As if the concept of getting sick when I don’t get sick pay wasn’t bad enough, there’s the actual getting sick part, which we all know is unpleasant and bad.

Sunday night I was up all night with intense stomach pains, and I finally just threw up, and felt fine, but I’d gotten no sleep, so I called in sick. I told them it was food poisoning (your guess is as good as mine) and that I’d be fine—just fine—to work on Tuesday.

Then there was Halloween. I ate four tons of food last night.

I slept fine Monday night until around six, at which time I woke up with, lo and behold, intense stomach pains. I couldn’t do anything about it so I loaded up on painkillers. We are now—and this is a set of words I do not think I have ever typed before—out of Aleve.

What’s really stupid is the Aleve didn’t even work. So a little while ago—after discovering to my dismay that what I thought were my three remaining Vicodins were in fact Allegra—well, I took a Percocet. All hail the Percocet. I could drop a brick on my foot right now and wouldn’t feel it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The FDA is 100% right to legislate and limit narcotic prescriptions like they do. This here is a recreational drug.

In any case, I have called in sick again, and thankfully spoke to a different person in the office. I feel especially bad because yesterday was the third day of a three-day assignment and today was the day of a one-day assignment in a different place. So both those clients? Screwedish.

I guess I’m just broken, and I just can’t eat anymore. You can bet your bottom dollar today will be an Experimental Low-Key Food Day. No tuna noodle casserole like Sunday. No lasagna and fourteen Kit-Kats (est.) like Monday. Today I am a jam-and-toast girl.

But I’m still not getting paid.

The graph I’m about to show you was one of about 100 I made this year for the National Science Foundation’s report to Congress (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/indicators/).

Some of the scientific things they list are people’s perceptions of science: there are charts and graphs about who knows what, broken down by things like gender, nationality, and education level.

One was the results of a survey quizzing people on basic scientific facts, like the earth going around the sun, species evolving, and the universe beginning in a huge explosion (the “big bang”). The fact that these were presented as facts by a government agency (considering the current administration believes in mythology) was pleasing to me.

What was not pleasing to me was the bar in a graph that told me 65% of Americans surveyed answered “false” to the universe beginning in an explosion. Almost two-thirds of us apparently think God made the universe in six days. More than half of us think evolution is “false.” A quarter of us think the sun goes around the earth.

We know better than China, on average, but we don’t know better than South Korea. This is why they have the coolest cell phones.

ANYWAY. There was another graph. This is the funny part, and I wish I’d uploaded this one. It listed things like astrology and clairvoyance. I’m not even commenting on the percentages that show how many people believe in this kind of thing—if they think evolution and the big bang are “false,” they’re more than welcome to spend their money on psychics.
Here’s last year’s version of the graph in question, which is pretty similar to this year’s.

The real joke there, at least to me, is how every topic but one is listed with a long, sentence-style explanation. Then you get “Witches.”

Not a complete sentence, like “Certain people, known as witches or warlocks, have the ability to harness supernatural forces to create magical results.”

Just “Witches.”

I’m at a temp job where there’s nothing for me to do, they know there’s nothing for me to do, and the owner of the company has just told me not to go home.

So be it. Random things.

The other day in my commuter lot, I saw a license plate that said “ICE 9.” Unless I am completely missing something else and overestimating the car’s owner, this is a reference to the book Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, and I was delighted to be in on the joke.

A few days before that, I saw an honest-to-goodness Virginia plate that said CUNTRYS. I have no idea how their system let that one get through and toyed with the idea of reporting it to someone.

I’m reading my new issue of STEP inside design magazine. I love this magazine because it’s full of reviews and articles on stuff that interests me, like websites (this restaurant one is beautiful; I love the ivory feel*), design conferences, software, photography, design annuals, textiles, toys, furniture, and even, once, cheese graters. There are interviews with the designers of well-known print ad campaigns, the creative directors of TV commercials, and the art directors of innovative movies. There are reviews and screenshots of interesting websites (go to vitaminwater.com and click “vitaminwater” in the upper left, then click “vital-T” to see the “spot of tea dear?” picture that will haunt your dreams) and articles and blurbs about really cool and innovative new products (this month’s best example).

I always end up marking a ton of pages for my collage or for things to look up online or in stores or on TV. The layout of the magazine itself is great, with creative typography (they lead stuff really tight, which I always like, though I’m not crazy about their paragraph spacing or their lack of column balancing and widow/orphan control) and lots of white space, meaning it’s easy to find cool phrases to cut out. The ads are also great, heavy on the paper manufacturers (often the paper ads are printed ON the paper being advertised, and often these samples are die-cut and made to be torn out and folded into things like gift tags and fortune-tellers, which is awesome) and stock-photo sites (often with codes for free images or sample books). My only quibble with this really high-quality magazine is shoddy prepress. Last month a whole page of type samples was dropped out, and the page ran with only blank blocks of color. A diecut paper-sample fortune-teller had the die crooked and wasn’t really foldable as intended (though a coworker here has one too, and hers is fine). And this month pages 121-128 appear twice, and pages 129-136 don’t appear at all. SO weird.

The girl (now 52) who played Scout in “To Kill a Mockingbird” still refers to the late Gregory Peck as “my Atticus.”A brief interview with her.

I think I’m going to move my prescriptions to Costco now that I can’t use my former insurer’s horrible mail service pharmacy anymore, but I’m tempted to pay retail just so I can get some of Target’s amazingly cool new prescription bottles. (Go to designforall.target.com, click the green pushpin or thereabouts (for “Everyday”) at the bottom, click “Protect” under “Activities,” and click the red prescription bottle in the upper left.)

Did you know the Powerpuff Girls are teenagers now? Creeeeepy.