...hard to swallow...

From researching food knowledges and myths in everyday life, their histories, and the extent to which we internalize them in our relationships with food, I find this, "a modern bit of disinformation created by British propagandists during World War II":

"To help conceal the fact that their night fighter pilots were being guided by newly invented radar equipment, the British claimed they had improved their pilots' eyesight by having them eat raw carrots". - Leon Rappaport, How We Eat

!!!

Unbelievable. All this time, it was never true. You have all been lied to!

...I came to you with best intentions...

She says: "Don't you think there's an age limit to finding your reflection in Dave Matthews lyrics? Somewhere near the end of high school maybe?"
I say: "No, no I don't. Clearly, I don't".

On that note:

Hey my love, you came to me like wine comes to this mouth
Grown tired of water all the time

So exciting but not even a little bit sensible, edgy and rich to get drunk on; nothing like the lake-smooth personality of the one I'm maybe-soon-to-be-seeing. Problem, problem, problem...

...he rode all unarmed and he rode all alone...

I have a tendency to view myself through the eyes of other people and let their gaze define the edges of my self-esteem. I think I know what they see - not absolutely, and naturally some people are harder to read than others. But usually my sense is fairly accurate, and yesterday my sense was telling me that I was blurred to blend into a seen-everyday soon-forgotten landscape. Occasionally I jump loudly into the frame, a clashing protrusion from the scene that is obnoxious and spoils the effect. The challenge becomes, then, to clear the boundaries and define the lines in a subtle embossing that works with the context of the image and doesn't jar. Maybe I accomplished that. I got an interaction anyhow, unprompted, out of nowhere (though for all I know it was the kind of subtly sardonic I'm too naive to pick up on). Yesterday it told me "I am a person again! I exist!"

On the other side of my personality, the stronger, better part of me is shouting her response: "We were always a person! We are master of our own image, subject AND context of the work, and in this setting our gaze defines YOU!"

...someday this pain will be useful to you...

Apparently, if in a dream you look in the mirror and see marks on your face (scrapes maybe, or a scar), it is a sign that you don't want the world to see your flaws and failures.

...love for speed...

The thing about being so caught up in all you have to do that you can't stop your heart racing enough to fall asleep is that eventually, come around 3 or 4 in the morning, you will be so tired you could collapse; the kind of body exhaustion that doesn't care how many deadlines loom in the 5 days coming, it just needs sleep. The problem is that when you need to wake up at 6 to make an 8:30 meeting in the city, going to sleep a mere 2 hours before is dangerous because everyone knows you won't wake up with the alarm. So it comes to this - sheer exhaustion, and having to pull the all-nighter you didn't want to resort to until at least mid-November. At this point you can't study any longer, the mind has its own limits no matter how flexible those of the body, so you are left poring through the reviews on allmusic.com - their acerbic wit is usually good for a few laughs and you scroll expectantly down to Avril Lavigne, only to find her latest album was rated 4.5/5. You don't know if your failure to understand this is because of the sheer inanity of Avril Lavigne getting 4.5/5 on anything, or the lack of sleep, but don't have the mental power to figure it out now. Moving on.

...starting rotations...

i) It happens every year, and is even understandable (not excusable, but understandable) - you get dozens of new bodies in a place and probably one of them is going to have sticky fingers. I never bitched about it before because I have never had any of my things walking away with those sticky fingers. But now I'm missing my cell phone (and before you say "retrace your steps", here are your steps - I had it at work, on my break, then at the end of my shift, no longer) and I feel like I've lost an appendage or something. I never realised how often I use my phone, and in how many capacities. Between work and the Globalist and school and friends and cabs and and and... and now I'm having none of that, but still hearing phantom ring tones, hip vibrations.

So to whichever of the new people whose name I'm not bothering to learn until January (if they even make it that long) who has my grubby Nokia, f*** you.

And if someone finds it in the back somewhere and it wasn't taken after all but only left behind in my ditzy haze, then I'll stop growling at work and maybe talk to some of the new people, and maybe even learn their names.

ii) It might be the middle of November before I find the time to write anything here again, I have so much going on right now - anyways I think at this point it's just habit, it's not like I'm saying anything particularly creative. But I thought I'd explain myself just in case the Brits start commenting about my week-long absences again.

iii) I think I've stressed and coffeed myself right into an ulcer. I can't be sure, but the big burning and nausea is maybe a hint.

...durable presentations...

Re: Daniel Rubenson this morning on Breakfast Television talking about Mixed Member Proportional and the electoral referendum, a note to the produceers of BT: big mistake.

If the idea was to explain to the general population the ins and outs of the proposed system change - why it is a better and more representative electoral process, why it is not a significant extra cost to taxpayers, how the list seats will be distributed and why we should vote for it - Rubenson bungled the point at pretty much every turn.

The irony is that at the end of the piece they took a phone poll asking people whether or not they thought they were informed enough to vote on the referendum, and most people (almost 2:1) said no. Not surprising if you were counting on BT's MMP summary to inform you on the issue since I bet no one had any idea what Rubenson was saying! I can't believe this guy is a prof.

Long-short: vote for MMP tomorrow. Otherwise, don't talk to me.

...involuntary bodily noises in european languages...

After this it's going to be difficult maintaining the Nigerian polio vaccination programme. As if trying to attain widespread eradication of polio in one of the last nations in which it's endemic wasn't already difficult enough.

I don't even want to discuss the fact that this new polio outbreak would not have occurred had the WHO been using the inactivated-injected vaccine that children here are vaccinated with, as opposed to an inhaled live-virus vaccine.