2006-12-16 - 4:02 a.m.
Thank God for Codeine, eh? No, seriously – thank God for the delicious, delicious codeine, which soothes the chest and allows one to drift into a snoozy snooze. For, as you may or may not know, I have succumbed to my annual case of The Flu.
This annual case of the flu is an inescapable inevitability – it occurs whether or not I take the flu vaccine or not. I certainly didn’t get a flu shot this year for the simple reason that in previous years, when I got the shot, I came down with the flu almost immediately. It was like injecting myself with the flu – why bother?
A few days ago, when I first came down with this flu, I was chatting with a nurse of my acquaintance, who noted that it’s just as well that I didn’t have the flu shot this year, since they have has essentially been proven ineffective. The flu shot, as it turns out, is one of the pharmaceutical industry’s greatest scams – it is basically a vaccine created from anti-bodies to the previous year’s flu, which traditionally has nothing to do with the flu that spreads a year later. The vaccine is just a dry run for the day when the government wants to inject you with ID chips to track you and possibly to control your thought processes. Don’t laugh: Deep down you know it to be true.
But since I have had the flu, I have had remarkably little energy for any activity, either productive or base. I have slept and slept and slept, and gotten up long enough to make some dinner and watch TORCHWOOD, SURVIVOR, and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Other than that, though, I have just been gasping and choking and wheezing and sniffling. Coughing and spitting and sneering and howling.
An odious young correspondent of mine had the gall and the chutzpah to suggest that I had come down with “A Cocksucker’s Cold” – and we all know what one of THOSE are. But, while I am quite capable of coming down with a cocksucker cold, that is not what happened in this particular case.
I caught this flu from my next door neighbor, a short and fat middle aged blonde lady who owns too many cats and frequently wanders down the halls after them when they escape he apartment. Or, I could just as easily have caught it from the schoolteacher lady whose house I go to a couple of times a week to help grade papers. She had the flu last week, having caught it from her husband, who caught it the week before from one of the students in the UCLA science class he teaches. So it is NO cocksucker’s cold – that I assure you.
Fortunately for me, I discovered that I had, stuffed deep in the back of my medicine cabinet, an ancient, but almost entirely full bottle of aspirin and codeine, purchased during a long ago trip to England or Canada. Man, those other countries have the civilization thing going on just right. In these comparatively more advanced nations, not only can you get married if you are gay, you can also buy small doses of codeine (and aspirin) over the counter at ANY drug store.
I never understood quite why they forbid folks from doing this in America – I suppose they just don’t trust American consumers not to overdose on the 80 or so pills they’d have to take to get “high” off the codeine. By the same argument, drug stores have now all but pulled benedryl and other anti-histamines off the shelves, because they are SURE that ANYONE who wants to buy some Alka Seltzer Plus is really going to melt down the pills and turn them into crystal meth bumpies.
I suppose it is possible that some drug-addicted freak might buy up many a-bottle of aspirin and codeine, and then centrifuge the pills to increase the dose of codeine – but, really, why would that be such a bad thing? Codeine is the most lovely stuff ever, and when you have a flu it is just the thing to keep from coughing up a bloody lung or a kidney.
Right now my favorite news story is, as you can imagine, the tale of US Senator Tim Johnson, the Democrat from South Dakota who just suffered a massive brain hemorrhage and has been rushed into surgery. This has, as the papers are reporting, thrown the Democratic majority of the Senate into some danger – if the Senator dies or is replaced, the Senate will go 50-50, and with Vice President Cheyney able to cast the tie-breaking vote, the Republicans shall take control of the chamber.
It will be interesting to watch how both parties try to deal with a situation that will make either side look cynical and disgusting. The Republicans, who must be rubbing their hands with glee at what ultimately God himself declaring his political party affiliation, must seem respectful and sensitive, when all they really want to do is shove the old Senator out the door like a dead dog. And the Democrats will now try to convince us that even though Johnson is now a drooling, dribbling, brain dead old goat, gumming his pureed corn and with a zipper in his skull to allow surgeons easy access to his damaged, blood-clotted brain, he is still a wise Senator, capable of deliberation and logical decision.
It would be pretty hilarious if the Republicans used this situation to totally thwart the will of the people – but, as you know, if the Democrats had really been meant to have absolute power, they would have won the Senate by far more than just one wobbly seat.
