— छह हज़ार इक्यावन —
Usually Wednesdays are the busiest day of the week with people working in-office, but yesterday was quite empty in here, almost on part with a typical Monday or Wednedday. I kept wondering what the deal was, like all day. And then it finally hit me this morning: oh right—there was a World Cup match at noon yesterday and everyone was deliberately avoiding the traffic, something we had all been told we were free to do on match days.
Yesterday was the third of
six scheduled games. I don't have a clue how progression through works, but I know Qatar was always scheduled for yestersday's game; I presume who they played was determined by winners of previous games—the schedule originally said "ITA/NIR/WAL/BIH vs Qatar" but now it says "Bosnia-Herzegovina vs Qatar."
Shobhit's rule of thumb is to root for the country that has legalized same-sex marriage. I don't know what criteria he uses when both have done so or neither have done so; homosexuality is criminalized in Qatar, which anyone could have assumed, and Bosnia and Herzegovina apparently includes sexual orientation in anti-discrimination laws, does not criminalize homosexuality, but also does not have same-sex marriage. It sounds like a lot of that country is pretty conservative so presumably gay expression can be tricky there, but at least it's not illegal. Even though Shobhit's sister lived in Doha for a while and Shobhit even visited her there a couple of times (I didn't even know until he did this that the city has
a very pretty skyline), my guess is that the criminalization of homosexuality there made him hope Bosnia and Herzegovina won that match (I just looked it up, and they did).
There's not really anyone for us to root for in tomorrow's ironically-designated "Pride Match," which the countries are not happy with: it's Egypt vs. Iran. Based on my googling, there seems to be only barely a distinction between the two when it comes to criminalizing homosexuality: in Iran, homosexuality is strictly criminalized; in Egypt, homosexuality is not explicitly outlawed but effectively it is, thanks to various public morality laws. It sounds similar to the direction Russia has been going in for years, but probably well ahead of them.
This actually makes me delight in Seattle's refusal to back down when these countries asked us
not to designate tomorrow's game the "Pride Match." Well, it's happening on Friday of Pride Weekend; what are you going to do? And you know what? I thought of this yesterday: we would all be advised to respect their culture if we visited their countries. There's no reason they can't do the same when visiting ours. A few rainbow flags aren't going to make them light up in flames or whatever. (We have plenty of flaming community members of our own.)
This is why I really want to go down to Pioneer Square tomorrow night during the match. I have yet to see the
Pioneer Square Pedestrian Zone, which I would be interested in whether it was Pride or not. Plus, given there will be a ton of people around just for the match and paying no attention to Pride stuff whatsoever, I am deeply curious as to whether Pride stuff will have any real visibility at all. Either way, I want to see for myself!
Steven, our HBC Merchandiser, did come in to the office yesterday—presumably easier for him, as he commutes from Vashon Island and I'm guessing he just walked here from the ferry dock—and I overheard him talking about how fun it has been to have Seattle hosting World Cup games. "It feels like the world is here!" he said. It's true that we've seen more diverse crowds than usual due to World Cup visitors. Walking home yesterday, I saw a small group of guys, a few on long, robe-like outfits with matching head wear, and a few in Soccer jerseys. That was right here downtown; when I got up to Capitol Hill, I saw a couple Black women on 12th Avenue wearing WE ARE QATAR shirts. Too bad for them, I guess.
— छह हज़ार इक्यावन —
— छह हज़ार इक्यावन —
Anyway, I guess I'll mention now that last night was Action Movie Night. Two different people asked me how my recovery was going, whether I was "all healed." I'm close, but not quite there; I'm four weeks into the six weeks in which I cannot ride my bike, or do anything else that may result in "bodily impact."
Speaking of which, I will share this here, but did not last night: I made the choice yesterday to stop the Extra Strength Tylenol, cold turkey. I lowered the doses down from three doses of two pills every day maybe a week or a week and a half ago, but I was still taking a total of between three and four every day until a couple of days ago; I think yesterday I took two total.
The thing is, I've been dealing with constant gas for
days, and BMs that have not quite been diarrhea, but rather close to it. I finally thought to google whether taking Tylenol daily for too many days can cause diarrhea, and the answer was basically yes: prolongued use can cause gastrointestinal irritation.
Now, I have no idea if there is a direct causation going on here, but it seemed worth finding out if it made a difference by not taking any Tylenol, for the first day in a solid four weeks. As of right now it's been well over 24 hours since I last took any, and it's already a little better. Now, this could very well just be coincidence, but I'm not in enough pain to go back to the pills.
That's not to say the pain is entirely gone. Having forgone my pre-bed dose last night, I did wake up a bit sorer than usual this morning, especially in my lower back, but it wasn't too terrible. I still lose my breath a bit more quickly than I would otherwise when walking up a hill or whatever, but that was the case even when taking the Tylenol. It can't be good for me to be ingesting so much of that shit anyway. I can still get a slight pang of pain in my abdomen when standing up from sitting. But, at this point I kind of feel like it's a choice between dealing with pretty minor but still persistent pain, and chronic diarrhea. Right now I'm going for hopefully lessening the gastrointestinal irritation.
Anyway, back to the movie. It was Chris B's choice, and he has a history of movies I thought were either fine or great, so I had kind of high hopes for this one. He chose a 1991 Jackie Chan movie called
Operation Condor. It had a lot of action in it that was largely pretty entertaining, but it was so light on story that I quickly lost interest.
Apparently it's technically a sequel.
Operation Condor is the only title used for it on Letterboxd, but on IMDb it's listed as
Armour of God 2: Operation Condor. This is also how it's listed on Wikipedia. It's very much made in the style of Indana Jones movies, the opening sequence almost directly ripping off
Raiders of the Lost Ark, only with way more sexism and misogyny: several times women are hit, slapped, or punched by men and it seems to be only as something to be played for laughs. When it ended, Shobhit declared it terrible—he must have yawned audibly four times during it—but, in spite of everything I just said, I must say that there have been countless movies played at Action Movie Night that were
way worse. This one didn't completely bore me, at least.
We had nine in attendance this week, one of them a new guy that Daniel brought as a guest—a guy with a relatively thick Russian accent named Nicholai. Aside from those two, we had Tony, Jake, Ryan, Ben, Chris B, Shobhit, and myself.
Tony once again had to bring down his DVD player and hook it up via separate video out (to the projector) and audio out (to the wall) cords. It's been a couple of months now, I think, that he's had to do this. We finally got a Braeburn community email from Alan, the Building Manager, on Tuesday, letting us know that it's going to get fixed. He said it would likely be 10 days to two weeks, so will it finally be fixed and upgarded by the next Action Movie Night? We'll see! I have the theater reserved for a double feature with Alexia on July 5, which is in 10 days—12 days from when the email was sent—so that's even iffier. I'm not keeping my hopes up and we'll go up to the condo to watch if we have to.
Using the veggie chili Shobhit made for the chili cookout at CC's on Sunday, our food contribution this week was tacos. We brought the leftover chili, taco shells, fried vegetables, shredded cheese, homemade salsa, sour cream. It went over quite well and nearly two 10pk boxes of taco shells got consumed. Several desserts were otherwise brought, and Dick's burgers; I had too many of the desserts. (I was shocked my weight was actually down this morning, but it was probably because of how much I also expelled throughout the day yesterday.) We'll probably finish up the chili by having tacos again for dinner tonight.
— छह हज़ार इक्यावन —
[posted 12:34pm]
