At a 7/11 on Church Street I stood and briefly stared upon the hot dog grill, where the grill thingies turn and heat the hot dogs evenly. Or so it seems. As I stood there a fellow gently shoved me aside, not intrusively, in fact it was in a manner that suggested I was in the wrong, in the way, standing there with no obvious intent. This high ground of societally performative morality vanished when he reached out and, with his bare hand, grabbed three of those 7/11 quarter-pound hot dogs, and walked out of the store. I’m guessing he didn’t pre-pay, and I do not believe there is an EZ-Pass type application that 7/11 uses to scan your body or your phone for a payment source.
Whoever that was got the better version of the 7/11 hot dog. As an honest man I proceded to purchase one myself, noting that the price had increased since the last time I got one. It used to be something like $2.83, and the little dribble of coinage in change was always annoying. Now the charge is $3 even, with tax, and they have proudly switched their weiner provider to a comopany I don’t remember or have reason to know anything about. When a change like that happens I feel the whoosh of corporata and decision-makers who dictate what with which we stuff our faces, what we eat that turns to feces.
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With the time change it is now darker than ever when I leave for work in the AM. Without doing any inquiry I for some reason assumed the opposite, that it would be sunrise at least. But no. I do get sunlight on the return home, which is what it is. But the darkness is broken apart onlyby the lights of the Broadway subway station, which I now use almost exclusively agfter determining that no one cares about the lowly 36th Avenue platforms. None of the signs work, the maps are old, pigeons are endemic, relevant transit-related announcements are inauduble while the shrill voies of celebrities begging us not to subway surf shreak through the morning quiet. On that last count Broadway station is not much better but for everything else the station just feels more alive, more like I’m actually in New York and not coming from NJ suburb
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The woman I talk to on Sundays said she’d been discussing me with someone else, I didn’t catch who, about my 10,000 steps a day regimen. It was quite the topic of a very lengthy-sounding conversation.