The Bug Stops Here

Think of me as a graying, middle-age, whining, bad-natured, demanding, two-legged, fat little guinea pig.

Observe me as the classic victim of a flu for which there is no shot, no name and no remedy.

It is the kind of malady that is sweeping L.A., jamming hospitals, screwing up celebrity parties, limiting attendance at sporting events and affecting box office revenues.

The movie “Titanic” is making money but only because a sickened society associates with that sinking feeling. Go to bed, drink plenty of fluids and play “Nearer My God to Thee.”

I associate more with “Deconstructing Harry.” Like Robin Williams, I am out of focus. I am blurry. A fat little blurry guinea pig.

Those in the medical community required to concern themselves with such matters are beginning to believe that what we have is not an ordinary kind of flu but a recent arrival from Australia.

If so, they say, L.A. is the new flu strain’s first U.S. target. It will spread out from here and cover the entire nation, from Oakland to Allentown, Pa. Another reason for everyone to hate L.A.

They will call it the L.A. flu, not the Australian flu, and the last words of those it sends to the Great Beyond will be a curse directed at the City of Angels, may we burn in hell.

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If you study me closely, you will observe the many symptoms of the current flu strain. I wander aimlessly through the house in the pair of silk pajamas I bought several years ago when I thought I was dying. I refuse to die in flannel. My eyes are watery, my nose is runny, my step is wobbly. I cough.

I have spent a week in these pajamas. Sometimes I wear a multicolored robe, which also was purchased when I thought I was dying. I feel like Hugh Hefner without the bunnies. The man has spent most of his life in pajamas, but I suppose he has more than one pair.

“It’s all right if you want to think of yourself surrounded by centerfold women,” my wife says sympathetically. “But don’t stare too hard. You know how you start gasping when you get excited.”

See how tenderly she places me on the couch that faces the television set. “Watch TV and relax,” she says. “Try not to think of Miss October. I’ll put on cartoons. Is Bugs Bunny OK? You like Bugs.”

My head aches and my vision is blurry, so it doesn’t matter much what I watch . . . except for Oprah, Jerry, Maury, Jenny, Geraldo, Rosie or Ricki. Should I, God forbid, be taken by the flu, I don’t want my last vision of life to be that of a trailer-camp bride who married a son from her fifth marriage after having killed her husband’s brother who raped her while they were holding up a liquor store just outside of Omaha.

Instead I turn to the History Channel. If nothing else, war has provided us with hours of entertainment. The damned British. The damned Southern rebels. The damned Spanish. The damned Mexicans. The damned Japanese. The damned Germans. The damned Chinese. The damned North Koreans. The damned North Vietnamese. The damned Iraqis.

War is hell. I watched “Quack Attack” instead.

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I do not suffer ailments bravely. During advanced combat training at Camp Pendleton many years ago, I came down with bronchitis. I coughed and wheezed endlessly, but my gunnery sergeant was loath to send me to sick bay.

“How in the hell you gonna fight a war if you’re sick?” he demanded. To him, war was good stuff not to be missed. Being sick deprived one of the sheer joy of sticking someone with a bayonet. Hopefully, that someone would be an enemy and not a trainee, but I wasn’t sure so I went back to work.

Because I have a tendency toward bronchitis, I get a flu shot every year. And every year I get the flu.

I asked my doctor, I mean my primary physician, why that was so, and he shrugged. I called the Health Department, and they referred me to my primary physician. I called the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and they referred me to my local Health Department.

In other words, no one knows. They only know that every year 25 million to 50 million of us get the flu. This year we were all inoculated against A/Texas, A/Nanchang and B/Harbin, but I got them anyhow. C/L.A. is next. They will inject us with antibodies diluted in a dry white wine.

Notice in my guinea pig state that while my wife tolerates me, our dog Barkley taunts me. He is brilliant and evil. I expect him someday to address me in perfect English. He is, after all, an English springer spaniel.

As I lay dying, he stole a wet tea bag off the sink and stood triumphantly just out of reach, the bag hanging from his teeth. All I could do was curse and moan.

But don’t cry for me, Angelenos. I’m getting better. I am told that the L.A. flu already shows signs of moving east. It will creep into Arizona and then New Mexico and Colorado and Missouri and Ohio and Pennsylvania.

I’d like to apologize to everyone but New York. New York somehow deserves the L.A. flu. I smile and turn on the History Channel. The Japanese navy is on the run. I think we’re going to win this one.

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Al Martinez can be reached online when he’s well at al.martinez@latimes.com