Gandalf said “The burned hand teaches best. After that, advice about fire goes to the heart.” What about the burned foot? I eat my breakfast, when others are eating lunch, in the living room. I put my French press of coffee, the coffee cup, and my little cream server on a snack table next to my chair. Somehow, as I put the French press down it leapt off the table and onto the floor. In the process the two cups of hot coffee in it landed right on the top of my foot. I was wearing slipper socks which made it worse as the coffee didn’t run off my skin. I ran into the bathroom, took of the sock and put in the tub and ran cold water on it. I know that’s what you do for a burn. I know you are supposed to keep it under the water for 20 minutes. I know I never follow that last piece of advice. I’m always in the middle of something when I get burned. I kept it under the water for a few minutes then went to mop the coffee off the floor and then eat my matzoh brei. The pain from the burn was bad. When I finished eating I went into the kitchen and put one of the cold packs I recently bought on the foot. It was just the right size. It kept hurting. The next step should have been putting Vaseline on the burn but I didn’t have any so I just put on sterile gauze. Amazingly the pain subsided then. I have no idea why. Maybe the cold finally took effect. Whatever it was I was then able to put my sandal on over it. . It has not bothered me since then.
When you spill coffee on yourself you get a first-degree burn, a sunburn is also first degree. It hurts but it isn’t a big deal. That’s because the coffee we are used to drinking is not that hot. Remember the woman that sued McDonald’s when she spilled hot coffee on herself while driving? She was universally mocked. That’s because people were misinformed. The McDonald’s coffee was so hot it made a second-degree burn. She needed skin-grafts. That’s not the risk she thought she was taking when she put the coffee cup between her legs while driving. She was not the first one to have such dire consequences from McDonald’s coffee spills and the corporation knew this and ignored it. That is what the suit was about. People got the wrong idea as corporate image machine spent a great deal of time and money telling the misleading story. They knew that people are just as likely to turn their ire at others they fear are getting something they don’t get as they are at those with the real power. It’s the same as them turning people against immigrants taking their jobs to divert attention from the fact that capital’s share of the national income has increased dramatically at the expense of labor’s. Beware of that narrative.
That let me get to the first chore I had to do, my laundry. When the laundry bag is full and you have no underwear, that’s a subtle signal to wash your clothes.
Then I did my next chore, going food shopping. I could have put that off but I wanted to get out of the house and get some exercise. I went to Aldi instead of Stop & Shop as the walking route there would take me on the other side of the reservoir and I haven’t explored that area yet. I discovered that the south half of the reservoir is empty. That’s not as pretty as a reservoir filled with water but it is interesting. Let’s see if I can keep up the regular long walks until winter. It’s good for my mental and physical health. I took the bus home because I was carrying groceries. I’m not a fanatic.
I’ve been watching classic Doctor Who on Pluto TV. It’s a free service, you can watch too. The Doctor Who channel is not on demand, you have to watch in real time. Good thing I have seen all the episodes so can jump in the middle. I love the new show but the classic, especially the run with Tom Baker, is in a class by itself. I saw most of one of the best serials, The Invasion of Time. What impressed me the most was the whimsey in the midst of a very serious storyline. They key to the Doctor defeating the Vardans was his ability to be ADD at will. The Vardans can read minds but his would flit all over the place so they couldn’t keep up. Then there were all these little bits of business. The Doctor sneaks out of his apartment via a secret door and walks down a hallway. For no reason whatsoever he doesn’t just walk, he plays an imaginary game of hopscotch. Later he leads his companions through the TARDIS to his workshop. The TARDIS is huge. The sets weren’t some futuristic design, just a bare sound stage. It looked like a loading dock. They keep walking through the same set. The others think they are going in circles but the Doctor assures them they are just identical rooms. When he appears lost he tells his companions, “I know the TARDIS like the back of my hand;” and holds his hand palm up. Leela without saying a word turns it over to show the back. It’s a throwaway and brilliant. The new series never mastered that tone.
Here’s a link Pluto, Pluto TV. The serials are shown at random, jumping from Doctor to Doctor. I’ll watch any by the first four Doctors. Best TV show ever.
Today is the anniversary of the Stonewall Riot. Last night I started thinking about LGBT rights without that factoring in, at least not consciously. I have no idea what got me down this line of thought, but I like the line. I can understand someone having a visceral reaction against homosexuality or gender queerness. I understand that those are not rational, they don’t need a reason. I didn’t decide that eating liver disgusts me, but it does. What I don’t get is not realizing that’s a quality of yours, not of LGBT people It has absolutely nothing to do with morality. It’s not the kind of thing we are taught to judge people by. It’s like discriminating against people that wear white after Labor Day or wear man buns or use the wrong fork. Wearing white socks with black shoes might look silly but it’s not immoral. It doesn’t make the person bad. I wouldn’t think about not serving a person who likes ABBA no matter how incomprehensible that seems to me. Translate it into your own terms. Either things that bother you or things about you that bothers others. How about people with deformities? They can be difficult for some people to look at. Would you think it right to be mistreated because of it? Of course not; same goes with gender identity and sexual orientation. It has nothing to do with it being or not being a choice. It has to do with being irrelevant to a person’s worth. Fairness and kindness are virtues. It is how we should treat people even if they are queer or Yankee fans. It’s about the Golden Rule. Everyone should be able to get behind that.
Now it’s time to make my breakfast. After spilling my coffee I went without yesterday. When I finished eating I used my French press to make cold brew concentrate. For today’s coffee I just have to add water and ice and have iced coffee. There is no chance of me burning myself.
Wise Madness 