DIAGNOSIS: NAGANO-SIS

I have spent the last two weeks being the sickest I have ever been in my life outside of hospitalization, also the most sexy. Now that I'm getting better my doctor still isn't sure what it was I came down with, but that's because he's a moron. He figured I was somewhere between a mild sore throat and full blown meningitis and apparently his years of doctor training dictate that anything in that range can be cured with Robitussin. After my first visit the Robitussin wasn't working at all so I went back and all he did was prescribe me Robitussin with codeine. It became obvious that I wasn't going to doctor appointments, I was going to Robitussin commercials. When the stronger stuff didn't work I just stopped going back to him since I didn't want to go through the whole Robitussin product line. So I disregarded conventional medicine and I prescribed myself an alternative therapy regiment of Ninja Warrior marathons and reading Fight Club all night. It may not have directly contributed to my wellness, but it got me feeling so manly I felt like I could fuck a Gundam.

Being so thoroughly sick for such a long time was total hell. The intense soreness turned my throat into raw bloody hamburger and the constant violent coughing kept me up all night. I am positive that during all of last week I slept a total of five hours but I'm not sure. After each cough my abs felt sore like I had just done 1,000 consecutive push ups and the coughs just kept coming. It felt like karmic punishment was being reigned upon me for some incredibly evil past life I lived. If that's the case I must have been worse than Darth Vader and Gargamel all combined because I felt like I was being punished for the deaths of everyone on Alderran and for eating all the Smurfs. It is also possible that I only had a slight sore throat and all this suffering was actually side effects from the Robitussin. Regardless, the pain and dehydration was somewhat worth it because in one week I lost eight pounds and the definition in my abdominal area was getting fantastic. Now I'm 5'9" and 149 lbs and I haven't looked this good since high school.

I know I was reading Fight Club too much because I suspected that my stronger abs and sudden vast knowledge of Japanese fishing vessels was the result of a secret double life I was leading during the ten or fifteen minutes I would black out. Was I dreaming that I was Makoto Nagano, captain of the 28th Konpira Maru and winner of Ninja Warrior, OR WAS MAKOTO NAGANO MY TYLER DURDEN? I decided to call this "Naganosis"-the condition where I'm so delirious I'm unsure if I'm Makoto Nagano. I was so high on Robitussin that my mind considered the possibility that during the few hours I was sleeping last week I was really entering Ninja Warrior tournaments in Japan and spending 350 days out at sea. I was worried for a second but then I realized that it's impossible for me to be Makoto Nagano because he's 5'3". I don't usually have daydreams where I lose six inches-it's always the other way around (if you know what I mean).

I'm just glad it's all over so that I can get back to bloggering, which is pretty pointless now that all my audience is gone because I haven't written anything in two weeks. Actually one good thing that came from my sickness is that my attitude about my lack of success in life is more positive. I accept that I'll never be as famous as that guy who wrote Fight Club and my writing will never inspire disenfranchised people to form a large underground network of independently operating terror cells, but that's okay. I am totally accepting of the fact that bloggering is a complete waste of my time and I am destined to wallow in anonymity and obscurity. It also makes it easier knowing that I've stockpiled all that unused Robitussin just in case I need to escape back into a heavily sedated state of Naganosis.

It's not as sexy and sanitary as saving snowflakes on microscope slides, but taping flies to the window sure does take a lot more skill

Yesterday I came up with a new hobby I call "flytaping" that also doubles as an insect extermination method. I wait for flies to land on the window then I grab a 3 inch length of "High Performance" Scotch brand clear packaging tape and I tape the flies to the widow when they're not looking. Depending on how they're caught in the tape, the flies get to gaze out at the world beyond my backyard which consists of miles and miles of sky and horse stables. Seeing all that big blue sky they could be flying in and all those horses they could be sitting on is undoubtedly the worst torture a fly could suffer as they die of starvation taped to a window. There are probably significant health hazards involved in doing this, but knowing these flies are suffering emotionally makes me feel really good.



Better yet, it acts as a deterrent for any flies looking in my window and wondering if they should risk coming in. Like if they see their dad taped to the inside all dead then maybe they'll get the hint that their kind isn't welcome here. Better than that, my flytaping also keeps my house resistant to attack from ninjas with slower reflexes than I. I have learned from watching G4 that today's ninjas are constantly trying to find ways to show off their ninja skills with outward displays of toughness and speed. It is a long standing ninja tradition to use files as a means of expressing skill. More old skool ninjas resorted to catching flies with chopsticks (probably because they'd have a hard time finding scotch tape in 15th century feudal Japan). I expect to be internet famous once the hip young urban ninjas of today start flytaping to show off their speed and quick reflexes. And if any of those ninja punks dares come by my house intending to steal my photoshopped pictures of Makoto Nagno, they'll take one look at my fly filled windows and go "OH SHIII---!"