Note that yesterday's entry was written before I took Thera-Flu. Had I been coherent enough to write AFTER I took the Blessed Potion, the entry would have gone something like this:

Fluffy puppies are pretty.

La la la la la.

Green. Everything is so satsisfyingly green.

What a fascinating living room carpet I have!

Is monumentaliciousness a real word?

So here I sit in the Kaiser pharmacy, waiting for my drugs. It's kind of a funny story how I got here.

Y'all know I've been ill. And today, I was actually feeling a lot better . . . mostly. Except for the breathing thing. Sitting still in a chair and breathing shallow, I'm fine. But if I try and breathe deeply or do anything strenuous (like, um, walk down the hall to the bathroom) I go into a proxysm of wheezing coughs.

So a co-worker sent me this great e-mail. You may have seen it. The "Department of Homeland Security" has designed these great new terrorism warning icons, you know, to educate us public-types.

(Aside: Has anyone noticed that the acronym for Department of Homeland Security is DOHS. As in, the plural of the sound Homer Simpson makes when he does something particularly stupid. Does no one think of these things when they name government agencies?)

Anyway, some beautiful person took the time to come up with alternative captions for these new warning graphics. Here are some of my favorites:

I'll link the complete list tomorrow . . . I left it at work. I wish I knew who wrote these captions, because I'd like to see that person get credit for their genius.

Anyway, reading these made me laugh really, really fucking hard. And with the breathing issues, it sounded very weird . . . all raspy-gaspy, as if I were some mutant offspring of a seal and a Hoover industrial-strength vaccum cleaner.

Not long afterwards, I was talking to my fabulous Hawaiian girlfriend, and I repeated the sound for her (because I thought that it, too, was pretty fucking funny in it's own way).

She said, "You sound like a dirty old man looking at pictures of Britney Spears."

This inspired me to repeat the sound several more times.

We both agreed that when a thirty-one-year-old homosexual starts sounding like a dirty old man looking at pictures of Britney Spears, medical attention is definitely warranted.

So the diagnosis, it turns out, is that the viral nastiness which has been engulfing the entire Bay Area has activated my long-dormant asthma.

How exciting!!

Am I allowed to blame both the terrorists AND the Department of Homeland Security for this??

You know, I loved Tracy's story a while back about how someone told her she looked just like Britney Spears. She immediately felt flattered, but when she told friends about it, they were a little less positive. The question arose: Is being compared to Britney Spears good, bad, or a little of both?

It's been a while since anyone has compared me to a celebrity. But for a period of time in the early nineties, it happened a lot. And it didn't usually feel flattering.

I used to be skinnier. My complexion was a little paler, my hair darker. My cheeks would bulge out a certain way when I smiled. And sometimes I would let my hair get pretty long. (Not, like, down to my shoulders . . . but sometimes down to my collar.)

Shopping in used record stores, the clerks would say I looked like
Beck. At first I thought, Cool! I mean these people liked Beck's music, so it was a nice comparison, right?

But then I wondered . . . is Beck really that good looking? Or is he more like one of those famous people who's known for NOT being good looking? I guess it depends upon which picture you look at and your personal taste. But I started to get paranoid. Were they making fun of me by calling me "Beck"? Were they saying I looked awkward and maladjusted? That I was a Loser, Baby?

Then came a longer phase where people said I looked like Mike Myers. And then when Austin Powers came out, I was actually offered paying gigs to impersonate Austin Powers for corporate functions and stuff. (I didn't take any of them, but they were offered.)

Again, I initially felt flattered. Because, you know, Mike Myers is famous. And Austin Powers was a cultural phenomenon. But then, again came the paranoia. Mike Myers is famous because he's a freak. And are people really laughing WITH Austin Powers, or AT him? Are my teeth that bad?

Ultimately, I guess I'm glad to just look like myself. It doesn't pay to measure yourself against anyone else. Because if you look hard enough, you'll always find something wrong.

From an internet message board:

JOURNING

I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST WHO STRENGTHENS ME.

Except, of course, spell, conjugate or punctuate.

I totally can't claim credit for that punchline . . . someone else thought it up. But I'm going to leave my sources secret to protect the innocent . . . and the guilty.

And then there is the message thread entitled "Homeschooling Mom's." For the record, I fully support legislation that would require that anyone intending to homeschool his or her children be forced to prove to authorities beyond a shadow of a doubt that they know how to use the apostrophe correctly.

But where there is idiocy, there is also sublime genius:

i have bought yard art as a wedding gift because sometimes i honestly cannot control how totally obnoxious i am.

When I lie down at night and think over my life and where I have erred, I often think that god will forgive me nearly everything, but probably not that.

My secret source asked my professional opinion as a minister . . . would God forgive this woman for giving yard geese as a wedding present?

I responded that there is a high degree of probability that this woman actually IS God.