Being Sick
“Health is not valued
until sickness comes” (Thomas Fuller)
I had the misfortune of being
sick with some sort of bug over the last few days. Starting Sunday I wasn’t
feeling very well in terms of loss of appetite and some nausea. Monday
progressed where I had so little energy that I couldn’t get out of bed to phone
into work that I couldn’t come in. I eventually managed to, but I always feel a
little silly calling in sick when you’re not shackled to the toilet sick. I mean,
you can still work if you’re tired, you just don’t get much done. Either way I
always feel like I’m being a lazy whiner, but where I might not stay awake
until the end of my shift I figured it was a safe bet. Tuesday I still felt a
bit off but I felt well enough to head into work, that is until an hour before
my shift started and I had some sort of digestive attack, that was enough to
call in sick again and sent me right back to sleep for another three hours.
Wednesday, I miraculously felt better.
I don’t get sick very often, and
I especially don’t get sick with a flu type bug. I feel like I have a pact with
my body where I allow it to roll over on the common cold twice a year for 4-6
weeks and the rest of the time I’m ok. Recently it’s been much better than
that, which I credit a better diet and more active lifestyle, as well as the
removal of the stress crash that is the end of exams. Since I don’t get sick
often, I don’t really know how to deal with being sick. With a cold you can
usually just take some Tylenol Cold or its assorted medicine and just blow
through your day with the sniffles. When you have no energy or you feel like
your insides are full of grease it’s a whole different story. While I feel
lucky that I don’t deal with it very often, I feel like I may be the worse for
the fact that I don’t know how to cope with it.
Despite the fact that I don’t
understand why they work, I’m going to list the three go to things I have on my
‘what to do when you’re sick’ checklist. All three of them are from my Mother
in that these are the things that came out during the uncommon moments where I
was taken with a non-ear infection illness.
1.
Flat, Room Temperature Ginger Ale: I know that
Ginger helps settle the stomach (or at least Gravol has been trying this as a
marketing ploy in recent years) but I figure that Ginger Ale is as closely
related to Ginger as Lemonade is to Lemons. Both of them are mostly water and
sugar and not much of the ingredient that is supposed to help. As well, you’re
making it even closer to water by taking it after it has lost its carbonation.
That I can understand, since the bubbles may hurt an already upset stomach. The
room temperature is what I understand the least, drinks are either taken hot or
cold, I don’t think I’ve ever had a beverage served at room temperature that
could not be improved by moving to either extreme. All I know is that when
you’re sick this beverage is amazing, presumably through magic.
2.
Salted Top Soda Crackers: I’m talking Premium
Plus, or whatever sad no-name brand the store might peddle next to it. I’m
pretty sure that there is only enough room at the top for Premium Plus because
there is never any other type of cracker competing with it. It must be a bit of
a cash cow because this is the one thing you’re probably guaranteed to see in
every kitchen that belongs to someone that can eat gluten. This one is more
understandable for being sick, it’s basically salt and crunch, easy to digest
and not very extreme in terms of flavour. It’s a way of getting calories into
your system that isn’t going to make your stomach hit the ‘evacuate’ button.
3.
Chicken Noodle Soup: This makes the most sense.
It’s either the from-a-powder broth and noodle variety or its home made with
lots of vegetables. Either way it’s a method for getting water, vitamins and
noodle into your system. However I can’t feel like this is one of those things
corporations brainwashed people into thinking they needed when they were sick
in the 30’s. Envision a corporate boardroom at the height of the depression,
trying to figure out how to get people to buy more soup. Someone suggests they
imply chicken noodle soup is good for this common cold they have going around.
Everyone exclaims and someone gets a promotion to Vice President of Vegabond
Marketing.
These three things will set you
on the right track on the road to recovery. That and drinking enough water to
make a Mermaid Jealous, but that goes without saying. I found that tea has a
way of making you feel better as well, if only because it’s warm and not very
heavy. I know there are a million varieties of teas out there, but I’m going to
stick with my green tea for now. Don’t worry about me though, I’m already
better at the time of writing, I was just putting my time honour sickly
traditions out there for scrutiny, and thanking that in my contactless, union
dues paying without getting benefits temp job, I still get sick days.
Beating Video Games
“You must do the thing
you think you cannot do” (Eleanor Roosevelt)
Although I spent most of my time
being sick sleeping, it still provided me with about 10 hours of time where I
was awake and not at work. Of course I was able to use this time productively,
and of course I used that time to play video games. I had been trying to beat
Mass Effect 3 since I bought the super-premium collector’s edition in November
2011. I got a good way through the game before Christmas but then Graduate
School picked up (If anyone from MAEP is reading this, this would be when the
Policy One Two Punch came down) and I had to put it down. People I know often
say that when they get to the end of a book series, they have a hard time
reading the last one because then it would be over. I never had this experience
in terms of books but I think this time I got it in terms of a game. Every time
I tried to pick up the game I’d finish a mission or two and then get
disinterested. I really wanted to see it to the ending, but I never could get
around to it.
What makes the ending of Mass
Effect 3 so special is that it is the end of a very popular franchise and it
was very controversial at the time. I say at the time because Mass Effect 3
came out more than a year ago and in the video game world the controversy is
now old hat, but I still want to talk about it. I thought the ending was an
interesting take to end a franchise that had been very well designed, if not
ground breaking (Bioware has since taken the choice and morality driven engine
to the Medieval World with Dragon Age). When I was first watching it I thought
that the main complaint may have been the lack of a happy ending. The fact that
it has the feel of a Space Opera you might be inclined to expect a Star
Wars-esque happy ending. However, Mass Effect was more driven by the choices
you made and the paths you followed, and it turns out that was the heart of the
issue.
After beating it I went and
looked up all the endings and found they did have sort of a same-ish feel to
them, especially before Bioware responded to the fan reaction. Two of the
endings were functionally identical with the exception of two or three tweaks,
where the third one wasn’t very much different. The combination left the whole
thing feeling as if all decisions led to the same outcome, very much different
from the ‘chose your destiny’ theme the game had been developing over three
titles. In their defense, Bioware
released an ‘extended cut’ DLC that extended the endings of the three choices
which caused them to bring out their distinctions from each other. As well,
they added a fourth ‘none of the above’ option that which technically being the
worst outcome, stayed closer to the theme of the game.
I can see where some of the fan
outrage came from, but I don’t understand at the root of it why people were so
upset about it. In the end it was the designers and writers of the game that
guided us to this outcome, and that’s what we get. Fans should not be able to
re-write the ending because it did not live up to their expectations. Although
in this case they largely didn’t, they were just able to get more clarification
on the question of ‘What happened in the end?’ which is a fair inquiry.
This is definitely the end of the Sheppard
storyline (barring a prequel), I can definitely see many other games coming out
of the Mass Effect universe. In fact I hope they do release more games under
the Mass Effect banner, it was one of the most enjoyable universes I had the
pleasure of delving into.
TV Series Endings
“When Television is
good, nothing is better. When it’s bad, nothing is worse” (Newton N. Minow)
Along with Mass Effect, Fringe was
another big ending that I had to deal with recently. For the uninitiated,
Fringe was a Sci-Fi Drama that started out with a Special FBI Unit
investigating ‘strange’ occurrences (Usually tied together with explanations in
‘Fringe’ science, hence the name) and snowballed into a trans-universal epic involving
multiple timelines and a strong theme of strong personal bonds seeing you
through adversity.
It was a show that my old
roommate got me into while I was still doing my Undergraduate. He had the first
two seasons on DVD, but had already watched them. So one Christmas I borrowed
the first season and watched the whole thing. I think we watched the second
season together but I don’t remember. The third season I enjoyed with another
roommate and his girlfriend, watching the episodes as they came out. I watched
the end of the fourth and all the fifth season with Sarah. Where the show had
many transitional periods, as did my life over the time that I watched it. I
started watching it in my final year of my Undergraduate and finish watching it
as a graduate of a Master’s program.
I think that Fringe might have a
bad rap of getting the ‘Lost’ effect, where the show had to keep ramping up the
Sci Fi aspect in order to keep driving the story. However, for Fringe I think
it was the natural evolution of the story. In order for things to keep making
sense, the surrounding universe had to become more elaborate. I’d like to think
of this as the ‘Futurama effect’ (In the fact that as Futurama continued to
make episodes, they had to delve into more ridiculous scenarios, all held
together as canon. Especially after the four Movies) and helped make the case
that a show that is essentially Science Fiction can still hold up a prime time
slot.
I personally really enjoyed the
ending. I think they brought everything to an end in a very satisfying way.
Especially where the show was slated to end at Season 4 (which had the ultimate
happy ending) and was brought back due to strong fan support. It is due to this
support that I feel that there was a bit of disappointment around the ending, I
think is focused on its distinct lack of a happy ending. However, it does
provide closure on the majority of the loose ends, and in the end, Fringe was
never about happiness. It had its happy moments, but it was more about extoling
family values and exploring people’s brains while really high on LSD.
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