Oh...

And, obviously, I wish a Happy Easter to all and sundry.

Unless, of course, you are of the Jewish persuasion, in which case: thanks a lot for trying to murder our Lord and Saviour, you money-grubbing, media-controlling, Elders-of-Zion-Protocol-following bastards. Nice try, though--turns out our Messiah can come back from the dead! Kind of makes that whole 'parting of the Red Sea' look like the cheap f*cking party trick it is. Pfft--Moses. Gimme a f*cking break. Turning a staff into a snake? Oh, he's not compensating for something! (And besides, going from staff to snake--from stiff to limber? Pretty much tells you where he's at when it comes to flaccidity, hmmm?) In sum: you suck, we rule, and Jesus could kick Moses's ass left-handed.

This message has been brought to you by the Christian faith, practicing Faith, Hope, and Charity for over 2000 blood-soaked, genocidal years. Remember our motto: Christianity--it doesn't matter what we do to you and your culture--Jesus loves us and therefore hates you, so it's OK.

No, Seriously--Let. Her. Go.

I don't want to add to the volume on this one any further (though I will)--especially since it looks as if the jury is back on Ms. Schiavo's fate, and even more especially because it seems that everyone in the g*d-damned country simply has to voice an opinion on the matter--though I will add that I find it fascinating and heartening that poll after poll says that a decisive majority of Americans think that A. the politicians making hay out of this sad mess are opportunistic scumbags, and B. that the poor woman should just be allowed to go gentle into that good night. (Hey, "swept away on a sweet river of morphine" is exactly how I'd choose to go when it's my time.) But on TV one can encounter nobody except those who vociferously decry this act as judicial murder and Mr. Schiavo as--when they're not concocting vicious theories as to his complicity in the events that led her to her State of Persistent Vegetation--a cold-blooded killer. But I've checked a few things and it turns out that he probably is the good guy here. There's no money in it for him, for one thing--the big bucks from the malpractice suit are gone, eaten up by legal fees and costly medical care. He's clearly moved on with his life--new common-law wife and kids, and so forth. And yet he stays married to this woman, who can only be a brutal emotional burden to him--even though her parents have offered to take her off his hands and see to her care himself. Can somebody think of a reason why, absent money or other mercenary reasons, he would want to end her life unless it was what he genuinely thought/knew she wanted? Is is that he's a Catholic and needs her dead so he can remarry? I doubt it, since he's clearly not too much of a stickler about living in sin--and besides, the Vatican, in its infinite compassion for the suffering and indignity of humanity, wants her kept alive. No, I've tried, and I can't think of a sinister motive behind his decision--well, except of course that just as it's too painful for her parents to imagine her dead, it may be too painful for him to have her living in this state. That's a possibility, and it would reduce him to their inadequate position. Poor Ms. Schiavo. Apparently quite the shrinking violet in life (and a bulimic, which is what got her into all this trouble in the first place--ladies, please stop worrying about how you look and worry instead about how you are), she's managed to become the biggest pain in the ass the state of Florida has seen since that little sh*t Elian Gonzalez declared he didn't want to go back to his stinkhole country of origin. (Though who could blame him, really?)

And Jeb Bush is seriously contemplating some kind of dictatorial fiat, is he? Well, maybe he should--if his convictions are so strong, if he's so convinced that this woman is an innocent life in jeopardy, then, if he lets his hands be tied by red tape and 'legality,' isn't he playing Pontius Pilate if he surrenders her to the will of the courts? I'd say so! So come on, Jeb--put your career where your mouth is--why, you may just force your brother to order your arrest for violation of federal law! Imagine the look on your mother's face! Wouldn't it be worth it just for that?

There's no good ending to this ugliness. None. But an ending would be better than an extension. She'll die, and there will be wailing and cursing among the nabobs of finger-wagging sanctimony for about a week, and that'll be that. If there is a lesson to be learned, perhaps it is this: the speed with which the judicial process has sped this woman to her grave since Congress attempted to usurp the third branch of the government ("Screw the courts! We've got an unconstitutional agenda to enforce!") suggests to me that party loyalty only stretches so far, and that if you piss off the courts enough--federal, state, Supreme--if you impede on their jurisdiction too much/far and attempt to remove from them their rightful authority, you will get b*tch-slapped. Ever since that midnight madness vote in the Senate, the courts have collectively and consistently flipped the Congress the bird--"F*ck you--we made our decision, it was our decision to make--the b*tch is toast!"--and I think that's got a lot to do with the behind-doors realization that if the courts roll over for Congress on this one, they're collectively surrending their Prairie Oysters to the gents up on the Hill. And that they will not do. So congrats, Congresspeople--by acting as if you could ignore the politics of this situation, you've ensured the outcome you (supposedly) wanted to avert. Jackasses.

Oh, and let's not forget that Congress doesn't care that the state of Texas just yanked the feeding tube from a baby whose parents couldn't afford to pay for its treatment. But then, the baby was poor, probably not white, and died under a law signed into legislation by a certain former governor who's now the nominal head of his party. So, you know, f*ck the kid--it's a completely different situation for a myriad of reasons that we won't go into because they're highly complex and totally imaginary/specious. Look, we're hypocritical, evil f*cks with an agenda to advance; don't trouble us with trivial details like "moral consistency" and "respecting the right of life we claim to value, even when it's politically inconvenient to respect it." In the words of Christopher Hitchens, "Doesn't it make you want to throw up everything you've ever even thought about eating?" God Speed, Ms. Schiavo, and you nameless little kid in Texas--the world and its leaders should have treated both of you better.

Let. Her. Go.

Look, what I'm about to use as an analogy is going to seem cruelly tasteless, but I maintain, as always, that my method is valid. Why? Because THE SIMPSONS is the I Ching--all answers may be found therein, if one only knows how to look. I cite in this instance the episode "Lisa The Vegetarian," in which Lisa (whom her father aptly describes herein as a "know-nothing know-it-all," one of the few times Homer has grasped an ugly truth and expressed it perfectly) turns to vegetarianism out of conscience, and then, with the fanaticism of a born-again Christian, insists that everyone else adopt her world-view. Everyone shrugs her off, largely because her methods of persuasion never extend beyond the shrill and the castigating--hint to Lisa: Positive political change comes through patience, reason, and persistence. Regardless--her frustration at her failure to convert all of Springfield into herbivorism leads her to hijack the suckling pig that her father has prepared for the piece de resistance of his barbeque. She drags it off with what I assume is a lawnboy, and it quickly rolls off under its own momentum, followed by a panicky Homer with Bart in tow. We join our transcript already in progress:

The pig passes through a hedge.

Homer: (desperate) It's just a little dirty--it's still good, it's still good!

The pig crosses a busy highway, then jumps a bridge and lands in a river.

Homer: (chasing it down the current, increasingly desperate) It's just a little slimy--it's still good, it's still good!

The pig gets sucked into a dam's sluice, where it blocks the river's flow like a cork in champagne bottle. Enough pressure builds up behind it and pow!--the pig flies like a champagne cork, only unlike the cork, it never comes down; it just flies away across the horizon.

Homer: (still desperate, but you can hear the futility in his voice) It's just a little airborne--it's still good, it's still good!

Bart: (with finality) It's gone.

Homer: (crushed) I know.

Folks, that pig? Terry Schiavo, the woman in Florida who's been brain-dead for over a decade. Homer? Her parents, who want her feeding tube to stay in place. Bart? Her husband, who's been saying all along that she always said she wouldn't want to live this way and wants to let her be at peace. A perfect analogy. Ms. Schiavo is gone, folks--a victim of science progressing far enough to keep her body alive but not far enough to do a damn thing about her brain. She's gone. She's not coming back. And even if she did--even if, oh miracle of miracles, she awakes, her brain is cabbage, folks. Her quality of life would be about what it is now, only with more drooling. She would be, in essence, a late-stage Alzheimer's victim, unable to communicate, recognize others, or do anything but lie in bed soiling herself. Who she was--the daughter that these parents love and want to hold onto? She's not there anymore. And yet, because her heart still beats and her lungs still inflate, they cling to her, claiming that she's still 'alive'--she's still good! She's still good! No, she isn't. This isn't The Dead Zone, people. She's not going to wake up fully functional with psychic powers. She's dead in every meaningful, human sense of the term, and what we have is a houseplant in the shape of a human being. Does human life in and of itself have value? Of course--but only if that life is human. And what defines human life is reason, memory, emotion, communication, the ability to be something more or other than a vegetable. In that sense--in that very real sense--I'm afraid that Ms. Schiavo is no longer human. That's an ugly, awful thing to say--it's an ugly, awful thing to think. But it's also true. A body without a brain is a corpse--it doesn't matter if the corpse has a functional circulatory system--and a corpse is not human. Not in a legal sense, not in a moral sense, not even in a sentimental sense.

I understand--I do--why the parents don't want to let go--they don't want to accept the unimaginable pain of what most people agree is the most emotionally agonizing experience anyone can go through--the loss of a beloved child. They will do anything--anything--to spare themselves that fate. But that's my point--they're not thinking about her. They're thinking about themselves. This is about them. And that's where they lose my sympathy. They're fighting to be able to tell themselves that she's still there--she's still good, she's still good!--so that they can go visit an inanimate bundle of flesh and bone rather than a gravestone--so they can talk to a deaf, blind, uncomprehending body than to a memorial. Well, boo-f***ing-hoo. How nice for them. How decent. How caring. How selfish. Let her go, folks. She's not still good--she's gone. Gone.

And of course, we might let her go with dignity, and then use those perfectly good organs to save the live of real humans--we might give her loss meaning by enabling her death to be a gift to those who can think and feel and who have families and loved ones of their own. But stupid, cold-blooded fanatics who think they're caring, moral people don't want that to happen. They stand outside and protest for a dead woman while inside that same hospital are dozens of people who need bedpans changed, pillows fluffed, who need human contact, who need real help--but, you know, "F*** them, I'm not gonna deal with real people--they're mean and cranky and I might not like them and besides, blood and sh*t and all that icky stuff make me want to urp. No, I'm gonna stay out here in the clean, warm sunlight and pat myself on the back for how moral I am." F*** these people. F*** them raw.

And as for the Senatorial forces massing to preserve the sanctity of life? Folks, don't be fooled. These people couldn't give less of a sh*t about what happens to this woman--save, I suppose, for the lunatic fringe of people like Rick "Why Yes I Was A Spanish Inquisitor In A Former Life" Santorum and Gary Bauer--the others just want to make some cheap political hay out of this godawful mess of private pain. The GOP representatives are only pulling evil sh*t like issuing a subpeona to a comatose woman--nice, very tasteful, you soulless f***s--for the same reason they jumped all over 'gay marriage'--because, if you think about it, Republicans ought to (and probably do) rather like the idea of yanking the plug on poor Terry, because it's much the cheapest option in this situation--put it this way: if it's what an HMO executive would insist upon, it's probably what an elected Republican would like. Point is, like 'gay marriage,' it's a great 'wedge issue'--by taking a 'principled' stand, they force the opposition to take an unpleasant if morally consistent position: "No, let her die! We'll fight to let her die!" Which makes it seem as though they're fighting to kill her. And at a time when the Republicans are scrambling a bit because they don't want to get on board with Bush's Social Security--heh--'reform,' but also don't want to look like traitors to the leader of their party, this wedge issue makes them look good to their constituents and buys them some time. Pretty shrewd, really. So while it's fine to be appalled at them, I say let's be appalled for the right reason: not because, like their idiotic, vigil-holding supporters, they're ideology-driven fanatics who don't care about human suffering, but because they're Machiavellian monsters who don't care about human suffering. Huge difference.

Let her go, folks. It's been time for a long time. I say it again: She's not 'still good'--she's gone. It's sad, and it's ugly, and it's true. Enough said, I think.

Pause

End-of-term grading is here, along with end-of-term marathon office hours, and end-of-term-beginning-of-reading-of-next-term's-required-texts. So basically, I'm a bit swamped. Give me a bit of a breather, and I'll be back when the smoke clears...

Welcome to the Age of "Meh"

Nobody gives a s*** about Jeff Gannon. Nobody. Well, nobody who isn't a blogger or a blog-reader, which means practically nobody. Nobody gives a s*** that a hooker (nevermind that distracting 'gay' crap--except for the fact that he's a shill for an administration that not-so-secretly thinks that Matthew Shepherd "got what was coming to him") with no journalistic credentials to speak of got within spitting (or in this case, fellating) distance of the President so as to ask him profoundly--ridiculously--biased questions, which it seems are the only kinds the guy can answer.

As I see it, there are two ways to read this, one positive, one negative: A. The Karl Rove propaganda machine that has been running with the efficiency of a perpetual-motion device is finally corroded with complacency and beginning to break down, or B.--and this is the one I ruefully believe--these folks have realized that there is no bottom--that they can't stoop so low that their partisans and an indifferent press-corps won't excuse/ignore it.

Because it's gotta be the latter, doesn't it? I mean, nobody in the media cares enough to report on the fact that the powers that be think so little of them that they knowingly let an internet hooker into their ranks--think about the message that sends to the other White House correspondents! But CBS and ABC reported on this not at all. At all. And the rest of the media outlets seem content to let the 'full investigation' we've been promised by the administration do the heavy lifting on this one. (Hey, while we're at it, why don't we give the cops and the D.A.s a break and let the criminals investigate their crimes? I mean, they're the ones 'on the inside.') Simply put, they don't care about Gannon. Just another day. And you don't want to make waves in the White House--you might have to get your lies from the Press Secretary from the live feed instead of being in the same room when the feces is flung in your faces. (My favorite comment on the brouhaha comes from, of course, Ann Coulter: "Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president." Oh my God, you've got to love that woman. Racism, age-ism and outright vicious idiocy contained in a single pithy sentence. Somewhere out there Lyndon LaRouche and Pat Buchanan are shaking their heads and saying, "Wow, that woman is just nuts.") Is that it? Fear of being shut out of the loop? But if the loop is all lies--if the loop contains people like the treasonous Robert Novak ("Don't impugn my integrity just because I compromised national security and a woman's life because her husband criticized Bush!") and Gannon, then why would you want to be a member of that club? I'm sure once Woodward and Bernstein started sniffing around, they got shut out a bit--didn't stop them from pulling off the journalistic coup (literally!) of the century.

But the press don't care. They don't care because, well, first of all, most of them are blow-dried idiots who got the job because of their ability to have good hair and deliver lines with sententious gravitas. But second of all, it's the times, isn't it? Aren't we in the Age of Indifference? The Age of "Whatever"? The Age of "Meh"? "I'm p-paralyzed with happiness," says Daisy Buchanan, as she remains supine on the couch rather than rising to greet the arrival of her cousin. We, too, are in an era of paralysis, aren't we? An age in which stuff either comes too easily to us (why get up, go outside, drive--or god forbid, walk to the bookstore, where they might not even have the book you want--then have to come all the way back, when you can just go online to Amazon?), or way, way too hard--a fact that robs us of the ability to arouse our nobler instincts when the rotten log of government is accidentally kicked over.

On that note, am I the only one increasingly creeped out by these 'town hall' meetings Bush keeps holding, where they only let in people guaranteed to fawn--isn't the whole point of a 'town hall' meeting to hear the concerns of the common people? But then, even if they voiced those concerns, he wouldn't really hear them. During one recent meeting, a woman tried to explain why Social Security was important to her because she's had to work three jobs just to keep her head about water, a revelation he described as "fantastic" and "uniquely American"--a moment of Chauncey Gardiner-ly inadvertant honesty. Yes, Mr. President, it is "fantastic" as in "unbe-f***ing-lievable" and "uniquely American" in the sense that the minimum wage you are determined to keep as viciously low as possible and the health care system you're determined to keep as cruelly inadequate/expensive as possible are forcing your citizenry into life-killing choices like working three jobs--none of which, I'm betting, are full time or give any kind of benefits. You just know she works at Wal-Mart, don'tcha? Oh, and as a follow-up, he asked if she "got any sleep," and laughed--laughed--when she replied, with unhappy honesty, "Not really." This man is an intellectually abortive monster. And we don't care.

We don't care. We don't care about Cheney and Halliburton--old news, man. We don't care about the government paying talking heads six-figure incomes to tout its policies as their own opinions. We don't care that reporters for the New York Times sell the war as a good thing because 'it's what's going to happen anyway and might as well get on the winning team.' We don't care about the Attorney General's memos titled "Torture--It's FANNNNN-tastic!" We don't care that failures like Rice get promoted--that Scalia will be Chief Justice. We don't care. We don't care because--why? Because caring risks disappointment? Perhaps. Yet Cubs fans persist--and Red Sox fans finally lived to see their caring pay off. And, who knows, maybe Episode III won't suck. (Yes, it will, but still.) There are small reminders around us that hope is not a loser's game. And yet about the big things--the integrity of our leaders and the choices they make for our lives, the media that was once the fourth branch of the government and now exists solely as a wing of the Executive branch, the fact that Not Killing Minors won by the slimmest majority possible among the Nine Worthies--and that when Rehnquist retires Roe V. Wade will be on the chopping block toute de suite--we don't care. We shrug, we say "Meh," we go back to watching re-enactments of the Michael Jackson trial. We don't care. And the people who are supposed to get us to care--they don't care either. I'd like to think that right before his retirement, Rather will snap and pull a Howard Beale on live television and scream about the "bulls**t" and how he's mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore (and frankly, if anyone's high-strung enough to do it, Rather is), but so what if he did? We'd just enjoy it as this year's equivalent of Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, and go back to not caring. Remember: "Meh." Forever "Meh."

People, we're five years into the decade, and as yet no one has bothered to slap a numerical moniker on it. Not surprising really. After all: "Meh."

Another Top Ten List!

Since I'm feeling uncreative and lazy amidst my bout of flu--no, wait, scratch "amidst my bout of flu" and replace it with "because these are fundamental aspects of my utterly inadequate character"--here's Another Top Ten List (see! copying the title of blog entry! how lazy is that?!):

The Top Ten Things You Should Be Ashamed For Enjoying:

10. American Idol. I know it's an obvious thing upon which to rag (love that funky sentence structure), but really, folks, nothing good can come of this--the only aspect of the show that's worth a damn is that nasty Brit laying into the at-best-semi-talents with all he's got--it's one of the few places in American culture where we condemn rather than extol mediocrity. But the people who slip by him and fall subject to the voting of the losers at home? This is supposed to produce decent pop stars? Look, people--there's a reason we don't let people 'vote' on what's supposed to happen next in a movie: most of us aren't mentally or artistically equipped to make a good artistic decision. Similarly, if five people like one singer, and six people like another, that doesn't make the second singer better. Pat Boone's cover of "Tutti Frutti" outsold Little Richard's original--that doesn't make the second anything less than a revelation, and the first anything less than an abomination. Let singers make their bones the old-fashioned way--slowly, painfully, giving them the chance to aquire the grit and stamina they need to be true artists. Otherwise, we'll wind up with a nation that thinks Andrea Boccelli is our greatest tenor because...well, because his voice is...I mean, he just...look, he's BLIND, OK??? Letting the masses decide such matters leads to stars chosen by their freak-show qualities. Let's let the true judges of talent, time and reflection, choose our stars, shall we?

9. Rap As It Now Exists. Please note the caveat. I never really bought into the whole "rap is the angry poetry of the streets" claim, mainly because, like beat poetry, it was impossible to tell good rap from awful, since it is the goal of all rap to sell its message the same way--rage and volume and percussion--and the percussion is never complicated--it's usually just some half-assed variation on the 4-beat. But I let the rap vindicators slide because A. as a white person, I really was not supposed to 'get' rap (though isn't an automatic exclusion of an audience the sign of a poor art form?), and B. black people did and do have an enormous amount of s**t to be pissed off about. But once rap became really formalized (or 'formulized,' to coin a too-cute neologism), once it became about image first and message second (or rather, once the two became so unified that there was no telling them apart), rap became something that could be faked. And anything that can be faked for a buck, will be. And so now, rap is as real as pro-wrestling--the life that it once criticized it now extols--the vicious materialism of the White Man is now the mark of the successful, bling-laden rapper--it's become a running skit performed by men who are increasingly unaware that they're playing a comic role--who actually think they're rough-and-tough men not to be fooled with, and who therefore act like they're in a info-mercial hawking testosterone. And it's all a joke. Rap has become about money. And once it's all about money, it's no longer art, it's entertainment. And since rap was never various enough in subject or style to be really entertaining, we need to let it go. Now.

8. Any Film or TV Project That Includes The Name "Wayans." I realize that what with the rap-bashing and now this, I may seem a touch racist, but seriously, if you give these men your money, you are part of the problem. I don't care what the problem in question may be, you are part of it, and you must be stopped.

7. Any Film or TV Project That Includes The Name "Rob Schneider." OK, mostly I threw this in to defuse the whole 'racist' thing--although he's part Filipino, and also Jewish, so I may simply be digging myself in deeper here--but for God's sake people, they're making Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo Two--TWO!!!! Surely we of all nations, colors and creeds can agree that this must not be allowed to stand.

8. Paris Hil--you know what? Never mind. It's too cheap, too easy, too 'already done'--and too sad, isn't it?

7. Any Actor/tress (mostly -tress) Who Hasn't Done A Decent Piece Of Work In More Than Two Decades. Do people really care what Elizabeth Taylor is doing these days? I know Liz Smith insists on telling us, largely because she's so embedded up Taylor's posterior she might as well be checking for polyps, but folks, Taylor's last movie was The Flintstones. I'd repeat that, but it makes my head hurt. Butterfield 8 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? were a long time ago, people. Let the woman go gently into that good night. And if Streisand isn't going sing anymore, I no longer wish to see, hear, or in any other way be aware of her. Johnny Carson--God bless and keep him--did it right; when he quit--he quit. "I'm not performing, and since all I am to you people is a performer, there's no reason for our lives to coincide. F*** off." Good man. Would that Cher would a page from that book.

6. Joan Rivers and her Unfortunate Offspring. Oh, I'm tempted to make cruel jokes about Joan's husband killing himself just to get away from her, but suicide isn't funny (unless it involves clowns and gas fumes and a lit match) and it's not fair. But just because we feel sorry for the Rivers women doesn't mean we have to cut them a paycheck every time someone lays down a red carpet. Anyone who makes that worm-eaten homunculus Mr. Blackwell look comparatively un-bitchy is not someone who should be allowed on TV. Granted, Hollywood's women, for the most part, cannot dress themselves well--hell, in the cases of Tara Reid and Lindsey Lohan, they can't dress themselves, period--not enough live brain cells, there--but the hideousness of Tinseltown Couture speaks for itself--just stick a couple of cameras on the walkway, wait for Juliette Lewis or Courtney Love to shamble by, and pipe in the theme to Psycho. Makes the same critical point as the Rivers harpies, and it's much less painful on the ears.

5. Every Movie Ever Made By Pixar--Especially That Piece of S**t Toy Story 2. Nah, I'm just f***in' with ya. And don't feel ashamed about pre-ordering the next Harry Potter book, either. Calvin & Hobbes sucks, though. No, it doesn't--God, you're easy to mess with.

4. Superbowl Commercials. It's finally happened. We've started watching television in order to see what comes between the shows. Isn't this something like going to the movies because you enjoy handing your money to the guy behind the ticket counter? Plus which, we've actually entered a phase where these commercials have become snarkily aware of our awareness--they've begun to mock us, even as they rook us. This trend does not speak well of the direction of humanity's psychic evolution...Speaking of which--

3. Budweiser. Jesus, people, it's sugary piss. Seriously--carbonate a diabetic's urine and do a blind taste-test. And it's the Number One Beer in the world--we've actually exported a facet of our culture that we do worse than any other country in the world, and made the world like it. Perhaps the mullahs are right, and we are indeed the Great Satan.

2. Guns. Look: good and decent people--the kind of people Jesus would approve of--would regard violence as, at best, a necessary evil--something to be engaged in with deep, self-questioning reluctance and a grim determination to end it swiftly and as painlessly as possible. So if you're really into guns--if you go to conventions and shows and really get off on holding them and you drool over the words "fully automatic" and "armor-piercing" and "hollow point"--if you love going out the range and blasting that silhouette to pieces over and over and over, well first: you're incredibly gay, and second: you're experiencing the evil of muderous sadism only slightly vicariously, and loving it. Which makes you a horrible, horrible person. So stop it. Go home. Put the gun away and pray you never need to use it. Listen to a little light classical music. Take up knitting. Sip your tea. Remember: you're gay--go with it.

1. Writing Blogs. Wouldn't be me if I didn't end with a reflective 'f*** you,' now, would I? Of course, those who read them should be even more ashamed...

Cough. Hack. Shiver.

I am sick today, and so my latest dose of vitriol will have to wait until my humours regain their equilibrium. (I think my black bile is overwhelming my yellow. Gotta love Renaissance medicine.) Sick with what, you ask? Why, the flu, of course. And why, you ask? Because I couldn't get a mother-f***ing flu shot this year because this g*d-damned administration couldn't pull its collective head out of its wallet long enough to make sure there'd be enough vaccine to go 'round, that's why!!!

...OK, that kinda took a lot out of me. I'm gonna go lie down now and ache.