Whenever I skip the second cup of strong, black coffee for a tall, steaming mug of tea with honey, you may be certain that I am unwell.
Herself picked up a bug (not The Bug) about 10 days ago, one of those raspy coughers that keeps everyone in the house awake, and come Thursday I was quietly congratulating myself for having dodged it when I began to sense a disturbance in the Force during a short trail run.
By Friday it was me hacking away like a lunger with a three-pack-a-day habit, chain-smoking Luckies through the port in my windpipe. Kane didn’t make that much racket when the baby Alien did his “Heeeeeere’s Johnny!” number at dinner on the Nostromo.
I hit the couch early on and stayed there, and when that proved exhausting I went to bed, around 7:30. And I stayed there until 7:30 this morning.
The fun part about having a bad cough is trying to find a position in which you can grab a bit of shuteye between eruptions. I usually sleep on my left side, but that was right out. So was the right side.
The only position that worked for me was flat on my back, just like Kane on the galley table.
The good news is, there was no blood on the sheets this morning and no midget Aliens chasing Miss Mia Sopaipilla around the house.
The bad news is I don’t feel up to throwing out a few half-baked zingers like “Rudy the Mook should be tossed in the sneezer until he can remember his bank balance,” or “The U.S. House of Reprehensibles resembles a legitimate legislative body in the same way that a tank-town dog pound resembles the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show,” or maybe “How is it that we still care more about Matthew Perry than anybody in Gaza?”
Mad Blog Media 
Rudy getting what he earned, with Dominion and Ms Fani Willis, Esq, waiting in the wings for the next act of this shit show.
Israel is their winning hearts and minds by just killing, maiming, or starving everyone in the Gaza shit show.
Man, I wish I was a fly on the wall in the White House living quarters to hear what Joe really thinks about Johnson and his band of trumplodites.
Carl Hulse at the NYT has a good wrapup of the House’s relentless pud-pulling, or as he calls it, “one of the most tumultuous and unproductive legislative years in recent memory.” He does not seem optimistic that things will improve.
As for Mini-MAGA, ol’ Mikey reminds me of a joke that was included in a video my bros and I did for a college folklore class back in the Seventies. Damn, I wish I still had the tape. It would be excellent for blackmail purposes — that is, if I hadn’t been the guy who was telling the filthiest jokes.
Anyway, a man walks into a bar, as they will, with a gorgeous woman on his right arm and this itty-bitty guy sitting on his left shoulder.
“I’d like to buy a round for the house,” says our man, waving a thousand-dollar bill. “Yes, sir,” says the barkeep. “But I can’t break a bill that size. You got anything smaller?
“Nope,” says our man. “Keep the change.”
Well, our barkeep suspects he’s having his chain yanked, but he gives the bill a good going-over and it looks legit, so he pours a round for everyone in the joint — at which point the itty-bitty guy, looks to be about a foot tall, no shit — jumps off our man’s shoulder and runs around the bar kicking over all the beverages.
“The fuck?” inquires the barkeep. “Not to worry,” says our man. “Set ’em up again. Here’s another thou’.”
“Sir, I told you, I can’t break a bill that size,” says the barkeep.
“Keep the change,” says our man.
And the barkeep pours, and the little guy runs around kicking over all the drinks, and our man orders another round and shows another thou’. Keep the change, etc.
Well, this goes on for a while until the barkeep can’t take it anymore. “Sir,” he says, “I will pour drinks all day long at a thou’ a pop, and thank you for your absurd generosity, but I gotta know — what the hell is it with your half-pint pal there?”
“I’m glad you asked,” says our man. “Some years back I was destitute. At the end of my rope. I had gone to the ocean to throw myself in and end it all, when suddenly I saw this strange and ancient-looking bottle sticking partway out of the sand.
“I took hold of it, and pulled it up, and tried to wipe it clean to see if it was something I might be able to sell, maybe buy myself a few more hours of life.”
“As I did so, a genie appeared, and to thank me for releasing him from the bottle in which he had been imprisoned for thousands upon thousands of years, he granted me three wishes.”
“Bullshit,” expostulates the fed-up barkeep, certain now that he’s being set up for a reality-TV show, the House speakership, or some other class of a ruthless and embarrassing skinning.
“True fact,” replies our man.
“OK, pal,” sneers the bartender. “What were your three wishes?”
Our man replies, “As I was in dire financial straits, my first wish was that every time I opened my wallet I would find a thousand-dollar bill inside.” And as he speaks, he opens his wallet, shows the barkeep the single G-note inside, says “And here it is!” then hands it to him.
“A tip for your patience,” he purrs, then opens the wallet again — and lo and behold! — there’s another thou’ in there.
“Holy shit!” says the barkeep, still suspecting humiliation, larceny, or worse. “What was your second wish?’
“Well, another reason I was so low — I was lonely,” replies our man. “So for my second wish I asked the genie for the most beautiful woman in the world to keep me company. And here she is,” nodding to the stunner on his right arm. She made Marilyn Monroe look like Marilyn Manson. Even the blind guy in the corner booth at the back of the bar gave out with a wolf whistle.
The barkeep mops the sweat from his brow, tries to remember that he’s married, and concedes that she is indeed the knockout of all knockouts.
“Can’t argue with you there, sir,” he says. “But one thing is driving me nuts here. I mean, here you are with the magical wallet, the babe of all babes … and the little fucker with the attitude. Why would a guy like you pal around with a guy like that?”
“Well,” shrugs our man with a wry grin, “my third wish was for a 12-inch prick. And there he is.”
You know what you started, right?
The test is will anyone enter the door Patrick left open?
It’s a bad habit, leaving the door open so wide. And worse, sitting with my back to it.
OK, I’ll bite.
So, two fellas die at the exact same moment in time. One is an English literature professor and the other a bricklayer. They arrive at the pearly gates and ring the bell on the counter. St. Peter comes out and asks if he can help. They both say “we are here to enter heaven.” St. Peter checked the admission book and sees both are eligible to enter. He tells them unfortunately there is only one opening, and one of them will have to wait in hell until space is available. He then tells them that a poetry contest will decide who enters and who waits. He gives each of them a clipboard with paper and pencil and asks them to write a poem using the word Timbuktu, which is a city on a river in the desert. The professor calmly and quickly writes his poem. The bricklayer sweats, fidgets, erases, breaks his pencil, but finally finishes his poem. St. Peter reads them aloud.
The first poem:
Across the golden sand,
A distant ship comes into view,
Sailing on the dark blue strand,
Its destination, Timbuktu.
The second poem:
Me and Tim was in the park,
With three girls who had the spark,
But they was three and we was two,
So I buck one and Timbuktu.
Who won the contest?
As a champion of the working class, I vote for the bricklayer. Anyway, everybody knows English-lit profs go straight to Hell when they snuff it. Those tweed jackets with the elbow patches and the pipe tobacco make for an aromatic addition to The Big Fire.
I recall that joke from somewhere. Maybe this blog.
It’s your basic shaggy-dog story, like “The Aristocrats,” only not as brutally repulsive. One of those timeless gags you can use to kill an entire dinner party.
That version would take about six minutes to deliver, but you can fatten it up quite a bit on the hoof. If you’re really good at improv you will soon have absolutely no friends at all.
Certainly an opportunity to validate Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the time available”. 🙂
It’s an endurance test. Who will stick around for the punchline? If you’re lucky, no one, and then you get all the drinks and hors d’oeuvres.
Not if the little prick kicks them all over first.
Get well soon young man !
Thanks, hoss. I feel like the little prick missed my beverage but got me in the plums.
Man down!! Hope you get on the far side of the plague which seems to be circulating like hipsters at a Starbutts. Reports from the medicos are that since we weren’t co-mingling per normal over the past several years we “lost” our usual ability to shrug off this’ n that invasion of bad juju. Not sure that makes any sense to me but people are sho’ nuf getting sick around these here parts.
Ayuh. This time of year everyone’s spending more time indoors in poorly ventilated spaces and that’s Disney World for a bug, only without the GOP threesomes and Ron DeSadist and Matt “Swingin'” Gaetz getting all like high-horse and moral and shit over who’s diddling whom, and where, and goddamnit why weren’t they invited?.
I hope this bug isn’t a cousin to the one I caught last year about this time. Holy hell, that beast had me by the snotlocker with a downhill pull for three weeks. It’d ease up a tad, and I’d think I was back in bizniz, but nope. Back it would come like bad news from DeeCee.
So, how is the word wrangler doing today? Half human or whole?
Actually, I had a moment sometime in the middle of the night when my immune system woke up, glanced around, and barked, “Wot’s all this then?”
Today I managed a two-mile walk in the sunshine and am not presently bubbling like a fondue pot full of … no, let’s not go there. Just because my appetite is on the fritz doesn’t mean yours should be too.
Well, that’s great to hear. Thinking back, I had a similar case of that crud in early October. First thing, test for COVID. Negative two days in a row, Felt better after about 5 days or so. So, quien sabe?
It feels very much like something I get now and again. I’ve never identified it — could be a cold, flu, or RSV — but it knocks me down for a while, lets me up after a few days, and then when I try to go about my regularly scheduled activities … pow, it knocks me down again. The ol’ one-two.
I got my last dose of it in December 2022, so it all feels very familiar.
Happily, Herself was out and about today so I had her bring home some chicken thighs and as we speak I’m simmering a large pot of basic posole on the cooktop — chicken, onions, garlic, hominy, cumin, oregano, water, and four big red chile peppers. I like chile in my Irish penicillin.