Poor Mei-Mei

Well, Mei-Mei was vomiting and feverish all night long. She couldn't even keep down rehydration popsicles. So she's checked into the hospital - again - with a drip in her arm. Poor kid. But it's not her valve and liver problem. Small kindness. It's just some bug. Every single bug in the world. My kids can't miss a one. Send your best wishes, internet. (Me, I have a ton of work due right exactly now. But Belle is sick as a dog herself, so I've really got to put some of it on a backburner. Wish I had a backburner.)

The good news is that Amazon has the Alien Quadrilogy on sale: only $26 for 9 DVD's! If I didn't own it, I'd buy it. It's the only DVD bells and whistles set I've actually pretty thoroughly worked through. If you are an SF buff, everything on it - commentaries, features, alternate versions - is worth watching. Plus it's awesome that 'quadrilogy' obviously isn't a word.

Someone (not me, I'm too busy worrying about my family) should do a rewrite of Lewis Carroll's "Lobster Quadrille" to be about the whole Ripley saga: "They are waiting in the shuttle - will you come and join the dance". That sort of thing. You remember it. (Sorry, I feel compelled to amuse you with drivel, even as my poor child lies in a hospital bed. What a world.)

"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail.
"There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle - will you come and join the dance?
  Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
  Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?

"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!"
But the snail replied "Too far, too far!" and gave a look askance -
Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
  Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
  Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.

"What matters it how far we go?" his scaly friend replied.
"There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The further off from England the nearer is to France -
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
  Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
  Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?"

Comments

[md 20/400]

Oh dear. All good wishes going your way.

[The Modesto Kid]

Sorry to hear about Mei-mei sick again -- I hope she gets back home soon.

The main problem with "The Lobster Quadrille" is that Donovan wrote a bad song which features its chorus, and it's difficult to read the poem without thinking about the bad song.

On the plus side (where Lewis Caroll's poems and singers who have been characterized as some sort of "Dylan" are concerned) I was listening the other day to the American Dylan's "Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest" and realized it could just as well be titled "The Ballad of the Walrus and the Carpenter".

[belle waring]

what's wrong with the word tetralogy, people?! whaaaat??

also, update from the hospital is...eh. IV fluids are good, stubborn fever not coming down is bad, my almost 4-year-old child weighing 12.8 k is WHAT THE FUCK SHE'S LIKE THE SIZE OF A FAT *CAT*! once she stops barfing I'll start feeding her sticks of butter or something.

[Matt]

Maybe they can get the sticks of butter in through the IV after melting? (I used to make up IV nutrition for people in the hospital- a nice mixture of sugar, fat, and vitimins. Good stuff if you can get it.) I hope she'll feel better soon.

[Doctor Memory]

Good grief, you folks are like a year overdue to catch a break or two on the general health front. Please send M's and my wishes for a speedy revoery to Mei Mei, and I hope you feel better soon too Belle!

[jeet]

Oh no. She may be sickly now, but when she grows up I bet she'll be all super-healthy. Like Wolverine.

[Dave M]

Here come best wishes for good health, over the Internet: zap! (UnStuff before using.)

Full marks for "they are waiting in the shuttle." Let's see the rest of it sometime. After all good healths have been restored, that is. (Hmmm, how to work in "it's the only way to be sure," which doesn't seem to scan ...).

One thing, though. You say that "everything [in the set] is worth watching" – but surely that cannot include the fourth film itself! I was so psyched to hear that an Alien film was to be directed by the guy who did The City of Lost Children, and then the film was so awful. (I thought the third one was okay though.)

[jholbo]

The fourth film is interestingly unsuccessful. I find.

[pholbo]

Love to Mei-mei and all, Grandpa and grandma

[Becks]

Awww. Get better Holbo/Waring clan!

[Keith]

Best wishes to the wife and kids!

Also, just received your Lulu editions of The Brick Moon and Steam Man of the Prairies. Fine work!

[Brock]

Since the third and fourth Alien movies were never made, it is only appropriate that they choose a non-existent word for the boxed set including them.

It was all a bad dream. No one would ever make a sequel in which they kill off the characters you were rooting in the previous movie, before the action even starts. I never paid to see such a sequel in the theatre. It was all a bad dream.

Like the Star Wars Sexology.

[ben wolfson]

Hexology, I'm afraid.

[ben wolfson]

Or hexalogy, I guess.

[Russell Arben Fox]

It was all a bad dream. No one would ever make a sequel in which they kill off the characters you were rooting in the previous movie, before the action even starts. I never paid to see such a sequel in the theatre. It was all a bad dream.

I concur completely with Brock. Many movies clearly were never actually made; it's just some horrible delusion or madness that makes us think they exist at all. Aliens 3 and 4 clearly are in this category, as are all the Star Wars prequel films, as is, most assuredly, Star Trek V.

John, Belle, my best wishes and prayers to your kids and whole family.

[cw]

I think you guys are getting sick way too much. Can it just be genes? Or is it enviromental? Something in the house, water, dirt, air, food, clothing?

[belle waring]

cw: I am afraid we are genetically feeble. my mom and sis are the same. we kind of hoped our kids would take after John in this respect, but oh well. I tell John, "hey, they're cute and smart and rich, I did my best."

[dsquared]

Oh dear, poor things. But 13kg for a four-year-old doesn't strike me as outside the normal run of things - I think little Napoleon Adolf was about that weight when he was four; we took him to the doctor because his ribs were sticking out and she said "feed him chocolate if you like but basically fuck off out of my office because it isn't abnormal".

[ajay]

we took him to the doctor because his ribs were sticking out and she said "feed him chocolate if you like but basically fuck off out of my office because it isn't abnormal".

Ah, government health care.
/TROLL

[jholbo]

Thanks for all the kind words. Hey, Keith, thanks for appreciating my hard work. Went to visit. Mei Mei's still not keeping anything down. Apparently there's some serious bug going around that's responsible, and she probably picked it up in the emergency room last week. So it's just yet another thing, not one of the other things. She can't keep anything down and everything has to come through the IV drip, but the doctors don't seem particularly concerned. It will probably be another day in hospital.

[cw]

"I am afraid we are genetically feeble."

But it's always colds and flu and stuff, right? Nothing weird or major? Maybe it's allergies. Have you talked to your doctors about why you are always getting sick?

[jeet]

@dsquared

Does Napoleon Adolf have a little brother named Vladimir Ilyich Zedong?

[Jim Henley]

Tracey and I offer our best wishes for the health of all the Holbo-Waring women. Hang in there, ladies, and get well soon.

[bitchphd]

Arg! STOP BEING SICK!

That's not at all helpful, I know. But I can't think of anything other to do than just yell NO MORE SICK in an ineffectual but well-meant sort of way.

I'm sorry for your troubles, and hope the kids will STOP BEING SICK soon. And Belle, too.

[belle waring]

I think napoleon adolf has a sister named livia lucrezia or something.
thanks for all the good wishes, people. gah I have freelance work to do this weekend setting up for a photo shoot on monday. I maybe should have just canceled thursday but I'm just starting working for these people and want to appear reliable. I'm totally going to look like shit in the pix too. le sigh.

[Jacob T. Levy]

Star Trek has too rich a legacy of awfulness and cheesiness mixed in with the gear stuff to retcon Star Trek V away. It's ridiculous, but its ridiculousness is highly compatible with much that has gone before. Not so with any alleged of the alleged last three Star Wars movies (and I start the "does not exist" clock ten minutes before the end of the original version of Return of the Jedi), or Alien 3 and 4, or any Matrix or Highlander after the first of each.

Many of those are better pieces of filmmaking that ST V-- but they all violate the implicit agreement with viewers in a way that ST V doesn't, really.

[Rich Puchalsky]

I don't think that it's a unique genetic immunity deficit or something to get every virus that wanders by. My family has been sick for, I think, just about a solid month, with influenza plus various minor viruses.

Hopefully -- or at least so I've heard from the parents of slightly older children -- you do eventually catch and therefore get immunity to every common virus out there, so that there are a couple of years later when you don't get anything.

[woof]

Well that downright spitzles the shamboo. Hope little Ms. Felineweight is home and hale soon.

[dsquared]

Star Trek has too rich a legacy of awfulness and cheesiness mixed in with the gear stuff

I am hoping against hope that "gear" has come back as a term of approval among the hip college kids. Either that or Jacob is actually a sixtysomething Scouser who was hanging out round the Cavern Club the last time people said "that's really gear, man", which would be pretty cool too.

[rob helpy-chalk]

Best health to all the Warings and Holbos out there!

Why hasn't anyone mentioned the most famous non-existent movie, Godfather III?

[hermit greg]

As a member of the Internet, I too wish Mei-Mei a quick and happy recovery.

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

Get well soon, you nice people you!