7:30am
I'm still tired of blogging. I feel ok today, fever-wise, but I have this incredibly painful cough and sore throat now. Also, a tender sinus headache that feels like I got hit with a softball on my right eyebrow ridge. But I feel sorta ok, I guess. I take it back -- I just coughed, and it hurt. Tomorrow, there's a birthday celebration scheduled at my dad and stepmom's house. I was quite sure that I'd be too sick to attend, but my dad and stepmom have put in a lot of effort into coordinating the schedules of four other people to find that Sunday the 7th is the only day everyone can show up. So, it looks like Sunday it is, illness notwithstanding.
I hope I don't develop bronchitis.
Someone keeps sending me computer viruses, usually in the form of forged headers from microsoft with 'cumulative patch' .exe's attached. Either that or 'return to sender' messages, which imply that a message has been sent from my account, with some randomly titled exe attached. Strange stuff, this world of viruses. But I think I've managed to procmail them away, and still be friendly to those known senders who for their own dark reasons enjoy sending html emails. I'm fairly certain that these viruses come from my usenet postings, in which I didn't know enough to convolute my email address. However, what's strange is that I was getting many viruses at my umbc account too, and I've never posted to usenet from there. However, my umbc address can be found on the web in places, unlike my sdf address.
Obviously the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that I have an arch-enemy.
Spam and viruses has become this thing that geeks love to hate, because it gives them an opportunity to invest endless hours tweaking the regular expressions in their .procmailrc recipes.
It's been said that the proposed spam legislation is going to do more to thwart 'legitimate' commercial emailers than it will to stop 'real' spammers. Personally, I'd rather receive a genuine spam than some artless advertisement for netscape. At least 'real' spams are sort of interesting, and one can derive some entertainment from the ways they try to circumvent filters. But an email from amazon telling you that you can still get your shit delivered in time for xmas if you order now is just annoying. I'd rather be told I can 'extend_my_peenis_by_three_inchus!!!' at least that's funny, and some geeky credence has to be lent to someone who works independently, forging headers and getting periodically booted from their isp, as opposed to another leering, plastic marketing department insulting your intelligence with it's laughable presumptions of who you are and who you want to be.
My very first email address at hotmail remains useful as an address to supply untrustworthy entities (read: anyone) from whom I need a confirmation email. It's also a good place to observe real, genuine spam, in its natural habitat:
From: randbaby@msn.com
Subject: mjtebbutt The bgiegst size PNEIS you awlays wnated F38126857BCCE269D1A440DBE3B65144Mjtebbutt
Here is a product that has changed my life to the fullesthttp://www.kvqkvq,co.mn@horty.biz/patch/?gethuge
CC121130DD47A88C47A21F069F8145B7B1AB006037786F7F31CE32C4F0EABF59 D01EECA8B24321CD2FE89DD85B9BEB51DE3CA97AFAEF7F990A87493FA7EDB806 01671D8272924E3D10BCE2C73066E933B51A15F382AC914391A58850AB343B00 5400976477EF0F1F283278E4611C12BB2C962286FBEFCDACF78CEAEF61C6C3FE D5431D804A8C8CA3B14CCF7862E6FEA8
Of course, I find any kind of unsolicited commercial email to be offensive, but it's more offensive if it comes from a supposedly reputable business.
3:26pm
I started sweating like a pig while I was wrapped up in my blanket, and my body temparature dropped to 97F. So, I have high hopes that I'm getting better in a more permanent way. I've heard that a lot of people are sick with the flu, including pesh. That's all...I'm tired of blogging, and will never do it again.
At least for a few hours.
4:42am
My flu was a great deal worse yesterday than it was on Tuesday. I had to go upstairs and lie down at 1pm, and didn't return until 6pm or so. I wasn't even tired -- I was just too weak and sick to move. So, I bundled up in sweaters, sweatpants and socks, and incubated in bed for 5 hours. Normally, I would have been really bored, but my mind entered some kind of zen state, not unlike sleep, even though I was wide awake. This has only happened to me once before, when I was really depressed one day during my 'on medication' period, and similarly sought refuge in bed.
So, that was pretty interesting, especially compared to my Greyhound bus trip, which was the antizen brought on by fever. But I'm really sick, yo. I haven't been this sick in years. There's a decent chance that I won't be better enough by Saturday to enjoy my family birthday party. If this is the case, I'll see what I can do about postponing it. But time is running out.
Right now, my nose is pretty clear, but I don't imagine that this will last; it alternates between frozen solid with mucus and easy breathing. But I am, in fact, the most repulsive creature ever to live, not having showered or changed my clothes in 2 days, all the while inundated with viruses and virus-inspired secretions.
By the way, the reason I'm up and typing away at 4:42am is I couldn't sleep anymore after sleeping from 8pm to 2am. So, here I am, at my familiar perch.
I expect a torrent of sympathy emails. Chop chop.
12:03am
I'm sure you're aware of the cliche of 'america-bashing' that seems to run so rampant in leftist academic circles.
Consider how much 'america bashing' the u.s. Media is willing to allow through its filters. Then consider what a small percentage of worldwide 'america bashing' this represents. Finally, consider what a collosal amount of global 'america bashing' implies about america.
IT MEANS THAT WE'RE NUMBER ONE AND EVERYONE ELSE IS JUST JEALOUS.
Haha, just kidding. But the truth is, the world community tends to hate america. I guess it's because 1) we do shitty things and/or 2) people have a natural tendency to snap and snarl at the big dog, so to speak, in some kind of international expression of innate competetive behavior. Maybe being the big dog constitutes doing a shitty thing in and of itself; that it's not possible to be this powerful without creating problems for the rest of the world, if we're going to act the way I sometimes think a nation-state has to act.
The behavior of nation-states is something to which ~*~*MY*~*~ theory of 'cooperation within a discreet system' applies.
I hope I convey here some bitterness expressed at the futility of striving for original ideas.
I've written about this before, and I don't feel like repeating myself at length. Basically, ~*~*MY*~*~ theory states that you need a group within which you cooperate, and then the group competes with other groups. The size of the group can range from just one individual to 'the brotherhood of man,' 'global village,' 'world community,' etc. But the most common and cohesive groups are nation-states -- they're the ultimate 'discreet systems.' so, in this model, the people in a nation-state will cooperate with one another, and compete with other nation-states. The fact that people in the united states sometimes seem to do more competing with each other than cooperating is another discussion.
So, applying ~*~*MY*~*~ 'cooperation within a discrete system' model to international politics, nation-states are supposed to capitalistically undermine one another and compete viciously and mercilessly for global resources.
Maybe questions of liberal and conservative, central-planning and laissez-faire, etc, have to do with where you choose to draw the boundaries of your particular 'discreet system,' within which you'll cooperate. Megahippies talk about the 'global village,' while rush limbaugh seeks to undermine everyone.
America has no choice but to rape the earth and pillage the resources from the mouths of starving ugandans -- it's the way nation-states are intended to work, and the way they in fact must work. On the bright side, it won't last forever, and the starving ugandans will soon be fattening themselves on the roasted flesh of marketing directors. Eventually, american economic domination will reach the point (on September 11th, maybe?) when the other nations of the world are forced to do something about it if they want to survive.
Don't be sad -- it's just the way things work. The roman empire lasted a good 500 years or so; we still have plenty of miles left on our SUV's. Wait cheerfully for the end of days.
I don't believe america *can* change its ways, that there is any hope whatsoever for a world community of any kind, in which nations don't strive to better themselves at the expense of others. But there doesn't have to be; the laws of capitalism and competition will ironically and eventually bring about the decline and fall of the american empire that once championed them. Sucessful competition ultimately dooms the victor.
Things are cyclical and in constant flux. The state of nature is dynamic, and to propose 'solutions' is reductionist fallacy.
I'm still sick.
Reality is an illusion.
11:26am
I have returned from my thanksgiving trip to ana's house in logan, West Virginia. It was a lot of fun -- there were many family-oriented excursions, and ana's family seems to like me.
But that's not what I'm here to tell you about.
Before the morning I was to leave, ana's grandmother fed me an enormous piece of this ambrosial yet sugar-poisoned desert, that was something like a banana-split pie. There was whipped cream in it, as well as bananas, butter, graham crackers, and about a quarter-ton of raw sugar. The net result was my tossing and turning on a sugar-high until 4am. My alarm woke me up at 6:00am after two hours of sleep.
Immediately upon waking, I felt what I thought was a bronchial reaction to ana's cat, 'paco,' in my chest -- sort of a wheezy, irritated, asbestos-y sensation. I figured that it would abate when I was no longer breathing paco-polluted air. But in wytheville, Virginia, as I was reading _dune_ on a bench outside the Greyhound station, it had gotten worse, and my fingers started to become painfully cold, even though it was not particularly cold outside. I relocated inside a nearby mcdonalds, and there I felt the familiar rushing, tingly, hot-cold, light-headed sensation of a fever. So, I walked across the parking lot to a gas station and bought a large-ish jug of grapefruit juice so I could hit my incubating virii with some vitamin c. I don't know if this works or not, but I've heard it's good to do. It probably doesn't work.
There was some confusion on my part about which bus to get on, since they weren't marked and didn't arrive on time. Apparently, I was the only one confused by this, since everyone there somehow knew which bus to board. I grew sicker and sicker en route from wytheville to roanoke, my next layover. I was unable to sleep despite my having had only 2 hours the night before, but thought that once it grew dark I wouldn't have any trouble.
While unpleasant, the rides from charleston to wytheville and from wytheville to roanoke were bearable, if only barely. The jaunt from roanoke to washington, however, was truly something otherworldly.
First of all, I was really pretty sick when I boarded the bus in roanoke for the final stretch. As the ride got underway, I was burning up with fever, my whole body ached, my head was pounding, and sleep was just impossible, even though it was nearly pitch-dark. On top of this, some kind of delirium had set in, and I was plagued by a gushing of random, racing, intrusive thoughts. I sat there in the dark staring straight ahead, occasionally glancing around at the other torsos sitting upright in their seats, listening to my mind deliriously and incessantly chatter away, and compulsively checking my watch. Without fail, between 3 and 6 minutes would have passed since my last check. So, I restrained myself from checking, and as a result the period of time between checks increased to around 10 minutes. This continued for the duration of the ride from roanoke to dc, which was 6.5 hours long.
And then there was the driver, a sullen, squat, mumbling man who sported one of those little derby hats. I saw a plaque above the driver's seat that read, 'your operator: courteous, safe, friendly,' and I amused myself to some degree by imagining in its place 'your operator: dumb, ugly, rude.' this didn't provide much respite from my own private Greyhound-hell. The driver suffered from something like tourette's syndrome, and when isolated by the darkness and what I imagine might have been his assurance that most passengers were asleep, he started uttering a torrent of nonsense words, grunts and other borderline-human noises. He was also an extremely aggressive driver, and would tailgate at 60mph at a distance of 10 feet to encourage people to get out of his way. There was also an incident somewhere in Virginia comprising his pulling into a gas station, stepping out, making some kind of exchange involving an envelope with two women, and then either letting them off or on the bus. I was pretty delirious at that point.
We drove not on the interstate, but rather what seemed like the entire way from roanoke to dc on 2 lane roads. I couldn't imagine this to be the proper way, and I had absolutely no idea where we were. Ordinarily, I would have been more willing to trust the judgment of a bus operator to navigate his way to the destination city, but the tourette's syndrome, fever, and darkness damaged my confidence. As he repeatedly left and re-boarded the bus, I came to truly despise our driver, his deadpan, sullen eyes, derby hat, tourette's syndrome, road rage and idiotically inefficient route to washington dc. I wanted to see him die.
At one point, I thought I was going to have a full-blown panic attack, there in the darkness of the bus, as I roasted with fever and stared into the night beyond the windows. It felt almost like a kind of hyper-awareness, especially since I couldn't sleep and checked my watch every few minutes; I was painfully aware of every passing second. My fever, the madman driver, our circuitous route, my inability to sleep, and my having traveled at that point for about 15 hours were contributors to the gradual loss of sanity that I was really afraid might end badly.
The thought that god was torturing me kept entering my mind, as did the hope that the bus would careen off a cliff and end it all. I saw, at one point, a street-sign that read 'emergency medical care,' and mused to myself 'that's what I need.'
The bus pulled into the Greyhound station in dc at about 10:45pm, in fact a bit ahead of schedule. I walked six blocks or so to the metro, and took it home. All told, I had traveled for 18 hours, from 6:00am in logan to 12:00am in gaithersburg, having had 2 hours of sleep and coming down with what I'm pretty sure was the flu.
I think the things that most nearly sent me over the edge were the delirium and intense wakefulness; sitting in the dark for almost 7 hours with my brain on manic, incessant overdrive was unbelievably torturous. For next time, I will hope for a shorter trip, the absence of influenza, and a more morally aesthetic driver.