christine read my entry below about the asian flu virus, and this morning she was looking up the flu pandemic in 1918 online on a free online encyclopedia. its wikipedia.org, and i feel, once again, that christine knows many secret online things that she’s KEEPING FROM ME. but at least sometimes she lets one slip.
i know there are many people who spend much much much more time on the computer than me, and they have lots of this secret knowledge.
but that’s ok if you don’t want to share. i don’t feel left out or anything.
one time a guy told me a story about when he used to be a cop, and he was trying to get a semi truck (which was MOVING) away from this guy who had stolen it, and the thief started punching him, and the ex-cop fell out of the truck and was run over. i don’t know how he survived, but he’s had constant pain since then, plus he doesn’t walk so well.
now, today, a guy told me that he’s had neck pain for a few years, because he drives a semi and it ROLLED. i finally said, “you mean, it rolled over?” yep, he said. very high winds.
i feel that it a semi rolled over, the person inside would die.
when i was a child, i was sure that if you threw a brick at the TV, the TV would catch fire and explode and your house would blow up and you would die. i have no idea where this odd idea came from, but i was quite sure of it. it’s not like i knew anybody who threw bricks at tvs, i wasn’t around violent people, we had no bricks near the tv as i recall.
just one of those things that a kid thinks.
but because of these incidents in trucks, i’m just going to stay clear of the semis altogether.
this wikipedia online encyclopedia is also available in spanish, italian, french, german, portuguese, swedish, japanese, and dutch. there aren’t as many articles in these other languages, and then there are even more languages like Bulgarian, chinese, and hebrew, with fewer articles, and even more languages like persian, kurdish, low saxon, and west frisian, with even fewer articles, and this keeps going on until there are languages which only have one article published thus far. but if you want, the website says you can another version in some other language, but just so you know, they already have articles in the language that the sesothos speak, as well as the guarani, the avars, and the kyrgyzs. and the igbos. but maybe you know a REALLY obscure language, and then you could be responsible for starting yet another addition of this fascinating encyclopedia.
this is just a little bit of the article about the Spanish Flu of 1918:
“In August 1918 the more deadly version broke out simultaneously in three disparate locations — Brest, France; Boston, Massachusetts; and Freetown, Sierra Leone. Many of the worst outbreaks of the “Flu” were among soldiers, both at the front lines and in camps far away which soon spread into civilian populations. Severe outbreaks often required hospitalization and even with the best of care often killed one third of those infected. The strain was unusual in commonly killing many young and healthy victims, as opposed to more common influenzas which caused the bulk of their mortality among newborns and the old and infirm. People without symptoms could be struck suddenly and be rendered too feeble to walk within hours; many would die the next day. Symptoms included a blue tint to the face and coughing up blood caused by severe obstruction of the lungs.
Mortality in the fast-progressing cases was primarily from pneumonia, by virus-induced consolidation. Slower progressing cases featured secondary bacterial pneumonias while some suspect neural involvement led to psychiatric disorders in a minority of cases. Some deaths resulted from malnourishment and even animal attacks in overwhelmed communities.”
here’s another little chilling tidbit from the article:
“The social effects were intense due to the speed of the epidemic. AIDS killed 25 million in its first 25 years, but the Spanish flu may have killed as many in only 25 weeks beginning in September 1918.”
just something to think about. read the article for yourself.
i didn’t spend my entire day thinking about the flu. i mostly spent it running around trying to get a new cell phone. i was talking to christine on the phone, and my phone just kept hanging up. i kept thinking that maybe it was just some kind of fluke, and would somehow, miraculously, heal itself, but then i decided to just go get a new one.
i got one just like my old one, only it’s a newer model. i got this particular phone because i could use my handsfree thing with the new phone.
of course it didn’t work.
i drove across town to buy a new handsfree thing, but they didn’t have any $8 ones at wal-mart. luckily there’s a cingular store on almost every corner, so i didn’t have to drive across town again, but i did have to pay 20 bucks for a new handsfree thing, and it least it works. somehow, SOMEHOW, i must figure out how not to break/lose it immediately. this will be a challenge.
there are many many other little annoying things that happened with the phone purchase, things that filled up hours of time, but at least i have a working phone again. whew. it does have about one, or maybe two, new features, and one is that i can have just a plain ring. i like that, just the ring, no fancy song or anything silly like that.
“ring ring,” that’s all my phone does.
the new wallace & grommit movie opened today, but i didn’t go. maybe i’ll go on sunday night, as a reward for getting SO MUCH HOMEWORK DONE. if i think of it like that, maybe that’ll inspire me to GET A LOT OF HOMEWORK DONE.
all right already,
grace