More updates and a story.

Still not better but getting there. I talked to my doctor today, and he thinks I must have had some kind of virus (my culture came back negative for bacteria and parasites, and there wasn't any blood, so it probably wasn't something more serious). I thought viral gastroenteritis only lasted a couple of days but apparently it can last as long as ten. Whatever I had, it was a particularly nasty strain and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. The worst seems to be over now, at least. I'm having some, uh, rebound issues, but hopefully that will clear up soon and I'll be back to normal.

In other news, I've been watching a lot of old television shows while I've been sick. I've been working my way through Taxi, and last night I watched an episode that I remember very vividly from my childhood. It was the episode where Elaine catches Louie peeping at her in the bathroom while she's changing clothes. To avoid a lawsuit, the boss fires Louie, and the final scene of the show is Louie at Elaine's apartment, begging for his job back. She tells him that she'll consider it if he can prove that he understands how his peeping made her feel. She asks him if he's ever had his most basic human dignity violated. In return, he tells her a story about how he dreads going clothes shopping twice a year (for context, if you didn't know, Louie is played by Danny DeVito). He says he goes during school hours to avoid crowds but somehow there are always a ton of kids there, and that he has to go to the back of the store and look for children's husky sizes. He says the worst part is when he has to step out of the dressing room in his brand new corduroys and walk down to the mirror, and he can feel all the eyes on him and hear the mothers telling their children not to stare. That story has stuck with me ever since I first saw it as a kid on Nick at Nite, I love the simple humanity of the embarrassing and humiliating moment he describes. I doubt that it's the same kind of shame and humiliation that victims of sexual harassment feel, but Elaine seemed to think it was close enough.