Alright, I have pinkeye. Go ahead and lay out all your zombie jokes a la South Park. Shawn and I have been doing it all morning. He’s got it too so at least I’m in good company. Good, puffy, gooey company.
Having more than one person affected with the same (gooey) malady gives you an interesting perspective on the subjectiveness of medical treatment. One nurse told Shawn that pinkeye was bacterial and prescribed an antibiotic. Another nurse told me that it can be viral or bacterial and prescribed an antibiotic anyway. The application process of said antibiotic varied from nurse to nurse to pharmacist. And research on the website of the company that employs all these people offers yet another point of view. I think clinical medicine might be a far more subjective field than any of us sitting on the cold exam table really want to think about.
One nurse told me to throw out all my tainted eye make-up, which goes along with my working hypothesis that many people walking around out there are actually from a different planet than me, but I thanked her for her advice.
The one point on which everyone agreed is its level of contagion. Mandatory sick day until you’ve got at least 24 hours of the (possibly irrelevant and species-deprecating) antibiotics in your system. So we’re home together. And eye-drops aside, that’s rather pleasant. We had a nice breakfast and deposited our contaminated selves on the couch side by side to hack through problematic code in our respect websites. Quarantine doesn’t suck.
And speaking of quarantining invasive life forms, my cousin and I went out to see The Thing on Saturday night. This is something of a hybrid between a prequel and a remake and I went in thinking I hadn’t seen the original. Ten minutes in, I realized that not only had I seen this movie before, but I had also seen it in space and underwater as well.
Apparently this is the third time this movie has been remade. It gets redone every time the special effects technology takes a quantum leap forward, and they have gotten better. Gooey. Gooey is the word for the day.
It’s a formula, but an entertaining one. My cousin and I spent our time predicting the order in which the cast of characters would inevitably drop off dead and offered them useful advice on their way. “No, you’re right. You should totally check out that suspicious sound. Open the door to the lab. I’m sure everything will be work out fine.”
And true to form, it all comes down to one bad-ass chick with a flame-thrower walking into the alien-whatever’s turf with a pocket full of grenades. I’ll stick with Ripley myself.
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
But an entertaining couple of hours and with some modestly aerobic advantages. I jumped out of my seat five times. My cousin kept count and laughed his ass off at me every time. As a cousin is obligated to do.
I hope I didn’t unintentionally contaminate the cousin, movie theater full of people, or anyone else with whom I’ve recently had contact with pinkeye. If so, you have my apologies. Wash your hands, don’t touch your eyes, and lay off the brains.