I don't know what to write about.

Hi there!

Waiting is an odd thing. I've had people tell me to let them know when I get my test results back for coronavirus. It's a stupid thing for a man to say, but I want to reply, "I know my body so when I say I feel like I have it, I'm not just making that up!" I understand the concern but I don't really know how to feel about it all. It's a real thing to me already even if it's possible I don't have it. I have symptoms of something, after all. It largely feels more complicated to me if it's not COVID-19, because then what the heck is wrong with me? I know it's not the same as what women have felt from medicine historically--see the history of "hysteria," if you need an example--but I can't help feeling not believed when people make a big deal out of how I could test negative or suggest I just have a cold. The weirdest part of this is that if I had a cold, physically I would feel worse because I would have a stuffed and runny nose the whole time and maybe a cough. Instead I've had a headache, sore throat, chills, and vague shortness of breath. The last one has been minor but noticeable; the first time I really thought what I was experiencing was symptoms of the disease was waking for a dream where I had been gasping for air or something like that. It was all weird and dream-like but I woke up and thought, my nose isn't breathing right. I don't have asthma but I guess I did have it as a baby, according to my father but was given steroids to overcome it; that said, I'm not sure how to relate this to an asthma attack but I think it probably pales in comparison to such events. It suddenly made sense to me, though, why people who have asthma were expressing concern in these times. If it was already harder to breath, these symptoms would suddenly become a lot worse!

I can breath fine, but I don't believe I can breathe as well as I usually can when I'm fully healthy. This brings to mind a less serious phenomenon that I've experienced in my life and may relate to other people's experiences (or it could just be me! 🤣). I'm trying to think of a name to give it, but the phenomenon is essentially this: 1) it is fairly easy to distinguish between what you like and dislike, but 2) it is harder to distinguish between what you like and what you like more. When faced with options, it can be important to know what you like more, but this knowledge is not always so apparent. Relating back to breathing, if I woke up with labored, short breaths that left me gasping for air like I seemed to be in my dream, this would be really obvious that something was really wrong. Maybe I can call this the "difficulty of subtlety" principle? That name seems a little too obvious though 😏. Anyway, it's harder to realize that yes, I can breathe easily, but no, I cannot breathe as easily as I usually can. Unfortunately I think this got corrupted into supposedly being able to test for  COVID just by holding your breath for 10 seconds. I say that and yet when I try to hold my breath for 10 seconds, we've hit the "DoS" principle again: I can do it, but it seems to be a lot more difficult than usual.

Silly examples of "DoS" that all have to do with food, drink, and taste: 1) It took me a long time to realize that I prefer my coffee without milk or creamer. I do like some creamers and I actually like coffee with creamer, which is what makes this more difficult to determine. Eventually, though, I realized that I prefer coffee black with sweetener. 2) I try now to eat only dark chocolate. This is perhaps the only classy thing about me. I do like milk chocolate, but I prefer dark chocolate. The funny thing is that the point of dark chocolate is to have it by itself. It doesn't exactly blend into other flavors as well; at least in my opinion. It's not that I don't like dark chocolate as part of a candy bar, for example, it's that what I like about dark chocolate is savoring the depth of flavor which isn't possible when it's blended or simply a light coating over some filling. 3) I think this is the first example of this phenomenon of which I became aware: I like peanut butter and chocolate, but I like peanut butter and chocolate better separately. For the most part, I don't particularly like sweet peanut butter, though I will eat peanut butter cups and I really like Reese's Pieces (the latter seem to be more sugar than peanut butter but what do I know?). I've spent years eating peanut butter cookies and peanut butter and chocolate granola bars and I still will eat these occasionally but I've begun to make myself answer the question "Why?" If I'm going to eat something that has the calories of chocolate or peanut butter, shouldn't it be in the form I most enjoy it? Interestingly, I do like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or even peanut butter and banana. Maybe the milk chocolate is the problem--there is no chocolate in Reese's Pieces after all. I don't know if there's a way to have dark chocolate with a depth of flavor and peanut butter together that would be enjoyable for me. Thinking about it, peanut butter fudge is a weird thing--I'll eat it but I'm not really sure I like it that much. Oh! I just thought of what to name the phenomenon: it'll become known as the "Augie principle," named for Christopher Mintz-Plasse's character in Role Models. When Paul Rudd as Danny asks him if he likes Coke, he captures the essence of the Augie principle when he replies, "I like the idea of it more than I actually like it." I actually remember this quote being about Diet Coke which I think makes it fit even better but misremembering the quote seems to fit into the general spirit of the Augie principle, in the way that an exception can prove a rule.

Well, I've found some things to write about! You know, it's funny, I looked through my old tumblr posts tonight to see if there was anything to inspire me for this post. I've had a plan lately to write a spy novel that is stylized in some ways after Don DeLillo's Players (not really a spy novel) and William Gibson's Pattern Recognition (which is even less of a spy novel). Scrolling through my tumblr I found that I had posted a quote from Pattern Recognition years ago when I was first reading it and a year before that I had posted a quote from The Spy Who Loved Me, which ironically is the only Bond novel I've read. I guess I haven't changed all that much years later. Anyway, I just finished rereading Players (I think Bill will quote it in a future part of THE ROOF) so maybe I'll reread Pattern Recognition next. Or read Juneteenth as I vaguely promised here on the blog. Or reread Nick Hornby's Smash which I also quoted on my tumblr years ago (actually in the post right after the quote from the Bond novel) and surprisingly fits into my plans for the spy novel too. What does a teenager's story about skateboarding, science fiction set in the present day, and the unraveling of a marriage due to boredom without exposure to extreme events have to do with each other? I don't know yet, but maybe one day. See you on Sunday!