You know what, I hate cough medicine. Not the taste, no. Well, *yes* actually, it tastes like ground up donkey balls, but it is more the *promise* of cough medicine that irks me. Last week I had a rather nasty cough. It was contracted in Los Angeles, transported to Ireland where I tried to cure it with late nights and drinking, but alas on my welcome return to blighty the black lung was still there. Normally I sit these things out, but life is more hectic than it used to, so I resorted to a chemist, a fiver and a shelf full of potions. I chose what looked like the most likely substance to fix said lung butter and returned to my abode where I chucked the filthy recipe down my throat. I repeated every four hours like the lies on the side the packet indicated.
What happened? Bugger all, thats what happened. It had no effect whatsoever. Instead, I took my already weakened state of health and augmented it with a regular dose of disgusting tasting, viscous, repugnant, vomit inducing liquid. Where in the name of all that is sweet and good do these companies get off selling such junk? I may as well try one of those old-wives tales solutions to such problems where you sprinkle bicarbonate of soda on your chest, bite a lemon and stand on one leg – I am sure it would be *as* predictable and *as* effective. What a load of old bollocks. I demand compensation for the mental trauma involved in gulping that disgusting stuff down in the hope of making the involuntary voluntary again.
Oh, and thanks to a kind email pointing out an image, it turns out that the trip to LA not only gave me the black lung, but the Open Source paparazzi snapped this beacon of glory:
Thats right, if my dad was Brian May, I would have turned out like that. Sorry ladies for shattering the normally handsome, manly, hunky image. Normal service will be resumed soon. If you looking for someone to blame, blame Meryl:
You can contact her at this address: *Meryl, Los Angeles, America*.
The shot was snapped during a pictionary competition at SCALE, which was rather amusing and run by the aforementioned Meryl. She has turned mockery into a fine art. Rest assured my vengeance will be sweet when I return to SCALE next year.
Despite such depravity I do have good news to report. My good friends in the [Ubuntu Loco Community](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoTeams) are running a Loco Docs Day on March 3rd. This is where all the juicy best practise documentation will be refined, improved and otherwise made to feel rather good and spanky. The LoCo project is growing immensely and the community is doing an incredible job. I am so proud of them all. So, get along and be a part of the LoCo docs day. 🙂
