mall raze after not setting foot in the place for any meaningful length of time in many years, walking through the mall is a somewhat surreal experience. every third person has their eyes glued to their phone, oblivious to the world around them. they'll walk right into you if you don't get out of their way in time. parents don't hold hands with their children anymore. they shout at them like disobedient dogs. come. come on. get out of there. stop that. catch up. then they walk on as the distance between them grows, not looking back at the child, assuming they'll follow. i'm amazed there aren't dozens of abductions a day. here too phones take precedence over all else. mothers pushing strollers, ignoring their child in favour of a texting session. one dispassionate dead-eyed stare after another. snatches of inane conversation overheard and then wished away from memory. one bit stands out. a man maybe in his thirties whining to his daughter who looks all of five years old, "we can never like go anywhere because you always have to go to the bathroom!" and an image that seems to capture the startling inhumanity of all of this, that i couldn't have invented if i tried: a bicycle flipped upside down so it's supported by the seat, an iphone shoved between the spokes of a wheel, recharging its battery in a wall outlet. 191107 ... raze i can't say i miss it. even on a day like today, when the humidity is thick enough to chew on and make a meal out of, walking in the park is more enjoyable by an order of magnitude. what i do miss is the bioweigher. you feed it two bucks and it tells you how much you weigh and approximately how many calories your body burns. it suggests changes to your diet. it suggests lottery numbers. it even spits out a horoscope (the bioweigher calls it a "biorhythm"). here's the one it gave me back in february: "you can feel yourself moving into high gear despite some unsettling emotional pangs. you can really see what needs to be done, so supervise, manage, oversee, and take care of all that comes to your attention. emotions unsettled." it's like you know me, bioweigher. there's no need for the thing now that i own a bathroom scale for the first time in about twenty-four years. but i can't help wondering what it would have to say about me now. 200526 what's it to you? who go blather from