- “Due to strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this game in no way endorses a belief in the occult.” A History of Zombies in Video Games [via]
- Restaurant Workers Don’t Stay Home When Sick, Study Finds. Not too surprising, but still: yuck.
- Tens Of Thousands Of Walruses Crowd Ashore In Alaska Due To Melting Sea Ice. How far south do they have to get before we accept there’s global warming? Utah?
- You know, Katherine Heigl’s reputation as a shrill diva probably is overrated, if not unwarranted, but I suspect most of her movies have bombed at the box office simply because they’re really, really bad.
- And finally, Unicorn vs. Narwhal [via]
health
Weapon-salve Wednesday
The Forgotten English on my desk calendar for today is “weaponsalve,” meaning “a salve which was supposed to cure the wound, being applied to the weapon that made it.”
So I just need to find the boxes of books I carried two years ago in New Orleans, which I think was the injury that hurt my spine, and apply a healing salve.
I was actually fine for most of the day, staying a good quarter or half step away from the pain a lot of the time, but the discomfort really kicked up in earnest this evening. I fear I’m fit for little else but watching an episode of House and going to bed.
I’m not in real pain, and I actually had a pretty decent day, trying to track down reviewers for projects and digging through stock photo websites. Nothing exciting…and sure, this morning the train was ridiculously crowded, so much so that I couldn’t even put down my bag, much less find a seat, for most of the trip. I didn’t even have enough room to read my book — Ubik; and let me tell you, sometimes it’s all too easy to believe Philip K. Dick was a self-medicating schizophrenic. Still, the train tonight was much less crowded. And at lunch this afternoon, as I walked around midtown, I actually saw someone with spray-on hair in the wild. I never knew such things actually existed! This gentleman really wasn’t fooling anybody.
So that’s it. Turning in early to rest the back, hopefully relieve some of the pressure. I fear it’s going to be a whole lot more of the same between now and next Friday — assuming it doesn’t get worse — and it may not get better without some serious treatment options. It seems like every time I get used to living with this thing, working around the pain, the pain changes, and the coping methods I’ve been using don’t work as well anymore.
Oh well, I’m sure House will make it all better. That, or distract me by being really bad. I’ve really been on the edge of love-hate with this show since the end of last season. I watched the season premiere last night and didn’t hate it, actually found some things that really worked about it, but I don’t know. These are probably thoughts for another time.
Tuesday is the new Monday
Another rainy day, although this one I didn’t get to spend at home. All things being equal, I think my back and related discomfort might be a little worse today; certainly, I wish I was seeing my spine doctor this Friday instead of next. But, despite that, it was an okay enough day overall. Albeit a pretty unexceptional day all around.
Then again, any Monday that’s actually a Tuesday is already one up in my book.
Tuesday various
- Roger Ebert: No Longer an Eater, Still a Cook
- I’ve been told that the best thing to do when you get an earworm is to sing or hum “The Girl from Ipanema.” Of course, then you get that stuck in your head. Unhear It seems to work along similar reasoning. [via]
- Worried about full-body scans at the airport? Okay, now imagine that technology deployed in street-roving vans. [via]
- Mysterious full-size Dalek replica left anonymously at English school.
- And finally, herding cats in IKEA [via]:
“He made a deal with Dr. Doom, same as you.”
I felt better for most of today, which I spent mostly putting together copies of Kaleidotrope for mailing, which I expect to do on Monday. (One of the benefits of taking the day off.) I also bought myself an exercise ball, which, despite only looking a little like it does in that picture when inflated (with a pump that looks nothing like the one in the picture, there or on the box), I hope will help me with exercising my back.
This evening, I watched Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the second movie in the franchise that for some reason keeps on going. I can’t say I really liked it all that much. It had a few good moments, mostly when it actually lets Milla Jovovich be a bad ass, and the film ends interestingly enough. But overall, I found it aggressively mediocre more than anything else, and it didn’t suggest any reason to watch either of the next two sequels after it.