A DREAM COME TRUE

Years ago two colleagues went down to Central America on an industry-related jaunt. About which I found out far too late to sign up on, so I spent the two weeks before they left looking up every darn tropical parasite and disease they ran any risk of catching and describing these in great glowing detail to them. They came back completely healthy.
They had had a great time. It had been wonderful.

They ate like kings, smoked like chimneys, drank like fish.
Oh, I should have gone, they said.
Bastards.

This morning I read about trypanosoma cruzi (chagas disease, trypanosomiasis), which the medical establishment alerts us is now endemic in parts of the United States, mostly places where I would not go with a ten foot pole. So I don't even need to visit Central America.

As a total aficionado of the ickinesses, I am of course overjoyed.

Heck, I could go to Texas. Or catch it in my backyard.

Meanwhile, there is the sound of heavy machinery from the street in front of my building. On behalf of the city, workmen are digging up an ancient evil. The pipes of our sewer system are being uncovered and replaced or something, which will improve San Francisco, eradicate drug use and pavement dwellers, and make us beautiful for the tourists again.

So far they haven't found Jimmy Hoffa. But they will.

We've flushed down so many things over the years that they're bound to find King Arthur's sword and the Ark of the Covenant. We live in interesting times.

Remember the seventies when any knock on the door was the cops and people promptly dumped their stash of narcotics in the crapper? There are encrustations in the tubes below the surface that will induce hallucinations and possibly seizures. Imagine men with hardhats seeing strobe lights and strange creatures, foaming at the mouth and eyes rolling back in their sockets. Soon they'll start screaming, like that floating head in Apocalypse Now, the horror, the horror! Rosebud.


Yeah, okay, I woke up far too early. It's doing things.
The second cup of coffee is taking effect.
Bath, lunch, bank, shopping.
Need to get out.



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