If I were an X-Man, my power would be to transform every disease I catch into canker sores. While such a power may save my life from all the various fatal ailments on this good Earth, ironically it also increases the likelihood of my death by suicide.

Sometimes I wonder if the inside of my mouth is actually a stage for some sick strategy game. i always get canker sores in the most inconvenient places ... not that there are any convenient places to get them, but for me especially they always find the most debilitating spots. For example, this year I've made the unfortunate discovery that the bloody things can grow on one's tongue. I have one on the side of my tongue right where it meets my molars, which means I can't drink/chew/talk/drink/swallow/spit or do anything sexual or otherwise with my mouth.

Oh, and home remedies SUCK. I mean, you can pour salt on the damn things. It hurts like all motherfuck, but they do heal faster. And after the initial pain, the thing goes numb for about a minute. Hooray. At the very least, you'll know that if you can endure this, you can endure pretty much any form torture including those big black floaty things that Darth Vader used on Princess Leia.

There's one thing that does work for immediate and somewhat lasting relief, but you're not going to like it. I sure as hell didn't. What you do is you grab a tylenol or aspirin and you press it against the sore. For a while. You know what? Might as well just pop the tablet in your mouth and let it dissolve over the owie. Suck on it like a lozenge. Believe me, the level of comfort improves dramatically, especially since the pain medication bypasses your digestive system when it goes straight into the wound ilke that. Of course, you'll be too busy vomiting to notice how much better your mouth feels, because everybody knows that tylenol, aspirin, and advil (once you get past the candy coating) tastes like shit rolled in more shit.

Still, the tylenol treatment should let me eat at least. If that fails, I renewed my fishing license at an outdoors store a couple of days ago and I found out they sell guns.