At the store today, there were a couple
kids teenagers youths picking up some soda and candy after school, and the taller one, a ruddy-faced blond, was... being overly nice. Suspiciously nice.
I first noticed them when they passed by the older (I'd say somewhere in her 60's) woman in front of me in the checkout line, and while doing so the kid said "You're very pretty!" ("Så pen du var!" Translated: "How pretty you are!"). She was kind of caught up with getting her groceries sorted out, and didn't respond... So he repeated himself. "You're very pretty!", again, no response (she's probably heard at this point, but doesn't expect him to be talking to her).
He moves around to her other side and repeats "You're very pretty!". She's probably heard and understood that he's talking to her, but by now it's just gotten a bit awkward and uncomfortable.
Fourth time's the charm: "You're very pretty!", she turns towards him slightly. "Are you speaking to me?", "Yes! You're very pretty!", "Oh, um... Thank you?", and with that he smiles and goes on his way.
Later he's in line behind me, and starts saying "Hi there!". Third time's the charm for me, as I either didn't think he was talking to me (what with my being busy putting stuff on the belt and going through the checkout) or don't really want to deal with him. But he persists, so I turn and give him an affirmative nod, and he smiles back before turning his charms on the checkout girl and asking her about her day ("Have you had a nice day?", "I've had a tiresome day, I can tell you that much").
I dunno, maybe I really have lived here too long... Or maybe it was his tone of voice that I thought was a touch insincere... Or maybe it was the self-satisfied smirk he had whenever he got a response... Whatever the case, my main response to his sunny disposition was to wonder what his real motive was.
As a bonus WTF, Spotify's doing this "looking back" thing, and it told me how many minutes I've listened to music on their platform this year. ...doing this, it calculated that this year's listening showed a
2,147,483,547% increase compared to last year. "Talk about overachieving.", it commented.
Well, closest I can get is this thread.
Tried vegetarian "chicken" fillets from the same guys as the "mincemeat". Similar issue texture wise, it was just bizarrely chewy. Tasted decent, nothing like chicken, but decent. I think I worked out why it's so strange, too, and I think it's that it's made from wheat protein as opposed to textured soya protein, which has a much more meat-like consistency.
Ahh, adventures in seitan? Yeah, the stuff's bizarre, but I grew up eating it and now it's got this weird sort of "childhood comfort" association for me.