A couple of days ago, a long time friend remarked to me that I hate my job of nearly 25 years. Now, stop and think, gentle reader… how many people do you know who have had the SAM JOB at the SAME PLACE for TWENTY FIVE YEARS? I know two or three, other than the guys I work with. One of them has been there for THIRTY SEVEN YEARS and is well past eligible to retire.

To return to my friends comment… I replied that I did not “hate” my job. “Well, you hate the people you work with, don’t you?” “Nope, they’re not worth the energy to hate. I save hate for important things like willful ignorance and asparagus.” He thought that was rather “cutsey”.

My response was a poem I wrote a long time ago:

I do not hate my job.

It clothes me and it keeps me fed.

But I feel the hours would be better spent

Writing stories than baking bread.

Later that evening, I began to contemplate how I DID/DO feel about my job and my life, which, to a great extent, is controlled by my job and it’s shifting hours. My job, commercial baker, pays fairly well and includes, being a union job, fairly decent medical/dental/optical benefits. It’s a bit like working at Boeing, except we make bread instead of airplanes. If you have ever seen the Food Network show “Unwrapped”, you may have seen the conveyor “River of hamburger buns or bread”… that’d be us. Thousands of dozen buns or loaves of bread an HOUR. On a GOOD day, with no major mechanical problems, it can be mind numbingly boring, watching the machines work. On a bad day… a fighter pilot once described his life as “Hours and hours of tedium interspersed with a few moments of stark staring terror. I n a factory bakery like us, when things go wrong, they go wrong FAST, in BIG ways…. fortunately, this does not happen often.

But that has been my life, seven, eight… sometimes twelve hours a day/night for twenty five years now… When I was younger, I would often be so exhausted at the end of the shift I would literally be too tired to drive home. But I did, and can recall waking up as my car veered out of my lane on the freeway more than once.

Tired is a short term thing that can be fixed relatively simply. Tired can be cured with a hot shower, a good dinner and a nice LONG sleep.

I have come to understand that.

But WEARY… ah, weary is a different thing. Weary is in your bones. It builds up over time, day by day, night by night… and it never really goes away. Weary is as much or more mental as it is physical. And that is what I am, where I stand on this day, preparing for another night of the “grind”…. and the only way to fix “weary” is to radically change what you do….

And that, my friends, is why I write… aside from the unstoppable compulsion to tell a good story…

This one is for the guy in the spiffy new BMW SUV who just snarked at me on Lake City Way about the Obama sticker in the back window of my pick-up…

FUCK YOU .AND ANYONE WHO LOOKS REMOTELY LIKE YOU, YOU WORTHLESS REPUBLICAN BAG OF MONKEY SPUNK!!! WHEN’S THE LAST TIME YOU ACTUALLY WORKED FOR A LIVING, IN YOUR FUCKIN’ NIGHTMARES?

You are SO LUCKY I was: A. Tired from working all night at the bakery and B. we were in traffic, or I would have given you both barrels of 00 Baker Attitude, point blank! I hope your Beemer throws a rod in the middle of Downtown traffic, I hope your portfolio tanks big time and I hope your house is further under water than the bottom of the fucking Marianna Trench!!!

As you can maybe tell, I’m a TAD peeved here… I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open to type this, but… KISS MY OVERWEIGHT, HAIRY, WORKING CLASS ASS, MOTHER-FUCKER!

There… I feel better now… g’night, Mr & Mrs America and all the ships at sea…

Okay, I’m a straight, middle aged guy, a vet and a blue collar worker… I don’t “get” homosexuality because, well, I’m not GAY… I have a little less trouble understanding Lesbians, since I like women and have no interest in having sex with a guy. I sometimes wonder why straight women do have sex with men, other than to breed… a lot of us are real knuckle draggers…  But I have no problem with someone being Gay, Lesbian, Transgendered, Bisexual, Cross dressing, Kinky or… well, anything consensual between adults… I give it all a cheerful Mox Nix ( The actual phrase is “Macht Nicht”, German-ese, literally “Makes Nothing”) as we used to say in the Army… be who you are…
The only “choice” I see involved in the LGBT world is in CHOOSING to be who/what you are or trying to be who/what you are NOT… Being real, true to yourself or trying to lie to yourself AND the world… THAT is a choice… Make the one that works for YOU…

On another topic…

According to an article the Seattle P-I today, Westboro Baptist Church is going to picket the funerals of two kids killed by their FATHER, who killed himself after killing the boys and who also apparently killed their mom a couple of years back (we’ll probably never know what really happened to her…)

Pardon my vulgarity, folks, but WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT?!?! I am SO NOT getting this (the protest part)… EXCEPT… I understand WBC is in the BUSINESS of filing lawsuits against any group or municipality who tries to stop them from protesting and denying them their Free Speech rights… I gather they make a decent chunk of change in out-of-court settlements… Gotta give ‘em credit: I offer a SMALL (quantum level) kudo for figuring out a slick little scam… But I really, REALLY, REALLY wish they would just “saddle up and Fuck Off”.

GAAAHHH!!!

…and people sometimes wonder why I write stories… Well, in my universes parents DON’T off their KIDS…

um… wait a minute…

Okay, I DO have an example in a current writing project of a young man killing his own father… and another of a guy trying to kill off his parents and take their throne… but the characters in question are serious head cases… and it IS fiction, for Gods sake… Greed taken to an insane level…

I would never harm my daughter… although, these days, at 19, I think she MIGHT need a swift kick in the pants to get her motivated… but I speak metaphorically… I still feel a little guilty for swatting her on the butt when she was a toddler trying to run out into traffic… but physically HURT her? Deliberately?

GAAAHHH!!!!!

Can we please get on with the Universe and leave these dithering idiots in the margins, where they belong?

Have a nice day… don’t violate anyone else’s right to free speech…  even if they ARE… well, morons…

Bigpencilgroup.com

Direct links to each of the books  are as follows:

• Part 1 – First Daze 
• Part 2 – Strangers in a strange land -
• Part 3 – Same old Song & Dance 
• Part 4 – One more time 

 

 

 

Okay, it’s been a couple of weeks… sorry… but today Robert,(the Grand Poobah of the Big Pencil Group and the guy who knows how to do all of this wibbly, wobbly computer stuff) and I got together and put Parts 2, 3 & 4 of the Weekday Warriors up for sale on Smashwords! For some stupid reason, I thought they were already there! But, NOW they are, for sale @Smashwords.com for .99 per download in multiple formats, including, apparently, a printable one! We even put together new, cooler cover art!

So… GET OVER THERE AND BUY THEM! PLEASE!!

More update: There is now a Weekday Warriors page on Facebook! I think I’m going to see about cross-linking the blog to it and there will be some bits and pieces of Weekday Warriors that didn’t make it into the books.

Also… sometime down the road, hopefully in the next few months… there will be a completely NEW novel coming out, a modern fantasy that will have NOTHING WHAT-SO-EVER to do with TANKS! Or the military, except very peripherally…

So much floating around in my head… political B.S… Sometimes it’s tough to figure out what to write about… I figure folk are tired of hearing ANOTHER opinion of Rick “man-bites-dog” Santorum…. I’ll get focused and have some more goofy crap for y’all to read in a day or so… Life with a perimenopausal part time teacher/Fairy Godmother…

See ya soon! Mike

A few days ago, the National Transportation safety Board released a “strong recommendation” that the use of a cell phone IN ANY WAY while operating a motor vehicle should be banned for public safety reasons.

I can understand why the NTSB might say that and I own a cell phone and a wireless Bluetooth earpiece. It’s distracting as hell! I try not to use my phone while I drive, even with the Bluetooth. MiLady won’t answer her phone while driving, even with her Bluetooth on. The NTSB is correct in that talking on the phone while driving IS distracting, Bluetooth or not, as are many other activities. I was ticketed last year for running a red light, which I did indeed run, not because I was on my phone (Bluetooth or not) but because I was having a conversation with MiLady, who was IN THE TRUCK with me at the time.

Distracted driving is distracted driving, whether you’re under the influence of alcohol, texting, messing with your GPS, talking on the phone, fiddling with your CD player, drinking a cup of coffee, rolling a joint (I used to know a guy who could roll while rolling, so to speak… thought it was amazing… back then… now, insane would be more like it.) lighting a legal cigarette (I guess some folks still smoke those, why, I do not know…) or even merely having a conversation with a passenger (see above. I pleaded guilty to a magistrate and paid a reduced fine. Camera ticket… whole different blog post… wait for it…). You’re not focused 100% on the road and operating your vehicle.

Simple, no?

But let’s consider a different situation:

A few months ago, MiLady and I were driving near Northgate Mall when we happened to be passed by a Seattle Police patrol car. When we looked over at the officer, we noticed that he was talking on his cell phone without a hands free device. MiLady, who was not driving at the time, got out her cell phone, called 911, asked for the police non-emergency line and reported this. I could have made the call, as I was at the time wearing a hands free earpiece, but I did not want to take a hand off the controls to dial 911 on my phone.

A few minutes later, the Seattle Police Department called her back and informed her that Law Enforcement were exempt from the Hands Free Law, as they needed to use their cell phones as part of their duties. She was told that under normal circumstances, an officer can use his cell phone while driving unless he is actually in pursuit.

HUH?

A typical Police car in Washington State today has a two-way radio on board, generally on the officers belt with a remote mic clipped to the officers shoulder. The car also has a wireless computer system with video display immediately to the drivers right hand, aside from all the basic controls a large four door sedan normally possesses such as steering, an accelerator and brake pedal. I have been told that Law Enforcement personnel are specially trained to be able to deal with this spaceship like collection of controls without becoming distracted.

The operative question here is not “Why does a Police Officer need a Cell Phone in addition to the other communications devices they already have?” but “Why is a Police Officer exempt from what was deemed a law in the best interests of Public Safety?”

We have been repeatedly told in the media that for a driver, ANY driver, to be engaged in a conversation while driving, even with a passenger actually IN THE VEHICLE is nearly as distracting as to be driving under the influence of alcohol (the argument used to promote the “Hands Free/Bluetooth Law” in the first place). Yet here was this officer, phone pressed firmly against his ear, chatting away and laughing as he made his way along Northgate Way at 30 M.P.H. From his attitude and behavior, I do not think he was making a “work related” call.

I say again: HUH??

Exactly what kind of “special training” can one get to prevent oneself from being a normal distract-able human being and where do I sign up for it? Am I the only person who see’s the irony in a police officer setting aside his cell phone to conduct a traffic stop to write a driver a citation for not using a hands free cell phone device? If that officer has some kind of accident while using his cell phone, is he liable for prosecution under the Hands Free law? If not, why not?

I’m sorry. Police and other First Response personnel are indeed special people who often put their lives at risk to protect and serve their communities in many ways. Why then are Law Enforcement allowed to put those same communities at risk by engaging in a behavior deemed BY LAW ENFORCEMENT to be comparable to driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs?

I’d offer the same opinion of a cop on his cell phone as I would anyone else chatting merrily away while maneuvering a 2,000 pound object through traffic at 30+ miles an hour…

HANG UP AND DRIVE, JERK!!!

(BTW, that crunching sound you hear is me kicking the hell out of a hornets nest, metaphorically speaking…)

A while back, the illuminated reader-board at a church near my home bore the message “How would you introduce yourself to God?”

I found this idea interesting on a number of levels, some of which I’ll discuss here. I’m going to start by saying that I don’t really hold with the whole “bearded guy in the white robe sitting on a throne” image. I mean, give him an eye-patch and a couple of ravens on one shoulder and it sounds like Odin.

But assuming one DOES buy into that particular image of “God” (I, for one, do NOT want Odin answering MY prayers. From my knowledge of Norse mythology, the guy had a rather strange sense of humor… to put it mildly) then one must also buy into the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent part as well.

O…kay… For starters, do I really want to know THIS guy personally? All knowing, all powerful and everywhere… that’s a little spooky. I like my privacy, thank-you-very-much, even if it’s only inside my head. All knowing means ALL-KNOWING, as in “knows EVERYTHING”.

There’s a lot of holes in that boat, if you ask me (nobody has, but I’ll continue… it’s MY blog, y’know…) starting with the idea of ‘knowing everything’. That’s just a tall order, even for a supreme deity class of being. EVERYTHING…

He knows how much toothpaste I have left? That I need to change the oil in my truck? What positions myself and MiLady… um, never mind… Why would He care? Does He need to know all that? Why? Is He writing a book?

And assuming He really DOES know EVERYTHING about EVERYTHING, why am I introducing myself to Him? Hell, He knows me better than I do! I run out of stuff because I forget (memo to self: Check toothpaste level) to keep track of stuff like that. I can say it’s because I’m A.D.D. But that’s a cop-out… I could make a list…

I really think it’d be more like God introducing himself to me. Yes, I know, the Mormons and every other sect and subset of Christianity try to do that in their own special way at any given opportunity. I notice that Muslims don’t do a whole lot of proselytizing or street corner preaching, at least not in my neighborhood. Likewise, you don’t see a lot of Hindu or Buddhist folks handing out little comic books about salvation. The Buddhist ones might be interesting…

But let’s suppose God did take it into that over-filled head of His to introduce himself to me. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but if He’s keeping track of EVERYTHING, not only does He have a lot on His plate, He has bigger things to worry about than a middle aged baker who wants to write novels. (Yes, that was a HINT!!! BUY the Weekday Warriors at Amazon or Smashwords for only .99!! What a BARGAIN!)

Although He might think I need to lose a few pounds, maybe change what character XYZ is doing or just generally get with the program, I like to think that God would be cooler than to just step into my head and sort of “download” what He wanted me to know. That would be creepy, and hearing voices is an active definition of insanity, okay? I don’t think God would want to make me think I was going crazy, it would kind of defeat the whole purpose of any introduction to get me dragged off to a place with padded rooms.

So, how would this go? Just appear to me? Not like a burning bush or something weird, maybe more like George Burns in “oh God”. But since this IS the year 2011, maybe He’d call first. I have a cell phone (okay, who except my mom doesn’t have one…)

I can see this now… sitting in my living room, the phone rings with the generic ring for incoming call… I have distinctive tones… No, I “might not want to answer my phone right now, it’s work calling… AGAIN…”… but if the caller ID said “God” and that was it… I’d probably be curious enough to flip it open and punch the green button… although I’d LOVE to hear what kind of voice mail message God might leave…

“Ah… hello?”

“Hey, Mike! This is God. I’d ask how you’re doing, but I already know…”

“Uh, yeah… “

“Seriously, this IS God. No kidding.”

“Uh… okay… how much trouble am I in?”

“No, no… not like that… no trouble… I just thought maybe you and I should get to know each other a bit better. I mean I already know you pretty well, but…”

“Is this about the Jesus Saves stickers I scraped off…?”

“No, don’t worry about that… Dale needs to calm down, anyway.”

Wait a minute… He knows who Dale is? HOLY…

“Did I do something wrong? I don’t feel like I committed any mortal sins lately… or is adultery still a big issue with you?”

“Ah… these days… we can talk about that later. Anyway, I saw that your schedule was pretty clear this afternoon, I thought you and I might get together and have a cup of coffee over at Starbucks and talk?”

“um… it’s Tuesday, I’m kinda… “

“I’ll buy.”

“Cool. Down on Lake City Way?”

“The very one I was thinking of.”

“Okay, uh… see you there in a few minutes. I’m the guy in the black…”

“Utilikilt, I know that.”

“Oh, yeah, you would, wouldn’t you?”

So, I grab my jacket, get my travel cup out of my truck, (personal cup discount, y’know…) and head down the street. I’m figuring the guy I don’t know who waves at me when I come in is the Guy I’m looking for…

“I’ve been doing a lot of this lately,” God says after we get coffees and sit down in a corner. “Mostly it turns into a lot of questions on your part. I could tell you how the Mariners are going to do next year, but that would take all the fun out of it for you.”

“So the future is off limits?”

Pretty much, yeah.” God smiles. “You’re gonna die some day.”

“I kinda figured that.”

“Yeah, George Carlin got that part right.”

“Is he…” I glance up at the ceiling.

“A really funny guy? Yeah, he was.”

“Not gonna tell me about the afterlife, either, huh?”

“Nope. How’s the coffee?”

“Starbucks. So, why am I here?”

“You mean here on Earth?”

“Yeah, that too, but more to the point, why am I sitting in Starbucks with God?”

“Generally, you’re here because… you’re here. Doing what you do. Writing, making bread, looking at pretty girls… yeah, I saw her too. It’s okay, they’re one of my better ideas. Enjoy.”

“Uh, thanks. But why am I sitting here, with you?”

“Mostly… well, it’s kinda fun for me, get to know folks personally, one on one… and I wanted to let you know that you’re doing okay.”

“I’m going to get into…”

“More of a concept than an actual place, Mike. People don’t get reserved spaces, there IS no “space”, as such. Don’t worry about it. You might want to lay off the donut holes, get on that bike a little more…”

“You sound kinda… I dunno… Jewish?”

“I am. Jewish, Muslim, Christian… Hindu, although the whole thing with the extra arms… hey, it’s just a metaphor. It’s all just metaphors, really. If it helps folks get their heads wrapped around the idea, it’s okay with Me.”

“That’s good to know.”

“You don’t really have “A” metaphor, though, Mike.”

“No, I guess I don’t. Is that okay?”

“Sure. I’m more interested in how you behave than what you believe.”

“Yeah, speaking of behavior, about that adultery thing…”

“A detail. Overall, you’re okay. You could be better, but you could be worse. A LOT worse. You’ve never killed anybody, you don’t go out of your way to hurt people, although you really ought to lay off poor ol’ Stefano at work. You’re wasting energy, messing with him. Put it into your writing.”

“Is that ever going to go anywhere?”

“Your writing? Don’t see why not, but don’t be quoting me on that one.”

“But maybe…?”

“Mike, you’re doing okay. Just keep being the guy you are. Nobody’s perfect. Not even Me.”

“You’re not?”

“Nope. You see any perfect people around you?”

“Not lately. In fact, sometimes it looks like to me, the more people claim to be perfect, the less perfect they usually are.”

“It’s an imperfect universe, Mike, full of imperfect people. That Dalai Lama fella has a good point. Just keep practicing. Hey, I gotta go. Busy, busy, busy. Break out the computer and get a little writing done, huh? The laundry’ll be there when you get home.”

 

I wrote this some time ago, on the nature of LOVE:

By what standards, on what scale

Can love be measured: Pass or Fail?

Farenheit? Carats? Pitch?

Volume or circumference?

Ergs of heat or candle power,

Voltage, rads or miles per hour?

Grains or grams, intensity,

Tensile strength, velocity?

Height, width, depth,

with a thickness gauge?

Does love, like wine, improve with age?

Critical mass, atomic weight,

Half-life, shelf life, born on date?

Proof, percentage, purity,

Combustion point, viscosity?

Metric, Standard, who’s to say?

What’s love made of, anyway?

Miles per hour? Meters? Feet?

R.P.M.s or ERGs of heat?

Celsius? Centigrade? Pounds and ounces?

Maybe by how high it bounces?

Knots? Horsepower? Pounds P.S.I.?

Micrometer or by the eye?

Effective range or cubic inches,

Great huge chunks or little pinches?

 

But… what if love is just a thought?

Has no substance, can’t be bought,

Measured, weighed or cut to fit…

What if everyone we love

Gets all of it?

So, Herman Cain is toast…. meh… but he did do one thing for me. Honestly, he got me thinking (I should be asleep right now, but this is SO in my head I need to write it NOW!)…

Every candidate for any office from President down to Second Deputy Dog-catchers Assistant seems to be required to take some unspoken but assumed Monogamous Morality Pledge. Now, I do have an issue with a guy being a total schmuck, groping women in elevators and such. The same goes for women. Sexual harassment is sexual harassment. That’s BS and that’s that.

I shall digress for a space on to the subject of LOVE:

Robert Heinlein once defined being in love as when another person’s well being is at least as or more important to you than your own. Sounds good to me…

Love is not a substance. You cannot weigh it out, cut it into pieces or divide it up.  Love is not a noun, not a person, place or, in particular, not a thing. Love has no physical presence. You don’t “have” love, as such, you DO it (No, not like “THAT”… that’s SEX… don’t confuse the issue here…) Love is a VERB. It is an ACTION on the part of one person towards another. A concept. A feeling or a belief.

You have three kids: You love them all the same, right? You don’t love one more than the other two, do you? Well, I hope not… although #3 might be really good at driving you crazy, you still love him/her. Tim McVeigh (the Oklahoma City Bomber)? On the eve of his execution, someone asked his father how he felt. McVeigh Senior said that while he found what his son had done to be horrific and could not understand or condone what Tim had done, Tim was still his son and he still loved his son.

I’ve never been able to understand how a parent could stop loving their child. These people who disown their kid because the kid comes out and admits they’re Gay/Lesbian (or whatever). You stop loving your own flesh and blood because you disagree with their sexual orientation?!? Tim McVeigh’s dad could still love his son AS his son… and you suddenly hate your kid because they want to love/sleep with the same sex as themselves… I think it’s YOU that have the problem, not your KID. Since when did HATE become a good thing?

Now, Coke or Pepsi or Mets vs Yankees, boxers or briefs… These things are IMPORTANT! Personally, I’m a Dr. Pepper kind of guy, don’t really do baseball, and I wear a Utilikilt most of the time, so…

Ahem… yeah… where were we?  Oh, yes…

BEING IN LOVE IS GOOD = LOVE IS GOOD.

If we accept as a “given” that “having” love or being “in Love” (ie: someone thinking that your well being is as or more important to them than their own and vice versa) is a good thing, would not having TWO loves be TWICE AS MUCH of a good thing? This would be bad how?

Suppose someone who was openly NOT Monogamous were to run for President? No, I don’t mean some Mormon from Texas with eight teenage wives and a barbed wire fenced compound. I mean someone who might, say, be in an “open” or, shall we say “non-traditional” relationship. Someone who has a wife AND a girlfriend, both of whom know about each other? Both of whom are OKAY with the relationship? Maybe even a Poly triad? Or to be fair, a FEMALE candidate with more than one male partner?

Okay, the Michelle Bachmanns, Mike Huckabees, Rick Perrys, Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world would all completely FREAK OUT. What would the rest of the world, or at least the USA say? “Wow… So-and-so has TWO permanent live-in partners… and the three of them appear to all be very much in love with one another…”

Please note: I am not going into the details of who does what to or with whom behind closed doors. Herman Cain’s LAWYER Lin Wood said  “private, alleged consensual conduct between adults (is) a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public.”

“No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life,”  … am I right? Huh? HUH?!? Hey, a Conservative Republican’s LAWYER said it, it’s GOTTA be TRUE! Take it to the BANK, people, it’s GOLD! Woo-HOO! In your FACE, Religious RIGHT!!! IN YOUR-FREAKIN’-FACE!!!

Oh, sorry… got carried away there…

Could we, as a country, believing in FREEDOM, be willing to accept that? Candidate XYZ sits there at an interview and blithely admits to having a second sexual partner, with his primary partners full knowledge and loving consent?

Openly, honestly non-monogamous… (let it sink in…)

Could we handle that concept? Could we handle that kind of honesty? Even the most liberal among us NOT in some similar relationship, could we HANDLE the IDEA of an OPENLY, HONESTLY Polyamorous President?

I close with the final stanza of a poem I once wrote entitled “Measuring Up”:

But… what if LOVE is just a thought?

Has no substance, can’t be bought,

Measured, weighed, or cut to fit…

What if EVERYONE we love

Gets ALL of it?

I think we can all agree that having a cold is a pain in the butt. We may disagree on everything from marriage equality to Coke vs. Pepsi, but having a cold = pain in the butt is a pretty much universal thing. If you stop to think about it, however, assuming you CAN think about much of anything between sneezes and coughing fits with your head pounding lightly but firmly, you CAN have a learning experience. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, so they say. Below are some of the “blindingly brilliant insights” I have had at various times while suffering some incarnation of this incurable but non-fatal malady. Please feel free to leave responses including anything I might have missed while compiling this. When I’m feeling better, I’ll read/moderate them…

Cheap tissues are NOT the bargain you thought they were.

There is no really comfortable position to lie in while your sinuses drain.

There is no such thing as “enough” sleep. Ever. Particularly, not NOW. Consciousness is highly over-rated.

If you have no Nyquil, bourbon will do in a pinch. It tastes better.

None of the foods you like even sound good, let alone taste good. Not even bourbon.

There is nothing good on TV, you have watched all of the DVDs in the house one too many times and there is nothing to read.

You cannot live on 7Up/hot tea and cough drops for any significant period of time.

Going to work is only a good idea so you can “share” with those annoyingly healthy co-workers.

You have probably felt worse at some time in your life, but at the moment, you can’t remember when.

Look at the bright side. You are not throwing up.

The fire station down the street was put there just to annoy YOU.

You cannot sneeze with your eyes open.

Irritable is an understatement.

Nothing helps, not really.

Not only is sex pretty much out of the question anyway, if you actually DO manage to, it HURTS.