Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon

Some random photos and thoughts on a fairly unremarkable Sunday afternoon, almost all from merchants on Seifertova street, about 50 yards down the hill from me.

First, From the EFSY cafe, where I'm writing this.

The decline and fall of Western civilization (linguistically speaking)

I can accept there are more forms of sexual orientation, gender fluidity, sexual identity, etc., than were dreamt of in my childhood philosophy. But I'll be damned if I can accept this linguistic affront! Oh, I guess I can accept that it's supposed to be "them" on both doors, but the sign on what used to be called the "Women's" bathroom is frayed, somehow. That's fine. 

But if we're going with "he" and "she," shouldn't we also go with "they?" Or, alternatively, if we're going with "them," shouldn't it be "him" and "her?"

What's more, how come non-binary bathroom-using individuals get to choose — "thems" get to use either room — but us old-fashioned normies don't?! Talk about discriminatory! I like using bathrooms on the left, given the option!

I think it should be "he" and "individuals who reject the traditional binary sense of gender and/or who believe they don't fit neatly into that traditional dichotomy, but who nonetheless, based completely on their wholly legitimate self-identification and who are not by choosing to use this particular bathroom in any sense endorsing or supporting the kind of old-fashioned and anachronistic thinking that forced us to have separate bathrooms to begin with, but fine, so nobody gets all bent out of shape, will use the bathroom that in a previous time was considered for "men," whatever that term meant then, or means now."

Would that be so hard?

Or maybe you capitalists who refuse to pay the miserable workers what they would need to write that on the doors would prefer something shorter? Fine. How about "She, as traditionally understood, and if any other human beings wish to use it for whatever reason at all, we all promise to freakin' relax about it, ok?" That would work for me as well.

From outside my gym yesterday

Just kind of cool that, on Saturday, the same day I whined about the Prague sky being gray, cold, and alienating ... it redeemed itself with this most-spectacular sunset. I wish I had had time to get up to the top of Riegrovy Park, about a ten-minute walk away. That would be been amazing.

"Hey, aren't you ...?"

On Friday I signed up for a month-long membership at FitTop — the local gym just down the hill from me. Ironically, it's the exact same place I had a membership at when I lived here in 2010. Same small room of cardio machines and weights — probably many of the same machines, in fact. I harbored a little hope that their database would remember me, but no such luck. 

Went yesterday for a work-out on the elliptical machine, then the rowing machine, then some weights, and went back today for a run on the treadmill, then the rowing machine, then some weights. Dunno if I'll be able to keep this up, but it's a good start.

If you look really carefully at the sunset picture up above you can make out a light tower over the Viktoria Zizkov football stadium through the branches. That's this light tower, seen Sunday morning from my bedroom window. Which means, in fact, that the FitTop fitness club is pretty much down where that yellow building is. I think it actually is in that yellow building, in fact.

Home soon. Bath/shave. Crystal Palace FA Cup game. NFL football. Michigan basketball. Delivery pizza. Oh, and I'll see if I can get the new Lidl robot vacuum cleaner to work. The bachelor life on a Sunday night. I could do worse.