2019.07.24
At a junior college in South central Kansas there is an introductory course taught by Death. The course, Basics in Animal Husbandry, is transferable to most major Universities, except for a few small liberal arts colleges who are skeptical of Death's academic qualifications. At least once, but usually two or three times, during every semester, Death would be absent from class. In her place was always the same man, who simply announced himself as Death's Substitute. He spoke with a strong southern accent, was very overweight, and told stories about his wacky shopping mishaps at discount stores to highlight his lessons. The next day Death would be back in class, excusing her absence because of some cold or flu. Then the class would laugh, to which Death would respond with a slight smile, because we had all seen the mornings news about some plane crash or earthquake, and knew what she'd really been up to.
If one is fortunate enough to reach a level of middle-aged, one encounters that phenomenon where any fixed interval of time is at risk for seemingly curiously compressed. (A "where did the years GO?" type thing.) Perhaps it's an artifact of any set unit of time being smaller percentage-wise of the overall length of time lived.
Lately for me it gets manifested as "what the hell, time to cut my fingernails AGAIN??"
(Also, FWIW: I'm often skeptical about the benefit/cost ratio of gourmet versions of things, but "Seki Edge Stainless Steel Fingernail Clipper (SS-106)" has proven worth the extra cost.)
This piece about this series of videos:
Eight years ago, a middle-aged Japanese man started a YouTube channel and began posting videos of himself feeding stray cats. A lot of videos. Usually one per day, every day. As of this year, he had posted over 19,000 times. If you put all his videos into one big playlist and turned on autoplay, it would take you roughly six and a half days to reach the end. It’s possibly the most prolific non-automated channel on YouTube.I kind of love it!
It’s also one of the loneliest.