sweasel.com

Though I kind of like this version. Click for t-shirt (no, it’s not one of mine. Wish I’d thought of it). 

Me, I’ve been on a field trip today. I went all by myself to get a chest X-ray, because I’m still coughing up mice every morning.

They made me hang around until they were sure they had a good picture, and then told me it would be two to three weeks before my GP had the result. I suspect that means there wasn’t anything TOO awful on it. Even the NHS wouldn’t make me hang around three weeks if it were serious.

Um, right?

It’s amazing the sort of things that get called art. I’d get in the con-game myownself, but I like to be clean shaven, and that requires the ability to look at myself in the mirror.

It’s nice to be in company of others who share my opinion that this particular item is crap – ugly-as-Hell crap.

If Art is a selective re-creation of reality filtered through the aesthetic values of the artist, then Munch was an evil and nasty-minded bastard.

As for the X-ray results, I tend to agree with your suspicion – but with govt institutions one should always be leery and vigilant. May your mice shrink to shrews, and may the shrews shrivel and shuffle off.

After you get your results I’ll tell you an NHS story. Feel better soon.

Uncle Al stole my comment. I hate that painting. I’ve always hated it, and the first time I saw that definition of art, I understood why. It is definitely a hideous piece of shit.

It is, I’ll have you know, he defining artwork of the 20th Century.

NB – this is not a Good Thing.

The piece would be more explicable if there were a calendar somewhere in the background with Jan 20, 2009 circled.

Weaze (By the way do forgive me for calling someone with a bad cold Wheeze) –

This cough thing has really gone on for much too long (we minions, or at least -I- minion) are beginning to be a bit concerned. You two haven’t been forced by the bad economy into watering the gin, have you? Some of it (having lived in Japan without central heat for some years) is just your first winter in a country where all the germs are newcomers to your immune system. If that’s the case it’ll burn itself out in the spring sunshine and won’t be back (except maybe for a guest spot) next winter.

However, if it IS the lack of juniper in your diet, surely an application to the endangered species fund, et al is in order.

I may be making too much of this, but the illustration of your post about your cold certainly looks like a cry for help to me.

Just sayin’

There was a Sky and Telescope article about The Scream about ten years ago – the weird light at sunset in Christiana (Oslo)witnessed by Munch in late 1883 was volcanic optics caused by sulphuric acid droplets in the stratosphere, the aftermath of the Krakatau eruption that summer. Munch wrote about it in his journal, and made sketches and paintings over the years. Both the sky and the water looked like blood and scared him to death.

It gave me a serious case of the creeps the first time I saw a print of it, because I thought that it was painted by a child depicting a particularly horrifying nightmare.

So I suppose it achieved its purpose in that sense. I still find it creepy, but I don’t get why it is considered fine art of worth a lot of money.

Did you mention you have chickens? They are associated with all sorts of usually temporary-but-sometimes-really-bad lung problems in people. Histoplasmosis is one – a fungus. I think there is an easy blood test to diagnose that one. Not sure what an x-ray would reveal.

As for The Scream, well. I’ll never know if I could have liked it or would also hate it like y’all. Fact is it was one of a few ubiquitous images when I was a college Freshman. There were Picasso bouquet or “peace” dove bedsheets and pillows, The Scream posters, coffee mugs, folders or book covers everywhere. I learned to hate it before I had time to even really look at it.

It shouldn’t take weeks for your GP to get the radiologist report. If the xray is negative, the doctor could be ordering some other type of tests. This just stretches out getting a diagonosis forever.

Redd – I hate to say this but, welcome to your (Obamacare) future.

Don’t Eat the Fish

A coy survey by the Illustrious Holes Navy

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/breaking-news/radiation-from-disaster-detected-off-japan/story-e6freonf-1226277934309

I had an inflatable screamer guy in my office at work for many years. About four feet high.

The painting does suck; but the inflatable rocks!

I’ve seen the one in the National Gallery in Oslo (which is a very nice art museum), yes I have. No, I don’t like it, but yes, it was cool to see it.

I swear, every time I see “The Scream”, I see “Mr. Bill” from Saturday Night Live.

LOL, Argentium! Yeah, it’s that or that kid from Home Alone. (Although I think the Home Alone director were purposefully to this painting – more evidence of its suitability as a cultural logo and perhaps not really good art).

Yeah, Alice, Uncle B keeps trying to blame the chooks. And it’s my third Winter here, Some Veg — not counting the fact I’d come over for Christmas (and sometimes February) for a decade before that.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it were something fungal. Fungus seems to like me (remember the Ringworm Incident? Not fully healed, that). My neighbors say it’s the damp climate. I’m also willing to blame the intersection of a 400-year-old house and my lousy housekeeping practices.

Whatevs. As long as it’s not the thing that got Hitchens, I’m happy to wait it out. First warm, sunny day, I’m going to fling myself in the grass and hope to burn it out.

“There was a Sky and Telescope article about The Scream about ten years ago – the weird light at sunset in Christiana (Oslo)witnessed by Munch in late 1883 was volcanic optics caused by sulphuric acid droplets in the stratosphere, the aftermath of the Krakatau eruption that summer. Munch wrote about it in his journal, and made sketches and paintings over the years. Both the sky and the water looked like blood and scared him to death.”

That’s what happens when you’re one of the Ignorati. He should have paid attention in his ‘Rocks for Jocks’ class.

Even the NHS wouldn’t make me hang around three weeks if it were serious.

Um, right?

Well….I suppose that we all have to put the best face on it.

But there is always the possibility, cost containment being the imperative that it is, that they are choosing to defer the expensive treatment for 3 weeks, in hopes that the situation “resolves itself” in a way most favorable to the national health service (ie. no further expenditures, even the visit to the GP in 3 weeks, will be required).

Maybe Stoaty and Uncle Badger need a few weeks someplace warm and sunny, where the heat can soak into your hide and bones.

Would an air purifier help? I went out and got one of those 30 filter/de-ionizer/sub-atomic polisher types. We’re living in a house without central air/heat, and it’s also constantly cold and wet. The Husband was having some fearsome asthma attacks and sinus problems since moving to the new locale. We put the air purifier right next to his chair and it seems to have helped a bit.

Not sure what to say bout your constant cough, stoatie. Wish you well in getting over whatever you have. As an aside,I have always hated the screamer and most unrecognizable impressionist art. Some of it is good and lots just plain crappy. I used to say schools of unrecognizable art and their “styles” cover a recognizable lack of talent. Like rap music, talent and training are secondary to chutzpah.

Hell…USED to say?I still say it. Parcing a figure into chunks…lines…cubes…just a load of malarkey for my money. Even Hitler, charming homicidal maniac that he was, could produce decent quality watercolors and architecural studies. He just liked to kill people and attack countries. Hell…prolly a Picasso fan.

I wouldn’t entirely put it past air pollution to be part of the problem. A friend of mine had a chronic bronchial problem the whole time we were living in Bradford. He moved to Bergen and was hugely better within weeks. I visited for a few days and found a sinus problem cleared up almost immediately.

I’ve normally had X-rays back fairly rapidly from NHS trips. Nothing beats going private, though. Last time I had a CAT scan I got the films back within 30 minutes.

Wow…a 54″ screamer inflatable sold on E-bay for 54 dollars a couple of years ago.

http://www.edvard-munch.com/backg/articles/Images/macleans_970303b.jpg

I hear he started with a smaller format, 5×8 or 8×10 maybe, called “The Whimper”…

Yeah, this is the worst looking of the ones, but all of them are pretty awful. The image is powerful, but the technique and skill is just lousy.

Oceania – “Oh noes! It’s teh radiations!!eleventy!1!!1!!

Me – “Yawn…”

I would imagine, oceania, that someone of your intellectual capacity could understand that 1,000 times higher than nothing is not really that much, right?

Please tell me that you understand that. Pretty please?

Goober, Oceania is some kind of biologist, and hates to go grocery shopping because of the challenging math at checkout.

He/she/it is also a firm believer in one of the basic Luddisms of the Twentieth Century: no safe level of radiation. You can think of the notion as a sort of WWII version of Glowball Worming — it ensures a continual flow of alarmism justifying further Government intervention regulation (and, of course, the research funding to support the alarmism). The fact that there are people in, e.g., Denver who live to a ripe old age, that Sandman somehow survives despite living on a granitic outcrop, or that airline pilots don’t keel over after a few hundred hours at 30,000 feet, bothers the Believers not at all.

If you combine the two, you get somebody who can’t tell the difference between 10^^7 REM and 10^^-7 REM, and ends up posing for a remake of the “art” under discussion. Pitiful, really.

Regards,
Ric

He needs to do some math about the amount of radioactive Carbon-14 that are in his genes right this very instant!

…that sandman survives despite living on a granitic outcrop…
@ric locke…

Yes, tis true. I do indeed live on a plateaued section of a mountain in Western North Carolina. Atop granite. Dreaded radon in mah air. Dadburnit! Someone send me a dosemeter, some lead to wrap around the aluminum foil aroind mah head…eleventy1!11!!1!1!11!1

Thanks for noticing my situation Sir Ric. I personally ignore the radon. I tend to think my taste for beer, bacon and divorces are worse than radiation. Oceania is a douche, science or whatnot aside. His ramblings just go by me, for the most part. O’s stupidity about milk and radiology last week was classic. I can alway ignore that turd.

Have a good one. I am a hillbilly headed for bed.

Night stoatie and Uncle badger.

Night everyone else.

Christopher Taylor wrote, “The image is powerful, but the technique and skill is just lousy.”

Yeah. Imagine if Norman Rockwell, with his extraordinary gift for detail, had done something like this. We’d all be having nightmares even as grownups.

Redd – I hate to say this but, welcome to your (Obamacare) future.

Too late, Uncle B. I already belong to a HMO. The saving grace is that I’m about 10 blocks away. I tell them to call me if they have a cancellation and I usually get in within a day or two.

The 4X6 was called the Whiner…..