Category: Orphans

Swine flu continues on a hysteria rampage. So serious is it that they’ve shut down high school athletic and academic competitions in Texas. No beisbol, one-act play or slide rule contests. Wait, do they even have slide rule competitions anymore? It’s just as well. The only use I had for a slide rule was to help draw a line when a ruler (or straight edge) wasn’t available.

Elsewhere, people are having their bad days, such as this smart fellow who was mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore. My friend Sally in Pittsfield, Mass., alerted me of this Wal-Mart madness in her city. I wonder if the smiley faces got to him?

Lastly but not leastly, I would be remiss to not mention the 100-day anniversary of President Barack “Big Barack Attack” Obama taking office. You would never know this if you didn’t watch TV, see the Internet or read newspaper. Feeding our nation’s attention deficit disorder, everyone and their little dog too is grading various aspects of Obama’s first 100. So I say, why not?

BIG BARACK ATTACK’S FIRST HUNDRED DAYS GRADES

–Ability to aggravate, annoy and enrage the right wing. Definitely a big fat A+.

–Inspiring the Republican Party to self-destruct. An A, especially now that Arlen Specter has defected to the Dems.

–Picking a family dog. I’d have to give him a B. I mean the fact that he got a dog would automatically give him at least a B. I’m not saying his dog Bo isn’t cute but I would have picked something else like a black Lab.

–Visibility. He’s beginning to be less visible somewhat these days which is a good thing. The less we see of him, the more we think he’s actually getting something done. For awhile I thought he was starring in a reality TV show. I’d give him a B.

I guess I’ll leave all the serious stuff for people who know, or who think they know, what the hell is going on.

Nothing really surprises me anymore when it comes to politics. With that said, I did feel like something fell through a black hole in the universe today when I learned that Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announced he is running for re-election as a Democrat.

Specter has always been a moderate voice in the GOP and it is a matter of misfortune for the Republicans that he has decided to jump ship. Of course, Specter faces a tough re-election and politics is politics is politics. I’m sure the Republicans will bad-mouth him to high heaven and try to make him seem as if he the biggest turncoat since Benedict Arnold. Never mind that the GOP has its share of former Democrats, both nationally such as Ronald Reagan, and locally such as our good-haired Texas Gov. Rick Perry and any number of individuals down the ballot who found if they wanted to be elected had to go to the dark side.

I am happy with Specter’s defection. I always found him to be one of the most able national lawmakers and viewed him with a great amount of respect. What the future of the GOP will be seems even more certain than before with such an announcement. I guess tonight will be “Smear Specter Night” on Fox News.

“No, I’m not really worried about the flu outbreak. I’m more worried about ending up as someone’s breakfast sausage.”

One needs to keep an open mind when interpreting events in your surroundings. That is no matter if you are talking about the pothole situation in your hometown or a possible disease pandemic occurring globally.

If you are one to get freaked out easily, then you should stay away from cable news today and its coverage of the swine flu scare. Or perhaps I should say this particular swine flu scare.

The 1976 version was more like hysteria and one which was probably enhanced a bit after then-President Gerald R. Ford called for all U.S. residents to get vaccinations. It all took place after an outbreak of swine flu among Army trainees at Fort Dix, N.J. I was stationed in the Navy at Gulfport, Miss., at the time and since the commander-in-chief said everyone should get a swine flu shot that meant I had no choice in the matter. I received my vaccination without warning one morning right after arriving to work and, unfortunately, after a long night of partying. I think that later that afternoon I felt like I had been run over by a swine truck.

It can be pretty easy to be overwhelmed when you have the media screaming “pandemic.” That’s their job, however, and the public would be mighty pissed if the media had not put out plenty of information should a real pandemic occur. But outbreaks of communicable disease of any type need to be viewed in a proper perspective. For instance, the 1918 worldwide flu pandemic killed between 20 and 40 million people including more than a half-million Americans. It was such a severe strain that it knocked back life expectancy in the U.S. by 10 years.

There have also been other pandemics since then such as the Asian flu pandemic in 1957 which caused almost 70,000 deaths in the U.S. Also, the last pandemic and one I remember was in December 1968-January 1969. I don’t think I had the flu but I do recall school being cancelled during the outbreak which really didn’t break my heart at the time. Nearly 34,000 deaths were a result of that outbreak in the U.S., which is about the average number of deaths from seasonal flu each year.

So a possible pandemic can be a cause for concern but it isn’t necessarily the end of the world as we know it. We’ve had pandemics before and many of us have lived through them, even after having these flu. Wash your hands, don’t go kissing total strangers, don’t watch too much cable TV news and you may just come through whatever this flu strain turns out.

For some reason I am more tired than usual at the end of an almost full week of work. I do wish what hours I work could be more stable. This week I worked 32. Next week I am scheduled to work 20 hours. Maybe figuring out when I am supposed to work and when I am not is tuckering me out. I wonder where the word “tuckered” came from anyway? Tucker must have been one tired dude (or dudette) to have a word named in his honor to indicate a state of fatigue. Oh well, it’s better than being named Crapper, that is unless you are a Crapper which, in any case, I hope that you are flush with success this weekend.

Once upon a time, college students could come up with creative ways to get out of classes they really wanted to miss. But it seems the creativity level these days has crossed over into the creepy side.

Bail was set at $7,500 today for Jennifer Grant, 20, a student at my alma mater Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, on charges of felony terroristic threat. Grant is accused of leaving signs at several different locations around the campus on April 16 warning that “a shooting will occur today and people will die.”

Given that day was the second anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre in which 32 people were killed, school and police officials treated the threats seriously.

An FBI agent and SFA police officer noticed multiple entries were allegedly made by Grant early that morning in the logs for the access gate of her apartments. The officers investigated the apartment complex because the doom-saying signs also showed up there, according to an arrest affidavit.

Grant reportedly confessed to police after they begin to put the pieces together. It seems she had a presentation due in an 8 a.m. class that morning. It was a class in which she hadn’t been doing so well. A professor told police that she was given three previous extensions for the project, but alas there was no fourth time for a charm.