We split the household chores, Littlestar and I, which is why I had no one to blame but myself when I found myself in the situation of scrubbing the upstairs toilet-bowl at three o'clock in the morning in order to make it clean enough to throw up into.

Caveat emptor: this diary is gross.


I awoke from a disturbing dream in which a tall African was checking the oil in our purple Nissan with his own grotesquely long sex, and I came to with his throaty warning in my heart feeling queasy and afraid. The unconventional mechanic had been uncircumsized in my dream, so I chalked it up to smegma-related stress stemmed from the fact that my son will be born soon and his penis won't look like mine.

I went to the washroom to pee and, to my surprise, proceeded to assplode. I considered that I may have come down with the stomach flu, and wondered whether or not I might soon vomit. I examined the flushed toilet and was dismayed to find the bowl stained and filthy, and stinking very much of unmentionable essences.

I could not bring myself to consider kneeling before such a grimy altar, so I took up the toilet brush and jizzed some milky blue cleaner out of the crooked bottle and had at her. As I scrubbed my vomit suspicion became a vomit certainty. I knew that I had to flush the toilet before I let loose or else risk a splash-back mouthful of solvent.

The moments are long as you hover over a toilet, waiting for the flush cycle to complete. I dared not belch.

The release came none too soon, and I was grateful that my daughter was staying at her grandmother's house because I should have hated to have awakened her with the terrible noise of my barfing labours. You see, I've never quite mastered the art of being ill quietly -- I am unable to perform the act without accompaniment by a hoarse and miserable shout, like a fell cheer for some unholy sports league: "Hurrah!"

(Nothing tastes good on the way out, no matter how good it tasted on the way in. Context is everything.)

Inspired by a sense of symmetry the virus within me thought it best to use dual vectors of transmission simultaneously, and thus I was obliged to clench a wad of tissue between my lower cheeks as I hurled so that I wouldn't assplode upon the floor from my projectile efforts. Dignity and the flu are strangers.

I spent the next day in bed beside a barf bowl and a glass of flat ginger ale, sucking on ice cubes while watching a stack of DVDs Littlestar had brought home for free -- Hollywood "blockbusters" rented out of the little convenience concern attached to the liquor store where she's been working. All of the movies were terrible beyond reason, but because of my sickened state I was able to respond in the most appropriate way possible: by vomiting.

What did I think of Nicholas Cage in National Treasure? "Hurrah!"

My quick review of The Fantastic Four? "Hurrah!"

I even threw up during Crash, which people who like pretentious artsy films are supposed to like, but I didn't. "Hurrah!"

I moved on to crackers and literature, chicken soup and Google News. By twenty-four hours time I was right as rain, with virus-laden swill leaping forth from none of my orifices. I failed to infect my born child and my wife carrying around my unborn child. My temporary mission as a propagator of influenza was an abject failure from the germs' point of view -- an evolutionary dead-end, swirled away down my sparkling and pristine toilet-bowl.

I win!