…and many happy returns of the day!

I forgot to mention that when I went downstairs to the Diabetic Foot Clinic for my regular biweekly appointment, they weighed me at the end and the investigator was so startled that he ordered me back on the scales for a second time. In the last two weeks I have lost 8 kilograms (17.6 lbs., one stone 3.6 lbs).

The infection may have had something to do with it, but the quality of the food here is, well, debatable.

Courtesy of HWMBO, I now have my netbook and can blog from my hospital bed. What a horrible week it's been. To recap:

The day after my birthday, November 9, I woke up with vague pains in my joints, especially those of my right foot. As the foot clinic had seen me the previous Friday, I thought that the pain might be a sympton of swine flu, but checked that on line and probably didn't have that. I suffered for four days, getting progressively worse, until on Friday the 13th I decided I'd better go in to the foot clinic. Lo and behold, when I got there with HWMBO the clinic found that my right foot was massively infected and the infection had spread into the bone. I was admitted to Kings College Hospital that afternoon and have been there for more than a week.

The first night on the ward was surreal. The elderly man next to me was a retired actor who had perhaps been drinking more than he should for many years. His friend (male) came every day, but he spent a restless night every night, calling out for the nurse constantly. This kind of prevented sleep.

They inserted a cannula into my right hand—this is a passageway into the vein to allow for intravenous medicines to be dripped into you. I am taking three intravenous antibiotics three times daily, and they seem to be working. The doctor says that they will install a PICC line and I can then probably go home and have intravenous antibiotics administered by a district nurse three times a day for four weeks.

They have also started me on rapid onset insulin before meals. This, in conjunction with the metformin and insulatard at night, has brought my blood sugar rapidly down to close to normal.

There is a routine on the ward. During the week the nurses go around washing patients starting at 4 am. Luckily I'm independent so I don't have to undergo that. I get up around 5:30 and wash and shave and all that, then go back to my bed and wait for the first antibiotic bout. Once that's over, I wait for the nurse to unhook me—they have lots of other duties and sometimes they forget. I try to be a good patient (comes from the Latin patiens, meaning suffering) and haven't used my call bell at all so far.

Then it's meds, insulin, and breakfast. Then the doctors descend. The big cheese foot doctor only came up once, the first day. Otherwise, his minion has been here to chart my progress.

More insulin, meds, and lunch around noon. More antiibiotics at 2. Then the wait for visitors.

If there is one thing that a hospitalised person can benefit from, it's visitors. Life here is dull, HWMBO has come every evening except Tuesday, but other than that visitors are sparse. On Sunday the duty cover chaplain came up to administer Holy Communion, and she said she would tell the chaplaincy staff I was here, but haven't seen hide nor hair of them since. The Area Dean came to see me, and Gill and John (the vicar of St. John's) came later in the week and administered Communion. Ethel and Jennie from St. Matthew's came. Otherwise, I've been here pretty lonely. Believe me, when someone I know is in hospital in the future, if they say they welcome visitors I will be the first one there if I can be. It is so vital to help people keep in touch with the outside world.

My ward-mates are an odd lot. The elderly actor in the next bed was supposed to go home on Monday but home help couldn't be secured so he went home on Tuesday. He cried all Monday night. There are two drug addicts here. One is very quiet and mostly sleeps all day. The other one, Michael, is really demanding and treats the nurses like his personal wait staff. They are saints to put up with it. There is an alcoholic in the corner who is falling out of bed or weeing on the floor all the time. They keep administering dementia tests to him and he keeps failing. However, he is too young for an urgent place in a nursing home. So he is warehoused here at great expense until they find a place.

So here I sit. Don't forget: visit your friends in hospital! Please! It's a lifeline.

My moustache is older than most of the people who read this blog, I think—I started growing it in 1970 and, except for a 2-year hiatus while I was in the seminary, it has been on my upper lip since then. I have at various times had a beard, but not now for many years (maybe 15—my ex wanted me to grow a goatee so I did, and as soon as I threw him out I shaved it off).

There seems to be an organisation called the American Mustache Institute (they even have a web site) that feels that having a beard is somehow suboptimal. Looking at the website I think it exists only to sell merchandise and is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But the man in the video below doesn't think so.

You might want to listen to this one with headphones if you're in an office, as it gets a bit fraught in the end. But, I have every sympathy for the poor guy and would cheerfully remind him that facial hair is one resource that is truly renewable! Just eat lots of protein and eschew the razor.

Thanks to Towleroad for a laugh when I sorely needed it.

When you're preaching, or giving any sort of speech, it's sometimes a bit unclear to you whether you're actually getting through or not. You can tell a less-then-optimal sermon by the rustling, the murmuring, sometimes even nodding heads. But the way you can tell if your message is being well-communicated is this: when you look around the church, there is no rustling, no murmuring, just people being silent and listening intently. That is the Bingo Moment. During the last few paragraphs of this sermon, I had a Bingo Moment, and afterwards I was complimented by some of the congregation. There is no more precious time for a preacher than to experience a Bingo Moment.

I was very lucky in another way today: the person reading the Jewish Scriptures picked up the wrong reading and read it through. Had I depended upon this reading for my sermon, I would have been a bit put out. I have seen other preachers in the same situation: they simply read the correct reading from the pulpit and ploughed on into the sermon. I'm glad I didn't have to do that this morning.

( Here is the sermon, behind the cut in case you aren't interested. )

…and many happy returns of the day.

Mr Quangle Wangle, grant us that

Is this the beginning of a prayer? If so, exactly whose god is "Mr Quangle Wangle"?

Enquiring minds want to know!

On the whole, I think I'd like to work in this office.

...and many happy returns of the day.

Those of you who are Tweeters or who keep up with those who Tweet will be aware of yesterday's little spat between Stephen Fry, the celebrated actor, blogger, nerd, and Tweeter, and another Tweeter, who called his tweets "boring".

Fry then suddenly bade farewell to Twitter, saying that there was "Too much aggression and unkindness around." This touched off a firestorm of indignation among many of Fry's 900,000+ followers, who implored him not to leave, heaped opprobrium on the other Tweeter, and generally roiled the placid waters in which Twitter's Fail Whale often swims.

The other Tweeter apologised, Fry apologised for his reaction (which was possibly due to his bipolar disorder), and the shitstorm died down.

I am not a celebrity, nor do I play one on TV. This little incident demonstrates the dangers of Twitter and blogging in general for celebrities. Fry has cut down dramatically on the amount of his Tweeting, and I'll bet a cookie that this incident will cut it down even more. But when he was Tweeting dozens of times per day, and garnering many followers, he got himself a reputation. His followers came to expect witty Wildean aperçus, interesting tidbits of technical lore, and various observations about Fry's day and the things he gets up to. When the number of tweets from Fry fell, the ones that were left might have seemed a bit pedestrian compared to his more voluminous previous output. Thus, boring.

Observation No. 1: Tweeters and bloggers are under no obligation to entertain, amuse, inform, or titillate readers. If something you're reading is boring, refrain from making that observation—just go on and read something else.

Observation No. 2: Celebrity Tweeters and bloggers are especially under no obligation mentioned in Observation No. 1. Before the Age of Blogging and Tweeting arrived in the late 1990's, people's only usual contact with celebrities was on the stage, screen, TV, or radio, and in the newspapers. Some few may have asked for an autograph, or entered into correspondence for various reasons. But most people never communicated with celebrities. Now, if a well-known person blogs or Tweets they are communicating instantly with perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, and anyone can talk back by producing an @-reply. Within a few years it was possible to see the well-known and famous walking with feet of clay, putting their trousers on one foot at a time, and being as ordinary as you or I. This is not normally a good thing for the famous.

Case in point: the Queen's breakfast tray has recently been shown in the newspapers. It's old, the cups and other containers are chipped, and it could be found in almost any of our homes across Britain. The usual opinions about the Queen's eating habits include references to gold flatware, crystal goblets, and bone china. Discovering that the Queen scoops her muesli out of Tupperware containers removes some of the mystique.

Now, imagine if the Queen were to begin Tweeting…

HMtheQ: The footman has just turned his back on us while leaving the room. We r not amused. What do u think? #rude

HMtheQ: We and Chazza beside ourselves with worry; Harry has turned up drunk saying that Chelsy is expecting. Pics at 11.

HMtheQ: Muesli for our brekker STALE! Heads will roll! #TowerofLondon

HMtheQ: It's Tues & we have 2 see that awful Scot Gordon Brown AGAIN. If he brags about his prudence 1 mor time we'll put im in the stocks—MUAHAHAHAHA!

@HMtheQ: UrMaj, all u do iz complain! Ur loyl subjects r fed-up with ur boring tweets. Shut ur piehole, Lizzy!

@HMtheQ: Y don't u stop ur moaning and go back 2 Krautland with Phil the Greek; we want a real English K & Q: King Beckham the 1st & Queen Vicky!

Hm. Her Majesty's royal mystique would be pretty well in tatters by the time she picked herself off the Persian rug.

Stephen Fry would be well-advised to limit his tweeting and consider carefully before pressing ENTER.

Observation No. 3: In common with almost all social networking tools Twitterers who are following other Twitterers are said to have "friends". The abuse of the term "friend" for what is almost always a casual, sometimes imaginary, relationship has confused millions of computer users. I have lots of social networking friends. I have only met a fraction of them. A larger, but still fractional, portion I have corresponded with. So are these and everyone else on my "Friends" list actual "Friends"?

Confusing online "Friends" with real, live friends is a fatal mistake. Friends are people who hold you when you have been bereaved, who visit you in the hospital when you're sick and whom you visit when they're sick. Friends are people who mutually can finish each other's sentences and laugh about it. Friends are people whom you'd give your housekeys to if you needed someone to water your plants while you're away. Friends are people you can tell about your first love, your most recent love, the love you're planning to have when the current one is through. Friends are people who help you move out of your former lover's flat. Friends are, well, FRIENDS!

When someone de-"friends" you it is not a tragedy unless you are meatspace friends with that person and they are de-"friending" you because you are no longer FRIENDS. When you de-"friend" someone you have never met, with whom you have hardly ever interacted, and with whom you have little or nothing in common, it is not the end of the world and you should not hesitate one picosecond.

Final Observation: If one is a celebrity, and one wants to Tweet, one should hand the Twitter account over to one's publicist, who is probably (not certainly) much better at handling such idle chatter than one is.

---

Note to my LJ and other friends: I do not mean to denigrate the relationship we have on Live Journal or elsewhere. I read everything, comment on whatever I think is worth commenting on, and want to keep up with your lives, Tweets, and blogs as much as I can. If we ever meet in person, I would be honoured to develop a meatspace friendship with most if not all of you. Until then, our online friendship is precious to me and, I hope to you, but isn't a personal friendship until it's validated. Thanks for all the online fun we've shared!

I have occasionally featured in the "Up For Air" column in the Marblehead Reporter, as Fraffie, the columnist, and I are probably long-separated siglings or something. We see eye to eye on almost everything (except she's a Republican [but not the rabid modern kind] and I'm not).

The column this week featured a Martha Stewart Moment that is priceless.

We all know that Martha has her well-painted fingernails dug into the state of Maine, Mt. Desert Island, to be more specific, where she shopped one day in a small gourmet-food emporium in North East, South West, Bar or one of those harbors, and when at the checkout counter mentioned that she had not see a cherry-pitter on the shelves. The nice clerk apologized and said, “Very sorry, we don’t carry cherry-pitters.”

“Where’s your phone?” demanded La Stewart.

“There’s a public phone just outside,” said the clerk.

Martha then said (it gets better), “Do you know who am?”

“No, ma’am, I don’t,” said the clerk.

The gentleman behind Martha-baby in line tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Do you know who I am?”

“No,” says Martha, “I don’t.”

“I am David Rockefeller,” said the man in line, “and go use the pay phone like everyone else.”

The whole column is here, but I couldn't help myself—I had to reproduce it.

Thanks, Fraffie!

We are all aware of that old rule of thumb which says that you wait 30 minutes for a bus, then 3 come at once. Well, I've had just the opposite happen here at home.

I'm off to a meeting later on this afternoon. Yesterday I filled out an application for a renewal US passport, seeing that it would cost £1,700 to file for renunciation of US citizenship. As the Royal Mail is on strike most of the time these days, I paid £25 for a courier to take the application then deliver my new passport once it arrives at the Embassy. The courier would pick it up anytime from 8am to 6pm. As I'll be leaving around 4:15pm today, I told the courier company to send the courier on Wednesday, as I have nothing planned and could stick around all day and wait.

At 2 pm today the doorbell rang. I answered, and it was the courier. I told him, "You weren't supposed to come until tomorrow." and he said, "I'll go away and come back tomorrow then." but I stopped him from leaving and gave him the application and supporting documents.

One might think this is an example of super service. I think of it as silliness. Several times I instructed the courier company to send someone on Wednesday, and reiterated that I would not be able to be here all day today. They assured me that the courier would be here on Wednesday. I feel odd complaining about it, but if the courier had arrived today at 5 pm, I wouldn't have been here and I would probably have had to argue with the company over sending someone tomorrow.

You can't win.

Except, the courier was a tall, rangy, Hispanic bike messenger, so I got some eye candy out of it.

1. The badness of a movie is directly proportional to the number of helicopters in it.

2. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight-saving time.

3. People who feel the need to tell you that they have an excellent sense of humor are telling you that they have no sense of humor.

4. The most valuable function performed by the federal government is entertainment.

5. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

6. A penny saved is worthless.

7. They can hold all the peace talks they want, but there will never be peace in the Middle East. Billions of years from now, when Earth is hurtling toward the Sun and there is nothing left alive on the planet except a few microorganisms, the microorganisms living in the Middle East will be bitter enemies.

8. The most powerful force in the universe is gossip.

9. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.

10. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11.

11. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

12. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

13. There apparently exists, somewhere in Los Angeles, a computer that generates concepts for television sitcoms. When TV executives need a new concept, they turn on this computer; after sorting through millions of possible plot premises, it spits out, "THREE QUIRKY BUT ATTRACTIVE YOUNG PEOPLE LIVING IN AN APARTMENT," and the executives turn this concept into a show. The next time they need an idea, the computer spits out, "SIX QUIRKY BUT ATTRACTIVE YOUNG PEOPLE LIVING IN AN APARTMENT." Then the next time, it spits out, "FOUR QUIRKY BUT ATTRACTIVE YOUNG PEOPLE LIVING IN AN APARTMENT." And so on. We need to locate this computer and destroy it with hammers.

14. Nobody is normal.

15. At least once per year, some group of scientists will become very excited and announce that:

• The universe is even bigger than they thought!


• There are even more subatomic particles than they thought!


• Whatever they announced last year about global warming is wrong.

16. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

17. The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.

18. The value of advertising is that it tells you the exact opposite of what the advertiser actually thinks. For example:

• If the advertisement says "This is not your father's Oldsmobile," the advertiser is desperately concerned that this Oldsmobile, like all other Oldsmobiles, appeals primarily to old farts like your father.


• If Coke and Pepsi spend billions of dollars to convince you that there are significant differences between these two products, both companies realize that Pepsi and Coke are virtually identical.


• If the advertisement strongly suggests that Nike shoes enable athletes to perform amazing feats, Nike wants you to disregard the fact that shoe brand is unrelated to athletic ability.


• If Budweiser runs an elaborate advertising campaign stressing the critical importance of a beer's "born-on" date, Budweiser knows this factor has virtually nothing to do with how good a beer tastes.

19. If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use, as His messenger, a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle.

20. You should not confuse your career with your life.

21. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.

22. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.

23. When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.

24. Your friends love you anyway.

25. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

Dave Barry

Thanks to smlee4, here is something you might find professionally useful.

In the middle future, when returning to San Diego, you may encounter a new experience.

Apparently in the great State of New Jersey, there is no law against bestiality. While the State Legislature is busily trying to remedy this omission, the local constabulary has been busy in Moorestown, and a local judge has ruled on the case.

Today's Great Legal Mind award goes to Judge James Morley, for ensuring that his ruling will live forever.

I have never heard of the "woylie," which is apparently a small endangered marsupial. I have heard of pythons, and of tracking collars. A story from Western Australia combines all three with hilarious results.

Moral of the story: check to see that the python hasn't eaten recently before you steal it.