True to my Irish heritage, I’ve picked up some goddamned malady just days before I have to wedge myself into a metal bird tailor-made to destroy eustachian tubes. When you are, as one occasionally is, faced with the choice between flying with cold congestion and having a horse make love to your ear, you pause to consider the two options. Neither is ideal, but there is some computing required to determine exactly which is less mal. On the prevention front, I’ve done everything that the doctors recommended as a deterrent, including sleep deprivation, excessive alcohol consumption, and surrounding myself with hordes of incoming freshmen. I’ve started my typical regimen of buying every medicine that might potentially apply to my ailments, finding the maximum allowable human dosage, and taking double that. Because I am twice the man. And because the FDA is a frivolous liberal construct. I can fly now, but I am also covered in ants.

I’ve been checking with Brown facilities management if I am allowed to spray Raid in the gym to get rid of the undergraduates swarming on the equipment. They said that I should not do that. They would prefer that I do something else. I counter with the point that the building is about six months old and they already have a brofestation. There’s at least one on almost every machine. The air smells of Axe and Natty Ice. It rings with the crack of high-fives and disparaging comments toward women. Am I using this bench? Yes. I am laying on it. Using it.

I guess swimming is an option.

A poor option.

For sad people.