simple shedding

St Louis Post-Despatch 18 May 1902 p. 47

As mentioned a couple of days ago I was surprised to see that a year ago in Turku with that lavish spread I was apparently unproblematically consuming various kinds of cheese. Bread is less surprising because I was eating bread up to two months ago without too much issue, indeed, going to good bakers like Crumbs in Kensington or making my own bread without care. 

Oddly enough I now perceive cheese (as part of the dairy slavery cabal) as cruel and weird, and while intermittently I dabbled with fake cheese I feel now that that stuff (perhaps depending what it's made from - should I try them all out experimentally?) actually makes me feel unwell, probably it's too rich in something. Not only can I now do without cheese and even cheese substitutes, I feel a little nauseous when I think about cheese generally. Remember that Simpsons episode where the cheap mafia milk is rat milk? Well, to me rat milk or cow milk, I make no distinction. That said, I really like this stuff called 'Like Milk', which is apparently made from peas, and I am also fine with oat milk, though I was disappointed to read in Wikipedia that the Oatley company is kind of morally dodgy these days. 

Bread is different, though I do often recall my father detailing the yeast process to me in terms that the yeast thinks it's going to have a life but then it gets baked and dies, although really, I am pretty sure yeast doesn't have ambition. But while I can't entirely remember when I last had bread, I do know I don't really want any anymore (I also recall that in the last year or so, bread has often caused me pain). So I don't know that I'll be going back to that anytime soon.

I suppose the time is approaching when I absolutely cease engagement with a culinary aspect to my tourism, whether it be local or global, and perhaps also going out to a restaurant aside from a completely vegan-friendly restaurant is off the cards. I don't want to rarify myself out of existence with these kinds of things but it seems natural and normal so why not. 

living death

I thought I would try to avoid the monster queue at N Melbourne so today I played it smart and got off at Kensington to take the bus from there. As a transport interchange, that place offers neither of the things it promises (i.e. no transport and no interchanging). The level crossing of the railway line means that traffic is often backed up right out of Kensington but at the same time it might well be doing that anyway without the railway line, as the street is ludicrously narrow (it has actually been narrowed; it doesn't need to be; and there is a doubly wide section of footpath that could be a bus stop but this would presumably limit the village atmosphere of three blocks of backed up stinking traffic trying to find a sneaky way into the city and impeded by a stopped bus and train boom gates). The bus spends so long at the stop waiting for people to get on, that more people keep coming along; it's absurd. And then once it sets off of course it takes a freakin' age to get there. A youngish woman and a child of 3-4 were in the seat in front of me having an argument about who was more cranky. It was at least a friendly argument.

I could have spent the time working on my laptop except I had nowhere to put my umbrella and was very distracted by the men at the back complaining about the stupid government and myki and the woman up the front who was coughing half her body weight in phlegm into a handkerchief. She was a magician because whatever she was coughing up it was constant, but the handkerchief remained - at least in her mind - functional. The man next to her had one of those trolleys with an oxygen bottle on it, but he was stoic and silent.

Hell is other people, I know, but the bus from Footscray to E Melbourne via Kensington traverses a particular ring you don't want to pass through that often.

they drive me insane

Most of all I drive myself insane. I lost the keys to the station wagon two days ago, after impetuously deciding to take the car to work when it started raining (me and 7 million other Melbournians obviously, as we had forgotten what rain was) and then deciding impetuously after driving for ten minutes that the traffic was too awful, that I’d have to take the train after all, and parking the sw in Oak Park, where it’s been for two days now because some time on Tuesday afternoon I lost the key. I drive myself not only to Oak Park but also insane.

But what about the other idiots I have to endure? What about that woman on the train a short time ago waggling on about how they should take all the seats out of the train so more people could stand in it? Oh, she was bad enough, all with her ‘I should be in parliament… introduce a private member’s bill, even though I’m not a member, apparently…’ that ‘apparently’ apparently supposed to indicate that it’s not really a democracy if not everyone in the world can be a ‘private member’ in parliament. But her friends were mental: ‘oh, that’s a really good idea. That’s a really good idea actually. No really, I think that’s really good.’ Blah! She gets me down and so do they.

But not as much as the Dickensian junkie on the train yesterday who I purposefully went down the far end of the carriage to get away from, so Dickensian was his junkieness, more like a Cruickshank engraving really which has since distorted further in my memory, and then for some reason he and the fluoro-jacketed middle aged man he was with came down my end of the carriage, where I had expressly hoped they would not be. He was one of those junkies with an endless sense of wonderment about his surroundings, as though his awe with the world excused his so-called experimentation with a life of deadly addiction. They were getting off at Strathmore. ‘Are there any trees where we’re going?’ he asked fat companion. ‘Why?’
‘Because I need to piss!’

Obviously using a toilet would befoul an otherwise fine and private place.

Speaking of which, what about ‘William, did you do a poo in the back of your pants?’ on the bus yesterday. She was horrific, in her brown peasant tent and her grin-moron child would have made Alfred E Neuman recoil in horror. I mean for god’s sake. In fact his name wasn’t William it was Tom. ‘No, I’m very cross with you Tom, that’s very naughty, you should wait to go to the toilet.’ OK, your child is all wrong, having him was an error, and he did a poo in the back of his pants (had he done it in the front of his pants she might have been proud of his ingenuity, I don’t know, or maybe that was what he was taught and doing it in the back is a special talent he has developed which the parents can’t do themselves, being front-pooers, so of course the mother is scared a la the Chrysalids.) Hell. I hated them.

Or that woman on the train on Tuesday, she in a red gypsy outfit, giving a monologue not unlike something someone might deliver if asked to play a game of stand-up comedy with the game being not actually making one single joke, in which she was apparently parodying someone a little like Neil from the Young Ones only an American, who was driving a van somewhere and wouldn’t take any notice when being told that he was already on Ballarat Road, ‘OK man just tell me when to turn onto Ballarat Road.’ You know those people who think that if it sounds laconic it doesn’t matter what the content is, it’s hilarious, and of course, Australians who think they can do American accents (and so pronounce the ‘r’ even in words without ‘r’s) are fucking idieRRts man.

But the worst was actually the guy on the train this morning. He was cutting his fingernails on a crowded train. Now, really, seriously, that is de trop. I looked around hoping to catch a bit in my eye, or if not that, then stare him into embarrassment. He was doing it inside a plastic bag. This was horrible, mainly because it was so freakin’ loud, and ‘clut! Clut! Clut!’ all the frigging time, and you start to think, Alright, prick features, you can cut your nails in a plastic bag on the train, I can’t stop you, I don’t know how to tell you this is socially Not Done if you can't intuit it, you looking straight ahead of you as if you aren’t doing a thing, and no-one else but me can hear you because they are all listening to Doof and metal on ear buds but HOW MANY FINGERNAILS DO YOU HAVE? When I cut my nails – which I do at acceptable times, without others around to listen to CLUT CLUT, or is it more like CLINT, CLINT, or is it STRIK, STRIK, I don’t know, a failing of the roman alphabet or probably all alphabets, anyway, when I cut my nails I make that noise about 20 times probably, not for half a freakin’ hour, are you actually trimming your hooves in there, or are you cutting the horny scabs off the heels of your hands, or are you shelling chestnuts I MEAN CHRIST, no-one should have to put up with that. Especially not me as I have enough bullshit to deal with I don’t care if it’s of my own making.