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Tag Archives: totally true stories

Real life superheroes

I write about superpowers a lot and superheros and superpowers go together. So, It has recently come to my attention that there is a real, live superhero in Vancouver. Well, he’s described as a superhero and I kind of disagree with that. I believe superheroes should have superpowers, because they are…super. As far as I can tell, this guy doesn’t have any superpowers. But this guy could probably be considered a hero. At least, he’s a nice guy trying to make a difference in his home town. He may be on par with that Batman guy who visits children’s hospitals to cheer up the kids there. Except that his superhero identity isn’t based on an existing one. So anyway, his superhero name is Thanatos.

Thanatos (image links to photo shoot with a bunch of superheros)

Thanatos goes out once a month, early in the morning, and helps the homeless community in Vancouver. He goes in full costume. He didn’t always. He used to do this just as a normal guy and apparently the homeless he was helping couldn’t remember him. Then it dawned on him that he should make his appearance more memorable. Enter the costume.

Thanatos, the superhero, based his name (and thus costume) on Thanatos, the daemon personification of death in Greek mythology. You may know him from the story of Sisyphus. Sisyphus first cheated death by tricking Thanatos into his own shackles. That must have been a sight to see. How do you trick people into binding themselves? But anyway…

So Thanatos, the superhero, wears predominately black, has a black tie with skulls on it, a black hat, a utility belt, and a green skull mask. It must be an interesting sight to see. I mean, think about it, you’re comfortably drowsing in a corner close to a streetlight in the black of night. And out of the mist, you waken to see a dark, looming figure approach you. He seemingly floats above the mist. Perhaps frightened and wary, you huddle into your corner a bit more. The figure enters into the beam of light cast by the streetlight, and you see a striking, green skull ominously glaring down at you. And then this dark-cloaked, beskulled person hands you a care package and tells you to be well. HOW IS THIS NOT INTERESTING?

I imagine it would look like this…

The fact that this guy decided to base his superhero persona on a minor figure in Greek mythology is interesting. The fact that he based his superhero persona on a figure of death is interesting. He’s not the grim reaper collecting the souls of the homeless on the streets of Vancouver. He’s giving them care packages! He’s trying to help them out! It’s this guy, dressed in black and a green skull, helping people out in the dark! THIS IS INTERESTING.

Anyway, it turns out that the person behind Thanatos is in his 60s. He enjoys what he does and would like to continue doing it for a long time. And when mobility starts being a problem, he says he will be out patrolling the streets in the “Hoveraround of Justice” and with the “Walker of the Free.”

  • This is how I first learned about Thanatos.
  • Here is a pretty interesting interview with Thanatos.
  • Here is Peter Tangen’s site on real life superheroes (the Telegraph article was an excerpt of sorts).

Interesting medical conditions

Just to be clear, I’m not actually a hypochondriac.  Sometimes I like to pretend that I am one so that I can have all these really cool diseases.  Um…I’m obviously not much like other people.  I like diseases.  And the agents that cause disease.  They’re really interesting to me.  But I generally don’t really believe that I have said diseases no matter how convincingly I might portray a sufferer of the disease in question.  So anyway, to the story!

Recently, I was looking into various medical conditions because I thought I might have broken my throat and later on, a few toes.

The throat story: One day last week, my right tonsil started hurting.  No reason as to why.  It just decided to hurt intermittently.  Then it decided to hurt all the time.  I was kind of annoyed with it.  Tonsils that hurt kind of interfere with swallowing and sometimes with turning my head.  So, I decided to look into causes on tonsil hurt.  I found a few.  The most interesting one to me was tonsilloliths.  Did you know such things existed?  It’s like a kidney stone…but in your tonsil.  They can get quite large too and look something like a tooth.  Can you imagine a tooth growing out of your tonsil?  I wonder if it would be any good for chewing.  Probably not.  You can use your teeth for chewing because they’re firmly seated in bone.  Tonsils aren’t really known for their sturdiness.  Anyway, tonsilloliths generally cause bad breath and sometimes will cause sore throats, difficulty swallowing, coughing fits, etc.  You can often remove them yourself.  Apparently, a lot of people post videos of that on youtube.  Otherwise, here is an image search for tonsilloliths.  And the wiki article for it.  It’s all so interesting!

The broken toe(s) story: A few days after breaking my throat, I was trying to get ice some ice for my coffee so I wouldn’t have to wait so long for it to cool off.  That involved removing the ice tray.  That involved a large frozen block of something falling off the top shelf of the freezer.  That involved my right foot being smashed by this frozen block of something because I didn’t realize that a large frozen block of something had fallen from the top shelf of the freezer.  My toes are quite black.  Even now.  At first, I thought I might have broken some of them.  Since then, I’ve decided that while I might have cracked the bone, it’s probably just some pretty bad bruising.  But still, this was excuse to look up different conditions that involve painful toes.  Did you know there is something called turf toe?  I thought it might be some interesting and exotic condition involving your toe.  Maybe there’s so much fungus growing out of your toe that it resembles an athletic field.  I don’t know.  But…it’s not that.  It’s just a really bad sprain of your big toe.  It was so anticlimactic.  Disappointing even.  I guess it makes people feel better to have some interesting sounding condition instead of “badly sprained big toe”?  Anyway, apparently people also post videos of turf toe on youtube.  And here are a bunch of images again.  Here’s the wiki for it, which is actually filed under a much cooler sounding name.

So…yeah.  Interesting medical conditions.  I might sample some of them.