Fanfare For The Common Cold…Tuesday Open Thread

Summer colds: what if you were sweating your tits off AND couldn’t breathe?

As you might imagine, coherent thought is even more elusive than normal right now, so I’m going pseudo-Larry King Dead stream of consciousness here. Buckle the fuck up:

ISSUE THE FIRST: Underappreciated stuff.

1. Ginger beer. It’s the most underrated of soft drinks. Most of the people I know think of it exclusively as a mixer for your Moscow Mules and your Darks and Stormys and whathaveyou. You are missing out, my friends. A good ginger beer makes your mouth tingle like wasabi and whiskey while simultaneously quenching your thirst. Get you some Bundaberg (those Aussies understand these matters). Embrace the pain and live in the light eternal..

2.  The Bangles. Too often they are pigeonholed by people who only know “Walk Like an Egyptian” or “Eternal Flame” as 80s kitsch. Serious musicians who fused a shitload of different influences and styles into their music while under pressure to be the Glam Girls. Go listen to In a Different Light. Don’t worry- I’ll wait.

3. Ernie Hudson. The “other” Ghostbuster who auditioned for HIS OWN ROLE in the animated series and got beaten out by Arsenio Hall. Then he kills it as the warden in Oz. All after being orphaned at TWO MONTHS OLD.

4.   Overcast weather. Snow makes the news. Rain makes the news. Sunshine is the GLORREEE BOY that everyone is so fucking glad to see. Let’s hear some love for that nice medium-dark gray day, where there’s no real threat of precipitation. It’s relaxing. Soothing. No glare, just vibes.

5. Fla-Vor Ice. Specifically the orange ones melted (but still cold). Delicious, and the fastest way to ingest sugar outside of snorting Pixy Stix off a prostitute’s ass.

6. Urinal diffusers. Also known as “urinal screens”.  Everytime I use the urinals at work, it boggles my mind that some Ph.D fluid dynamicist and an industrial designer had to sit down together and come up with a product to efficiently disperse a high-speed stream of urine without scattering or aerosolizing the droplets, all while using the least amount of material per screen. If I see further, it is because I am pissing on the shoulders of giants.

7. Egg Drop Soup. Name a more versatile soup. You can’t. It’s delicious as an appetizer. It can be a main dish. Put some char siu pork in there, a couple mushrooms, some baby corn and you’ve got Mary Ann to ramen’s Ginger. Or some nduja. Fuck, I wish I could taste things right now…

8. Nyquil.

NFL NEWS:

-Free agent running back Leonard Fournette narrowly escaped being cooked when his custom Dodge Durango Hellcat caught fire while he was driving on the highway. No details have come to light regarding the start of the fire. Fournette, who was released earlier this year by Tampa Bay at his own request, instead released a video thanking God for being able to walk away from the smouldering wreckage which would surely have crippled him, if not killed him outright. He probably said some stuff about the car wreck as well.

NON-NFL NEWS:

–Italian teacher sacked for 20 years of absence vows to defend herself. Hero.

-No coup in Russia? We’re not couping now? And after I got out the red, black and green
Liberation jumpsuit that I had been saving for just the proper occasion…

WHAT’S ON TONIGHT:

Well, if shitty baseball isn’t your thing, you’ve got a few choices:

CONCACAFACAFO Gold Cup Futbol:

Canada vs. Guadeloupe (6 pm DFO Standard, Fox Sports 1): Cohost Canada kicks off its campaign against the former Swedish colony (look it up- it’s the only thing I remembered from my elementary school book report!).  Normally, I reflexively root against France, and so I would be opposed to Guadeloupe as a French overseas department. However, I am almost always going to support an island group with fewer than 400,000 souls to draw from. Also, I see here that they previously defeated Canada in the 2007 Gold Cup en route to a semi-final berth, which I find delightful.