1/1/2021> Welcome to 2021, finally 2020 is behind us... + welcome to the jungle, the 1st post of our Life in the Blog of Ghosts. We decided to shed the journihilistic Daily Noose name cuz hopefully our gloom + doom Drumpfian fake news dayzzz are over + also for the reasons mentioned in our (gasp!) about page. Dare we say we may be more coherent going farword? We created a new /21/ folder + are putting 2020 in the archives. This year we aim to finish filling in the gaps (1997–2003) in archiving our entire life online on this Blog of Ghosts, this BoG.

We don't expect much to change overnight in 2021, we'll likely remain in homebound self-isolation at least for the 1st ½ of 2020. We're planning on going to Bologna in June but who knows if that will get postponed again, hard to predict. Yesterday our bedder-½ reminded us how instead of resolutions we used to make predictions + seal them in an envelope (before Inurnet) + then the following year on New Year's Eve we'd open each other's envelopes to see how on- or off-base we were, or how different our lives were turning out than what we expected/predicted. We could do that here but if some crazy prediction came true folks would think we cheated + changed it to make it look like we was psychic (tho the wayback machine might keep a record). Maybe we're just more bogged down by our past then we was before... maybe that's true in general, as u get over 50 u halve more time behind u then in front of u, the glass is ½-full rather than ½-empty. In The Order of Time (which we talked about some in the last post) Carlo Rovelli talks about how there is no present, just the past + the future + the present is just the intersection of the past + future w/ no duration. Time is not linear but more like a cone + since time is relative we're all like dogs fumbling around w/those lampshades on, each in their own little worlds. As we sang in "A Hued Grief":

a walled garden approach
lampshade pets see onely blue sky
necks severed clean from bodily function
the junction of rivers + land riversed

Which gets to—if not resolution or prediction—a 1st theme for 2021, rivers... the next Sound Furies album will be about rivers + dadastreams + thriver meme (the new book we'll be cerealizing online) is also a sorta dadastream, or at least it starts w/ a river. We've even started a playlist to inspire us (tho this may change as the year progresses):

More than just watery rivers, we resolve to be more fluid in 2021, to go w/ the flow, not to resist the tides of time but become 1 w/ the watercourse way.

We ate our last bird on xmas eve, a chicken jerked out on the grill in sub-freezing temperatures. While we're still milking every bit we can from the bones (we got 3 quarts of broth in the freezer) we won't buy any chicken going forward + will only consume water-based animals, eggs + dairy, a lacto-ovo-pescatarian like we was the 1st decade of our adult life. As usual, we can afford to shed 5-10 pounds (currently our fluctuates between 166-171... we want to get this to be more steadily below 160). We're not gonna drink the entire month of January + after that will try to stick to 1-2 drinks 1-2 times a week. We're gonna eat no sugar (at least in January) + generally less salt + sugar + just be moderate in everything. Hopefully this will keep our mineareye's d-zzz @ bay + enable us to sleep bedder. Once a week we resolve to cook something we ain't ever cooked before, to break up the monotony of another year eating @ home. Yesterday we made paella for the 1st time + also cooked lobster for the 1st time (they were on special + we was reading how there's a surplus since no 1's eating them in restraunts, otherwise we don't like cooking or eating them just cuz lobsters seem of a higher order). We didn't boil them alive, we just got lobster tails. The paella we made in our dutch oven, cooking the rice (w/ garlic, onions, etc.) w/ chicken broth + coconut milk (leftover from last week), w/ turmeric, paprika + thai spices so not really a paella (no saffron). We put the lobster tails + some asparagus in for the last 15 minutes + viola...

Served w/ a salad w/ diakon radishes + grated celeriac (the 1st time we've used celeriac... it came in our CSA box). Our new homebound reality is all about good food, exercise, books, music + movies. We talk plenty about books + music on 5cense-cum-The Daily Noose-cum-Life in the Blog of Ghosts, but we decided going forward into 2021 we're gonna try to keep track of the movies we watch cuz it's such a big part of what we do now... in lieu of travelling, eating out + all the regular things we all used to do pre-2020 we can just vicariously live life thru film. So we've created this viewing log that also includes our favorite films + shows + as we see films (or at least noteworthy 1s) we'll keep adding to this list, least we forget about them. The other day we was thinking about double feature permutations (these days we often watch more than 1 a night), like lots of people have seen Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, but how many people have seen it after watching L'invenzione di Morel (1974)? Which is what we did 2 or 3 nights ago + the night before that we watched Polanski's The Tenant followed by Wild Things. Last night we more predictably rewatched parts I + II of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, drank our last 2 bottles of cava + actually stayed up past midnight to ring in the new year.

scene from our last walk of 2020