By Mark | November 30, 2005
Last night, when I jokingly mentioned that I had diarrhea, I wasn’t expecting that it was going to get much, much worse. I thought that it was just a passing thing, having more to do with the fact that I’d eaten breakfast at a greasy spoon, had unrefrigerated leftover chili for lunch, and scarfed down tons of Indian food for dinner, than it did with anything else. I guess it was at about 2:00 AM that things took a dramatic turn toward the worse, and I realized, as I lay doubled over in pain and covered in my own shit, that it really wasn’t all that terribly funny.
For the next twelve hours, I spent my time evenly distributed between the bed and the toilet, occasionally confusing the two in my delirium. I had all the classic symptoms of the flu; the explosive diarrhea, the cold sweats, the excruciating muscle cramps and the dry heaves. It was pretty bad. Fortunately, Linette was willing to bring me water, do laundry as it became necessary and remind me that I probably wans’t going die. I know I don’t say it enough, but she’s one hell of a woman, and I can’t imagine how much more somthing like this would suck if someone were alone…. Anyway, it’s now about 24 hours later and, even though I don’t feel so great, I get the sense that I might be coming down the other side. Urine, at least, has begun coming out of the part of me that it’s supposed to come out of, and I take that as a pretty good sign.
Now I’m headed back to bed.
(If you have it in you to do me a favor, please keep a positive thought for Clementine, Linette, and our recent houseguests. I’d hate to have any of them come down with this.)
By Mark | November 29, 2005
Please be on your best behavior (like that time I got quoted by the BBC and we had the little influx of traffic from across the pond). I’ve just been informed that I was quoted on Slate, so I anticipate that there will be lots of strangers here soon, moving among us like haunted house employees in the dark, alternately grabbing at our bottoms and howling like monsters. Whatever you do, please don’t engage them. If there’s one thing that I learned in grade school, it’s this – if you just roll up and play dead, they will eventually lose interest in hitting you… At any rate, I’d like to write more, but I have a terrible case of diarrhea, and my eye popped again. (In defense of my parents, this time, unlike the last two times, my eye didn’t pop when I was actually with them. This time, it blew up in the car on my way back to Michigan, at least two hundred miles from their home. And, while I’m sure the stress of the family visit had something to do with it, I suspect it probably had more to do with the plane that just barely missed us when it crashed into the highway a little in front of us… That’s something else that I’d really like to tell you more about, but I need to go rest my blood-filled eye now.)
By Mark | November 29, 2005
Apparently, I missed something called the “Earth to America Global Warming Comedy Special” a few days ago. Fortunately, however, our friend Norm over at One Good Move has archived all the good bits so that we can check them out at our leisure. The highlights so far for me include Larry David describing his evolution from radical narcissist to radical environmentalist, Triumph the insult comic dog tearing apart four low-profile Republican Congressmen, and Will Ferrell getting back in the saddle as our manly, brush-clearing President… It’s good stuff.
By Mark | November 29, 2005
Kurt, the fellow in Hawaii who so heroically snatched up the Zombie-Claus gauntlet that I had thrown down a few weeks ago, has suggested that the following scenario guide our activities on the 16th, and I thought I’d bounce it off of you for your feedback… This is the text that would run on the official Zombie-Claus site once it’s launched:
It has come to our attention that the North Pole and the International Mall-Santa Training Grounds (IMSTG) have been attacked by the undead. The arrival of the undead into these areas of normal holiday cheer has caused a mass revolt of Santas around the world.
“As Santas become the undead their perspectives about Christmas have changed. They are now protesting the over commercialization of the Christmas holiday and it’s encroachment into the traditional Zombie holiday of Halloween”
-Stated the IMSTG president in exile, Claude H. Smoot.
To date, Zombie-Claus have been spotted in the Canadian provinces and are making their way south and should hit the bordering states sometime in the next few weeks. The people of Southeastern Michigan should be particularly concerned. There have been unconfirmed reports that an organized gathering of Zombies is scheduled for sometime in December.
As the Zombie-Claus attack, their population is increasing greatly. Besides the Zombie-Claus there have been confirmed sightings of Zombie-elves and Zombies that appear as if they have been caught in the middle of a Christmas shopping spree. Nobody is safe from these attacks and all trips to shopping districts in December should be taken with caution.
Please help to get the word out,
Lives need to be saved.
I know the logic might be a bit fuzzy in places, but I think it’s delightfully so, in a B-movie kind of way, and I very much liked the addition of the “encroachment on Halloween” bit. If you have additional thoughts, please leave a comment. And, if you think that you might want to participate on the evening of Friday, December 16, send me an email and I will make sure that you are added to the distribution list.
By Mark | November 28, 2005
I don’t, as a rule, socialize with the men and women who leave comments on this site. Actually, truth be told, I go quite far out of my way to avoid any contact with them. There was something about Dick Cheney’s Extending Taint, however, that drew me in. Maybe it was his rough, world-weary bluster. Maybe it was the charming emoticons her used in his personal notes to me. Whatever it was, I just had to know more.
So, when I got word that he and his wife (Lynn Cheney’s Collapsing Taint) were going to be in town, I jumped at the chance to have them over for snacks… Unfortunately, and this didn’t occur to me until they’d arrived, taints, not having mouths, can neither eat snacks nor, for that matter, speak. So, they just kind of stared and Linette and me for a few moments, nodded a bit as we made smal-ltalk, patted Clementine on the head on few times, and then left. Fortunately, however, Linette was able to snap this photo of me and Dick Cheney’s Extending Taint before he and his wife rolled quietly out of Ypsilanti in their flesh-colored taintmobile…
It was a night that I will never forget.
