Saturday, June 30, 2007

I'm happy to report I am rabies free

I just finished reading Rant by Chuck Pahlihalinukanukaluau. It was perhaps in some ways a mistake, given my hypochondriac ways, as the title character is a venom-addicted redneck who spreads rabies to the masses (a superspreader - patient-zero is an obsolete term). Chuck P. being a writer who does his homework (most writers do their homework, but the proliferation of books by people who never should have written books like Sean Hannity and Shaq, and the festering cess-pools of blogs by graphomaniacal opinionated jerks has diluted the quality of the term 'writer'), the reader is treated to all the essential details about the effects of rabies, and he throws in info about other deadly diseases and plagues on top.

The 'Party Crashing' business in the book makes one think of a guy pitching a movie ('It's like 'Fight Club', but WITH CARS'), and throughout I couldn't help but think, yeah, sure, you feel alive in that moment when your car hits another, and then you get 40+ years of your lower back killing you. It's entirely unglamorous if you screw it up and don't manage to obliterate yourself, James Dean style. I am old and risk-averse, though, so fuck what I think. Did I like the book? Yes. SPOILER ALERT: Chuck does some interesting and unexpected things over the course of the book. END OF SPOILER ALERT.

The book has made me paranoid about my cats or insects in the house giving me a horrible illness, but I've been paranoid about my cats ever since reading about how Toxoplasma from cats can make people...paranoid.

No comments: