I am one sick puppy.

Literally! Well, almost literally. I am sick, but I am not a juvenile canine. What I'm saying is that I look and feel like hammered shit, laid up with some kind of horrible sinus-y/upper respiratory/cold thingie with all the usual trimmings: a disgusting phlegm-y cough, achy muscles, and a pounding head. (It's not COVID. I checked.) At the moment I am "bed-rotting" as the kids say, chugging water and OJ and popping Zicam (proven to shorten colds...but we'll see) every two hours. 

At least it's given me a chance to binge all four seasons of Mr. Show--the entire series is now streaming on HBO Max!--because weird comedy is my comfort food. And one of my all-time favorite Mr. Show sketches is the whacked out, spot-on H.R. Pufnstuf parody "The Altered State of Drugachusetts," where instead of Freddy the Flute they got Gurgle the Bong, costumed characters who are either tripping balls or trying to come down from tripping balls, and David Cross sporting a bad pageboy wig and doing a brilliant Jack Wild, complete with those weird, jerky dance kicks he used to bust out during the musical numbers. 

Bonus: a little-known version of the HR Pufnstuf song, recorded by The Murmurs and featured on the 1995 compilation Saturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits, an album with mid-90s mainstays like Liz Phair, Matthew Sweet, Juliana Hatfield, and Collective Soul covering theme songs from 1970's kids' shows. It's a lot of fun, and probably one of the best things to come out of the nineties' obsession with seventies pop culture.

And with that, I think it's time for me to down some Nyquil and pass out. 

FUCK, I'M DYING.

Well not literally, and hopefully not for a few more decades. But, Christ, I feel like I am. 

I really thought I could do it. I thought I could be one of the few lucky ones to dodge the COVID bullet, but all my hopes went straight down the crapper when I tested positive after a full day of trying to cough up both my lungs. My first test was negative and I thought, ha! Just a cold after all. People still get colds, right? Of course they do! That's why it's called the common cold---it's common! Then my symptoms got steadily worse; pounding head, fiery throat, muscle aches, my whole body was screaming. So I did another test and then.....BAM. Positive. 

I went to a mini family reunion last weekend in Tulsa, so no big mystery where I caught this crap. Everyone was vaccinated and boosted--there was much discussion about it beforehand, so we know this for sure---but I guess I have what could be called a breakthrough case. Apparently there's an Omicron offshoot called the BA.5 going around and it's the latest thing in viruses, so at least I'm au courant. 

So that's it, that's all, that's the post. If you need me, I'll be quarantining in the upstairs guestroom, trying not to infect the world. At least I have a furry little Siamese nurse to take care of me.    

Little Stevie Nicks. Her sister Sabrina is at the bird watching window.

ALSO, this seems apropos, because when I think back on what COVID was like, 

I'll remember this fucking headache.