Convalescent

Oh sleep ! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole !
To Mary Queen the praise be given !
She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
That slid into my soul.
- Coleridge

My symptoms finally reduced to the point where I could sleep without being constantly woken by pain or coughing. I put in a solid eight hours on the sofa from 5 am to 1 pm. Jon helped hugely by setting up the laptop so I could listen to THEGS - listening to stuff helps me to drift off.

Heh. That's quite a subtle gag at today's Olympic-themed Google.

(no subject)

I dreamt, in enormous detail, of an adventure in space. Our little ship visited many planets and I think perhaps many times, but finally landed on a world with an immense swollen red sun, which appeared to be a large cardboard cutout. The sunlight was painfully, stinging hot. We had crash-landed, but the crew, who I think were random survivors of something, couldn't be bothered to organise or do anything, even to choose which rooms in the ship to sleep in. We were obviously doomed. One of the crew urinated all over the shower and the walls; he had had this problem for a week but hadn't told anyone. I forced some of the crew to take him into the planet's single town for medical treatment. ("Can you phone them?" I asked the captain; he gave me a Look. "Or use radio, or whatever." Obviously even if this backwater didn't have whatever cool communications system we used, they would still have radio.)

Earlier, when I was the Pertwee Doctor, I went into town, leaving the ship via a sort of large rolling metal ball. The ship was up on stilts, or something; the ball rolled off and then rolled down the path into town. I got out through a hole in the side, but the ball kept rolling - I realised I had no way to get back to the ship. The town comprised the usual mall I visit in my dreams, including the second hand book shop, this time part of a chain called "Irish Books". I remember thinking books would be an unlikely luxury in this apocalyptic scenario. Later, when I was Zoe from Firely, I also found a cupboard full of books on the ship.

The cats were there, of course. Frank was sitting on the front porch of the spaceship. His white bits had got red dust in them from the planet.

More Fun with Subtitles

Clash of the Titans is dull, so I tried watching a couple of scenes in French. I can just barely get the gist: "I feel sorry for the bad guy. Me too. I love you. Me too." Said bad guy is played by Barnum from Mind of Evil, putting in a smashing performance. An interesting effect: the blankness of Hamlin's performance as Perseus is even more obvious when you can't quite follow his dialogue, and try to watch his face for clues. Not a flicker of expression.

ETA: Oh gods. Perseus' wacky animal sidekick just showed up.

There oughta be a Bad Mythology Web site for snobs like me to enjoy, like Bad Astronomy*.

This film suffers from the widespread Curse of the Hollywood Movie, ie, casting really terrific British actors as the baddies**. Zeus (Sir Laurence) and Athene (Susan Fleetwood) just exchanged about four lines which packed more emotional power than pretty much the whole rest of the movie. About her pet owl for heck's sake!





* Although I've never quite forgiven this site for complaining about the expression "a meteoric rise", because I'm a language snob too.

** First brought to my attention by RH: POT and confirmed by The Three Musketeers.

Advice to the Sneezy

Here, o ferrets, is my hard-won KNOLEDGE about colds. Listen.

As soon as the symptoms manifest, gather your supplies. Do not delay; you may soon be helpless. You need:

- cough syrup (if the cough's in your chest, an expectorant one, which both reduces the coughing and breaks up the eval shit inside you)*

- Panadol (a pain reliever which reduces fever) or similar

- tons of hot drinks (I use Lemsip, a lemon drink with Panadol; Jon bought me some ripping liquorice tea**; Ace's suggestion of adding a slice of ginger to tea worked brilliantly) - these soothe your throat and clear your nose

- gargles (eg 1 cup warm water + 1/2 teaspoon salt every two hours)

- tons of tissues, plus suitable receptacle for the dead ones

- sugar-free Eucalyptus/Menthol lozenges

If prolonged, uncontrollable coughing has, er, nasty side-effects for you, cater for those too (eg have a spare ice cream container handy in case of barf).

Also gather books / DVDs / Walkman etc. You are going to be helpless and bored. I relocated to the sofa so my constant noise and bother wouldn't keep Jon up all night. Unable to rise, I had an eye mask so I could alternately dose and read without having to get up and turn the light on and off.

You have got to keep your throat moist or it will hurt. Hot drinks, lozenges, steam, gargles, etc all contribute, as does a clear nose (hence the eucalyptus and menthol).

Keep your fever down with Panadol and keep warm, but do not overheat yourself, you'll go funny. I once had to be rescued by Kyla after wrapping myself in blankets, sitting in front of the heater, and forgetting how to speak or drink. Conversely, beware of the body temperature drop that occurs when you go to sleep - you don't want to wake up with a shock, shivering.

Warm showers bring great relief - heat + steam. Actually they're good for anything, stomach upsets, depression, you name it.

Info on when to see a doctor here. (They are spot-on about the undissolved particles - I nearly killed myself with the last inch of a cup of miso soup. Wash 'em out quickly with a cold drink.)





* This may seem obvious to many. As a younger woman I once saw a doctor and complained of a cough so severe I couldn't stop wetting myself and throwing up. The useless bitch failed to mention cough syrups. Years later a chemist explained this simple concept to me. I have known many superb doctors, but also many superb chemists. Also, do not make my youthful mistake of sipping the cough syrup until you fall into a stupor; it's not meant to be used like that.

** Nuclear Free and Not Tested On Animals. Wow!

Satan's face seen on front of Satan's head

The old fellow has been in the news a bit lately:

US general's 'Satan' speeches broke rules. *gulp*

Thanks to morgan303, the story of an Australian Wiccan's successful religious vilification complaint. This has received plenty of "amusing, weird news item" press coverage about the place*, but the story isn't so funny. After a competing politician labelled her a Satanist and claimed occult forces were attacking the local council (I am not making this up) she was beaten and her home and car vandalised and she lost her small business. (For some mild amusement, though try this wholly incoherent response from an online columnist. I had to work out what "womb baby killaries" are.)

I am personally less worried that someone will spot my pentacle and chase me down the street than that they'll spot my pentacle and point and laugh at my hair-legged hippy eccentricity. Nonetheless that's pretty bloody scary stuff. Still, a pentacle's pretty inconspicuous compared to the hijab.

ETA: In South Carolina, a Wiccan's pet parrot was killed and mutilated as part of a campaign of threats and vandalism against her. I cannot express my rage at this.

ETA: Oh gods. They also killed and mutilated her cat. This is unbearable.


* The Herald Sun's headline was "Witch says she was demonised". This may not have been intentional humour.

(no subject)

In the mid-eighties a Melbourne radio station ran a daily comedy segment, Miami Mice. In pretty much every episode the murine heroes had to deal with the same hostage crisis: one episode started with a weary voice squeaking, "Fat Cat's got more hostages down at the warehouse... better go bust him..."

So too, Mr Howard's porkies.

Howard was told of doubts on Iraq weapons, says Blix

Fresh holes in PM's account of children overboard

(no subject)

Madness in the High Court

This is a little bit funny, a little bit fascinating, and a little bit scary. There but for the grace of the gods go I.

Madness in the fanfic

Another beauty from babb_chronicles. A fascinating thing about these kids' scribbles is that they're only doing what numerous more, er, accomplished fanfic writers are doing - borrowing characters and milieu to work through their own stuff*. Fic is hugely about loyalty, betrayal, friendship, and the complexities of sex and romance. (I mean, look at that first example. Have we not all felt that way?) I'm also intrigued by the embryonic efforts to imitate JKR's style, as in the bit about Ron's "munching and crunching".

Of course, it's a little more difficult to be there-but-for-the-grace about the nudist stepmother and god's personal fighter.

Someone has made ikons of some of the phrases from these woebegotten efforts. These are terribly funny, but as always my flinch reflex stops me from snavelling any (imagine if one of those poor kids came across one!).



* This is perfectly legitimate - what d'you imagine we do in the published junk? :-)

My synaesthesia is pastede on yay!

New Scientist reports on an unusual study of "late-blind" synaesthetes and blindfolded non-synaesthetes, with researchers suggesting that the condition may be the result of universal "plasticity of the brain". (Based on this brief outline, sounds like bullshit to me, Barry. But I wanna know if the chromolexical guy got the same colours for Braille as for print numbers and letters.)