CSotD: Science, Philosophy and Sechlike

Friday’s Baldo (AMS) hit as I was starting to recover from being flat on my back with covid, so it was still painful to laugh but, then again, it was painful to be amused, because I hadn’t even bothered calling my doctor.

When I had covid a year or so ago, I couldn’t get in; they sent me, instead, to the local McDoctor Shop, where it turned out my half-trashed kidneys made it impossible for me to take Paxlovid anyway.

And while Medicare would have footed the bill if my regular doctor had told me to drink plenty of liquids, I had to pay to be told that by the clinic.

Point being that it wasn’t all that long ago when you made regular appointments for two weeks down the road but they would always find a slot if you were sick or injured at the moment. Now the only way to get immediate attention is to have chest pains, and by “immediate” I mean after you sit in the ER waiting room for way too long.

I think Tia Carmen is exaggerating with “three months,” but maybe not. Our local hospital is a major med center, chock-a-block with med students at every level, and six to eight weeks seems to be the usual wait for an appointment.

So I picked up some PowerAde, which I don’t really like but which has 50% more electrolytes than the leading sports drink.

Self-prescribing used to be a lot more fun than that.

Speaking of all the medical students at the Dr. Seuss School of Doctorin’, today’s Barney & Clyde (Counterpoint) reminded me of a student who attended one of my yearly physicals and administered that basic cognition quiz.

She gave me the five words — which, BTW, were much more unconnected than Trump’s hypothetical list of things he could see during the interview — and I repeated them back and we went on to talk about other things, though coal miners who became movie stars wasn’t among them.

Then she asked me to repeat them again, and my unspoken response was, “What? I was supposed to store those?” Apparently I had, however, because, while it took an effort, I did dig them back out.

So, if you go in to have your brain tested, watch out for tricks.

And if you can’t remember them, just say, “I’m sorry, my brain is completely booked, but you can ask me again at 8:30 AM on January 16th, if that works for you.”

Nathan Cooper offers a bit of implied advice, or implied criticism, but either way, the message is that if Facebook substitutes for reality in your world, well, Zappa would classify you among the Plastic People, and, oh, baby, now, you’re such a drag.

I haven’t seen the Northern Lights in several years, not so much because I’m living further south but because I’m living in town with lights and neighboring buildings and such. But they were part of winter when I was younger, and the thing about them is that you never get used to them.

We could see them several times throughout the winter, and they would blow your mind every time. Even the small displays were mind-expanding, and when they’d hang drapes across the horizon, it was an event where you’d phone your friends so they’d go outside.

Can you photograph them? Sure. You can photograph a puppy, but can you photograph how it feels to snuggle a puppy?

What they look like is not what they are like, in part because in a really good display, you can also hear them, and in part because you can’t photograph reality, only the images on the cave wall.

If you’re ever lucky enough to see the night sky filled with pink or green shifting, glowing curtains, put down your damn camera and Be Here Now.

As long as I’m waxing philosophical, today’s Frazz (AMS) spins in a couple of directions. One is that Caulfield is absolutely right in that the spontaneity of jazz should not be mistaken for happenstance. You may not know where they’re going next, but they do, and not because they’ve discussed it but because they’re in tune on a level nobody else can see.

On the other hand, the phrase itself — also applied to folk music, which is where I heard it — is a self-deprecating joke about the tuning of instruments.

It’s extremely difficult to get instruments in tune with themselves, let alone with each other, and after a million micro-adjustments, there comes a time when you have to say “Close enough” and count on the musicians to make it work and to let those tiny imperfections become part of that carefully curated spontaneity.

It’s not a matter of objective acoustics. It’s a matter of perception. I had a roommate with perfect pitch, and it was more a curse than a blessing. Poor bastard couldn’t enjoy most music because all he could hear was the discord.

To lighten the metaphysical load, here’s an excellent example by Crabgrass (AMS) of logic amongst the elementary school set.

What makes the trick work is a play on language. What makes the gag work is that these two are best friends, and so a chance to one-up each other is an ongoing part of their relationship — “Put it on my tab.” — and that, having been snookered, Kevin can’t wait for the chance to pull the gag on his sister.

Man Martin put his comic strip Man Overboard on hiatus for a few months, but is now back and is beginning a new chapter in his evisceration depiction of the Book of Genesis. You’ve just missed the bit where Jacob steals his older brother’s birthright, though you can catch much of it in the archives.

It’s very funny, so long as you see the original as folkloric rather than as the immutable direct watch-for-lightning-bolts word of the Lord, because while Martin respects the storytelling, he’s not above pointing out the plot holes or of using naughty words.

I’ve been laughing a lot, and so far I’ve avoided lightning strikes.

For a more earth-bound fundamentalist theological heresy, Joy of Tech strikes at a basic belief in back doors, which made me laugh, too, but mostly provides an excuse to end with this classic Eddie Izzard bit: