Champion Rabbit wrote:...

a busker who I often encounter on my journey to work who's version of 'Stairway to Heaven' is genuinely the worst music that I have ever heard..

In my world there would be re-education camps for people like that!

Coolest fucking thing: saw some bats flit in and out of the orange glow of a streetlamp. They were pulling moths out of the air.

Yesterday, the temperature was about 32ºC, so my wife and I decided to go for a trip to the beach at Southend-on-Sea.

As we approached Southend the traffic got heavier and for the last 5 miles we were crawling behind a filthy truck that had no brakelights. In the dirt, on the back of the lorry, some wit had written: "BOMB A MOSQE[sic]"

When we got to the beach, there was a muslim family that was having a picnic next to us. The women were wearing hijabs and family all took turns in praying. We were imagining how they might have felt if they'd been stuck in the traffic jam behind the truck.

Yesterday evening was oppressively hot and sticky. During my cycle ride home from work the whole city was bathed in a weird, sickly yellow light which threw everything into highly contrasted and sinister relief. When the rain started shortly into my journey I realised it was pointless trying to stay dry. I rode home slowly and allowed myself to get wet. The flinty air as rain struck hot concrete smelled fantastic.

I think the ex-East End gangster Mad Frankie Fraser lives either on or very close to my street off Walworth Road, as I saw him there for the second time last week.

He was walking a tiny dog and had an expression that I am still wondering about. There seemed to be fear and anger in it, perhaps caused by his world changing forever, the approach of death, the diminishing of his body, how he used to be a feared, perhaps even respected man, and now how he's old, tiny and walking his dog along an ugly, rainy street in Camberwell, the other side of Central London from his manor, Bethnal Green in the East End. He was, and probably still is a shit in my books, but I felt sorry for him.

I did a lot of walking yesterday in the course of doing my job in a steel mill. About half way through the day, I started to notice a slight pain coming from one of the toes on my left foot. "Hmm...feels I have a bit of a hangnail or something...oh well..." Figured what little pain there was would subside and I'd see what was up when I retired for bed. Didn't feel so bad when I took my work boots off at the end of my shift, so I thought less of it. When I took my socks off prior to going to bed, the toe next to the "pinky" was completely swollen and black and blue. Only that toe. Wasn't like that in the morning. Didn't drop anything on my foot during the day, and I wear steel toed shoes when working. I've been wearing those boots for several years now without this ever happening. Mystery...

Barking dogs of all shapes and sizes.
I tell them to shut up and they keep barking.
I heard five different barks from five different barking dogs.

BARK
BARK
BARK
BARK
BARK

Stupid dogs...

One day last week while driving to work, I was on a ramp between two freeways probably going about 50mph. There was a car in front of me and a taxi in front of them. All of a sudden the cab slams on his breaks forcing the cars behind him to stop, leans out his door, and pukes all over the road. We sat there for about 3 minutes watching this dude puke as he had stopped at an angle so there was no getting around him.

thread hijack (my apologies)

Djembe, get your toe looked at. That sounds like an infection that could lead to blood poisoning. I have a friend who had the exact same symptoms (or lack thereof). I'm willing to be that you balance something on that toe (wood, drywall?) and use it for a lever. Keep aware of how you use it during your day today. Then get it looked at.

This is one of the best threads in a long time. Onward.....

I haven't done much today.

Yesterday, though, when I was getting home from work and was at the stoplight on Farwell and Brady, someone was doing bird calls. Really loudly. As in, I could hear them loud and clear over my loud car radio. I couldn't see who was doing it, but it was clearly a person and not a bird. They must have had an amplifier.