We're All Dead

The one thing I’ve learned in 47 years of blogging is you have to jump on a subject as soon as it surfaces or every other blog will have it covered better and funnier than you have. That’s why I’m jumping on Swine Flu now I figure there will be two or three days of interest in the pandemic before millions start dropping dead in their tracks and it all becomes passé.

But first these two farts in the whirlwind: The pirate guy and torture.

You may remember the pride of Poopchute Somalia, Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse Whatever, he was the blood thirsty but incompetent cut throat his fellow cut throats sent to the USS Bainbridge to negotiate ransom for the release of Captain Richard Phillips of the Maersk Alabama. After some American Seals finished the preliminary negotiations with his compatriots, Mr. Whatever thought he had won an all expenses paid one way ticket to the Federal Court in New York City and showed up states side with a big old grin on his face beneath his saucer shaped eyes and jug handle ears. He apparently neglected to read the small print on the ticket stub.

Prior to his arrival my friends and boon companions had been inclined to call down the wrath of Hell on the Pirates of the Horn but the photos of Mr. Whatever won their hearts and cleansed their minds of any common sense so suddenly it was like talking to a bunch of girls that decided Richard Ramirez or some other serial killing psychotic was dreamy. He was after all accused of the second most forgivable crime of our time, abducting and threatening an American. (The first most forgivable crime is the killing of Americans; we after all drove them to commit the crime with our dysfunctional foreign policy and arrogance. Of course it’s still a heinous crime but it would be patriotically remiss not to place all the blame on the dead Americans who after all are symbolic victims as compared to the real victims, the hijackers, who suffered… I could go on forever but I’ll let some one at the Huffington Post do it instead.)

From Monster to 90 pound teenager with jug ears, saucer eyes and big ass grin all in one rendition flight, apparently he was less pleased when he heard the charges he faced and started crying like the grinning, jug eared, saucer eyed 90 pound teenager he is. I’m sure he’ll cry just as hard when he discovers how popular grinning, jug eared, saucer eyed, 90 pound teenagers are on Rikkers Island.

He’s in New York now represented by only his public defender and how many battalions of attorneys the ACLU has been able to put on the case in short notice. In other words he’ll be out in no time.

I’m sure his defense will involve cruel and unusual treatment which seems to be the only sort of treatment the United States dishes out these days. Mr. Obama and Mr. Chaney are in a pissing contest over some memos that Mr. Bush received from counsel regarding torture, specifically water boarding. The public argument seems to be whether torture of any kind should be used at any time or just when Jack Bauer deems it appropriate. There is concern whether our use of torture will infuriate our enemies and cause them to be less restrained in their use of beheading, suicide bombing and IEDs. I suspect it will be agreed that the United States will torture only when it has to and our enemies will only behead and bomb innocents when they want to.

The best thing about this exercise is the frequently stated concern by both sides about how this will affect the ability of lawyers to do their job. They may want to make this appear to be about national security but it’s really about the Lawyer's Guild protecting its work product.

Now, the Swine Flu. In1919 a great flu swept across the world and killed 40 million people, you’ve never heard about because it happened during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson but he didn’t do anything about it so it must not have been too important and besides you went to public schools.

The flu virus is very mutable that’s why you have to get a new vaccine every year. Its also very contagious and air born unlike hemorrhagic fever which is conveyed by fluid contact or Zommbieism which can be spread by the bite of a zombie or skin contact with certain unspecified chemicals the Army experimented with back in the sixties.

There is no effective treatment for the virus beyond moderating the symptoms; Medical Science has been too busy with Acid Reflux, Restless Leg Syndrome and Male Pattern Baldness to look into something as mundane as lethal flu. Because the virus is so mutable and so small when an infected person sneezes in your face you're exposed to millions of varieties of infectious particles some virulent and some not. If you get a moderate case you live otherwise you may die, its the luck of the draw, 36,000 Americans die of flu during a normal season. Dying of flu can be as pleasant as drifting away in the swirling hallucinations of flu caused pneumonia or as distressing as coughing up blood and necrotic lung tissue. Either way you’re screwed.

There are effective ways to control the spread of epidemics especially quarantine. Quarantine as you all know is derived from either the French, Italian or Latin word for forty and refers to the number of days your ship sits in port before anyone one or thing can get off if your port of origin had plague in it. It implies that the place doing the quarantining can prevent the quarantined from off loading their ship load of plague ridden goodness, this flu originated in Mexico, you do the math of the likelihood of closing that border.

Quarantine requires the suspension of all your rights and privileges as a citizen to be effective, fortunately Mr. Obama will have no qualms in that regard. An epidemic is the situation the word emergency was meant to describe, not some foreclosed houses in Palmdale, but it requires brutal determination to limit its destructiveness. We’ve been here before and I don’t mean in 1919, in the 1980’s AIDS was killing gay men and many cases were linked to sexual behavior in bath houses so public health officials proposed closing the bath houses. This offended activists who didn’t want their God given right to buggery infringed and twenty some years later over a million are dead, more are infected every year and the band plays on.

Hopefully this swine flu will just be a blip in the history of flu, in 1919 when it took seven days to cross the Atlantic on a steamer it managed to kill 40 million. I don't see how it can get any funnier than that.