Snot good

Cleodhna came down with a cold last weekend; a particularly nasty one, which gave her a tremendous earache, and then gunged up her ears to a point where she was almost or completely deaf in at least one ear for a couple of days. It looks like I’m coming down with it as well.

Douglas Adams and John Lloyd wrote a book called The Meaning of Liff, which was about finding place names nobody uses, and using them to describe concepts that we all know about but haven’t found a word for. For instance, “Massachusetts” are the things we’re looking for when we blow our nose then open the handkerchief; “nice and Kentucky” refers to a situation where you e.g. slot a book into a remaining space in a bookshelf and it fits exactly and nicely.

Well, in the last couple of hours my nose has decided that what the world needed above anything else was more snot. I’ve found a random supermarket plastic bag, and a gap in the corner of the office between the book shelf and the disused old PowerMacs where the plastic bag does indeed fit nice and kentucky. To add to the veneer of sophistication, I have a roll of aloe vera-infused toilet roll on the desk. Occasionally I’ll tear a piece off, blow my nose, and deposit the resulting offering into the plastic bag, like a ticket for a Fungus the Bogeyman-organised raffle that nobody wants to win.

Now, given that on Wednesday Cleodhna and I are due to go to Brian’s for a game, and either of us might still be contagious, and the last thing a parent of a 5-month-old baby wants is for it to catch a cold that causes earache (because a baby with earache cries all the fucking time), this is arguably shitty timing. By the weekend we both should have recovered (my immune system, and my lack of asthma, means I don’t have to worry about coughing up interestingly-textured goo), which is good because that’s Jamie’s wedding, and the last thing you want to be at a wedding is an unhappy, no fun, Plague Mary. On the following Monday I head off to France for a fortnight. They’d better not have swine flu when I arrive.

(If you’re worried about swine flu, check out Making Light. See also a commenter’s link to a possible link between industrial-level pork production and disease, and another diary from dailykos on the same subject. Note that so-called moderates stripped pandemic funding from the recent US stimulus bill.)

Then again, perhaps I’m lucky after all. They say that when there’s a real bad-ass flu epidemic, healthy young people die disproportionally because their immune system reacts to such a degree that it ends up killing the host. In which case already being slightly ill might be a good thing. (Certainly xkcd agrees.)

In which case we have nothing major to worry about, and I should forward a few sick jokes (something that email stopped doing a few years ago). e.g. RT@ArianeSherine “If we’re calling Swine Flu an “epigdemic” & “hamdemic”, am I allowed 2 talk abt having the trots & being cured by oinkment?”

Or, from Warren Ellis: “Adult film industry invades swine-flu decimated Mexico, converts empty homes into sets, establishes the pornocracy of Sexico”

Or, my favourite, “Don’t worry, I’m only giving sinners the swine flu.”

How do I know this? Because I’m following God on Twitter.