Like John Hurt in the movie, “Alien”, I am currently at war with my gastrointestinal tract.

The first minor skirmishes began yesterday. It was a really busy, nightmarish day at work, and I didn’t take very good care of myself. I didn’t eat a bite all day, I drank far less than my usual amount of water, and these factors must have fed the unrest. By late afternoon, I could feel what seemed like small-arms fire in my gut, and there were occasional grenade attacks.

Toward evening, I decided it was time to bring the war to my GI system. Remembering how hard those Mexicans fought at The Alamo, I decided to send in a similar army, so off we went to Taco Bell. Uno, dos, tres tacos later, the battle was fully engaged. Take that, I said. I threw in a salvo of tortilla chips and a good dousing of Diet Pepsi. The turmoil seemed to settle down a bit.

Later that night, as my wife and I crawled into bed for a restful night’s sleep, my GI tract decided it was time to escalate. Biological weapons. Yes, a midnight gas attack. How we survived it, I have no idea. We were soldiers.

This morning, the unrest continues, as isolated pockets of resistance are being slowly put down by my own weapons of mass destruction, namely chemical weapons. Alka-Seltzer, Pepto-Bismol, and lots of water are my current arms of choice, and I feel that the war has turned a corner. Deep in the bowels of my … er, bowels, there will soon be peace.