Who Wants an Infection

If I were a more superstitious person (okay, I guess I'm fairly superstitious), I'd make something of the fact that I've seen the term Typhoid Mary show up three times in the past two days in completely unrelated media. In David Cronenberg's Rabid, on the new episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and in The Drowning Girl, which I'm still reading.

I had to hurriedly dump a whole drawer of DVDs in my car--a drawer containing all my David Cronenberg, David Lynch, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, and Archers movies. After I'd moved things into my sister's garage, four DVDs had accidentally remained on the seat--North by Northwest, The Searchers, Stagecoach, and Rabid. So I watched Rabid again last night. As usual, I found something unaccountably comforting about Cronenberg's style. I also love the peek inside a Canadian shopping mall in the 70s.

I guess Marilyn Chambers in that movie is not unlike the Eva in that chapter of The Drowning Girl, who is described as "a Typhoid Mary of the mind and soul". Someone who causes widespread damage to others but is oblivious, a sort of victim, at the centre of the storm.

The reference in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is less interesting, just referring to the poor Simmons character. Not a bad episode, having to do with firefighters infected with an electric alien virus after the invasion depicted in the Avengers movie. An obvious reference to first-responders on 9/11 who later, in several cases, came down with severe respiratory illnesses which were sometimes notoriously left uncared for by the United States healthcare system.

I guess there is again something of the victim who causes damage to others when one considers the glee with which Simmons analyses the alien virus before she realises she's herself infected.

I was able to watch the episode on my Kindle after downloading the ABC app. I had no idea what channel the show was on before this. I guess it makes sense, since ABC is owned by Disney.

I got the Kindle Fire for my birthday earlier in the year and I'm sure glad I did. I'm at the school Tech Mall now but most of the time I'd be completely without internet access if it weren't for this tablet. It's around a hundred dollars cheaper than an iPad or the Samsung tablet and it doesn't have has many perks--most notably I can't access Second Life from it. But it does allow me to do most things, provided I can find some Wi-Fi and I can muster patience for touch screen buttons and the sometimes fascinating stupidity of autocorrect.