Ephemeral linksmanship:
He couldn’t just be “Mr. Hitler”; the guy was a former head of state. “Herr Führer”, though, would imply approval of the Third Reich and his dictatorship, which can’t be done even at dinner. Finally he figured it out: “Herr Reichskanzler Hitler” [sp?]. Since that was his official elected office, it was the best choice for being introduced or asking the guy to pass the salt.
The most fascinating part of the lecture was the discussion of the contagion of clothing. People were asked a series of questions about clothing that had been worn by others. No one wanted to wear clothing that an AIDS patient had worn, even if it had been thoroughly cleaned. Many people didn’t want to wear clothing that a handicapped person had worn. And finally, the contagion of evil enters the picture when we’re talking about clothing. If some beloved figure like Mother Theresa has worn a sweater, most people responded they’d love to wear it. However, if Adolf Hitler had worn the sweater, no one wanted to wear it. And if the sweater had been worn by Adolf Hitler and then by the Dalai Lama, they still wouldn’t wear it. Some kinds of contagion can’t be purified.
So anyway that’s how I learned that you can turn into Hitler if you sit on the wrong toilet seat, and that you don’t want to stay in a hotel with the guy.
I spent a couple of summers in London as a kid, and oddly enough that’s the city where I learned about living with terrorist bombs, and also the city where I learned to fear trains.
This was during the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the Irish terrorist campaign was in full swing. Everywhere you looked there were signs advising you to report abandoned objects, not to accept packages from strangers, etc. People there were used to it but as a teenager from Southern California I found it both exotic and terrifying.
But that’s not how I got my fear of trains. In the summer of 1980, my father and I were waiting for a train in the Tube station near our place. There was a woman next to me, dressed for the office and carrying a purse and a sweater. I turned to my father to ask him something, the train arrived, and I heard screaming. When I looked back there were her shoes, and her purse, and her sweater neatly folded on top, but no woman. She had jumped in front of the train.
I remember getting on the bus to continue our day while the train was shut down. Every time the bus went over a bump I thought it was a body.
Ever since then, I’ve stood a good long way away from the tracks when I’m in a train station.
Since I had a visit to the E.R. brought by paramedic ambulance last week, I’m experiencing the classic aftereffect symptom: financial panic. I’m tensed for the blow when the bill arrives, prepared for my insurer to deny everything, ready to fight collection agencies and complain to commissioners and end up paying the whole thing outright on my credit card at 14% interest.
The old joke about bleeding heart liberals is that the difference between a liberal and a conservative is a police report. Good point; no one likes getting their ass kicked, and it doesn’t do much for your progressive values to have the pain and fight-or-flight chemicals running.
I’d add another rule, though. The difference between a conservative and a liberal is a hospital admission. Prosperous middle-class Americans who’ve never been seriously ill and have confidence in their medical plans are fooling themselves. They’re all only one illness away from total financial ruin. The insurer will deny claims, the hospital will press them, a collection agency will buy them, and no one will forgive anything. Welcome to Ayn Rand Memorial Medical Center, folks!
My pharmacist is now required by law to counsel me if the prescription is new. This is a fine idea in theory, since physicians don’t know everything about a drug and don’t take the time to discuss it. In practice, it’s a joke. I go to a 24-hour pharmacy in a drugstore chain and it’s understaffed. With my latest, I waited ten minutes before a rumpled and worried Indian man rushed out and said “It is diuretic. Do you have questions?” and then ran off. This is his usual practice.
When I got home I looked at the bottle and there was a sticker on it saying that I should stay out of direct natural or artificial sunlight. Sure enough, looking up the stuff revealed that it increases sensitivity to the sun and that special attention to sunscreen and protective clothing is strongly advised. What if the clerk hadn’t put the sticker on the thing, or I hadn’t looked? People around here have the hobby of lying in the sun.
Requiring professionals to do something vital and then giving them no time to do it doesn’t work. The invisible hand just punched me in the nuts again.
Adderall holiday today. I’m predictably more sleepy and less focused, but I didn’t have much to do and being focused is tiring. I have been noticing a few side effects and over-tuned senses, etc. on this dose of the stuff so I’m going to ask to go down to 15 mg when I see him next week.
Being on a diuretic is tiring, too! Not only do I pee about 12 times a day right now, but I’m lightheaded and woozy and I keep having attacks of exhaustion when I have to sit down right now for about ten minutes.
Went to Mother’s to get 50 mg tablets of niacin (they’re hard to find, everyone wants to sell you 500 mg niacin or 100 mg each of a bunch of B complex). I managed to defeat their Huge Wall of Possibly Fraudulent Supplements and find it. I wonder why there are 20 different brands of vitamin? I bet if you’re a vitamin freak you have your special brand and think every other brand is suspect.
I’m not cut out to be a hypochondriac; this is all a huge pain. I think someone who would enjoy this should take it over.
I finished the biography of Corvo and I’m working on an article about him, because he’s so amazing. Now I’ve just started the new Eco and I already love it. And I just got Firbank’s “Five Novels”. Mmmm.
I had to go into the office today for the first time in forever. On the 405 north going past Long Beach airport, I was punching buttons on the stereo and U2’s “New Year’s Day” came on. It’s a song I half-like; overplayed, but nice noises. I was thinking how overblown and crummy Bono’s lyrics were. Just as he sang the line “this is the Golden Age, and gold is the reason for the wars we wage”, one of the Air Force’s gigantic new C-17 Globemaster III transport planes loomed out of the haze over me as it left the Boeing facility at the airport, headed out to sea. Soon it will be lugging tanks and guns and scared 19-year-olds to Iraq. Nice MTV moment there, O Demiurge.
My ID card didn’t work at the office and we all made Logan’s Run jokes. Then after some meeting stuff we had a lunch meeting at the Buggy Whip. This is an ancient steakhouse near the L.A. airport that is stuck in 1962. It’s cave dark inside, red leather booths, old waitresses with whisky ‘n’ cigarettes voices. I ate Florida Stone Crab Claws, salad with Green Goddess dressing, and a 22 oz. porterhouse steak with mashed potatoes and spinach. The waitress made gravelly small talk with us. My coworker H. paid since he was taking us out to celebrate his new master’s degree and thank us for covering for him during school times over the last couple years.
I also had to learn the network architecture of our New Big Thing. Fortunately my coworker J., who set all this up, is not only an excellent Internet Roadie who does the networking shit right, but he documented it all meticulously. Thank you J., even more than thank you H. for the pile of meat.
I should have stayed in L.A. and messed around at a record store or something but I came back down through two hours of Hell’s own traffic. Spent $45 on gasoline and a carwash. Went to D’s. I was miserably uncomfortable and upset, and didn’t want to be around my friends at all. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to kill everyone or have everyone kill me. Social interaction lately is a cigarette. I need it; I light it up; and then it makes me sick and I can’t stand myself for doing it again, and I remind myself it’s bad for me and I should stop. Then I need it…
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