Well, I survived. Perhaps it was God's punishment for attending a Britney Spears concert, but I recently suffered from a potent strain of the flu. I'm not sure if it was THE flu du jour (H1N1), but I will state that I have never been so sickly in my life. Well...not including the after-effects of eating mystery meat from a street vendor in Shanghai (which I highly suspect was soylent green). But that was a fate suffered at my own hands. This flu was a curse passed on from a family member. One who has also miraculously survived days of agonizing pain and discomfort while further enduring the mercy of daytime television. I swear, if I am forced to watch one more Proactive commercial, bad things will happen. Very bad things. Life is suffering, indeed.

In terms of ability to devastate the human body and infract social chaos, swine flu is not as epic as, say, the Black Plague (which is good because death is rather unfortunate). I predict it will be more like the Molly Ringwald of the viral world: a media darling one day and completely forgotten the next. And just like viewing '16 Candles' allows us to reminisce, in the future we will all have fond memories of that one Autumn in which we bonded over puking our guts out while suffering from a fever of 110. Good times.