perfidy

My favorite old-timey disease name of all time: dropsy.

My favorite made-up disease: the staggers. As in, Q: "Buckethead, you look a little rough. What happened to you?" A: "Oh, I'm ok. Just a fifth of Beam and a case of the staggers." Of course, I made this one up shortly before our cat died to describe her inability to walk straight, so it's not really that funny when you look at it that way. *snif* I really miss little Iron Chef Chen Kenichi.

I think, Buckethead, you shouldn't ask for too much in the way of excellent disease names. Just look at the last few years. Sure, "I got the SARS" doesn't sound half as good as "Poor Jim's got a case of the hoof-and-mouth," or "I had to put down grandpa like a cow with the aftosa," but "ebola" is a great name for a disease that eats your flesh and makes you die, and likewise, Monkeypox is a perfect name for a disease that comes from pet prairie dogs. MONKEY POX! And it's FATAL! HAW!

I knew a prairie dog once. His name was Stinky. Guess what he did?

I leave you with this: Ten cases of the bubonic plague in Algeria, two of them the almost certainly fatal septicimic variety. Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. I say it will end coughing blood, weeping, and cursing God for his twisted sense of humor. But me, I'm an optimist.