Fervent fireplugs for the Fourth.

One of the most charming outpourings of civic and national pride at the 1976 United States Bicentennial was ... fire hydrants. 

I don't think anyone is certain where the practice began, but in the leadup to July 1976, people in many communities across the fruited plains started giving the local fireplugs a makeover. 

My favorites were the ones done up like Minutemen -- such as this old soldier. 

I had kind of hoped that we might see this sort of thing return for the big 250, despite the fact that about vocal minority of the country seems to hate America beyond reason. I don't think anyone's hatred of the country or the president or whatever matters here, though. After all, how many people does it take to paint a fire hydrant?

Granted, there's something less impressive about 50-year celebrations. 100? YAY! 150? Yay. 200? YAY! 250? Yay. It just doesn't have enough zeroes to put it over the top. 

Also, there is an issue with painting fireplugs that may not have been a problem in 1976: color coding. Franklin, Tennessee, provides an explanation of the significance of different colors of its fireplugs:

The same code is not used throughout the United States; for one thing, most areas don't have yellow-barreled hydrants. But I have noted the difference among bonnets here in New York, and the difference between regular hydrants and those only used to flush the system. You see, though, why this would preempt celebratory hydrant painting. You wouldn't want the firemen to ignore the working hydrant just because it had been made to look like George Washington with a black bonnet in place of his trusty tricornered hat. 

Well, it's understandable, but it's a shame. I would have loved a patriotic excuse to give this hydrant a refresh:

Hmm -- does that orange top mean it spews up to 999 gallons a minute? And will the department know that when the paint flakes down to the iron? 

Let's hope they don't need to use it, anyway. We live here! 

Just ask my dog.

MS KMA.

When I was a kid, the schools were closed on Election Day. They were closed here yesterday. Unfortunately, unlike when I was a kid, I didn’t have the day off, and it was frustrating.

I have three big projects due at the end of the week, and one of them is particularly stressful. It’s for a prestigious publisher, and I did not do my best work for them last time. I may have been sick that week. But that’s not their problem. I got called out for it, and they didn’t send me work for months. I thought I had been moved to the naughty freelancer pile. 

After a nine-month freeze-out I was offered a shot at redemption. I already had a pile of work, but I was determined to restore my reputation. Pride? Certainly. Hubris? Well... Whatever it was, my deadlines turned into a title of a popular movie: Everything Everywhere All at Once.

And then Election Day fell. Which was fine, but I had to go to the polls twice (once to take my wife, because it was unclear that she knew the Secret Backroads Shortcut, and by the way there are two polling places closer to our house than the one to which we have been assigned). Leading up to the second trip, Microsoft decided it was the perfect day to update the laptop.

It is like a pesty salesman. 

Let's do the upgrade now.

I'm busy. Later.

It'd be much better to get this done right away.

Leave me alone.

How about now?

FINE Let's schedule it for tonight.

I set up the schedule to restart at nine o'clock in the evening. Around four thirty, it was time to take the Mrs, to the polls, and Izzy the Baby Dog as well since his attachment has gotten fierce since we lost Tralfaz and we haven't started alone-training again because he has been getting antibiotics and eye drops and eye ointment for blepharitis and conjunctivitis these last two weeks and don't even ask. So we loaded up the truck and we drove past two polling places to the stupid one we have to go to. 

When we got back about 5:30, I found out that Microsoft had apparently decided that it was just going to go ahead without me, since I'd been away from the computer and had probably knocked off for the day. Why wait until nine? I swear, as I woke the screen it asked, should we start now or reschedule? As I reached for the mousepad to stop it, it plunged into update world. OK! Silence is acceptance! Let's go!

Never change, Microsoft.

Eventually I got back to work, but of course I couldn't get as much done as I wanted after all that. Plus, I was hardly in a proper frame of mind. You know what it's like -- you've already gone way past frazzled and are edging up to psychotic when that last thing happens to make you Hulk out. Like, you finally get the dishes in the dishwasher and turn it on, thinking you won't be late for work if the traffic isn't as bad as usual, and then:

I'm not saying it's a suitable time to go William "D-Fens" Foster, but you know you'd start with the dishwasher and somewhere along the line take out the laptop as well. Well, I know I would under those circumstances.

Out on the carpet.

Ugh. Yesterday was a very Monday Monday. I agreed to do a big assignment without realizing that the deadline is this Friday, and it's the most boring book in the world and worked on it all weekend and most of the day Monday. All that on poor sleep Sunday night (another windy night, and large dog Tralfaz wanted multiple trips out in the bitter cold). But that wasn't the worst of it.

A client bawled me out for a poor job I did on another book. What hurt was that she was exceptionally nice about it, and that she was right. I had neglected the book. I'd overbooked, and it was the same week baby dog Izzy needed surgery and then keen attention during recovery. The thing was, her assignment wasn't difficult; it was painless. A pleasant enough mystery novel. Meanwhile I was doing a crazy cookbook for one client and a messed-up manuscript that looked like it had been dictated to Siri for another, and a flow of short fact-checking jobs from a third, and I took it all because I have to help come up with the $5,500 for the kid's surgery. But just as the best-behaved child gets the least attention, so too did the most pleasant editing job, and the errors that escaped me in my proofing were caught by others.

So I have taken up residence here. 

 

Which leads me to one of my favorite conundrums: Is it worse to be accused of something falsely or accurately? The first is frustrating, because it's unfair but it's hard to prove innocence; the second is embarrassing, and shame is painful. My first thought is that it's better to be accused falsely, because there's always the option of punching someone in the snoot. But really, for the sake of truth, it's better to be upbraided honestly. Wounded pride stings like hell, but the only way to get better is to be caught in the act of being worse. If I have to lose this client, those are just the breaks. 

Meanwhile, until my penance is over, Tralfaz will be in the bed while I'm in his house. Woof!

Medical update: Duh.

There was a headline in Medscape on March 11 that made me want to reach in through the Internet and do some serious Moe slappin': 

Year of COVID: Everything We Thought We Knew Was Wrong

Well. How about that. I wonder if what they thought they knew was wrong is what the rest of us have come to know they were wrong about. Let's have a look at some quotes from the piece. 

[Michael Osterholm, PhD, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota] says mixed messages may have cost the US in terms of public support.

"I think it is a really unfortunate situation because we burned a lot of bridges in terms of people wanting to follow or support public health measures," Osterholm says.

Oh, do you think so? 

In a scientific brief published in March 2020, the WHO cautioned that there was no evidence that the virus was lingering in air and making people sick, though recent experiments suggested that it might be doing just that.

Scientists who study aerosols were dumbfounded.

In a strongly worded letter to the journal Science, Kimberly Prather, PhD, a professor and atmospheric chemist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sought to clear the fog. "There is overwhelming evidence that inhalation…represents a major transmission route for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)" she wrote.

According to this piece, the World Health Organization made an awful lot of errors. Totally innocent, of course. I wonder if anyone had an idea that the WHO could not be trusted? I seem to recall one fellow, orange complexion, kind of loud... but everyone says he was talking through his hat. Also. China comes in for no blame in this piece, despite its well-known lies and coverups about the whole thing, abetted by its flunkies at the WHO. So where does the blame lie? Well, there's an optimistic quote from a certain White House figure that's framed to make it look like he is a moron:

The same day the WHO declared a pandemic, then-President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office. "The virus will not have a chance against us," he said, "No nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States."

Today, of course, the US leads the world in COVID-19 cases and deaths.

ISWYDT. 

We shall see in this article that our public medical friends only made innocent mistakes out of unfortunate ignorance and the interference of politicians. And aren't they oh so trusting in those Chinese death figures? 

But let's go on.

Much of the public health guidance given to the public last year turned out to be incorrect.

"Putting aside rampant disinformation and political interference, the real tragedy was not having any COVID-19 testing for the first 2 months of the US pandemic, which promoted diffuse spread of the virus across the country, and we've never been able to contain it since," said Eric Topol, MD, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research and editor-in-chief of Medscape.

"That was the unforgivable mistake…a fatal mistake for thousands of Americans," Topol said.

I seem to recall there was COVID-19 testing available, although its failure to be widespread had more to do with the "this is just the flu, don't worry" out of these public health poohbahs than any "political interference." It's nice to blame someone else, isn't it, especially for your "unforgiveable mistake"?

Notice that the "rampant disinformation" isn't pegged to anyone. We're left to think it came from the White House rather than a certain nation that starts with a C and ends with an A and isn't Cambodia. You know, the one that was locking up doctors?

Of course, it wasn't all bad.  The development of the vaccines, which happened with unprecedented speed, was a dazzling achievement.

"It's astounding, you know, and it's a testament to the scientific community, the medical community, the regulatory community, the pharmaceutical industry, you know the fact that everybody was able to do this," on such an accelerated timeline and without compromising safety, "was a very happy surprise," Heise says.

Now everyone is hoping we can get them rolled out in time.

Didn't that orange guy whom everyone hates have some role to play in getting the vaccines out before year's end, when everyone was saying it was impossible? Sounds vaguely familiar....

"I think it's just a reminder that we have to be very humble when we deal with these viruses. We have, have, to be humble," said Osterholm.

Some experts worry we will pay a price for these missteps now.

As he has watched the new coronavirus variants emerge, he says he's realized we're in a whole new ballgame with COVID now.

"I always give people a disclosure when I talk about these viruses now, that you know, I know less about them now than I probably did 6 months ago. And I think that type of open mind is what's going to help get us through here and envision what the future might look like and what we have to plan for," Osterholm said.

Oh, don't worry about it at all. We know everything from now on will be really, truly on the level. Even though you all told us that it was okay to go out and parade around for social justice when you wouldn't let people leave their apartments, and even though public health officials in states like mine signed off on sending sick people to nursing homes, we know you're all about duty and humanity. 

Sure, we the public will trust you. Just as much as you trust us. 

Later, that same morning....

Continuing my saga from yesterday....

The emergency department is like a fish tank where the bloopfish and beepfish communicate constantly through the medium. Something is always making an electronic noise. TV shows about hospitals would be ridiculously annoying if they accurately portrayed the ambient electronic sounds in an emergency medical setting.

I lay on my side once more, racked with pain, waiting for something to happen. With any luck it would involved lowering the pain, but so far things had only added to it -- drawing blood, checking vitals, sticking in an IV line.

Frankly, I was surprised that someone in so much obvious physical distress would be allowed to linger so long. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was hours before I was given a dose of morphine, which eased -- but didn't remove -- the intense pain in my back. I have to wonder if hospital protocols have gotten so tough on dispensing pain medication that they make the stuff exceptionally difficult to procure. I intend to ask someone about that.

Meanwhile, I was in the bed, white-knuckled, grasping the side rails like they were keeping me from falling. The pain actually kept getting worse, incrementally, as my repeated blood pressure checks confirmed objectively, and like a good Catholic I offered it up for the salvation of souls. But five hours into the ordeal, I suggested to God that I had probably saved as many souls as I could handle.

I got a lidocaine patch, which helped about as much as a smear of vanilla frosting would. But at last the nurse said he get some morphine.

The time between the nurse saying he would get me morphine and the drug's actually arrival was so long, you could probably have watched half of Cats, which might have been almost as painful. Because now it was tantalizingly just out of reach. My wife, my angel of mercy, probably would have gone out in the streets to try to score some illicit drugs is it had kept up much longer.

No man I know wants his loved ones to see him the way my wife had to see me. I was reduced to a whimpering mess. I feel ashamed about it, but I don't know how I could have behaved differently. Now I wonder if she'll always think of that when she needs me to be strong for her.

Hours passed. I listened to the usual ER chitchat. One patient and his wife being interviewed over and over by staff trying to get them to admit that the husband was a drunk; them clearly bluffing and prevaricating. Occasional laughter in the air. Someone with a long, dull litany of complaints. Me moaning. Why couldn't I pass out from the pain? Does that happen in real life? Of have I been lied to by the movies again?

About the time that the minor relief of the morphine was wearing off, they came to cart me out for a CT scan. This meant lying on my goddamn back again, and once again it was brutally hard. But at least we were doing something constructive. Then it was back to the same spot in the emergency department, to wait some more. Next time I get in medical trouble, please remind me not to do it on the Saturday overnight.

I don't know when it was that they decided I ought to get some Dilaudid, but it took until they decided to send me to get an MRI. That stuff did really ease the pain, at least to bearability, and for the first time I started to think I might survive this mess. I want to note that there was no fun to be had out of these pain meds. I had no mind-altering effects, except what you would expect from the reduction of awful pain. I was a little dizzy. And then I broke into a terrible cold sweat, right in the middle of the MRI.

If you've stuck with me this far -- thanks! Also, you may remember that in 2018 I was sent to get an MRI of my head for a hearing problem. That MRI had a mirror to give the illusion of looking out at the world; this one didn't. It was a blank white tube and it fit me like a tuxedo. I'm not terribly claustrophobic, but it was pretty bad. I shut my eyes and tried to think of anything to occupy my mind -- prayers, shopping lists, every member of the Justice League of America in alphabetical order. When I started flushing and sweating, I didn't think I could make it through -- it's almost a half hour ordeal for the contrast MRI. But I was so strongly motivated to stay in that tube and let them get the data they needed, I just kept my eyes shut and managed to not panic. That was a gift from heaven, right there.

From the MRI I was checked into a room in the orthopedic section, there to get interviewed by all the doctors who hadn't interviewed me already. Now, at least, the painkillers were adequate to the situation, and once installed in the room I was able to rest. It was about mid-afternoon.

I don't think I was rude to anyone, and absolutely no one was rude to me. Really, the staff could not have been more kind through the ordeal. However, I am not proud of my behavior, the moaning, the cries of pain, the inability to put on the brave face. If all the other little indignities of a hospital stay did not follow -- the need for permission to get up, the stupid gown, the escorts to the bathroom, the constant reminders of what one looks like stripped down -- it would still have been as humiliating as anything that has ever happened to me.

Maybe it just means I have too much pride, after all. But as I said, no man wants to be seen by his loved ones as I was in the ER.

🏥 🚑

We'll finish up the tale tomorrow; all downhill from here. What happens next? As Wagner wondered yesterday, maybe I died! That would be awful.

Ranking the sins.

We all have heard of the Seven Deadly Sins: PAGGLES, or Pride, Anger, Greed (Avarice), Gluttony, Lust, Envy, and Sloth. Some may call them faults, character defects, or poor behaviors. We know they're bad. But how do they rank?

For the purposes of our poll, we ranked each sin in order by the following criteria: Popularity; Amount of Damage Caused By; and Enjoyment Factor. Each sin got the points for its place in the ranking. The fewer points the sin got, the higher it finished. The sin with the lowest point total is... the winner, I guess.

Here are the results of our polling:

Lust is the surprise winner! Well, maybe not to some of you. Pride follows, with Gluttony edging out Greed for third; Envy and Anger are all knotted up at fourth, which is probably appropriate, and Sloth brings up the rear, which is very appropriate. Here are the judge's comments:

LUST: A perennial favorite, Lust's fun ranking helps put it at the top of the list. It certainly can lead to a lot of damage -- broken marriages, unwanted children, horrible diseases, poverty, prostitution, Lambada -- but that alone is not enough to propel it to the top. Lust is enjoyed by many even when the action it impels is not immediately available -- e.g., Obsession is a perfume, not a pancake mix.

PRIDE: The king of the sins, the sin that tells us that all other sins are our due, Pride always comes in at the top of the heap -- but not this time. Because while Pride is the engine that drives the motor of sin, it is only fun when it's fulfilled, and as the appetite of Pride grows with the eating, it never can be for more than a moment. By plummeting to fifth place on our list of enjoyable sins, Pride drops out of the top spot -- but only by the criteria used for this survey. Don't worry, Pride; you'll be back on top soon.

GLUTTONY: It's hard to say that a culture with an obesity crisis doesn't have a problem with Gluttony, so we won't. Obviously Gluttony is popular; just have a look around Disney World if you don't think so. It's also fun! People may abstain from other sins, but everyone has to eat, and only the most ascetic of us want to eat things that don't taste good. Dietitians and doctors would probably disagree that Gluttony should come in sixth for damage-causing potential, and certainly anyone whose eating has brought on heart disease, diabetes, liver disease, or other potentially deadly problems could think so as well. But being fat never started a war, and it's not contagious, except perhaps psychologically. Don't worry, Gluttony, we still love ya (obviously).

GREED: What do you get the man who has everything? Whatever the next man up on the totem pole has. Greed had multiple tines on its pitchfork -- it is fun to shop (for many people); accumulating wealth offers security; and it is a great source of Pride to have lots of good-quality stuff. So Greed has fun, prudence, and Pride on its side. Plus, it leads to stealing, imperialism, and cheating, and a great friend with Envy. No wonder it is so popular. It's just hard to pin widespread disaster on Greed, unless the one doing in the pinning is a freaking socialist Commie, in which case that sin is coming up next.

ENVY: Envy's awfully popular and popularly awful. The guy on the pedestal wants a bigger pedestal so he can look down on the guys on lower pedestals. Everyone can envy someone. As Benny Hill once said, "Poor men wish they were rich, rich men wish they were handsome, single men wish they were married, and married men wish they were dead." Envy has led to mass slaughter, wars between nations, Communism, and butt implants. If it were any fun at all it would rank higher, but envy feels like pain.

ANGER: You might think Anger should rank higher in popularity because so many people are angry these days, but our judges felt that while anger is often employed, it's very seldom enjoyed. There are those who really do dig getting mad, the ones for whom the fun ranking would be higher, but most of us would just prefer that everybody do what we demand and get out of our freaking way -- then  we would not have to be angry. Anger ranks higher for damage as it can cause any amount of violence, from a toddler smacking her twin sister to a nation going to war.

SLOTH:  I guess Sloth could be a big problem if you let the farm go fallow and die of hunger. Or are too lazy to rush to the country's defense and the barbarians invade and kill everyone. But it still seem like an also-ran in the Deadly Sin field. Thus, it was too lazy to climb out of the cellar for danger. And its popularity is pretty low; proud people are too busy to be slothful. No one is busier than the Devil. But Sloth also refers to mental, spiritual, and emotional laziness, as seen in the kind of person who thinks no one and no cause is worth disturbing his torpor. Add that to the number of people addicted to the sleep alarm, living in their folks' cellar, applying for unneeded government benefits, even refusing to help with the damn dishes, and we see why it roused itself to the fourth spot on our popularity ranking.

I'm pretty proud of this list, and the minutes of research and thought that went into it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna get a snack and take a nap -- that is, if my friggin' neighbor isn't playing with her deluxe chain saw again. Although she is kinda cute....

Dream reader.

Sleep reading is something we discussed back when I was a kid. There was a longstanding theory that if you went to sleep with your textbook under your pillow, you would absorb the information within as you slept. Kind of like how you could press your pants by putting them between the box spring and mattress overnight.

The pants pressing works if you do it right, but the sleep absorption never seemed to work, and not just because it's ridiculous. Apparently there are a few things you cannot do while dreaming, and one is read. You can fly, you can get shot to death, you can eat and drink anything, you can meet famous people, you can go to lands that don't exist, but you can't read.

Why? Bookriot, who ought to know, tells us that "When we dream, the part of the brain responsible for logic and intellect shuts down, allowing us to accept crazy dream stuff as reality while at the same time inhibiting our ability to interpret letters and numbers. Indeed, trying to read something and not being able to is considered one of the surefire signs that you’re dreaming (a few others are not being able to read clocks–one of the reasons why you find so many clocks in surrealist paintings–distortion in everyday patterns like brickwork or wallpaper, and not being able to see yourself in a mirror–you either won’t look like yourself or your face will be blurry)."

In fact, Bookriot asks, the last time you tried to read something in a dream, "Did you actually see letters? Was it a blank sheet of paper, or an incomprehensible jumble? Chances are it was."

I'd wondered if it was true, and indeed, within the last month I had a couple of dreams that convinced me there was something to it. In the first I was in a strange train station and trying to find the right train, and the sign looked like a jumble of letters; I tried so hard to read it (like an act of will would pull it together) that I woke myself up. In the second I was reading for work -- as an editor, I do that a lot -- and all I could see were words of no more than three letters, none of which made sense.

Which brings me to Pentecost. I was at the vigil Mass last night, and the first reading was the familiar Tower of Babel story from Genesis:

Then the LORD said: If now, while they are one people and all have the same language, they have started to do this, nothing they presume to do will be out of their reach. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that no one will understand the speech of another.

The story is often told as if the main sin involved was the tower that was being built in Babel, but you don't actually hear the people saying, "Let's build a tower tall enough to get to heaven so we can take over!" All they say is "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky, and so make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth." Which is close, but there's no indication that God is being challenged. The sin of pride is obviously what offends the Lord, and the threat these people pose to all creation by being unimpeded in their desires.

Also, God doesn't throw down the tower; it seems to just not get built when the people are scattered. Tarot cards not withstanding.

So what does the legend of Babel have to do with being unable to read in dreams? What silly connection have I made now?

Simply put: pqr nbz re. Or, in awake terms, language.

As in dreams, when the logic center shuts down, the prideful people in the legend of Babel also lose their reason, because of pride. They had a dream to "make a name for ourselves" and in that dream they lost their language.

The reason this is read at Pentecost is because we see the restoration by the Holy Spirit after the ascension of Jesus. The apostles, submitting to the will of God, receive the Holy Spirit and emerge speaking in tongues, astonishing the listeners in Jerusalem who came from all over the known world. What was scattered and confused in pride is gathered and restored in humility.

Now, last night I dreamed I was a voice actor for the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, a job of which I was quite proud. But I was feuding with one of the other actors who had a better part. As the dream went on I came to realize that A) my character was a very minor CGI alien and B) I had no idea what I was doing. I'm no actor! I don't understand the directions or process of voice acting! I don't know my lines! Pride falleth before the truth, eh? And by the way, I couldn't make out any text on the script at all, except for scribbled margin notes that said things like pqr nbz re. 

Well, movies have no logic anyway.

Full moon tonight.

Joe was known to be combative, and proud of his new flashlight.