All my koosh are belong to swine. [Photo credit: Erin Williamson]I wanted to get sick because I want my immune system to get stronger and better, but now that I am sick I am not really enjoying myself as much as I thought I would. I really imagined it as some kind of vacation. I am not the kind of person who takes vacations or who enjoys them, but I expected this to be a biologically-necessitated period of cookie-ingestion and daytime-television-consumption. It turns out having the flu actually sucks, and that ice cream doesn’t cure it, no matter how many pints of “H1-PeCan” you eat.
My fever—101.5˚ at the moment—burns from the inside out like it does when Lindsay Lohan pees. I pee about 3 times an hour because of all the water I am drinking. I call it my take-a-sip-leave-a-sip policy. I’m peeing so often there isn’t even water in it anymore, I only pee the sound of peeing. It echoes up out of the bowl to mock me. But with my fever I am more popular with the cat. She seems to like sleeping on me a whole lot more. And every time I line up some Tylenol to try to bring my temp down, the cat knocks them off the table with what looks like glee.
I was worried about getting sick during the school year though because now I’m a teacher and I have students and I have this sense that they need me. This is a delusion brought on by my fever or perhaps by my profession. University professors and their graduate mentees are often delusional. It’s a proud tradition. It’s what gives us the idea that we should be telling people who are nothing like us that they should live their lives exactly like we do. Although my girlfriend told me she needs me. She’s having cramps and she wants me to lay across her belly. She said it’s greener than using the electric heating pad.
I read that if I get a flu this season, it’s probably the swine flu. I have my doubts, though. Sure, I didn’t get vaccinated—who has?—but I do ride public transit. That’s vaccine enough. It’s like giving your lymph system a copy of “Oh, the Places You’ll Go.” I for one credit the bus system with vaccinating me against ever quitting flossing.
I still remember how in April, the news started to report on the “deadly” swine flu. Then the study came out that told us that up to 117% of the population was going to get the virus. Now I get emails from the university telling me not to go to the doctor if I have flu-like symptoms and not to get the vaccine because I have no serious health complications. It’s probably better that I not try to get the vaccine, because there’s almost none of it to be had. It’s a chicken-egg problem. Because American companies make the virus for the vaccine by growing it in chicken eggs. According to pharmaceutical companies, newer technologies to make the vaccine faster are not profitable for companies, and it would take government leadership from the highest levels to transform flu-virus production. Which came first? Lack of action on innovations in vaccine-production technology, or lack of leadership from this administration?
While companies struggle to produce the seasonal flu vaccine alongside its porcine counterpart, we’ve known about the actually-deadly avian flu for at least 6 years and, as of February of this year, we only had about 26 million doses stockpiled. I can’t wait to see the lines that form when even the people who are afraid of Guillain-Barré and Autism are desperate enough to get the shot.
Not wanting to wait for the CDC to determine if I have swine flu, and being told that a good citizen does not burden the healthcare system by an unnecessary doctor’s visit, I went on WebMD to do some research on swine flu. I learned that one of the most common sex mistakes women make is not initiating sex with their partner. Sorry, I got distracted by an article called, “6 sex mistakes women make.” Sex mistake number 7: initiating sex with me. Especially in my current condition. Though if you see someone walking the vaccine lines outside of health clinics offering the women “swine jobs,” don’t let on that you know me. I really need the money.
not piss.deciding how we will clean the house is a chore in itself. my girlfriend likes to use "natural cleansers." like vinegar and baking soda. she reminds me that vinegar is an acid. i remind her that we're cleaning the house, not douching it. to me, a surface isn't clean unless i've removed a layer of it. when you take a deep breath in a clean home, lingering chemicals in the air should burn the nose and esophagus; it should not smell like a side salad at tgi friday's. the former is the smell of chemical burns on the fingertips and the extinction of a plankton species as substances once used to torment axis soldiers on the hindenburg line race through storm drains to open water; the latter, the smell of a frat boy's last-ditch attempt at conquest. all that's missing is axe body spray, which, as we all know, is the smell of overconfidence and desperation.
on cleaning day, my girlfriend cleans most of the house. she does this and does not ask for a thank you. i clean the bathroom. i do this and then i parade around the house in celebration, and i make my girlfriend take pictures of me with the toilet. i taunt her with my bathroom-cleaning superiority. to some this may sound arrogant, but i'm very good at cleaning bathrooms. i'm so good at cleaning i could probably turn paris hilton's vagina into amy grant's. that would kill off another species of plankton.
just in case the big gray search box didn't make it clear.I hate it when people put me in my place, especially when I wasn’t at fault. There’s something very smug and unlikeable about a person who will try to school you in “the right way to do things” without first bothering to find out if you followed protocol to begin with.
Back in late July, I posted a message to a listserv called “Freecycle,” indicating that I wanted to give away a copy of MS Office 97 (contest closed, ladies and gentlemen, so please no emails). Per the rules of the message board, I followed up with a “taken” notice telling everyone on the board that someone had agreed to take the item, and as such it was no longer available.
Yesterday, I received an email asking if I had given away the software. I replied, stating that it was gone, and I thanked him for his interest. And then I got this:
--- On Tue, 9/8/09, [name withheld] wrote:
Subject: Re: OFFERED: MS Office 97 Professional Edition for PC
Date: Tuesday, September 8, 2009, 8:59 AM
Thanks. Please make sure you post a
taken per our group's rules. It prevents
messages like mine.
No, what prevents messages like yours is the search feature, which allows you to find out whether or not I posted a “taken” before you send me self-righteous little emails like this one.
the secret to feline mind control: cuteness. [Photo credit: Paul Mayne]the people i go to school with would like to get published. they’re writing for the
journal of pragmatics or
discourse and society or
college composition clusterfuck quarterly.
meanwhile, i’m trying to get into
cat fancy.
this is perhaps why no one takes me seriously as a scholar. they’re exploring abstract theoretical aspects of meaning-creation and their ramifications for English language learners. their papers have titles like “the genre of the end comment: conventions in teacher response to student writing.”
[1] i want to make some jokes about living with a kitty for a magazine with articles such as “pet memorials” and “dogs in disguise.” (kitties—more than meets the eye?) if no one takes me seriously, it’s because i never give them the chance.
so, anyway, yesterday i popped into the bookstore near work to read the latest issue, but it was sold out!
cat fancy was sold out! it was the only empty space in the entire magazine section! stacks of news weeklies were still on the shelves. other animal mags, like bArk, were stocked aplenty. there were heaps of those magazines for beadworkers and quiltmakers and scrapbookers and figurepainters.
if the title wasn’t as cutesy i would understand why it was sold out. i can't imagine people buying a magazine called
cat fancy with a straight face. i would pay someone to buy it for me or have it delivered anonymously by post.
if it were called
feline times or
cat review, perhaps it would be different. i would read
feline times. i picture a persian kitty in a gray pinstriped business suit with a monocle and a bowler hat. “the global rice shortage: how much more will you pay for kibble? by lord waffles q. fuzzy-bottom.” (take that, t. s. eliot.)
i guess it makes some sense. cats are more popular than dogs if we judge things strictly by the numbers, and, according to
steve dale, my town is one of the top 10 cat friendliest cities in the nation.
of course, all of this is in spite of the overall shittiness of the kitty demeanor. there is no better evidence for feline mind control. when dogs bite, they get put down. when cats bite, we assume that we did something to piss them off and we cling to the hope that they’ll stop someday. but they won’t stop. oh sure, kitty might say she can change, but you know that if you want the violence to stop, you have to leave. the classes didn’t work and you’ve got to think of the children.
Notes:
- Smith, Summer. “The Genre of the End Comment: Conventions in Teacher Response to Student Writing.” College Composition and Communication 48.2 (May 1997): 249-268.[x]
