Friday Flames: Shingles in your area
Anyone who isn't sure what shingles feels like doesn't want to find out. And other news about paralyzed octopuses, electric clothes, magical realism, and crotch turtles.
Let’s spare a moment for shingles, the quintessential Gen X Disease. We’re basically the last generation who had to suffer through chicken pox before the varicella-zoster vaccine was introduced in 1995. And if you had chicken pox as a kid, the virus lives latently in your veins and waits for your immune system to get old and distracted before it considers Hulking out into shingles.
Plus, one of the most common triggers of this Hulking is chronic stress. As if that could ever be a problem for people like us at this time in history. 🙄
A lot of us first realized that shingles was a thing when David Letterman missed a month of shows because of it in 2003. And since you can only get the vaccine after you’ve turned 50, it’s easy to dismiss shingles as an old person’s bother that only one in three people actually get. But then Conan O’Brien admitted that the stresses of his early writing career gave him shingles behind his eyeball when he was only 23!
Magda regards shingles with particular spite because of the mild case she contracted just three months before her 50th birthday. And now that she’s gotten her first shot, she’s even more sure that the dismal, flu-like side effects are minor compared to the feeling that "holy shit my flesh is burning!"
Other people we know have described the rash as an army of little disease gnomes stabbing you constantly with white-hot needles. Or, as Vanderbilt’s William Schaffner puts it, “Shingles rarely kills you, but it can make you wish you were dead.” So it makes sense to start your vaccination schedule as soon as you can, especially while this two-faced jackass has anything to say about it.
Embers in the News
Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle:
Because baby octopuses need their dad Scientists discovered that male blue-lined octopuses paralyze females prior to mating to avoid being eaten.
Talk about an invasive species TSA officers stopped a man at Newark airport who was trying to smuggle a live turtle in the crotch of his pants.
A real-life “power suit” Clothes made with a new polymer that converts body heat into electricity could one day power wearable devices.
When to take Social Security Many households are taking Social Security as soon as they retire. Is that too early? Or does a bird in the hand make more sense?
Currently reading
Magda is in the middle of Tom Lake by Ann Patchett for a book club, and she is reading Jobs To Be Done: Theory to Practice by Anthony W. Ulwick for work.
Doug just finished Matt Haig’s The Life Impossible, which employs a Cocoon-like magic realism to help an anhedonic British widow get her groove back. The plot is less interesting than the way he tells it, with pithy, charming insights into the way humanity deals with getting older.
Currently watching
As part of his Gene Hackman mourn-a-thon, Doug watched The Conversation, Martin Scorsese’s classic (and prophetic) tale of how the advancing surveillance state leads to paranoia and loneliness. As a follow-up, he read this The Conversation, in which a physicist explains why ranch dressing is neither solid nor liquid.
Magda watched a lot of (what else?) The Price Is Right reruns while she was recovering from the shingles vaccine. She’ll get back to Top Chef with Mike this weekend.
Currently cooking
Magda went to a soup party last weekend, in which everyone brought a slow cooker full of soup and went home with takeout containers of lots of different soups. This creamy, cheesy potato soup was a big hit, though Magda used shredded hash browns instead of cubed, added garlic salt and Worcestershire sauce, and stirred in half a bag of shredded cheddar for the last half hour of cooking.
Doug is seeking out lasagna-type comfort food from all over the world and really liked how this moussaka recipe turned out. And now he has a go-to back-up for when our son’s favorite version of ratatouille leaves a ton of leftover eggplant.
Thanks for reading and don’t get the shot from Vincent Vega,
Magda and Doug
I got shingles at age 45. It was on my neck, shoulder, arm and I lucked out because some get it on their face/eyes. At the time, someone who also had shingles, told me that it was worse than the road rash they suffered when they fell off their motorcycle.