You know it’s bad when…

…you’re too sick even to be horny.

For the past week and two days, I have had The Head Cold From Hell. Seriously. Not only has my nose been turned by the action of microbes so primitive they can scarcely be called “alive” into a gigantic factory for the production of mucous and human misery, but to add a cherry on the top of the misery and mucous sundae, my throat feels like it’s been sandpapered. With 40-grit sandpaper. Attached to a drill.

Or perhaps like I’ve been swallowing hedgehogs whole. That’re hopped up on amphetamines.

I seem to have inherited this particular lovely little virus from dayo when I was in Chicago. It’s got a week-long incubation period, so I had plenty of time to come home and spread it around the office before I got sick.

On the good side, though, I’ve been coughing so bad I can’t sleep, so I’ve been using the time to try to read. I somehow got the idea that I might be able to read myself to sleep at night, but the book I’ve been reading is William Gibson’s All Tomorrow’s Parties, so I don’t know what I was thinking. Reading Gibson to go to sleep is about like trying to put yourself to sleep by downing a shot of moonshine, followed by a chaser of crystal meth and PCP.

All I can say is thank god for Advil and Benadryl. They’re the only things making it possible for me to be upright and reasonably mobile. Don’t know what I’d do without it, really. I was chatting with Gina at oh-fuck-thirty in the morning a couple nights ago and said “What did people in pre-industrial societies do when they got sick?” and she said “they died.” Which is pretty damn close to the truth, actually.

And that reminds me that I have a whole ‘nother LJ post to make about that, which I somehow haven’t got ’round to yet.