Day 1 - The peculiar pleasure of being so sick of this

It is Friday.

A man is defined by his habits. Whatever he is is whatever he is accustomed to being.

That is the logic of life. Everything on top of that is just causation. To try and draw links further than that is risky. One does that at one's peril.

After my failed attempt to buy a length of nylon webbing I was walking home, feeling defeated. I think it was yesterday. It was cold. Something like -20 degrees Celcius. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit. I don't speak Fahrenheit, and neither should you.

My eyes met a poster that advertised an upcoming TV show. There was a man in a suit leaning over a table, his fists lying on the tabletop, and a woman sitting in a chair wearing some sort of business costume. Both were looking severely at a chef sitting on the opposite side of the table. Only the back of the chef was visible, so I guess I was supposed to recognize the people facing him. I didn't.

After going through the written information printed on the bottom of the image it was revealed to me that the point of the program was to have pastry chefs compete for a prize, with the indeed famous chefs acting as judges. I walked a block's worth of meters trying to figure out that poster. I had fleece underwear under my winter jacket, but because of the curve in my lower spine there was a pocket of air between the fleece shirt and my back. My back in that particular air pocket was dripping with sweat. The sweat was cold.

There is something very strange about that setup. The guy's facial expression and posture suggest he's just about to divide Poland. And what he is basically supposed to be saying is: "Make me a cake."

I passed two youngsters, maybe sixteen or seventeen years old. They were wearing my favourite style of pants, slim fit jeans, but what they wore in addition to them was just brutal.

And they were smoking electronic cigarettes.

Yet again I was overcome with a sense of disconnect. My logic dictates that a cigarette in the hands of a person of that age is supposed to be a sign of defiance. It possesses the same self-destructing characteristics that alcohol does. These sorts of things, the self-destructing ones, seem to add something to us, they give us some benefit. When the distance to the edge of a cliff gets smaller, the dick of the one getting closer to the edge gets bigger. Isn't that how it goes? Or have I misunderstood something?

And yet these guys where smoking electronic cigarettes. The things that are meant to protect a person from being thrown out of a moving plane. And they were in the last place on earth where one is supposedly allowed to smoke the regular, cancer-filled, carcinogen-producing ones: outside, in conditions that make your pancreas susceptible to frostbite.

Where is the sense of danger and defiance in that? The bloody things, according to my understanding, only give you the thing that relaxes you (because you've made your body think it can't relax without it), without any of the mortal dangers.

What is the point?

I'd reckon it's the same point that an atheist can present for his workaholism in a protestant country.

None.