Despite my flu shot, I've gotten the flu anyway. The irony is not lost on me, but it's a complex vintage, and one not easily achieved or savored. For example, part of me wants to feel I have finally gotten my money's worth in a modern-day transaction.
So much for theory, where the shot is supposed to give you the flu -- sort of -- in order to build up some immunity to the flu. Well, sure. Got it.
But, I'm feeling on the wrong end of an old punchline, where this guy in a joke walks in to a drug store and asks, "Have you got anything for a headache?" and the pharmacist whacks him on the head with an SUV-sized wooden mallet.
Only, in my version of the joke, which is set in current-day America, and involves many players, major political parties will collide, generations of wealth will be shed, and the powerful will melt down their long-standing base over the intricacies of the details which fascinate them: Who built and provided the mallet? Who were the suppliers and contractors? What form of manufacture and transportation was used? What were the raw materials? Was anyone consulted along the way? Who did the paperwork? Who was employed, and where? And, of utmost importance, of course, where there any emails involved?
On Monday, August 6, 1945, after six months of intense firebombing of 67 other Japanese cities,...
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