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01/10/01
It's PhlegmTASTIC!!!

I've always suspected that Pamie and I are on some weird parallel life track because we were born one day apart (both early April, same year), but now even though she lives in L.A. and I live in Austin, we both managed to get sick at the exact same time.

I could go into all the other similarities, but it would end up sounding depressingly like I went out of my way to contract flu-like symptoms in order to bolster my case that Pamie is my long-lost Anglo, separated-at-24-hour-length-birth twin.

So I won't do that.

But I'm pretty sick.

The night before last I started sneezing a lot and started releasing phlegm as if I were Hooch from Turner and Hooch. Then yesterday, I picked up echinacea (I love that word, by the way. Say it out loud. It's great fun.) Ricola throat drops, some generic cold and flu medicine, and two boxes of Kleenex. The Kleenex boxes are almost gone. All I did at work yesterday was edit stories, sneeze and blow my nose all day. I work in a small office and I felt really bad that I was exposing everybody to my dangerous germs, but I had so much work to catch up on that I didn't even feel I could justify going home early.

So I plowed on, running through my box of Kleenex Expressions! as if I were trying to mop up The River Phlegm.

It's pretty gross.

Last night, Rebecca played Florence Nightingale and overloaded me with warm, diluted orange juice (yuck), Vics Vap-O-Rub (yeah!) and NyQuil. I was lying in bed with a wireless Internet laptop I'm reviewing, and my loaded up Game Boy Color, so when she arrived, I was like Geek Boy Of the Serengetti. In between checking message boards and running around the Web, I was trying to become supreme Pokémon Puzzle Challenge master. I didn't look pathetic or sick at all except that every few minutes, I would lean over to blow out a cubic liter of snot or run to the bathroom to spit out multicolored rainbows of my innards.

Eventually, after a hot bath and watching some plastic surgery on TV (breasts, love handles and a complete face reworking for three different people, in that order), I was ready to conk out. I took the NyQuil and said nighty night for the next 10 hours. I woke up feeling much better, but my head still feels like its full of birdshot. I still have a sore throat. But at least I'm not on the verge of full phlegmage breakdown like yesterday.

I'll stop saying the word "phlegm." I promise.

Oh, hey did you watch The Mole last night?

Me neither.

Not to beat it to death, but The Mole isn't even listed on ABC's Web site as one of its prime time shows. That's just sad. Your own network can't even list you on its Web site.

If you aren't affiliated with Drew Carey, ABC doesn't want your new-show-smellin' ass.

Today, it's cold and rainy in Austin. Everybody is huddling and running around in the wetness. In my little office at work, where we already have dim, moody lighting, it's very dark. It's like we're working at night. I kind of like it this way.

My friends Greg and Andy are going to Hawaii in March. Greg invited me to go for his sister's wedding, and because I've been taking so much time off and traveling a lot, I begged off, even though Hawaii is one of the places I've always wanted to visit. As Andy put it, when else would I be able to go and have my own personal guide to the island?

But it would cost a lot. And I'm going to Washington next month for some management training (no, really, I'm not a manager, really. I just pretend and people seem to play along and give me money for it). So, essentially, I'm trying to curtail all this traveling that I did nothing but crave year before last.

Somewhere in there I have to fit a trip to Atlanta, too, to see how their newspaper covers technology and how we might work together with our sister paper.

Are you bored yet? Yeah, me too.

Because I've been sick and traveling (thought not in that order), I've completely neglected going to the movies even though there is actually stuff out there that's worth seeing. I haven't seen Traffic yet, but I want to.

And this Friday, I've promised myself and my friends that I'd go see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which I am fully expecting will kick my ass like it's after my lunch money.

Chow-Yun Fat. Michelle Yeoh. Ang Lee. What could possibly be missing? If you stuck a cameo by Jackie Chan banging his groin on a bicycle from 100 feet in there, you would have the perfect martial arts movie.

My dream is to one day be in a martial arts film as myself. I would be Oma-San, the warrior who survives only by his wits and by a well-placed blow to the neck.

"Why are you all running?" a boy would ask a crowd of people running from the sea port.

"He is coming!" the subtitles would read. "Oma-San! The great neck-attacking warrior!"

Everybody would be scrambling to put on neck braces and to wear those ornamental neck rings for protection.

I would walk off a plank from the small boat that brought me to the village. I would say (in Cantonese), "Fear me, for I will go at your neck! Where is Neck Gna Wen?"

Neck Gna Wen would step aside from a tree he was hiding behind. Wearing his flowing robes, he would be revealed to be a 340 lb. monster with absolutely no neck. My greatest strength would now be my folly. I would have no neck to attack. So I'd have to go for his nads.

It would be a great fight, and more importantly, it would be great cinema.

Call me, Ang. I don't even mind auditioning for the part.

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