The basic conceit of the series is that we follow a red blood cell (personified as a Japanese teenage girl) through various adventures inside the body of a nameless human being. We never see anything bigger than the cellular scale and we don't know what's happening outside the skin. She makes friends with a white blood cell (personified as a slightly older teenage Japanese guy) and we see how things work in the human body at the cellular level.
Well, kind of. A lot of it is allegorical, because of course cells aren't people. But the metaphors usually work pretty well, and it's an entertaining little series.
But in the first episode we're told that the person is immune-compromised. Every episode features the white blood cell (and his cohorts) doing their thing to kill invading antigens, and there's usually quite a lot of blood (blood?) involved with the deaths of the things. And over the course of the next twelve eps, this poor sap gets food poisoning, a parasite, the flu, cancer, a major allergic reaction, heat stroke, and then has a major wound "near the head" that puts him in hemorrhagic shock.
The allergy ep in particular just works, though, and you see why it is that something as minor as pollen can cause all the misery of hayfever. It's pretty educational stuff, but it's fun, too.
The platelets are extra-cute.
* * *
So, in Ohio, a teenage girl goes to stab another girl and gets shot dead by a cop. Now the left is falling all over itself to tell us that knife fights are just a part of growing up.
Well, if you like your knife fights, I guess you can keep your knife fights, or something...?
Meanwhile a bunch of other idiots are complaining that the cop should have shot the knife out of her hand, or shot her in the legs, because they are idiots who don't know how difficult it is to hit a moving target, let alone one that's maybe twelve inches long and two across, and think that if you shoot someone in the leg they automatically drop to the ground because that's how it works in the movies.
Problem is, real life doesn't work like the movies. There probably are not more than five people in the United States who could actually make a trick shot like that, and I highly doubt any of them are police officers, because to have that kind of shooting skill it needs to be what you do for a living.
"Shoot her in the leg"? Humans are incredibly durable animals, even compared to other animals. When you've got someone amped up on adrenaline (and I'd say someone who was trying to stab another person has got to be) they might not even notice they've been shot in the leg, at least long enough to finish stabbing their target, maybe fatally. And if you're shooting someone in the leg and you hit the femoral artery, they're still going to die, just not as fast as if you center-punch them.
Seriously, it's one reason I never took the Astra seriously as a self-defense weapon. .25 ACP is a terrible self-defense round because it just doesn't have any power behind it, and it's actually possible to shoot someone with the thing and not have them notice they've been shot. Shoot someone in the head with it and it might not even penetrate the skull!
You have some guy coming after you, doped to the gills on PCP, and you'll have to empty your magazine into him to stop him, unless you're using an elephant gun...and if I were you I'd be ready to fall back and reload and empty that mag into him, because he'll probably still keep going and not drop until he's dead.
* * *
Trying to find where I saw the video posted from 2005, 60 Minutes, where Morgan Freeman tells Mike Wallace that he thinks "black history month" is ridiculous. Wallace, that old communist, is flabbergasted by this.
I have a little more respect for Morgan Freeman now.
* * *
Proxima Centauri probably does not have any habitable planets. A solar flare blasted the system with some 14,000 times the normal amount of UV. Because PC is a red dwarf, any planet in the habitable zone would be very close to the star, and a flare like that would roast the biosphere and probably knock half the atmosphere off to boot.
* * *
You know what? I hadn't realized it, but I'm right there with him. That's why I haven't been blogging about politics as much, and the posts have been shorter. He describes looking at his phone in the morning and looking at his news feeds.
The same thing this morning just a few minutes ago.It's the same for me and the blogroll. I read all these articles about the democrats and the republicans and I DON'T FUCKING CARE because they're all members of the Gangster Party and none of it means a damned thing.
I glanced at several as I was scrolling through and it just hit me.
I Don't Give A Fuck.
It's all bullshit designed to keep me preoccupied.
Every fucking bit of it.
Kabuki Theater Writ Large.
The Republicans are gonna do this, the Republicans are gonna do that.
Horse shit, the Republicans aren't going to do anything other than roll over on their backs and piss all over their bellies just like they have been doing for 50 fucking years.
I mean, Natalie Dee said it best:
I have other things I want to do besides sit here and scream at the wind. Screw it.
* * *
Had a pretty nice day at work yesterday, mainly because I was told by the maintenance manager that she had a very strong preference for me staying there, rather than getting an unknown quantity from the purchasing corporation. And further she offered to be a reference for me.
I don't know anything about this deal and I'm preparing to move to the near off-site location. Though, if they offered me enough money, I might reconsider that....
And as long as I'm dreaming, I'd like a pony.