d_hofryn

Normally I would have sympathy for those of you who have had the flu but since I spent the last 36 hours with gastro, I mock your pain and claim mine to be superior. This misery was at its peak at about 4am on Sunday when my beloved doc made a house call and I found myself very glad to be getting an injection. This was an act of desperation on my part and it only occurred to me later that getting my GP out of bed at 4am might be kind of expensive. Any guesses?

This is the first time I have missed lectures for ages and I was touched to get some get-well emails from students, seems that I don't inspire all of them to cry. Maybe I'm losing my touch.

I've also sworn life long fealty to the pharmacist down the road (whom I have not yet met) who decided on the basis of the extensive notes I sent along with DC that I "know what I am doing" am worthy of being given prescription drugs without that petty prescription. Better living though chemistry indeed.

And the whole "Manto is a drunk & a thief" thing really happened right? I didn't hallucinate that?

I've been marking first year essays. Most of them attempting to argue that religion should not be open to the same debate and questioning as other ideas. It seems that they have learnt nothing.

There was a particularly horrid one with gross propaganda pics attached of supposedly aborted foetuses. What amazes me most is how they will take things at face value without any further analysis, it didn't even occur to him that the photo's might be doctored or not come from a particularly reliable source.

On the funny side, one of them wrote about why men find her attractive.

I'm at home in front of the PC tonight instead of the two parties I'm supposed to attend because I have the immune system of something consumptive and fictional. Just when I thought I was done being ill and pathetic, round two.

On the upside the accountants seem to have written some decent essays, unless I was feverish while marking them...

Bloody hell.

Of course now that I have a huge pile of business ethics essays to mark I suddenly find time to blog. Hmmmmm. Braced myself for nasty weekend of marking with kitty therapy courtesy of Todal and Angel episodes courtesy of Extemporanea.

We've both now remembered why we never really warmed to the episode 'She' in season 1, bloody Bai Ling is in it wearing the most flimsy excuse for a top since...the last time Bai Ling wore something.

Still recovering from weekly over feeding by parents and weekly debate about why whatever I am wearing is not suitable. I think my mom is still worried that if she doesn't intervene with lace and bright colours I'll be doomed to be a tomboy. I wish I could have photographed her facial expression when she reluctantly agreed that the jersey I was wearing 'looked comfortable'. I think that she should just be bloody delighted that I'm no longer dressing like Axl Rose.

Speaking of which, as predicted by yours truly, 'GNR' has pulled out of the Coke fest and I am now really relieved that I didn't cave into peer pressure and blow 500 bucks on a ticket. Good old reliable Axl.

Now onto mark a bunch of essays about utilitarian arguments for abortion. Written by accountants.


Shoot me now.

I've suddenly remembered why there was a collective failure to rush to support Wytchfynder when he was broken hearted.

He really isn't very likeable.

to imagine that I would have the time to update this thing this year. I'm currently lecturing 16 hours a week and barely have enough time to buy food and do laundry.

While having sushi with some old friends from high school on Wed evening, I witnessed a rather odd car accident. There was a screeching of tires that went on for ages followed by a thump. I looked up just in time to see the thumper peeling rubber into oncoming traffic and racing away from the scene. Thumpee wasn't even out of his car yet.

Of course the tow trucks were there within a couple of minutes, followed by the cops after about fifteen mins and the fire truck after half an hour. (Why do you suppose they needed a fire truck?)

After the sushi I went over to the cops as I'd got a pretty good look at the car and driver. I've often read about how cops screw up witness interviews by telling the witness what other people had seen rather than asking them what they had seen, but it was damn freaky to have a conversation like that with a real person.

I've always been really worried about the patent unreliability of eye witness testimony in a legal context, but after witnessing it first hand, I'm bloody terrified. If these bumbling fools have any part in a criminal investigation the whole thing is probably tainted.

This year I am going to attempt to actually update this thing from time to time. This may be a crazy goal as I'll be starting tons of new teaching work and may end up with no free time at all :(

Back at work now and trying desperately to design a brand new course that I will be lecturing in Feb, so far I'm just finding it hot and frustrating. I wish the year started in winter.

Also trying to find a car to buy, with bloody aircon!

I feel lost and alone, with gmail down I have to actually talk to people on the phone. Ugh. On a brighter note today was the last day of term. This will be the first vac in many years that I have actually been able to have a vac since I will not be worrying about a thesis, the d'vil's thesis or the possibility of a brain tumour. It's going to be so relaxing :)

I guess I'd better write a LARP.

I've discovered the key to my liberation, it is Elton John played very loudly, although I think that the end of term is probably a big part of it too.

Gave my last classes today although I had to miss one of them in order to attend a retirement party for a dog in the Philosophy Department. In addition to the guest of honour there were four other dogs present, lots of dog biscuits were had and a funny speech made. Wacky philosophers.

The classes were actually kind of fun too. This week's topic was abortion so I split them up into groups of pro life, pro choice and unsure, and we had debates. There was a vast majority on favour of pro choice and a strong correlation between pro life and religious belief. What a shock.

One of the students asked if they were my favourite class, which they were, and that was kind of sweet, a nice note on which to end the year.

The rest of the day will be spent watching Buffy :)

I have a pain in my back and my chest because my muscles are so clenched that it hurts to breathe. Nightmares of note and sudden resistance to all normally potent chemicals. I laugh in the face of sedatives.

This is not good.

This is, in fact, an anxiety attack. I get them every now and then when my unconscious refuses to accept the adamant claims of my conscious that everything is under control. Stupid brain.

Listening to non stop Guns in Roses is not helping the way it used to. Perhaps Queen?

Only three days of term left. I think I can I think I can.

So long as it doesn't involve taking deep breaths.

Zapiro isn't much of a public speaker, the talk was more of a guided tour through some of his cartoons, they were very funny though. The venue was so full that there were people standing in the isles and sitting on the floor literally at the poor man's feet. I was the subject of a rare moment of chivalry when on of my students gave up his seat for me so that I wouldn't have to sit on the floor. I must be starting to look as old as I feel.

Zapiro seems like an interesting person if you like mad liberals. Part of me loves him for having the balls to stand up for himself, even in the face of a R15 million law suite from old JZ.

Another parts want to crush him under the heel of my fascist jackboot.

So this thing of teaching 17hrs a week is getting me down. It feels like a real job. Literally counting the days till the end of term. The students actually aren't that bad most of the time, as long as I pretend that the humanities students don't exist.

On a brighter note, Zapiro is giving a talk on campus today which should be interesting

Due to a bizarre twist of the timetable I'll be teaching for 5 hours solid on Thursdays for the next six weeks.

I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

Trying to get first years to understand Euthyphro's dilemma is bit like herding cats. They are so bloody indoctrinated that they can't process the notion of morality in the absence of religion. I am full of impotent rage.

Oh, and there was a lesbian couple making out in one of my lectures today. Quite sweet really but rather distracting. Why do students think I can't see them?

In last nights dream my family and I were a group of ancient, evil witches who used black magic to extend our lives. Some white-hat got hold of a spell that could be used against us which involved putting a curse on a bunch of parachutes which we then had to open and they would suck us into an appropriate hell dimension. We figured out a way of thwarting this plan but it meant that we each had to transfer the curse to a loved one by tricking them into opening the parachute, and this would only work on someone you loved.

On top of all of this I developed necrotizing fasciatus.

Yuk.

One of my favourite Philosophy professors has this theory that most human pleasure is nothing more than the relief of, or absence of, some kind of negative stimulus. (This is part of a broader argument that we are all far less happy than we think, and life sucks etc which I won't get into now.) I'm not sure to what extent I agree with this view, but I'm damn sure that the absence of daily headaches is bloody marvelous and makes me want to jump in rain puddles and click my heels.

The short version of the long story is that after years of headaches, a ct-scan, two MRIs, a month of arthrexin and a lumbar puncture, no one has been to tell me what was causing headaches I was waking up with every morning. Every morning. For months.

I went to see a new doc who specialises in wimin troubles about three weeks ago and she put me on 10 mg of Trepiline (Amitriptyline)a night. This is a tricyclic antidepressant(apparently the normal dose for depression is between 30-100 mg) which was discovered to have analgesic effects when it was a standard treatment for cancer patients suffering from depression. The slightly freaky thing is that they don't know how or why it works.

But it does! I haven't had a morning headache since I started taking it, and although I've had one or two small tension headaches here and there they've been tiny and gone away after half an hour.

The side effects are a little weird though. This stuff really knocks me out and I'm only taking a tiny dose, I don't know how people on more manage to get out of bed at all. On the up side I'm getting the best sleep I've ever had and having vivid and exciting dreams with so much detail that I can't remember them for long after I wake up. For me this is very unusual as I remember most of my dreams, some of them for years.

Today is also day two of getting up at 5am to go to gym. My muscles are pretty achey but I haven't felt this good in years.

Could this stuff be making me a little manic?

I still get the killer PMS headache but I'll see how that goes next month as I'm also switching to a new Pill.

Better living through chemistry and all that.

So last night just after midnight I got the chance to use all the nifty torches I've been stocking up on this year, when the Southern Suburbs were plunged into darkness. The official story from Evilcom is that some copper cables were stolen which caused a fire which shut down an entire sub-station. You'd think that Evilcom could wrangle some electric fencing around their own sub-stations,but no, that would be like using logic or something.

In other news I had a double feature of two reoccurring nightmares that I hadn't had in a while. The first one has a basic formula that can be adapted to various settings. The crux is that I notice a tooth is loose and eventually it falls out. Apparently this is quite common given that most of us have experienced losing teeth as children and it was pretty weird and upsetting, at least for me.

After waking up from that and checking that I still had all my teeth, I went back to sleep and had another formula nightmare. This is the one where I am at the airport and in a big hurry to catch my flight and I realize at the last minute that I don't have a passport. This episode was particularly annoying because I was meant to be going somewhere with my boss, so I had the added stress of making a bad impression.

Even worse, in this dream I kept thinking to myself, "I would never be this disorganized in the real world, this must be a dream" And I STILL couldn't wake up.

So once again being a sheep and following memes, 'cause frankly I can't find many other uses for this thing. By the time I've finished staring at a computer for work, I generally don't want to keep typing for fun.

I've put together a list of the 12 fictional characters I'd most willingly have sex with:

1)Spike (Obviously)

2)Sawyer from Lost

3)Jason Dean from Heathers

4)Snake Pliskin from Escape from New York

5)David from The Lost Boys

6)Bodhi from Point Break

7)Lucius Malfoy from the movies not the books

8)Sherif Lucas Buck from American Gothic

9)Jareth from Labyrinth

10)Captain Hook from the most recent Peter Pan (it must be a Jason Isaacs thing)

11)John Bender from The Breakfast Club

12)Alan Shore from The Practice & Boston Legal

And the common thread is.....

No time to say hello. Goodbye! I'm late I'm late I'm late.