윤

Crick’s back, compounded by my reluctance to double-dose Aleve and the cold the boy sneezed into my mouth. Serves me right: haven’t run in months, been binging on ice cream, and sleeping through noise on the monitor. This time I make good, for sure.

老婆 and I decided to stop at 大黒家 ら～めん on our way back from the little old lady who twists her back every week and had to drive around blocked-off one-way streets for half-an-hour before settling for a $4 parking lot nearby. We had unwittingly arrived on the one day Angelinos busted out their bicycles (or more likely, the cash for them) to challenge our dependence upon foreign oil, promote green transportation, or something. Of course, regardless of how they actually got there. Now you know me, I’m all for self-flagellation propulsion; I just think it shouldn’t have to be as part of a Flickr event. Wanna experience downtown outside a cage? Move the route over a few and ride up 5th.

Though when it’s 110° out, fat people gonna live. But I made the commute, with a bottle of water to spare. Then again, I used to run for longer at City College in Pasadena, and without water breaks, during summers so hot I couldn’t sleep at night unless I drove to the office in Walnut and would be found on the floor the next morning by co-workers. Of course that was ten years ago.

Latest blood test says mine have doubled in the past two years, which somewhat corresponds to the increase in the difference between my calories consumed and spent running. Crossing into borderline ought to motivate me to get out more, because I’m determined not to change my diet. Whatever awaits me in the great beyond, it’s unlikely to come with physical pleasures, so I might as well indulge myself now. Witnessing firsthand 老婆’s 阿嬤 make the rest of her family grow sick of salmon so she can keep watching TV and taking naps indefinitely has taught me to live not only without fearing death, but so that when it does come—and it will—it won’t come as a relief to everyone. Besides, what’s living without the freedom to be treated to the occasional meat cake topped with mice?

Thing I’m surely missing from running lately, which I hope to rectify with my recent shoe upgrade, are the flights of fancy my mind’s allowed while only otherwise engaged in whatever autonomic function is required to keep my heart from exploding. (Well, that and my self-imposed health benefits.) News from Comic-Con is that All-Star Superman will be animated, though it beats me how they’re gonna fit all those wonderful stories onto an hour-and-a-half DVD. No, my concept for a Man-of-Tomorrow film to appease the Statler and Waldorf’s of the Internet would be teased opening with a crate full of weapons, handled by seedy African pirates or warlord’s henchmen. A wrinkled newspaper was packed inside, the headline exposing corporate corruption at the highest level—story, panning below it, by Clark Kent of the Daily Planet. The men arm themselves and begin a night-time raid on a poor village, and all looks bleak until they are engulfed in light. He has arrived, bringing with him all the powers of the sun, to this most remote part of the world, and makes quick work of a very different evil here, too. A little boy thanks him and he winks in return, then telescopically hears a woman cry for help thousands of miles away, and he’s off.

Sounds like a Betty & Veronica story title. Came across this entry from more than seven years ago while searching for anything I had written on the Outer Limits, whose draft I’ll get around to eventually, after I heap some praise on Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Alas, technology’s still not here yet for

[…] a personal trainer who’d holographically be visible only to the wearer of, say, specially-equipped Oakley Wires. She’d take the form of a busty Japanese idol, of course, run backwards at your pace and motivate you to improve it. Upgrades would allow her to sweat in kind. Problems I foresee include my legs buckling under the added weight, or tripping over it outright, and keeping an eye out for cross-traffic.

And the broken image:

One Internet pundit beat me to it by describing the sensation as “the closest I ever come to swallowing a mouthful of semen” (to which I add, never say never), but it’s not got the taste of the delicacy I remember from the streets of Taiwan. Steel can, however, is giving me a nice desktop workout.

Tonight I learned that the chromosome I came up with is a Y. But as relieved as I am that there’ll be a strong young man for his mother in my rapidly-declining years (if my average mile is any indication), I must confess some trepidation at the news, as it reminds me that I am a son estranged from his father, who himself had no better relationship with his own. Was each of our circumstances so unique, or did we simply both hold our predecessors responsible for our broken homes? Perhaps mine failed because his family was more burden than boon, his world had no room for those of his offspring, and his lifelong pursuit to debunk the patriarch’s material sacrifices only backfired. On us. Then it would seem the best course of action is just to let it go and join my wife and child in bed.

Was explaining our stop at Fry’s last weekend to 老婆, and her response: that’s because they were made in China. (The Sony’s, which I successfully swapped them out for, don’t fit flush against my head as intended and has always been the case, insert with the speakers facing forward. Yanking on the extra-long cord brings up the same old concern, too.) Alas, the Zippy keyboard which has served me so well these past few years, comes to us from Taiwan; the flexible Tripp-Lite it replaced, which didn’t fare as well—what do you know, let gravity have at the wires inside and they fail—most likely from the mainland. But let’s hope that manufacturing, regardless of where it’s done, sticks to standards commensurate to premium products such as Deck’s.

The deep keystrokes remind me of my old Selectric II, but it’s as if the thick and hence less portable case is making the extra room for your fingers. Thankfully the FN commands to dim and disable the lighting work over USB to the 360 and PS2, because I’d be blinded by the LED’s at their highest setting. Or made to feel guilty by their gratuitous use of energy. There is, however, a niche concept behind it (even if it harks back to case modders from ten years ago), the braided cord, diamond plate bottom, that’s just as hardcore and uncompromising as Apple’s. At twice the price.

Then again, the headliner inside my Japanese truck designed and built in the US has come unglued and is sagging.

Has it been ten years since Chris got me the Phillips-made Nike-branded headphones that restarted my need for running music? That first pair seemed to have lasted the longest, the stethoscope-like fit the most comfortable and capable, while the lifespan of its subsequent replacements has shortened geometrically: yesterday the latest, which I had hoped for better in the newer Black color, conked out after only a month of sporadic use (my Mountain Dew ratio is approaching 60K). Always in one ear, always in the first mile. We’ll see how long my remaining inventory, courtesy of my purchase-return cycle at Fry’s, lasts before I switch to Sony’s.