Dubious Quality

A Tragedy, in One Act

Ugh

By the time I went to bed last night, I had quite a sore throat, along with a cough.

After coughing all night and waking up constantly, I got up this morning and felt feverish. I took my temperature and had a fever of 101.

We had some old COVID tests (C feels bad, too, although her symptoms are a bit different than mine), so we both took one. Her test was negative.

Mine was not.

So after six years of dodging COVID successfully, it finally got me.

It feels like the flu, and that's my Wednesday.

The Good News or the Bad News?

I went to see my new gastroenterologist today.

I've had IBS for 25+ years, and she recommended a new medication that she said might help substantially.

That's pretty great.

I'm all hyped up about this new medication, and when I go to the pharmacy to pick it up, they said I had to give "permission" for it to be filled.

Why? Because a one-month supply is $270.

Um, no.

I went home and checked the price everywhere (including Amazon Pharmacy). Because of the patent, it's almost $300 anywhere you get it filled, and that's WITH insurance covering it.

No way would I spend that much on a prescription for a condition that isn't life-threatening. So I guess I'm waiting for the generic version to come out in 2029.

I was able to fit in a swim because the gastro's office is only about a mile from the pool. I walked all over the place, though (about six miles), and it was 93 today, so I'm definitely beat.

Geese and the Requirements of an Industry

The band Geese is everywhere.

I can't go anywhere on the Web without seeing an article about them. They're the big, new, hot rock band.

There's only one problem: they suck.

The first time I heard one of their songs I started laughing because it was so bad. I'd heard so much hype that I expected it to be terrific, but it wasn't even serviceable.

Zero creativity and zero innovation. Everything they do has been done much better by other bands.

This made me wonder why they're getting so much promotion, and it made me realize something I should have understood decades ago.

Think of promotion as the music industrial complex, for lack of a better description. Over decades, the skeleton of this beast has grown and grown. It's huge now, and it feeds on stars.

Without the stars, thousands and thousands of people lose their jobs.

So no matter the basic level of band quality in an era, stars must be produced and promoted as if they were dropped straight from music heaven.

It can't ever stop.

This explains Foreigner and Poison and quite a few other bands. They weren't great or even average, but they existed in a time of thin talent and became stars.

The show must go on, as they say. Even when it makes you cringe.

Friday Links!

Leading off this week, a riveting article (that's been turned into a book by the same author): A Teen’s Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld.

Even though David Foster Wallace's writing leaves me entirely cold, this is a wonderful interview: Consider the Sister: Amy Wallace has spent two decades guarding the human her brother was—against a world that prefers David Foster Wallace as a puzzle.

This is absolutely excellent: Rights require money.

A tremendous article from the Texas Monthly archives: The FBI Agent Who Can’t Stop Thinking About Waco.

From Wally, and it's shocking: Florida surgeon ‘devastated’ over death of patient after removing liver instead of spleen. A master ham slicer? The Man Who Cuts the Perfect Slice of Ham. Long and interesting: ‘10 minutes of nirvana’: 52 writers on the best sandwich of their life. I've been to zero: The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City. A puzzling use case: I, robe-ot: the android monk working to reboot the faith of South Korea’s Buddhists. If you ever wanted to know about knots, I've got you covered: We've Got The Knots (animated knots).

The Greatest Job in the World (not actually extinct)

Thanks to all of you (including an actual librarian) who wrote in to tell me that the research desk DOES still exist, even with information being so readily available these days.

L. Wade (librarian) described it best:
The Greatest Job that Doesn't Exist does, in fact, exist. Public libraries still have people with Masters in Library & Information Science who sit at a desk and answer reference questions. University libraries and federal agency libraries do, too. There may be some special libraries that no longer have a staffed reference desk, and some desks may be consolidated Information/Reference/Circulation desks, but they continue to be staffed by people with MLIS degrees.

Book Update

The book which now has no title continues at pace.

I received such excellent and comprehensive (almost overwhelming) feedback from the editor I worked with that I thought I would never get through it all.

I did, though. Finally.

Now I'm in the process of making several high-level and hundreds of lower-level decisions. Solving problems. It's inordinately messy, but I'm not stuck.

I was expecting to be stuck. Paralyzed, really, from the sheer volume of feedback. And I'm not, but I am moving methodically.

This is to say that end of the year for publication is probably in some peril at this point. The quality of the book has risen considerably, though, and in all the right ways. It's a possible trade-off worth making.

A Fever

C is in Montreal to visit her mom.

We talked today and she said the city has gone completely mad over the Canadiens. Almost every store she passed had team gear or a sign in the window. One had a signed jersey under glass from Jean Beliveau, who played for the Canadiens from 1953-1971.

Given that there were 20,000+ people inside the Bell Center on Sunday night and 20,000+ more watching right outside the arena (on huge screens the team brought in), I'm not surprised. They'll be be solid favorites to make it to the conference finals if they win tonight.