perfidy

Thanks to Geeklethal for his apt dubbing of my ongoing and frustrating illness as "Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis." I would however quibble with his characterization of my malady as Dickensian. "Dickensian" implies a certain grimy romanticism (or anti-romanticism) as well as a finite endpoint when the ill person keels over in a poignant and oddly wordy episode. "Dickensian" illnesses tended to be of the tubercular variety, and what I gots is not that. Sure I have been subject to an endless parade of coughs, catarrahs, chest infections, head colds, and bizarre symptoms nearly never seen in a male of my age and general health. But that's not "Dickensian."

I prefer to think of my illness as "Eggersian" after postmodernist novelist David Eggers, whose "A Hearbreaking Work of Staggering Genuis" is the only library book I have ever thrown across a room in disgust. "Wallacian" is also in the running, as in David Foster Wallace's interminable cocktease of a novel, "Infinite Jest," in which the joke was on the reader for sticking with Wallace through 1200 pages of densely footnoted disquisition on tennis, homelessness, and handicapped Quebecois separatists. But, since Eggers is more or less the father of that foul genre, "Eggersian" it is. Like his books, my ongoing sickness is endless, indeterminate, undiagnosable, enervating, incredibly frustrating, and ultimately halfway debilitating. Halfway? Yes, halfway. It's difficult for me to say whether walking a couple miles on any given day will leave me feeling invigorated or like I've just been tied in a bag and beaten with saps.

But all that is just so much pointyheaded wankery. Since the doctors seem to be at a loss as to what's wrong with me (the current wisdom is to give it a month to see if things clear up or if a tumor et. al. grows to diagnosable size), owing to the "goddamnit, what-now" factor currently in play regarding my health (this week: pneumonia! next week: sinus infection! every week: mystery fluids emanating from parts inside whence they oughtn't!), I suggest that the proper name of my at this point ten week old illness is "Bohica." As in "Bend Over, Here It Comes Again." A beeg thanks to my father, Chainsaw Mick for the coinage. He's a quality chap even if he fails to see the malicious genius of Dale Earnhardt, Jr.'s driving style in favor of Jeff Gordon's clean-race skills.

Anyway, just so you know. Not that you wanted to know, but I figured I had to explain my very light posting somehow. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

[wik] GeekLethal is on to something with his random-media-player blogging. For some reason, my 111 CD changer fixates on two songs on Josh Rouse's album "Dressed Up Like Nebraska" even when I move the disc to a new location. Ditto track one of Iqbal Jogi & Company's "The Passion of Pakistan," a caterwauly festival of unearthly Dervish sounds that in small amounts add spice to a music mix but if heard too frequently grow, shall we say, extraordinarily tiresome. What the heck?

[alsø wik] Bitch, bitch, bitch. How does Gary Farber keep it together?