September 21, 2009

Wikipedia is one one of my favorite sites because you can dick around on it for hours, today for no apparent reason I wound up reading about Antarctic expeditions from the turn of the century, in particular Shackleton and Scott and I listened to this song here by the Weakerthans called Our Retired Explorer.

I wound up reading about Lawrence Oates because of this painting:
It's called "A Very Gallant Gentleman" and I wanted to understand the painting and it turns out that Oates was a member of the failed the Scott expedition called Terra Nova and he got terrible frostbite on his feet and was slowing down the expeditions return.

So one morning after his companions refused to leave him behind, he turned to them in the tent and said "I am just going outside, I may be some time" and he didn't even put on his boots he just walked right out into a blizzard and died.

That makes me want to cry, a little. It's so scary and brave and sad.

Stuff like that affects me a lot, I re-read them and stare at the pictures and think about what that must have been like and basically mindfuck myself for an hour.

Fortunately for me I think I have a touch of stomach flu (yum!) so almost immediately after reading all that stuff I spent the rest of the day focusing on not throwing up and sucking on salt crackers and wishing it were fall already, it's a 30+ degree oven in this joint and I don't have AC.