doing my small part to help drive humanity toward the inevitable antibiotic-resistant bacterial apocalypse.

i've been running around all morning trying to get our house back into shape after a good week and a half without doing any sort of cleaning whatsoever because of my crippling bout with the pestilence. and, as anyone with a toddler, three cats, a demented pug, and a cleaning-disabled partner knows (anyone? helloooo?), under those circumstances a week and a half without cleaning is tantamount to sending out an all-points-bulletin to the world of disease and filth: please, come nest in our home and slather yourselves upon every surface! we never close! let the unbridled festering and putrescence begin! WOOO-HOOO!!!

so i've been walking around with a spray-bottle of bleach all morning, and as a result can no longer smell or taste anything... that doesn't smell or taste like bleach, that is. in any case, i finally feel like doing things again, things other than laying on the couch, laying on the bed, reclining in the easy chair, etcetera. and the reason for this rapid recovery is, well, that i conned my doctor into calling in a prescription for antibiotics for me yesterday, without actually having to go to the doctor. i eliM_ted the middle-man, in effect. and while i'm kind of perversely proud of my persuasive powers, and know that i was indeed nursing an ear infection and was therefore in need of said drugs (i'm not a doctor, but i play one in my mind), i also know that this transaction was, in the grander scope of things, PURE UNMITIGATED EVIL. i've heard in about 15 years all the known antibiotics in our arsenal will be useless against the mutant superbacteria we're aiding and abetting through our overuse of them, but with delicate flowers like myself gulping antibiotics down with abandon because we essentially weren't meant to survive and reproduce, i'd say we can safely cut that figure in half. i know, i know: I SO RULE.

all of this of course means that in less than a decade i'm shit out of luck (as my father would say), and will be forced to add those attractive white paper air filter masks and surgical gloves to my daily wardrobe. but like the good american that i am, in the meantime i'm gonna throw caution to the wind and live in The Now, man. load me up with more antibacterial soaps and purell, motherfuckers! I'M INVINCIBLE!!!

okay, well, maybe a little vincible. sniff.

Comments

[heather]

Don't worry, they have those cool designer face masks in Japan now... it will just be like another accessory!

http://www.teaching-in-japan.com/images/japanese-mask-1.jpg

[Belinda]

Don't worry...with the current residents of your home, you'll only be beating back the bugs temporarily, even with the bleach and Purel. So you'll wind up striking a nice balance and exposing everyone to just enough germs for them to build up a nice resistance, and clean just enough to keep out the plague and ebola virus.

[Gen]

Substitute newborn baby for demented pug, and I am one of your legion.

[styro]

I hear that Science (with a capital S) is working feverishly on drugs that bacteria will not be able to become resistant to---different methods of attack, for instance. (most of the antibiotics now work on the hand-grenade method: they see a bad bacteria, attach to it and blow it up. Some of the newer antibiotics they're working on just WORK in a different way. Like, they will encapsulate the entire bacteria in a membrane that will have a tag that codes it as WASTE so your body will just excrete it, whole, but neutralized.) It will be interesting to see what they come up with: some of the drugs have very interesting and exciting possibilities---IF the Science Dudes can get them to work the way they want them to...