Swindle Flu

The Hitchhiker's Guide had solid advice when it said "Don't Panic!"
Yet, every couple of months that golden advice goes unheeded, as most Americans seem to do the same thing. Freak the fuck out.
Before we fretted about the economy, it was the tomato salmonella outbreak. Then bird flu, then West Nile, then SARS, then terrorism, then Y2K. Nothing came of that, did it? At least, not in terms that our fears imagined.
We totally forget that we were terrified mere weeks ago of some other mystery monster.
Stupid Americans. Why aren't we afraid of real problems, like poverty, failing infrastructure or drug cartels? Oh wait, we are. We Americans are afraid of everything, the epitome of xenophobia, like gophers afraid of our own shadow.
We don't really solve our problems here, we throw money at the pigs on Capitol Hill and hope they'll do. . . something. Well, for the last 40 years our elected idiots haven't done shit, not really. Their War on Poverty, their War on Drugs and their War on Terror have all made those issues much worse. Thanks, guys!
If fear and government haven't helped us, what will? Maybe if we ignored these problems, would they disappear?

But back to Swine Flu. So far, 159 people have died and 3,400 have been infected. That's hardly a pandemic, and all this media coverage is only spreading panic. My advice is to relax and wash your hands a bit more often.

I want to condemn people and reflect the advice of Hitchhiker's Guide but it just seems pointless even to poke fun. I could mock you, but I really don't have to. We mine as well be fearful of a zombie invasion, at least that's more likely to be serious.

Anyway, here are two videos, one on the exact same fear before it was recycled and another from Congressman Ron Paul adding some logic to this insanity.

Wind is Entropy

I wrote a haiku:

Wind is entropy
But really, it is static
Change is illusion.

It got published on twihaiku.com, but I don't think that's really a big feat.
Anyway, now I'm reminded why I hate haikus and that's because I don't only have three lines worth of thought on wind or static or change or anything.
I want to talk about how much I adore the wind, in all it's chaos and I don't want to be restricted to seventeen stupid syllables.

I love it when hot sand and gravel blow into my pores, and I walk around like I've risen from the dead.
I love it when gusts of air blow plastic bags into trees and they tangle around sapling limbs like flags of surrender.
I love it how nothing stays the same in wind, how trees swing low, how ponds evaporate, how houses topple over.

In wind, trash goes everywhere, leaves and sticks and stupid worthless things become important.
In wind, those tufts of dead grass I walk by every boring day, they come alive.
In wind, everything struggles to bend back in place, everything becomes a challenge, everything is victory.

I'm reminded how when I was young, I would stand in the middle of our street and raise my arms and welcome the stinging, chaotic dust storms, the first before each monsoon. I'd stand until everything around me was red-brown and smelled like rain and then the storms would come.

Fuck haikus.

Agnatha

I ran into a street preacher today. I always wondered if they still yell and scream when no one is around and it turns out, they do. He was shouting at no one, no one but me, tellin' me the end is nigh. He spelt Yah-Weh wrong. Yay-Way.

The wind was so bad last week that it blew all these fake plastic flowers from the local cemetery into a ditch, floating atop a thick layer of mud and trash. I've been picking up plastic flowers on the side of the road for months, but never realized they blew over from headstones.

It's windy again today.