I don't know if you've heard, but we're all going to die!
Seriously. It's coming. One way or another, we're all doomed.
It could be global warming. It could be the worldwide recession. (A recession so severe we're all going to become wandering nomads of hunter gatherers. I've seen Road Warrior. Well, if it comes to that, I warn you...we're protected by a fierce toy chihuahua. You won't know what hit you. So stay away from our eggs! You hear?! They're OURS! I've been digging tunnels. We have traps. Oh yes. We have gizmos and traps and if you even touch our eggs you'll be impaled on this rusty impaling thing I invented.)
We could die from drinking our polluted water. We could be done in by global cooling! (Which is similar to global warming only much cooler.) It could be climate change! (Which has elements of global warming, global cooling and man-eating, carnivorous tornadoes.) It could be bird flu! SARS! NO SPARE PARTS FOR MY PONTIAC! It could be Asteroid B-58-1 which is lurking out there in space just waiting to KILL US ALL! Or it could be...SWINE FLU!
(However, I heard today that Joe Biden has suggested that if we all just stand away from each other in the middle of a field...we should be safe. But don't you even think about getting near OUR field. I've got it booby-trapped with booby-traps. Some of them are quite painful I assure you and even more rusty than the impaling gizmos I invented to protect our eggs.)
THERE IS SO MUCH TO FEAR!
But I'm all panicked out. Seriously. Seems like we've been living in panic mode for too many years now and I'm exhausted. Swine Flu just may be our doom, but seems like everything is going to be our doom.
I am reminded of Y2K.
The theory behind it went something like this: At 12:01am on January 1st, 2000...our computers would kill us in our beds.
My daughter was about to be born a few weeks before that dreaded 12:01am nightmare came true.
The news reports were super scary. People were moving to bunkers in Idaho. I thought about us moving to Idaho but the daily commute to Los Angeles would have been a killer. Plus I don't like bunkers. There's something way too Bergtesgarden about it.
But what would the point be anyway? Our computers would just kill us. Planes would drop from the sky. A malicious computer would force us to watch Golden Girls reruns 24 hours a day...on every channel.
And what about my newborn daughter? No computers = no medicine. No food. No water. No power. NO NOTHING!
I panicked. I bought a 5 month supply of powdered milk and freeze dried food from a company in Utah. I did. No joke. (But as the rest of the world floundered my family and I would be happy with our reconstituted egg product.) I was smart. Forward thinking. Brilliant.
And then...at 12:01am on January 1st, 2000...I waited in the dark...in a corner of the bedroom...waited for my computer to slowly creep up on me and KILL ME! I had a baseball bat and my dad's old army helmet. I was prepared. I encased my sleeping wife and newborn daughter in bubble wrap. And then...
The sun came up and...
Five years ago we threw out the last remaining bits of freeze dried food which had all gone way past their expiration dates. We had tried to have some of the food once a week...but it was nasty.
Since that day I have decided to fear wisely.
I laugh in the face of Fear. I had bacon and sausage and sausage gravy for breakfast. For lunch, a pulled pork BBQ sandwich with pork rinds. For dinner, I plan to have pork chops and pork and beans, followed by a bath in a tub of pig fat (it's good for the skin, you know).
ReplyDeleteTomorrow, I'll die of a heart attack after my arteries have turned to concrete.
But at least the swine flu won't get me.
Once I made the decision to limit my fear output to things that actually frighten me, rather than things the news tells me I'm supposed to be frightened of, I found I suddenly had a major surplus in a fear budget which was previously strained to its limits.
ReplyDeleteI fear nothing, except moths. Those are dangerous. You may laugh, but someday I shall be able to say "I told you! I told you to fear the moths!"
ReplyDeleteI'm not horribly afraid of the swine flu even though it's pretty close to my front door. Why? I read my Bible. I should be more concerned with my relationship to God, because my Bible says He's going to protect his people from the plagues in the last days. I'd like to be on that ship.
ReplyDeleteIt's just a good thing that pigs really don't fly, 'cause then there'd be avian swine flu.
ReplyDeleteLove the appropriate image by the way. Is this blog going to be coming in Scream-o-Vision any time soon?
ReplyDeleteYou've pretty much said what I've been thinking lately. I'm taking a greyhound bus next week to Vancouver and suddenly my parents are paranoid I'm going to catch Swine Flu! On the bus! Or if not on the bus then in Vancouver because there was a couple of people who had had it there! =O
Also, lol @ Keeper :D
I have to wonder about the effect this constant fear mongering has on a society. Gasp! What if.....we become so callused to fear that we won't be afraid enough of the thing that finally gets us!? I'm goin back to my bunker with my assault rifles and dehydrated egg products!
ReplyDeleteAnd I'll be in MY bunker, with MY assault egg products and dehydrated rifles.
ReplyDeleteOh actually, speaking of Y2K, I remember wondering what the effects were gonna be, so right after the year turned in New Zealand, I went online and checked informational sites there. The first one I found read thus:
ReplyDeleteNo Y2K issues have been experienced.The date stamp on the message was 1 January 19100.
Shortly before Y2K, I published a piece of music with a "Y2K Ready" label on the cover. Everything else in those days had one, so I figured, doesn't the public want to be assured that the music will still work after Y2K?