“Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the earths crust. It should have been the first metal that mankind used. This would have happened if it wasn’t for the fact that it is so difficult to extract it from the rocks that contain it. But just think what it would have been like if the first great age of man was the aluminum age. What kind of wussy sword would you be able to make out of aluminum! It would have been the golden age of the step ladder.”

I had planned a post about the Centralia fire, but today at work I was browsing the CDC website for information about asbestosis, and somehow came across an article about traumatic head injuries (you know how badly government websites can be organized).

The gist of the article was that the most accurate predictor of whether you’ll get a concussion is (trumpets please): having had a concussion. (I’ve had three. Three.) A bit more probing revealed that the biggest predictor of whether you’ll get cancer is having already had cancer. And on Monday my doctor told me that because of the scar tissue in my lungs, I will most likely just keep getting pneumonial infections for the rest of my life and they will get worse as I get older. Even now, walking to work, there’s a wet and sinister rattle when I breathe. (Is it the car exhaust? Or is it that the antibiotics didn’t work and something horrible is seething down there?)

At any rate, much to my surprise, the concussion article got to me and I had to run to the washroom to stuff tissue in my eyes before anyone saw me crying over my cost estimates. Of course the same things will keep happening to you. Anyone who says ‘Don’t live in the past’ is a fool and is lying to himself: your past lives through you and dictates your future. Damaging your brain guarantees that you’ll damage it again later; having cancer gives you cancer. And it’s the same for everything in life. Fear makes you afraid, heartbreak predisposes you to further heartbreak. I used to be so certain that character, not experience, was destiny. It made me less cynical… but the cynicism appears to be back with a vengeance. Where did I ever get the idea that people could change?

As most of my approximately three loyal blog readers know from other sources, I’ve got teh pneumonia again. Yes, it’s in both lungs. No, the antibiotics haven’t kicked in (which is a little alarming because I only have two pills left). No, the fucking inhaler isn’t working this time either. Dr. S says I’ve got scar tissue in my lungs, which is why they are both now the size of marshmallows. (Not the mini ones. Regular marshmallows.) Yes, I’m seeing a lot of spots in front of my eyes because I’m slowly drowning from the inside. Yes, I’m too weak to wash a spoon, which is OK, because the inhaler’s got me feeling too nauseous to eat anyway. No, I haven’t been going to wurk. (Although I did go to a work party today, which was a terrible idea.) And yes, for my closest perverts, I am gasping like a porn star, thanks for asking.

The upshot of this illness is that because I have actually collapsed (Tuesday and again today) from not being able to breathe, I’m keeping the phone fairly close. I’m also watching a lot of BBC documentaries propped up on a couple of fat pillows so I don’t slide down and die from internal suffocation like John Merrick. I’ve found a particularly good one about phobias, though I’m not done that one yet. There’s a little boy who’s got a dog phobia, and there’s a woman with a flying phobia, and there’s a woman with a phobia of birds. And feathers. That is amazing. The whole point about phobias is that they’re not rational, which this poor woman keeps acknowledging, but it was pretty amazing to watch her physiological responses when the screen slid up and revealed a single feather held in a clamp. This woman can’t leave her house without going into hysterics because Britain is full of pigeons and stuff. She can’t even own a feather duvet because a feather might slip out and then, well, it’s all over.

I bring this up because I don’t have any particularly bad phobias (well, that bee one, which I’ve overcome and succumbed to several times), but now I am developing a pretty specific fear of… well… asphyxiation. It seems sort of justified at the moment, but as of Tuesday, all I can think about is my friend Vanitha, who spent a lot of time just before her death not being able to breathe. She ended up in the hospital on a ventilator, and then everything shut down at once, and I saw her just before that day, just before, which is an image I now cannot rid from my head. It started with an upper respiratory infection, her mom said. That turned into a lower respiratory infection, and then it just got worse and worse.

I don’t blink and see black any more. I blink and I see Vanitha on the ventilator, with her father clutching her hand. I can still hear her struggling for air that night we all spent in the hotel before her wedding. At that point, she had six weeks to live. I don’t know why I’m going on about this. Probably trying to justify my phobia. But it would be really good if the fear would just go away now, because it’s not helping with the insomnia one little bit. Aargh.

UPDATE: OK, my moderation program has been deleting the comments I’m trying to leave on this post… I wonder what I said to make it blacklist me. Oh well, guess I’ll retype it. (???)
Thanks for the kind words, everyone – I basically just woke up from sixteen hours’ sleep (in fact, I thought I woke up in Hades: when did Calgary become such an inferno? Did I miss something?) and though my chest hurts, I can breathe a bit better now and I know the chest pain is just from the fluid in my lungs, so that’ll be gone when they empty out. One more day in bed and I should be as right as rain. Incidentally, Kim, the love got here bang on time – muchos gracias. :-) And Corey, thanks so much for the offer of cheering, I’ll take a raincheck though. My apartment is hip-deep in germs, possibly antibiotic-resistant ones. :-o I’m still hesitant to write this off completely, as respiratory complaints sort of creep up on you much later when you don’t expect it, but the worst is very clearly over. Yay! Score: Premee:1, Pneumonia:0. (But keep in mind we may only be at half-time.)

I think it’s been pretty well documented that I hate the ‘Harry Potter’ series, and I think my motivation has also been explained at great length. (NB: it’s not because of literary snobbery, I think, because I read Stephen King and probably several other authors who write what the critics consider ‘junk.’ It’s not elitism, it’s just taste – I don’t have a taste for the canon of dumb, overpraised teenage girls who dot their i’s with little circles, which is Rowling’s style. I mean, I quite like the movies: because they are entirely divorced from the assy writing.)

So I’ve heard that there’s this petition online somewhere – don’t look at me to link to it for you – to bring Harry Potter back after the seventh book. Oh my God, please to be kill I, twice. Please God no. It’s got to be a sign of the apocalypse, if she gives in and resurrects this bastard series after the last book. The world will COME TO AN END. (Well, it will for me. Because I’m going to jump off my balcony.)

I slightly want to start a counter-petition, or at least write J.K. a letter.

“Dear Ms. Rowling,

Please don’t bring ‘Harry Potter’ back. Whatever scraps and tatters of talent you ever had have been eroding away with each new book. Also, don’t you think you have enough money now? And aren’t you getting tired of proving that the intelligence of crowds is in actuality the stupidity of herds? We all get it. You don’t need to beat our heads in. Please just go away now.

Yours sincerely,
Premee ‘Nice Premise’ M.”

I don’t know. I suppose it’s worth a shot. (Oh, another NB: obviously I read the so-called ‘spoiler’ for the final book, it’s been floating around for ages, it would have been easier to not read it, it’s like how Mark had ‘Unusual Suspects’ ruined for him by a few words on a t-shirt. And the spoiler makes good thematic sense, doesn’t it, it fits better with the series than having Harry die. But the point is that the books don’t have to end, if this spoiler is authentic. And oh my God. I can’t go on.)

OK, I know this would have been more appropriate for Canada Day, but I was too preoccupied with carefully getting the plastic lids off my dang Jag shots to think many patriotic thoughts on the actual day.

I admit I’m quite, quite surprised by some of these. ‘All-dressed’ is Canadian only? I had simply assumed that chips were a North American standard because even though our chips are made in Canada, aren’t they all from American companies? Ditto with ‘Gravol,’ and for the same reason. ‘Poutine’ and ‘bargoon’ I expected, of course. (Bargoon especially – by the by, is that just from that commercial, or did the guy from the commercial get it from somewhere else? Anyone know?) But ‘humidex’? They’ve got crazy humidity in the States too, I’ve heard a week in New York can be like a week in Atlantis, but we really came up with it on our own? That’s really kind of neat.

Yay Canada!

Not to be crude or anything, but does anyone know why my lovely lady lumps keep getting photographed with gay men? Just asking.