Bacteria

I hate food poisoning. I rarely get sick, and when I do it's rarely serious enough to bother me... I don't have allergies, I only get one or two very minor colds a year, and when a bout of flu spreads like wildfire through university populations, I'm one of the few who never gets it but sometimes somehow pass it on to other people.

But food poisoning is a different story. You really can't do much about it if you accidentally eat something you shouldn't have. The more good bacteria you have in your digestive system before you get hit with a stomach bug of whatever type, the less severe the symptoms will be... so people who eat lots of live culture yoghurt for instance, will generally not get as sick.

I dunno how my good bacteria levels were before I got sick, but someone else arrived in my stomach a couple days ago and launched a surprise offensive, blitzkrieg-style. Like Poland, my horse-mounted soldiers were no match for the invading panzer division, and soon my system had crumbled.

At this point, the WWII analogy stops working so well.

The civil war in my stomach was a violent one and, despite numerous attempts at ceasefire negotiations and guerilla-style resistance, no progress was made until late yesterday, when a UN Peacebuilding operation operating under Chapter VII guidelines was sent in to force the peace (Acidophilus tablets).

Currently I'm a bit like East Timor... the situation is stable compared to past events, but the effects still linger and sporadic violence, corruption, and bureaucratic ineffectiveness is the norm.

If only the leaders gathering at the UN World Summit could solve the issue of food poisoning in my stomach...