Retroaction

I went to Urgent Care tonight to get my thumb x-rayed. I hurt it yesterday, assumed that it wasn't broken because I could move it without experiencing severe pain, but was alarmed by the swelling and bruising that showed up overnight. Thankfully, my initial supposition turned out to be correct: it's merely badly jammed. More intriguing was the fact that my nurse, who sees dozens of patients each hour, day after day, remembered me from my early January visit. "You're the one who had the terrible cellulitis in your throat. How did that turn out?" She was surprised to learn that I'd managed to overcome a tonsillar abscess without hospitalization. Needless to say, I'm retroactively proud of my stoutness. But it would probably make more sense for me to own up to the stupidity of my stubbornness instead.

The Radar Still Works

I haven't been paying attention to release dates lately. I'm busy. I'm not getting paid to write about music anymore. I'm in word mode. But that sleep-suppressed part of me that still remembers, for example, that June 24, 1999 -- a Tuesday, naturally -- marked the release of Pavement's last studio album Terror Twilight, it made its presence felt tonight. After my visit to Urgent Care I was irresistibly drawn to ZIA on Oracle and then to the New Order bin. I honestly thought their new record was coming out in a month or two. Yet there it was, in all its first-day-out glory. Whether I end up liking it or not -- and it seems worthy of a thumbs-up so far -- I'm delighted to know that I haven't gone totally numb to the provocations of consumer desire.