Watering: Relapse

Watering entries are personal diaries, alluding to this post's conclusion. They are a potpourri of recent thoughts and experiences (one might even call them a blog, if one were to be so common), published when I have no other projects to work on, in order to ensure I've written something for the day.

It was picture day. The results were mediocre, but I don't know that I would have been satisfied with anything, considering this month's decrepit stagnancy. I woke up with the thought in my mind that if I hadn't lost, I'd finally broach to my father the subject of a cheat meal.

After the run, I came to my senses and broached EC stacking instead. During the course of the conversation, however, wherein I offered the cheat meal as a, in some ways, less risky alternative, and he expressed misgivings about both, I decided that I didn't want to overlook either.

So my father went out and, as I nervously and eagerly awaited his return, pliably picked me up everything for which I'd asked. I didn't think to ask for a blood pressure monitor. That might come next.

With Peep Show on shuffle, the same show I was watching as I consumed my farewell giant trough of pasta in September, I relapsed. It's interesting, entering a meal that you know will have detrimental physical effects, trying to determine when ketosis breaks, to scrutinize every sensation.

One tortilla chip didn't do it.

Then the entire quesadilla and its sides were gone and I felt fine. I began to wonder if I'd ever been in ketosis at all. If the reason I never suffered keto flu was that I was mistaken, getting false positives on the strips, losing solely by calorie restriction.

I was full after the first burrito. The food wasn't delicious. Before I'd begun, I'd hoped that I would become instantly sick; so wracked with fever and nausea that I'd never want to do this again. Instead, I was utterly normal. Just full.

So I started eating ice cream. It lit up my brain. This motherfucker is indescribable. I have to think it was the flavor, rather than the mere fact that it was ice cream. A simple vanilla would not have been so amazing, it was the texture in as equal part as any. I do not enjoy writing this kowtowing appraisal of sugar, but were anything to draw me back to it, it was this perfect pint.

The sickness began. I could not finish, or even complete by half, the final burrito. It wasn't tempting. Nauseated, and experiencing a feeling that must have been stomach cramping, I left for the bathroom.

Returning, I got further down in the ice cream, leaving less than a third of it before the pain became too great. The final spoonfuls, taken as I was trying to quickly clean up so that I could lie down and let this not unlooked-for illness dissipate, were comedic. They tasted so good and became bullets as they traveled down my esophagus. I cachinnated as I gestured, alone, to my mouth and then to my stomach, indicating the bliss upstairs and the pain below.

I threw what was left out. For the rest of the day I considered digging them out of the trash bin. Didn't.

The frustration is not being entirely sure if the pain was entirely from exiting my seven month ketogenic state or simply from binge eating. It's really been since 2010 that I've eaten classically - that is, to the point of physical pain and exhaustion.

I am indeed out of ketosis. For the first time, the strip was entirely unresponsive to my licentious urine's advances.

My weight stayed exactly the same.

I am currently high on ephedrine and caffeine. A half-pill of both, eliciting a slight rush, a modestly elevated pulse, but no true palpitations or jitters. I feel sharp. And more, I feel as though I've unnaturally recovered from the depression with which I woke this morning. I admit, I'm enticed. Though, perhaps the Jekyll & Hyde link belongs here more than there.

Watering: Anus Burger, Lists, Hebdomadal

Watering entries are personal diaries, alluding to this post's conclusion. They are a potpourri of recent thoughts and experiences (one might even call them a blog, if one were to be so common), published when I have no other projects to work on, in order to ensure I've written something for the day.

Butter on peanut butter toast. I should have lost a hundred pounds by now, but I haven't. I was within one-fifth of a pound of doing so (technically), then bounced back up. This is excruciating.

Broccoli casserole, with mozzarella. I've been eating more calories now that I've started lifting. At first I lost anyway, so I thought it was OK. Now I don't know what to think. It's only going to get harder to force myself under twelve hundred while I continue to stall.

I asked my father for fiber supplements and he got me fiber laxatives, which, well, good. I never could have asked him for those. Of anything, they're probably to credit for the bout of loss. It's time to talk to him about EC stacking, if I'm going to just start shoveling pills into me in the hopes of them expelling fat out of me.

I wanted to get through the last of my regular cream cheese, so that's old school chicken stuffed with it. Don't know that I'll ever crack the nut of getting perfectly crispy bacon wrapped around it without breaking. Lifting weight has been all right. The equipment is not correct, but the chat was actually pretty ameliorating when I confessed how infantilized I felt by having my father influence my purchase so wholly. I'm very discouraged and confused.

Chicken, spinach and an egg. Frozen spinach has really become a true friend. It seems like the Deus Ex plate effect wasn't so anomalous. Only makes me want to play the game again, but I've got too much else to play.

I know that for a fact, now. Instead of doing real work, I made a list of every game I own but have not finished. Then I made a list of every game I do not own but want to either play or finish. Then I added every game I've finished but want to play again. Then finally, every game yet unreleased that I want to play. Organized by priority, alphabetically, alphabetically, and by release time, respectively. As I tweeted, making the list put me into a crisis of mortality. I will be dead before I ever find the time or will to play Ben There, Dan That.

I love making lists, though. The next day, I finally tried to list every game I've ever played by year. Still going. Doubtlessly losing many SNES platformers rented from Blockbuster in the aphotic recesses of my memory, and those games I do remember under the wrong year, but I'll forgive myself. Writing the list kept me oscillating between nostalgic misery and that old, comforting blanket of hobby.

For posterity (posteriority), the beef anus I made after seeing a life tip to poke a hole in your burger to keep it from shrinking or something. I also mixed this with ranch seasoning, so while it looked a mess, it was modestly watershed. Mixing the beef before cooking it improved the texture, and I also baked it in the oven, leaving me a lot of gravy to pour on the spinach.

Butterfish, which tastes better than it smells (after cooking it in two tablespoons of actual butter, obviously). I stopped writing weekly for The Player Character. Reading old Seasonal Lags, there was no comparison. I need time to work to my potential, and I'm also very lazy. I feel genuinely indebted to the other staff now that I'm not holding myself to their same standard, but for what it's worth, writing news came easily today. I do feel slightly unburdened. And I feel more optimistic about future Player Character projects. I do wish that I did have it in me to offer hebdomadal spiels at a consistent quality, but that wish is nowhere near as powerful as my wish to not bother.

I fucking went for it and added water to the second peanut butter bread batter, stupidly doing it straight from the faucet so I couldn't even see how much I'd added. Whatever. It paid off. The bread didn't rise significantly higher, but its texture is extremely breadlike. That's a ham, mayonnaise, and provolone sandwich. If you were physically (or emotionally) unable to taste peanut butter, you'd never know the difference.

Watering: Food Backlog, Comments, Invitations

Watering entries are personal diaries, alluding to this post's conclusion. They are a potpourri of recent thoughts and experiences (one might even call them a blog, if one were to be so common), published when I have no other projects to work on, in order to ensure I've written something for the day.

Too much to cover. I'd like to get the pictures in first.

One egg over a toasted slice of peanut butter bread. The way the light of my lamp hits my plate in this picture makes it the closest I've come to food porn or at least reminiscent of a Deus Ex: Human Revolution screenshot.

Far less tantalizing, canned chicken with mayonnaise and pickles over toasted peanut butter bread. Tasted nicer and more in-focus than it looks.

This morning's breakfast. Two Gordon Ramsay eggs (sour cream gone off) over toasted peanut butter bread.

The bread. See it a lot on r/keto and finally made it. I believe I screwed up the preparation by mixing all the ingredients at once until it simply became a slightly eggier peanut butter, which was so adhesive that I ended up eating too much off of my fingers while trying to get it in the pan. Possibly made myself sick ingesting so much raw egg, possibly placebo. Should mix the peanut butter and eggs until liquid, not further to thickening, then add rest. Should look thin and with sediments. I am not a sedimental man, but it might have helped in this case.

It rose more than I expected it to, but not enough to function for sandwiches. Good as a little plate for servings like this. Nice taste and texture contrast. Got a baker's dozen slices from it, could have narrowed them even further.

Last Player Character column got hotter than I could have imagined on N4G, which was a double-edged sword. It drew some comments and one was pretty negative, although the person who wrote it clearly didn't read the article carefully or fully. I am pleased with how I responded. Remember: priority in running my site is accessibility. I must pride myself on taking criticism, even kowtowing to it. My ego wasn't too bruised. Then linked the comments to the chat chums; Ben's criticism of the column, while mostly fair and polite, was too difficult to swallow.

Couple of nights ago, dreamed of Shiva. Very odd, that. I remembered her exactly as she looked at fourteen. Perfectly beautiful, in a bright blue shirt. Dreamed that I had tried to blackmail or threaten her, then was trying to avoid her in the streets of Forest Hills, walking with Serj.

Found her on Facebook. Friends with Serj. Amazingly, I always knew her last name - I was never certain. She's married now, possibly a mother.

Perhaps I dreamed of her because it was 4/20, and my earliest memory of the day was having Serj tell me that she had been saying "Love you plenty, happy 4/20" to people. I quoted that on Sans Pants. I've never forgotten it. Don't know. Tangential.

Two nights ago sucked badly. Then the love affair which dare not speak its name became more engrossing with the introduction of sexual pictures sent to my phone; you know, like what happens in the movies. Then it sucked amazingly.

Reviewing the pictures this morning, they were adjacent to old pictures of Verse. Trying to find her screen name, I made the minatory mistake of venturing into my AIM logs. Some conversations later, I found myself reading through always painfully pleasant chats I had with Mary. My memory of us barely speaking in 2004 is wrong. We spoke, then and afterwards, and were close.

Two things:

Autumn 2005.

Mary: Dude

Mary: Bella came out

Jason: Just now?

Mary: Well, I dunno when. Clark told me

Jason: I see.

Mary: HAHAHA, I SO KNEW IT

Jason: Fucking Charles made me gay too.

Mary: OH MAN

Mary: hahahaha

Mary: you're funny

Jason: It was a very easy joke.

Mary: I know, but you executed it with such panache

That was a good joke. I don't know if I knew it at the time and just played miserable to be distant or if I've fallen so far by now that my standards for myself have lowered. I had to stop reading there. I feel as though I've let so much slip through my fingers.

To whit:

Spring 2004.

Mary: Hey, you doing anything tonight?

Mary: Robin and Charles and Bella and Lenny and I are all going out to party. Wanna come?

Jason: No.

Mary: Ya sure?

Jason: Very.

Mary: Dammit, Jason!

Mary: You would totally have fun

Mary: Probablly

Jason: First: I wouldn't. Second: I already have a date for tonight.

Mary: Oooooh...

Mary: Nice.

Mary: Have fun, okay? I'm signing off. Bye.

I notice myself acting very cold to her in these conversations. Could be lover's spurn. Could be depression. Could be confidence. I would never act like that to someone now, and I wonder if that's a good thing. I do sound cool, but only by her grace was I tolerated.

As for the invitation, I'd completely forgotten that. I remember Oswald asking me, noncommittally, once if I'd be interested in going to a party. That's mostly all I think of when I reference turning down invitations back then. Apparently, I did better than that. There was no date, obviously. I got to fard myself in fantasy instead of partaking in an experience which could have been pivotal. I wonder what would have happened if I'd gone. If I'd still know them now. If it would have gotten me closer to Allison.

When I still pine for Allison, I wonder what I could have done to break through to her back then. Obviously, there's the old stalwarts of not being fat and being more outgoing. This is something concrete. I could have tried to mingle, to party. I could have gotten invited more often.

But it's a lie to say I still don't feel a certain pride that I didn't. Pride, along with a pain of missed opportunities and forsaken memories that almost has me in tears.

Perhaps it was a lie to say I am not sedimental.

Watering: Legendary, Chicken and Spinach

Watering entries are personal diaries, alluding to this post's conclusion. They are a potpourri of recent thoughts and experiences (one might even call them a blog, if one were to be so common), published when I have no other projects to work on, in order to ensure I've written something for the day.

Damn, I'd meant to write this all damn day and now it's tomorrow.

First off: The book was finally closed on Annie. An arduous Band-Aid to pull, but the pain is lessening fairly quickly. Was quivering following our final, typically vitriolic conversation. All I can do is hope that I hurt her. My desperate to do so was probably obvious. She was passive aggressively vindictive and all I can do now is hope that the pain of those last two conversations eventually dulls to the point that I can masturbate to her again without the sadness becoming prohibitive.

I immediately started crushing on Sarah even harder, when it was done. That's the cycle. Enormous suffering transposed into infatuation, yielding enormous suffering, and so on. What must it be like to live unhindered by women? I remember wishing for saltpeter when I was young and desperately making sense of my sex drive. Now I wish I could keep my sex drive compartmentalized by pornography and stop looking for love.

I want my heart castrated.

Sarah is so charmingly gregarious and approachably sexy. I feel uncharacteristically capable of winning her affections if I could just find the opportunity.

About that. I think I'm - well, let's not say confident. Let's say my mind is projecting itself into the future. I am thinking from that perspective. No longer staring at the light at the end of the tunnel of weight loss. I am mentally inhabiting the light, ahead of my body. I began at 330. I aim at 180. I am nearly 230. I am two-thirds there.

Maybe that is it. Or, maybe the news that I've slipped under Paul is what did it. I knew I was no longer the fattest person I know, on account of Jeremy. Now, I'm no longer the fattest person I've met. And he's a couple of inches shorter. That makes the loss real. That makes it transcend fantasy. It is the change of one's number on the roster that is the bona fides of progress.

Two eggs and a tablespoon of heavy cream. No flip, which allowed a nicely formed circumference. The bottom did not burn before the top had cooked. No rawness.

Becoming standard. I am no longer embarrassed by the spinach's luster, having had it affirmed by friends in prior images. This is a good dinner. The salad could go.

Watering: Pressures, Scene of the Crime

Watering entries are personal diaries, alluding to this post's conclusion. They are a potpourri of recent thoughts and experiences (one might even call them a blog, if one were to be so common), published when I have no other projects to work on, in order to ensure I've written something for the day.


You know, talking about the banality of social media is extremely tired. Despite having never partaken in it until this month, I never found stand-up comedy jokes about the uselessness of "twittering" very funny or relatable. What is fertile ground: the utter anxiety of it. Wondering if you're saying too much, too frequently. Trying to glean the best way to acknowledge another person without feeling like an encumbrance on their feed. Reconnoitering the appropriate etiquette is made all the more difficult by those people who probably feel similarly cavalier when it comes to actual socialization, who insist that there's nothing to worry about.

Yeah, that'll keep Sarah from thinking I'm a big ol' goof.

Head is clearer today than yesterday, in which it was clearer than the day before. Weight stalled, teased lower. Dinner plans have changed for tonight. Could improvise portion adjustment? Dinner past two nights has been good: chicken coated reasonably well and a complete meal.

The spinach has made a commendable comeback in taste. And while it will never truly bedizen my plate, it doesn't necessarily look disgusting.

Dreamed last night of confirmation that CM Punk is a Republican. It's probably moot at this point. Whether he is or isn't, he's good friends with a devout one. Speaks ill of his character either way. And it's not like he was as admirable as I ever wished him to be in the first place.

In boarding school, we had an English assignment to write a week's journal entries for a fictional character. I attempted to write a man who had committed a murder. A really insightful take on the criminal mind, I'd intended. It was garbage, and I had to go with something else, but I remember one entry. It read, probably exclusively: "Don't return to the scene of the crime. Don't return to the scene of the crime. Don't return to the scene of the crime."

Follow by the next day's "I returned to the scene of the crime."

I remember when Jon's website was discovered, because he'd tweeted a Dragon Ball Z reference. He said he understood criminals now, how they make the mistakes they make, how maybe they want to get caught.

I don't want to get caught, but I also want to write down that I recently had a conversation turn sexual in slow motion. I should have stopped it, but I didn't, and it was a mistake. That's the funny thing about trying to actually do that thing people are supposed to do, ceasing flirtation. It's really difficult, not only on account of one's libido, but also just out of care for the partner. You don't want to hurt them by doing the right thing. He or she must have felt the same way too. It is so sensitive that I can't even use the person's alias. A lot of fears are hovering. It would be silly to expect that this will remain forever a secret. How wonderful it is to be such a weak-willed toy of consanguineous lust.

I must update this blog tomorrow in order to push this entry from prime viewing.

Funny how getting involved in a terrible situation like this makes the sexual aspects of the media I watch seem so much more empathetic. Maybe this is how everyone feels, and why people don't mind them as much as I do. The last Mad Men was just something else. It makes me think of that one episode of Sopranos I watched in bed in college, which will someday be recounted in Life in Song.

Wardrox was helpful in correspondence regarding The Player Character, which I am currently neglecting. News is going to get harder the longer I put it off. I'll go check my feeds now.

Watering: Hauppauge troubles, WrestleMania thoughts

Watering entries are personal diaries, alluding to this post's conclusion. They are a potpourri of recent thoughts and experiences (one might even call them a blog, if one were to be so common), published when I have no other projects to work on, in order to ensure I've written something for the day.

It's nice to wake every day with something to be excited about. With all the budding projects I have encircling me right now, my personal space is one of boundless potential, soon to be desaturated into a destitute aura of obligation and tedium.

One such happiness marred was my receipt of the Hauppauge 1445 HD-PVR Gaming Edition (along with my SSD). Curiously, it's fifteen dollars more expensive now, looking at Amazon. I suppose that pleases me in some spiteful way. I initially thought their included component cable was faulty, when strange horizontal lines began running through the image on my PlayStation 3. While there are cases of people attributing this to the Hauppauge, it seems that the real problem is some electrical gibberish on account of using components. Will try using a two prong adapter.

Didn't isolate this problem without some frustration. Tried the cables on the 360, compared with standard, no noticeable different. Had the 360 sat on my chair as the television was covering most of the table. Worried about ventilation but couldn't see any obvious problems. When I went to turn it on again, I saw my console red ring for the very first time.

It was rather pretty, in a terrifying way. The contrast of colors, the haunting significance, the immediate rush of adrenaline. Like looking at a beautiful, poisonous flower or staring into the face of God before you're liquidated into LCL. (I can't believe I was able to make that reference from memory.)

An immediate moment of clarity: I could purchase another 360 from eBay and give no money to Microsoft. But perhaps that's similar to perpetuating the diamond trade even by wearing synthetics. I searched for temporary, towel-based solutions (later, I would commend myself for not panicking - quite an Adamsian morning), leading me to discover that the truly dreaded red ring was three sections of the circle, not the full four. I'd simply not plugged my AV cable in all the way.

The so-called fear of God dissipated. I was left with the feeling that I ought to repent.

The Wii looked fine as well, although, having returned Skyward Sword, I had no games with which to see if switching cables had miraculously cured my black dots. Selected Super Mario Bros. 3 from my downloaded incunabula, not the most strenuous test for my newly acquired technology.

Combined breakfast and lunch into a nice meal over an episode of Peep Show I'd had in mind, having been too busy with the PVR to acknowledge the zeitgeber of morning.

Was going to write a Life in Song this morning, actually, before things became eventful. Now that I'm watering, I suppose I should talk about WrestleMania.

The conversation was good and pleasant, so I'm happy to say that I was wrong in my prediction that I'd regret looking forward to it, even despite Banky's absence for much of the show. Skype also helped expedite the evening, keeping the demons of delivery at bay. I was wrong when I assumed they would become worse with time. Now, I only think they'll become worse with depression or frustration. Perhaps it is working it against me that I've been in a good mood lately.

This is cyclical.

WrestleMania: Punk and Jericho did not open, which was good. Dragon's eighteen second loss did. Rock won, which surprised until it was made clear that he's in for Backlash, at least, the following night. Two people later, in the chat, were fans of Triple H and Undertaker. In Skype, we found it hysterically bad. Tim kept a count of finishers, marking attempts as halves but not counting sledgehammer shots. Eleven. We may have been petulant, laughing at their now seemingly lauded match, but it was a lot of fun.

My consoles work. My computer will arrive in total tomorrow. I know what my next step is to fix my PlayStation's issues. All in all, not as bad a day as it could have been.

Life in Song: Walter Reed

Life in Song is a series which will likely never finish. It is not, as originally conceived, a span of my hundred favorite songs; rather, each post covers one song randomly selected from a list of those which immediately evoke a memory or other emotional response. Entries will likely be uncomfortably candid and melancholic, as they attempt to recount a song's personal significance and also its context in my psychotically detailed fantasy life.

Song: Michael Penn - Walter Reed

Thoughts: This is the very first episode of Life in Song. I'd considered starting yesterday but chose not to for reasons of time. Additionally, just as finding the perfect song on my iPod with which to begin my walk in the morning is often a fifty-skip struggle, none of the songs that came up then were just right to be number one. Today, as though blessed, this song was the number drawn and I immediately knew it was the right place to begin.


Defining Era: 2007, winter.


Vital Lyric: "Tell me now what more do you need? Take me to Walter Reed tonight."


First Exposure: Home from college for the winter, I was able to catch up on the third season of House. This song plays at the end of "Fools for Love," which began the Michael Tritter arc. (It is also featured the medical mystery resolution of the two lovers actually being half-siblings, which struck me quite sadly that this was apparently devastating for them). Featuring a nice hook and somewhat ambiguous historical allusions, two things which will captivate me quite reliably, it transformed the otherwise dull scene of House's arrest into something that seemed fairly momentous.


Prominent Memory: I had had an online romance with Flower since the summer of 2006. She was at that point and possibly still the most attractive woman I'd conned into undressing for me, while lying about my weight and identity. That December, learning I'd returned to New York, she was insistent that we finally meet. I resisted at first. She wanted me to come on the thirtieth, claiming she was lonely, being sexually explicit, threatening that I would no longer see her on camera if I didn't. I caved, but it was too late by then. We agreed I'd come the next day, the thirty-first, the last day of the year. She was having a New Year's Eve party that night, but I could arrive, make love and leave before then.

She was staying alone in her father's apartment in the Battery Park Ritz-Carlton (half-hotel, half-apartment building). I spent the subway ride staring at my reflection in the opposite window, trying to convince myself that I wasn't too fat, that my hair wasn't too unkempt and haphazardly dyed, that my clothes weren't too poor. Thinking it totally sensible that she could grok me in person as she had over the Internet. Disembarking in a section of Manhattan to which I'd never before been, I considered trying to buy condoms at a Rite Aid, but was running late and lost.

"What a way to conclude 2006," I thought, wondering if everything could really work out.

I found the building hours after I should have. She was becoming frustrated waiting for me. The door man let me in. I still believe he thought I was a drug dealer, on account of my appearance and the brevity of my stay. I did not belong there. The apartment was the greatest I've ever entered, worth millions of dollars, window-walls overlooking the water south of Manhattan. This changed everything from that point of my life onward.

We sat. I felt the sexual tremors of imminence. She was not outwardly disgusted with me, but she didn't initiate anything either. Then, so quickly, the first of her friends arrived. I will never be convinced that she didn't have some silent way to signal them, once she saw me. They were courteous; they offered me marijuana, which I declined with the persistent lie that a friend and I had a contest to see who could stay sober longest. That sounded plausible to me, at the time. I left. I went home.

I listened to "Walter Reed," affixing my pain and turmoil to it. Days later I pressed her until she admitted that she found me unattractive. We never spoke much after that. Our differing interpretations of the events caused a rift between me and Kate. I skipped work (having just begun my internship two days prior), prompting my stepmother to grow enraged and complain that she needed space, and other things. I relayed her ranting to anyone I could reach on AIM, none of whom should have been told. It was a mistake. Later, in the gap of time before our first show, I sat on a bench with Leo and told him how much I love songs that allude to history, despite my lack of historical knowledge. It must have been apparent that I was bothered. He asked and I stayed coy. It was a good moment.

To grouse: I feel that this memory may set an inaccurate precedent for the Life in Song series. I believe very few will actually have such relatively meaningful stories. More will just be the soundtrack to my depression in various rooms.


Alternate Memories: "Walter Reed" came up twice more. Once, the drive home from college. ("All I want to die is hide, it's graduation day.") Of course, it wasn't meant to be the drive home, it was meant to be the drive to Philadelphia, but that's another story. I believe I chose it manually before shuffling the rest. "There's nothing here worth saving," the song said, reflecting on how fleeting I saw college by its end. Then, years later, I began the move to California with this song. I don't know if I chose it. I thought I would play music, but we switched to comedy and podcasts immediately afterward. My father asked about the aforementioned lyric. Of course it was intentional. The song was funereal then, as I looked back at my home for what has remained the final time.


Fantasy: While not a showstopper, "Walter Reed" is a reliable weapon in fantasy band Artist on Artist's arsenal. Its use of historical and military references make it characteristic of my more painful lyrics. Probably early-mid tenure at H Street, retired and used sparingly in later years.


Out of Ten: 8.3


Audiosurf Score: 58,553 (Nearby: 1, Global: 5)


Some Levity: I bet this space will be the hardest of any to fill. Let's see: "Walter Reed" led me to look up its namesake and his hospitals on Wikipedia. For some reason, he came up in conversation during my internship. I was able to note his influence in treating yellow fever, or something. Criminy, who brought up the person, seemed dubious - I think he had a different concept of Reed. That's not the levity. The levity is the time, at the same job, I sat on the couch as I did often and one of the other employees didn't realize that my arm was between his and the armrest, and failed to realize it for a long moment as it slowly downed on everyone that he had embraced me in this minor way. Barton commented something to the effect of: "When ten seconds lasts a lifetime."