DST, TB, Podcasting, and KFC

Well, I hate daylight savings. I mean, I like the arrangement of the hours this way better than whatever it is we have endured all winter, but I hate having to switch the clocks around all the time. Unless we’re going to have rolling blackouts or something, which I suppose could be a distinct possibility, I don’t know why the world has to continue with this charade. Vast swaths of humanity having to suffer what amounts to jetlag every “spring” is the dumbest thing ever. On top of which, KFC is trying to break into the fine-dining market:

There has been stirring online after internet users claimed KFC has been upping its prices recently, and now the company looks to be going further upmarket with a brand new venture. The fast-food giant is planning to open a brand new fine-dining restaurant in Sydney, serving fancy 11-course meals. From 1 April 1 to 3 April, the chain is teaming up with Nelly Robinson, who owns Surry Hills restaurant, nel., to provide an upmarket take on its traditional menu.

Many people are likely wondering why KFC would do this, but all of them will quickly forget their curiosity because, at the bottom of the article, there’s a link entitled “Elon Musk Has Revealed Why He’s Had So Many Children.” I’m not going to click on it because I’m pretty sure the answer to that question is as obvious as the length of the day.

Setting all that to one side, what I mean to say is that a few knowledgeable people have sent us some helpful corrections to our Podcast yesterday. about ACNAtoo and BelieveUstoo. Matt and I will work through them next Monday in the regular podcasting way, so that we don’t get muddled. I am sure we will also work through the response that ACNAtoo posted yesterday, hopefully without shouting at the children, though that seemed to be everybody’s favorite part of this week’s effort.

And finally, because I’m staggering into life late and have nothing to say about anything, here is a nice article about the literary “impact” of tuberculosis:

Kafka died at the age of 40, Chekhov at 44, Mansfield at 34; TB infected and killed people young. This was one factor — the glow in the cheeks as the disease developed was another — that contributed to its being seen for many years as a romantic affliction; hence the image of the “beautiful consumptive”. Charlotte Brontë wrote that “consumption, I am aware, is a flattering malady”. Mann’s Hans Castorp associated it with genius, and even its own victims such as John Keats — dead at 25 — romanticised its effects: “youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”. His friend Percy Bysshe Shelley affirmed it: “Ah, even in death he is beautiful, beautiful in death, as one that hath fallen on sleep.”

All this was at a time when the source of TB was not understood — it wasn’t until 1882 that the bacterium that causes it was discovered — and so it was seen not as an acquired disease but as an illness intrinsic to the inherent disposition of the sufferer. It is not too far a stretch, after all, to link a waifish aesthete and a wasting disease (French dandy and aesthetic provocateur Théophile Gautier said that in his youth, “I could not have accepted as a lyrical poet anyone weighing more than ninety-nine pounds”).

TB dominated illness in literature throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with Charles Dickens, Samuel Richardson and Elizabeth Gaskell all putting their characters through its gruelling mill. Toward the middle of the twentieth century, the novels became less frequent as TB rates began to fall.

Isn’t that cheery. I’ve got to go do some things. Have a nice day!

Photo by Victoria Shes on Unsplash