I have no taste

I've had no sense of taste since about Odin's Day or Thor's Day of last week. You could stuff a rotten pig uterus into my mouth and I'd chew it down with no problem.

Same goes for smell. I can't smell a thing. It's sad: I miss the scent of my farts. They were a unique olfactory experience-- a cross between septic waste and Muhammad Ali's incoming fist.

I also delighted in the sickly sweet odor of my feet. Pulling them out of shoes made slimy and noisome after a twelve-hour day spent in classrooms and offices, I used to love sitting back in my room as the miasma overwhelmed me, bringing on a light buzz and pleasant visions of eyeless, fanged swamp creatures with lambent claws.

But no more.

No stink can penetrate the mucus plug that now deprives me of my cherished qualia. Perched Jabba-like atop my nerve endings, every possible entryway to my brain blocked, the mucus knows that it rules. And it's not leaving without a fight.

The fight began today. I visited our school's clinic, fully expecting to meet the troll-like woman who'd taken care of my neck before. She wasn't in today, as it turned out, but I got a prescription from the front desk ladies, who again complimented my Korean and charged me only W800 (about 80 cents, US) for several packets of pills and a small bottle of cola-colored cough medicine.

Alas: the mucus hasn't budged, despite two doses of the mystery pills and two swigs of cough syrup. For those who don't know: the Korean pharmacies went under government regulation a few years ago (I don't know exactly when, but it was between 1996 and 2002, during my absence), and all the good medicines-- i.e., the extremely potent, vaguely illegal substances made from wacky plants-- were pulled from the shelves and replaced by... Comtrex. Bayer Aspirin. Tylenol.

The pussification of Korean medicine has made me a very unhappy camper: I remember a mid-90s concoction that knocked one of my ailments flat on its ass. It slunk away, muttering, never to return.

Those were the days. But now... the sun no longer shines in my world, which lies buried under a thick layer of snot and phlegm. Alas for the disappearance of good medicine. This era, sadly, now belongs to the mucus.

I'm supposed to return to the clinic on Wednesday. The troll will be expecting me. If she and her witchcraft prove insufficient, then I'll be off to a real doctor-- the kind who takes one look at your clogged nose, whips out a massive power drill, kicks you in the chest to stun you, then screams, "It's GO TIME!" as he jams that drill bit into your nostril and deep inside your brain.


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