I'd Like to Stop Sneezing Now, Please

I AM A WALKING histamine reaction. All last week, and these past two days, my allergies have been running at ludicrous speed. I caught a brief respite with the weekend rainstorms, but even these carry a heavy price tag, by helping to sprout more pollen-bearing seeds, that will no doubt plague me in early summer.

Each season, the experts at the National Institutes of Health or the National Weather Service or the goddamn National Allergy Groundhog Hole proclaim that this is the worst season yet. Somehow, the global course of deforestation and invader-species monoculture escapes these white-coated jokers, and they solemnly proclaim, sometimes wielding tissues out of sympathy, that allergy sufferers can look forward a longer, harder, deeper season of being nosefucked.

Can we get an honest investigation of these pundits, to see if they have well-concealed investments in the producers of heavy-duty antihistamines and facial tissues? Every time they ratchet the online pollen indexes, do they buy a new BMW?

I haven't even attempted to mount the hill near my house in the morning in the past week and change. No way in hell. Two blocks between the PATH stop and the building are enough to have me sneezing for a half hour when I finally get up to the office. I can only imagine what sucking down a half hour's worth of green-tinged pollen fog would do to me. I'd wake up two weeks later in some sort of Darth Vader suit, without such conveniences as the cybernetically enhanced strength, the Dark Side abilities, or the lightsaber. More likely I'd be booted back out onto the street with one of those CPAP units spraypainted black and a case of Primatene Mist.