The Skeptical Boffin

I am crying with laughter. There are no words for how awesome this is.

Anyone want a weeping angel T-shirt? :D Jinx is selling 'em! <3 <3



Click here for the store page: jinx.com/men/shirts/geek/dont_blink.html LOL.

Would anyone like a drawing, or would like to suggest something for me to do? I really need to get my painting muscles going again, but my brain's still frozen thanks to all the meds and peppermint drink.

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I actually went out for dinner at a Japanese restaurant tonight. California temaki, and a whole plate of salmon sashimi all to myself. [Yes, I'm greedy. Yes, my degree was in microbiology. Yes, I eat raw fish. Deal with it.] It's officially my first real meal for the week: I'd been eating very poorly before, thanks to the cough (which was clearly opposed to my having anything digesting in my stomach), and everything had been pretty repulsive anyway. So yeah. Score one for me this time.

It's ridiculous how long this cough has been going on. It even got *worse* at one point, if anyone can believe it, and my mother became desperate enough to try the remedy from her friend, which she insisted would get rid of the cough. This was the remedy: coating the soles of my feet with Vicks VapoRub, and then stuffing said feet into a pair of very thick socks. Obviously, I hate having my feet touched more than the rest of me combined, and I protested vehemently that the day it worked was the day our sun rose from the west and set in the south, but she insisted anyway, so we wound up wagering an iPad. The result? Not only did I keep the neighbours up all night with seemingly never-ending paroxysms of violent coughing, the soles of my feet were so well lubricated that I spent the next day slipping, sliding and skidding around the house like a demented dog on an ice skating rink. At least my coughs are now respectable sporadic bursts, rather than the hacking variety with enough power to forcibly pop out my eyes and eject my brain through my nose.

Still waiting to regain hearing in my left ear, though. Left ear currently feels stuffed with sound-absorbent material; I lost a great chunk of my hearing earlier this week, following the ear infection. On the one hand, it's much easier to tune out and *not* hear things I'm not interested in (eg. market noises, horrible music from the radio); on the other hand, if I'm sleeping with my good ear in the pillow, you could detonate several bombs in our neighbourhood and I'd still sleep right through it. That is, if the coughing didn't keep me awake. Haha.

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A good friend of mine - whose taste I never had cause to doubt up to now - recently started reading Twilight and, believe it or not, actually liked parts of it. After getting over my incredulity, I decided I would give the book the benefit of the doubt (I did read Harry Potter, didn't I? even though I had no intention of doing so?) and actually read it for myself before I passed judgment. And now, having finished it, I can really, honestly say:

It's not a bad book. It really isn't.

It's unspeakably horrible.

Yes, I know it's a book for teens. Yes, I know it's romance. But even with the knowledge that all teens are angsty and have percolating hormones, and believe in soppy things like One True Love Forever... it's still horrible. And it's not just the romance because surprise surprise, there *is* actually such thing as - thought it hurts me to say this - tastefully written romance. (Which, incidentally, you won't find anywhere in this book). For one, Bella Swan is about the most spineless, lamest, most vacuous and insipid protagonist I have ever come across in the world of teen fic. Apart from her name, which should already send alarm bells ringing (beautiful swan???), she's a Mary Sue who doesn't even bubble and dazzle like her sisters; she's like a Mary Sue with all the fizz and glamour taken out of her. She's supposedly a disaster magnet, an accident waiting to happen - but apparently that adds to her charm because she manages to attract people (particularly boys) like flies, never mind that she's a new girl in a little town where presumably everybody has known everybody forever. Her range of emotions range from angsty/snivelly to needy to blindly enamoured to more-depressed-than-a-wet-mop. And that's just her.

It gets worse once Edward the sparkly glampire enters the picture. If you have read Les Miserables, and were annoyed by how Victor Hugo kept reminding his readers about how beautiful and statue-like Enjolras was... well, at least Enjolras was still human, and he did die at the insurrection. Not to mention Enjolras would've looked like a drippy wallflower next to Edward Cullen. Seriously, every few pages we are treated to Bella's fawning descriptions of how devastatingly beautiful and gorgeous and perfect Edward was. It was nauseating. And really? If a boy, in real life, kept breaking into your bedroom to watch you sleep at night, and stalked you everywhere, and claimed that he was nothing until he met you, and that his whole life revolved around you, you'd get a restraining order. But apparently it's perfectly all right if the boy is a vampire? Eh?

The tragic part is that there *are* interesting fragments of the story that, perhaps, in the hands of a much better writer, might have become midway readable (especially, say, if it had been written in the 3rd person rather than the 1st). But this isn't it. It's a jagged mountain of painfully clunky narrative, unrestrained blathering and angst and emo and angst and emo. And major characters so two dimensional they could've been printed on floppy typing paper. And at the end of the day, all there is to he book is a perfect, smouldering, angsty sparkling, stalky vampire, and a girl whose only purpose in life is to be around him, and be rescued from danger by him. It's as if someone collected the dreams of every sad, lonely, overweight, deluded teenaged girl who wanted to be loved by a perfect guy, and distilled it into a 500-page novel. *facepalm*

It terrifies me that not only teenaged girls but also middle-aged women all over the place are reading (and loving) this because, really, what does that tell you about their evaluation of love and romance and desire?

I am currently harbouring fugitives. Their names are Martian and Debilitating Cold, and they're currently in hiding, probably somewhere in the vicinity of my lungs.

My first clue that my body had been invaded by rogue microorganisms was when, following lunch on Thursday, I developed an annoying persistent cough. By Friday, said annoying cough had blossomed into a conspiracy to keep my erythrocytes from effectively transporting their little oxygen passengers to the gazillions of cells populating the Sprawling Nation of Far, and thus just as effectively kept me out of the gym. Said pathogens apparently seized control of my communications centre yesterday, which probably wasn't hard to do at all since I practically handed it to them on a plate, having spent two consecutive hours burning a hole in my throat by talking non-stop at Biology class like a Chatty Cathy on stimulants. Meanwhile, my respiratory tract, sensing the inevitability of war, was busy stockpiling mucus and phegm in some remote part of my throat that no amount of throat-clearing or coughing could dislodge. Come evening (and my aunt's party) I was viewing the food served at dinner as unspeakably vile little buggers that would, if given the opportunity, cheerfully invite the contents of my lunch to join them on the serving plates; indeed, vile little buggers with the general appeal of large lumps of celery-flavoured booger. Left in time to get to orchestra practice, where we spent a very merry night playing Various Christmas Songs With A Liberal Sprinkling of Phlegm, and then returned home to play my own Death Rattle Concerto, Opus 44, featuring a very impressive Hacking Cough Solo. To add to the mood, the local temperature dropped to several degrees above absolute zero - and when I say "local" I actually mean, "restricted to the area confined by my skin", since outdoor temperature was registering a nice balmy 27 degrees Celsius - thus necessitating the application of a long-sleeved denim workshirt, socks, one very warm silk floss duvet *and* one comforter the thickness of several loaves of bread. Which, as you may have guessed, did absolutely nothing to bring the perceived local temperature back up to normal, while actually steaming the covered person (ie. me) to palatable tenderness.

However, am very pleased to report that my internal thermostat was fixed by very grudging molecular repairmen early in the morning, and, after spending most of the day comatose, I am reasonably back up to speed (though pieces of my lung are still coming up with each cough...). Except that I was astonished to find, upon waking up today, that I had been transformed into a frog, and thus can only utter the words *croak* and *ribbit* - something that will probably require a kiss from some member of royalty to rectify.

Dear Mr. Camille Saint-Saëns,

I appreciate the lengths to which you go in reinforcing the "Death calls at Halloween" theme for your Danse Macabre tone poem, but do you not think that deliberately depriving your First Horn of breath for sixteen bars is perhaps a little extreme? After all, your horn player is also human, and requires oxygen for important bodily functions, such as staying conscious for long enough to play your composition to completion. Or perhaps it is your goal to have said horn keel over dead as a result of anoxia? I suppose it might be terribly apt - although you should bear in mind that, contrary to the French superstition you based your piece upon, your horn player will not be rising from the dead to dance to the tune of your violins.

Sincerely,
1st Horn (deceased)

PS: I might have survived the ordeal too, had it not been for the fact that I was playing host to a large Halloween party of bacteria that was having far too good a time in my respiratory tract to even consider the possibility of leaving.

So I'll come clean and confess it: I'm a fan of Noel Coward's songs. Have been since I caught Mad Dogs and Englishmen at the end of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians (which, incidentally, was the only part of the film that I found interesting at all); anyone visiting me during study hour in college would've heard my Legends of the 20th Century 01: Noel Coward CD playing over and over and over ad nauseam. (Unless of course it was the Pet Shop Boys -- which gives you a pretty good idea of the sort of stuff I listen to). It's almost impossible to get sick of Coward's wit - it's almost like PG Wodehouse set to music - and the songs still make me snicker in spite of the fact that I've just about worn a hole in the CD.

A few years ago I caught a rerun of the 1999 BBC Proms featuring Jeremy Irons - singing Noel Coward songs. I've just found them again, and thought I'd share the videos because Jeremy Irons, while obviously not camp, has a coarser, more nasal timbre to his voice, and has trouble with the high notes, nevertheless manages to more than do Coward justice in his own rough(er) way:



The arrangement for Mad Dogs and Englishmen is hilarious, and sent me into an apoplectic fit of laughter at one point. You'll know it when you hear it.



While the songs Irons picked are among my top Coward favourites, I can't help but wish that 20th Century Blues could've been replaced by The Stately Homes of England... but that would've made it one comic song too many. I would've killed to hear Jeremy Irons sing it, though.



The build-up of frustration and hostility! That last verse!!! It wasn't in my CD; god, I wish it was. (Damn the public sensibilities of the time). The song was awesome enough with Noel Coward singing it, but Jeremy Iron's inflections and body language are *gold*.

Here's an enlightening little conversation I just had with my mother:

[mum watches me remove a microwaved leftover pizza slice from the oven]
Mum: Didn't you cover that? You and your dad are exactly alike. Why didn't you cover the pizza?
Me: Because it's dry, and there's nothing to splatter all over the inside of the microwave?
Mum: But you should cover it! My friend told me all about MICROWAVE RAYS. What if those MICROWAVE RAYS get into the food?
Me: Mum, they're called waves. What do you think cooks the food?

It's both hilarious and appalling how many people don't know how their modern gadgets work.


In other news: MAFIA II WILL BE OUT IN TWO DAYS' TIME!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, I have waited for this game for six years. And god, how I loved the original. I really, really want this new one to be good.

You're never seeing me again.

I couldn't help laughing. Although I shouldn't, because it really isn't funny at all. All I kept thinking was, What the hell are they teaching kids these days? I tutor biology, but sometimes I find myself teaching math as well because... apparently, whatever else they might be doing, school teachers aren't teaching their students manual arithmetic.

( Semi-rantage follows )

Art Digression

Force, I am so good at starting twenty new art projects simultaneously (without finishing half of them), I don't know what to do with myself. Here's a work-in-progress for a portrait that I started for absolutely no reason, and now have absolutely no idea what to do with:



(Robson Green, because he rocks).

*facepalm*

In the meantime, my *actual* ongoing projects are being put on hold... for no reason. Like, oh, the latest installment in the Stephen Garrity saga, or the webcomic my Tank-phobic friend and I are working on. Gah.