urban human

london dwelling human spends a lot of time underground. from what i can gather, this is not an unusual state of affairs for urban human because the transport system plays such an integral role in city living and many earth planet cities have developed a network of underground transport tunnels (with varying degrees of success).

so for this week’s daily post photo challenge, i thought i would highlight the underground aspect of urban.

if you would like tips on how to survive underground urban, or indeed if you have any tips to offer, please click over to my post, underground survival.

the many battles of shibuya crossing

where human meets traffic to do daily battle

so many are they that face off against one another at the place they call shibuya. they gather at the lines in patient hoards, not one of them moving before the war cry sounds. they hold.

and when it comes, they surge forward as one; defiantly advancing in vast numbers towards inevitable, clashing calamity. but as they meet, the strangest thing… they merge and then pass, fluidly in choreographed unison.

and when the battle is ended, more gather at the lines to begin the dance again.

closing ceremony chitty chat

the whole purpose of this earth database diary was to try to understand human better by writing everything down and hopefully engaging in chitty chat with human. so far, it’s not going very well. only two human have come with me and neither of them wanted to chitty chat.

so i’ve decided i should think more about the business of chitty chat and have a go at this challenge (it says ‘challenge’, but i think that’s a joke and not actually likely to end in a fight to the death in a pool of what human would say resembles custard, as would be the custom on {!!^/@!*}).

what was i saying?

oh yes, chitty chat. chitty chat and the olympics. has social media changed how i view the olympics?

well, not having viewed the olympics before, i would have to say i can’t really answer that question specifically. although i can say it would have been a very different type of viewing experience without social media. for example, if not for social media, in particular the facebook, i would not have had contemporaneous commentary of the closing ceremony from friend human, which frankly was necessary to (mostly) understand what on the planet was going on! a bloke who belied his name by appearing neither particularly fat nor slim (nor a boy for that matter) emerged from a transparent, luminous octobus (no, that is not a spelling error, but a rather clever conflation of the words ‘octopus’ and ‘bus’)?? the child catcher, having taken on a troop of bedridden children, their nurses and a gaggle of women apparently anticipating rain in the opening ceremony, gave an encore in the guise of russell brand??? even london dwelling human seemed confused.

if not for the facebook, i would not (within minutes of it occurring) have been able to watch that bumbling, madhuman they call mayor dance like a discombobulated {!@**^%} performing a rarely seen mating display over and over and over and over again…(i don’t know, maybe he was trying to flag down the octobus). now that was fun!

what also became apparent is that human’s capacity for chitty chat is vast. not only was there near continuous translation unabashed slating of the ceremony by friend human, but there was even chitty chat about chitty chat.

the real question then is, “at what point does social media stop being something by which human views the entertainment and become the entertainment?”

but coming back to the first question, has social media changed how i view the olympics? yes, as far as i am able to tell. social media provided information about the olympics that i was able to view. social media provided opinion about the olympics that i was able to consider. but most importantly, social media provided a way to share the olympics. for all the bad things that have been said about the closing ceremony, it was hilarious… especially so because of the comments made by friend human. i see now that social media is not just about enabling the experience, it’s about sharing the experience. the clue’s in the title you see? and yes, i suppose we could have tried to get together for… like… real, but i don’t know any london dwelling human who could afford a flat large enough.

>>> please be advised that all names and pictures have been removed to protect the identity of london dwelling friend human.

making a meal of it

probably, my first poem should rhyme. here goes…

up north human eats its dinner,
when everyone else has lunch.
i really can’t get my head around,
when i’m supposed to munch.

do i have cake and sandwiches,
when it’s tea time at four o’clock,
or meat and three veg at half past five;
should tea be cold or hot?

it’s hard to know what meal to eat,
if it depends on where you’re at.
i suppose you could eat all of them,
but then you’d get real fat.

so many meals i can’t keep up:
breakfast brunch lunch dinner and tea.
i’m already full, please hold the plate,
supper‘s too much for me.

and that’s before we come to pud,
which might otherwise be dessert,
or dinner if it comes filled with beef…
my head’s starting to hurt!

one tiny human

friend human of mine has a little one, which means i’ve been able to study the behaviour of tiny human more closely. subject tiny human is 3 years in age and of the female variety. i’ve begun to document our conversations for further analysis. this is one:

me

what are you eating?

tiny human

observation: tiny human is much more straightforward than human.

underground survival

i love london dwelling human. london dwelling human has many different faces and voices and foods. london dwelling human is fascinating.

but london dwelling human is also a conundrum. take for example, ‘public transport’.

all you really need from a tube map, the londonist

if you took london dwelling human out of london and made it wait for once-a-day-bus in some country backwater, london dwelling human would probably explode. and that’s before asking london dwelling human to decipher out-of-london-bus-timetable! you might therefore expect london dwelling human to be so appreciative of the rather excellent underground train system (or ‘tube’), that it goes about its daily business as if floating on clouds of euphoria listening to its own personal chill out mix tape. not so. the moment london dwelling human enters the cavernous tube system, london dwelling human becomes an angry, raging beast… no, an angry, raging beast in a desperate hurry.

so surprising and extreme is this change in character, that i have taken it upon myself to compile a survival guide.

1. under no circumstances tell angry london dwelling human that [insert any number greater than 2] minutes is not a long time to wait for a tube (definitely do not point out how long it would have to wait if it lived in ‘the country’!).
2. always assume that angry london dwelling human is in a hurry right behind you. this will prevent such obvious errors as: i) stopping to read the route maps positioned at junctions or the top/bottom of stairs; ii) stopping at the ticket barrier to take out your ticket; iii) stopping to wait for the tube at the entrance to the platform; and iv) stopping in the doorway of the tube. in fact, just don’t stop.
3. be careful how you interpret the escalator signs. the left hand side is for walking, but mostly running. the right hand side is also for walking or running.
4. be prepared for snarling if you ask seated london dwelling human to move its bag so you can sit down.
5. under no circumstances attempt to engage london dwelling human in chitty chat. non-london dwelling human, however, might be open to inane communication. if unsure, initiate at your own peril.
6. be warned, a tube is not full until nobody can breathe.
7. if you have occupied london for more than 3 weeks, be aware that you are now angry london dwelling.

i do hope you find this guide useful. please feel free to add any points i’ve missed by way of chitty chat below.

point of interest: out-of-london-bus-timetable is the only thing my intergalactic translator has been unable to interpret. at this point, i’m unclear whether this is in fact evidence of a military code for use in the event of interplanetary war. if so, this lends weight to my theory that old woman human is definitely up to more than it is letting on, being the only variety of human apparently capable of decoding the mysteries of out-of-london-bus-timetable.