Monday, April 27, 2009

This and that

Are you worrying about the swine flu? It sounds so much lovelier here (as many French words do) to say "la grippe porcine" than pig or swine flu. I thought it would be something like "l'influenza de cochon" which sounds pretty bad, but they found prettier words to use. Serge says it's all just a bunch of hype but I reminded him that it's only a matter of time, the nature of disease and especially viruses make it certain that future pandemics will occur. I think this one doesn't transmit person to person all that easily or we'd see a much faster explosion of cases.

As you can probably imagine, not much happened around here yesterday. Our friend Dan came by to get Serge to help on the look of his CV (resumé) and then he never left so we hung out for the afternoon and they forced me into martinis at 3pm. I was in bed by 8 but I still didn't wake up til 6:30 this morning. Oh what a sloth I am.

I need a third paragraph to give a better aesthetic look to the post. Two never looks right, as even numbers seldom do, so that's why you're being forced to read this, what can only be described as drivel. I'm wondering if drivel can be clever or if that's an automatic oxymoron. Speaking of word wonderings, I figured out why those who "chew" tobacco say chew instead of suck. It's because if you ask them if they smoke they will have to say, "No, I suck." And nobody wants to say that. Oh and here's the oxymoronicest of them all - Happy Monday! (I find it interesting that the spell check approves my use of the word oxymoronicest.)

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

You had a tee martoonee afternoon. I tried one once and it tasted like drinking rubbing alcohol. The Hog Flu is scary. My professor just came back from Mexico last week and he has been very sick. He thought he had a reaction to drug withdrawal. Now I am afraid to go back to class. ed

Birdie said...

I'd love to sit down with you and chat. 'Cause I'd bet money that it would be something like that third paragraph with occasional jewels of wisdom and observation tossed in. Even your rambling is hilarious.

CoffeeDog said...

Even your drivel is entertaining!

dpaste said...

I think "l'influenza de cochon" sounds more much elegant than "la grippe porcine." But we're usually at odds with our aesthetics anyway.

TED said...

I prefer "oxymoronicaliciousest."

Franciscus van Munster said...

Now that's what I call a quality post, and it reminded me of why I got hooked on reading you daily (and I swear there is not a hint of sarcasm here)

Snooze said...

the panic over swine flu is certainly not hype. Hopefully it will turn out to be a milder version but seeing a cluster of people between 25 and 40 die from the flu is rare and warrants extra checking. Since SARS though our systems are so much better.

lattégirl said...

I live in blissful ignorance of much of what goes on around, but your post gives me pause. There is a flu going around the Laurentians. A nasty one that is hitting hard, lasting a long time, and often coming back after a short respite. I wonder if that's swine flu? I suppose now I'll have to look it up - thanks a lot for disturbing my serenity.

(p.s. at least it doesn't seem contagious. I've been in contact with tons of the afflicted and so far haven't caught it.)

Mel said...

It does appear that, at least in the Texas and California cases, there was human-to-human transmission. So there is some cause for concern, though I think the media are whipping up more hype about it than is absolutely necessary.

em said...

A bunch of people say cv here now too.

The media is excited about the possible pandemic death since it means so much attention for them of course, but it's a possibility that this is it, and if it's not then it's coming (as you say). Right before I heard about this swine flu, I heard of several cases of "really bad flu" or "the worst flu ever" from relatives scattered throughout the country. Seems weird. I'm thinking I must have missed an early news report.

In other news there is an investigative journalist suggesting that the Bush family framed Nixon via their CIA connections. I just heard about it yesterday. Yowza. Russ Baker is the guy's name.

It's an everything's fucked day. I hope you are doing better than that.

Cameron said...

As coincidence would have it, I had just finished reading John M. Barry's book "The Great Influenza" which describes the 1918 pandemic -- when this latest news of swine flu hit the airwaves.

I don't mind the "hype" now, after reading that the news of the 1918 "Spanish Flu" was greatly suppressed in the media. People didn't know what was going on, they died by the millions and had not a clue why.

It may already be too late to check the spread of the current flu, as no travel restrictions were in place in Mexico immediately after the outbreak was identified.

Anonymous said...

This swine flu stuff has me freaked out. You know how I am about germs and stuff...

Summer said...

EEK, yes the swine flu scares me.

Java said...

There is person to person transmission with this swine flu. Yeah, I like "la grippe porcine" better. But person to person is how it's spreading. There are no swine or other critters involved in most if not all of the affected humans.

As Cameron mentioned, there have been flu pandemics every few decades. Actually, we're past due for one. I think the last really bad wave of flu was in the 50s, and there are records of flu epidemics about every 30 years, if I recall correctly, dating way back. With all the bugs that are now unresponsive to lots of modern medication (think MRSA) it seems the danger is even greater than it has been in years. Yes, I'm concerned.

Wash your hands. Often.

wcs said...

I'm not sure that Americans need to be scared. Since many of them don't accept evolution, this flu strain probably doesn't even exist for them, let alone pose a problem.

La, la, la, la, la...

*/snark*

Blobby said...

I think they hype is ok. Listen, 14 deaths in Philadelphia 2 decades ago got Legionnaires Disease named after them.

And I'm sure no one thought of the first 106 deaths from GRID in 1981 to be anything substantial. Hype was needed then.

While it is about the folks who have died, it is more about keeping hundreds of thousands of others from getting the same fate.