"Hello Existential Dread"

by Dom B.
2001.10.25

Cough medicine, friends, that is what it is all about. Two days ago I woke up coughing up oddly colored phlegm chunks. You know the type. You end up with a taste in your mouth you can only describe as 'green' and something you spit into a kleenex that has way too much mass to be coming out of your lungs. Real mind-screw, ain't it?

On the one hand, you're disgusted and slightly worried about the State of The Nation of Your Body, and on the other hand, you have a sense of accomplishment. Because, hey, that stuff's not inside you anymore, and you've never seen anyone else do it, and you could patch a tire with it. And you just coughed one up. "Hey, Look what I made!!! Ain't it cool?!?!?"

So at this point I went to work, and it sucked, and I felt like passing out all day. So the next day I stay at home to get better. Knock back some Tussin Cough Syrup. Sounds like some southern redneck word for fighting or jerking off. "You been tussin', ain't you boy!". So with a belly full of Tussin and a head full of Anime and comic books I end up playing video games and downloading Apocalypse Now quotes "all the live long day".

But the cough medicine, oh, the evil, evil cough medicine. Cough medicine and screwed up mass media DO NOT MIX. My nightmares were particularily vivid last night.

Nuns on acid! And frigging rats running around with little machine guns strapped to their backs! AND THEY WERE ALL PISSED AT ME!

And THEN the really messed up crap happened!

The next thing I know, it's Wednesday evening and I'm writing this column, and I don't know what to do with my life, and I'm looking for a new job, and it's getting dark at 5:00 pm and I'm eating a great big anxiety sandwich about every hope and fear I have.

My cold is getting better, but I'm stressed out about writing a simple cover letter to my resume, I've got this wonderful inner voice that tells me everything I try to do is crap and for some reason I feel old at 24. Then the cough medicine kicks in, and I think I'll play Quake 3 until 2 am. Right after I watch Powerpuff Girls.

Cough.