Respect Authority

And so it begins. The summer of no news. The economy, while still slowly imploding in on itself, seems to have moved away from the rapid freefall into global depression that seemed so unavoidable just a few short months ago. We have a black, progressive, intelligent president — who knows almost as many big words as Bush made up on his own.

And swine flu — which for a brief 15 minutes of porcine fame threatened to upend our sudden post-Obama euphoria — has already faded: This week Mexico City lowered its swine flu alert level from yellow to green, saying there have been no new infections for a week. (This is to say nothing of other Mexico City alert levels, related to things like “drug-related violence,” “irreversible pollution” or “gang warfare,” all of which remain at a rather permanent state of red). 

What is there left to do when dinosaur-caliber mountains of shit aren’t perpetually hitting an industrial-sized fan? Twiddle our thumbs? Pick our noses? Watch an inordinate amount of reality television? 

Bring on the next global crisis; I’m bored.

Available at your local Bed Bath & Beyond.

Fucking Mexico. I mean seriously. Fucking. Mexico.

Thanks to the national prowess of our neighbor to the south, we as a country are out thousands of jobs, I personally am addicted to sour cream, and now there’s swine flu.

On Wednesday, the U.S. reported that a 23-month-old Texas child became the country’s first death related to the virus. To put that number in context, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had received reports of 53 seasonal flu-related deaths in children during the current flu season. 53! Which isn’t to say that children dying isn’t inherently tragic, but is to say that one death can’t be analyzed in a vacuum. In addition to saying the darndest things, kids also have weaker immune systems. 

And while ‘Merica is just starting to feel the effects of “pandemicamonium,” which is in some way officially sanctioned now that we’ve actually had a fatality, Mexico is in absolute batshit SARS mask lockdown, with schools, restaurants and resorts closed or quarantined. 

In New York, officials say a recent school trip to Cancun may be the culprit for dozens of St. Francis Prep students getting infected, and subsequently bringing the virus to a tightly-packed city of 8 million. Which got me to thinking, if swine flu (pigs?) were making a conscious geographical decision, then at least it was a good one. More than once have I longed for some sort of medical outbreak to hit Cancun, preferably in the midst of spring break season and ideally when it’s populated by bikini-clad MTV groupies. If Carson Daly could be there too, well then I might die a happy woman. 

In all seriousness though, this is the last thing we need. I happened to, in a prophetic moment of movie renting, watch Quarantine this past weekend. If that movie told me anything about biological warfare — between man and man, or man and pig — it’s that we’re all going to die, probably in a pre-war apartment building, after being savagely bitten by our friends and family. Which makes sense, since that’s basically how things are in Mexico all the time.