The other day I was talking to a friend on the internet. Aside from being cold outside and being tired of winter everything was fine. Lately the weather had been getting a little warmer, during the day, the snow would begin to melt, at night it would get cold, the snow would begin to fall.
The next morning I woke up with a horrible sore throat and I sounded like Barry White. I hoped it would go away during the day but it didn’t. Later on, I found out that, not only did my friend wake up with a sore throat but another friend on Facebook also woke up with a sore throat. As the day progressed I kept finding more and more friends across the country that were getting sick.
Now, I’m not a doctor but I’m sure by now even you can see that it’s obvious. Facebook is spreading a new computer virus. To be honest with you, I’m really hoping they can pinpoint it right down to Farmville so they shut it down and I can stop getting these stupid purple cow requests and “help build my stable” requests all day long.
So that day I went to work. I work outside where I’m constantly getting in and out and in and out of a nice warm truck. Every time I got in, the warmth would cause me to begin sneezing until the world started spinning.
Every time I got out of the truck the wind would suck the heat right out of me. So from a distance it would look like an 80 year old Florida man on an Artic expedition without a coat. So I get back in the truck and crank my heater up, sneeze, sneeze, sneeze, and when I wake up I have to get out of the truck again.
The only thing I have in my truck to blow my nose on is a roll of coarse grit sandpaper I stole from the paper towel dispenser in the lavatory. It was either that or two rolls of John Wayne toilet paper, you decide. The way I see it, if I can read a newspaper through my bathroom tissue, it certainly isn’t going to contain what I had in store for it. So, sandpaper it is.
I went into the office to see if I could scrounge up something softer but as soon as I walked in I immediately started sneezing again. I quickly searched for something for my nose before the nice ladies in the office saw what was hanging from my face. Frantic, I grabbed a white sheet of xerox paper. Can you guess what’s worse than coarse grit paper towel?
Now this left me with a conundrum(that’s a moral dilemma). Always wanting to do my civic duty, I stood there looking first at the trash can and then at the recycle bin. Back and forth. The paper was recyclable but what I printed on it was not(pun intended). I opted for the trash can but walked away with a feeling of guilt. I also had a premonition on the way back to my truck, I saw several boxes of puff’s plus with lotion in my near future.
On my way home from work I stopped at the store for the tissue. Knowing I was about to walk into a warm building, I knew it was only a matter of time before I started sneezing and knowing I had no paper products at all, I moved quickly. I grabbed three boxes of Kleenex with aloe (they were 40 cents cheaper), then grabbed a twelve roll pack of bathroom tissue, also with aloe, but that’s a story for another time.
By the time I got home I felt a little better so I thought I may have wasted my money on the Kleenex. I came home, ate dinner, watched the television and went to bed.
The next morning I awoke to find my head stuffed up and unable to breath, but after about an hour I had drained well and was feeling better. So I decided to go through the half hour process of putting on my arctic gear and went to the local coffee shop.
When I arrived at the coffee shop I found a packed house. Now this place isn’t much bigger than a standard living room so it doesn’t take much to pack the place. But today they had a special guest speaker, a local author doing a book signing. The author and the other two people in the coffee shop must have noticed immediately that I was afflicted because they scooted closer to the corner when I walked in. Naturally I took a seat right in the center of the room. I don’t know what the worry was, none of them had laptops and couldn’t possibly get this virus until they got home. Maybe it was my laptop they were afraid of, not me.
I opened my laptop and got to work. Then I got an idea. I opened my instant messenger to see if my friend was on (we’ll call her Typhoid Mary since I blame her for spreading this) to see how she was feeling. I opened the webcam and the first words out of her mouth were, “you look beat up”. I thought, she had no idea how right she was, I’d been punching myself in the nose with Kleenex since the day before.
While on the net I had friends offering me all sorts of advice, remedies and various other quackeries. I heard Theraflu but don’t have a flu. I don’t know if there is a Theracold but if it tastes like Theraflu I’d rather have the flu. I heard Nyquil but it was still light out. I heard Dayquil but if it doesn’t put me to sleep, what’s the point?
The best advice I got was the strangest, but the one piece of advice I should have heeded. A friend told me not to blow by nose, stop it up, it was just brain lubricant leaking out. I told her I’ve already almost blown my nose off my head. It turned out that she was right. I’ve already lost so much brain lubricant that my thought gears have seized up. In the end I opted to try Norton anti-virus but couldn’t find any instructions on the box.
Eventually I got tired and started to feel pretty bad again so I packed up my things and headed home. When I got home I headed to bed for a nap. Big mistake. I woke up a half hour later thinking I had either contracted avian flu or dreamed about a chicken because I was coughing like I had lungs full of feathers. On the bright side, someone came in while I slept and topped of my brain lube again.
So it’s now the end of day two. I’m about to start my third box of Kleenex and not looking forward to the next couple of days. Tomorrow I’ll wake up with a splitting headache because my head will be mysteriously “over” filled with brain lubricant and the leak will be repaired.
I’ll have to venture out for three more boxes of Kleenex because I usually use six. After those six boxes I’ll be feeling better on the inside but the harsh reality is, on the outside I’ll look like an alien. My nose, top lip and everything in between will be raw, red, cracked and bleeding. I’ll have to go to work, looking like a monster and dreading the very real possibility that I may have to sneeze and/or blow my nose again.
I’m about to try to sleep again but wanted to leave you with some advice. If you’re on the net, stay away from Facebook. If you must use Facebook stay away from Farmville. If you must use Farmville, make sure you have a damn good anti-virus program installed and please stop sending me Farmville requests. I don’t want to go through this again.
