ATTACK OF THE POLLEN MONSTER!
WOE IS ME (but then againÖ.)
Allergies (see below) are killing me. I ended up with a throat infection and could barely speak. Those who know me well realize how much this impedes my total lifestyle. The humidity magnifies my knee problems. Grabbing a cab from lower Manhattan somehow seems more difficult lately.
But, hey! There's good news, too. Work is excellent (and part of the reason for so little blogging of late). I've been very busy but happily so. The Yanks won last night. Boston comes to town next week and we have tickets. We took our Scottish friend to a game last week and watched as the Yanks pummeled Baltimore.
PASS THE TISSUES!
Allergies have come to destroy the planet. There is no room for discussion, Forget the Area 51 [1] babble. Pollen is here to either take over, or eliminate humanity.
When the pollen count [2] gets to about 95, it is time to buy stock in Kimberly Clark, and over-the-counter drug companies. Once the pollen count hits 100, all hell breaks loose. The sneezing, the itching, the teary eyes, the stuffed noses, the general hell of living. Life becomes an uncomfortable maze of distractions and annoyances.
According to the New York Times, the pollen count has gone from the usually annoying and unbearable 98 or 100 mark to as high as 8000! And I thought the end of the world was the day it hit 6000!
Of course if the NY Times wasn't so piggish and old-paradigm about content, I'd post a link to the story. But the Times, taking the "our fishwrapper is more valuable than yours" approach, wants to charge readers for yesterday's news. There's a reason communities usually pick up the recycled newspaperswith the garbage. And one can still go to the library and look at hard copies of recent issues of the paper What dolts! They deserve to suffer from allergies as penance for such bad judgment.
Allergy sufferers come in all sizes and shapes. And have all types of symptoms. New Yorkers are reeling from this incredibly bad season. The lack of significant April rain meant much of the pollen didn't wash away. So it is airborne, and it is everywhere, in higher numbers than is humanly tolerable.
In my case, it hits my nose and my ears. There's this itch in my ears, almost in my throat. It is in an unscratchable place. The closest thing to relief: a snorting effort, thesound of which may be the closest a human comes to matching the cry of the lonely moose
My nose feels as though a battalion of crazed ants and an attack of prickly heat have ganged up to cause me undue suffering. There's no cure.
There's also the feeling that something is in your eye. It is bothersome, slightly painful. An errant lash, perhaps? No! A string-like gathering of pollen-inspired mucus, laying over the eyeball. Sounds gross, eh? Well imagine how the damned thing feels!
Yes, as the last line shows, allergies also effect mood. Negatively.
Asthmatics are running for cover. Grocery stores, Costco, Wal-Marts, are experiencing a run on tissues.
Coming to my car at the parking lot each evening I realize the formerly black vehicle has been taken over by this layer of green. No, it isn't an Accord, anymore. It is a Pollenmobile! Even the antenna is turning green. No wonder I have a sneezing fit as I make the three minute walk from the office to the car!
Of course there are web sites about pollen. A Google search [3] turns up over 26,000 hits. Here's a good one [4] for finding the pollen count in your neighborhood.
REVISITING A FEW OLD TOPICS
Quicktime [5] is good for watching streaming video. Real good. Maybe the best of the type. Hurray for Quicktime. But there are many of us who enjoy Quicktime who have no need to learn the nuances of the program, or to buy it so we can create our own Quicktime works of art.
Apparently Apple doesn't get this.
Whenever I download Quicktime -the freebie- Apple waits a little while, then tells me my Quicktime Beta is out of date, time to get a new one. Beta? Gee, when I downloaded it they called it the free version.
What is Apple trying to do, force me into using the FREE and no "use by date" product from MicroSoft, the MS Media Viewer? So it would seem. At least those annoying messages from Quicktime would disappear.
There I was yesterday evening, trying to open a file found via a Google search, and all I could do was hit the brick wall of apples: time to update Quicktime, your version expired, and hey, buy the pro version, and screw you and the page you were trying to see, since Apple takes over your machine and makes it restart in order to go any further.
How incredibly presumptuous of them! Rotten to the core. (couldn't resist - but take heart: at least I edited out the worm/computer jokes)
Okay. I admit it. I downloaded the update, restintalled it, had to start from scratch despite having a few different works of various sort in various stages of completion. By this time I realize that creating a temporary directory is the easiest way to store and recapture all these files, so all was not lost.
Quicktime turns out to be running in such slow time-definitely not, excuse the pun, REAL TIME-that when it installs, the pop-on-your-monitor-whether-you-want-it-or- not screen has a trailer for the film, The Gift [6].
This movie came and went in a heartbeat. When it arrives in your local video store, go rent it. The bigger the screen on your TV, the more you'll enjoy it. Great acting, good story, beautiful cinematography. If you are easily prone to white knuckles, it might be scary (I wasn't the slightest bit scared, but Mountain Woman said it had her on the edge of her seat!).
This is the best movie I've seen so far this year. Crouching Tiger was very good, Hannibal was so-so, but The Gift was tops. 15 Minutes was a disappointment. Maybe sooner or later I'll get to see Blow, which looks like a hoot. How can it miss, with Johnny Depp and Paul ("Pee Wee") Reubens?
ONE MORE THING
Yes, I really will finish up that post I began in April about old movies and television. But as I said: I've been incredibly busy on the work front, allergies are killing me as they take over the planet, and I had this throat infectionÖ