Food poisoning sucks. Seriously. It’s so unnecessary. It seriously seriously sucks to have it. I can’t recommend it at all. I would recommend that you don’t get it, actually.

However, it’s probably going to happen. I can remember a time, back in the old days, when I was a young gallivanting explorer, naive in the ways of food preparation, when I was visiting Luxor, Egypt. The restaurant we were supposed to eat lunch at was closed for no reason at all, which was quite common in those days.

Luckily our tour guide “knew a guy.”

I was hungry. So I had several helpings of the rapidly prepared rabid raccoon lung skewers. (Once you pull the fur off, it’s not so bad.) It was something I would come to regret. Everyone got sick, but none more than myself. I was sick for days. Doctors gave me pills and shots and IV fluids; I hallucinated and tossed and turned and had a 24 hour a day Pink Floyd concert running through my head.

Then I recovered. Since then I’ve been more cautious. I’ve also got a much stronger constitution for eating dumb shit. More often than not, when others around me grow pale, grab their belly, and run off into the darkness screaming, I shrug carelessly, and keep eating.

One time, in Cabo San Lucas, back in the old days before all the Gringos arrived, I was walking on the beach, desperately thirsty. And there, right on the beach, for seemingly no reason at all, was a water faucet jutting out of the sand. I shrugged, walked up, ignored all the people shouting at me in alarm, and filled my belly with the hot water that came out.

I was fine. No worries. Rabid Raccoon Lung skewers had made me invincible!

Or so I thought. Then, a couple of days ago, I made a huge mistake. A terrible arrogant miscalculation. I assumed ordering a breakfast taco in San Francisco would be okay. I was in the first world – filled with hipsters, sure, but first world nevertheless – after all: surely I could deal with a taco.

Well, no.

There’s a scene in Live and Let Die, near the end, when Roger Moore shoots Yaphet Kotto with a bullet that inflates him like a balloon. He floats up in the air, hits the ceiling, explodes, falls into some water, and gets eaten by sharks.

I bloated up for sure. The rest is not pretty and we will not get into it. I’m barely thankful I didn’t explode and get eaten by sharks.

All I can say is, keep your guard up!

Food Poisoning: The Breakdown

Pros: Weight loss!

Hallucinations!

Fever-induced thinking!

New-found respect for the body’s’ evacuation response!

Cons:

Nausea

Diarrhea

Dizziness

Dehydration

Cramping

Muscle aches and pains

Bone pain

Hair pain

Left elbow pain

Right elbow pain

Fatigue

Self Pity

Apathy

Homicidal thoughts towards household pets

Pepto Bismol Dependency

Spinal Pain

Muddled thinking

Inability to lift a remote control

Toilet bowl co-dependency

Talking out loud to your own stomach

Making lists in your head of all the things you never want to eat again

Aversion to sunlight and bright colors

Headaches

Vertigo

Inexplicable Martin Short hatred

No sense of time

Ginger Ale Dependency

Bad breath