tom cruise, mosquitoes, stool sample

In the news today in India: Tom Cruise washes his hands for five minutes.

Well, yeah. I dislike Tom Cruise but not going to fault him for this hygiene habit. You want to be careful in India. Actually, you want to be careful everywhere. One of the worst nights I ever spent was after visiting a McDonald’s restroom in Memphis. Since then, I’ve become Cruise-ian about washing my hands.

Speaking of health and India, I’m still taking malaria pills. It looks like I have another two weeks to go. I’m kind of annoyed that the nurse I saw at the travel clinic, although she noticed and asked about the psoriasis on my hands, didn’t mention that these malaria pills exacerbate it. And boy, do they ever. Don’t look at me, I’m disgusting… (She didn’t know anything about medical travel to India, either, which casts doubts on her travel medicine knowledge, to my thinking.)

For a few days after I got home, I was pretty sure I had meningitis, despite the vaccine I got against it, because I had a stiff neck. But since I had no other symptoms, I concluded it was 24-hours-in-economy-classitis.

Happily, I returned from India healthy as when I left.

But now here’s a grim story in today’s DMN about a hardbody runner who was bitten by a mosquito on the one unprotected spot on her body (her face). She got West Nile Virus and will never be the same. The end.

Wow, that’s a picker-upper. Especially since she did just about everything right—but she wasn’t diagnosed quickly enough. Yikes.

And here’s a compelling quickie about how Americans’ fixation on happiness cuts us off from a full life. Rock on, fellow melancholic.

It brought to mind a maudlin short story I wrote for a high school creative writing class. It involved a talking dove and a sad old man. (The assignment was to use five specific words in a short story. I think “dove” was one of them. Also “stool” so the old man was sitting on a stool in the sunshine. I don’t remember the other words. I guess I could have gone in a whole different direction, what with "old man'" and "stool" but I don't know where the dove would have worked in...)

The story ends with the old man saying this: Yes, dove, I want to die. Not now, though. I have had a beginning and a middle to my life. I want to make the full circle. I have had happiness, love, joy. Now, left for the end, come loneliness and regret. Perhaps they are painful but I want to die with perfect symmetry to my life. For each joy, I want a sorrow. For each filled moment, I want a moment of loneliness. Is not a moment of loneliness just as fulfilling as one with companionship? I shall die eventually and I shall die happy with the knowledge that my life has lacked nothing. I want nothing from you now, Dove. Return to me and remind me of what I have said when Death is approaching and I am afraid.

Deep shit, eh? I got a good grade, anyway, and the teacher made me read it aloud in class.

Now, cheer up and Texans get out and vote. How exciting is this?