I must have been a grade-A bastard in a previous life, because the Fates are working over-time at payback.

I've been lucky enough to have three kidney stones up to this point in my merry little existence, one in college and two after. They passed -- with much cursing and gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth -- by themselves, the calcified, male equivalent of giving birth. Each hurt like hell, the last two landing me in the hospital begging for whatever drugs they had lying around.

It turns out they were the easy ones.

My new kidney stone -- I've decided to name it "Eddie" -- is the size of the end of your pinkie, from the last knuckle to the tip. It's wedged high up my left ureter, the x-rays show, and isn't going anywhere. My kidney aches and throbs and pain radiates in unhappy, southerly directions.

I'm going to be admitted to the hospital next week and they'll run various apparatuses up my urinary tract -- I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to that -- and sit me in a sonic bath and break the little SOB into "gravel." (That's the word the doctor used, by the way, like you could use the remains to pave a driveway.) The pieces will then make their agonizingly painful way out of me.

Hello? Whoever's in charge of karmic retribution? Isn't the receding hairline enough?