Messiah

Some people will tell you that alcohol has no restorative properties, that it cannot alleviate cold symptoms, that, in fact, it can compound those symptoms. Those people are liars. (Their motive for such falsehoods? Beats me. It's probably a knee-jerk response stemming from the culturally instilled belief that alcohol -- and heavy metal -- only causes harm, never help. Blame Christians and Alcoholics Anonymous.) Suffering from my second fever -- this time avec sore throat -- in six days, yours truly did what had to be done. I drank approximately 3 liters of beer and 8 ounces of scotch before bed. (Sorry for the mixed units of measurement*. I'm Canadian.) I didn't like it, either. Sure, as anyone who knows me will Ron Artest, I am fond of my libations. That I love drinking like Bubs loved heroin goes without saying; but I'm only human**, and even I have a hard time imbibing when my temperature is close to 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit).

I did, though, and I'm damn glad I did, too. I woke up this morning with only a slight pain in my throat, nothing some ice cream couldn't fix (ice cream!), and spent the rest of the day reading, playing video games, and watching The Wire. Today's my day off, see, and instead of lying in bed all day, I actually did stuff that made my day off pretty neat as opposed to really fucking shitty. I think I'll do some more of the same right now.

Oh, how nice it would be to remain sick forever. I could stay at home every day! I might teach myself how to bake really tasty cupcakes, ones with orange icing that doesn't taste at all like oranges. I'd invite people over, and when they asked, "What are you up to these days?" I'd answer, "I'm working on a novel about a kid who synthesizes a new drug for a science experiment a la The Manhattan Project, but this new drug is too "dangerous" because it's going to put the big pharmaceutical companies out of business because no one will ever have to take any other drug ever again, this new drug does it all, kinda like how computers will eventually consolidate entertainment, and the kid is marked for death. I don't want to give away the plot any further, but there's this big part, comprised of two long chapters, where the protagonist has to make an ethical decision that's really a Catch-22, and the reader discovers, hopefully, that we're all doomed, that all of our altruistic decisions are damning, all of our selfish ones equally so, and everyone, I mean the earth's entire population, dies," and then I'd watch their eyes light up like they just had an epiphany. "That sounds pretty good," they'd say, and I'd respond, after a pause, three quick drum beats in succession, "It's only one of the several ideas I'm kicking around."

All before breakfast.


* Also sorry for the mixed written-digit numerals. I threw out my AP press guide by mistake/in protest to their shitty idea of journalism.

** Or am I dancer?