Persiflage, Nancy Pelosi Impersonators, Plus Never Enuff AI Videos

[mallorys_camera]

Hilary Mantel is a bit rich for bedtime consumption. All those unfamiliar vocabulary words! "Persiflage," anybody? I mean, it's a great word, a perfect word, but who wants to read in bed with a book and a dictionary?

So, I've been putting myself to sleep with an old favorite: Pride & Prejudice.

And in the spirit of Pride & Prejudice, I scampered off to Marshall's yesterday to buy some long, flowery dresses that no self-respecting Regency heroine would ever be caught dead in, but hey! they were cheap.

I say "scampered." I really mean "limped." Because once in Marshall's, I felt as though I was going to faint.

Maybe I have COVID, I thought.

I never did catch COVID back when everybody else was catching it. Or maybe I did catch COVID but I was one of those asymptomatic COVIDers the CDC warned us about, out there insidiously infecting everybody else.

I'm not running a fever. But all those other symptoms—shortness of breath, hacking cough, traveling body aches, headache, extreme fatigue—were a check.

So, I bought the first three things I shoved into my shopping cart—fortunately, they all fit—and raced back home to do a COVID test.

Nope! Not COVID.

Maybe it is the the mysterious malaise that leveled BB & Flavia for three weeks. They actually went to a doctor. Verdict: a rhinovirus. A nasty rhinovirus.

Since the three of us were inhaling each other's carbon dioxide in a car not too terribly long ago, I'm gonna assume I have what they had.

###

As a sidebar, I'll note that I do hate shopping for clothes, and I don't understand at all how anybody can possibly like it. I see loads of clothes I like, usually on actors on the various streaming entertainments I indulge myself with. But none of those clothes are ever for sale at the stores I can afford. The stores I can afford are filled with the most awful dreck in the most hideous colors and patterns, and the stores are lit up with migraine-inducing fluorescents, and the other shoppers are extras out of some colorized B-roll from Night of the Living Dead.

###

I went to bed early and slept nine hours, and feel maybe 85% this morning, but I expect that to fade.

The only going-out-of-the-house thing I have to do today is Adrienne's meet-and-greet, which I volunteered to help her with.

I wish I hadn't!

Adrienne has delusions of being Nancy Pelosi.

The other day, she was introducing me to someone: "And here's Patrizia who does... uh... social media—"

"I designed your website," I reminded her tartly.

She never even thanked me for designing her website!

And then yesterday, she emailed me some statistics about food stamp cutbacks in Ulster County (severe) with the note: Lets look into this.

You look into it, be-yatch! I thought. I am not your fuckin' staffer.

I remind myself that this is a networking opportunity. Networking has never been something I'm particularly good at, subscribing as I do to the naive notion that human connections should be sincere & spring from the heart.

But it's never too late to learn.

###

And speaking of learning...

Here's Today's Exciting AI Video!

Sora would not touch the medieval cats marginalia at all! I wonder if that's some weird kind of copyright hypervigilance?

So, it was back to NightCafe with some prompt tweaks. This prompt worked a bit more successfully than yesterday's, except that that the black cat is no longer turning pages and the strange hulking cat on the lower right keeps sprouting disturbing phantom limbs.

Comments

[bleodswean]

I like these little AI vids. I think I prefer yesterday's marginalia cats and rats. Fun!

[mallorys_camera]

I like the ending of this one better, but you're right—the other one had a better beginning.

[summersgate]

Ha! I loved the ending of this one!

[mallorys_camera]

I do, too! 😀

[suzannareads]

I recently checked out from the library an adaptation called Pride and Prejudice in Space. I don’t exactly recommend it, but I did enjoy it.

Hope your day of rest and relaxation is good.

[mallorys_camera]

I've also seen something called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in bookstores. 😀

[lethe1]

Is your COVID test up-to-date? The older tests don't recognize the new variants, so they give false negatives.

Did you use the oxygen meter? I immediately bought one back when you wrote about it, and it gives some extra reassurance.

[mallorys_camera]

Honestly? I dunno if the COVID test is up to date. I do throw the old ones out once a year and replace them with new ones.

Good thought about the oximeter.

[asakiyume]

For the past some-months, there have been unpleasant viruses that come up not-covid and not-flu, but they're still unpleasant.

Hope you feel better in less than three weeks!

And honestly, Adrienne! What the heck???

I like to think of you scampering like a rabbit or a hare.

[mallorys_camera]

Rabbits are my totem animal. Max's last name is actually "Hare." 😀

I'm shocked

[bb_lurks_here_too]

That you got stuck on "persiflage". In the original French the verb it's derived from actually means your favorite thing: "to banter". Of course in English it got better as most French words do, in coming to connote not just "banter" but words designed to throw one off the track of a liar. (Thinking of Ben here, it would mean both what you loved and hated about him)

Re: I'm shocked

[mallorys_camera]

I know, right? It's a word that I of all people should know! 😀

I think we should make a pact to use "persiflage" at least once in every future conversation we have with one another!