"Attorneys for Christa Pike said Thursday afternoon that she is alive, in critical condition 'and receiving lifesaving medical care' after Tennessee officials tried and failed to execute her by lethal injection the previous night."

WaPo reports.

AND: Here's some speculation about how she survived (and an interesting tip on how a person can prepare in advance to stymie the lethal injection):

"... the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us..."

Ever since my experience with "the foul-mouth parrot Andrew Jackson once had" — which required me to get my head examined — I've been on the lookout for sentences that resist reading,  perhaps to the point where I consider the possibility that I have lost the ability to read. 

In that light, I contemplated this famously long sentence by Virginia Woolf, which begins her essay "On Being Ill."

"Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us in the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death

"Lounging idly in the deserted little waiting-room was the usual shabby, bored, lonely ticket-seller, prodigiously indifferent to the grave beauty of the scene before him and to the throng of ancient memories jostling him where he stood."

Having recently suffered a bout of isolated transient alexia, I worry about a relapse when I encounter a sentence like that. It makes me wonder: Do I still have the ability to read?

That's the first sentence of a novel — writers put a lot of effort into crafting sentence #1, you know! — and that one is calling out to readers who are not me. Somehow every noun needs at least one adjective — or 3 or 6.

The book is "The Brimming Cup" by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. It was the #2 bestseller of 1921. (#1 was "Main Street" by Sinclair Lewis.) Here's a great picture of Canfield Fisher:

Isolated Transient Alexia — a migrainous accompaniment — ever had it?

JAMA Neurology abstract: "Alexia as a transient or paroxysmal neurologic event is a rare clinical finding. John Hughlings Jackson made reference to the paroxysmal occurrence of 'word blindness' as a temporary sequela of neuronal exhaustion at an epileptogenic focus.... A transient episode of alexia in the absence of accompanying neurologic deficit is exceedingly rare.... We recently observed a patient who experienced an isolated, transient alexia that appears to have been a migrainous accompaniment...."

I suspect this happened to me. Here's what I was trying to read and could not make any sense of it, and I struggled from all different angles: "The Story of the Foul-Mouthed Parrot Andrew Jackson Once Had" (an episode of a podcast I like: "Boring History for Sleep"). 

Now, I think that's a type of headline that is objectively hard to puzzle out. I encountered another one this morning in the NY Post: "Missouri foster mom accused of trading teen for monkey avoids prison." Something about the sequence "monkey avoids prison" sends your thoughts tripping over the precipice. 

But that "Foul-Mouth Parrot" headline was entirely undecipherable to me. I searched for an entry point: What is "Story"? What is "Andrew"? "Foul"? I couldn't even think of how to begin to pronounce those words or how words work together to mean something. This not-knowing lasted for about 15 minutes, and of course, I queried A.I. about it. That was after Meade had consulted a different A.I.

And I believe all A.I.s will tell you the same thing if you put this story into it — not the story of Andrew Jackson's parrot or the story of the foster mom's monkey — the story of a reading human suddenly completely unable to read. And we did what A.I. told us to do. That's why there was no sunrise photo yesterday. Our sleep was massively disrupted. I had to get my head examined.

ADDED: I omitted a crucial detail that is why I was thinking in terms of a migrainous accompaniment. About an hour before the alexia, I experienced a scintillating scotoma — a glittering arc'd zigzag in my visual field. I've had that twice before, in 2004 and 2014. In 2014, I treated it as nothing, but it felt like a big deal in 2004. I blogged it as "My scotoma" (deliberately evoking "My Sharona"):

"A defibrillator delivers up to 1,000 volts to a patient’s heart; inmates executed by electric chair typically receive about 2,000."

"A typical lightning strike, by contrast, transmits 100 million volts or more. But lightning races through the body in milliseconds, and therefore often spares it. Some people... recall the moment vividly.... the flash of light whiting out all vision; the sound, which many survivors say is the loudest they’ve ever heard. The pain, for some, is excruciating, yet others feel no pain at all. 'It felt like adrenaline, but stronger,' one survivor reported. 'I felt an incredible pulsing,' another said, 'a burning sensation from head to toe.'... [Afterwards, f]orgetfulness, sleep problems, sexual dysfunction, and headaches that manifest as intense pressure—like 'my eyeballs are just popping out,” one person told me—are common. Some people become hypersensitive to noise; others lose their hearing entirely. A few, almost miraculously, are freed of a prior ailment: a bad leg healed; vision, once impaired, restored.... Some have to relearn simple things, things they’ve done their whole life—how to read, how to sing, how to ride a bike.... One woman told me she often feels as though water is running down her limbs.... Inexplicable odors can emerge; food can taste like cardboard or glue...."

From "What 100 Million Volts Do to the Body and Mind/The odds of being struck by lightning in America in a given year are one in 1.2 million. How does the experience reorient a person’s sense of chance, of fate?" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

"Hopper had suffered body dysphoria since childhood and his feet were an 'unwelcome extra'.... Hopper did not regret the operations, but 'bitterly regrets' the 'dishonesty' about their cause...."

I'm reading "Surgeon jailed after amputation of own legs" (BBC).

An NHS vascular surgeon who had his own legs removed has been jailed for two years and eight months for insurance fraud and possessing extreme pornography. Neil Hopper, 49, of Truro, Cornwall, carried out hundreds of amputation operations before having his own legs removed in 2019.

"He was eight inches shorter in length than he was before he burned. That’s thermal fracture.... Not only are you riding on top of 3,000 pounds of batteries, this 'spaceship' design is a double-edged sword."

Said the plaintiff's lawyer, quoted in "Family sues Tesla after Cybertruck owner dies in 5,000-degree inferno, causing bones to disintegrate" (NY Post).

"Billionaire Elon Musk stunned the White House press corps Friday by sporting a black eye to an Oval Office event to mark the end of his 130 days in the Trump administration."

The NY Post reports.

Oh.. ha ha... I see he made the joke I was about to make: He "wasn’t anywhere near France."

"Prince Robert also shared that his son asked him a final question: 'Papa, are you proud of me?'"

"Prince Frederik had struggled to speak for 'several days' before he died, according to Robert, 'so the clarity of these words was as surprising as the weight of the moment was profound. The answer was very easy, and he had heard it oh so many times, but at this time, he needed reassurance that he had contributed all that he possibly could in his short and beautiful existence and that he could now finally move on,' Robert explained. 'Frederik knows that he is my Superhero....'"

From "Luxembourg’s Prince Frederik dead at 22 from rare genetic disease: 'He is my superhero'" (NY Post). The disease is POLG Mitochondrial disease.

"Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan revealed Friday that a Facebook user claiming to be a 'cousin' of a juror in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial..."

"... suggested he had advanced knowledge of last week’s guilty verdict. 'Today, the Court became aware of a comment that was posted on the Unified Court System’s public Facebook page and which I now bring to your attention,' Merchan wrote in a letter to Trump attorney Todd Blanche and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. 'In the comment, the user, "Michael Anderson," states: "My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted … Thank you folks for all your hard work!!! …."' the judge explained. .... In his Facebook profile, Anderson describes himself as a 'Transabled & a professional sh** poster.'"

I'm reading "Hush money judge alerts Trump lawyer, prosecutors to Facebook post claiming prior knowledge of jury’s verdict" (NY Post).

It's hard to imagine how this can amount to anything... even if it turns out that the person who posted actually is the cousin of one of the jurors.

I've chosen to link to this story at the NY Post, because other news outlets did not include the detail that "Michael Anderson" called himself "transabled." According to Wikipedia, "transabled" is a term used by some persons with body integrity dysphoria, which is "a rare mental disorder characterized by a desire to have a sensory or physical disability or feeling discomfort with being able-bodied, beginning in early adolescence and resulting in harmful consequences."

Why would someone who presented himself as a "shit poster" — I'd write "shitposter" — also want to identify as "transabled"? Actually, it's hard to understand why a shitposter would want to call himself a shitposter. Wouldn't the usual game of shitposting be undercut by telling people that's what you're doing?

"The new Trump movie has his campaign in an uproar...."

 

Apparently, the Cannes audience gasped at the brutality of the rape scene. The victim: Ivana.

Here's the Guardian article, "'This garbage is pure fiction': when subjects hit back at their biopics Trump has spoken out against The Apprentice, but he’s not the first celebrity to attack an unflattering big-screen portrait":

"The court heard how the defendant's 'Eunuchmaker' pay-per-view website advertised services including castration, penis removal and the freezing of limbs."

I'm reading "'Eunuch-maker' mutilator jailed for 22 years" (BBC).

I first read about this case in The Daily Record, and it was so ludicrously, shockingly lurid that I didn't think I could write about it. But then I saw the BBC was covering it, so it became bloggable.

But for the sake of decency, I will put the rest after the jump:

"One day I opened my eyes from a deep sleep and looked around for something, anything, familiar. Everywhere I looked was all very strange."

"Little did I know that each new day my life was unavoidably set on a path that would become unimaginably strange and more challenging."

Wrote Paul Alexander, with a pencil (or pen) in his mouth, quoted in his obituary, "Lawyer, Author and TikTok Star Spent 72 Years in an Iron Lung/Paul Alexander, who died at 78, was paralyzed with polio at age 6 and relied on the machine to breathe. Still, he was able to earn a law degree, write a book and, late in life, build a following on TikTok" (NYT).

"Nobody will ever hear me say I’m glad she’s dead or I’m proud of what I did. I regret it every single day."

"She didn’t deserve that. She was a sick woman and unfortunately I wasn’t educated enough to see that. She deserved to be where I am, sitting in prison doing time for criminal behavior."

Said Gypsy Rose Blanchard, quoted in "Gypsy Rose Blanchard released from prison early after serving time for the murder of her abusive mother/Blanchard, 32, was released from the Chillicothe Correctional Center at 3:30 a.m. Thursday. She had been serving a 10-year sentence for the June 2015 slaying of her mother" (NBC News).

"Do you believe that people are understanding better or are they dolts like me who think you're acting?"

Chris Cuomo loses composure and tries to hold back laughter while interviewing a TikTok influencer who suffers from Tourette’s.

Might be the most entertaining interview I’ve seen this year 😂 pic.twitter.com/2KbRzCXZux

— Te𝕏asLindsay™ (@TexasLindsay_) December 13, 2023

"You have my kids repeating your lines, so that it's almost become cool — and not because it's raunchy — but because you're being real, and you're living your truth, and they love it. They love the bravery of it."

"I have that disorder where when people make noises it hurts me. Like at the movies? That loud popcorn chewing..."

"... or the rustling of the wrappers. I don’t go to the movies for that reason.... Not interested [in men]. I don’t want to sleep with anybody any more. I don’t want to hear somebody breathing."

Said Linda Evangelista, quoted in "Linda Evangelista: ‘I don’t blame myself any more’/She was one of the world’s most famous supermodels, but a botched cosmetic procedure left her a recluse. Now, at 58, she’s back — and taking each day as it comes" (London Times).

There are plenty of reasons to avoid relationships. One is that they make noise, even if it's only the breathing.

ADDED: The condition, I've read elsewhere, is called "misophonia," and I blogged about it here, in 2011, and here, in 2015. There's an excellent Reddit group, r/misophonia, here.

What would it take to get us to notice this once much-talked-about topic that had fallen entirely out of the news?

The topic is NFTs.

I'm reading "More Than 20 Report Burning Eyes After NFT Festival in Hong Kong/Bored Ape Yacht Club, the collective that hosted the three-day event, said it was investigating possible causes, including UV lights used at a party on Saturday night" (NYT)

"The ways you can get infected with this bacteria are, one, you can eat something that’s contaminated with it [and] the other way is by having a cut or tattoo exposed to water in which this bug lives."

From "California mom had all of her limbs amputated after consuming bad tilapia: 'She almost lost her life'" (NY Post).

The bacteria is Vibrio Vulnificus, and here's a link to an article from last month, "New York State Department releases guidance after 3 dead from flesh-eating bacteria in New York, Connecticut." 

I think the problem with swimming and tattoos refers only to recent tattoos, in their healing phase. It would be quite something if getting tattooed represented a decision never to go swimming again. 

Meanwhile, the woman who lost all her limbs merely encountered fish, and it's not enough to avoid eating raw or undercooked fish. You have to worry about handling raw fish. Wear gloves.

"One agency, which the officials did not name, determined that it was 'unlikely' that a foreign actor was at fault, a slightly less emphatic finding..."

"... that did not appreciably change the consensus. One agency abstained in its conclusion regarding a foreign actor. But when asked, no agency dissented from the conclusion that a foreign actor did not cause the symptoms, one of the intelligence officials said.... 'There was nothing,' the official said. This person added that there was no intelligence that foreign leaders, including in Russia, had any knowledge of or had authorized an attack on U.S. personnel that could explain the symptoms."

I'm reading "'Havana syndrome' not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary, intelligence review finds/After a years-long assessment, five U.S. intelligence agencies conclude it is 'very unlikely' an enemy wielding a secret weapon was behind the mysterious ailment" (WaPo).

Some attempts to allay suspicion stimulate suspicion. I wonder what else does "not appreciably change the consensus." I remember when "consensus" used to feel reassuring.

The intelligence assessment also examined whether an adversary possessed a device capable of using energy to cause the reported symptoms. Of the seven agencies, five determined that it was “very unlikely,” while the other two said it was “unlikely.”

But what did cause the symptoms? Is every possible cause is unlikely? If so, the unlikely causes remain in play, because something caused them.

"Even though medical experts expect their baby to survive only 20 minutes to a couple of hours, the Dorberts say their doctors told them that because of the new legislation...

"... they could not terminate the pregnancy.... 'The doctors already told me, no matter what, at 24 weeks or full term, the outcome for the baby is going to be the same.' Florida’s H.B. 5 — Reducing Fetal and Infant Mortality... bans abortion after 15 weeks with a couple of exceptions, including one that permits a later termination if 'two physicians certify in writing that, in reasonable medical judgment, the fetus has a fatal fetal abnormality' and has not reached viability. It is not clear how the Dorberts’ doctors applied the law in this situation. Their baby has a condition long considered lethal that is now the subject of clinical trials to assess a potential treatment. Neither Dorbert’s obstetrician nor the maternal fetal medicine specialist she consulted responded to multiple requests for comment...."

I'm reading "Her baby has a deadly diagnosis. Her Florida doctors refused an abortion. Florida abortion ban includes exception for fatal fetal abnormalities. But her doctors told her they could not act" (WaPo).

I wonder... are the doctors interested in getting the chance to figure out how to treat the condition, which is Potter syndrome?