Today, I am feeling poorly.

I have, karma-style, brought this on myself by pointing and laughing at my beloved, who contracted an illness called "croup", usually only contracted by babies. Although it is true that he is a lot younger than I am, he is not THAT much younger than I am, so I was finding it amusing that he had a sickness reserved, appropriately, for infants. Was he also suffering nappy rash? Did he want his dummy? etc. Hilarious.

Then, I started sneezing and coughing, wanting to tear out my burning tonsils, attempting to throw off a rampant fever, and desiring simply to lie down until the winds of time swept me into another dimension. Not so hilarious, as it turns out. More hideous, really, than hilarious, when you think about it. Still, there is some conjecture over whether or not I have the same illness as my manfriend (let's call him Babyface) which thus renders croup hilarious again, since hilarity is, as we all know from Australia's Funniest Home Videos, in the eye of the beholder.

If anyone out there has ever tried to write while suffering from a fever, you will know that it is quite a bizarre state to create anything in (apart from, frankly, mucus). I often try to write or plan creative projects when I'm lying in bed with a fever because, not being a drug taker, I rarely get the opportunity to read over my own writing later and think, "What the hell was I thinking? Who wrote this? I don't remember writing this. I don't remember anything! You guys! Are you having me on?" etc. It really is quite loopy what goes through your fevered mind.

Now I want to read this book, but the problem with being sick is that as soon as you're not sick any more, it's the most boring topic on earth.

In fact, clinical tests prove that the five most boring things on earth to discuss are:

Illness (unless it's fantastic like the girl whose spider bite turned out to be a nest of baby spiders on her face)

Other people's dreams (fascinating to you, boring to everyone else)

Stories about pets (I refer here to stories that do not have plots - the mere fact that an animal is in the story somehow meaning that the story can be about how an animal exists, wags its tail, has fussy eating habits, sleeps, has a name etc. Animal stories are only interesting if your animal has saved somebody's life, played an instrument, been involved in a crime of some sort, or (like the lizard in the newspaper recently) eaten a toy version of itself and then excreted it, causing its child owner to exclaim that it is having a baby out of its bottom).

Office procedures (Apparently, discussions relating to the most appropriate method of filing or archiving are always long, no matter who you work for, and they usually involve two very opinionated polar opposite positions, about neither of which anybody else cares).

and

Traffic (As much as it might pain you at the time, someone overtaking you from the inside lane will bore the pants off someone at the barbecue you arrive late at. Unless you actually have an accident, become involved in fisticuffs, or accidentally flick the bird at mother theresa, it's boring. It just is.)

Do you know how I know this? Because I worked on the phones at a radio station. Do you know the top two topics people want to talk about on talkback radio? Traffic, and pets. Dreams comes in at number three, closely followed by children, sob stories (illness comes in here, so does debt) and weather. The only one of these that doesn't make it onto talkback radio is office procedures.

Maybe I should start my own show.