The following is an essay I wrote last year, around roughly week 12 of the season. Thanksgiving weekend: the Giants played the Eagles at home and lost not because it was Manning's (second?) game, but the Eagles are a vicious, parasitic team. I no longer despise the Eagles, but I still love this essay. Thought it appropriate given Giants victory over the Cowboys (17-10) this weekend as well.
Sadia Kalam
11.28.04
Eagles and Ebola
Ten-year-old Peter Cardinal dies within 24 hours of arriving at Nairobi Hospital. He begins his fatal embrace with red eyes. Then his lungs fill with mucus, making his breaths slower and more difficult. He is misdiagnosed first with malaria, then acute respiratory distress syndrome. His colors change: there’s blue in his fingertips, little red spots over his skin, then finally spontaneous black and blue bruises over his body. His brain bleeds. His eyes dilate. He dies.
The death of the young Peter Cardinal is much like the rest of Richard Preston’s novel The Hot Zone: fast, consuming, suspenseful. The killer is an invisible predator, a nameless permutation of lumpy ropes, an uncontainable mass that invades and destroys life. The virus knows no boundaries—neither national nor geographical, neither racial nor taxonomical. It does not care if you are a ten year old child, a chimp from Germany, a cocker spaniel in Sydney or a cockroach scurrying on kitchen floors everywhere. Preston describes viruses as “totally selfish,” for they exploit bodies full of healthy living cells for their survival alone (59). The promiscuous, globalizing character of the virus makes it one of nature’s insurmountable enemies. Naturally vicious to the human body, the virus dissolves through our defenses as if none existed.
The virus’s mix of explosive offensive and suffocating human defense are not unlike the credentials of the Philadelphia Eagles, a team that has prematurely won the NFC East title. Ebola Reston, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan, Marbug—together these sister viruses create an unstoppable offensive team, marked by ruthless, indiscriminate conquering tactics. Like the viruses, the Eagles slice through defenses. Men like Eagles Jevon Kearse break through offensive lines, sack quarterbacks, block punts. They pressure, suffocate, and confuse the opposing quarterback into throwing the ball away, sometimes even into the ready and intercepting arms of the Eagles. The Eagles leave teams bruised, suck their morale as they jump from stadium to stadium. Their only defeat to date was to the Pittsburg Steelers, a game Eagles hosted in Philly. This parallels the fact that a virus generally does not kill its natural host. Since then, Eagles have been undefeatable.
These men adorned in green helmets painted with white wings charging down fields with fiery force are surprisingly consistent. Granted a team contending for the Superbowl Title must be opportunistic and talented both offensively and defensively, yet the Eagles do more damage than necessary. During their conquest over the Giants Thanksgiving Sunday, Eagles Lineback Trotter forcefully pushed franchise quarterback Eli Manning when the rookie was already running out of bounds. Eagles’ defense limits Manning to passing a pathetic 14 years and a 16.9 quarterback rating. In the second half, Eagles score 20 points and limit Giants to a mere 47 yards. This is a defense that hasn’t given up a TD in the last two games. If not the statistics themselves, the Eagles’ use of indiscriminate force and geographic field promiscuity make them a singular team.
While the parallel between lethal viruses and the Philly Eagles seems dubious, Richard Preston compares the viruses to everything from Trojan horses (58) to “molecular sharks” (59) to “white cobras” (137)—so why not eagles? These metaphors allow us to see what literally seems imperceptible to human conception. In order to see these invisible killers, we must magnify our enemies 17,000 times under an electron microscope. Something that needs hundred million copies of itself to cover the period at the end of this sentence, that such an infinitesimal entity can liquefy bodies is incredible.
More puzzling than its size, perhaps, is the virus’s classification. Is it neither dead nor alive, somehow existing in an in-between category that defies all binary simplifications. The virus is ambiguous, maybe even hybrid in its composition. It lives only within living cells of a host. Outside a living cell, the virus hardly seems alive because it does not engage in any of the life processes that characterize living organisms including nutrition, transport, respiration, excretion, regulation, or growth. Biologists do not include viruses in either Protista or the Monera kingdoms. Viruses exist in a sort of hybrid category all its own.
Its mechanism for killing, too, seems hybrid. Preston notes how the Ebola virus attacks a sort of third space which he defines as follows:
It is called third spacing. If you bleed into the first space, you bleed into your lungs. If you bleed into the second space, you bleed into your stomach and intestines. If you bleed into the third space, you bleed into the space between the skin and the flesh. The skin puffs up and separates the flesh like a bag. (93)
Unlike the first and second spaces which cause bleeding in concrete places, the space between skin and flesh cannot be spatially located in the body. By definition, flesh denotes the skeletal muscles and fat, but also includes skin. If anything, the “space between skin and the flesh” could potentially include every living cell. The scope of the viruses, the sheer magnitude of their debilitating power makes Ebola a serious contender in the evolutionary rink.
Sadia Kalam
11.28.04
Eagles and Ebola
Ten-year-old Peter Cardinal dies within 24 hours of arriving at Nairobi Hospital. He begins his fatal embrace with red eyes. Then his lungs fill with mucus, making his breaths slower and more difficult. He is misdiagnosed first with malaria, then acute respiratory distress syndrome. His colors change: there’s blue in his fingertips, little red spots over his skin, then finally spontaneous black and blue bruises over his body. His brain bleeds. His eyes dilate. He dies.
The death of the young Peter Cardinal is much like the rest of Richard Preston’s novel The Hot Zone: fast, consuming, suspenseful. The killer is an invisible predator, a nameless permutation of lumpy ropes, an uncontainable mass that invades and destroys life. The virus knows no boundaries—neither national nor geographical, neither racial nor taxonomical. It does not care if you are a ten year old child, a chimp from Germany, a cocker spaniel in Sydney or a cockroach scurrying on kitchen floors everywhere. Preston describes viruses as “totally selfish,” for they exploit bodies full of healthy living cells for their survival alone (59). The promiscuous, globalizing character of the virus makes it one of nature’s insurmountable enemies. Naturally vicious to the human body, the virus dissolves through our defenses as if none existed.
The virus’s mix of explosive offensive and suffocating human defense are not unlike the credentials of the Philadelphia Eagles, a team that has prematurely won the NFC East title. Ebola Reston, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan, Marbug—together these sister viruses create an unstoppable offensive team, marked by ruthless, indiscriminate conquering tactics. Like the viruses, the Eagles slice through defenses. Men like Eagles Jevon Kearse break through offensive lines, sack quarterbacks, block punts. They pressure, suffocate, and confuse the opposing quarterback into throwing the ball away, sometimes even into the ready and intercepting arms of the Eagles. The Eagles leave teams bruised, suck their morale as they jump from stadium to stadium. Their only defeat to date was to the Pittsburg Steelers, a game Eagles hosted in Philly. This parallels the fact that a virus generally does not kill its natural host. Since then, Eagles have been undefeatable.
These men adorned in green helmets painted with white wings charging down fields with fiery force are surprisingly consistent. Granted a team contending for the Superbowl Title must be opportunistic and talented both offensively and defensively, yet the Eagles do more damage than necessary. During their conquest over the Giants Thanksgiving Sunday, Eagles Lineback Trotter forcefully pushed franchise quarterback Eli Manning when the rookie was already running out of bounds. Eagles’ defense limits Manning to passing a pathetic 14 years and a 16.9 quarterback rating. In the second half, Eagles score 20 points and limit Giants to a mere 47 yards. This is a defense that hasn’t given up a TD in the last two games. If not the statistics themselves, the Eagles’ use of indiscriminate force and geographic field promiscuity make them a singular team.
While the parallel between lethal viruses and the Philly Eagles seems dubious, Richard Preston compares the viruses to everything from Trojan horses (58) to “molecular sharks” (59) to “white cobras” (137)—so why not eagles? These metaphors allow us to see what literally seems imperceptible to human conception. In order to see these invisible killers, we must magnify our enemies 17,000 times under an electron microscope. Something that needs hundred million copies of itself to cover the period at the end of this sentence, that such an infinitesimal entity can liquefy bodies is incredible.
More puzzling than its size, perhaps, is the virus’s classification. Is it neither dead nor alive, somehow existing in an in-between category that defies all binary simplifications. The virus is ambiguous, maybe even hybrid in its composition. It lives only within living cells of a host. Outside a living cell, the virus hardly seems alive because it does not engage in any of the life processes that characterize living organisms including nutrition, transport, respiration, excretion, regulation, or growth. Biologists do not include viruses in either Protista or the Monera kingdoms. Viruses exist in a sort of hybrid category all its own.
Its mechanism for killing, too, seems hybrid. Preston notes how the Ebola virus attacks a sort of third space which he defines as follows:
It is called third spacing. If you bleed into the first space, you bleed into your lungs. If you bleed into the second space, you bleed into your stomach and intestines. If you bleed into the third space, you bleed into the space between the skin and the flesh. The skin puffs up and separates the flesh like a bag. (93)
Unlike the first and second spaces which cause bleeding in concrete places, the space between skin and flesh cannot be spatially located in the body. By definition, flesh denotes the skeletal muscles and fat, but also includes skin. If anything, the “space between skin and the flesh” could potentially include every living cell. The scope of the viruses, the sheer magnitude of their debilitating power makes Ebola a serious contender in the evolutionary rink.
a year later, one thing still holds true.
ReplyDeleteeli manning stinks. 152 yds, 0 TDs, 2 INTs.
~a bitter Cowboy fan. =)
lol
ReplyDelete:)