Rational Behavior

Ugh, viruses. I spent four days in bed, alone, doing nothing but pushing fluids, taking ibuprofen and guaifenesin, and watching selections from my extensive DVD collection. On Friday and Saturday, I made it through Season Two of Angel and two liters each of orange juice and diet ginger ale. Today my boss asked me how I was feeling, and when I coughed at him in reply, he remarked that the last time he had flu, it took him two months to get completely over it. I told him that I'd put recovery on my due date list for March 15.


Fortunately, I don't get sick often, and I probably haven't had the flu in something like ten years. Unfortunately, when I do get sick, I feel like I'm never going to have sex again. Last night, I was standing in the kitchen, and it occurred to me that b&c was looking very fuckable, but then I was immediately overwhelmed with the dozens of reasons why pounding him would be a) impossible and b) a very bad idea. B&c doesn't seem overly troubled by any of this, which is odd. I mean, I suppose the fact that while I was stuck at home last week and weekend, he managed to get out three times for some slap and tickle might explain why he's not troubled, but normally no amount of outside activity keeps him from getting grumpy when I'm not also fucking him regularly. Maybe he just recognizes that at the moment I'm clearly not fucking him by necessity rather than by choice. I still occasionally expend the energy necessary to jerk off, but that means that I have to wait another half hour before expending the energy necessary to, say, salivate.


Anyway, I had downloaded all these pictures almost a week ago, back when I thought my hacking cough was due to the previous night's misadventure with a blunt rather than the onset of the Black Death. It was going to accompany a story (sadly, a story that involved no fucking) about Rafael, the cute bottom in whom I caused multiple intense anal orgasms without having to expend a lot of effort. I was a little put out with him at the time (at the time I was contemplating the entry, that is, not at the time he had the four anal orgasms within three hours), and I may have blown him off in a not entirely kind way, but now it's kind of hard to remember.


I was convinced that this story had the potential for a certain sort of recondite humor, but after I'd written it, I realized that to develop that potential clearly was not within the realm of possibility given my current diminished capacity. More to the point, when I looked at what I'd written, I kept hearing the immortal words of This Is Spinal Tap: "It's such a fine line between clever and stupid."


So I deleted all of it, except for the following paragraph, which I include now merely to demonstrate what you have been spared.

Other people would get pissed off at being handed a scoopful of mendacity, but I, of course, never respond emotionally to anything. My behavior is governed by a complex, but comprehensible, set of algorithms that are carefully calibrated to maximize goal fulfillment. The particular algorithm for deciding how to respond to a communication of this sort isn't even as complex as some: we identify the potential responses, then we assign to each potential response its probability of achieving each of several goals. Then we assign a desirability factor to each goal. Finally, we multiply the probabilities by the desirability factors, sum them up, and come up with an overall score for each response. It's really fairly simple, and if you don't understand the simplicity, that's only because I don't have an easy way to scrawl formulas onto a tablet and then have them appear on screen. I regret.

Yeah. Count your blessings and enjoy the pictures.