Hey, gang! I’ve been out of commission for awhile. August has been wrought with change and hardship. I started off the month with my trips to San Diego and Seattle, then returned to work my very last week at the library, and now I have started up with school again. Also during this time I developed an extremely painful abscess on my face which has caused all my glands to swell up and has caused the entire right half of my head to be a big heap of hurt. Everything on the right side of my face hurts: teeth, skin, ears, eyes, hair follicles, throat, all of it. Or the right half of it anyway. Although the tooth pain has been particularly nasty, by far the most irritating symptom has been the shooting blasts of pain in my inner ear, which effectively made me unable to concentrate on writing anything and also made it very difficult to go to sleep at night.

If you ever feel a swollen lump on your chin, or any other part of your body, for that matter, GO SEE A DOCTOR. It is not a collection of fifty pimples within one square inch of skin, as I thought my condition was. Although god knows I was probably coming close to that average back in high school. It’s curious that this is the most seriously ill I’ve been in months and I’ve still been working and such as normal; I suppose the main difference has been that as soon as I came home from work, I pretty much fell into a coma. It is not so bad now that I am on antibiotics and ibuprofen, but I still have some recovery time ahead of me, I think.

Some of you have been requesting gross pictures of the thing, and while I have never shied away from complaining about my medical problems and whoring photos of them as filler, right now the thing just looks like a big scab on my face. It’s really not all that interesting. I’m thinking I’m just going to let this period in my life’s physical appearance fall by the wayside of history.

Anyway, also in the time I was gone Blogger was down due to a technical problem and also I was having trouble with getting my domain name renewed. So in general August has not been a happy time for updating the web page. Hopefully that’s all turned around at this point. I don’t know if this is true in the case of the nasty writer’s block that has been dogging me for the last few months. I suppose we shall see.

Hooray for getting back into the swing of things!

The heat index was somewhere around one hundred ten degrees Farenheit in the city today.

At risk of making myself sound like a totally gross person, I have of late been defining the seasons by my bodily drippings. And I do not mean the shist or the pist, gentle reader. Those take place year round.

I can tell it’s cold outside when my nose starts to run. My nose leaks like a faucet in cold weather, and as soon as I enter a heated room, every little bit of mucous that was waiting for its chance to escape starts to drain out at breakneck speed, and only if I am lucky can I catch it all with a tissue. Were I more inclined to such juvenile behavior, I would probably have an easy time blowing nostril bubbles and the like.

In hot weather, I sweat. God, do I sweat. My sweat output puts my runny nasal drippings to shame. They’d barely fill a thimble, but the sweat would fill buckets. And, similarly, when I walk into an air conditioned room, the sweating does not stop. No, it continues for quite some time. Granted, I rather like the feeling of air conditioned sweat on my skin. However, the fact that it keeps dripping into my eyes is something of a downer.

I walked to work from the train today. If the air were any thicker I would have needed scuba gear to make the journey, or perhaps a pickaxe. I entered my place of employment at around noon. I finally stopped sweating at 2:30 PM, after sitting in the same chair and not moving around all that much in an air condtioned office for nearly two and a half hours.

I took my lunch break at about 6:30 PM, and my heat-fevered mind told me a burrito would really hit the spot. (And it did – the meat was spicy but the guacamole and sour cream really took the edge off.) Needless to say, the sweat returned. This time, the sweating did not cease before I left work at 9 PM. This was due in some part to the fact that I was moving heavy boxes around in an effort to get the place a little more organized before I left. But when I left, I was sweating.

I sat at the train station and waited for the southbound Purple Line train to pass through, and I suddenly realized that the air was crushing me, that it was actually squeezing me like a sponge, which explained the fact that I was leaving puddles wherever I went. And it’s a good thing my hair’s grown out long, or else it wouldn’t have been able to absorb it all and my clothes would have been drenched. On the downside, of course, I had nasty, sweaty hair.

Hours have passed and I still haven’t stopped sweating. I’ve been drinking plenty of water, and I feel fine, but the sweat continues. Come to think of it, I have been pretty worried about things lately…

Plus, it’s like, fucking hot out. You know how it is.

Interesting. My back, in such excruciating pain yesterday, feels merely a dull pain today. This is not all that different from the incident a couple months back when I woke up with a stabbing pain in my big toe, which after a day became a dull pain and soon disappeared. I did not, apparently, have the gout.

I sure hope my body does not continue this trend of constantly activating the pain receptors on random parts of my body for no good reason. If it keeps happening, I’ll kick my body’s fucking ass!

Ow, my ass!

I appear to have thrown my back out.

I left it on my tray after lunch, and the janitor won’t help me dig for it. My parents are gonna kill me!

No. Seriously, I seem to have somehow injured my back in such a way that it feels okay if I am still, but excruciatingly painful should I choose to move. And something I have noticed in the last few hours is that it is very difficult to keep from moving in this on-the-go world of ours.

I think I will take some pain relievers and give this whole back thing a day or two to see how it plays out. Maybe I finally came down with that scoliosis they were always checking us for in elementary school. Perhaps I will have to wear a back brace. If it is so, I will wear it proudly on the outside of my T-shirt and decorate it with stickers.

I hope I haven’t damaged my spine. As I understand it, the spine is a very useful and active part of the body, even if you are cowardly. I wonder: with a damaged spine, would I still be able to breakdance?

Maybe I’ve slipped a disc and will require the assistance of a chiropractor, or a stereo remote control.

Or perhaps I am dying, and rigor mortis is setting in prematurely? This could also explain the bloating.

I tell you, that’s the last time I try to untie my shoes before taking them off.

I… may have recently ingested some spoiled mayonnaise. I assure you that it was entirely unintentional, that I had every reason to believe that the mayonnaise was in perfectly good condition and not at all spolied, but it appears that my sources of evidence regarding the freshness of said mayonnaise may have been misinformed or were simply incorrect.

I have yet to feel any of the negative side effects one might encounter after introducing spoiled mayonnaise into one’s digestive system. I am unsure how much of a delay there is going to be before I experience these feelings, assuming I get them at all. Anything is possible, because, again, my sources may have been misinformed or are simply incorrect.

To combat the no doubt oncoming symptoms that admitting spoiled mayonnaise into one’s body can bring, I have, based on no doctor’s orders, imbibed an entire can of grape soda. I feel that the chemicals in the grape soda, whatever they may be, will counteract the chemicals in the spoiled mayonnaise, whatever those may be. Despite having no medical knowledge whatsoever aside from my prodigious comprehension of the inner workings of the human gall bladder, I feel no small comfort in having taken this action.

Although I think I may go lie down now. Yes, yes ? that’s what I’ll do.

Yesterday I finally came to terms with the fact that I am a great big tub of lard.

In the last few months, I have gained approximately twenty pounds. More importantly, however, every pair of jeans I own will no longer fit me if I do the top button on the fly. Well, technically they can fit me if I do the top button, but it is incredibly uncomfortable and also it creates an unsightly yet vaguely humorous spillage of belly flesh over the waist. Unpretty! And I can’t help but notice how *solid* my fattiness is. It is not at all as squishy and malleable as television and movies led me to believe it would be. It’s *heavy*. I guess that could be why heavy folks are heavy.

As I am far too cheap to simply accept myself the way I am and buy some new trousers, and because walking around with my jeans unbuttoned at the top seems undignified at best, I have decided that I am going to dedicate some of my free time to taking an inch or two off my abdominal region. In service of this I have gotten my “ab-slide” contraption out of mothballs and have begun intensive daily workouts. This work I do on the “ab-slide”, however, may be cancelled out by the fact that working out on it renders me unable to move for several days, leaving me stranded on the couch with a bag of chips and the remote control. I have also started doing a daily regimen of push-ups and sit-ups, which, again, leave me unable to move. The sit-ups are probably redundant anyway, as I think the “ab-slide” contraption is meant to replace them. Lord knows it’s easier on the back. Oh, if only someone would invent some sort of padded mat which will allow one to exercise unhandicapped by painfully solid hardwood floors!

Another step I have taken towards reducing my waist size is the complete elimination of food from my diet. I’m not quite there yet, however. Yesterday after work I went to the local chain supermarket with the full intention for buying food for me and for my household. However, I thought, “A-ha! I’m going on a diet! No more food for me!” So, instead of food, I bought liquor. No beer, though – certainly beer won’t make my waist any smaller. No, I bought a bottle of scotch and a bottle of sweet vermouth. For dinner I ended up making myself a double Manhattan. I can already feel the flab melting away. I feel *something* melting away, at any rate.

Finally, as a last resort, I have begun corset training. The gals at the workshop think that I can have a fifteen-inch waist by June if I keep at it!

This morning, I coughed up three small children.

If anyone has any need of me today, I will be lying on the couch, trying to find the words that will properly poeticize the feeling of some unknown-but-high quantity of post-nasal sludge oozing slowly down the lining of my throat. In addition, I may be conducting some experiments concerning chewing gum vis-à­¶is sneezing forcefully.

It’s a beautiful world; I’m just living in it.

Well, this is really stupid. A few days ago, I noticed that I had a giant hangnail on my index finger. Did I do anything about it? No, because I am very Manly and am able to ignore such a pain as trifling as a hangnail.

Today at work, in the course of my daily routines, shuffling through papers and books and whatnot, I got a nasty papercut on the ring finger of the same hand. What did I do? I licked it a few times and forgot about it.

Later in the day, I had a slight run-in with a book return cart. Nothing serious, but it meant that I had a second small cut on the ring finger of the same hand.

It began to bleed. The papercut, which had previously ceased to bleed, began to bleed once more. Then, the hangnail TWO WHOLE FINGERS OVER started to bleed.

When I got home from work, I cut off the hangnail and went to go wash out my cuts and put bandages on them. For even though I am Manly I wish to prevent infection where possible.

As I opened the medicine cabinet door, its bottom metal corner swung right across the top of my forearm – the same arm as the hand with the cuts – and resulted in a large gash, from which blood began to ooze.

“Give me a break,” I said. “Give me a break.”

Today is Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is the one day each year which we set aside for purposefully expressing to those we love how much we love them by buying them adorable and/or vaguely smutty Hallmark? cards. Unfortunately, every time I set foot into a Hallmark? store, I inevitably end up hovering in front of the Precious Moments? display case, hypnotized by their evil, spiralling eyes. My blood slowly begins to boil in a murderous rage, and at this point I either purchase a lilac-scented machine gun and go mow down the customers and employees at the Chick-Fil-A next door, after which I am taken out by police snipers, or my face contorts into a violent grimace as I smash the cases and everything in the immediate radius with my bare fists, and soon I bleed to death from the resultant severed arteries. So, needless to say, I avoid Hallmark? stores whenever possible. Happily, I am a bitter, hateful person who loves nobody, so it is not much of a problem.

Therefore, today, while others were thinking of the feeling of love in their hearts, I was thinking about the feeling of pain in my right tit.

I know what you’re thinking. “You are a man. What know you of tit pain?” Well, I’m not claiming to suffer from a broken back from double Ds or bruises on my face and stomach from running down a flight of stairs without proper support. Nay, support has nothing to do with the nature of my complaint. Nevertheless, pain is pain, tits are tits, and in the case of men the best verification that one indeed has tits is to have pain in one. While getting out of my van yesterday after work, I misjudged the distance from my stylish faux-leather satchel to my body, and as I stepped out, I pulled the bag toward myself, thinking to put it over my shoulder, but instead clobbering my right tit with a great deal of force ? at least, a great deal of force relative to the average amount of force at which tits are ordinarily clobbered.

“Ow! My tit!” I hollered, attracting the attention of old ladies and small children at play in the middle of the street. As I had their attention I figured I would make a show of it, so I did a little dance of pain, jumping, spinning, rubbing my sore tit. Later that night, as I lay in bed, I dreamed that I was at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and that the female gymnasts were using my right tit as a springboard for the pommel horse. “Dammit, Dominique Moceanu, stop jumping on my tit!” I woke up screaming.

I knew I should have called in sick to work today. This afternoon, as my brain was ordering white blood cells by the thousands to my right tit in order to fight off the dull pain that remained ? apparently to the point where all of my other motor functions were slowed ? I ran smack-dab into somebody. In fairness to my brain, the corridors in the office where I work were laid out by Frank Lloyd Wrong, the eccentric sadist architect. However, this mitigation was unhelpful, because the person I ran into was smaller than I, and the point of impact on her body was her shoulder, and the point of impact on my body was ? wait for it ? my right tit.

“Ow! My tit!” I hollered, for the second time in as many days. Like a leaky bucket that has been refilled just before the water all runs out the bottom, the pain had returned to my tit. The woman was very apologetic, but it was not her fault. I explained to her that I had been very careless about my tits lately, or at least just the one. She nodded understandingly and rushed off to call building security.

As I write this, I have a frozen steak on my tit, hoping to keep the swelling down. I went shopping on Amazon for a protective chainmail sports bra, but boy, is THAT place ever misnamed.

Happy Valentine’s Day, from the very bottom of my tit.

This evening, after I came home from work, I fell asleep on my couch. This is not at all unusual, as those of you who know me well know well. However, when I woke up earlier tonight, my left shoulder was extremely tender, and in fact, it hurts a great deal to raise my arm. I figure I probably slept on my arm wrong, but it has now been several hours since I woke up, and the shoulder still hurts just as much now as it did then. Could the shoulder pain, I wonder, have anything to do with the eight-inch spike sticking out of it? I mean, I swear that was there earlier, and it didn’t hurt then. Maybe it’s one of those delayed reaction type of things, like those fireworks they shoot off on the fourth of July that just go up and kind of peter out, until everyone is no longer paying attention to them, at which time they go “KABLAM!” or something to that effect and make everyone jump and involuntarily move their bowels. Or maybe it’s less like that and more like something else. All I know is that my damned shoulder hurts.

Also afflicting me but in a different way is the fact that I am one of those poor souls who is operating with a hard drive that is 99.9% full. Only the barest minimum of system resources is available to keep my computer functioning. I actually have two computers with a total of four hard drives between them, and every single drive is nearly full. For some reason, I find myself unable to depart with, for example, those digitized episodes of “The Tick” that I haven’t watched yet and continue to keep on my hard drive no doubt in violation of some copyright law or other. So I am in the market for a new hard drive. Something like, oh, eighty gigs should suffice.

Still, it won’t make that pain in my shoulder go away. That is what whiskey is for.

Well, I do this from time to time. I fell asleep as soon as I got home from work today, at about 5:30 PM. Usually when I do that, however, I wake up just as the televison program I wanted to watch that night was about halfway over. This time, however, I slept for a good solid eight and a half hours, waking up at 2 AM, which is a lot more sleep than I get in the average night. Yet, strangely, it still feels like the same day, unlike when I go to bed at 2 AM and wake up at 7:30 AM. I’ll probably go back to bed soon, even though it looks like Heavenly Creatures will be playing on the cable in a few moments, but I won’t watch it no I won’t I won’t.

A faithful reader using the enigmatic nom de plume “your former health aid” wrote in, using the comment form at the bottom of the page, to inform me that I have conjunctivitis (pinkeye) and to seek medical attention immediately. Thanks, mysterious stranger! In the meantime, everybody stay away from me, because I’m a walkin’ toxin. Definitely no butterfly kisses. I am starting to wonder if there is any illness that I don’t have. Lately I have been collecting them as if they were Pokemon. I guess it’s relatively safe to say that I don’t have cancer, or AIDS, or Down Syndrome, or male pattern baldness (yet), or whatever illness Rush Limbaugh has that has caused him to lose all hearing in one ear and eighty percent in the other, assuming it wasn’t simply caused by listening to himself on a regular basis. If that were the case, Dittoheads everywhere would be purchasing hearing aids and saying, “Eh? What?” and blaming it on Clinton.

My hypochondriac ass and I will be returning to sleep now.