CHILI PASTE IS A WAY OF LIFE

Sofar, Brian claims it's merely a cold. He's had it for over ten weeks. Mario tells me it keeps coming back, and then it lingers. My downstairs neighbor has recently started hacking, as well as someone else in the building. Pete says that the internet generation brought it back from a different dimension just to pester everybody over fifty. Or possibly kill them slowly. Which is a novel theory, but does not explain why the three regular asshole bums at the bus stop don't have it. If anybody needs to be fatally pestered, those alcoholics do. Old people no longer dare sit there, but wait with pained expressions under the nearby trees.

In my case it combined nicely with flu-like symptoms to make for a very surreal three+ weeks, and perhaps it's almost gone. But then, I am the youngest of the mentioned victims, what with being BARELY past fifty.
And I may be out of touch with reality anyway.

Jeff is overjoyed that I seem to be recovering; the last time he saw me he fled in a panic anytime I got near him. He thinks I am now no longer infectious.


At it's worst it's a repetitive cough that leaves you gasping for air.


Trust me, it's the perfect way to occupy those boring moments between Easter or Passover and Mother's Day. You realize that you are perfectly okay with attending no seders for the sixth year in a row, as well as having no older relatives to infect on festive occasions. It would also be absolutely splendid for Christmas/New Years, as well as the July Fourth Barbecue you've never been invited to.

If you get the impression that I am pissed, you are wrong. Misery does not love company, but prefers solitude. It's very civilized.


When you are alone, you can happily spend hours with micro-fiber pads and pipe stems, and there is no need to ask how the brats are doing in school, or how cousin Agatha's divorce is coming along. No one to whom you absolutely need to devote half a brain's worth of attention.


That's what e-mail and Facebook are for.


Of course, there's no one to share food with, but with an awful hack hack hack, you find it easy to forget that most people don't eat what you eat anyway. In a way that's icing.

Almost all fish dishes are better with hot sauce.
That's just a thought.




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