Hey, it’s me. I can barely suck in enough air to stay awake. This cold has my nose completely sealed off and my throat’s about the diamater of a juice-box straw. I have to struggle just to suck in air. If I tilt my head back just a bit, I can’t get any air in at all. I’m afraid that I’ll forget, look up at something, and completely cut off my air supply. What would happen, brain damage, at the very least I’d pass out and fall to the floor, right? Fuck. I just know that I’m going to die like the Elephant Man tonight. He went to bed once without first supporting that giant head of his and the weight of it crushed his wind pipe.

I don’t want to suffocate in my sleep… I’d better make some coffee, or cut a hole in my throat like they did to that guy in that episode of “MASH.” Do you remember that; the episode where the made the “x” in the guy’s throat with a pocket knife and then jabbed in half a ballpoint pen?

OK, I need to do something. Maybe I’ll see if the shower with loosen up some of the phlegm. Heaving up layers of mud-like mucus into the bathtub drain might help.

Linette’s gone, so if I die, it will be alone. She went to help our friend Monica get ready for her art gallery opening in Detroit tomorrow. I’m going to try to go, if I can stop coughing up blood long enough to put in an appearance; assuming of course that I make it though the night.

I sat down here at the computer after watching about ten hours of TV from the couch, under a blanket, shaking. I thought that I’d come in here and start cataloging the digital photos we took during our vacation. That’s not going to happen though. I went through a dozen or so and then I felt like logging on here to complain. Is anyone listening? I’d like to think that I’m complaining to a real person somewhere.

So, here’s one of the first photos I downloaded. It was taken in Venice. I don’t know if you can tell or not, but there’s a huge fucking cruise ship in the canal. It’s obnoxious and it pisses me off. I snapped the photo to remind me about how much I hated that. I hope you hate it too. I hate people who take cruises.