On Being Sick (h2so4 4)
[courtesy of Tylenol with Codeine]

I've been sick and home from work for a week now. This never happens to me. Three days is about the longest sickness. The first day is always almost fun, allowing yourself to languish around in bed all day doing nothing, eating soft foods and watching insipid daytime tv shows, throwing newly weighted facial tissues at oprah, geraldo, and erica kane of all my children. 

My tonsils are so swollen that they take up my entire throat, and everytime I call someone they think I am either crying or that a tremendously fat woman has taken over my body.

The Dr. gave me tylenol with codeine, and I've noticed that, while codeine doesn't remove the pain, it at least makes you stop caring about it so much. So I started reading the dictionary, an activity which, if you knew me, you would know is not THAT strange, but nonetheless, I learned:

• Bowie is a city of west-central Maryland AND a single-edged steel hunting knife about 15 inches in length having a hilt and a crosspiece. 
• all bourbons are whiskeys but not all whiskeys are bourbons. 
• a mascon is a mare on the moon having rock of greater density than that of the surrounding area, thus exerting a slightly higher gravitational force [mas(s) + con(centration)]. 
• a mare is both a female horse AND any of the large dark areas on the moon or on Mars or other planets. 
• whiskey can be spelled whisky, and whiskeys can be spelled whiskies. 
• bourbon must be made with no less than 51% corn mash, with the remaining a combination of rye and wheat. 
• bourbon is a name for a kind of whiskey, AND a sociopolitical reactionary, especially a southern Democrat with highly conservative views. 
• a masher is both a kitchen utensil for mashing vegetables or fruit AND a man who attempts to force his attentions on a woman. 

From which new knowledge I have been able to extrapolate thusly:

• David Bowie is not in the dictionary, but should be. 
• A man who forces his attentions on you thinks you are a vegetable or fruit. 
• Bill Clinton may be a bourbon, but I would not order him at a bar. 

The man on the moon is actually a female horse.

—Jill Stauffer

"All these shortcomings need not be considered as a major drawback: the reader capable of deciphering the hidden meaning of a book from the order of its entries has long since vanished from the face of the earth, for today's reading audience believes that the matter of imagination lies exclusively within the realm of the writer and does not concern them in the least, especially with regard to a dictionary." Milorad Pavic, The Dictionary of the Khazars, Knopf, New York, 1989.

Last updated 14-Apr-2007