Having spent that past week or so more or less incapacitated, I’ve been able to make room in my life for some of the more idle pleasures such as reading, complaining, and bed-sore development.

One of the books I’ve been reading is called The Memory Bible. It’s not religious even though it sounds like it might be. Rather, it’s a book that’s all about how to keep yourself from forgetting things, and how to keep yourself from developing dementia or that other memory disease, the name of which I can’t remember right now.

If you’ve ever asked yourself questions like, “What common household items have I inserted into my anus since this morning?” and not been able to answer them that afternoon, then this book is totally for you. We all experience a certain amount of age-related memory deterioration as we, well, age, and doing everything you can to prevent it is, like, good.

One of the sections of the book is all about foods and other things you can put in your body (not common household items) that can boost your memory, help repair your memory, and prevent further damage to your memory.

Normally, I’m quite a skeptic, but I was so enthused about the possibility of keeping my memory from spiraling downward at a high rate of speed that I went out and picked up a jar of fish oil pills. Something in fish oil is supposed to make me remember stuff more good, but I forgot what. It’s, like, vitamins or something. It’s weird, too, because fish are soooo stupid. You’d think that they’d be really smart with all that fish oil if fish oil were good for you, but they aren’t.

It’s an interesting concept: Fish oil pills. I have this image in my head of a gigantic fish-squeezing machine with a huge funnel below, catching squeezed fish parts and their associated oils. Then, through some complicated process that’s light-years beyond my own personal engineering abilities, all the red stuff and eye-juice is somehow removed from the mess, and the remaining clear stuff, the fish oil essence, is crammed into these pill things. To a simpleton like me, that’s, like, magic.

Anyway, I’ve been taking these fish oil pills, and I feel way, way, waaaaaaaay smarter now. The only problem is that, for about two hours after taking them, I have these fish oil burps that are really disgusting, and sometimes I actually barf up a little bit of the fish oil in my throat.

The taste is horrendous. I won’t attempt to describe it for there are no words in the English language, or any language, suitable to the task. Just try to imagine all the evils of Hell unleashed at once upon your angelic little taste buds. It’s really gross.

What’s interesting is that this isn’t a new flavor for me. I had nearly forgotten it, but its shadow has obviously been lurking in the late-night alleyways of my gray matter, for it only took a couple burps and throat-barfs before wave upon foul wave of childhood memories washed up on the shore of my consciousness like medical detritus slamming onto the shores of polluted New York beaches.

What I recalled was from some of my earliest days on this planet – memories of activities that were damaging not only to my tongue, but to my soul.

I don’t know if any of you have, or had, a mother who got you to do things when you were a kid by faking her own heart attack, but, I assure you, mes amis, the experience is not a pleasant one, which is precisely why I am going to unload it on you in the hopes that I can exorcise it from my inner spiritual bosom, never to be emotionally torn again by its razor talons, clawing up my interiors like the paper-shredder of my mind…