A couple of reminders that things are only getting worse.

(1) Recovery time for any aches, pains, or injury just keeps getting longer.

I’ve always had a bit of a bad back. As in it’s OK most of the time but roughly every 18 months it just goes on me for no real reason. I don’t overwork it or do anything to put it out, but it just goes. And by that I mean I can’t get out of bed, or stand up straight if I do get out of bed.

Now in the past, and this has been recurring since I was a kid, these flare-ups have usually only lasted 24 hours. After that I’m on the mend. In just a couple of days I’m pretty much full strength. But my most recent attack lasted a full week. I’m still not 100%.

It’s the same for anything that goes wrong. Any pain you used to go bed with, knowing that it would be fine when you woke up the next morning, now takes days or weeks to get better. I pulled a muscle in my rib area last year and it took three months before I could lift anything.

(2) You can’t see or hear as well.

I’ve always watched movies with subtitles on. I don’t know if that’s so much because my hearing is going though or because of poor sound recording. Only recently, however, I noticed for the first time I was having trouble reading a book with some really small print. Or maybe I just thought it was small.

Because I’m shortsighted I’ve never worn glasses to read, But I find with this book I have to hold it at just the right distance to be able to read it comfortably. This is a bit worrying, as I do have a lot of books with small print (all those Penguin Classics Dickens novels!) and I’m wondering how big an issue this is going to be moving forward. I suppose at some point I’ll be having to get large print editions out of the library to manage.

Saw these neat clouds on my morning walk. Looks like a map of the coast. (You can click on the pic to make it bigger.)

I remember before the COVID-19 pandemic a bag of Doritos never cost above $3. On sale you could get them for $1.50 or $1.88. But I’m glad to see Wal-Mart is rolling back their prices. Way, way back if this sign is any indication.

Index

Those living in this country know well that Canada’s roads have two seasons: Winter and Under Construction. This doesn’t affect me very much, but as a hardcore flâneur I do get put out by signs like these, all encountered in a single walk downtown I took this week. They put a cramp in my style!

This is an index page for my posts on things I see in my day-to-day life that just don’t add up. See if you can figure them out.

Prequel: (Not) From Concentrate
Part I: Food Makes Food
Part II: Fresh or Free
Part III: Book Sale Facilities
Part IV: Glacier Freeze
Part V: Crosswalk
Part VI: Price Rollback

Be thankful this was never your job! Stowing sails in a storm wouldn’t be something I’d sign up for. (You can click the pic to make it bigger.)

This is a crosswalk. I don’t know what the traffic rules and regulations are where you live, but around here these broad white stripes mean it’s a crosswalk. And that means vehicles stop for pedestrians.

But according to the sign this isn’t a crosswalk. It’s like any other stretch of road, where pedestrians yield to vehicles.

Except it’s painted as a crosswalk.

Of course, this particular bit of signage is on campus, which is a place with its own rules and regulations. So I guess anything goes.

Index

So I was just looking online for a new winter coat. As some of you may remember, I had a bit of trouble with this a few years back. Anyway, I was browsing through the discount offerings at the Wal-Mart and came across this product description that I first thought might be AI slop. Then I decided AI couldn’t be this bad. No, somebody, somewhere figured that this was the best way to sell a coat.

I resisted adding this particular item to my cart, as impressed as I was that it was made of “materials” and was guaranteed to make me look not just handsome but more handsome. I don’t know if the world could handle that.

So for those of you who enjoyed my previous post showcasing the wallpaper on display in a house that had been recently listed, here’s another. Actually a beautiful house and for the most part nicely turned out. The wallpaper in this bathroom though . . .

About a week ago I had someone make a series of comments on my reviews of a horror franchise over at Alex on Film. The comments didn’t come with a link to someone’s own web-page and the email seemed like a bot. They weren’t just spam though, as they were written in response to things I’d written and, more directly, to comments that others had made. They also made some relevant points. Not points I agreed with, but ones that I could shrug at and consider fair enough.

After holding them in my queue of comments awaiting approval though for about a week I decided to delete them. I don’t mind bad language (I use it myself), or even the expression of outrage, but the hostility seemed out of place. I won’t reproduce them in full, but here are how a few of them started:

“Fuck off cunt.”

“Imbecile. You don’t know shit.”

“Fuck off all you cunts . . . ”

As I say, the commenter goes on to make what are at least somewhat on-topic responses to the threads. At the same time, they just feel like someone trolling for a reaction and I didn’t want to bother. I guess this is common enough behaviour, but (assuming a human actually wrote the comments) it seemed to me like a line was being crossed.

I really don’t like deleting comments made by anyone, but at the same time I think we all have standards. I also wonder at how some people choose to interact online, and whether it’s a response to how they’re treated in real life and if it colours how they speak to people they meet in person. It would go some way to explain the increasing rudeness in behaviour that I see almost every day.