How to Talk to Your Cat About COVID-19

Vlog

This post is available as a vlog. Watch on your phone, tablet, or laptop, or plug your device into the TV or (ideally) a Jumbotron.

Introduction

First it was climate change. Then it was gun violence. Now it’s an honest-to-God pandemic that has wormed its way into our communities and our psyches— leaving us stuttering, babbling, and mumbling, yet again, trying for the right words to explain this terrible thing to our cats.

Whether you consider yourself a “pet owner,” a “human guardian,” or a “cat custodian,” you may feel unsure of how much to say about COVID-19 to your furry, feckless friend. This post gives you guidance all the way through the process.

Remain calm

Though cats often seem to ignore humans entirely, they are actually quite sensitive and perceptive. They can detect our anxiety, and this affects them more than you might realize. For example, if you suddenly shout, “I CAN’T TAKE ANOTHER MINUTE IN THIS COFFIN-LIKE BAY AREA DOLLHOUSE!” you shouldn’t be surprised if little Snowflake runs under the couch to hide.

It’s also important not to let your mood become your kitty’s problem. As annoying as it is to see your darling (but shedding) little friend napping  for six hours straight on your cream-colored sofa, it’s never appropriate to yell, “How can you lounge around like this when the WHOLE WORLD IS MELTING THE FUCK DOWN?!”

Here’s an analogy. Say you’re on an airplane and, after severe turbulence, it pitches nose-down and begins falling to earth. The last thing you’d want in this situation is for your flight attendant to forget your ginger ale. Your cat is the same way. She doesn’t care how anxious you may feel about complete respiratory failure. She wants her dinner. On time. Actually, right now.

Be patient

These are difficult times for all of us, even pets. Well, most pets. Goldfish are probably oblivious, frankly. But your cat surely realizes something is up, and may act out in frustrating ways. She might sharpen her claws on your beautiful cream-colored sofa. Or maybe she is suddenly missing the litter box by six feet or more. Or she’s walking on your face at 4:00 a.m., or shooting heroin. Yes, it may be she has always done these things, but her behavior might also be a cry for help. What are you to do?

First of all, forgive her. That cream-colored sofa probably wasn’t the wisest choice to begin with, and it’s not like your children haven’t spilled tea on it anyway. Drape a colorful tapestry over the back, and your guests will think you were just going for a splash of color. And when Fluffy disrupts your hard-won sleep—waking you up fifteen minutes after you spent three hours tossing and turning and trying not to think—well, you just have to chuckle and grind your teeth some more. It’s not appropriate to berate your pet in these situations. She won’t understand.

Second, try to alleviate her anxiety. Remind her that cats can’t get COVID-19, so far as we know, and that the worst thing that could happen to her is that her entire family could die and nobody would be around to feed her. Point out that eventually somebody would come around and bust the door in, and until then, she can feast on the corpses.

Share with your cat how you deal with your own stress so that he can learn from you how to cope. You might ground yourself by connecting more with family members. Maybe you take advantage of the “new, shitty normal” by wearing pajamas 24x7. Perhaps you split two bottles of wine with your husband, even if he only has a glass or two. Or you might stare at a TV or laptop screen continuously while twirling your hair or chewing your nails and occasionally sharing the latest bad news with anyone in earshot. You may even hurl profanities at the answering machine when a Robocaller leaves a seemingly endless message. All these behaviors are signs of an impending mental breakdown, and they’re perfectly normal. Your cat will watch, and wait, and wonder when it’s mealtime.

Sometimes we count on our cats to help us feel better. Isn’t this what pets are for, after all? After a stressful workday, when your employer is in the throes of a downturn, and your stressed-out boss takes it out on you, it could be that closing the lid on your laptop and taking to the La-Z-Boy armchair with a magazine and your furry friend is the perfect way to unwind—if only Stripe would actually stay put, tuck in his paws, and purr. You know, do his fucking job. But instead he forsakes you and bails from your lap. Don’t be mad! Your cat is social-distancing!

Be honest and forthright

Provide information that is honest and tailored to your cat’s age and developmental level. While cats are quite smart, they probably won’t understand the finer points of lengthy editorials, like “How is this a novel coronavirus? It’s getting so fucking old already!” You need to keep the message simple, but don’t sugarcoat it by pretending COVID-19 isn’t a big deal. Just about any cat, and even some Republicans, naturally recognize that this virus is real and that it could infect any of us.

It’s useful to find out what your cat already knows. It’s okay to ask. You might inquire, “What are you hearing? Did you ever eat a bat? Does my skin feel oddly warm to you? Did it seem like mama had an awfully dry cough last night? Who are you working for?” Granted, you may not get many answers. Your cat may just stare at you. But if she does that thing where she closes her eyes very slowly, seeming to regard you contemptuously through slitted eyelids, she knows something. You can tell.

You can be reassuring and candid at the same time. There really are lots of reasons to be hopeful. For example, when the current trend—denial—gives way to the next one—abject panic—people will finally start wearing masks and staying away from each other. And one day there will be a vaccine, so we can turn our rage away from this invisible virus and turn it on the medical industry bureaucrats who can’t or won’t deliver the vaccine at scale. You know … the devil we know.

Help your cat feel “in control”

Give your cat specific things she can do to feel “in control.” Getting lots of sleep and washing are both great ways to stay healthy, and your cat is already doing them! Praise your cat whenever you see these behaviors. “Oh, you’re such a fooly-foo!” you might tell him. “Who’s a little fur-face? Who’s a little fluffernutter? What a galoo-foo!” All of this will reinforce your cat’s good behavior.

Speaking of behavior, actions speak louder than words. So telling your cat how to stay safe, or even encouraging him verbally when he assiduously scrubs his butthole with his tongue, is well and good, but sometimes it’s even better to just go over and bury your face in his fur and make murmuring sounds. Just don’t let him lick you.

Another way to empower your cat and give her a sense of control is to actually relent and feed her at 3 a.m. when she walks on your face, instead of banishing her to the garage. And when she walks across your desk, knocking your coffee over on your keyboard causing you to forget yourself and cuss up a blue streak during a videoconference with your boss, just let her. In times like these, your family needs to come before your career.

Be sensitive

It’s natural to forget your cat altogether when you’re focused on trying to figure out how you could possibly survive this pandemic when your teenagers wear their masks around their necks and seem congenitally incapable of washing their hands, and when their version of “six feet away” doesn’t preclude actual physical contact. In the context of your darling children suddenly being recast as oblivious, unstoppable killing machines, a pet can seem pretty insignificant. But cats are people too, and need to be reassured during these dangerous times, even if they seem like asocial predators with no ambition other than to kill, eat, and sleep.

In light of this, keep an eye out for “reassurance seeking.” This may look like a cat saying the same thing, such as “meow,” over and over again while staring up at you or threading his way around your feet, practically tripping you, as you carry a giant platter of food. This ceaseless repetition of “meow, meow, meow, meow, meow” ad infinitum might actually annoy you, but remember, little Whiskers could be suffering severe anxiety. If this continues or is pronounced, you might consider asking your cat’s veterinarian about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, otherwise known as CBT (not to be confused with CBD—a mistake many humans make to their own great detriment).

You should also watch for signs of declining mental health. If your cat sleeps more than 18 hours a day, she might be depressed (though this can also be a symptom of being a cat). Or, if she’s listless, refusing to play with her cat toys, a ball of yarn, or even a roll of toilet paper, she might be having some kind of emotional crisis (though it may be a sign that she’s no longer a kitten).

Take care of yourself!

It’s hard to model calm behavior and “be there” for your cat if you let yourself fall apart. Ironically, one way around this is to invert the natural order and look to your cat as a role model. Does she get enough sleep? Check. Does she know when to turn off the news and put away the smartphone? Clearly. Does she practice mindfulness? Probably—it’s not clear what else could be happening inside that tiny skull. And does she do yoga? Well, yeah! Hell, cats practically invented yoga!

But don’t take it too far … remember, you’re not a cat. You may have your own way of coping. You might distract yourself with books or videos. You might stockpile toilet paper. Maybe you gorge yourself on animal flesh while you still can, while the stockyards and meatpacking plants are still operational. Maybe you binge shop online for clothes that probably won’t fit and that you may never have the opportunity to wear. Or you might relax your body and mind with a miracle elixir like Drake’s Denogginizer Double IPA. All of these are perfectly valid ways of coping, so long as you remember to also clean out the litter box from time to time.

More reading on the pandemic

• Shelter-in-Place FAQ
• E-Book Options During COVID-19 Lockdown
• Is Cycling Safe During the COVID-19 Pandemic?
• The Toilet Paper Hoarding Conundrum
• More COVID Chronicles – Baking in Place
• When Will the Pandemic End?
• What Are Hospitals Like During the Pandemic?
• Teleworking During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Why Don’t The Dutch Wear COVID Masks?
• Travel Tips During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• COVID Wristbands

Other reading on cats

• Adopting a Kitten in the Modern Era
• Ode to Cat

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From the Archives - Dead Week Poetry

Introduction

Man, college was a long time ago … 25 years. But I still remember it so well, especially the really hard parts, like final exams. I used to do these mammoth study sessions in the school library, which was always packed during dead week. Fittingly, I’m putting together this blog post in a public library, which is also hopping.

I wrote the following poem during a study break. It wasn’t much of a break because a) I couldn’t leave the library for fear of losing my seat, and b) the poem itself required mental effort. But writing it did treat my brain to a little novelty. Maybe yours, too!

Pausing in the Library on a Busy Evening – December 10, 1991

What’s on the test I think I know.
I have to plan three essays, though;                          2
My work’s completion’s not yet near
Though I began ten hours ago.

Those watching me must think it queer
That all this time I’m sitting here.                             6
My slouch and frown together make
A nervous bundle, wracked with fear.

With UPTime keeping me awake
My hand, while writing, can’t but shake.               10
My thoughts comprise a jumbled heap
Of doubts about the test I’ll take.

I’m not an antisocial geek,
But I’ve good grades I have to keep,                         14
And pages to write before I sleep
And pages to write before I sleep.    

Footnotes & commentary

Title: Pausing … Busy Evening

I doubt there’s an English major in history who wouldn’t immediately recognize my poem as a take-off on Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” I really don’t know what inspired me to suddenly stop studying and do this quasi-tribute.

Interestingly, as I look now on the history of Frost’s poem I see that his effort and mine were somewhat similar. I’d been working all day and into the night preparing for my final exams in English and, during a break, suddenly had a poem idea pop into my head. So it was with Frost, who was working all night on a long poem and, taking a break to watch the sun rise, suddenly got the idea for “Stopping by Woods.” He wrote the new poem “about the snowy evening and the little horse as if I’d had a hallucination,” in “just a few minutes without strain.”  I wouldn’t say there was anything hallucinatory about my poem, though after 15 hours straight of studying that’s not so far off. And I wrote my poem very quickly too, and if there was any strain it at all it came from replicating Frost’s cool rhyme scheme (more on this later).

Line 1: I think I know

My professors tended to give us pretty good clues into the kinds of things that would be on the final exam, but not enough to give me a lot of confidence. We read a ton of books for each class—at least half a dozen—and it was a good idea to read book each more than once. The second time through, a million things would become clearer because less of my brain would be taken up trying to keep characters straight, order events in the right sequence, and figure out what the hell was going on in. But there just wasn’t time to read everything twice, so I had to try to guess what books mattered the most to the prof and would end up on the exam.

My test prep was all about focusing my efforts on what seemed likely to pay off. I’d try to predict what would be on the test, and prepare rigorously for that. Often I’d go into a test totally unprepared to write about certain books, taking a calculated risk that the extra time I spent on certain other books would pay dividends. As it turned out, I was only burned once by this method. Perhaps my real skill as a college student wasn’t in literary comprehension, but in risk assessment. Here’s a sample (from my notes) of that process (evidently based upon a hint from the prof that he’d be asking us to compare two novels):

Line 4: ten hours ago

I don’t think this “ten hours” figure is accurate. If you look at the first picture in this post, you can see an arrow with “15 hrs” indicated. (I often tracked how long I spent studying, though I really can’t say why. Probably just out of habit, like my cycling training diary.) Maybe the 15 hours included some studying I did at home. Or maybe I didn’t feel like reworking this line of the poem to accommodate a two-syllable word (i.e., “fifteen”).

Line 5: those watching me

This was lazy writing. I mean, who could possibly be watching me study? The speaker in Frost’s poem had a horse handy to second-guess his behavior, but I did not. I should have pondered the matter of whether I myself thought it queer to study so long. (It strikes me as queer now, that’s for sure … my attention span has surely shrunk.)

Line 7: slouch and frown

This phrase, “slouch and frown,” is really pretty weak. The slouch is okay but I should have focused on how tight my neck was, how hunched my back, and how tense my entire body was. That would have led in to the next line much more nicely.

Line 8: nervous bundle

I liked this phrase “nervous bundle” right away, as it conveys the idea of being “bundle of nerves” and also the idea of my spine and how all the nerves join in this big bundle or something, and how aware you get of all that when you’re so tired and stressed out that even your spine starts complaining (see previous comment).

Line 8: wracked with fear

I wasn’t the only kid scared shitless about his upcoming finals. The student library was a cesspool of stress during dead week. You could just feel the fear hanging in the air. The atmosphere was suffocating, which is perhaps why, whenever I could, I studied in in the very spacious Doe Library. Doe was one of those almost unbelievably beautiful university buildings. Here’s a photo:

Frankly, that gorgeous room, with its thick oak desks and high ceiling, inspired me to study longer and harder, and the relatively small number of students it accommodated had a calming effect. It was definitely in Doe that I wrote this poem—I can remember it vividly, even down to exactly where I was sitting. I’m not sure how I managed to score a seat in Doe during Dead Week.  

I wasn’t always this lucky, of course. Another time during Dead Week I got stuck having to study in the Moffitt Undergraduate Library, which had low ceilings, tiny study carrels, and a lower proportion of liberal arts majors. (Other majors involved more stress, I think.) Here’s an excerpt from my notes from a study session at Moffitt:

I wish I could blow this place up. This is sheer misery. All these fervent, steaming, stressed-out people, their legs popping up and down like a jackhammer, the wads of gum stuck to this study box now bubbling and dribbling down towards the desk (which is swimming in a flood of grease from pimply foreheads and chins). Somebody has thrown a textbook into a 2nd-floor toilet, where it disrupted a long-abandoned, un-flushed load—turning it to cocoa. This I see in a gruesome flashback, instigated by my still unrelieved bowel.

Line 9: with UPTime keeping me awake

UPTime was, and is, a big horse-pill containing caffeine, gingko biloba, ginseng, cayenne pepper, Spirulina Blue Green Algae, Echinacea, and other stuff.

Whether or not UPTime worked better than NoDoz, it had the advantage of being free, for me. UPTime sponsored the UCSB cycling team with loads of free product, and even after I transferred to UC Berkeley I still had a bunch left. Plus, I worked at a bike shop and I got the manufacturer to send us a whole bunch of free product samples, which carried me through all the way to graduation. If anything, UPTime worked too well: I could stay awake for ages and ages but wasn’t exactly comfortable.

Line 10: can’t but shake

Case in point.

Line 11: comprise

My first boss, at my first corporate job after college, was also a Berkeley grad and really dug that we had the same alma mater. On the downside, he was self-assured to a fault, and once upbraided me for using the word “comprise” in the way I used it in this poem (i.e., as a transitive verb). He declared that it could only be used passively, in the phrase “is comprised of.” He was dead wrong, of course, but he also controlled my salary so I instantly capitulated and used “is comprised of” in all my job-related writing. To this day, using “comprise” as a transitive verb gives me a little rush of liberation. (“You cannot reach me now!”)

Line 13: antisocial geek

Another poor line born of laziness. Everybody is an antisocial geek during Dead Week, except maybe at party schools. Did I really think anybody noticed that I had isolated myself from all society in order to study? Certainly not, no more than I really believed anybody was watching me study (cf. line 5). Probably I just wanted a throwaway line that (more or less) rhymed with “keep” and “sleep.”

Speaking of the rhyme scheme, Frost created something pretty clever there. At first blush it’s not so special: the first two lines rhyme, the third doesn’t, and then the fourth line rhymes again (i.e., with the first two). So the rhyme scheme is AABA. So what? Well, check out the fifth line (i.e., the first line of the second stanza). It rhymes with the third line (of the first stanza), which previously hadn’t rhymed with anything. This convention holds for most of the poem, so the first three stanzas go AABA BBCB CCDC. Perhaps because Frost didn’t’ want to leave any line unrhymed, he didn’t follow the convention for the last stanza (i.e., didn’t do DDED) but rather had every line in the final stanza rhyme: DDDD. So it’s a 16-line poem with only 4 different line endings. Cool, huh?

I’m tempted to pat myself on the back for appreciating this nifty rhyme scheme even without having Frost’s poem in front of me when I wrote my poem. (This was before the Internet, after all). But since I mimicked not only Frost’s convention but the actual rhymes (that is, I did AABA BBCB CCDC DDDD as opposed to EEFE FFGF GGHG IIII), it’s possible I wasn’t actually aware of what I was doing.

Line 14: good grades I have to keep

It’s easy to see why a high school student would be obsessed with getting good grades: after all, as explained here, the conventional wisdom is that if you don’t get perfect grades, you’ll never get into a good college, and you’ll never get a good job or a good spouse and you’ll live in miserable, lonely poverty your whole life. But why would a college kid, already enrolled in the school he wanted, be wracked with fear about maintaining good grades?

Perhaps at this point in my education I hadn’t yet ruled out grad school … though I’m pretty sure I never seriously considered that. Maybe I figured potential employers would actually care about my grades. But more than anything, I wanted to graduate summa cum laude (i.e., with highest honors). I’ll concede this was perhaps an arbitrary goal, and maybe I sought it simply to offset the lack of respect I so frequently suffered due to my major (e.g., “English? What are you gonna do with that?”). In any event, I’m not so sure my effort was worth it. When I was interviewing for that all-important first job out of college, only one person commented on my college record. This was an engineer who asked, “So … summa cum laude … is that a fraternity?”

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Fiction - Rejection Affects Health

NOTE: This post, though referencing an actual psychology study, is a work of fiction. I use the actual study as a jumping-off point for something entirely fanciful.

Preamble

“Rejection triggers responses in the body that can increase a person’s risk for maladies such as asthma, arthritis, cardiovascular disease, and depression, a new study says. Scientists at UCLA recruited 124 healthy young adults to participate in a lab-based test aimed at determining whether social stress such as rejection causes inflammation, which can have detrimental effects on mental and physical health. Participants were put through stressful tests that were designed to make them feel rejected. Measurements of inflammatory markers were performed on samples of oral fluids taken before and after the tests…. Not surprisingly, the inflammatory biological markers in oral fluids increased dramatically after the stressful tests.”

—“Rejection Affects Health,” WebMD Health Newsletter, 10 Aug 2010

Introduction

Our recent study was a big success. One of the conclusions we arrived at is that further study is warranted, with a widened scope. In our initial study we had recruited healthy young adults; what more light could be shed, we wondered, if we studied all ages?

Our first follow-up study was with seniors. The results are not documented because the sessions did not go smoothly. Several of the participants could not hear—and others could not understand—most of what our test administrators were saying. Moreover, several of the male participants had poorly shaved chins, with little white hairs like Shredded Wheat stuck to their skin, and other subjects drooled, which distracted the administrators.

Much better success was found with other age categories, and those results are documented here.

Test #1 — Six-year-old test subject

Several six-year-old study administrators were recruited and trained in how to make the study subject feel rejected. These administrators very quickly caught on to the study methodology and did an excellent job carrying out the test.

On a school playground, a test subject was selected: an especially cute six-year-old girl who we felt would be unaccustomed to rejection. She was not made aware that she was participating in a test. The administrators, who were also her classmates, set about teasing her mercilessly. The first said, “I’m not friends with you anymore!” The second joined in, “Yeah, you’re like a baby, always carrying your ‘Roo Bear’ around!” The third administrator yelled, “We hate Roo Bear—he smells like dog farts!” Then they all laughed.

The impact on the subject was immediate. Subject bawled loudly for some time. We had trouble getting a good oral fluid sample with our swab, as subject thrashed around and her saliva was diluted by nasal mucous, which was flowing freely from both nostrils, and by tears streaming down into her mouth. Subject would not stop yelling. It took us a long time to figure out what she was trying to say: “It’s not ‘Roo Bear,’ it’s ‘Woo Bear,’ and she’s a girl bear!”

Not surprisingly, and despite the trouble with the oral fluid sample, this social trauma resulted in significant increases in markers of inflammatory activity, with abnormally high levels of tumor necrosis factor-α (sTNFαRII) and interleukin-6 (IL-6). We recommend further testing with this age group, though it has become obvious that it would be wise, going forward, to notify the subject’s parents in advance.

Test #2 — Fifteen-year-old test subject

Subject was a fifteen-year-old bike racer. Administrator was a fellow racer, who was given specific instructions in carrying out the test. Following a difficult hill climb bike race, a group of racers was comparing results and talking about the race. Subject, who did not finish in the top twenty, looked ideally awkward from the outset. Administrator said to the group at large, “Hey, I don’t need this energy bar … does anybody want it?” Others had been instructed to say nothing, and eventually subject replied, “Yeaahh!” Administrator stared at him in disgust and did not hand him the energy bar, behaving as though subject were uniquely exempt from the energy bar offer due to some obvious defect.

While this test initially looked promising, the professor made us feel like idiots by refusing to analyze the oral fluid sample. Apparently the test setup was rendered invalid by the elevated inflammation markers that would inevitably accompany athletic challenges like bike races, and we should have known this. We have thought about trying again with this age group but are feeling a bit demoralized.

Test #3 — Twenty-year-old test subject

A pretty brunette college student was recruited as administrator and instructed to be conspicuously friendly toward a prospective subject in her foreign language class. After some delay, subject eventually asked her out on a date. From the outset of the date (a casual lunch at a café), per our instructions, administrator was oddly cold, refusing to smile or engage subject in conversation. Eventually subject asked her to explain herself, to which she responded, “I talked to my old high-school boyfriend for a long time on the phone last night—he’s at BYU—and we’ve decided to get back together.”

To our great surprise, the oral fluid sample showed no significant increase in either sTNFαRII or IL-6. We interviewed the subject later; here is the most salient excerpt from his statement:

“She was straight-up fly, so I made sure not to get my hopes up. Sure, I was disappointed, but mostly I was trying not to laugh. I was tempted to say, ‘BYU? In Utah? The epicenter of American polygamy?’ or, ‘Seriously, your high school beau? There’s food in your dorm fridge that’ll last longer than your “relationship”! With four years of young women being dangled in front of him, you really think he’s going to wait for you? ’ But I didn’t say anything.

“Anyhow, it’s no biggie. My roommate and I like to compare notes about girls rejecting us. It’s like a running joke. We even have an expression for it—‘me dio calabazas’, which means ‘she gave me pumpkins.’ We love recalling these rejections … it’s almost like keeping a scrapbook.”

Test #4 — Forty-something test subject

It occurred to us that our study should include subjects having the classic risk factors of mid-life crisis. Those in their forties, burdened with mortgages and living in fear of losing their corporate jobs, were deemed ideal. We selected our subject on the basis of his age (forty-one), life commitments (family, Bay Area mortgage), and the fact of his maintaining a non-commercial blog (apparently as a hobby). We recruited a woman of the same age to serve as the administrator, accosting subject at a barbecue. Administrator’s friend began the dialog by asking subject’s wife if she blogged; she took the bait, replying, “No, but my husband does.” Administrator promptly asked subject, acidly, with evident bewilderment and even revulsion, “Why do you blog?”

Subject was speechless for at least ten seconds, before stammering, “It’s because I’m stupid and I don’t have any friends, why do you think?” We immediately swabbed him and found unprecedented high levels of both sTNFαRII and IL-6. A quick scan of our records showed this was in fact the strongest data set of rejection-inflicted inflammation on record. Subject agreed to a brief discussion about his experience. Why, we asked him, was his reaction so strong?

“Well, first of all,” he replied, “she asked the question with such disgust, as if she were asking, ‘Why would you sniff a cat’s butt?’ I mean, ‘Why blog?’ Why do anything? Why do a crossword puzzle? Why knit? It’s like she couldn’t imagine that a person would write just to express himself, maybe improve his writing, and post his stuff to a blog in case somebody might want to read it. Her question seemed like either a rejection of the idea that I could ever offer anything of value to the literary world, or a rejection of the very existence of literary world, like the world has forgotten that there are modes of written expression that go deeper than Twitter or Facebook.”

We asked if that was all. (Subject became even more agitated and we even considered re-swabbing him.) “Isn’t that enough?” he said. Finally, after some reflection, he said, “I guess I’ll admit that, since nobody questioned the idea of my wife blogging, this woman’s incredulity was like a rejection of my masculinity. Like, why would a guy blog, you know?”

Further study is clearly warranted.

Test #5 — Forty-something test subject #2

Based on the success of the last administrator/subject pairing, we again selected a forty-something woman as the administrator and a forty-something white collar husband/father amateur blogger as the subject. This time, the venue was a high school reunion, which we felt would be a perfect setting. (We deny the assertion that this test was an attempt at getting the “high score on inflammatory activity markers”; we are simply trying to isolate acute cases for further study.) Administrator was a friend of the subject’s wife. Subject, again, was unaware that a test was being performed on him.

Administrator, behaving in a friendly manner, casually asked subject if he was on Facebook. He said he was not. She asked if he Tweeted. Again, he replied no. She asked if he did anything social online at all, and he said he had a blog. “A blog?” she said, with unmasked repugnance. “Why do you blog?”

Subject, to our surprise, was placid, even sanguine. “You mean you really don’t know why bloggers blog?” he replied. “I thought everybody knew that. It’s so that they can make fun of people to a wide audience. For example, by tomorrow everybody on the Internet will know that you went around this reunion with your bleach-blonde hair and boob job thinking you were all hot, when really you looked ridiculous because your teeth were stained purple by red wine.”

Thinking quickly, we swabbed the administrator and found sTNFαRII and IL-6 levels that were completely off the charts. Clearly, further study is warranted.

dana albert blog