Some images of Sirius X. M., my beautiful son.

My chronic back pain, which the Nova Scotian healthcare system thinks I should go suck eggs over, can lead to some pretty sleepless nights even with some Tylenols in me. I try to explain to people without chronic back problems how it feels, when I attempt to either lay down or get up, by saying it's like my back is having a deep yawn. However the lower half of my body wants to cramp up at the same time.

I bring this up because I slept in pretty late today after a bad back night and the coffee still hasn't done much for me. So the world is these two photos above.

I took these photos while I was taking the Mugunghwa train with a visiting friend from Gunsan to Seoul. He had gifted me yet another Olympus Pen when he arrived, which I later lost the lens cap on which drained what little juice was left in the selenium light meter. I'm a serial killer of cameras. We spent the ride up in the dining car, as much as you could call it that. The little food kiosk was long shut down and your meal was whatever you thought to pack. At least we managed to snag some stools, there not being any regular seats available that day.

Now, here's the thing: Senior citizens get to ride for free. And they do. In whatever seat they can find. You will have to get pushy with an 80 year old pretending to sleep if you want to sit down. They're not happy but if you can present them with a printed copy with your seat number they always comply.

One summer, coming back from a trip to Seoul with a very heavy backpack, I booted a not-actually-sleeping old fellow out of my seat. I was the hero of all of the students who were forced to stand because they lacked the courage and social freedom to tell various grannies to get the fuck outta their seats.

I assume they tell tales about me around soju bottles to this day.

Man, I wish I still had the ability to carry a very heavy backpack around....

Mugunghwa is notable for being slow and meandering. The seats are also wider than the ones on the high speed trains like the SRT and KTX, so there's that. That meandering does take a significant amount of time to get you anywhere, but the views out the window can be amazing depending upon the time of the year. I preferred taking it if I had a lot of time to get to places.

If you visit Korea some day and aren't in a hurry, I recommend it as your main way of getting around the country.

my singular talent is the manufacture of provocative shitposts.

It's a curse, like being the hulk but instead of turning green and swole I make everyone around me miserable.

These shitposts come to me in dreams, while I sleep.

Here's a selection of my intrusive Discourse Thoughts.

• (I thought videogame Dunkey was black) and that why he's guilty of modern day minstrelry

• Charli XCX tops the charts, Jesy Nelson is nowhere to be seen, once again british WOC are left in the dust

• People with Dwarfism are cheating the state out of vital tax funds by purchasing children's clothes (we need that V.A.T.)

• It's ableist to ask me to respect your personal space

• Taylor Swift is the Queer Icon of our generation

Is there a medicine I can take to stop having these corrosive thoughts?

I can spend quite a lot of time just panning through google maps when I’m bored. And sometimes I find something ridiculous enough to share with my other geography nerd friend. This was one of these things.
I spotted “Eerste Exloërmond” and “Tweede Exloërmond”. “Eerste” means “first”, and “tweede” means “second”. So in english that’s just “first and second exloërmond”.

WHY??

• starting a placename with an ordinal when another place shares its name is dumb!! Starting with an ordinal is cool when it’s the only place with the name: “First crossing”. But doing it like they did irl is just going “hmm yes I have town 1 aaaaand oh yes town 2”
• why are they separate towns?? They are RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER. Oh did the <measuring on google maps> 1.9km between their two main roads create such a historical and cultural divide to have them separate?? Why is the first Exloërmond not just a township of the second one? It has 365 inhabitants!! That’s not a town!! YOU ARE A ROAD. In any SANE province like Brabant you would be NEVER be a full town!! The second one actually deserves to be called a town since it has an actual town at the south end of it. I do not believe for a moment that the people in Eerste Exloërmond would say that they feel separated from the people in Tweede.
• why not keep going? Where is 3rd exloermond? We should call every place in the country “Nth Exloërmond” if we accept this ABSURDITY