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The holes in a fly swatter minimise the air current which warns the fly of being hit, whilst reducing air resistance and increasing speed of the swat.

-Wikipedia

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Thank the Lord for this.

Friday I came home from work to find two things: Emily and a house full of flies. My parents had warned me about a housefly infestation on Thursday evening, but when I left Friday morning there was nary an insect in sight.

Alvin and the Chipmunks psp

That night they buzzed around me at a dizzying rate of speed and number. I pulled Emily away from her nachos and Sabado Gigante to get her thoughts twenty-four hours after the massacre:

It was nothing I had ever seen in a house before. It was more like my barn when we had fourteen cows…or calves, rather. I thought it was interesting how they were racing around the kitchen in what seemed like circles. *makes circle motions* I mean, you told me there were going to be a lot, but I didn’t expect half that many. It was just ridiculous. I just don’t think I’ve ever seen that many flies where it didn’t have a stench hanging around.

So Emily thinks my house doesn’t stink. I am so in.

The massacre: it was not pretty. Scared the crap out of Gilbert the Fish, needless to say. Armed with two fly-swatters, twelve clear sticky fly traps and four hanging fly strips we went to work. Over about a half-an-hour, we destroyed the lives of just under fifty flies, with more caught in the various traps overnight. By morning, the house had returned to a much more livable state. Now there are a few still buzzing their way around the homestead, but nothing close to the air traffic control disaster that was my Friday night. The ones that remain seem more lethargic, barely running from my swatter swats. Losers.

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The Corrs: Unplugged ipod

The flies shouldn’t return; the trash has been emptied, and no food sits out unguarded. Emily and I, merciless insect killers, triumph again. Nachos for all!

• Beowulf & Grendel move

I went to Chicago, and all I got was this lousy cold.

Actually, colds don’t bother me much. Late in the first day a sore throat develops, then the next day the nose is attacked. Maybe a minor headache, some woozies, etc. It starts to fade by day three, and then soon enough it’s just a sad memory.

Unless, of course, Vicks changes the formula to Dayquil.

I suck down the orangeness of Dayquil down like crazy during my colds. Unable to sleep without clearing my nasal passage, I turn to the magic elixir for support. Every six hours I pound the formula, granting some level of comfort as I wait for my white blood cells to hang a “Mission Accomplished” banner across the aircraft carrier in my spleen.

That is, when I can find it.

Tuesday morning I headed to Schnucks in Carbondale only to find them out of Dayquil formula, so I bought the gelcaps instead. This was my first mistake, since I can’t swallow pills (my gag reflex is legendary,) and these things taste like death when you crack them open. So it was off to Kroger’s West (old and busted,) where the same dearth of orange magic greeted me. I opted for Nyquil, which I took when I got home; this was mistake number two, as I had never digested the grape version of the Quil family and did not realize that it is merely a watered down form of a lethal injection.

I woke up a fortnight later.

Emily and I ran to the store later that day, and Kroger’s East (new hotness) was strike three for Dayquil. Walgreen’s, however, offered me a man who, in the midst of completing his planagram, had explanations:

I Do movie Oh, they changed the formula. We have the new stuff right here.

Except that the new formula is cough relief only, with none of the pain relief or nasal decongestant the modern Peter-on-the-go requires. I need the daytime, sniffling, sneezing, aching, coughing, stuffy-head, fever, so I can blog medicine, and all I get is cough drops in liquid form. Nuts to this.

On the way out, for some reason their overstock catches my eye, and what do I behold but three bottles of the old formula.

I bought two of them.

Half of me wanted to roam Jackson County rounding up all the Good Nyquil bottles and hoarding them, a la Elaine Benes, but given the reason they changed the formula is that the medicine was a popular ingredient in meth production, I didn’t want the state police pounding on my door at one in the morning just so I can watch King of the Hill without sniffling.

The best part of this story has little to do with my minor illness or chasing meth ingredients around Carbondale, but with Wikipedia’s impressive wit. Often a page that needs cleaned up has a warning at the top; witness this atop the entry for Nyquil:

Beowulf & Grendel dvdrip To meet Wikipedia’s quality standards, this article or section may, ironically, require decongestion.

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