The Bridge is not a great album and I sort of like it

The Bridge - Billy JoelI finally picked up Billy Joel’s 1986 album The Bridge in fancy digital format, previously owning and then selling the CD (I needed the money at the time–this was a long time ago when selling used CDs was actually somewhat worthwhile). For some reason, it sells for a few dollars more than his other albums, as if subtly trying to tell you to avoid it or conversely making it seem more valuable and thus, irresistible.

Given the actual album content, it may be more the former.

Joel was prolific throughout his career until this album, which came out three years after An Innocent Man. His next two albums would come out three and then four years apart before he essentially hung up recording forever (with a few minor exceptions).

With The Bridge the first hints of a creative dry spell are seen with Cyndi Lauper lending a co-writing credit (and vocals) to “Code of Silence.” On the other hand, Joel also uses the album to do whatever the hell he wants, a fitting reflection of the indulgent 1980s. Fortunately, his ability to write effortlessly catchy tunes lifts much of the material. He straps on a guitar for no apparent reason in “A Matter of Trust” but the song is catchy enough. He adopts a falsetto and goes big band in “Big Man on Mulberry Street,” does a duet with idol Ray Charles in “Baby Grand” (while engaging in some ill-advised Ray Charles-style vocal affectations) and apes The Police in “Running on Ice.”

The low points come in the songs where he is addressing or singing about women. Sometimes the result is forgettable fluff like “Modern Woman,” one of his most skippable songs ever. Other times the songs are bogged down with tacky lyrical turns. In “This is the Time” Joel sings:

I haven’t shown you everything a man can do
So stay with me baby, I got plans for you

This is gross, really.

“Temptation” seems to be a defense of his then-relationship with Christie Brinkley, a lyrically weak and musically lazy ballad.

But among these lesser songs, there’s some good stuff, too. Sure, “Big Man on Mulberry Street” is over the top but it’s also a fun pastiche. While the lyrics are strangely generic, “Code of Silence” is still evocative and Lauper’s contribution to the song works well. “Getting Closer” is an energetic, er, closer, and while “Running on Ice” gets a little too wrapped up in its portrayal of Joel as a poor, overworked but so very sophisticated urban man, the song is pleasingly energetic.

This is easily Billy Joel’s most inconsistent album since his work in the early 70s and I wouldn’t blame anyone for stopping their collection at An Innocent Man (or even The Nylon Curtain), but there’s enough solid material here for me to give it a tepid recommendation.

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Boxing Day is not about boxing

The ad wizards at Sears probably think this is clever, but it’s really just kind of dumb.

Although I suppose some people might actually box each other to get to some of those sweet door crasher deals.

oh we are funny
No, Sears, no.

Also, wearing boxing gloves would make it difficult to pick up items you wished to purchase in-store or to enter your credit card information if ordering online. I suppose a particularly dextrous person might be able to use their toes or nose (for the online part, less so for in-store).

Also also: Strike two for “boxing week.” Don’t make me put on my boxing gloves.

Boxing Day 2016 or as I like to call it, Slushy Rainy Snowy Horrible Stay Inside Day

This morning I was greeted with this from the deck:

Boxind Day 2016 and still more snow
Boxing Day, Snow Day–who can tell the difference?

Still more snow. And as forecast, it warmed up just enough to change to rain so sidewalks are now slushy messes and roads have rivers running curbside, topped with layers of slushy snow that might fool you into thinking they’re solid until a vehicle drives through and sprays you from head to foot with a delightful slurry of ice, water and mud.

The forecast over the next four days calls for rain or a chance of rain, so presumably at least the new stuff will wash away, leaving the crusty old stuff still lingering until New Year’s Eve, where 3-7 cm of new snow is forecast. Snow on New Year’s Eve–what could possibly go wrong?

On top of this, I now have that feeling in my sinuses and chest like I’m coming down with a cold. Just as my sore back is finally on the mend. Typical.

I make no promises that I won’t spend the rest of 2016 complaining about the weather and my possible cold. Good night!

Christmas trees a-falling: A stroll on Christmas Day

As foretold my the ancient prophecies and my post yesterday, it was a white Christmas as the crusty, icy snow from two weeks ago is still lingering around in plentiful amounts. Fortunately, it was also clear so I took the opportunity to go for a walk and keep my back from seizing up. Win-win as long as I didn’t fall. Which I nearly did, multiple times.

As I headed out one of my primary objectives was to find the least slippery route. The majority of sidewalks are clear, as are the streets so this was pretty simple until I got to Hume Park. Once there I got my first look at the Great Tree Destruction of Early Winter 2016. This tree fell near the kids playing area, intent on squashing a tot or two. It had already been cut up by park workers or passing lumberjacks.

One less tree to pester people in Hume Park
One less tree to pester people in Hume Park

The next timber that had timbered was across the trail at the bottom of the stairs leading into Lower Hume Park. This is the same spot where two trees came down during the windstorm of August 2015. It is a very popular spot for trees to fall over, apparently. No one had touched this one yet but I was able to climb over it without issue. (UPDATE: This tree was finally cut up and removed in April 2017.)

Another one bites the dust. Well, snow.
Another one bites the dust. Well, snow.

The stairs, which I did not take a picture of because it likely would have resulted in many broken bones, were covered in compacted snow that had developed an icy sheen. The compacted snow was also lumpy. This had the following effect when placing feet on the steps:

  • impossible for feet to rest solidly, causing them to slide
  • sliding on an already slippery surface causes more sliding
  • with little room to accommodate aforementioned sliding it becomes very easy to slide off the current step, land on the one below and then continue the process until the bottom of the staircase is reached, where one would arrive in a pile of broken bones and contusions

I went down the stairs by gripping the handrail with both of my gloved hands and clutching as if my life depended on it, which it did, probably. Even so, I still had my feet give way a few times, nearly causing me to go down express-style. At this point, I knew I would not be coming back up, no matter which way my route went from here.

The third fallen tree was leaning over the sidewalk on North Road, just before the turn-off onto the Brunette River trail. I didn’t take a picture of it because the sidewalk here was not in good shape. It also didn’t look that dramatic as it wasn’t blocking my path.

A short way down the river trail I came across fallen trees #4 and #5. These had been cut and cleared but the debris area indicated they had come down on the trail, intent on taking out hungry squirrels or people out walking in the snow because it’s pretty. While I did take a picture, I prefer this image instead, showing the amazing power of sewers to melt snow. There is a sewer line that parallels the river and every manhole (peoplehole?) cover was a snow-free zone. This batch of eight was big enough to have a picnic on, albeit a stinky picnic.

Sewers: fighting snow since ancient Rome
Sewers: fighting snow since ancient Rome

Fallen tree #6 was at Burnaby Lake. I ventured as far as the Cariboo Dam, where I normally start my runs. The first shot shows the uprooted tree from just behind. It fell away from the picnic area, so only wandering polar bears would have been at risk. The sun is already low in the sky because we have about 40 minutes of sunlight per day right now. Good ol’ winter.

Burnaby Lake, now with one less tree
Burnaby Lake, now with one less tree

This shot gives a better view of the trail, which is now a slick, icy insurance claim waiting to happen. I knew it would be like this but it was still kind of depressing. It’s going to take a lot of sun or a lot of rain to clear this out before running can resume. And we are expecting more snow, possibly in as soon as a few hours. I will need to develop an unnatural love for treadmills, for unnatural is all it would be. Or take up knitting, which is currently not affected by snow.

Good conditions for running if you are a snow leopard or abominable sowman
Good conditions for running if you are a snow leopard or abominable snowman

And so it was here that I ended my snowy trek, turning back and heading up to ride the SkyTrain home. It was nice to get out and despite being 2ºC I managed to keep up enough of a pace to not feel cold. But I’d rather be running because when I’m running I’m not within eating distance of Bugles, Ferraro Rocher or other evil concoctions I have foolishly kept in the household.

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‘Twas the night before Christmas (2016 edition)

Technically this is a rare white Christmas, not because I am, in fact, white (which is not rare but persistent), but because there is still snow on the ground. It’s been around eight years since snow hung around for so long. It feels like this snow has been around for eight years.

I went for a twenty-minute walk around the neighborhood this evening and as one might expect on Christmas Eve, it was very quiet, aided in part by rather dense fog. I had people in a car pull over and ask me how to get to the Patullo Bridge. Normally you can find it by just driving toward it–it’s kind of hard to miss. But in the fog, it’s actually really easy to miss. If you’re not familiar with the area you’d have no real sense of where you are. You might be driving into a town that sacrifices tourists to appease a corn god or even into Surrey.

Tomorrow is forecast to be cold and clear, which is fine by me. Boxing Day (the start of Boxing Week, Boxing Month and eventually Boxing Year) is slated to feature more snow. This is not fine by me. I’d like to start running outdoors again before it’s officially spring.

Oh, and I somehow hurt my lower back about a week and a half ago (lifting an old Seanix PC, I think) and it’s been slowly recovering, except last night when it suddenly got much worse. I’ve been more mobile today and have medicated in anticipation of the bed failing to comfort as it should.

So I only really want three things for Christmas:

  1. No more snow this winter (seems unlikely)
  2. My back to feel better (there’s a decent chance it will at least be improving again)
  3. Donald Trump to be kidnapped by Bigfoot, never to be seen again (unlikely but I remain hopeful)

Overall, not the worst Christmas Eve ever but given how generally dismal this year has been, I am content the fog outside isn’t actually on fire.

 New Year Resolutions for 2017 (assuming the world is still here by 2018)

It is time to make resolutions because tradition demands we make silly promises, break them, express regret, then do the whole thing over again a year later, which is just enough time to convince ourselves that this time will be different.

That said, my goal to get to 150 pounds this year was going quite well until mid-October. By then I was at 153 pounds and was still running regularly, having recovered nicely from an injury in the early spring (and having escaped battered but without any broken bits in my Great Tripping Incident in August). Then two things happened:

  1. I caught a very nasty cold. It laid me out for a couple of weeks and I missed a bunch of runs.
  2. Simultaneously, the sun began setting early enough that by the time I was healthy again I could no longer run my usual routes after work because it was now dark and I’d be attacked and carried away by vampire bats.

To address #2 I kept running on the weekends, but once a week is not enough to keep in shape. I pondered running during lunch at work but did not commit to it for various reasons. I thought about using the treadmill at the Canada Games Pool but my partner kept offering to go and then not really wanting to, which made it easy for me to decide that yes, it was easier to just sit at home and eat bags of Bugles instead.

This is all to say that about two months later I am up to 164 pounds, an impressive backslide. Gaining weight is very easy. If I made that a resolution I’d have 51 weeks left to work on any and all other resolutions.

My first resolution, therefore, will not be a huge surprise.

My Resolutions for 2017 Assuming Donald Trump
Doesn’t Destroy the World

  • drop to 145 pounds. Yes, I’m actually making the goal tougher for 2017. Secretly this was always my goal and 150 pounds was a soft target. I’ve been as low as 143 pounds and it’s definitely not too skinny on my frame. Though I am kind of skinny, anyway.
  • run at least three times a week barring injury or other extraordinary circumstance. I would previously include “the entire city covered in snow” being an extraordinary circumstance but really, there are gyms and treadmills, so this doesn’t qualify. It’s also the minimum needed to keep in decent shape.
  • no farmers tan. I wear t-shirts when running and as a result when I remove my shirt I a) blind anyone nearby with my ultra-white untanned body and b) get mocked for having conspicuously tanned arms right up to where the sleeves of my t-shirts sit. My solution this year will be to wear sleeveless shirts (I already have a few) and maybe a few stints working on a wee bit of a tan for my upper body. I might entertain the thought of running without a shirt when the weather is warmer but I’m not sure I should subject the world to that.
  • killer abs. Yes, the time has come to work on my upper body, especially if I’m not going to have an unseemly farmers tan. I haven’t decided how to do this yet. I have dumbbells but I tried them before and didn’t like them much. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure I won’t like anything I try to achieve this goal. It will be an interesting challenge.
  • eat better. This means fewer Bugles and saying no when offered candy. Currently, I tend to say yes except you can’t hear the actual word because I’m already shoving the candy into my mouth.
  • learn to swim. Haha, no. I’m not trying that again! Well, maybe. But only if I can learn with people who really can’t swim, not the bunch of cheaters I was grouped with when I took lessons in 2009.

That covers my health-oriented goals. Now onto being a better person in various ways.

  • write 1,000 words a day. No exceptions except under extraordinary circumstances like every keyboard, pen, pencil and other writing instrument in the world suddenly disappear and even then I could scratch out words in the dirt with a sturdy twig. These 1,000 words are to be fiction, so blog posts don’t count.
  • read at least 32 books. I’d love to bump this to 52 and do a book a week but I simply can’t read that fast. Maybe I could make speed reading a 2018 goal.
  • be a positive influence to others. I have no specifics on this. I’ll just try to think before I post, be nice and smile (but not in a creepy sort of way).
  • win the lottery. I’d spend the money wisely, I promise!

That’s good for now. If I think of more I’ll add them and I’ll try to re-visit the list periodically to see how I’m doing. I expect tears.

Thirty years in Vancouver: the ups, downs and sideways

I moved to Vancouver in August 1986 to take a job at Expo 86. I was 21 years old and paid $4 an hour to work in a souvenir store. This was actually 35 cents above minimum wage. I felt like I was living the high life. I quit a week later after being moved to a shift that ended at midnight (I was young and temperamental) but after thinking about heading back to the island I ultimately decided to stay.

Thirty years later and I’m still here (I’m in New Westminster as I write this, so technically outside of Vancouver proper but still in the ephemeral area known as the Lower Mainland). A few things have changed. Prices, for example. Observe!

  • 1986: one zone transit fare is $1.15
  • 2016: one zone transit fare is $2.75
  • 1986: one-zone monthly pass is $46
  • 2016: one-zone monthly pass is $91

The rent for my first bachelor apartment in downtown Vancouver was $330 per month. This seems like make-believe now, the kind of thing you tell kids and they laugh and say, “LOL, you and your crazy stories, Gramps!”

Today I walked along Robson Street for the first time in quite awhile. Some things haven’t changed–the London Drugs that was there in 1986 is still there now. Earls is still above it. The dueling Starbucks at Robson and Thurlow have been reduced to a single store–but not to worry, several others have sprung up along the strip to compensate.

The original Vancouver Public Library at Robson and Burrard has changed hands a few times, starting as a Virgin Megastore then changing to an HMV before music as physical media finally and truly died. It is now a giant Victoria’s Secret store. Where once people sought knowledge and enlightenment they now seek lacy lingerie.

An old building on Thurlow that once housed a McDonald’s has been replaced by an edifice featuring Versace. This pretty much sums up downtown now. Tony, expensive. Dull.

And crowded, as there are only three shopping days left before Christmas.

I headed over to Nelson Street to see if the old Beverly apartment building, one of the first places I lived in (circa 1987-88) was still standing–and it is! I am actually a little surprised because with real estate downtown being mega-super-insanely expensive, I would have thought this dumpy little walk-up–that my drunk landlord tried to burn to the ground one night–would be long gone.

Beverly Apartment, Dec. 22, 2016

It even looks better now than it did back then. In 1988 it was painted a much darker brown and looked like a big square poo. This is definitely a step up. Rent is probably $1500 a month now.

By this time I was starting to get cold because it’s winter and winter is like that, so I headed to the warm climes of Pacific Centre mall. My brief, incomplete tour of downtown surprisingly didn’t leave me feeling nostalgic, probably due to a combination of the crowds, cold and so many shops and other places having been replaced. The streets are there, the layout is the same but it feels like a lot of what made the area what it was in 1988 is gone now. Maybe I’ll feel different if I go back in the summer. I’ll put that on my 2017 to-do list, assuming Trump doesn’t nuke the world first.

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The future of AI and blog topics

This is how the internet works.

  • I subscribe to a newsletter from Medium, choosing a number of areas of interest
  • I get a Medium Daily Digest email with links to articles reflecting my chosen interests
  • One of these interests is writing
  • One of the links is to an article titled 15 of the Best Free Web Applications for Writers
  • This article highlights a number of interesting and useful tools–I approve!
  • One of these is HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator. I love generators because the results can sometimes work as intended, providing inspiration when you struggle to write anything, but more often they provide unintended amusement because they will happily interpret things literally or combine items in silly ways that are not meant to be silly

This leads to the results I got. As requested, I entered three nouns:

  • cat
  • future
  • writing

I was not advised to write about cats in the future…or was I? Here are my week’s worth of suggested topics:

  1. 10 Quick Tips About Cat
  2. What Will Writing Be Like in 100 Years?
  3. 10 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About Future
  4. 14 Common Misconceptions About Cat
  5. 10 Signs You Should Invest in Writing

First, I must admit I love the idea of this monolithic entity known as Cat. Cat is good. Cat is all. You will respect Cat. I am less convinced that I could come up with ten quick tips about Cat or 10 signs I should invest in writing. But I’m going to try, right now!

10 Quick Tips About Cat

  1. Cat is furry
  2. Cat has four legs
  3. Cat has tail
  4. Cat likes cat food
  5. Cat will chase laser pointer light
  6. Cat will sleep on your keyboard
  7. Cat does not like Dog
  8. Cat loves Mouse
  9. Cat is smarter than you
  10. Cat will come back the very next day

What Will Writing Be Like in 100 Years?

We’ll have fully switched over from fountain pens and foolscap to holo-typing machines that imprint the letters into a space slightly in front of and above our faces. Writing will be a holistic experience, one you share just by running up to someone and saying, “Watch this!” while you spew out words into the air between you and them. Then they will leave because you’re a bit of a freak. Writing will still be a very lonely thing.

10 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About Future

  1. The future is always just ahead
  2. There’s no future in the past
  3. Prices will be higher
  4. That dude who is taller than you? In the future he’ll still be taller than you
  5. Wait, who are my competitors, exactly?
  6. If you don’t correctly anticipate future trends, you’ll never stop wearing those acid wash jeans
  7. The future is so bright you will need to wear shades
  8. Invest in sunglass manufacturing
  9. What goes up must come down, so invest in elevator technology
  10. Still not sure who my competitors are but they should watch out because I have read many books that predict the future using advanced math or something

14 Common Misconceptions About Cat

  1. Cat is really Dog in disguise
  2. Cat will never miss when jumping onto Couch
  3. Cat likes cheese; it is Mouse that likes cheese, though Cat likes Mouse the way Mouse likes Cheese
  4. Cat uses tail to communicate complex thoughts
  5. Cat is alien species silently watching and judging us
  6. Cat is spelled Kat in some countries; this is only done in cartoons for humorous effect, not in real life
  7. Kit Kat contains real Cat (see above)
  8. There are no cats with nine tails
  9. Cat on a hot tin roof does not mean Cat likes being on a hot tin roof–do not put Cat on hot tin roof
  10. Cat only speaks when it has something important to say (note: this may actually be true, Science has yet to prove one way or the other)
  11. Cat likes taking many baths
  12. Cat will never sleep on your keyboard
  13. Cat will never come back the very next day
  14. Cat enjoys long lists about misconceptions

10 Signs You Should Invest in Writing

  1. You see a big sign that says “You Should Invest in Writing”
  2. Your crazy but rich uncle says, “I’ll give you $100,000 if you write some stupid novel about anything.”
  3. You have a vision of the future and it’s filled with blank pages–and only you have a working pen!
  4. It’s better than investing in 8-track tape technology
  5. Time magazine will one day make “Words” the Person of the Year, making writing hot and in demand
  6. It’s like the lottery, someone’s going to strike it rich, so why not you? (Not applicable if you’re a hopeless hack.)
  7. A typewriter can be used for writing, self-defense and as a door stop; to not invest in something so practical would be foolish
  8. For #7 you may also want to invest in a time machine in order to acquire a typewriter
  9. Darth Vader shows up at your place and says, “Invest in writing or I’ll force choke you where you stand.” It’s probably just another one of your kooky dreams but better to not take any chances
  10. Because you saw it in a list

There, all done! Wait, that was supposed to be stretched over a week. I’ve done it all horribly wrong? Now what will I write about tomorrow?

Not to worry–there are plenty more great prompts just waiting to be used!

December 18, 2016: The bots were snowed in

On December 18, 2016, the number of people/bots/aliens that visited my site were: 0

I even posted a pretty winter picture that day. You could even use it as a nice wallpaper if you cropped it badly. Maybe just use it as is and add scrolling columns of “Damn snow” on both sides of it. The point is I had new content and no one came to look at it, not even by accident.

But that’s okay because the minor amusement value in pseudo-complaining about it more than makes up for the fact that over 7 billion people exist on this planet and on December 18th not one of them came by to have a look-see at this blog. And if one or more of them comes by today, they’ll see this post and maybe feel bad, which will provide further minor amusement value.

The Hunter is a bad album and I like it

The Hunter album coverBlondie’s album The Hunter, released in 1982 and at the time thought to be their final album (the next, No Exit, wasn’t released until 1999), is regarded by many to be a stinker, an ungainly mix of styles and songs that don’t really hold together (Rolling Stone charitably describes it as “an offbeat stylistic jumble” more to be pondered than enjoyed). The band became so interested in making thought-provoking songs that it sounds like they aren’t having that much fun. Presumably the listener doesn’t have much fun hearing the results, either.

And yet I have been listening to the album a lot lately and I find it strangely irresistible. In some ways it’s a retread of Autoamerican, replicating a lot of the songs (Orchid Club = Europa, Island of Lost Souls = The Tide is High, The Beast = Rapture) and the experiments here don’t come off as well as they did on Autoamerican. “Dragonfly” is about a spaceship race (!), “For Your Eyes Only” is a rejected James Bond theme, “Orchid Club” sounds like the theme for a cheesy jungle adventure film from the 1940s. Mixed in with these are lighter pop songs like “Danceway” and the sweetly nostalgic “English Boys.” There is no coherence and many of the songs don’t quite gel,  lacking passion or vitality in some cases and in a few instances literally sounding as if a song was recorded in the wrong key. My favorite example is the Autoamerican B-side “Suzy and Jeffrey” which sounds like it was accidentally recorded at two-thirds the intended speed, though “For Your Eyes Only” also has a peculiarly sluggish rhythm to it. This is Blondie being dilettantes, more interested in experimenting than crafting the kind of catchy songs that propelled them to fame in the late 70s.

And I like it! Listen to the first thirty seconds of the opening track “Orchid Club” with its tribal drums and monkey screeches. This is not a group interested in duplicating “Heart of Glass.” The album unsurprisingly flopped and the band split up.

But still, I can’t deny that “Danceway” is catchier than it deserves to be and “War Child” could be a great song with only a few tweaks, mostly related to the generally muddy production (a problem the entire album suffers from). “Orchid Club” is great because of its cheese.

Even the album cover is ridiculous, directly playing up the whole hunter angle, with Harry decked out in a giant pile of hair mimicking a lion’s mane and the other band members bedecked with tribal paint on their faces (and looking thoroughly nonplussed about it). It’s silly and yet it’s all part of what makes The Hunter work for me.

I can’t really recommend the album, but if you want to hear what happens when a group gains commercial success then largely turns it back on it to do their own thing, The Hunter is an intriguing listen.

 Top 10 ways the world could end

What better time to contemplate world-ending disasters than the holiday season?

  1. Meteor/asteroid/comet strike. A big one would wipe out most life on the planet within weeks. On the plus side, we wouldn’t suffer for long.
  2. Global pandemic. The Black Death killed as many as 200 million in Europe in the 14th century and that was without convenient air travel allowing the infected to hopscotch the planet, spreading disease as the go.
  3. Trump starts some kind of nuclear war. I call out Trump specifically because he is more likely than anyone else on the planet to think using nukes is a good idea, and then to actually use them. It would be tough to wipe out all life, though, because most other leaders would probably be smart enough to hold off.
  4. The sun dies. This one will actually happen, but we’re good for a few more billion years or so.
  5. Climate change goes amok. The signs aren’t good. The biggest concern would be climate change making basic resources like food and water scarce, even in developed countries. This could see billions die as areas where people can comfortably live and food can be grown will shrink dramatically. Tip: Don’t invest in Miami beachfront property.
  6. Aliens vaporize our planet to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Let’s face it, we’d be hard-pressed to give them a good reason not to do this.
  7. An unprecedented solar storm strips away the atmosphere. You can only hold your breath for so long.
  8. A different sun a few light years away goes supernova, baking the Earth like a clay pot. Suns can be real jerks sometimes.
  9. One or more super volcanoes erupt. As befits their super designation, these volcanoes can alter the global climate in a way that would kind of kill almost everything, thanks to years of ash-filled skies.
  10. Gravity stops working and everything just floats off into space. It’s just a theory, after all. Maybe it’s controlled by molemen in the center of the Earth and they all go on strike for better pay or free Netflix.