It was a fiery pain, sharp and sudden, as if I’d brushed up against a white hot stove element. I dropped my bag of dog treats and immediately checked the source of the intense burning, discovered the detached wasp’s stinger embedded on the inside base of my right ring finger. It instantly brought to mind a video I once saw, an extreme close up of an abandoned stinger, one end trailing its former owner’s innards, the other still pumping liquid poison into its unfortunate victim. I acted quickly, pulled it out, then attempted to suck the toxin out of the tiny wound – with negligible results. In retrospect, I think that only works for snake bites.
WTF? I’ve always laughed at the women in my life – my sister, my ex, Akemi – whenever they’ve reacted with hysterics, shrieking and bolting, at the mere sight of a wasp, ever-confident in my assumption (evidently an erroneous one) that the damn things only sting when provoked. Also, from what I’d been told, unlike bees that can sting with gay abandon and not suffer any consequences, wasps die after they sting someone. As it turns out, wrong again as its reversed: bees die because of their hooked stingers while wasps are unaffected due to fact that their stingers are straight. So, my assailant wasn’t suicidal, but she (I’ve since learned that only females possess stingers) was certainly crazed. How else to explain that completely unjustified attack? I was just standing there, minding my own business. My own business!
And, yes, I’m sure it was a wasp and not a bee. It didn’t look like this:
It looked like this:
All demented and angry and shit.
I had to cut the walk short, much to Jelly’s disappointment, and returned home to run the affected area under cold water, douse it with oregano oil and rubbing alcohol, and then downed a couple of advils and a benadryl. Nevertheless, my finger swelled up, turned a bright pink, and was extremely sensitive to touch. On the bright side, I did not experience dizziness, shortness of breath and/or death.
Ironically, I wasn’t the one scheduled to endure any sort of pain today. That was Akemi who had a wisdom tooth removed this afternoon.
She was in and out of the dentist’s office in less than fifteen minutes and, I’m pleased to report, is on the mend. According to the dental assistant, when she gets hungry, she should eat something soft and preferably not hot. So, ice cream dinner it is!
Continuing our trip down Atlantis memory lane:
QUARANTINE (413)
A “bottle episode” is a cost-saving episode that limits its scope to our established characters and sets while also making equally limited use of visual effects. After Be All My Sins Remember’d, we really needed one of these to get us back on track budget-wise. More often than not, the action in a bottle episode centers on our heroes, trapped and isolated, attempting to reverse the conditions that landed them in their difficult circumstances. When done well, bottle episodes can be engaging and entertaining, shedding light on our characters as they open up to one another in closed confine conversations. When done poorly – well, there’s not need to discuss that since Quarantine did it well, throwing together some unlikely pairings (Ronon and Keller, Carter and Zelenka) and delivering an episode that, while inexpensive to produce, offered humor, suspense, and insight into our characters. It also granted an opportunity to a most unlikely hero, Radek Zelenka, who ends up saving the day – following a terrific tumble out a vent.
Ah, how things may have gone had the circumstances been different. At the beginning of the season, Martin Gero pitched the idea of McKay becoming a dad. I liked the notion of Rodney having to balance fatherhood with his ongoing commitment to safeguarding the galaxy and we were giving some serious consideration to having him settle down with Katie Brown… But when Rachel informed us that she was pregnant, we elected to write her pregnancy into the show instead. There could only be room for one parent in season 4.
This creative shift also, curiously, had an effect on another storyline we’d been considering, a romantic arc that would have seen Ronon and Keller get together. In the end, it became a love triangle and, instead of Kellnon (or is it Roller?) we wound up with McKeller (or is it KellKay?).
Thoughts? Opinions? Did you prefer one pairing over another? Or would you have preferred no pairing at all?
Leave a Reply