THE COMMON COLD
May 25, 2010
There is no such thing as the common cold. Like God and love (and all of human society for that matter) we made it up.
Yes, the common cold is also a human invention.
You say you have a cold.
I reply, "What the hell are you talking about?"
You describe your symptoms. You say you have a runny nose, that you have a fever, a cough and so on.
I say (with my usual rudeness), "So the fuck what? What does that have to do with having a cold?"
You look at me surprised (if not totally baffled), and say something like, "Excuse me?"
Then I really attack.
"Dude, you've only told me how you feel, what's going on inside your body and head. You haven't proven to me that you have a cold, whatever the fuck that is."
This prompts you to go into attack mode yourself.
"That's what the fuck a cold is, asshole. Jesus Christ, man, what the fuck planet are you from?"
"What the fuck planet am I from? I got a better question. Who the fuck have you been listening to?"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Don't you realize that the word cold is just a word that we appropriated to describe—I should say conveniently describe—what is happening to us whenever we experience the symptoms that you are currently experiencing?
But when it comes to what we (also conveniently) call diseases we should completely dispense with our predilection for convenient speech, our sheer laziness, and take the time to precisely describe what is happening.
Fuck convenient speech.
Fuck names for diseases, which is just more convenient speech. Fuck all that.
Just tell me what's happening to you. Tell me you've got a runny nose. That's the truth. Don't go flying off on some bullshit tangent and call your runny nose a cold. Fuck colds. A runny nose is real, something concrete and observable. But who the fuck has ever seen a cold? I repeat. It's just a term of convenient speech.
There really is such a thing as a runny nose, and a cough, and a fever and so on. There is no such thing as a fucking cold."