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.

Bee Microwave

I was running through an alley with my friend Kyle. We were escaping from the cops even though they weren't chasing us. We stumbled upon an old microwave that looked like it was from the 1970's. I decided to take it home and recreate my "microwave experiments", but it was heavy and cold and I dropped it in some random parking lot.
I came back the next day with Kyle and his car. He told me to plug it in and see if it worked before we took it home. And it did! We juiced it up and it started to hum.
"Put a leaf in it, see if it heats up," Kyle said.
I opened it and said, "There's all this mud and shit in here. And ants. And BEES!"
The bees, having just been microwaved, were too stunned to swarm out at me. I frantically slammed the door, kicked the thing over and sped off.
But seriously, what the fuck kind of bees nest in a microwave?