Yet another day of no brain and too much coughing

 

Comprehensive ickiness marches on.  Booooooring.  Last night I not only had insomnia but The Cough decided to demonstrate what it could really do.  I had no idea it hadn't been trying previously.*

            So, between having done nothing today** and having no brain to make something up, I will depend on forum comments for structure an d(apparent) progression tonight. . . .

Anne_D

And I'm the only person on the planet who didn't/doesn't like THE SOPRANOS or David Tennant.

Nope, not the only one. Tennant is my least favorite of the new Doctors. Never watched The Sopranos, but from the clips I've seen and the reviews I've read, it's not my sort of thing. 

My problem with the Sopranos is that it's about a nice normal (which is to say completely banjaxed and dripping with neuroses and relationship problems) American family . . . who happen to kill people.  Because they're Mafia.  Whatever.  The point is they kill people.  This is just part of the set up.  It's supposed to provide depth or irony or something.  Ewwwww.  No.  I'm not going there.  Killing people is not a normal, acceptable response to business and personal failures.  It is not a healthy, positive way to deal with rivalries and frustrations.  You want to have a story about going around killing people, you need vampires, werewolves and evil magicians.

            I sat through several episodes at irregular intervals because I had so many friends who loved it.  I'm not all that interested in endless developmental rehashings of personal troubles**, which left the murders.  Squicky.  

EMoon

No, ma'am, you're not. David Tennant's acting in ANYthing (including the modern-dress Hamlet production in which he played Hamlet–a miscasting if ever there was one) seemed to be limited to acting bugf*ck crazy with his eyes bulging out. 

Well, yes.  Exactly.  He makes me look composed and serene.  Take a Valium, David, and sit down.   

Sanderling

But this pretty much explains everything, in my mind – for two years, anytime anything went into their mouth they were left feeling pretty awful. I'd stop wanting to eat after that, too. 

Yes, well, it's not that straightforward.  They have spells when they're all over their food like normal dogs, especially Darkness.  Chaos, even enthusiastic, runs to the end of his enthusiasm pretty fast.  There have been moments when I've thought I might even get a little weight on Darkness.  (These moments go away again.)  But you never know when or why such a spell is going to come on—or how long it'll stick around.  Their moods vary from day to day . . . and meal to meal.  Sometimes the Don't-Eat Fairy coshes them halfway through what was looking like a total gulping-down epiphany.  At least one more item that has to be added to the list of Things Robin Must Brace Herself to Be Made Crazy By however is the notorious sighthound indifference to food.  Salukis are infamous for this.  Deerhounds are too.  My guys are one-eighth deerhound—although one of the whippets of the previous generation belonged to the Food Is Optional philosophy too.  She was a very sweet dog, but completely, ahem, barking, and I have a fair range of experience of canine peculiarities.

 Diane in MN

. . . I'll stop talking about it in case Teddy's bad angel starts getting ideas. DOGS. Yes.  

Chaos is squirting again.  )(*&^%$£"!!!!!!!  DOGS. NO.  Next time it's cheetahs or axolotls. 

Claning

WHY DO I HAVE THE LURGY WHEN I AM A PARAGON OF VIRTUE?

Some health advocates do make it sound almost as though germs are only incidental to diseases and if you get sick it is ALL YOUR FAULT. 

Yes, because you haven't done it THEIR WAY.  Here their book only costs £49.99, the cheap rate at the local gym will only rip £1200 out of your flesh every year and the class/machine/trainer you want won't always be unavailable, the supplements you absolutely must have will only be another £100/month, and the special organic food and fashionable superfoods won't do much more than quadruple your grocery bill.  It's your health, isn't it?  What are you waiting for? 

MNCathy

. . . we took our dog . . . to an off-lead dog park this summer and she went to investigate a pond and somehow fell in. She is not a water dog. I don't think I've ever seen such a look of puzzlement on a dog's face at finding herself knee-deep in water, and she got out fast. A young Labradorcame along shortly thereafter, and she stood and watched in disbelief as it chased around in the water. She clearly thought it was mad.

Yes.  There are water dogs and there are not water dogs.  Mavis, my dog minder, asked me a couple of times last summer when it was beltingly hot if the hellhounds really wouldn't get in the river to cool off and I said they haven't yet.  Darkness has fallen in twice by stalking a duck too near the edge, but he has rocketed straight back out again without pause to invest in the experience.  I've twice waded in on hot days*** and tried to persuade them to join me, but they stand on the shore with that alert, patient look that many dogs get when you're doing something even more doolally than usual and they're hoping that it's not going to interfere with your taking them home again by the most scenic possible route to their nice comfy dog bed (we say nothing about food).

            In my deranged and poverty-stricken youth, I used to housesit for an aging lab who had to be prevented from plunging into the Maine Atlantic in the winter because it was hard on his rheumatism.  

Mrs Redboots

The first of your recipes is known in my family as "Cow cake", especially when iced with chocolate butter icing as my mother cuts it into portions whose size resembled that of the concentrate then fed to dairy cattle. 

I love this.  LOVE LOVE LOVE.  Cow cake.  That's it forever.  —It is one of those recipes that everyone has a version of.  But I've never heard it called cow cake before.  Hee hee hee hee hee hee.  I personally much prefer the digestive-biscuit version to the rice-krispies version that I saw far more of when I was a kid.  Although this may have had to wait till I discovered digestive biscuits, which we didn't have in the States when I was young.  Graham crackers or vanilla wafers just aren't as good. 

BlueRose

It appears your computer equipment is possessed by all nine circles of gremlins. Have you considered something other than Outlook – like Thunderbird?

Outlook is a right bitch to deal with if it decides it doesn't like you, and if you DON'T need the appt bit then Tbird will sort your email side right out.

And I imagine you have all your appts on your iphone anyway 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  You have not fathomed the depths of my daily shame.  My appointments are in my small paper pocket Ringing World diary. †

            I did ask Raphael why I'm on Outlook, and it's as I was expecting:  he says that given the sinister conflation of my somewhat unusual requirements plus what local broadband support is available plus what the archangels themselves can do, Outlook is still the least of evils. 

            Sigh. 

Mrs Redboots

. . . the only problem with 1571 is that you actually have to pick up the phone and listen to the dial tone to know that you've got a message . . .

The message on ours (recorded by me!) says "You're welcome to leave a message, but as we are very bad at checking for messages, please ring our mobiles!" 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  I try to prevent people from even knowing I have a mobile phone.  'Oh that pink iPhone-shaped case that I wear around my neck at all times?  Oh, no, it's an emergency bar of chocolate.' 

* * *

* Somebody tell me what frelling evolutionary advantage is conferred upon one who has insomnia and/or hosts a cough.  Being able to get by on very little sleep would be great, but that's nothing to do with the experience of insomnia:  maybe you're awake when the camp guard has nodded off and you see the sabre-tooth tiger creeping toward the headman's baby and you raise the alarm.^  But next day when you move camp they're going to have to carry you, you're so tired . . . and they aren't going to.  Every early prehuman for him/herself.  So the sabre-tooth tiger gets you instead, next night.^^

            I can't remember if there's any actual science for this or not, or whether it's just the obvious joke that every semi-literate menopausal woman since Darwin has made, but that your caloric requirements plummet the moment you're no longer fertile makes some sense.  That provides another pair of hands to tend the tribe's children while the young women are either pregnant or foraging, and these hands increase the likelihood of more kids surviving and don't cost the tribe anything. 

            Insomnia?  Coughs?  Successful parasites don't kill their hosts.  Coughing gets you left behind too, and you may be glad to see that tiger.  

^ Or maybe you don't.  The kid's a brat, and is going to grow up to be another big stupid bully like his dad.  

^^ Or possibly not.  It may still be full of headman's brat.  

** Except a few paragraphs of SHADOWS.  Not enough paragraphs, but still . . . paragraphs.

*** Yes:  there goes 90% of all nongenre story-telling media.  I'm a lowbrow^, what can I tell you. 

^ With a few exceptions.  Most of which (Eliot, Trollope, Dickens) I would be happy to argue are genre really.

† Remember that a 'river' in England is any minor concavity that contains at least one teacup of water for at least forty-eight hours once a year.  By these standards New Arcadia has quite a nice little river.  It's still only knee high in the middle. 

††  http://www.ringingworld.co.uk/purchase/diary-calendar-other/diary.html