This week has been one of excitement in my town. Seems E. coli had contaminated the town water supply. Whoa, Nellie! This stuff is bad. Ingest it and you're looking at a week long bout of... ugh. Never mind. The saddest part about this whole thing is that I believe the town could have caught this water concern earlier.

Stage Effects A. coli Sweaty armpits B. coli Scratchy left earlobe C. coli Color green makes you angry D. coli Strong urge to pick noses E. coli Seven days of dangerous dehydration and bloody bowel movements

As you all know, E. coli must go through four mutations on its way to becoming its nasty little self. Each stage of the progression is worse and worse until at the fifth stage, the consequences of an E. coli encounter are really just plain yukky. Why hadn't town officials noticed the disturbing early warning signs?

So when faced with this stuff in the water supply, what do you do? While the town works at flushing out the water system using all sorts of other dangerous substances, you essentially head out to your nearest store and panic buy all the bottled water off the shelves. Note, it is important to scream, yell, kick and pull hair while panic buying otherwise it's just business as usual. With bottled water in hand (actually, I recommend putting the bottled water in a cup and the cup in your hand) do everything humanly possible to not drink it. You must conserve!

When you're forced to conserve water, it's amazing to see how much of it gets wasted on a daily basis. I mean, here I was pouring capfuls of water onto my toothbrush and drinking small glasses while taking medicines. Makes you wonder why them boys at NASA gets all freaked out happy when they detect ice crystals on another heavenly body (no, not Denise Richards). Water is a precious commodity! This is something that some water-ban-violating community members seem to overlook.

I have to believe that the guys down at the DPW in town had some fun putting all sorts of disgusting dyes into the water under the guise of "flushing out the system". There's something about watching the water in your home run from clear to brown that makes your stomach turn. "Isn't that my job?" I thought.

I suppose it could be worse. Apparently, and this is a true story, in some town in Louisiana, some workers "accidentally" connected a sewer line to a water main. It wasn't until residents in town started noticing that the ice cubes in their freezers had some sort of white center in them. What's Up With That?! Well, the white stuff in the ice turned out to be toilet paper. Yuk!

"Hey, Honey, this here clam chowder is the best dang chowder you ever made!"

"Clam chowder?! Honey, I gave you the chicken soup!"

Yikes! (Mental note to self: extend bottled-water travel requirements up from Mexico to majority of US southern states.)

So to sum up, this is just another example of how we need to regard our water supply as an essential and precious commodity. Really.

I end with a civic apology to the Eric Coli family who once again, faced with an ignorance that is rampant in this country, were run out of another town.