Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

TWIL: What Street Corn Cheetos taste like

I brought Cheetos to trivia. It was going to be a Cheeto buffet:  Puffs,Cheetos-flavored popcorn (sadly, unavailable), and this new thing: Mexican Street Corn Flavored Cheetos.

I've had street corn. I remember it was tasty: corn dampened with a mild cheese sauce, a touch of spice, salt, and maybe a bit of lime. It tasted like 80% corn, 10% cheese, 7% spice / salt, 3% lime.

These Cheetos? 40% corn, 20% spice / salt, 20% cheese, 20% lime. The balance was all wrong. It tasted like cheesy foot acid. Over-salted cheesy foot acid.

I took a bite and advised against it. Then after seeing my face, three people tasted and made, yes, the same face. 

And you. You want to try it now. If you do, believe me, you will make the face.

More worries about the LA fires

As long as I can change channels when people start to cry or shout, I've been fascinated by the coverage of the LA fires. The fire departments have bee battling them for days and still there's zero containment, what with the Santa Ana winds carrying embers to drought-dried shrubs. 

So now I'm worried about more combustible areas. What if an ember ignites the La Brea tar pits? That's only 14 miles away from Pacific Pallisades. The tar pits were closed today because of the fire. (I don't know what tar pits even look like. I've always pictured, well, pits, of tar, just simmering out in the elements with a path neaby and a rope you can hold on to. Are they enclosed? Air conditioned?)

Later: After checking the web site, it looks like there are exhibits inside and outside, and that there is an exposed outdoor lake of asphalt in which some current day animals get stuck. 

There's also an enormous oil field under LA. Almost every well is capped, but who knows if there’s a crack leading to some bottled-up gas ready to ignite?

Things are bad enough without any catastrophizing from me. 

 

Weekly Paint Progress: 1/9

This week the 2025 Croquet balls went from this:

... to this.

The wet paint on the balls isn't photographing well. It's better than it seems.

 

It's like a foreign language commercial

I just had to suffer through this commercial below. (By the way, I just upgraded to YouTube Premium, so no commercial for me, but that does mean I can't see to select commercial-free content for you. Apologies if you had to watch a commercial before watching a commercial.) 

Is it just me? I could not understand over half of this commercial, because I do not speak child. I could only understand the children listing the ingredients. "Appuz" = "apples." 

I feel like this commercial is specifically designed to play the competitive momming game. (If you don't feed your child dragonfruit, what kind of monster are you?) But then they bump up the game so if you don't understand what these children are saying, well, you are to be pitied, you probably don't even eat dragonfruit yourself.

God bless this commenter. What IS the last kid saying?

 

Review: A Real Pain

This is the IMDB page for the recent Jesse Eisenberg movie A Real Pain. While it is a wonderful movie, the page below is not accurate.

Do you see at the lower left where it says "Buddy Comedy" - I say no. I mean, maybe the first few minutes might make you think that, but no. Speaking as someone with a similar walking wound of a sibling, no, not about "buddies." And as for comedy - the very end is just heart-breaking. 

And  --

[Suddenly Spunky Labia International Toe Porn Superstar grabs the iPad and types the remainder of this post with her toes.]

BUT JESSE EISENBERG'S FEET HIS FEET THEY WERE GLORIOUS AND GRACEFUL HE IS MY SOLEMATE.

TWIL: How to disable a Kenmore ice-maker

In this house we don't need ice: we don't use ice. We had to wait weeks for our previous fridge because we ordered it without an ice-maker. Ice-makers break. 

This time, we just decided we'd keep the ice-maker but turn it off. (They hum away trying to make ice, otherwise, deluded things, even if there's no water line hooked up.)

After timing how far apart the hums came (45 seconds) and doing some research, and watching one complicated YouTube video, I felt that I was equipped to follow the multi-step process to shut off the humming ice-maker. 

I opened the freezer to review the situation and saw the answer was obvious. 

My favorite hotel, threatened

There are very few hotels where Gary and I opt for a second visit. If we re-visit a city, the hotel with the best deal on the day usually wins. 

There are two exceptions: the Michigan Avenue Hilton in Chicago and the Bourbon-Orleans hotel in New Orleans. 

Per the latter: we stay on the side overlooking St. Ann, not the Orleans side, but still it was outrageous to hear the New Orleans terrorist put one of his explosive devices at the corner of Bourbon and Orleans.

I heard that individuals peeked inside the cooler to see if there was abandoned liquor inside, but were disappointed. But then ... I would think they'd say, "But that thing that is in there does kind of look like an improvised explosive device."

 

Weekly Paint Progress: 1/2

Well, I didn’t like the shadows were in the previous one so I changed the lighting and took the photo again.

… and here it is, already not quite right so I hope that makes it so I don’t get obsessed. 

The glass thing is so exaggerated in my head; yikes. Are my problems always on the left side? I should ask the neurologist if there's some kind of brain issue. I do have the optic neuritis in my right optic nerve. I doubt this will turn into some Monet thing where I influence a school of left-right wonkism.

2024: In Review

The worst first, followed by the rest.

The Worst: Gary's rash, and multple doctor’s visits, and his fanciful scientific explanations for everything. This morning, though, he said that while it feels just as itchy and even more painful, it’s getting better in some sub-cellular way that only he can notice.  

The Other Worst: Goldie the cat died, just when he was really starting to have fun: killing the mice, jumping at night. 

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Creative Pursuits: the Novel

After rearranging the whole thing and killing one entire chapter, I ended the year with no further structural changes, just line revisions. That’s very good.

Creative Pursuits: the Painting

This year I finished the mandolin, tongue Gary, grim Gary, Mom in a boat, Mom’s face in a boat, Goldie, cartoon Goldie, and the never-ending Granceil. (I am truly going to make one more swipe to lift her droopy eyelid.)

The Finances

Now that he’s 70 (good God), Gary has started taking Social Security. It is really hard for us to adjust to a spending versus saving point of view. Then again we aren't hit with thousands of dollars for medical insurance every month ... yet. He didn’t seem to have a problem buying yesterday’s refrigerator and a new dishwasher.

Me, Visiting the Outside

I attended a delightful cooking class with friend Anne. Anne was also my companion for the Opera season: The Barber of Seville, La Boheme, Julius Ceasar, and Galileo Galilei.

I went in to work six or so times and on two occasions my shoes disintegrated. First the black shoes and then the navy blue ones. 

I lost at triva twice: once for Habitat for Humanity and once for the Big TeddyJ Trivia, but I think we lost that time ‘because we were dazzled by the visit from the Head Honchess. 

I did spend a little time outside in the elements. I looked upward for the Northern lights, not once but twice, and I didn’t bother to chase the total eclipse a second time because I still remember the first time. The Christmas telescope was replaced by the emergency Christmas refrigerator, but I still enjoyed looking at the moon through binoculars any night it wasn’t cloudy.

The Outside, Visiting Me.

My attempts to bond with the crows failed, but the cicadas were all over me. And of course, this is the year we took the long-awaited video of the baby possums riding their Mom’s back. 

My Own Personal Body Nonsense

While Gary battled his rash, I battled my bladder. The first dose of bladder Botox was terrific, but the second didn't really satisfy until a few months in. Now it’s good, but I think it was too sedated before.

I had a little reproductive renaissance during this year's Hot Matron Summer. New toys, new books, new personal achievements unlocked. Is there something you didn’t think you could do? Maybe something you never wanted to do? Think again. 

In clinical trial news, I finished up the monoclonal antibody trial. (I am sure Europe thanks me.) Not only that, I horked up some DNA for the safety of future generations. 

Summary

While this year brought bad news for others on the health front, it’s been good news for me, not to mention that there is speculation that Ozempic could be used to help with MS inflammation.

I’m stepping out a bit more, though Gary isn’t, because he wants to be off the steroids for a few months. Grandceil notwithstanding, I think my painting is getting looser and I’m having fun with the book again. So, things are good for me from a selfish point of view, but of course they can’t be good because of Goldie and Gary. A pretty mixed bag of a year.

New Refrigerator Timeline

There is a tiresome account below of our new refrigerator.

===========

12/16: Gary alerts me that the refrigerator is out. Because I am not the sick one, I move all the food to the immortal Amana in the garage and the freezer in the basement and suggest he call a repairman or buy a new fridge.  He claims he does not know HOW TO CA -- oh, sorry to yell. He claims he does not know how to call a repairman or buy a fridge.

12/17: He spends the next day researching, and comes to me in the evening saying we should buy this particular item online. I am aghast. I say I would rather talk to a salesman, and have them set it up. No, he says, this is how it is done these days: all online. We order one on the Home Depot website for an excellent price. 

12/20: We get an email from Home Depot saying the fridge will be delivered between 12/27 and January 3.

12/21: The next day we get an email saying the fridge will be delivered 12/27.

12/26: We get an email that the fridge is being delivered today. I track it from physical therapy, and I see no one is at home when they tried to deliver it in Fenton, where we do not live, while Gary was here at our house, not in Fenton, waiting.

On the phone Home Depot says there is something wrong with the delivery that is outsourced to a third company, Express Something, and he swears our fridge will be at our house on January 3. 

12/27: I get a voice mail from the delivery service saying they could not deliver our fridge to Fenton but they will try again Monday. Almost immediately they call back and hang up, as if they have another message for my phone number.

12/30, 8 am Monday. I get a phone call from a man claiming to be outside my house with a refrigerator. I get snippy and ask if he is in Fenton, because I have been told that my fridge will be coming on January 3rd, and as I say this I walk out the front door and there is a man with a refrigerator. So after that there's a fridge in my garage.

I call the third company involved, the installers / haulers, whom I advise that they need to wait for 1/3 to roll around, and they are perfect, just a dream. They say things like, "Can we come out this afternoon?" and later, "We will be there in 20 minutes," and they arrive at our actual  house and set everything right.

==============

I mean, I checked and the credit card hasn't been charged for two refrigerators, and if they foist another fridge at me on the 3rd I will just close the door. 

Review: Disaster Autopsy

Did you like Minute by Minute, the cable show that stepped you through a disaster and every link in the chain of events? I know I did. I love the idea you could take what must have felt like chaos and then slow it down and make sense of it. 

So now there’s this Disaster Autopsy* show that does the same, only with fancy graphics and a bit less of a ticking-clock narrative. In fact, they started at the end of the Columbia disaster and then worked backward, step by step.

There’s a narrator who sounds very much like the narrator of  Curse of Oak Island, Robert Clotworthy. “What can make a shuttle wing change shape?” he asks, perplexed. “Being hit by some foam at lift-off?” I respond, feebly. Talking back to this narrator is not as satisfying as shouting at the screen “OAK ISLAND IS JUST ONE GIANT SINKHOLE.”

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*Incidentally, a friend heard the title -- Disaster Autopsy -- and interpreted it to mean “World’s Worst Autopsies”  or “Autopsies Gone Wrong” and was sorely let down. And now I think THAT show needs to be made. 

TWIL: Spring floor

Did you know was when gymnasts do their floor exercises, they are doing tumbling and the like on a floor that has springs underneath?

Literally. The physical therapist told me that the competition floor sits on top of a lot of springs.

I mean, good for them, but then I began to wonder, when did this become a rule as opposed to a cheat? (Like the designated hitter.)

Evidently it was deemed cool in competition to get a little extra spring in your handspring in 1979. However, the Olympics play fast and loose with what years they use the springs. No springs under the floor in Barcelona in 1992, for example, just foam. 

Some dance floors have spring floors, like dance floors at embassies, and when I heard that, I checked - the House of Blues has a spring floor, which explains its terrifying bounciness when I visited in 2013.

Zeno’s Probate

I cannot tell you how infuriating this probate has been, like the arrow in Zeno’s Paradox I just eternally ... get almost there ... almost.

And yet, earlier this month I did have some tangible proof of progress: a check.

Of course, it was a check that seemed difficult to cash. After I got past the tax issue, then their client software team had to fix a bug that seemed to affect only me.

But then, magically it seemed as if we were at the finish line. But no. When I checked online for my new account ... nothing. Instead I have an email with a strange message to sign a document, then when I follow the link it is not there.

Always inching forward then scuttling back.

Weekly Paint Progress: 12/26

Now that the eternal purgatory of the Granceil painting is over and my confidence is a sloppy puddle of debris, I return to the benchmark test of the croquet balls, mallet, and small mason jar. 

Try 1: 2018

Try 2: later, 2018

It's a test so many things: can I draw an ellipse? (There are two.) Can I paint a cast shadow? (Evidently not in 2018.) I'll need to add an element so I can test the shadow casting. 

This is what I am aiming for this time.

Christmas

Well, darn, Gary thinks his sores might be caused by wheat, so no waffles for Christmas morning. I mean, I could make myself waffles and make him watch, which is always fun, but that’s not the tradition. 

The only card came from the lawn-mowing service; the only present was self-selected from HR choices. Choices which, and I wasn’t going to say this, included two vibrating body massagers. I did not pick those, because, please, obvious trap, but I did replace our almost 40-year-old tumblers with newer ones. 

If not for Barenaked for the Holidays, it would be any other day. And that’s fine. 

Two hot things in the news on Christmas eve

This morning I woke up to two hot and timely bits of news.

Hot thing number 1: The Sun

The Parker Solar probe zipped by the sun at 5:53 am today. It's been near the sun, but this is the closest flyby ever. Still about four million miles above the surface, but close enough to be in the corona. 

Hot thing number 2: Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton is in the hospital with a fever, which is concerning because he had a fever before his bout of sepsis a few years back.

Godspeed to the probe and good wishes to Bill Clinton, whose probing days are over, I imagine.

Starwalk2 Easter egg

On Friday I opened my Starwalk 2 application to see where the Moon was that morning, and a little animated Santa zoomed past the moon on some kind of Santa Rocket. Charmed!

Also, you can see the moon there by the front paw of Leo, and I never thought about it before but I suppose that’s what astrologists mean by “the moon is in Cassiopeia,” or Leo, whatever. 

TWIL: Truck etymology

Truck: as in “I don’t have no truck with cheaters and liars.”

Evidently, “truck” once meant “Small items of little value” (or, similarly, “vegetables”) and then it became a verb meaning to barter or swap small items. 

Go here and listen to “No Truck,” an excellent song by Kate Miller-Heidke. 

Christmas Ornaments of 2024

Well, I did put up the tree. 

Goldie the Cat of the Dead is memorialized ...

... as is the loooong-delayed sale of Dave's house.

That plus Gary's rash made for a pretty grim year. Next year should be better. Right?

 

Wrap up Paint Progress FINALLY: 12/19

Oh I am so sick of this painting!

Freaking tilt! I realized the tilt on the head is conflicting with the tilt on the canvas, so I took tape and made an artificial boundary for the tilt so I would stop looking at the edges of the canvas as reference points.

Was!

Is! 

Supposed to be! She cannot even look at me! Terrible!

Done. I am seriously going to burn this one. Next week croquet ball, mallet, and glass jar.

 

Mouse Detective: Case closed

Last week the mouse detective returned and determined that the mouse threat was gone. The cobweb in the basement was still, the steel wool was not moved, and none of the snap traps loaded with marshmallow fluff had been sprung.

The mouse caught in the trap early on was probably the first and only mouse, and he was dead. Case closed.

We tried to get her interested in the blood stain on the sidewalk, but she pegged it on the owls, and soon after that there was rain for a day and now the blood evidence is gone, and so is she.

 

Review: Actual Knix bra!

So I bought two bras (from the actual Knix store this time).

One is the Ultra Soft front closure bra. (When I read the description closely later I saw it was so soft because it was made for women recovering from breast surgery.)

It is very comfy, yet it has a built-in breastplate type of structure, like one of those padded bras I bought when the sagging began in earnest. I opened the package and it said to me, "Here, decant your boobies into my padded mold that is shaped like perky young breasts." Good for a while, but by the end of the day my breasts - still in the perky shape - were both positioned two inches lower on my body than I started. I shortened the straps for the next outing.

The other bra was the ill-advised (non-returnable) Catalyst Front Zip Sports Bra, which did have the design flaw the faux bras had: it is so elastic that the cups sprang back to my shoulder blades. Plus, it is too small in the waist for me. However, this is my plan: Deconstruct the sports bra, take out the padded breastplate boobie mold, and sew it into one of my old reliable comfy zip front bras, and then we shall see what happens. 

TWIL: How to remove an avocado pit

Years ago I saw someone -- maybe Martha Stewart --remove an avocado pit by thwacking a knife blade into it and twisting. For, say, 35 years, that is how I’ve removed avocado pits.

Tonight I thought, “This avocado is sliced in half. I learned at the cooking class I went to that you can take a pitless avocado half, score it into chunks in the rind, then squeeze the chunks out into your salad. I wonder why you can’t just take the half with the pit and squeeze out the pit.”

Which I found, you can. 

Possibly posthumous weekly paint progress: 12/12

I am getting the damn tilt if it kills me.

What it was ...

What it is...

... and that is what it evermore shall be. Smile - tilt, eyes, no tilt, no longer care.

Creepy photos from yesterday

Granceil is like the silent sister in the Twilight Zone movie.

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I saw this outside the door yesterday morning.

Bright red blood or perhaps wine. Some might say those are bird footprints to the left of the circle, or little sideways hearts?

It looks to me as if a small female animal became a woman.

TWIL: Rats are fun pets

Rats (not mice, mice are evil) can do amazing tricks. They come when called, and stand up and spin and walk on their hind legs, and many more things.

(I kind of get the feeling they don't do those things unless they see the treats in your hand.) 

 

The return of the mouse detective

The Mouse Detective returned to see how many traps had been sprung in the corner of the basement. Three sprung traps. One dead mouse. 

I told her they must be coming in through the garage as she surmised.

"More probably from the outside," she said. "See the breeze?" and she pointed at a  nearby cobweb. It was gently fluttering. She said, "That's coming from there," and pointed at the suspicious corner of the basement. "That's where they're getting in."

I told Mouse Detective she needed her own network series.

Eternal Weekly Paint Progress: 12/5

This week Granceil went from this:

... to this.

 

That's closer to the goal, which was this.

I give up. No more portraits. Unless someday I return to Granceil and start over entirely. And as is my wont, my next thing will be easy: drapery and croquet balls in primary colors or something.

Later: I’m adjusting the mouth tilt but I’m not inflicting it on you all.

Even later: it would be fine but I lost the 20 degree tilt to her head.  So it will never end.

The Actual Moon Phenomenon Earthshine Captured

(Hey, if you are in a feed-reader you might want to click through and visit yesterday's post and comments and see how I was actually duped by the internet into buying the wrong bra. Then read the wholesome post below.)

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Well, by some amazing chance I thought about sunset and moonset at just the right moment, and I did get to see the Old moon in the New moon's arms at 6:28 yesterday evening, just as the sky was pinkening. 

Of course it required the binoculars to reduce the glare of the crescent, but it was pretty cool. I guess I could have been looking at some pink peripheral sunlight instead of earthshine, but I saw the dim disc of the earth's shadow, then I saw the topography of the craters on the edge of the illuminated crescent. 

Gary would have seen it too, but he took so long putting on his shoes and coat just to go out in the garage that the moon was behind the trees by then. 

I would be mad, but I've already set an Alexa reminder for 28 days from now.

UPDATE: Not a Knix bra, but a fraud! Review: Knix Bra

I should have checked the URL and gone via the web site, not a search. This bra below was a cheap knockoff. More in comments. Trying again!

======================

A while back, AH mentioned the Knix bra in the comments.

I regret to say the Knix bra did not work for me. Sounded good: front closure, no wires, supportive. Sadly, the cons outweighed the pros.

Problem 1: Material

The lacy cups are right out of a standard bra, but the rest is a seamless band of silky yet rubbery elastic. Back, straps, cup connectors in one unending loop. It's like if a colony of silkworms put their butts together and spun out a bra-cup holster. I don't know how to say it other than the crepe felt creepy to me. This is subjective. Other people might say the lack of hems, selvages, seams feels elegant. 

Problem 2: Size

I recognize that all my muscle is now fat. I've been this weight before, but pants that zipped up snugly in the past then can't get past my thighs now. I didn't think that there would be a muscle/fat conversion issue with the bra, because as the mammogram report tells me, my breasts have been entirely fat for years. I'm up to size 2x in clothes, but evidently I have maxed out the Knix size chart at size 5x. 

Problem 3: Putting it on

This is sad, because it has a front closure, so the ease in putting it on is the big selling point.

• Attempt 1. I unhooked the front closure and put my arms in the straps. I thought the cups would dangle but instead they cupped the spine side of my shoulder blades. I tried to reach behind to grasp the cups but I couldn't get there, plus I didn't want to further aggravate my rotator cuff.
• Attempt 2. I closed it in front at my waist and then tried to put my arms in the straps. I couldn't even find the straps. 
• Attempt 3. I closed it entirely and put it on over my head. It did indeed give me some support but it was too much horizontal too little vertical. You need a balance.

So, oddly I am keeping it. I'm not wearing it, but perhaps when the rotator cuffs heals I will try stretching it out and give it another shot.

 

TWIL: Earthshine

In addition to sunshine and moonshine, there is earthshine. 

If you are looking for a partial moon during the day (even without binoculars), if the moon is in the sky, far enough away from the sun that you aren’t blinded, and is in the right phase, you can supposedly see the part of the moon that is illuminated by the sun, but instead of the rest of the moon being black because of the shadow the earth casts, you see earthshine, because the sunlight reflecting off the earth illuminates the shadow a little.

I heard recently that a poet called it "the old moon in the new moons arms," or something like that.

Go here for a photo, and a little smile that NASA wants you to know that this may not be the most up-to-date moon-earth-sun science.

Mouse Detective

A few weeks ago the Rottler exterminator came out to do the maintenance for our plan, and she was very personable, so I mentioned that we seemed to have mice. I knew this because:

• Intermittent mouse poop in basement
• Noisy mice in walls
• Goldie caught three mice in the basement

The woman set out an outdoor trap and came back a few weeks later.

It was a joy to watch her work. She was on the case. You could see the deductive reasoning at play. I thought I had worked out some things, but I don't know the ways of the rodents.

For example, I thought I had figured out where the mice were coming in: the external dryer vent. Just a short jaunt under the laundry room floorboards, and then drop down through the insulation to the basement, have a poop on top of the storage shelves, pee on the dead cat's stuff.  

She looked at the same setup and said, "You know, I see that you feed the wildlife. Where do you store the food?"

"In the garage, but it's in heavy bags. Gary once found a tiny hole but it was only big enough to get out one half of one nut."

"Let me see."

She walked out to the garage, and went immediately to the corner that abuts the laundry room, the same spot in the garage where we hade once found a hole twenty five years earlier. I remember because we moved a big storage unit to block the hole. That strategy must have been effective, because she moved the unit and found a different hole. And a lot of debris, including peanut shells. She stuffed the hole with steel wool from her own supply. (We had bought our own to use when we found the hole ourselves, hahaha, as if.)

While she was setting traps I said, "So, I'll see dead mice in the traps, and we won't hear the mice in the walls."

"If you can hear it dollars to donuts that's squirrels. I noticed you have a tree limb that touches your house. Squirrels are just walking around up there trying to get in to your soffit and gnawing on the metal gutter."

It was truly satisfying, because I felt like Gary and I were almost there, but then she came in like a forensic psychologist and knew the mouse and squirrel motivations.

Time to saw back the tree limb and put the peanuts in bins, I guess. Feel a little pity for the mice and squirrels.

Looks like I picked the wrong millennia to try to write a book

I hate AI.

It's going to do to writing what photography did to art. 

UPDATE; Weekly Paint Progress: 11/28

This week Granceil went from this:

.... to this

when she was originally this.

But then I worked some more and now I'm stopping.

New Dentist Technology

My space-age high technology dentist has yet another device.

The hygienist said, “We have a new, less invasive way to clean your teeth called ‘Airflow’. It’s really good at getting below your gums.”

“Awesome,” I said.

Then she said, she would protect my face with a dental dam, then paint my teeth with a purple substance, the blast it off with water and grains of sugar alcohol.

“Wait, what,” I said. “You’re going to make my teeth purple and blast them with Splenda?”

And that's what she did. “This is great,” I thought. “No more metal scrapey hook thing.”

But no. After the process I got the scrapey hook thing anyway. But maybe if I use this new toothbrush vigilantly there will be less scraping next time. 

Okay. How purple, you ask. Barney purple.

And does it taste like Splenda? Yes, the little bit that mixed with my spit did.

Weekly Paint Progress: Bonus Edition

Granceil is so hard. Gary, from the front, blue sweatshirt, nailed it the first time. Granceil, three quarters, requires weekend work, because I know she is in the basement judgjng me.

So this weekend Granceil went from this;

... to this:

She is grey and elongated and she has developed sideburns, but her eyes are the right size. And at least the jacket doesn’t look overworked.

TWIL: Clinical trials gone wrong

I am now officially finished with the Supernova monoclonal antibodies clinical trial. I suppose I blind myself to bad news about trials because the next thing I did was ask ChatGPT about clinical trials gone wrong. (I feel the need to disclose that AI helped with this post.)

I knew about some trials: the Guatemalan and Tuskegee syphilis trials, and the Vioxx trial. Others required more research.

So, this week I learned about these trials.

Jesse Gelsinger Gene Therapy Trial (1999, University of Pennsylvania)

Jesse Gelsinger was participating in a trial he should have been disqualified from because he had high levels of ammonia in his blood chemistry. The gene therapy trial was targeted at people with a genetic liver disease called ornithine transcarbamylase deficiency (OTCD). He died four days after getting the drug from a severe immune reaction that led to multiple organ failure and brain death.

Illegal Trovafloxacin Trial (2004, Pfizer)  

This was an illegal clinical trial Pfizer conducted in Nigeria. They gave the antibiotic Trovafloxacin (not the standard antibiotic) to children suffering from meningitis. Eleven children died (probably of liver damage) and many others suffered severe side effects, including paralysis, brain damage, and blindness.

BIA 10-2474 Trial (2016, Bia-Portela)

This trial involved an experimental painkiller intended to treat, among other things, chronic pain from multiple sclerosis. Well into the Phase I trial they upped the dosage, and one participant died. Four others were hospitalized with severe neurological damage. It seems like they stopped all the trials related to this or any drug like it. 

Theralizumab Trial (2006, Parexel) 

This was a Phase 1 trial of a monoclonal antibody designed to treat autoimmune diseases and leukemia by stimulating the immune system. Within minutes, all six participants experienced a severe "cytokine storm" (a massive immune system response). Some of them were left with permanent damage, and one participant was in a coma for weeks. 

My favorite quote was from the Theralizumab trial fallout. "You don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out what will happen if you non-specifically activate every T cell in the body."

So, what I get from this is: don’t participate in Phase I trials, illegal trials, trials you are disqualified from, or trials where they jack up your T cells.

More Oak Island

I saw the promo for the new season of Oak Island. 

“Ugh,” I thought, “why is this show still on?”

Then I remembered I could fast-forward through most of it, but as it turns out, I am forced to watch commercials now for some reason. I spent more time enduring the commercials than this show. 

The greatest betrayal was that after teasing me all last season with the Garden Shaft, they have now given up on the Garden Shaft, because it is a little spongy, to which I say, “Plastic.” They have all kinds of things that could mitigate the seawater that they didn’t have when FDR was bankrolling it.

I think the only way I would look forward to this show is if they just made it all outtakes. If they show people hurling shovels in frustration. Producers planting relics. People getting trapped in sinkholes.

Weekly Paint Progress: 11/21

This week Granceil went from this:

... to this.

Damn left eye still too big. 

(When previously it was this ... zoomed in so I could see the detail.)

Moon Zoom

When we were looking into telescopes, I read that a pretty good pair of binoculars can let you really focus in on the moon. Gary had just bought a good replacement pair of binoculars. (We'd just tried to look at the comet and found that our binoculars were for some reason all gummy. I again blame structural collapse. It seems anything rubbery just disintegrates in our house.) 

The new pair were entirely moon-worthy (200x zoom). I didn't really believe an earth-bound pair of binoculars cranked up to max zoom would reach to the moon, but indeed they do. I looked at the full beaver moon and saw the "seas," or the mare, but no crater rims.

I understand that if you look at a gibbous (three quarter) moon you can see crater rims on the edge of the shadow. The next gibbous one is tomorrow.