This little piggy couldn't go to school, this little piggy couldn't go to market....

....and now the government is going to make all us little piggies go wee wee wee all the way to our semi quarantined homes! REALLY?!?!?! Okay, I am veto-ing the vote - I promise true love will prevail and you will hear that story soon, but I have to talk about more pressing issues - like wide spread media panic!!

I gotta talk about the Swine Flu - or the H1N1 strain for those of you on the Pork Appreciation Board of America who have lobbied for a name change in fear that God loving Republicans (like the first President Bush) will stop eating Pork rhines in fear that they might catch this pandemic flu from those crunchy salty treats. I have to admit - this is creating a field day for my schizo bi-polar hypochondriac inner child, but now this issue is invading into my much calmer, rational, logical mind.

I see the writing on the wall - schools are slowly starting to close. Official news conferences are being held with muckity mucks stating that school officials will not be penalized financially or otherwise for closing, the Vice President is saying that health officials are advising them that the best way to handle this is to restrict mass groupings such as the classroom setting, I am getting letters from my child's school stating they are keeping in close contact with local and federal officials for the best way to handle this with the safety of our children in mind. I get it... the kids are gonna get summer a little early and we working parents are gonna be more than screwed - because no school also means no childcare.

I am not trying to sound heartless here - I am trying to put this into perspective. This is a flu strain. This is a viral infection that leads to symptoms that are irritating and uncomfortable and TREATABLE. The unfortunate few in our society that would be compromised by this flu would also be compromised by any other strain: the elderly, small children, and the sick. Perhaps we should keep scary words like "pandemic" to situations that could actually wipe out the majority of the human population - not something that could up the sales of Tylenol, ibuprofen and thera-flu.

The media is going to kill us. They are going to drive us crazy and send us jumping off bridges and crashing our cars into each other. Here in Houston alone the media and "experts" had a million people stranded in their cars fleeing from a hurricane that never came, yet this week they had no clue that a storm would come over night and we woke up to 10"+ of rain and could not drive in our streets and thousands of peoples homes had their furniture floating in a foot of water. My point is, no amount of pretty graphics or scrolling snappy phrases can alter the facts. They have NO CLUE about MOST EVERYTHING. And rather than just say we don't know much, we are going to come up with some really great theme songs and incredibly bright colored interactive TV screens to make it look like we know more. Look... I can draw a squiggly line here.....to emphasize my point about nothing even more.

So here is what is probably is going to happen - more people than normal are going to get sick later in the season that when people usually get sick. It's going to suck - but then it will pass. Yes - people will die - it is sad - it is terrible, but it is a fact - not a pandemic, not a plague. If you get sick - get treatment. If you get sick - stay home - take care of yourself - get better.

And by the way ... I reserve the right to allow my hypochondriac inner child to go running through the streets squirting all of you with Germ-X and screaming "The End is Near!! The End is NEAR!!!"