In which she celebrates yet another cold with a poll

(LJ users will need to click through.)

Poll #3798 We're talking non-serious instances of the common cold here. Serious illness gets serious sympathy.

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6

View Respondents

What's your favouritest symptom of the common cold ever?

View Answers

Sinus congestion -> headache. Diddums points for hunting down knitting needles to drain the cavities.
2 (33.3%)

Nose congestion, subcategory runny -> using up a box of tissues on abrading your poor snozzle. Diddums points for plugging them with tissue and wandering around like a walrus.
0 (0.0%)

Nose congestion, subcategory blocked -> having to sleep with your mouth open to breathe. Diddums points for dreams in which your mouth is so dry it's set like concrete.
4 (66.7%)

Nose congestion, subcategory sneezing.
0 (0.0%)

Inflamed throat, subcategory ow. Diddums points for developing a loathing for the taste of throat lozenges.
1 (16.7%)

Inflamed throat, subcategory "OMG, since when did my throat have mucus glands?"
1 (16.7%)

Inflamed throat, subcategory can't talk now, vocal cords glued together. Diddums points for teaching a bunch of ESOL classes anyway.
1 (16.7%)

Chest congestion, subcategory productive cough. Diddums points for checking to make sure you're not coughing up blood.
1 (16.7%)

Chest congestion, subcategory nonproductive cough. Diddums points for getting a bowl in case you accidentally cough up your stomach contents instead.
1 (16.7%)

Chest congestion, subcategory asthma. Diddums points for being surprised when the nurse tells you your blood oxygen levels are perfectly normal actually.
0 (0.0%)

Chest congestion, subcategory did we mention coughing? Diddums points for hugging your chest together in case your next cough explodes it.
2 (33.3%)

Fever. Diddums points for plotless nightmares about Bill Clinton trying to murder someone, or the colour yellow.
0 (0.0%)

Malaise. Diddums points for... well, malaise, really. Calling in sick with malaise is just hopeless. "Hi, I can't come in to work today because I feel kinda, um, well... Okay I'll be there soon."
2 (33.3%)

Lethargy. Negative diddums points for the gleeful realisation that, whereas like any other day you're going to read/internet/TV rather than do housework, today you at least have a good excuse.
1 (16.7%)

Photophobia. Diddums points for opening that long-anticipated book/laptop/TV only to shriek "The light! It burns!"
1 (16.7%)

Other (see comments). Diddums points for the most woeful tale!
1 (16.7%)

In which feminine hygiene products are perhaps not the best source of a good education

Do they still make those bubblegum wrappers with the jokes on them? You know those jokes that had been carefully selected from a jokebook entitled The World's Unfunniest Jokes, by people who've heard of jokes but maintain their impartiality through a strict and willful ignorance of what this joke thing is all about, and who then painstakingly rewrite them so as to leech from them any remaining hint of comedy?

Well, for those of my readers who don't themselves experience that time of the month when you pour blue fluid(*) onto a Feminine Hygiene Product and then go out and ride a horse in white pants, let me just say that FHPs often come wrapped in a similar manner. Except instead of unfunny jokes, we get unfactual factoids.

The ur-FHP Factoid for me will always be "If you put a grape in the microwave it will explode." To be fair, this would probably be true if you inserted the important clause and then turn it on. And "A full moon always rises at sunset" is true for values of "always" that include "at certain latitudes, or at least at certain times of the year", so I'll pass these ones by.

I'll also pass by those familiar factoids like "The human body is made up of ninety-random percent water" and "When you sneeze, the air comes out your nose at randomty miles an hour."

But every so often my eye gets caught by something like "23% of all photocopier faults are caused by people sitting on them and photocopying their buttocks." Which. I. What? I mean. I'm pretty sure that ninety-random percent of all photocopier faults occur at my workplace alone and I'm also pretty certain that I would have noticed if any of our students had decided to drop their pants, sit on the copier, and attempt to scan their buttocks and do you know how I'd know? Because then they'd have to jump off and waddle across the library casual reading area and main entrance to me at the help desk in order to tell me the photocopier wasn't working, and I'd come back across the room and discover that the photocopier was flashing a "Cannot recognise paper size" error message on its clever little screen.
Maybe this statistic was collated in the first week after the first photocopier was bought by the first company ever to use one, which coincidentally happened to be the week of said company's annual Christmas party?

Because otherwise I can only presume that the writer of this factoid has never actually used a photocopier. Other than, perhaps, to photocopy their buttocks.

And when they print stuff like that, it causes me serious doubts about the scholarship behind their claims that "Human thighbones are as strong as concrete" or that "The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used by the Egyptians in 2000BC". Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that these things could be true! But so easily is scientific integrity shattered that I'll never again be able to take it on faith from my [brandname] Feminine Hygiene Products.


(*) Actually I just remembered an ad in New Zealand a few years back in which someone murders someone, disposes of the body, but just as the police sirens approach she notices a small but incriminating pool of blood remains. Oh noes! But wait, she has a brilliant idea! She grabs a [brandname] pad, quickly soaks up the blood, and we cut to the police leaving again, thwarted. Ladies and gentleman, Feminine Hygiene Products, your ultimate murder alibi! (Possibly works with Handee towels too.)