And Then I Learned...

      The long-winded labels on prescription medicines are a kind of miracle of the worst of legal and medical prose.  I'm suggestible enough that I rarely read them unless I need clarification on the pharmacy's instructions on taking the medication: why come down with a bad case of imagination?

      So when I was still feeling awful on Sunday, I was starting to wonder if I had some kind of heart trouble.  I hate that feeling, and worse yet, because of the need for quick reaction to a genuine emergency, nobody in the medical business will waste a second figuring out if it's a genuine problem or only looks like one before sending you off to the ER to get it checked out at considerable expense.  The referring parties don't get a commission; they just don't want to have to deal with your rapidly-cooling corpse, spend time and effort giving you CPR, or explain to your grieving survivors that you had not, in fact, looked all that bad before falling over.  Speed affects outcome and minutes count.

      Thing is, I don't have any survivors who will grieve for long, especially not once the insurance and retirement-account checks arrive, and I have had two perfectly terrifying and costly panic attacks in the last fifteen years that felt (almost) like the real thing.  So I faffed around, feeling awful and putting out cautious feelers for advice, thinking, "If it was that bad, I'd be on the floor already," and -- finally -- read the package insert.

      Yeah, about that.  The super-ibuprofen, not so bad.  The muscle relaxer?  "Irregular heartbeat, anxiety, mental confusion, tingling in extremities," and so on and so forth.  It matched up with how I was feeling and none of them were low-probability.  So I was taking those pills, they were letting me me sleep like a log and then I would wake up to an extended bout of side-effects until it was time to take the pills again, sleeping, waking up to feel awful, over and over, with a break on the night when I just took the pain reliever by itself and kept waking up, heart racing, anxious, with pins and needles in my fingers.

      I did it to myself.  I've been off 'em for about thirty hours now and lo, my disturbing symptoms are gone like a campaign promise.  My back still hurts some -- that's what started all this -- but it's much better than it was and will be better still once I take some plain old OTC acetaminophen.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Hey Isn't That Benedict Cumberbatch?

      I'm not quite halfway through the film and I never read the book, so I can't tell you if they did justice to the plot.  (Critics are divided -- it's from the John le Carré book and he's known for twisty stories.)  I can tell you that the 2011 production of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a pitch-perfect 1970s spy movie.

      The film came up as a no-extra-charge suggestion on Amazon Prime Video.  I had enjoyed the mid-1960s "Harry Palmer" spy films with Michael Caine as Len Deighton's originally nameless British espionage agent, as well as 1975's Three Days of the Condor, with Robert Redford up against a complex conspiracy.  I recognized the title.  The artwork suggested more of the same as those movies.  I'd made myself a little dinner and only half-watched the opening credits as I ate; once the film was underway, much of the cast looked vaguely familiar but I couldn't put names with their very much in character faces.  It fit right in with the older films, right down to having a nice shot-on-film look and late-1960s - 70s color.

      And then a young actor with a thick mop of blond hair and Benedict Cumberbatch's face showed up....  My first inclination was that I didn't think he was that old, followed by the realization that he couldn't possibly be.

      I started checking background details.  One or two anachronisms showed up (air-conditioning hardware*) to confirm when the film was shot, but that was all.  The costumes, props, sets and location settings have been given a great deal of careful attention to keep the film on target.  The cinematography and editing is very much in keeping with the time in which the film is set.  The reviews I have seen don't point it out; all that work is background, invisible, seamless -- but the film so far is an artifact out of time, and stands very nicely next to the older examples of the genre.

      ETA: I woke up in the night and couldn't get back to sleep -- I'm still dealing with back pain, etc. -- and watched the rest of the film.  It's good all the way through, and remained consistently a 1970s spy movie.  Well worth watching.
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* Small "split system" units showed up in Europe before they arrived in the U. S., but not as early as the 1970s.  The outside portion has a distinctive look.  It probably takes a geek to see this stuff (ask me about the U. S. electrical outlets on the wall of a Russian dance studio in White Nights) but the wrong detail can break an audience's suspension of disbelief.

Well, That Was Clever

      Given the way the two medications together shut me down, last night I decided to try just the prescription-strength NSAID at bedtime.  Well, bedtime-snack time, since they have to be taken with food.

      Bad idea.  I could not get comfortable.  Every way I laid made my back hurt in a slightly different manner.  I got very little sleep until sheer exhaustion drove me into two longish (90 - 120 minutes) bouts of intense dreaming that tapered off into deeper early sleep this morning.  The six o'clock alarm was like a sword made of electric light, swung by a drunk and angry Edison.

      The wizard smote me and I managed to feed the cats before laying down again, for an hour of fitful dozing among rising pain.

      So guess what I have planned after breakfast?  No, don't guess.  This is the last sunny day of my vacation and I'm taking the pills as prescribed and going back to bed.

On The Good Drugs

      Picked up the super-ibuprofen and muscle relaxer yesterday afternoon.  They all but knock me out shortly after I take them.  Off to bed now.

     (ETA: Never made it.  Woke up 45 minutes later in front of the computer, unsure of where I was, how I got there or what day it was.  That stuff shuts me down like flipping a light switch.)

Mystifing

      Explain to me how a smalltime TikTok transgender celebrity most people never heard of receiving a few free beers with their picture on the label is a huge, horrible problem, but a National Guard Airman giving away piles of high-level military secrets on the Internet to impress his gamer-kid pals is a praiseworthy whistleblower.

      Use as many crayons as you like.  I've got all day.

      A year from now, the social media spotlight will have moved on, leaving nothing but empty beer cans.  A year from now, China, Russia and whoever else will still be poring over every scrap of intel they got for free and setting up ways to use it against us.

Better

      The drive-through doctor gave me a big shot of super-ibuprofen and prescribed the pill version, plus a muscle relaxant.  That was yesterday afternoon.  I started feeling better soon after but the pharmacy has so far only managed to fill one of the prescriptions: welcome to 2023 and the aftermath of what happens when short staffing meets a pandemic and crashes.

      There's some hope I'll have both by the end of the day, at least.

Old Remedies

      Okay, "Take OTC painkillers and pursue normal activities" didn't work.  "Spend fourteen hours relaxing in bed" didn't work, either.

      I'm going to have to get cleaned up, go to doc-in-a-box and explain very carefully that I am not in any way interested in stronger pain pills,* I just want to know what's gone wrong with my back or whatever, and what I can do about it other than sweeping the pain under the rug.

      This is not a prospect that fills me with delight.
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* At one time, back when the medical profession was handing out mild opioids pretty freely, I had a problem with chronic pain and an open prescription for a widely-abused pain pill.  I'd like to tell you that I am so strong-willed that they didn't hook me, or that taking them for actual pain is an absolute bar to addiction, but the truth is, they stopped me up so bad that I had give 'em up and would only consider using that family of drugs again if it was a matter of life or death -- and I'd have to think it over first even then.

Oh, My Aching Back

      On vacation this week, and since Saturday, I have been suffering lower back pain.  It may be another kidney stone.  Or it may be due to a fair amount of ladder and small-diameter spiral stair climbing Friday, when I had occasion to go to the top of the Salesforce tower downtown.  The view is great, but it comes at a price.

      Either way, I think I'll go back to bed.

The Mandalorian And The Implicit Promise

      Science fiction and genre fiction generally tell stories with a clear conflict between good and evil.  Good typically triumphs.  There's usually a hero and a villain, "good guys" and "bad guys," and the good side succeeds.  Some genres modify these basics: evil wins in most horror fiction (if good wins, it's a thriller instead), noir detective stories blur the lines between good and evil to a greater or lesser degree, and satire often inverts the trope.

      Strip it down to the basics and you're left with the kinds of stories that poets sung to appreciative audiences in Ancient Greece: Heracles takes on impossible odds and succeeds; Odysseus returns home by perseverance and wit; the all-too-human gods struggle among themselves.  (Most ensemble-cast SF and other genre fiction closely models the Greco-Roman pantheon, from Star Trek to Mission: Impossible to Firefly* and The Expanse.  Wagon Train and Rawhide are at least partial fits to this model.)

      The Mandalorian hews to type, with good results.  The initial Star Wars films were meant to recall the old movie serials, filled with action and derring-do and ending on a note of triumph.  But they fell short in one significant way: there was a new episode of the serial every week.  Star Wars came along in large lumps at long intervals; that's how movies work.  The episodic serial moved to TV, with storytelling conventions -- and budgets -- that owed more to radio drama than film.

      Or it did.  Modern digital effects have made much of the sweep and action of movie-making affordable for the small screen and The Mandalorian (and associated series) has pushed it as far as possible.  The result has gone full circle: the movie serial is back!  Grander than most TV; perhaps not always quite as overwhelming as longer, bigger-budget feature films, but bursting with larger-than-life excitement.

     All fiction makes a promise to the audience in the opening scenes.  Successful fiction fulfills that promise in an emotionally satisfying manner.

      Tam and I started on the most recent season of The Mandalorian over the weekend.  We're enjoying it.
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* Firefly is notable for giving us both Ares and Athena, though the Hephaestus analog of the series is notable for being "lamed" by youth, inexperience and gender instead of physical disability. Zeus, Hermes, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite and possibly Poseidon fill out the cast.  This way of looking at such stories makes the casting of war-wounded James Doohan as Scotty on Star Trek doubly meaningful, not only the "Scots engineer" trope of nautical fiction but the lamed artificer of the gods.

Be Careful What You Wish For -- And What You Do Once You Get It

      It's a version of the Streisand Effect: after Tennessee's House managed to remove two of the three obstreperous State Representatives who spoke out of turn on the floor of that chamber (and with their own bullhorn) in support of gun control, the former members are working the Sunday morning news-discussion show circuit -- and if they're at all personable and telegenic, they'll become regulars.

      Look, they acted out and had some kind of penalty coming over their behavior.  This is not especially uncommon in the state legislatures of this country, especially the 49 with bicameral legislatures modeled on the Federal government and particularly among the more numerous and often younger members of the "lower house."  It doesn't happen every month or even every year, but it happens and is usually dealt with routinely -- a fine, a motion of censure, a stern-talking to by the presiding member or by ranking members of their own party..  It's a blip in the news, if that.

      When the majority party tries to kick out three members affiliated with the minority party, spares the blond woman and removes the two much-darker men?  That's not a blip.  It's a headline.

      If they'd all received a routine rebuke, this would have been just one more bit of noise in this country's long and very noisy debate about firearms.  The (heated) conversation continues, unsettled and unsettling, with enormous emotion on all sides; with muddled and muddy statistics; with a lot of glib, easy answers and a poor understanding of the practicalities of applying them; without resolution and with a lot of shouting and performative behavior.  One more act of protest sinks quickly in the ongoing uproar.

      Unless the reaction to it calls attention to it.  In 39 states, one party controls the legislature and  the Governor's office.  At least a dozen have effective one-party legislative supermajorities and operate unchecked by anything except the courts and their own consciences and judgement.  Yes, Tennessee is among them.  With one-party dominance in government, citizens rely on must rely the prudence and maturity of those they have voted into the Executive and legislature more than the traditional checks and balances as augmented by tension between political parties.

      Overreach provokes reaction -- sometimes even against a commanding majority of elected office-holders.  It has happened in a few states on the contentious, emotionally-fraught issue of abortion.  It's been known to put Illinois Governors in jail.  When egregious, it can bring down governments.  Outcomes can be unexpected and often are orthogonal.  I wonder what's inside the box this time?

Use It Up, Wear It Out...

      "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."

      If your parents were Depression babies like mine, you heard that more than once growing up.  Now, there's a possibility the "influencer" trend might be getting a little bit threadbare.

      There is a cycle to such trends and there are generational differences.  Sometimes frugality is ascendant, other times we're urged to aspire to conspicuous consumption.  Mass-market stuff or handmade, artisanal items?  It's a trend -- or, often, a necessity cloaked as a preference, especially when the economy gets tight.

      I am (mostly) the child of my parents.  I'm still using Mom's old Revereware pots and pans, some of them gifts from her wedding in 1949 and others more recent presents from my Dad, merely thirty years old.  On the other hand, I've got three trendy cookpans from an on-line start-up, so I can't claim to not have been influencered;* on the other other hand, they're supposedly lifetime purchases.  And on the fourth hand, Mom would doubtless have pointed out that I already had perfectly good skillets and stewpots.

      The culture: we're swimming in it.  Probably better to shower afterward instead of pretending we're above it all.
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* This cannot possibly be a word.  I'm not sure if it should be.

Bad Weather Coming In; A Mess Averted

      Some strong winds in Indianapolis this morning and storms headed our way, so I'll type this and be off: it looks like things went okay outside the courthouse in Manhattan yesterday.  People waved signs and yelled at one another -- and went no further.

     Good for 'em.  Good for us all.