Whatever Happened to the Avian Flu?????

Not that I'm particularly proud to be a part of public pandemonium about potential pandemics (yeah, I'm pretty proud of that phrase myself), but weren't we all worked up a couple months ago about the dreaded AVIAN FLU? Weren't news reports on our television airwaves, our am/fm and cable radio waves, our pod casts and internet blogspots flooding us with warnings of the upcoming epidemic? How it may happen - what could result - how many of us will die? Everyone was a little nervous about it. People were changing their behavior … “maybe I should get the beef, NOT the chicken.” My roommate reevaluated his desire to purchase a chicken, a live chicken, "what do you want, I'm Mexican" (no, really, that's what he said). In lieu of the inevitable outbreak he decided poultry would not make the best pet. I, for one, am grateful.

You couldn't open a newspaper without a full color map of the United States and/or the World showing the potential pattern of the flu, the speed at which it would spread, predictions on how many would suffer, who would die. Democrats blared that the Republican government was ill prepared for such an event. Republicans claimed that the Democrats would surely fail to correct the problem, likely opting to “sit down and talk with the avian flu” as opposed to eradicating it. Democrats fired back claiming the Republicans would likely welcome the pandemic, giving them the opportunity to order martial law. The green party advocated giving chickens free health care in an effort to cure the bird flu before it mutated. (They also continued to encourage people to drive bio-fueled cars and wear hemp clothing without explaining the benefits such actions would have on the flu situation.)

Our entertainment was becoming FLUCENTRIC. Movies of the Week were hurried into production, one entitled "PANDEMIC" is just waiting to be released, to prey on our frayed nerves and supply us with 2-4 hours of riveting entertainment.

Everywhere you went people were talking about the avian flu. And then, poof, it just disappeared. One-minute water cooler conversants are hypothesizing how a human infected with a normal strain of flu could become infected with a bird flu (smart money is on poultry to person fornication) the next minute nothing. No talk of bird flu. No talk of human flu. No talk of aviary bestiality. What happened? Did we somehow manage to avert the disaster? Did the brain trust in Washington figure out a way to cure such a disease if it so happens to make an appearance on our shores? I don’t think so. I think we just decided to focus on more tangible methods of our future destruction. I mean, why concern yourself with the biological fallout from one farmer’s evening tryst with a flu-infected rooster, when the world around us is blowing the crap out of itself.

There is always Iraq. Who knows what can happen there? My guess .. more people will die. Oil will flow. Democrats will complain. Republicans will justify. Life will, or will not, go on. Then, as if the Middle East wasn’t exiting enough, there’s Israel and Lebanon “Because there’s just too much sand for only one war.”

Oh, and the dangers are not just abroad. Look at the USA, we have huge problems to deal with. Have you heard? Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite. I know, shocker. Guess what else, he has a drinking problem and gets preferential treatment from law enforcement authorities. Shocked! Shocked! And I don’t know about you, but I haven’t even seen one picture of Tom Cruise’s baby. What the hell do you think that means? The implications are frightening.

All of these topics are justifiably taking our collective attentions away from the little bird flu that could. They are enough to keep us worried. To keep us questioning. To keep us speculating. But there’s a new one, and it’s a doozy. I know you know what it is … that’s right - someone is fucking with our god damned constitutional right to bring Gatorade on an airplane. Those mother fuckers!!!

Yeah, those wacky terrorists are at it again. Planning, plotting, lining up to get killed all in the name of Allah or Mohammed or someone else I’m sure I’m not allowed to draw a cartoon of. Did we think they’d go away? Say to themselves “9/11 was good, we did good, they made a movie about it, 2 movies actually, one starring Nicholas Cage .. I think we made our point .. lets retire”? Not so much. They are back and this time they’re fucking with our right to drink bottled water on the plane that we didn’t spend $5 on in the airport convenience store.

Of course the “exploding Gatorade” plot will now require us to spend more time in airport security. Prevent us from bringing liquid or gel like products in our carry on luggage. It will cause, no doubt, further inconvenience. Can we handle it? A very helpful news report (aren’t they all) the other night, showed a brief interview with a very tired airline passenger dealing with the new security measures. What did she have to say? “I hate to say it, but it looks like the terrorists won.” Yes maam, they won. They are prohibiting you from drinking your 12 oz can of diet soda whenever you damn well feel like it and, to add insult to injury, delaying you another whole hour to make sure that your not smuggling KY JELLY laced with explosives in your purse. That is what they were fighting for. And they won. Thank you, oh representative of the American public, for putting such a fine point on how we are all feeling. Shmuck.

Where am I going with this? Not a freakin clue. I rant, that’s what I do. The fact is, we aren’t happy unless we are fretting about something. The avian flu became a topic of discussion because we had become bored with Iraq and it looked liked the terrorists had gone on sabbatical. There was nothing to make us fear the end of the world. So our media and our government gave us what we wanted - Fear and worry and we ate that shit up like a bowl of non-poison laced ice cream. So who knows what’s next? One thing that really makes me think .. if we are so convinced that the end of the world is coming, either by terrorists or flu epidemics or global warming or Tom Cruise – shouldn’t we just try and have a good time?

Maybe not. Cause if we do, if we just stop worrying, start living life, start enjoying ourselves some drunk country boy with a bad cough and high grade fever will be getting it on in the back room with the prettiest hen at the country fair who happens to be in dire need of some Nyquil. Then we will all be sorry.