- Peter Sagal on the difference between an opinion and a bias:
A bias doesn’t mean that you think that what a certain candidate says is idiotic; a bias means that not matter what he says, you’ll attack him. Or, if it’s a bias in favor of him, no matter what he says, you’ll forgive him, or simply choose not to draw attention to what doesn’t make him look good. You know your opinion after you read the day’s paper; you know your bias before you open it.
- Maybe it’s just me, but I bathe every day. [via]
- In case you were wondering: what happened to the Doctor Who companions?
- Original estimates of the untapped oil reserves in Alaska only off by…oh…about ninety percent [via]
- Amal El-Mohtar on a steampunk without steam:
I submit that the insistence on Victoriana in steampunk is akin to insisting on castles and European dragons in fantasy: limiting, and rather missing the point. It confuses cause and consequence, since it is fantasy that shapes the dragon, not the dragon that shapes the fantasy. I want the cogs and copper to be acknowledged as products, not producers, of steampunk, and to unpack all the possibilities within it.
I think I like the idea of calling this subgenre “retrofuturism,” with steampunk just one sub-subgenre of that. While, of course, differentiating the whole thing from alternate history, since that posits a specific branching point, a moment in history — the Nazis win, the South doesn’t lose, etc. — rather than an historical era. It’s only the ubiquity of steampunk that, to my mind, is the problem — insofar as this is a problem; it’s the fact that it chokes out other retrofuturistic viewpoints, necessitates a very specific and limiting aesthetic, keeps retrofutrism tethered (much like steampunk’s zeppelins) to specific countries, eras, worldviews.
If steampunk were just one type of story, rather than the all-consuming and defining aspect of retrofuturism, I think we’d be seeing less backlash against it.
health
Make a left at the piano
A rainy day here, the bulk of it spent at the doctor’s office — or at least that’s how it seemed at the time. I had a 10:30 appointment with the urologist, but for whatever reason, I ended up waiting almost two hours before I was seen. Most of that was spent in the magazine-free exam room, me just twiddling my thumbs and occasionally sending out a bored tweet with my cell phone.
A nurse practitioner, and then the doctor, finally came in a little after noon. And the short version is, I’m pretty much okay. I had an exam, and now I have a couple of prescriptions to hopefully take care of my symptoms, which aren’t indicative of anything too serious. (They’ve been more worrisome and discomfiting than painful, and they haven’t gotten progressively worse since late September.) I go back for another appointment in a month, hopefully with all of this resolved. And hopefully never needing to go back to a urologist until I’m at least as old as most of the other patients I saw there today. (Sixty- or seventy-year-old men, I suspect, are urology’s bread and butter.)
The place, incidentally, was huge, affiliated with a local hospital. How huge? A woman came in, asking for directions to another office, and the woman behind the front desk told her to go back out and make a left at the piano, and then… Seriously, if a medical practice has a piano in the lobby, that’s pretty huge.
Overall, the appointment went well and helped to alleviate some of my concerns. (I kept flashing back to this Mike Birbiglia bit where he notes that it’s never good news when they say they’ve found something in your bladder. “We’ve found something it your bladder…and it’s season tickets to the Yankees!”) I go back in mid-December, so we’ll see what happens.
I have an 8:30 appointment then, so maybe I can even get out of there before noon!
Tuesday at home
So the good news is, it’s almost certainly not my back. The disc herniation in my spine is still there, and hasn’t miraculously healed in the past year and a half, but it doesn’t appear to be impinging on the nerves. So I have an appointment next Thursday with a urologist, and I’ll see where that leads me.
My appointment was over pretty quick this morning, and I spent the rest of the day watching a little television — Fringe and a BBC show called Luther — and working on this short story due at the end of the week. I’m at about 3,000 words now and looking around frantically for the exit.
Tomorrow it’s back to work.
One fish, two fish, red fish, stamfish
Today was kind of weird, both a regular Monday and everything that comes with that, and almost a Friday, given that I’m off from work tomorrow. Unfortunately, it’s for a doctor’s appointment. I was originally going to be off this coming Friday, the start of a three-day weekend, but I rescheduled when I needed to make this appointment. That seemed easier than taking an additional half day this week, which also would have left me with one half-day less to use later on, in the likely event that I need to make any additional appointments.
So it’s kind of like Friday, although also not anything like it at all.
The word for the day on my Forgotten English desk calendar is “stamfish,” meaning “to talk in a way not generally understood.” I’ll leave it to you to decide how much I live up to the ideal in Matsell’s 1859 Rogue’s Lexicon.
A scanner darkly
I woke up dark and early this morning to do that thing everybody loves to do on their weekend: go get an lower lumbar MRI. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been having some increased discomfort and referring pain that might be a result of my herniated disc, but before we do anything else we need to take a look at a new scan and see if that really does look to be the cause.
So I woke up, showered, and drove over to the radiology place five minutes away. The one good thing about going out before 7 a.m. on a Saturday is that there’s practically no traffic. I was the first patient of the day, and I actually had to ring the buzzer to be let in.
The scan itself went smoothly. I didn’t luck out with an open MRI, but this is a different place than where I went before, and the machine was a little more comfortable. I’m not especially claustrophobic, though the MRI does seem designed to take you right up to that edge. Both times before, I’ve found that my arms get pinned a little uncomfortably, the chute down the middle being a little too narrow for them to rest comfortably at my side. That wasn’t so much an issue today, thankfully, and the scans themselves were a lot quicker. I’m not entirely sure why that is — a different machine, more specific prescription, better operator? — but I’m hoping whatever they show will suggest our next course of action.
I think I’d prefer it to be the disc, just since that’s a known quantity, and the alternatives that leap immediately to mind are a lot less appealing, but we’ll see what the doctor says on Tuesday. I have a CD of the scans to bring with me, since they weren’t going to make it to him if sent by mail. (I’m glad I asked on my way out.)
I came home and watched a little television, then caught up on a little sleeping. I tried to do some writing today, too — for most of the day, actually — but this particular story I’m working on has me kind of in the weeds, trying to figure it out. I like it, although it still feels kind of directionless, and I’m not really sure how to end it. The submission deadline is in a little over a week; I could probably rework it for something else if I miss that deadline, but I’d really like to try it there first. We’ll see. More writing this week, I expect.
Then this evening, I watched Temple Grandin, which I missed when it was on HBO. It really is a terrific movie, most of all for Claire Danes’ astounding performance. I have no great familiarity with autism, although I’ve read many raves from people who do — including my sister, who works with autistic children all the time. All I know is, Danes is captivating, and her performance never feels like a cheap gimmick, like “hey look at me! I’m playing disabled!” It’s an inspiring story, and Danes’ portrait of Grandin is fearless.