“a sick, sadistic side” –dignan

after writing my last entry i suddenly fell horribly ill. as in i felt utterly like crap and after i got in bed monday night, with the exception of getting up to go the 30 ft round trip to the bathroom every few hours, i was not out of bed until late wednesday morning. i had chills and was semi-delirious. picture me in an old western (or movie set in the 20’s or so) where people are in black and white and in bed covered in blankets with a wet cloth over their head and mumbling incoherently about things that don’t make sense. that was me. i knew i was talking nonsense, and doing it to an empty house, but i couldn’t help myself. i suppose it’s from having an engineering/technical background, but my delusions tend to involve some weird variation on my body and/or the world being systems that have weird rules that i need to follow in order to help alleviate the pain and suffering. this time it had to do with the orientation of my torso and limbs, and some kind of distribution of energy or flow or something and how it would affect my overall body. i would intentionally place my limbs in certain configurations because i *had* to or i would feel worse. oh yeah, i also didn’t eat or drink for that day and a half. i finally drank about 12 ounces of water the last few hours i was in bed.
when i finally did “get up” i still felt awful, but the illness had “broken” and it wasn’t *as* bad. with much difficulty, i convinced myself to get in my car and drive to a clinic. i got there around 1:30pm. and of course they were out to lunch until 2pm. so i went to the house of pies and ate a big bowl of fruit and drank water. i went back to the clinic and they gave me a 10-day supply of horse pill antibiotics. i also picked up some cans of soup (2 low-sodium chicken noodle and 1 won ton) and “hint of salt” premium crackers.
thursday was about the same as wednesday. in total on wednesday and thursday i ate two big bowls of fruit with water, one english muffin, and three cans of soup with crackers. i also learned salt adds a lot of flavor to campbell’s chicken noodle soup. but i wasn’t feeling up to being picky. i had no energy and felt too crappy to go to work, but i’d slept so much my body didn’t want to sleep. so of course i ended up watching the television. but not cable, i watched movies. (and all but the first was via netflix online streaming.) here’s what i watched, and my thoughts:

• picture this: the times of peter bogdanovich in archer city – this was actually an itunes 99 cent rental. it was interesting, as i really like the last picture show, but it’s a documentary and not explosive or anything. it gives some interesting history of the various people and what was going on in their lives before, during, and between the filming of the two movies in archer city. it also discusses archer city’s opinion of itself as an object of mcmurtry’s writings, citizens take on the people, places, etc.
• this is england – a semi-autobiographical story about a young school kid in england whose father dies in the falkland war, and his having to deal with that. he ends up befriending some skinheads (which isn’t in and of itself a bad thing, as most skinheads aren’t evil or racist…although they are sort of gang/mob-mentality-oriented usually). but an older skinhead who went to prison comes back with white power ideas and everything gets messed up. it is a good movie.
• fast food, fast women – i had already seen it before. it’s a kind of odd movie about quirky people in new york acting quirky. but there’s an innocence to it that makes it cute, even though there are really a lot of kind of bad situations and choices. i wouldn’t say the acting is that great overall either. but it’s a quaint story.
• the price of milk – this is a surrealistic story set in new zealand. the colors are pretty nice in the film. the story is odd. imagine perhaps a classic fairy tale, but set in modern new zealand. odd “magical” things happen, and sometimes people in the movie think it’s odd, sometimes not. mostly it plays like a fairy tale — bad choices, evil people, manipulation, trickery, and — something not in all classic fairy tales — a happy ending.
• the animatrix – i had already seen this, but there are some *really* good segments. various animation styles and various storytelling styles, but the world/framework created in the matrix provides such interesting possibilities.
• le femme nikita – i saw this a few years ago, but it is worth seeing again. it made me miss the hrc. 🙂
• lady vengeance – this is a korean film, the last in the “revenge” trilogy (which includes oldboy, which i’ve also seen). a young lady confesses to a murder she didn’t commit, and during the years she spends in prison (acting like the model prisoner, but being anything but) she plans her revenge on the person who forced her to confess to the murder. beautiful imagery, graphic and disturbing. i love the importance asian cultures place on symbolism, ritual, customs, honour, etc.
• for all mankind – this is a documentary based on video and audio footage from the volumes of material from the apollo missions. it’s really cool to see documentary footage of the astronauts and engineers and crafts and everything from then. it was an amazing feat of determination and will (and luck), and it must be incredible to have been a part of it. all that stuff is what made me want to be a part of the space program when i was a kid. but the drive and support died in lots of ways before i made it, both for the program and inside myself. it’s still cool to know that i *did* make it though, and for 4 years actually was a part of the u.s. space program as an aerospace engineer. (and 2.5 more as a unix admin.) usually the job was boring and drab, but every now and then i’d have a moment of clarity and think “i’m at jsc working at nasa on the space program. how *fscking* rad is that?”

friday i went back to work, even though i still wasn’t feeling too great. but it went okay. it was a maintenance window, so i actually didn’t have to go in until the afternoon. but of course i had to work until around midnight.
saturday i ate lunch with the potts, then i went and saw how to train your dragon in 3d with them. this being an animated film, it was “filmed” in 3d, so the 3d stuff was better than clash of the titans. i still think it’s gimmicky though, and i’m not sure why some people seem so excited by it. the movie was fun to watch and was a cute story. some of the animation bits were really impressive, even if the characters were very cartoony. i had forgotten about it being record store day, so in the early evening i went to a couple of places to see if i could pick up the devo 7″ of new songs. no luck. i had been thinking about doing something that night, but my body reminded me it was still sick and still had way less than normal levels of energy. i ended up staying home and watching snl by myself, then going to bed.
sue had been bugging me the last several days to get a neti pot, as she’d recently started using one and evidently thought they rocked. neti pots are the short long pots (like tea pots or watering pots) that are used to irrigate your nasal passages. yeah, you take lukewarm saltwater and pour it up your nose for a minute or two. it sounded odd, but i watched a lot of youtube videos of people doing it (including doing it horribly “wrong”), so i figured “how bad could i do at it?” i ended up buying one at whole foods (a nice ceramic multi-colored glazed one) along with some fine-grain non-iodized salt for it (you can also use kosher or sea salt). i then went over to the potts and all of us (minus sue, who was working) ate at sweet tomatoes. then we went to fry’s. at fry’s i bought a new multimeter (i’ve only ever owned pocket ones, so this full-size one is my first), a bit set for very small screws (security, hex, torx, etc.), 3 different color 7ft cat 6 cables, and a netgear 5-port gigabit switch (with management features…which unfortunately is configured with software for windows only).
when i got home, i broke out the neti pot. i was a bit nervous, but i’d seen plenty of people do it on youtube and read enough about it to not feel too freaked. the deal is, if you get the salinity and temperature right, it doesn’t burn or feel painful or anything. so i mixed it up and…it feels a little odd, but it didn’t feel like burning or getting water up your nose (haha). and it definitely helped clean out some stuff that was just sort of hanging out up in my sinuses. after i was done with that i set up my new switch and cables. it’s to network all of my home entertainment center devices, which were previously all on an old 10base netgear hub. i’m hoping it’ll provide a better pipe for streaming and downloading with my apple tv and samsung blu-ray (it’s what does netflix streaming).
i should also mention after having gone 4 days or so without any soda, tea, coffee, etc., and having eaten “healthier” stuff, i decided to try and continue that for awhile. i’ve now gone one week without sodas, tea, coffee, etc. and i’ve decided to not get combos with fries. i’m not trying to become a health nut or anything, i just figure cutting out sugary sodas and fries should get rid of a fair number of calories i normally consume because they’re there. even if i continue to eat everything else the same, that’ll probably cut my calorie intake one third i’d bet. i’ve done this before though, so i doubt it’ll last too horribly long. it begins to lose its value when you don’t see any results in making the effort to sacrifice something and change your habits. (it’s either that or my ex’s theory that i hate myself…choices, choices.)
i still feel somewhat sick today, even though i’ve been taking the meds. since antibiotics usually work pretty fast, i’m guessing this was actually a virus. hopefully the antibiotics will at least keep anything else from cropping up during my body’s weakened state from fighting the virus.
tonight i watched (via netflix streaming) this film is not yet rated, a documentary film about the inconsistent and secretive practices and ratings of the mpaa that also serves as an attempt to expose the “secret” raters. while i wasn’t shocked by much about the mpaa and their behaviour, it was interesting to learn more about just how few people make the arbitrary and somewhat inconsistent decisions about the rating each movie gets. and how horribly secretive they want it all to be.
“…that if our paths cross again, you’re going to see a side of dignan that you haven’t seen before. a sick, sadistic side because i’m furious at bob…” –dignan, bottle rocket