The New Flu Review

How’d the swine cross the road?

He flu! 

 

Get it? Hope not, cuz it appears to be this year’s leprosy. Not the humor, that’s always vogue: the flu. Wanna get sent home from work early? Just bury your face in your spaghetti leftovers while oinking madly-and those aren’t even swine flu symptoms!

 

“Show me how the piggies eat!”

 

Yeah, we’re a fun culture to observe when we’re in the Petri dish of paranoia. Right now coughing in a crowded room is more dangerous than waving a pad of pink slips in an office building. We change our fears faster than Wikipedia can make up stuff to be afraid of.

 

Tweetmime-aphobia: The fear of being boxed-in on Twitter with nothing to say.

 

Fear. It grips us like a… uhm… a really scary thing that we don’t know… something we don’t have a word for. Unknown?  Yeah that works too, but it’s far less dramatic, and lets face it, we’re very dramatic when it comes to our fear. There are torch wielding mobs of masked vigilantes marching snifflers from the work place.

 

Our fear is so bad, that I read in the news that the US is tightening up their borders to make sure no more cases of swine flu can get across. Is it just me or does that sound like somebody writing government policy has a delirious fever?

 

We can’t stop a U-Haul caravan filled with migrant workers; how do we plan on stopping a one man sneezer cell?

 

“Excuse me sir, what do you have in the back of that van?”

“Tequila.”

“WHOO HOO!!!!”

“Uhm, what was that?”

“The tequila, it’s made from happy agave.”

“Ok, fine, pull through.”

 

Yes, I have the utmost confidence that our government will stop this at the border, fix our deficit, and create international harmony and tourism aplenty.

 

I do feel sorry for Mexico’s tourism board.  As if the drug gangs weren’t bad enough, how do you put a good spin on a pandemic? “Come for the fish tacos stay for the pork?”

 

Armageddon days are here. We’re one chicken little away from a barnyard hysteria. This whole thing is so stupid too.  I mean there are people out there skipping  ham and bacon breakfasts, not because of damming aortas, but  because they don’t want to catch an airborne virus.  If that doesn’t debunk evolution, I don’t know what does.

 

What’s more, as far as I can tell, swine flu isn’t that much worse than people flu. Remember, this is the opinion of a blogger and not a medical professional.  Take your spoonful of remedy with a grain of salt. Still, as I see it, some people do die. Some people do die from slipping in the shower too, so you better slip on the Velcro thongs. That would be the shoe thongs not the underwear ones.

 

“Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

 

That’s right. We’re all prone to death. One way or another, it’s coming for us. We’re also all very likely to experience some discomfort in our lives too.  At some point, things will suck.  Need proof?  Just look at what you’re reading!  Yeah, I know, makes you feel kinda dirty doesn’t it , and not in a good way?

 

We’re all afraid. We’re afraid of losing our jobs, our houses, our lives, our wives, our socks, our stocks, our secret BBQ recipies, our favorite back scratcher, that inner voice that makes more sense than the other inner voices. We’re afraid of losing these things and much, much more. We are a fearing people.

 

When I was a kid, I was afraid of getting hit in the face with a ball.  It really didn’t matter what kind of ball: lacrosse, tennis, foot, base, red rubber. It didn’t matter. I feared them all equally.  I got hit in the face a bunch of times too. You know what? That didn’t ease my fear. Oh sure, sometimes it didn’t hurt, but there were those other times that only confirmed me bloody nose suspicion: pain hurts.

 

Still, I liked to play games, and I wanted to stop being the last kid chosen. What choice did I have? That’s right, I learned to catch balls with my teeth.  Sure, it hurt like hell, but I faced my fear (so to speak), and I became more popular. It got so that every time I played a game, kids would throw balls at my face!  I was the total hit of the dodge ball circuit!

 

Ok, so maybe not. Maybe that’s me burying my fear in the self-clumping kitty litter of denial. The thing is, when we stop being afraid of everything we can move out of this funk we’re in and get back on track.  I mean can we put this in perspective. Swine flu has nothing on the black plague. The mortality rate was much higher, and they were much more likely to bump into a plague rat than we are to trip over a flu swine.

 

“Charlotte, what does ‘quarantined porker’ mean?”

“Well the good news is they’re too afraid to make Wilbur bacon.”

“The bad news?”

“Well, they’re gonna kill you anyway.”

 

 

So come on. Do it for all the famous pigs out there (Yeah, I am so not touching that joke). Can’t we all just get along with our lives? There have got to be more important things to be afraid of.  I hear they’re planning another Hannah Montana movie.  That’s some scary stuff.