craziness has done to our collective unconscious in 2020. Some of the dreams don't need much alteration, others we have to flesh out/massage to match the images + try to create an overarching narriverative, a sequel of sorts to Poste Restante. Ain't sure yet what we'll call it, it started out as Drips of Consciousness (when he called them) then became Residual Drips of a Smear Campaign + the current thinking is Residue or Residues or maybe Richter or Rorschach Residues. Authored by "MM/DD/2020".

1 of the Residues (this 1 hangs on our living room wall)

We're reading John the Posthumous by Jason Schwartz cuz every 1 talks about how great he is (probly just cuz Lish said so), but like when we tried to read him before, we just don't get it... the language is fine (if not a bit precious + dated), but whatever he's writing about is plain boring w/ way too many religious undertones (maybe if you're a buybull-thumper it'd mean more). We're all about honing craft but not at the expense of content. We also started to read When Elephants Weep by Jeffrey Moussaaieff Masson, which sounds interesting (about the emotional lives of animals) it just seems full of the usual anecdotes we've already heard + their doesn't seem to be much structure to the book, just rambling sentiments. Also started to read Zen Enlightenment by Heinrich Dumoulin but it's more of this cursory historical overview of Zen buddhism written by a white guy. Both the later are books found in book boxes, the Schwartz book we got straight from O/R books.