Wonderduck's Pond

March 02, 2022

A Terrible Day For Rain

This past Monday, Feb 28th, 2022, at 4pm, marked an unimaginable milestone. The one-year mark of my adventures in WTFdom passed with no fanfare, no acknowledgement, not even my weekly headshrinker visit... also with me suffering from the effects of my infection: chills, headache, general malaise and stupor. So really not much different than any other day, just with chills.

I thought about posting on Monday, but was too tired of all of this crap to actually write about it. Instead, I vicariously watched artificial people play videogames that I knew I myself would never finish. One was a ridiculously fast paced FPS, and my fast twitch muscles have been shot for years. The other was Getting Over It With Bennet Foddy. I own a copy of that one, which is why I know I'll never finish it.

Until 4pm. At that time, I got to the edge of my bed, leaned hard on my heavyweight cane, got my legs under me and shoved with them like a Free Safety trying to break up a pass. Liftoff was Apollo-speed, not Shuttle-zippy, but I could feel the strength building, my knees getting closer to the point where they'd keep everything centered and controlled. If I could stand, I could walk. And if I can walk, this whole miserable adventure comes to an end. It was going to happen right then and there. With the cheerful bit of my workout music screaming in my ears, I felt like it was really happening.

Then my knees screamed ABORT ABORT ABORT and I abruptly returned to the launch pad after a three inch freefall. No massive fireball though, which I guess is a good thing. It wasn't pain, it was just the realization that my knees were already wobbling and would have pitched me to the floor in short order. Since I was there already, I did the usual leg and arm stuff until dinner. It was as disappointing as I was.

Just gotta work harder. Easy to think, hard to accomplish when you thought you already were.

On a different topic, remember that song I posred a bit ago, Lagtrain? About a month ago, another fanmade video for it came to my attention. This one was different though.

I'd seen it before. The source material, that is, back in high school. You don't forget something like this. Or I don't. I forgot plenty of stuff from when I was a Knight but this bubbled up from the tar pit portion of my memory after just a few seconds. Vauc, does this looks familiar at all? Mr Carlson's Geometry class?

This ring any bells for anyone? Well, whatever. Like I said in a comment on the yootoob page for this thing, "If you went back in time 40 years and told 14 year old me that I'd be seeing it as a cool video set to a kickin' song sung in Japanese by a computer... I would have been the happiest guy in the world."

I suspect I'm not alone in that.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:24 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 513 words, total size 3 kb.

1 I love everything about that video. It is now the preferred version, all others can take a seat.

One of these days I'm hoping to find a particular science educational short, just so I can show it to everyone to prove that no, I wasn't hallucinating, this actually existed and was shown to schoolkids, presumably in an attempt to numb them into insensibility. Unfortunately, a zillion CGI videos about mitosis and meiosis have been made in the decades since and I'm unlikely to ever see that particular one again. It was... rather awful so that's probably for the best.

Posted by: GreyDuck at March 03, 2022 09:24 AM (rKFiU)

2 What I remember about Mr Carlson is the way he could crack the yardsticks. 40 years! I've probably merged my memories of that video with memories of pong and level after level of the Tempest arcade game. So, maybe?

Posted by: Vaucanson's Duck at March 03, 2022 09:54 PM (0dtXM)

3 I love Tempest to this day.
I'm afraid my memories of Mr Carlson was his shoes, and how one had a sole four or five inches thick... considering my talents in math, I surely don't remember his teaching!

Posted by: Wonderduck at March 05, 2022 01:24 AM (bHHXR)

4 What you might need is some water therapy - ie, in a pool or hot tub. They have a lot of good stuff for this in sports medicine practices, and I am pretty sure that knee and leg strengthening is pretty common for that. Also they have harnesses and stuff so you don't fall.

Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at March 08, 2022 02:16 PM (sF8WE)

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