In Which The Martians Have Landed

There's a new epidemic going around town, and H1N1 has got nothin' on it.  Run in terror, folks, because it's Martian Death Flu season, and our household is contaminated.

That's right.  You'd better burn your computer after reading this, because the dread disease is so contagious that I'm pretty sure it can be transmitted by Internet contact.  Martian Death Flu is coming for you all.

First identified by eminent scientist Dave Berry back in 1986, Martian Death Flu (MDF) has been a minor problem, affecting only two or three people a year until now, when lax regulations on the importation of Martians caused an outbreak of the disease among fourteen year old girls across the nation.  From there it rapidly spread to the rest of the population, and now we're on the brink of a pandemic.  Once MDF is contracted, there's nothing to do except take to your bed or couch for a week and hope that a meteor will fall on your house and put you out of your misery. 

I'm sure my research on the origin of MDF is accurate, because watching Lady Gaga videos to figure out which one to link to this post also made me wish for death.  And here's another important fact: 1986, when Mr. Berry wrote his groundbreaking article, just happens to be the year that Lady Gaga was born.  Coincidence?  I think not. 

With any luck today was the worst day for Jeremy and me, and we'll have the weekend to recover slowly.  I'm really hoping I'll have regrown all of my taste buds by Monday, as my favorite holiday of the year-- Half Price Chocolate Day-- is happening then.  I burned the entire top surface of my tongue off by drinking copious amounts of scalding hot tea with lemon in a misguided attempt to melt my lungs to the inside of my body in order to prevent myself from ejecting them while coughing.  For future reference, this does not work.  All it does is make everything you eat taste even more like cardboard than it did when you still had taste buds.

Connor, I'm sad to say, is definitely not over the worst of it yet-- he's still running a low-grade fever and his nasty, lung-ejecting cough seems to be taking up residence long term.  I'm kind of hoping at this point that he doesn't end up with bronchitis. 

Bronchitis, for those of you who don't know, is when a brontosaurus stomps on you, making it hard to breathe.  At least that's how Jeremy explained it to Connor earlier today.  Apparently not very many people get it because brontosauruses (brontosauri?) are few and far between, making it very difficult to catch.  I'm not sure exactly what the correlation between the Martians and the dinosaurs is, but apparently they work together or something.  No doubt the government has covered it up in an attempt to prevent widespread panic.  We'll have to ask the velociraptors about it when we have the energy to drag ourselves out to the van.

But there's no need to panic, folks: while a vaccination for the direct transfer of Martian Death Flu has yet to be developed (so if you come into physical contact with us you are DOOMED) there's a simple inoculation available for the electronic transference of the disease.  Simply barricade yourselves in your homes, turn off your computers, and listen to eight hours or so of public radio programming.  This should stave off any ill side effects you might experience after coming into contact with Martians, brontosauri, or fourteen year old girls for at least a good forty five minutes.

One final note: I'm pretty sure that when my children are adults, rather than spending hours explaining why they were so traumatized by their childhoods they'll just direct their therapists to this website. 

It'll save everybody a whole lot of time. 

~Jess