Things you learn when home sick

My entire family managed to give me the plague this weekend. I got to spend six hours over Sunday night-Monday morning vomiting every half an hour. Worse, I missed getting to the toilet on time for the big'un and poor feiran ended up cleaning up after me. What would I do without her? For starters, I'd be cleaning vomit out of the cats' fur still, but she also didn't hate me for spewing on the floor so much that she didn't then very kindly fetch me stuff from the grocery store. Point is, I owe her lots of hugs when I'm no longer a carrier for this.

Things I've learned from this bought with GI doom?

I hate being pathetic when sick.
I hate being pathetic, period, but when you're sick, you sorta have an excuse and the temptation is there. I lazed about on the couch for much of the day and slept. It felt decadent, especially as by then my stomach was tentatively back on good terms with itself.

Flat soda is actually really good for you.
I called my mother to ask what all to expect of this bug, and she told me that the only regular doctor we've ever had--the family pediatrician (woo, does that say how long I've gone without a GP or what?)--always recommended flat coke when we were sick. It gives you a bit of sugar energy, and the flatness takes out the stomach-troubling bubbles. Watering it down with ice that melts into it also helps, which is convenient since I couldn't exactly chug the thing when at risk of vomiting it up again.

After two hours, every episode of Family Guy looks the same.
At my mother's suggestion, sleep was the order of the day, so I put on a season's worth of Family Guy with the intention of sleeping through it. I watched one disc, got somewhere in the middle of the second, and I woke up to snippets on the menu screen that I couldn't tell weren't all from the same episode.

Involuntary muscles can hurt.
Stomach is still a bit tentative about foodstuffs, but the nausea and pain are gone. Except for the cramps in the abdomen. Turns out muscles that aren't used to being abused quite as harshly, be they voluntary or in-, can get rather cranky about it. Owie. How do you massage a muscle ache that is internal? Anyone?

(no subject)

It has been brought to my attention that, if the WGA strike persists much longer, CBS has decided it will show edited versions of the first season of Dexter.

If you have any interest in seeing this absolutely phenomenal bit of television, take my advice and DO NOT WATCH THE CBS VERSION.

Look, I want you all to watch and like Dexter. It's beautiful, well-acted, well-written, and a total mindfuck. When it comes to making you react to what you're seeing in ways that aren't always comfortable, this is the best show on the planet, hands down. There are some folk who might be tempted by tamed version of the show, which will allow them to see the fabulosity without the gore. I've got news for those people: an edited version WILL NOT MAKE THE BAD STUFF MORE PALATABLE. In fact, it will do exactly the opposite.

It's not just that this is a show explicitly about a serial killer. It's about the fact that you cheer on a serial murderer with no sense of compassion for anyone. The point of seeing the brutal murder process up close and personal is to remind you that, while he seems the fluffy puppy most of the time, Dexter is FUCKED UP. The show makes you question your own morality, your ability to see in black and white or even very definite shades of gray. If you take away the violence and mercilessness of the character, you lose a whole level of audience involvement. And if you don't see the monster, you won't appreciate that.

Moreover, I can imagine that the series would just be very boring and humorless without the murders as counterpart. So much of Dexter's humor is in the juxtaposition of this smooth, confident, unblinking killer and the bumbling, inept, damaged every-day Dexter. No, I suppose the graphic violence isn't necessary, but then I never felt that Dexter was all that graphically violent. Oh, there's plenty of blood in places, but most of the kills are disturbing enough without gore as to make any editing of them for content nearly impossible. Either you edit nothing as there's no literal "problematic scene" to edit out, or you edit everything and ruin the tone because you've had to leave it completely out.

Bottom line: if you know me even tangentially, I'm willing to donate my DVDs to you for a time to appreciate this series uninterrupted, unfiltered, and untainted by commericial TV rules--the way it should be, damn it.

Oh, of COURSE I was going to comment

Having finally seen the trailer in Hi-Def, it's time for some thoughts about The Dark Knight. Or why I think Nolan and Company may own me come summer:

( Just in case you care about trailer spoilers. )

(no subject)

Oh, good, it's not just me.

Really, I am turned off by this woman's writing already and I haven't even experienced it. Diablo Cody wrote Juno for those of you who don't know yet. I dunno about the movie--I'm a little less than pleased that it should be considered so "edgy" for a girl NOT to get an abortion when she's pregnant at 16--but the writer is really annoying me at every turn. An interview with her in Entertainment Weekly tried to cast her as the party girl (she drank more heavily during the interview than most people do in a month), and now she writes a column for them that reeks of desperate "LIKE ME! LIKE ME!" attention whoring that I'm even more turned off to her.

"Ha ha ha, look at my zany adventures and my ability to name-drop pop culture references," doesn't make you cool. It makes you a self-interested tool. This is definitely that anal-expulsive, free-thinking child you knew would never have his/her bubble deflated because of he/she cultivated a barrier of protective ignorance and deflected all criticism by going, "You just don't get it." That's how she comes off--so desperate to be edgy, she's just irritating. For those of you who watch Dexter, I picture her as a real-life Lila minus some of her issues and plus about a thousand more.