A pig coughed on me

Alas dear readers, this may be my last post. You see I have come down with a tickle in my throat and a cough escapes my lips now and again, which can only mean one thing: I've come down with the swine flu! Don't cry! Dry those tears! It was meant to be. My last post, wherein I utilized the image of Johnny Cash to express my annoyance at those who confuse earth-friendly practices with commodity shopping, has offended mother nature and all the male gods who tend to her well being. And now I must pay the price, for I think that some of that foul swine vapor down in Mexico has made its way into my own lungs and there sits among my brochus, alveoli and cilia. When a globule of snot escaped my nostril this morning and my tongue eagerly darted up to taste its salty goodness, I was very alarmed. "What's this?!" I exclaimed, "Do I taste bacon in my boogers?!" You can imagine my dismay.

Having accepted my fate, this afternoon I made my way to the nearest Mexican restaurant so to accelerate my end by eating delicious burritos. I ordered pork burritos, chorizo quesadillas and the spiciest salsa available, oh yes, "mucho especia hombre!" I demanded, and my request was granted. I sat at the table, my mind nursing a fever and thoughts of my imminent death, my mouth nursing a swollen tongue on account of the ridiculously spicy salsa. No wonder the flu came from Mexico, if they're crazy enough to eat salsa that spicy, somebody has probably humped a sow on occasion. I could hear the wheezing gurgle of my own breathing as the mucous slowly climbed up out of the infinite blooms of alveoli, I presume, up my trachea and throat and out my nose. Sometimes a wad of the stuff was compelled to exit by the mighty coughing fits which sounded the call of my doom. I inhaled the food, figuratively, and after paying, where I was sure to exchange money using the hand which has received the brunt of my cough when it occurred to me to be polite, I made my way home, "adios tacos, I'll see you in heaven."

As I walked down the busy urban street, I heard coughs similar to my own and I thought that this signified the end times, like rats piled up and rotting in gutters. "I'm not alone," I thought and let fly a frightening and painful wretch of the lungs, spraying far and wide the toxic molecules, allowing them to play near the gaping mouths and nostrils of the strangers I saw around me. Their time was also inevitable because everyone knows that there's another plague coming, we can feel it in our small intestines and thyroid glands, among other organs. I've had a change of heart! Here on death's door I'll stop with my cynical mockery, let me formulate it another way. The plague's coming and after first attending to the evidence, weighing and analyzing the data and hard fretting over computer models, only then do we allow ourselves to express opinions of certitude. It's our passion for the sciences you see, can't get enough of them, can't stop learning, always chomping at the bit to further hollow out the gourds of our understandings. Yes, a plague in our time has long been expected, and I'm among the first to get it, making me a hipster, at least where the swine flu's concerned. See you on the other side! Cough!