Blogging Under the Influence

For the past, oh, six days now I have been feeling ill. Symptoms fall in the range of your common garden-variety virus, sore throat, sinus congestion, runny nose, headaches, fevers, chills, speaking in tongues etc...
So I've been stocking up on vitamins, fruits, soups, drugs, throat lozenges and other tradition cures/alleviations. I bought a packet of NyQuil liquid caps to help me sleep since that seems to be the most difficult thing for me to do when I'm sick.
Last night, I was lying on my couch feeling miserable and self pitying and watching Firefly actor/producer commentary. It made me laugh, which made me feel a little better. At about 9:30, I decide that I want to hit the sack early, so I crawl upstairs to my bathroom and rummage around my medicine closet. Let me say here that I have enough medical supplies to support the third mobile infantry and enough drugs to stun a team of oxen. As I'm looking through my many and varied pharmaceuticals (some purchased over the counter, some prescription use only) I realize I have left my NyQuil liquid caps downstairs. I did however, notice a bottle of NyQuil liquid.

The only problem is that this particular bottle of cherry flavored NyQuil expired in November of 2008. Now, I know what you're thinking, surely I just went downstairs and got the packet of freshly purchased nyquil liquid caps and took those. Surely I dumped that half used bottle of liquid death down the drain. *ahem*
So I measure out the appropriate dosage from the Cherry NyQuil and throw it down the hatch. At this point I can safely say that the flavor engineers over at NyQuil have a really good sense of humor. Calling this product "cherry flavored" is a sin equivalent to filling grenadine bottles with hamster vomit and selling them in bulk.

Now, I know what you're thinking, and in my defense, let me just say that drinking two year old NyQuil is not as crazy as it sounds. I've had a clinical trials course and I know something about what happens after the best used by date on pharmaceuticals. Usually, the product simply loses efficacy. The effects of the drug are lessened not changed.
So I crawl into bed with the taste of rodent upchuck still on my tongue and settle in for a nice long sleep....

I wake up at about 11:00pm and I'm groggy and dizzy but otherwise comfortable. In my semi-conscious state I ask myself, why did I wake up? Surely, the medication didn't work. So I stumble out of bed and go downstairs. It takes me a while to find the liquid caps (because I'm drugged out of my gourd). I crack them open and take the full the dose. This is where things get a little weird.


I fall asleep again and my dreams become vivid and grand. I can see geometric shapes laid out against a pastoral landscape and I hear the voices of Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, and Ron Glass. They are talking and talking and they won't stop talking and when I wake up 2 hours later I can still hear them talking. That's right, I am awake and I can still hear the disembodied voices of the men doing firely commentary. I stumble into the bathroom and everywhere I look, there are shapes, mostly rectangles with dots at the vertices. The voices keep talking and the shapes are sticking to the walls and I stumble back into bed. I wake up two hours later and the voices are now a cacophony in my head. I try to close my eyes again but the room spins and I can see citadels built upon layered and interlocking rectangles with dots at the vertices. The noise increases until I feel my head is going to split open. Why won't they shut-up, I can't sleep unless they shut-up. As the voices reach a crescendo, I bolt upright and then there's silence.
I'm covered in sweat and my heart is pounding, but the room is cool and silent. I take a few deep breaths and fall back down to my pillow. As I close my eyes, all is quiet, but I see a single rectangle, outlined in silver, with blue dots at the vertices floating in the middle of my mind's eye.