The overbearing nature of my illness makes it impossible to concentrate on anything besides the incessant throbbing in my head. The excruciating soreness feels like a dagger puncturing my throat, and my body roasts like a miserable, self-sufficient sauna.
It is amazing how a simple illness can cause even the most undemanding tasks to seem incredibly daunting. For instance, my fever has made me so sluggish over the past few days that I have actually considered utilizing my roommate's Los Angeles Dodgers cap as a bedpan.
When you need to ingest 12 doses of ibuprofen just to feel well enough to move your cable bill out of the rapidly approaching puddle of spilled Hawaiian Punch, more intricate activities become extremely problematic. If you don't believe me, try writing a newspaper column when your sinuses are on the verge of a Chernobyl-like explosion.
Although our brilliant strategy for dooming the earth by irreversibly releasing toxic chemicals into the atmosphere has successfully left us with an incredibly mild winter, the extraordinary warmth has been unable to prevent the seasonal exchange of dreadful viruses.
Perhaps the widespread circulation of cold and flu bugs is one of the most damaging disadvantages of university life. Wherever thousands of people are cramming into overcrowded rooms and pretending to learn while carving \Pantera Shreds!"" into wooden desks, the transmission of illnesses is essentially inevitable.
It is important not to overlook the important role of university housing in promoting the spread of sickness. Not only do the dorms allow us to experience the hilarity of an intoxicated individual obscenely flopping around on the filthy, wart-infested floor of shower stalls, they also satisfy our demand for reliable cesspools of infection.
Although the dorms are certainly an important center for spreading maladies, there are other places on campus where the air is almost as contaminated. In a recent visit to the Chemistry Building, I noticed that the entire room was echoing with a chorus of coughs, making the atmosphere seem less like a university lecture hall than the tuberculosis ward in the infirmary of a Turkish prison.
Unfortunately, as students at such a large school, there is little we can do to avoid coming into contact with the occasional sickness. Although gas masks have become increasingly common household items since the recent bioterrorism scare, most people reserve such technology for incidents where anthrax is directly involved, like last Friday's concert at The Rave where they opened for Judas Priest.
Although University Health Services does offer shots and medications to help students get through the flu season, there is no foolproof way to avoid getting sick when you have contact with so many people each day.
To cut down on your chances of developing a sickness, I recommend avoiding exchanges with others at all costs. Instead of making the common mistake of actually attending class, remember that it is immeasurably safer to maintain complete isolation in your room at all times, relying on stale Pop-Tarts and powdered Kool-Aid for sustenance.
In closing, I would like to apologize for the stumbling incoherence that most likely dominates this column. It is extremely difficult to express any sort of valid message through the overwhelming delusions of fever. Now, if I could only find the energy to reach that Dodgers cap.
