Wednesday, April 26, 2006

It never fails. Assuming there were a notary awake, you and I would go to his office and present tonight’s discussion on fancy parchment, have him trot out the seal–you know, officiate this shit. Note in your records I’m typing. On the keyboard. The time is 11:58 PM, which is kind of late, but that’s overshadowed by the cavalcade of time-outs on Blogger. The Internet should conform to my schedule and plan its outages for another time, and by golly I demand a snack and a nap right now.

The interns offer a comforting connection to campus, usually by sharing bits about university goings-on and mutual professors and, in the past few days, a nasty stomach virus. The experience has been a delight, so much so that I’ve realized my favorite sickness is, despite all my firmest convictions, the sore throat. Stomach viruses are just insidious, buried deep in your trunk and striking seemingly on a whim. A sore throat is more honest, don’t you think? When it’s there, it’s there, no ambiguity, no second thoughts about whether you’ve really gotten better or whether you’re basking in temporary respite.

Well, my psychotic neighbor upstairs is shouting again and pounding on his wall in a profanity-laced attempt to silence the apartment next to him. He’s a guy in his mid-forties who, after every screaming match, will inevitably bump into me in the parking lot and apologize profusely, claiming he wasn’t the one who was swearing.

I once helped him haul a television up to his apartment, being the goddamn saint I am, and he casually invited me to watch a movie. This was the second invitation, actually, and rhetorical gymnastics were passionately employed to maneuver around it. I don’t believe I’d bring much to the table, understand, which is to say I’m not yet ready to have my entrails fashioned into curtains while he whispers nursery rhymes. But the flu? That’s something to share. When he apologizes on Saturday or next Tuesday, we’ll shake on it.