we move like tigers on vaseline

[freckles_and_doubt]

In the Department Of We Learn Something New Every Day, I can now disassemble and reassemble a collapsible wheelchair, admittedly with much fumbling while my dad quietly laughs at my approximation of mechanical skill, but hey. He knew he hadn't fathered an engineer. Have also learned to take wheelchairs backwards down slopes, which is apparently Article 1 in the Wheelchair Highway Code. I'm sure other articles prohibit me bashing the damned thing into doors and (occasionally) pulling up too late and bashing my dad's feet into the fronts of counters. I'm a good driver. Really. At any rate my dad is now safely ensconced in hospital for a minor op, without any particularly torrid wheelchair traffic accidents. The nice medical people are going to install something I've been referring to as a peg without realising that it's actually a PEG tube, or percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube. Eating's a bitch when you can't swallow.

Early-morning hospital jaunts seem to have dislocated my day a tad, I'm feeling a bit random. Randomly, then: maxbarners pointed me to this deliriously happy article about a new form of spider called Heteropoda davidbowie. I have to say, the resemblance is striking: I think it's the spider's eye-makeup.



And, even more randomly: recycling! Has it ever occurred to you that the process of checking plastic bottles for their recycling status is uncannily like sexing kittens? You hold them up in a good light and peer searchingly at their nethers.

Comments

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Still waiting for the District 9 review

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Still eluding me... but progress has been made, a bit. I honestly have no brain at the moment.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm now starting to realise that the tone of the movie shifted a lot - from bad SA Farce ("The Gods Must Be Crazy") to military action. Not sure yet if this is for the best, but it points to deliberate undermining of assumptions rather than (or in addition to) a patchy script.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I think that's why I'm finding it difficult to write a coherent response to it: I keep making a judgement, then realising there's another layer, or another implication. I agree about the deliberate undermining of assumptions, and not just about genre but about symbol and politics, too. It's not a racist or stereotyping movie but a movie that makes some very acute and rather uncomfortable comments about stereotyping and race.

Eeep, pegs!

[first-fallen.livejournal.com]

I actually knew what that was, but only because I assisted with inserting one into a Rottweiler (well, "assisted" being "held the drip up", but still!). It was a bit scary. I hope your dad recovers toot sweet and that the procedure is beneficial.

Re: Eeep, pegs!

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Thank you. The procedure is gosh-darned essential, he now can't swallow at all, and has been fed for the last week or so via a naso-gastric tube. Since the liquid food stuff is very sludgy, this is very slow: the PEG tube will speed things up madly. He's much stronger than he was after a week of 'flu and no nutrients because he was too weak to swallow.