29th August 2014

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Friday 29th 59F, 15C, overcast, breezy. Showers forecast again but it should be brighter later. My walk was shortened by heavy rain. It has remained dark and overcast all morning with repeated heavy showers. Any hope of a ride is conditional on a drying out as promised. I finally left at 4pm for a short ride under a leaden sky. At least it stayed dry. I was cruising at 18-20 mph going. Only 8 miles.

Saturday 30th 60F, 16C, overcast with heavy showers. My neck is much improved though I still can't turn my head to the right without pain. My swollen hand which received the hornet sting has shrunk to almost normal. Though the knuckles are still swollen. I had to shelter under a tree half way home but was going quite well so I detoured uphill. The rear gears have a sticky cable! 18 miles.

A popular scam by the various Danish supermarkets is to put ordinary wares on display under an Økologisk/Organic label on the shelves. To complete their ruse they often have wares marked with the red Danish flag on the packaging. Which [by the very strangest coincidence) is very similar in size and appearance [at a glance] to the red organic logo. So those without their reading glasses think they are buying organic but get to the checkout with the nasty, poisonous stuff. Have you read how many times fruit is sprayed per crop?

I raised the matter recently with one supermarket manager who simply dismissed it as "out of stock" of the organic produce and walked away. The same was true for the rest of the week and on all the previous occasions I have raised the matter with him and the staff in other supermarkets. So if you are holidaying in Denmark watch out for non-organic produce displayed under a label with the organic logo. So far they have used this trick with non-organic onions, apples, bananas, potatoes, cucumbers, eggs and cabbages. That's only from fuzzy memory. So there may have been more. The trickery is obviously endemic. Crooks, damned crooks and Danish supermarket chains!

The vast tonnage of Danish fresh fruit and vegetables, which usually goes to Russia, is to be destroyed. To avoid the market price collapsing. Ironic that the politic-ooze want the public to eat more fruit and veg. I wonder what the statistical balance is between being poisoned by the produce versus never eating the stuff at all? The completely spherical [sic] woman in front of me at the checkout today had no organic fruit or veg. Not even the poisonous wares. She did have five x 2 liter tubs of ice cream and a five x 2 liter bottles of the infamous Croke: Coloured water, sugar and gas. I'm glad I'm not an ambulance man, fireman or a nurse!

Sunday 31st 56F, 13C, heavy overcast, steady rain. Copenhagen has had 100mm/ 4" of rain with considerable flooding. I bet that helped to clear the cycle paths! Or not.

It is difficult to say at this point whether I will be able to escape to the great outdoors. It's not as if riding in the rain is impossible. It is just so unpleasant and irritating in so many ways. The rain is cold and makes the cyclist blind just for starters. Though a peaked hat helps provided it is safely held in place by a cycling helmet. Trying to wear a peaked cap without restraint is just asking for it to flip off when the next lorry passes. It's always a toss up between rain driven into the eyes or wearing wetly opaque glasses. Preferably with yellow lenses to avoid suicidal thoughts.

Is there anything more depressing than wearing dark sunglasses in heavy rain under a leaden sky? I suppose there's watching TV. Politics, sport or religion are always fertile ground for dark thoughts about ending it all. Wildlife documentaries come a close second to any combination of the above. Age is torture when you've seen it all countless times before!

My fondest hope before I die it to see a global revolution to put a complete end to advertising. Particularly the 99.99999% aimed squarely at the village idiot mentality. Who else would be taken in? Is there any other kind of advertising? The internet is so saturated with the stuff that it's worse than malware! Vast, global but entirely virtual empires are supposedly based on lying to billions of knuckle-draggers about complete and utter dross.

Can you explain the difference between spam and the endless advertising diarrhoea dumped onto our screens without permission? The BBC News website often charges me 30 seconds of my life before I can see a YouTube video! A video in which the BBC were never involved in either the recording and uploading. Across the Internet these parasites on other's luck or talent are charging the viewer great chunks of their lives for commercial gain. Isn't it time that YT videos had the same protection as the Hollywood studios?

No offense to the educationally challenged but why are there so many of them? Judging from the global quality of advertising seven billion, and counting, are considered no better drooling vegetables  by the "propaganda industry". The moron who first allowed subtitles on TV adverts should have been strung up from a lamppost!

If we have learned anything from Asian dominance in a sweat shop world is that labels mean absolutely nothing. And that nothing has any greater value than the actual quality of the tat on offer. If the workers are not paid enough to lead a reasonably comfortable life, outside their obscene working hours (often in appalling and/or dangerous conditions) then it is slavery. Pure and simple.

Anyone still clinging to product loyalty must be even more naive and gullible than the rest of humanity. Why is there nothing on the product label about working hours, conditions and monthly wages? Probably because nobody gives a shit provided the product matches their expectations of being dirt cheap enough to afford more of everything. Doesn't that make the consumer nothing better than a slave driver?

Meanwhile back at the trike shed: I was rewarded for going out by being rained on going both ways. I probably deserved it for going completely off-topic as I waited for the Danish monsoon to end. Only 7 miles.

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