unpleasant health details

Let's hope it's just something I caught from the bathtub.

F


or the past few days I've been plagued by some sort of medical condition. Over my tailbone there's this like, I don't know, infection thing. It's all weird and shit. In addition, there's this outbreak on the left half of my rump. I'm not unfamiliar with the odd pimple on my ass, mind you, but this is a whole archipelago: a battered black book, a words, aka working title, one a little off c e n t e r, one still xiled and a lowing of cows. No, I take that back, there can't be a lowing of cows. He's not in the archipelago. Must be a nova notes. And there's one that's cleared up already. It must be either a Javina or a heinovision. But look at that one; it's on my face and is infuriated that it's not on my ass. Perhaps it's an Elly.

Associated with these distressing anomalies is a glandular swelling in my groin. Scary stuff, I tell you, causing me to look up things in Altavista no one ever wants to find himself having to look up. You know, I'd thought I'd been kind of safe with my sexual behaviour (as much as most people), but it's possible I went and fucked up. It's difficult to tell. Psychosomatic reactions are clouding my symptoms at this point and I have no idea what's wrong. At least my genitals still look okay. Let's hope it's just something I caught from the bathtub.

However, let's not forget: even hypochondriacs get sick.

I rooted around in the medicine cabinet looking for some sort of miracle cream. Matthew Hart used to have some heavy duty prescription stuff that was really good for just about any sort of rash, especially the kind an Eastern North American guy gets in the summer time. But all I could find was some sort of acne salve. What the hell, I put some on my butt, but the archipelago already seemed to be vanishing anyway. As for the thing on my tailbone, that seems to be unchanging for now.

The logos' vacant relentlessness made me think of stuffy office meetings presided over by unoriginal paper-shufflers.

new purchasing habits

M


atthew Hart and Angela spend most of their time elsewhere these days, living in a state of curious inseparable dysfunction. I miss them, but it's kind of nice not having drunk people around. I've noticed that my purchasing habits have changed because of Matthew. I used to buy CDs all the time, but I wouldn't think of it now. CDs, you see, are meant to be shared with your friends. But when he's drunk (which is usually) Matthew is so destructive that I cannot leave CDs out in public. The cases get smashed and the CDs themselves appear to get used as some sort of floor abrasive. I've taken to buying things that only I can use: whiz-bang computer equipment.

Microsoft's idea of funny

I


  was reclined on my bed watching my newly-assembled computer's only available screen saver. Little coloured Windows™ logos flew by as if I was traveling at high speed through a universe cluttered with cloned trademark overkill. I think this was supposed to be humourous, but I wasn't laughing. The logos' vacant relentlessness made me think of stuffy office meetings presided over by unoriginal paper-shufflers. It isn't difficult to picture the meeting where that screen saver was given the go ahead. "Excellent idea, Bigsby! Your screen saver will repeatedly cast a favourable space-age/cutting-edge light on the product's logo after every period of user inactivity, thereby facilitating the necessary marketing goal of brand recognition!"

familiar scans

I think the Simpsons is the single greatest ongoing creation of American popular culture.

F


or the current issue of an online literary magazine for which I am a "Webmaster," I found myself scanning documents at UVA's cramped little Electronic Text Center. I like that place. It's a happy combination of a public computer lab and an office where real work gets accomplished by salaried employees (who, among other things, create online versions of ancient documents like the Dead Sea Scrolls). People who need help can simply ask one of the many professionals around them. I don't know if I'd be happy working there, what with the constant distractions, but I like the idea of such intimate hybrids between public interaction and focused intellectual pursuits.

I go there to do optical character recognition simply because I'm more familiar with their setup and OCR equipment than I am with Comet's. I've been going to the Electronic Text Center for years.

---

In the evening, I drank beer and watched two episodes of the Simpsons with Deya. I think the Simpsons is the single greatest ongoing creation of American culture. That's fainter praise than I intended.

one year ago

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