What's the meaning?

Day six of my flu time and I think it's starting to get better.
Good thing too, because I've started getting really bored at home, and contemplating things like 'what's it all worth?'

One would think that I had plenty of things to do at home, but the reality can hurt sometimes. I got Infinite Undiscovery earlier this week. Lack of a map or walkthroughs, as well as being incredibly confusing and easy to get stuck at many times is giving me the shits. There's nothing really catching my interest to watch on TV, the internet to download.

Added to that, whenever I wake up it seems my throat is a nest of pain. Everytime I swallow it feels like someone's slashing at my throat with a cutthroat razor. I've developed painfully nasty, inflamed gums (probably from drinking too much of that honey-and-lemon concoction to ease the throat pain).

The unwanted extra free time, the daily diet of rice gruel and soup, as well as some things that have been happening in my personal life, have made me really wonder ...

What is life?
You're born, you grow up, you work, you spawn, and then you die. Everyone gets on this endless treadmill called life, and does this same thing, sometimes in different sequences, but still, it all goes in this sequence.
In the grand scheme of the universe, rather insignificant. Consider - in a universe of a million million galaxies, each galaxy made up of a billion billion stars, we are here, on one little blue planet in a surburban arm of nowhere, in a mediocre-sized galaxy called the Milky Way, going about our insignificant little lives, blissfully(?) going about our own daily little lives, believing in trivial matters like who makes the next footy grand final, the stupid, silly little facts on the Republican Vice President-Nominate's unwed daughter being pregnant, like they actually matter, in the grand scheme of things.

In the grand scheme of things, everything that happens on this mudball, in this pissy arm of a ho-hum galaxy is, at the best, irrelevant. Why should it matter? In a few billion years, the sun will go nova, expand, turn our little Earth garden into a charred ball of carbon, melted rock and burned metal, wiping out all sign of human life on Earth.

So then ... what really, is the meaning behind any of this?

House, MD

What's this? Two blog posts in one month?
Yes, I have that much free time at the moment, and nothing better to do apparently.

A quick update for the dear readers ... I have come down sick. I have a nasty feeling that it started a couple of weeks ago with what appeared to be the early signs of a cold. But as I was seeing a special lady in a few days, I wanted to make sure that I was fighting fit. So, precautions - a lot of butter menthol lollies, some of those nasty strepsils- type throat lozenges, and judicious use of Vicks First Defence nasal sprays. I think it went away ... and for your information, the date went quite well ... but then it appears it might have come back with a vengeance.

On Sunday, I woke up with a nasty sore throat, and a fit of coughing. No biggie, my dad grabs some antibiotics from the dispensary at work and chucks it to me, as well as getting some Cepacol Plus throat lozenges. I spend a very fitful and feverish night half sleeping, half hacking and coughing my lungs out. I end up getting the shivers ... and it's not anything anyone should ever have to go through.
Monday, I wake up feeling like total shit. A headache, a throat like someone took an electric sander to it, body aches, and even nastier coughs. It's all I can do to stagger downstairs and pitifully beg in a hoarse and cracked voice for some medical treatment. At which point, my dad kindly brews up a concoction of honey, lemon juice, and hot water, which slides down my throat so soothingly ... and then warms up some pumpkin soup for me. However, once I get doped up on painkillers and cold and flu meds, I regain some form of functionality. I spend most of the day sitting around, reading forums and manga and going through about three pots of tea. Benadryl Night-Time cough syrup ensures I have a better night's sleep.
Tuesday ... I wake up, throat feeling like the sander was switched for a sandblaster, and coughing up blood. Lots of fun. The fun bit came at the end of the day when I had foolishly chosen not to drink as much water, and I end up with the symptoms of a hangover ... queasy stomach, and a nasty headache. It's not fair! If I wanted a hangover, I wanted to at least have that unpleasant bit balanced out with the drunken feelgood buzz you get when you start to get drunk! -_-
The fun bit came Tuesday evenning, however, when my med friend in Melbourne, Henry, decided to implement some telemedicine.
Ironically, he wrote a 4000 word essay on that very subject back in high school, and I remember making jokes about it, like 'teledeath,' where you kill yourself by licking the monitor and having the person on the other end administer fatal doses of electricity through the screen. It seemed pretty ironic that he was now practicing that on me ...
My brother got to play nurse, and I got to play the patient ... he used his mobile phone's built-in torch to shine light in my mouth, and a DS stylus to press my tongue down. The look of horror on his face when Henry told him to get a sample of my bloody phlegm was just golden.

Ugh ... going to see the doctor later today, so let's hope it's nothing too serious.

A Facebook Rant

I've noticed something recently.
Particularly the popularity of digital cameras and high-quality camera-phones. Have you ever noticed that whenever you go out at night, you can always spot at least a few people posing for photos on the camera? And that it happens many, many times during the course of a night?

I noticed this particularly when I was out at a family dinner for my grandma's birthday. My older cousin (who is married, pregnant, and an absolute bitch to have to work with), and her husband were having fun with his expensive SLR digital camera, taking all sorts of happy snaps. Every so often, a particularly funny-looking image would crop up, and she would declare that 'we have to facebook it.'

Now this leads me to wonder ... the typical facebook photos are just a group of people smiling, with different backgrounds. Sometimes you get people doing silly/funny stuff, but mostly it's just people smiling for the camera. I wonder ... what drives people to take these photos just so they can upload it to their facebook/myspace?

I feel that in a way, it's fake. You have to put up the photos to prove to your friends and relatives that you have a fun, interesting life. Some get a kick out of having others comment on their happy-snaps. Some attention whores need the validation that comes with commenting on pics. In a way, I suppose it's because it makes them feel like their existence is being acknowledged, and they are being validated through attention from others. I suppose that's the whole reason why social-networking sites like Facebook are so popular nowadays - not just to keep in contact, but in a shallow way, to prove that you're better than others, by the happy-snaps you take while out at a club or a bar, that you actually have an interesting life. And yet, that's somewhat boring in itself - everyone goes out to clubs and bars, and gets drunk and does some stupid shit.