For a person who has written extensively about vomit in the past, it may be surprising that I’m not a big fan. I’ve been down with a flu or maybe some food poisoning for the last few days, and it hasn’t been pleasant. I won’t go into any specifics, but I think the worst part about this particular downtime has been that I didn’t have any TV, so I couldn’t sit in bed and flip through channels. Okay, the constant nausea was far worse, but if I had a good distraction, maybe that would have helped. Anyway, the fever and stomach stuff is done, but now I haven’t eaten in days, and I can’t just go to Little Caesar’s and get a bunch of crazy bread and $5 pizzas. I’m trying to get past the applesauce level, maybe to something with protein. As we speak, I am eating one of those frozen microwave pretzels, since it’s pretty much all bread, and that’s working okay.
I’m starting to get a little ancy about the land. One of the magazines I read ten times yesterday was a Popular Science, and all of the tiny ads in the back half is all of the stuff I wish I could teleport down there: plows, tillers, steel buildings, log cabin kits, well drilling machines, the magic “make your lawn look like a golf course” grass plugs. I don’t know how many trees or bags of gravel will fit in the back of the Subaru, or if I can get one of those Farm and Fleet 8×10 metal sheds in there, but I want to try. It’s also good to have a Denver address, because if I ordered some plants or whatever, I could have them shipped here, and then drive them down. You can’t do that in your carryon on a NY->CO flight. (My land does not have a street address, and even if UPS or RHL or whatever would drive near there, I would get a bunch of baby trees dropped off and not find out about it for months.)
As an aside, Popular Science is the biggest piece of shit this side of Fader magazine. It’s filled with stuff that doesn’t exist, but makes it sound like by the time you get to your car and drive to the store, it will be waiting for you. But of course, it never will. They have this ha-ha funny thing on the last page that shows covers and articles of the magazine from years ago, so you can get a laugh out of the mag saying in 1967 how everyone will have a jetpack and a robot butler by 1974. Well you don’t have to do much math to determine that the 200 mph hybrid hydrogen car on the cover of this issue is going to look like a huge joke five years from now, let alone 25. I also hate their “how-to” section, which on the cover says something like “Make your car controlled by a computer! Instructions on p.78!” So I’m expecting actual step-by-step instructions on how to do this. And when you turn to page 78, and step one is “go online and buy this computer kit for $2700.”
So why do I subscribe? I bought a bunch of subscriptions for my nephew’s school PTA. It was either Popular Science or Elle. Sarah was smarter: she bought a bunch of food and told my nephew to keep it. Another tip: if you ever do subscribe to Popular Science, give them a fake email address. Or give them president@whitehouse.gov. Because you will never, ever get off of their spam list.
I thought today would be the perfect day to go to a baseball game, but the Rockies are coming back from Shea, so no game today, and Friday and Saturday are night games. I’m really itching for a good day game so I can go get $4 bleacher seats and work on a nice sunburn. We have tickets for the Yankees game on 6/19, and it’s funny how heavily they push those three games. I don’t expect much of a game there, but it is commemorative desk item night, as if my desk doesn’t already have enough shit on it.