That Time Of The (Lunar) Month

Time to screw with the Moon again.

13,591 Steps In Seoul

Some random shots taken while perambulating around GwangHwaMun Square this afternoon and evening, plus one on the way home.

Errant Glove(s)... Plus

Today I was just ambling along, on my usual afternoon walk around the neighborhood, when I spotted a glove in the road.

Its placement was a bit unusual, as it was not on the sidewalk but in the traffic lanes.

Anyway, I went up to it, first checking to see no vehicles were coming (of course), for the obligatory closeup.

Then, this pair of old ladies sitting at a bus stop called out to me, saying the other glove was "over there", pointing a little ways back up the street.  Evidently they had been watching me going through my little ritual, and were intrigued.  I looked, and yes, it was the other glove all right, lying a short distance away in the very center of the road, back in the direction I had come from.  I had missed it on my first pass because, well, because I just wasn't looking, not expecting a glove would be lying in the middle of traffic.

So I went and took my shots, came back to thank the babushkas for bringing it to my attention, then went back to take these closing shots:

 

I have to say, it was pretty odd.  Why would anyone do this?  Did someone belatedly realize, while driving, they are allergic to the material of the gloves and throw them out?  Did some fortune teller tell her client the gloves are cursed and must needs be got rid of in traffic so that lots of other cars would drive over them and thereby dilute their power to do evil?  Weird.

Fear Of The Dark

Something just occurred to me.  A question, rather.  Humans are diurnal creatures -- we are evolved to be active by day and quiescent at night.  But throughout most the evolutionary history of our species the hours of darkness weren't just about resting and sleeping;  night was associated with the very real danger of being killed and eaten by night-prowling natural enemies, and the fear and sense of vulnerability it inspired.  As a result modern man, even though he no longer need fear being attacked by wild beasts, still feels a vague, nameless atavistic fear of darkness and of the state of helplessness engendered by the loss of visual awareness in the dark.

It then naturally follows that animals that have evolved to be active at night and are able to see well in darkness, like owls, cats and tarsiers, would lack a fear of it (outside of the specific fear of predation that is, which anyway can happen in broad day as well).  So does this mean that once technology has advanced to the point where our natural vision can be augmented or entirely replaced by perfect night vision, and we can see just as well in complete darkness as in daylight, we will no longer be afraid of the dark (although, I suppose by then darkness itself, at least in the physical sense, would logically have lost its meaning;  so maybe that should be "afraid of '(supposedly)dark' places" instead), and as a result all the traditional stories of ghosts appearing at night and monsters in dark corners will have lost their power to frighten, and instead be relegated to a time in mankind's primitive past?

Cute Dinner Run

I felt like Mexican food for dinner, so I went out to pick up a few tacos.  On the way I saw these paired trash bins with cute ears.  One for ordinary refuse, the other for recyclables (the bins, not the ears^).

Or maybe they were meant to be protruding eyes, like the eyes of frogs and toads.

(I found this perfectly matching image online - how amazing is that!)

Then, on the way back after picking up the tacos I saw this Japanese izakaya with these vent pipes.  Ordinarily I find them slightly sinister, like giant serpents waiting to gobble up pigeons, but paired up like this I found them rather humorous for some reason... even "cute".

They reminded me of the periscope eyes of a mudskipper.

So kawaii, you might say.

Phoenix On A Sidewalk

No, this isn't another one of those Dead Bird (#1, #2, #3, #4) posts.  I just happened to spot this stain on the sidewalk

and knew instantly what I had to do with it.  I brought it home, did some simple basic edits -- and it was reborn as the fabled Phoenix, the immortal bird that, having reached the end of a five hundred-year cycle (sources may differ on this point), immolates itself in a pyre and then is reborn from the ashes, young and renewed, as the next generation of itself.

Another One

With a slight, interesting twist.  Just now, I was re-reading the old post "My Ghostly Twin" while listening to the old Samantha Sang song (hah, alliteration) "Emotion" (featuring the Bee Gees).  Just as I read the phrase "no matter where I go", she sang "wherever you go", as if she were singing to me personally.

It made me think of the Twilight Zone episode "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine", where retired movie star Ida Lupino got to interact with one of her own old movies.  Also of the scene from a horror movie from some years back -- *whose title I can't remember for the life of me -- where some people are watching an old home movie they found and a little girl in the film describes the people who are watching the film in the present.

*An AI search states that it's probably Sinister 2, but I couldn't find a clip of the scene.

Today's Worm Rescue

Today I waited until early evening to go to the market, to avoid the heat.  It's only May but it's already getting uncomfortably warm in the midday hours.  After a goodly walk in the sun I'm wont to come home with my shirt sticking to my back and my feet feeling like warm pickles inside the socks.  So it was going to be a brief trip (the market is only two blocks down the street) in the fading sunlight, and I wasn't expecting to run across any photo-worthy sights;  so imagine my surprise when I sighted a worm -- one of those extra-thick ones they've got here in Korea -- in the middle of the sidewalk.

I watched it for some moments to see if it was dead or had at least enough life left in it to be worth saving, and to my delight it moved -- but just barely.  I really think it was on the border of death, as it didn't respond at all when I picked it up, but in any case I took out my knife, dug a hole in the verge and put the worm in it.  I covered it up loosely with earth, feeling I was not sending it back to its native environment so much as I was giving it a burial.

Number of worms rescued:  80

Bigger Half vs Smaller Half (Mod Photo IX)

Or "photo painting", if you prefer;  although, having seen online a bunch of disparate images subsumed under that generic title, I really don't think anyone is thinking of images like this or those from any of my previous posts in this category when they use the term.

Cicadas!

What the heck, we're barely halfway through May, and already the cicada nymphs are emerging in droves!  Last year's cicada season only got a proper start well into June, to last through part of September.  Are the global-warming alarmists right after all?

Here are some of the early risers I encountered today (maybe that should be "early climbers").

More Seoul Stairs, Again

My interest in staircases is related to my fascination with old rundown buildings.  If buildings connect "now" to "then", then staircases connect "here" to "there".  As one is usually an essential part of the other, I guess you could say it's kind of like how space and time, once considered separate, are now combined into a single entity, spacetime.