She taught me how to speak to death inside

Rabbit, rabbit! It turns out that if you have a migraine for five days straight, the day after it breaks you are not magically restored to feeling wonderful and in fact feel rather as though someone has hit you several times with a bag full of freight trains; in other words yesterday was terrible. I spoke to way too many doctors and sent some necessary e-mails and finally in the evening read Nevil Shute's Landfall (1940), which I loved and whose film adaptation I realize I am wary of tracking down despite its attractive supporting cast for fear it should diminish the heroism of the novel's co-protagonist, the barmaid who is not just the love interest but the one person in the story who's in a position to put together the pieces of what really happened to HMS Caranx on December 3, 1939. "Not quite from the top drawer, you know. But she's got a very nice mind." Trying to figure out afterward if the obliquely electrified secret weapon which the other protagonist is dangerously testing for the Navy was the sort of thing that could have come out of the Department of Miscellaneous Weapons Development led to me trying not to corpse while reading spatch descriptions of the Panjandrum epically not working. Honestly, this discovery was the best part of the day. Even the Wikipedia page is funny. I am vaguely amazed I never saw any of the test footage during the Oops! portions of Square One TV (1987–92). I did observe the claim that the entire device might have been a hoax per Operation Fortitude, but I can't help but wonder if that's just less embarrassing than admitting that for four months the Admiralty seriously investigated the military capabilities of a gigantic unsteerable Catherine wheel that in full view of seaside civilians got chased by dogs, fell over in the surf, and/or almost blew the top brass up.