The Everything Bagel

"You've been feeling it too, haven't you? Something is off. Your clothes never wear as well the next day. Your hair never falls quite the same way. Even your coffee tastes wrong. Our institutions are crumbling. Nobody trusts their neighbor anymore. And you stay up at night wondering to yourself..."  Alpha Waymond, Everything Everywhere All At Once

The posts about me hating my job and exploring the factors that go into that (I hope) illustrated how things go wrong, often with capitalism as the primary culprit.

It is not the only culprit, and we will spend more time on that, but I remembered this part of the movie.

The quote can simply create a mood, but we may be surprised by the break down.

Your clothes never wear as well the next day:

I'll start with my weakest link, but it is still interesting.

One potential issue is use of fabric softener. These products coat your clothing, and may lead to your clothes not being (or smelling) truly clean. This may be a reason for the popularity of scent beads.

https://mygreencloset.com/never-use-fabric-softener/

These are things that are not good for you, your clothes, your appliances, or the planet, but they are still widely advertised.

It is probably more to the point that mass-produced clothes are often produced cheaply, where you will have threads coming out, making seams sloppy, or if they are the threads holding the elastic in place that can really mess with the structure. 

Plus, you may also notice that clothes being the same size, even for the same brand and design, don't always fit the same way. This could be a function of the fabric cutting, where multiple cloth segments are being cut at once, not all with the same amount of fabric, or where the stitching does not work out exactly the same.

https://www.thread.com/us/tips/men/style-sos/style-sos-why-does-same-size-fit-differently/

This is worse with cheaper brands, but only being able to afford cheap clothes probably means there are many areas that aren't going as well for you.

(And if you're fat... )

Your hair never falls quite the same way:

Personally, my hair texture is difficult tough to match. Pantene used to work really well for me. Hairdressers tended to hate Pantene, but I could afford it, and my hair felt good. They changed the formula. I found a good fit with Shea Moisture, but then they changed the formula for that.

The really annoying thing with that is apparently the change was to try and get more white customers. (I am not Black, but my hair has some similarities.) I was ditched again, though my sisters are still using Shea Moisture. (Their hair is more conventional.)

I keep bouncing around with different brands, some working better than others. If I had more disposable income, that would help, but there would be lots of other places to use that first.

Of course, climate changes that result in more hot, humid days can have a big effect on hair. Also the water we are getting may have some problems, but that may be more of a factor for...

Even your coffee tastes wrong:

https://www.discovery.com/science/unsafe-drinking-levels-in-rainwater

In the Willamette Valley, we drink rainwater, but it does come through the water district; one hopes it's fine, but food gets watered by rain. 

I don't drink coffee, but I eat fruits and vegetables and grain products; what is coming out of the sky matters. 

Plus, so much of that (and the food for the animals we eat) is grown in depleted soil.

Lately a lot of meat just doesn't taste that great. I still have my sense of smell, so it's not that. 

I have long been aware of the difference between beef grown on feeding lots versus beef raised by 4-H kids. I mostly understand the reasons for that, but what if everything is getting worse? What if you have depleted soil as the source of the grass or hay or alfalfa or corn, plus rain water full of chemicals, and that is what tired, overworked people find on their plates?

You can argue that the crumbling institutions and the neighbors not trusting each other are bigger issues, but the "small" issues all relate.

With my job getting busier, and medical offices getting busier, people are spending more time on hold. That is less of a problem than the other barriers to care and to healthy lifestyles, but it still sucks.

It's not because of a giant bagel across parallel realities, but many things -- big life issues and small pleasures that could take some edge off of the larger difficulties -- are collapsing inward in a vortex of suck.

Have you been feeling it too?