So I get home from drinking with the crew because today (well, yesterday at this hour) was our last day of filming, and I grab the computer so I can read while icing my foot.

The first thing I see when I look at my RSS feeds is this from the Onion: “Uninsured Man Hopes His Symptoms Diagnosed This Week On House.”

So hilarious on so, so, so many levels, the most bitterly ironic of which is that many of my friends who work on the show are about to be uninsured themselves.

Having had a bad cold and having blown through my remaining supply of Real (ie. pseudoephedrine-based) NyQuil, when I stopped by the drugstore to pick up another prescription tonight, I decided to pick up some more of the good stuff.

Two problems arose with this idea.

First, because pseudoephedrine is used in the manufacture of methamphetamine, anything containing it is now banished behind the counter, where you must scan your driver’s license in order to purchase it, allowing Big Brother to track your purchases and ensure you’re just sick and not manufacturing meth.

Because of this ridiculousness, most pharmacies just sell the “reformulated” (ie. completely useless) version over the counter, and keep a limited stock of Real NyQuil.

Secondly, because the cold I have has been going around for some time, said limited stock was depleted to the point where the only bottle left of the good stuff was the Green flavor.

Previously, I’ve always purchased the “Cherry” flavor, which tastes nothing whatsoever like cherries, but is at least bearable in its own foul, familiar manner.

Tonight was the first time I tried the Green flavor, which is only labeled “Original.” Now I understand why Laz refers to it as the GREEEEEEEEEEEEN flavor.

Because it doesn’t taste like anything else you’ve ever tasted. You taste it and you think, “UCH! That tastes….GREEEEEEEEN!”

You can hear and read that description all you want, but you cannot understand it until you take a sweet sip of the disgusting weirdness. Now, I understand.

And now, I must head for bed before I pass out facefirst on the keyboard.

Broadway stagehands: Followers when it comes to calling strikes (having called theirs about a week into the WGA strike), but let’s hope they’re leaders when it comes to settling them.

Now it’s down to the main body of the WGA and the CBS news writers.

It’s at least a somewhat hopeful portent, and for the week we finish filming and 95% of the remainder of the people I work with get laid off, I’m clinging to whatever hope I can.

You could have come anytime last week. You could have come on Thanksgiving, making dinner a bit awkward, but giving me three days of sitting at home on my ass to recover.

But when did you decide to come? Sunday night. Yes, Sunday night you started me on a downward slope of dozens of consecutive sneezes and disgustingly dripping nostrils.

I hoped, nay, I prayed that it was simply because it’s been getting a little chilly at night and I’ve got my heater turned way down to save money.

Then I woke up this morning, and because of you, I sounded like Elmer Fudd until almost noon. I walked around all day like my brain was made of Jell-o. I tried drowning you in orange juice last night and this morning, to no avail.

I had four days off in a row. And when do you come? When I have to work for five, when I do not have time for this bullshit.

You are a terrible, rude houseguest, Cold. And I hereby order you to get the fuck out, and take your friend Sinus Congestion with you.

Normally, I’d be moaning and complaining about having to go back to work after a blissfully lazy Thanksgiving break.

This year, I’m just thankful I still have a job that I’m not nearly ready to drag myself back to kicking and screaming.

Cross your fingers that progress is made tomorrow, my friends.

Made it through my web server’s spam filter, so I got it on my crackberry (although it did get caught by my mail program’s spam filter):

Vacuum Carrot Elephant Meteor Backpack

There’s something eloquent in the utter randomness.

My cousin Mark, who enjoys the Halo series very much, sent me the following video, which he said captured his feelings about Halo 3 very well.

I’m not a gamer much beyond Tetris and desperately trying to find a Wii (and then finding it at the one point I couldn’t afford it) for the last few months, but I thought this review by a Brit for an Aussie magazine was hysterical:

Now every time someone says the words “Easy Street” I’m going to picture a little sign below it that says “We’ve got hookers!”

On a separate but related note, I was listening to one of my BBC podcasts and I heard a member of Parliament (a Conservative who was chairing some committee related to finance) describe the missing data fiasco I wrote about the other day as “a major cock-up.”

It still sounded more dignified than anything anyone in Congress has said in some time.

If you thought the incidents where various American companies lost laptops with 300,000 or 400,000 people’s financial information were bad, then be very thankful you don’t live in Britain.

You and your “system upgrades” that leave my interwebs running at the speed of cold molasses (ie, 400kb/s). Seriously, if I wanted speeds this slow, I’d save myself $25 a month and get DSL.

I’d better be able to view four thousand pictures of cats with goofy captions nigh instantaneously when this “upgrade” is finished.

From last night’s Office vs. Set Bowl Off: Where Strikes Are A Good Thing.

- Bowling is really hard if you’ve injured the foot you have to plant.

- If you have injured that foot, bowling becomes a lot easier if you just muscle the ball from off your good foot, even though it may fuck with your shoulder a bit.

- Teamsters are excellent bowlers.

- Watching rarely-drinking friends getting wasted off of one drink is even more fun when bowling is involved than at a normal party.

- Watching your co-workers jump up and down like five year olds whenever they get a strike is hilarious.

We’re totally challenging another show as soon as the writers’ strike is over.