Author: Graeme McMillan

I am an old man. That’s a story I keep telling myself in part in jest, in part in exaggerated, melodramatic concern, but it’s something that I felt for real, for once, this weekend when out for donuts with friends. The trigger was simple; while out with those friends, I didn’t check my phone once — I had it with me, sure, but beyond looking at it to check the time at one point, I didn’t look at my messages, Twitter or anything else like that. Those I was with, however, did so pretty continuously. More impressively, they were apparently having multiple conversations with people while we were talking and I didn’t even notice. I’d think we were all engrossed in the conversation we were having, and suddenly they’d drop some comment about something that had just happened on Twitter or whatever; I came home to discover that there had been an ongoing text message thread that I was part of going on the entire time, without me even knowing.

I thought to myself, this is what happens when you get older; there’s a point where you hit the level of information you’re able to deal with at one time, and that’s it. My friends weren’t there yet, they could take more in (and put more out there) effortlessly. One of these days, the speed with which I can process information will seem old-fashioned and archaic, while everyone else will be processing tens of chats in real time and virtually without giving it a first thought, never mind a second. Welcome to the future.

Because it’s been awhile, and because I’m returning after radio silence brought on by being sick:

Hello! I’m Graeme McMillan, a writer about pop and nerd culture for Wired.com, Playboy.com and the Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision and Live Feed blogs. You can find me on Twitter, here on Tumblr, and early morning ramblings here. I’m also one half of the Wait, What? podcast, which you can listen to on iTunes, Stitcher or find right here, and I write weekly blog posts for that site, as well. I also run the Wait, What? Tumblr which updates sporadically at best. Like Auric Goldfinger, I love only gold. Owwwwwwnly gohhhhhld. Owwwwwwwwnly gohhhhhhhlllllllddddddd.

After days of enforced solitude, yesterday was surprisingly social — brunch with one group of friends, late afternoon donuts with another — and I spent the entire time pretty much leaning back and hoping that I wasn’t infecting anyone (Kate to everyone, at more than one point: “He can’t be infectious anymore, he’s been sick for too long,” as if that makes me feel better). Nonetheless, it was apparently good for me — I feel better today than I have done in almost a week, which might be a sign that I’m finally on the mend.

Of course, the fact that I started taking cold medication properly yesterday after days of just hoping that relaxing, hot tea and watching Star Trek The Next Generation might also have something to do with it. But I’m placing all the credit on the friendship.

I woke up this morning at 2am, far earlier than I would have liked, coughing and with my throat burning. Clearly, I wasn’t healthy just yet, and that realization was at once depressing, frustrating and angering: I had gone to bed convinced that I was “getting better,” and that I’d wake up this morning at a sensible hour, feeling healthier and back to normal or at least almost back to normal. Instead, I woke up and thought, no, wait, I was supposed to sleep in today and not feel like this, what the fuck. There’s a stage of sickness where it’s not enough to distract, but enough to irritate, and it feels like that’s where I’ve been for days, now. To me, my medication! To me, my health. We can but hope.

I am, as the Smiths would put it, still ill.

Yesterday, bothered and frustrated by that fact, I resorted to those lozenges that have names like Cold-eze or So You Can’t Breathe Without It Hurting Well Maybe Suck On This. The directions for them always amuse and worry in equal measure: Don’t take any more than six a day! Don’t take them any faster than one every two hours! Don’t feed after midnight! One of the particular directions of these particular lozenges in question was, “Don’t bite on it, just suck it until it dissolves entirely.”

So I put it in my mouth and obey the directions, thinking to myself don’t bite it I know I want to bite it but just don’t bite it for the love of God when, entirely unthinkingly, I swallow it whole.

Now, this shouldn’t be a problem — it was pretty small, and it’s not as if it could really lodge in my throat and kill me, and yet that’s exactly what I was convinced was going to happen. For the next ten minutes after swallowing, I sat there nervously, unable to do anything other than just wonder when I’d suddenly stop breathing without notice. Goodbye, cruel world, I thought to myself. At least when I’m dead, I won’t have to keep blowing my nose.

Firmly into day three of being sick, and I’ve reached the stage where sleeping isn’t really an option; instead, I found myself lying awake in bed, my throat killing me and my head unable to stop running through “Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson. Despite this, I know that I’m getting better because thinking doesn’t seem like such a full-time occupation anymore, unlike yesterday.

What’s amused/annoyed me in equal parts about this cold is that, the past few times I’ve been sick, it’s been on weekends and I’ve felt sorry for myself, thinking if only this would happen during the week, I wouldn’t lose my free time to being sick. Now that it’s actually happened, I’ve realized how misguided I was; my deadlines still exist, it’s just that they take longer to meet when you can’t think straight. File under “Be Careful What You Wish For, Because You’re Dumb.”

I’m sick.

I could feel it coming on yesterday, and I alternated between denying it and embracing it with a certain fatalism (Of course I’m getting sick, I’m about due for this). What it means right now is an unclear head, a sore throat that constantly needs to be cleared, occasional coughing, a running nose and me feeling sorry for myself.

Really, it wouldn’t be January without this happening. It just got in under the wire.

I’m often struck, reading news stories about snow storms and blizzards and such hitting other parts of the country, by something approaching jealousy — a sense of that weather sounds exciting, I wish we had snow. It’s as if there’s part of my brain that hears the word “snow” or “blizzard” and immediately falls into a drift of romanticized imagery where it’s cold and white outside, yet still friendly and welcoming, and people go out and build snowmen before coming back in to drink hot chocolate.

The reality, I know, is very different. Since moving to Portland, I’ve been through a couple of genuine snowstorms which are exciting and beautiful at the time, but bring all manner of problems (Better hope that you’ve stocked up, because you’re really not going to want to get groceries during that kinda thing). It always ends with the snow melting, and just days of slush and greyness outside, the thing I always forget. One of these days, I’ll remember the downsides instead of just being jealous about the postcard version of things in my head.

Today’s post is postponed by the Fantastic Four trailer, which I’ve already written about twice and will probably do so another couple of times before the day is out. Sometimes, a trailer, or a piece of news about something similar, is released and I find myself writing about it a number of times for a number of different outlets. It’s an interesting experience, trying to keep track of what I’ve written for where, and also the different tones and expectations of each outlet. I can say this nerdy detail here, but it’d be lost over here and so on.

The problem always comes when the thing you’re writing about is so vague that it’s difficult to pull any details out of, of course; I remember the Star Wars trailer and the number of times I essentially wrote “Well, we don’t know who these guys are, but it looks great, huh?” over and over again.

Looking at the list of locations and former wifi networks on my Kindle is like reading a particularly off-kilter recitations of everywhere I’ve been for the last year or so. Like an elephant, it appears that a Kindle never forgets — at least where it concerns Internet connectivity. It offers up a number of options anytime it’s somewhere new, a coded collection of past locations: Where was 2mbbt, again? Was it somewhere I went to via the Bolt Bus free wifi that’s also on here?

When we’re old and forgetful — so, you know, next week at the rate I’m going — it’ll be these kinds of collections of old Internet logins that will survive us and tell us where we used to be. Our lives written out in keychains and forgotten passwords to locations we won’t even remember visiting.