(no subject)

[camwyn]

Lord, do I ever miss my copy of That's Incurable!. I need my guide to Ten Diseases You Were Better Off Not Knowing About. There was a skin disorder in there that sounded like something out of the wizarding world... oh well.

Still working on WYGO? if you couldn't tell.

Now pls. make the overriding theme of 'New York is as much a city of weirdoes, outcasts, and newcomers as it is of old establishment, and it's not the establishment who're going to save it' get out of my head, because I have GOT to finish WYGO? and H:H and probably something with Hellboy before I can go anywhere NEAR GB 1884.

rassum frassum much too easy to fit all the good guys into social outcast slots incl. even Dana mumble mutter stupid bloody Caleb Carr making me interested in late 1800s NYC growl mumble mutter hiss spit...

Comments

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

There's always lichen planus and molluscum contagiosum. The latter sounds Rowlingy to me.

[ahmeemee.livejournal.com]

I love how everything you come across becomes a resource for your writing. Funky names? Let me make a list! Incurable diseases? Cool, I could use it in my fic!

[camwyn]

That's the inside of my head for you. It's always like that in here. Whether it's for original fiction, fan fiction, WHATEVER- sooner or later everything gets tagged for writing purposes. My muse, Pamela, is an OCD Canadian woman with nothing better to do with her time than go through all my interesting impressions and memories and sort them into piles based on How Can We Use This?. And then she leaves me post-it notes about the information until I can't ignore her any more, the bitch.

That's Incurable! was fun, though. I think in Britain it was sold as The Hypochondriac's Handbook. The Ten Diseases list was from the mid-1980s. The criteria were 'start off with common symptoms of much less dangerous things, then progress to horrible ends'. I seem to remember...

- cobalt beer syndrome
- familial periodic paralysis
- Prader-Willi syndrome (bit unfair, as this one's genetic)
- Lassa fever (Ebola hadn't hit the scene in any big way yet)
- Ondine's Curse
- lethal midline granuloma

Damn, I can't remember the others. There were some neat ones in other chapters of the book, though. Including a really nice skin disorder called Cinderella Syndrome, whose medical name was erythema dyschromicum perstans. Which, now that I think of it, is the same thing as lichen planus as mentioned in Vivian's comment.

[milkshake-b.livejournal.com]

Could be worse. My muse has ADD. (And also this post somehow ended up in my House folder. Freaky diseases make the muse happy right now.)

[camwyn]

Bet yours never booked herself into a hostel in Alaska along with you.

(That's how I found out her name. When I visited Fairbanks in 2003, I went to Billie's Backpackers Hostel, expecting to get a nice berth in one of the bunk beds. Instead I was told that the private room was available and where was Pamela?

"What?" said I.

"Pamela. The other person on your reservation."

Apparently somehow a woman named Pamela had been added to my hostel reservation. No last name. Just Pamela. There were no Pamelas at the hostel, either that night or any night thereafter; when I told cadhla of this, she said obviously Pamela was my muse. It was... very strange, really, but it did get me a nice bed my first night in a new time zone, so.)

[not-croaker.livejournal.com]

Well, there's always Psoriasis.

And its near-inevitable companion, Psoriatic Arthritis.

Which has lead to my own current condition: lower back pain plus three fused vertebrae in the neck.

[camwyn]

Appealing prospects in terms of what they actually do, it's true, but I was hoping for something with a vaguely gruesome or overall mysterious name to fit in with the general tendency of the wizarding world to describe things more picturesquely. I mean, my usual way of saying someone's unenthusiastic or looking at you funny is to say they're regarding you as if you had a particularly advanced case of gum disease. The wizards would come up with something funkier, though.

Sorry to hear about the back problems, though. Psoriasis and company are nastier than most folks wanna give 'em credit for.

[vivian-shaw.livejournal.com]

I respectfully submit that "looking at him as if he had lobsters crawling out of his ears" has often worked for me.

[camwyn]

Might do that next time. For now am going with a wizarding disease called the Crawling Spots.

[drharper.livejournal.com]

If you want a real diseas, how about leporsy or small pox?

Or, since the wizarding population seems to be stuck a couple centuries behind the rest of the world, Plague. ;)