I successfully downloaded the photos in my digital camera to my hard drive and they look just beautiful so I'm going to take that camera to Worldcon with me on Thursday. I'm beginning to look forward to the trip. Of course, I still have a vile sore throat and a racking cough but I hope I'll be mostly recovered by then. I nearly lost my voice last week which in my line of work is disastrous. I am beginning to be worried by this recent bout of flu, cold, fever, and cold. I take antibiotics, and herbs, and vitamins, but nothing helps. It's not like me to be sick constantly. A doctor looked at my throat two weeks ago and pronounced it to be Not Tonsillitus but I don't know. Maybe this is part of getting old? One doesn't seem to throw off minor indispositions as easily. Christ, what a depressing thought.
It's been a pretty pathetic weekend all around. I've done nothing but mope around the house, inclined to feel sorry for myself, and read Georgette Heyer, Dorothy Sayers, and a book on Victorian sentimental literature. I feel mired in history, specifically English history. The manners, morals, and language of the late 18th to early 20th century are either charming or impossible depending on my mood. I am often soothed by the restrictions of genre writing; I know the detective will find the real criminal, love will triumph in spite of misunderstandings, virtue will be rewarded, horrid relatives will get their comeuppance, blah blah blah. No nasty surprises. Everything runs like clockwork. All very cosy and comforting . . . unless I read too much of it. Then it becomes cloying, unhealthy, and makes me feel desperately unhappy because no one talks like Harriet Vane any more and no matter how many books I read I am not English and I don't live in England. For me, genre fiction can be like chocolate. It is possible to take too much.
To cap all this misery and woe, I discovered Saturday night that Iron Chef is no longer subtitled. This is a disaster. Fuji TV has mysteriously dropped the subtitles and although Channel 26, who broadcast it locally, flashed an apology on the screen at the beginning of the show I'm devastated. Half the charm of the show is the strange subtitles, and I can't follow any of it without them. The Iron Chef mailing list has swung into action already. The parent company in Japan is indifferent to the English-speaking audience and has opted to save money by not getting the show subtitled. Letters and faxes are pouring in from devotees of the show but so far no one in Japan is very impressed. Possibly none of you are, either, but this show was a real delight and I'm pissed off at being marginalized by a corporate entity who doesn't care if I like their product because they assume I won't respond to their advertising. They're wrong.
All right, enough of this. Time to get out of the house and walk the dog, breath a little fresh air, not that I can smell anything, and think of my nice, short three day work week. I'm determined to give up English lit. for a short while, too. I shall read something unmistakeably American for a while. I have a copy of Cold Mountain that someone gave me a few months ago; that should do nicely. A good, long Civil War account will get me back on my feet again.
And if I need any comic English writing with lots of impossibly erudite language I'll just go read Nigel Richardson. Pip pip!
