How To: Plague

No, calm down. Calm yourselves down. Gosh darn it. Stop leaping to conclusions! You don't even know what I'm thinking right now! You and your overactive imaginations. Snerb snerb snerb. No! No one has the plague! Especially not me! I'm opposed to things like illness, so horrible germs just bounce right off me. There's no need to worry.

But the actual worrying part comes when it turns out I have to a giant research project about the plague. Yes. The actual plague. Like BLACK DEATH BLACK PLAGUE GROSS PESTILENCE PLAGUE-Y PLAGUE OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION. Ugh.

It's so unfair. One of my friends gets to write about children's literature. I could write about children's literature. But noooooo. I get to write about the pulsating pustule puffer plague of people who refuse to bath on religious grounds.

And there are beautiful entries in the book I have to read, such as, "Victims violently coughed up blood, and after three days of incessant vomiting for which there was no remedy, they died, and with them died not only everyone who talked with them but also anyone who had acquired or touched or laid hands on their belongings." (From John Kelly's The Great Mortality)

Thanks for that, Weird English teacher.

So I think I'll probably write about this guy who kind of might have started the Plague, if you so choose to believe in things such as curses and witchcraft-y things. He seems more interesting than investigating actual parts of the Plague. Plus, real medical things are gross. (I can't even deal with my brothers pulling out their loose teeth, so plague symptoms? I might actually die.)

This guy apparently cursed the king of France because the king of France decided to burn this guy alive for going against the church in one of his public statements. And I guess being burned at the stake is a pretty good excuse for cursing someone. Although, if I were going to curse someone, it probably wouldn't be with plague. There are probably way worse things. Like banishing all the turtles of the world. Or making sure no one could wear orange ever again. Those would be horrible things. And if I died by burning, I'd certainly want to punish the world just like this guy. "You have crisped me! I shall steal your happiness! May a million billion years pass by before the world sees another turtle grace its putrid land, and when the first turtle emerges from the dust of your deaths, may the remaining failures among you bow to it and worship it as a deity!" That would be my curse.

Way better than a stupid plague.

Man, I wish I could have actual powers to curse people. Except there are many flaws in this plan. Like, if I were to actually curse the world with no turtles and hope to still be alive, I would be pretty upset. Maybe I would amend the curse, so it would be that I would be the only one to have a turtle. Many turtles in fact. I could have a whole hoard of turtles, and they would be my magical friends who would embrace me and my life at every chance they got, and we would rule the world from a magical throne that I would make out of evil, only because I would use all my powers to rid the world of evil, and turtles for others, because they don't deserve turtles. So, um, this got kind of confusing. So sorry.

Anyway. If I spend as much time actually researching things as I do writing blog posts and doing other "important" things, I would probably actually be ahead of the game. But alas, I have no such self-control. I'm filled with the extreme desire to finish all 5 seasons of Fringe and catalog them. It's a struggle. Maybe I shouldn't have so much freedom. Maybe I should live in the library this semester. That would be easier to get things done. Plus, books about the Plague live in the library!

Ahh! Except maybe the books about the Plague actually have the Plague, and I probably shouldn't touch them but then how would I get my paper done and oh no I've invented an impossible to solve paradox maybe I should just get to write about children't literature that would be a good solution in which I would both be happy AND not have the Plague.

Please and thank you.