I swear, this abomination reads like it was written by a 15 year old sorority girl high on meth, but it’s actually by Boris Johnson’s sister. Really, try reading it — it flits about from topic to topic, from her dog having puppies to prating about her mother’s maiden name to weird complaints about not being sufficiently conservative while saying…

It has been a source of mystery to me and no doubt many others that I manage to host a radio show without landing in the soup more often. I’m always saying things like, ‘But are we allowed to say Liverpool Women’s Hospital any more?’ and ‘I only want to see someone in a surgical face mask in an operating theatre’ and ‘If lockdowns work, why are we having another one and if lockdowns don’t work, why are we having another one?’ But then I realise I am a mere soggy centrist snowflake compared with some.

Don’t worry, strange lady, you’re a right-wing asshole, no question.

And then she drops this on us:

Wow. Humble bragging, name dropping, and casual sympathy for a procurer for a pedophile. I felt like throwing up over everything between the headline and the final line.

She has a radio show and publishes in the Spectator? Man, the United States isn’t the only country parasitized by a colony of superficial twits.

If you’d like to have nightmares, Christopher Stolarski has written up an account of his month of treatment for COVID-19. He was young and healthy, so he survived, but it sounds hellish.

Get vaccinated.

I’d also say, “wear a mask,” but I guess that ship has sailed. We require them at the university and in the hospital, but outside of those places, I never see anyone else wearing them anymore. Does anyone know how to read a graph?

Curious. I got up at a ridiculous hour again this morning, and cautiously walked into the kitchen. Why cautiously? Because our cat likes to leave us little presents, like a puddle of puke or a dead mouse. I flicked on the light and saw…onions. Onions on the floor, onions on the countertop, onions on the stove, onions in pots. The source was obvious — we had a mesh bag of onions hanging from a hook — and the material cause was clear — the mesh was slit wide open, from the knot at the top to the bottom of the bag. It was no longer a bag, but more of a useless mesh sheet. But how? Who, or what, committed the act of bagicide that liberated all these onions?

My first suspect is the evil cat, except that she has heretofore exhibited an irrational fear of the stove and the kitchen counters. The criminal mind is a superstitious mind, and she is definitely the kind of super-villain you’d find in a Batman comic book. But the bag was neatly slit, not raggedly torn, as a beast would do.

Also near the bag was a butcher block of knives that I’d sharpened to a razor edge yesterday. They must have played a role, somehow.

My keen deductive mind is forced to conclude that the cat, while practicing to overcome her fear of kitchen appliances, has learned to wield a knife and slash viciously at objects in her environment. That may seem unlikely, but when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth^*. I’m going to have to keep a closer eye on her now. First the onions, then the master, you know.

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^*By the way, I detest that dictum — it’s typical Holmesian illogical BS. You can never eliminate all the impossibilities, you can never even know all the alternatives. What if it’s something I didn’t even think of?

It never is.

Today I

• Assembled an exam I’ll hand out to one class tomorrow
• Put together a bank of practice problems for another
• Graded a bunch of papers…which I can’t post yet (I’ve learned that putting up intermediate, incomplete results prompts squawks of protest from the remaining students, who fear I lost their work)
• Got my lecture notes for class tomorrow together
• Posted the presentation for the class on Canvas
• Bought some supplies for this week’s lab
• Didn’t take a nap
• Neglected FtB’s Sunday social backchannel gathering
• Drank 2 cups of coffee and a quart of Diet Dr Pepper
• Sharpened the kitchen knives
• Made soup, it’s simmering right now
• Maybe I’ll get to bed at a reasonable hour and sleep through the night (ha ha)

Tomorrow, Spring semester advising continues on top of the usual workload.

Hey, this week is busy, but next week is only a half week, and there’ll be no lab! I’m going to need that to make it to the end of the term.

The TWO MILLIONTH comment on Pharyngula (caveat: we lost many comments in various moves, so really it’s the two millionth surviving comment — we practice natural selection on our commenters here) has been made. It’s here, and was made by the esteemed Lynna, OM in the Infinite Thread. Congratulations! Good work! Keep it up!

Sorry, I don’t have any prizes. Maybe I can save up for the 3 millionth comment.

All right, I’ve kicked prednisone to the curb, since it was magically making me wake up at 2am every morning. Now that I’ve been off it for a few days, though…I wake up at 1 am every morning, and can’t get back to sleep. Never again will I touch this poison!

To be fair, though, I think part of the problem is that the stupid ankle has slowed me down so much I’m not maintaining my usual level of physical activity, trapping me in my office most of the day. I’ve got this boat anchor strapped to my left ankle which simultaneously means I can’t get out much, but at the same time, I’m worn out from hauling it around.

On happier news, I seem to have successfully blocked our little troll. He’s now battering himself senseless posting one word abusive comments that get immediately whisked off into the spam trap. Seeing his frustrated futility cheers me right up. Also, my lectures are all prepared and ready to go for the next few days — I might be presenting them in an exhausted fog, but at least I won’t need to think too hard for a while.