I'm NOT Iron Man

Three times yesterday I heard snippets of Black Sabbath's "I Am Iron Man" -- never in it's entirety, and always in incongruous places.

First on NPR, in a story about the Fenway Park DJ (they play it for Mike Lowell when he comes up to bat, because he once got hit in the head by a wild pitch and then sent the next pitch into the stands).

Then on television (I don't remember the context of that one, but it wasn't on The Osbournes or in a commercial or anything).

Then, when we were on our way home from dinner, the kid collecting tolls on the Mass Pike was blasting it from his little booth.

Three times in twelve hours -- and it's not a song you hear that much at random these days (not like, oh, say, "go heavy go widdit" -- which I know is not the name of the song (which is why I didn't capitalize it) but it's the part that sticks in my head until I want to carve my brain out through my ears) -- I was starting to wonder if this might be some sort of sign...

And then yesterday I could not get out of bed.

Now, that's a slight exaggeration. I didn't piss myself or anything. I even managed to haul my ass out for a pint of sympathetic Ben & Jerry's at around one o'clock (Johnny doesn't drive; there's no sense sending him out for ice cream on a 90-degree day: all I'd get is ice-cream-soup).

But -- and this is not exaggeration -- it did feel as though someone had attached strong but tiny rubber bands (like the ones you have to wear with metal braces) to all the muscles from my waist down to my knees.

So I took a -- well, I took two aspirin, three extra strength Tylenol, one prescription-strength Mortin, something called Nabumetone and, finally, a Vicodin. Nothing helped, so I took another day off.

I don't think it counts, though, because I spent it watching a marathon of America's Next Top Model -- which I do believe is punishment enough.

I got the Sunday crossword done, though. The Globe that is, not NYT. Well, almost. Does anybody know an eight-letter word for "Symptom of old age"?