Monday 18 February 2008

Tiny Invisible Doom!

According to a blood test I had the other month and my very serious-voiced doctor, I am apparently highly allergic to dust and grass/pollen. That was the phrase he used, "highly allergic".
The way he described it made it sound as if I should be safely bundled into a hermetically sealed bubble and fed through a tube.
I don't feel highly allergic. I get hayfever (a couple of sneezes a day not that taxing) but apart from that there are no highly inconvenient health problems that have now been explained fully by my newfound nemesis that I can gleefully banish with the power of more intensive housework.
I figured all it would just mean was that I should vac and dust about the place more often.
He told me that, yes that would be a good idea but ideally I should find someone else to do it for me. God knows I wouldn't be able to wait for them outside though, whilst they battled the armies of dust for me, because then the grass and pollen and such would get me.
He also advised me against drying my sheets outside when I wash them because they may become infused with pollen which would then join forces with the dust that is bound to be lurking in my flat to persecute me unmercifully.
The end result is effectively that I can't go out but can't stay in either.

Due to my lovely hayfever I wasn't entirely surprised by the grass/pollen verdict but if I'm allergic to dust... well, I must have built up a super hero level immunity because our house is very much a friend to the dust bunny and its brethren and I feel fine.
Possibly I'm only living a sad half-life and once I've covered every piece of furniture I own in those lovely don't-pee-on-me-plastic-upholstery-barriers, hired an anal-retentive cleaning service and started using mattress and pillow protectors I will magically be infused with a level of energy erstwhile unbeknowst to me, never ever have bad hair days and will realise that up until now I have been completely unaware of the colour purple.

Given all the things that we're all allergic to in our modern wonderland and the things that are guaranteed to give us cancer (ie eating food, breathing air and drinking anything) I figure we might as well give up now.
Given some careful planning and a bit of dedication, in a couple of generations we will all be locked in underground bunkers surviving on mushrooms and lichens - providing we can genetically engineer them not to involve spores - and warning our pallid and sickly looking offspring about the evils of the above-world and how the tiny enemies that surrounded us constantly almost wiped us out.
We might as well, it would at least pass the time and allow us to feel all important and post-apocalypticy and if the seas rise and cover the exits to the above-world I can guarantee that something exciting would happen that would require one of our more burly and witty pale-o-nauts to have to somehow get out, get to the surface and in the process learn something about the human spirit and that we actually can survive the Daystar and the world that basks in its glow... And when he returns with this heart-warming news I'm sure people will also be interested to hear that they can stop eating Soylent Green, but only if they want to.
Waste not, want not.

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