Keriosity

So, due to reasons explained in my last post, I have been living under a rock for the past several weeks.  Preoccupied, busy, overworked, underslept…and apparently losing my grip of the english language.  ”underslept”?!

If that even was an actual word, would it be an adjective?

Anyway, now that the swine flu “epidemic” has become newsworthy enough to become the topic of jokes (my favorite: www.doIhavepigflu.com), I am finally hearing about it.  And in the last 5 minutes, it’s been upgraded to “pandemic” status.

Pig Flu Pandemic!  A pig illness that has mutated and can now spread between humans!  Sounds very scary and very contractable!  Here are the latest statistics on the damage this “pandemic” has caused:

• 2500 sick people and 160 dead people in Mexico, a country with a population of 109 million people.  Of all of those cases, 49 sick people and 7 dead people have been confirmed to have pig flu.
• 100 people sick and 1 person dead of the pig flu in the United States, a country with a population of 304 million people.
• 10 countries have confirmed or suspected cases of pig flu, for a grand worldwide total of 195 confirmed cases.
• 53,000 children in Texas didn’t have to go to school this week because the 1 U.S. fatality occurred in their state and children make excellent vectors.
• $105 Billion requested by President Obama from the Federal Government for the development of vaccines.  (That would be $344 million spent PER PERSON in the United States! F*ck the vaccines - just give us the cash!)

Btw - the regular plain old-fashioned FLU flu, which I had two weeks ago, has caused the death of 13,000 people in the U.S. since January.  Imagine the cash we could bilk out of the feds for THAT flu if we only had the foresight to panic and give it a silly name.  The Keri Flu has been spread to at least 3 people I work with, btw.  I must be stopped!  Here I am in cahoots with my buddy Swiney, who is now known to the World Health Organization as “Pig Zero”:

Seriously though,  why are we panicking?  People have been dying of common illnesses for a while now - haven’t we gotten used to the concept yet?

In the olden days, we called these people “sickly people.”  They were frail and were treated gently and couldn’t go outside in the winter and they wore depressing gray clothing and always looked pale.  At least that’s how they looked in movies about the olden days.  They were “sickly”, which meant they got sick easily.  Sometimes they died of a simple cold and while everyone was sad, it was acknowledged that they were not exactly strong and healthy to begin with.  And now, sickly people are called “immuno-deficient” and they’ve become the barometer of the world’s health.

We don’t like when people die of “simple” illnesses because that means the REST of us could die from it too.   The truth is that the rest of us are NOT going to die from the flu.  The sickly people die from the flu.  It’s sad, but it happens.  It’s nature.  That might sound cold, but if we were gerbils, we’d eat the sickly ones.  Instead, we humans spend billions of dollars on vaccines to give to healthy humans because a couple of sickly people got sick and a few of them died.   Can’t we spend billions on making sickly people healthy instead of making healthy people less afraid of things they shouldn’t really be afraid of anyway?

Ok I’m going back under my rock now…I hear there’s a Norwegian Black-footed Sheep Flu that’s about to mutate so that it can be spread to sheep with other colors of feet…a sure sign that it’s going “human-strain” in no time…

No, you’ve not traveled backwards in time - I rewrote this essay for a writing contest, and I like this version much better. I hope you do to:

The #1 Most Evolved Species On Earth is, of all things, the Seahorse! I mean, it hasn’t been made official or anything. But after reading about them in Wikipedia, I have realized that, at the very least, seahorses are more highly evolved than humans. Here’s why:

When a male seahorse and a female seahorse become quite fond of one other and decide it’s time to start a family, it’s the MALE seahorse who gets “pregnant”. The female seahorse deposits her eggs into the male, and then promptly leaves the scene. (Males of the human species might be familiar with this sort of behavior.) The male seahorse fertilizes the eggs by some process I’m not aware of because once Wikipedia started explaining that it involves his snout, I stopped reading. Some private things should just stay private - the fact that male seahorses use their own snouts to fertilize themselves is definitely one of those things. Anyway - HE carries the growing fetuses and gives birth to thousands of tiny seafoals, as I’m sure they’re called, while SHE is at the sandbar having a cocktail.

How did she manage this genius arrangement? Since seahorse pregnancies only last 2 weeks, it probably wasn’t a hard sell. One day, a seamare got fed-up and told her mate that she would no longer nag him about seastallion-nights-out if he would be the one to deal with the morning sickness and the stretch marks. He replied “So for 2 weeks of mild discomfort, I can get you off my dorsal fin?! Sign me up!” and that changed evolutionary history.

And ever since that critical moment, male seahorses have been hoping for Natural Selection to intervene so they can mutate a leg with which to kick themselves.

Wikipedia also mentions that seahorses are monogamous. It seems that once the MALES have to struggle with losing the baby weight, monogamy is a big priority to them! Seahorses are appearing more evolved by the minute.

Polygamy is the norm in the animal kingdom - usually with good reason. Species survival depends on strong population numbers and healthy bloodlines, therefore “spreading the seed” of the stronger males is crucial.

Sometimes, with dogs for example, it is more of a physical, biological instinct than a species survival technique- as evidenced by the fact that there hasn’t been a single case of a sofa cushion giving birth to puppies.

In fact, the “biological instinct” excuse is often used by human males to explain their carousing, which is why the “men are dogs” theory is entirely their own fault. True…there is at least one biological effect that happens to a man when he is attracted to a woman, but that is not a justification for behaving like an animal. And the only instinct he should be concerned with is the one that tells him he will be “in the doghouse” for letting biology get the best of him.

If men were as evolved as seahorses, they’d realize that.

Note: “Pouch (only in male)”

I have thought this thought for a long time - and I am finally ready to share it:

The tragic death of Steve Irwin makes us overlook the fact that Bindi is one strange looking child. I know that at least a few of us have this same thought when we see her on TV: “Yeesh that’s an ugly little gir- WAIT! I can’t think that! It’s too mean! Her father died! And she’s actually sort of cute.” Sure she is…in a wombat kind of way.

What? Too cruel? Ok fine - she looks more like a vampire bat. That better?

Yet another fad diet has hit the masses - the “What Would Jesus Eat” Diet. The theory is that Jesus ate natural foods, no preservatives, little meat or sugar, and thus, he and the disciples were all thin and fit. I guess we are ignoring the fact that in those days, people had a habit of taking 40-year walks through the desert, so obviously exercise had something to do with it.

Also, how do we know everyone was thin and fit in biblical times? We have no photographs from back then. We have some paintings, but paintings are really just old versions of Photoshop. That’s why no one in a painting has cellulite, zits, or crow’s feet. And judging by all the flying fat kids and mysterious halos that were so prevalent in religious art - I’d say they weren’t exactly reliable sources of factual information.

Anyway - getting back to the Jesus Diet - it consists of bread, fruits and vegetables, nuts, beans, wine, and fish. Replace “fish” with “cheese” and you basically have MY diet. It’s nothing special. Were it not for the wonders of microwave cookery and chocolate, I would be quite bored at mealtime. Jesus was also Kosher, so there’s that factor to the Jesus Diet. You’d need to cut out all shrimp, crab, and pork - but you can load up on grasshoppers and crickets, since they are Kosher and Jesus-approved. In fact, if you really want to lose some weight, go on the John The Baptist Diet. All-you-can-eat locusts and honey. I’d be dead in a week. But noticeably thinner.

To follow the WWJE Diet, there is a cookbook you can buy. The “What Would Jesus Eat” Cookbook. I imagine it’s a very short book and most recipes start with “Take 5 loaves of bread and 2 small fish…” Also, you’d need to severely adjust the recipes unless you plan to have a dinner party for 5000 of your closest friends.

The other touted benefit of the Jesus Diet is that it will prevent disease. Ok, I think the Bible clearly demonstrates that to prevent or cure a disease back then, you needed a Miracle. Not a piece of bread and an olive. Around Jesus’ hood, there were cases of lameness, blindness, hemophilia, idiopathic muteness, paralysis, epilepsy, and the ever-popular leprosy. Jesus went around healing people left and right - there were a LOT of sick people! And most of them probably ate the same things Jesus ate. So I don’t buy the “disease prevention” claim of this diet.

Why do we assume that old-fashioned dietary habits were so healthy? Since the introduction of over-processed, genetically altered, and “what-the-hell-is-that-ingredient?” foods, life expectancy of humans has risen dramatically, and it continues to rise. Today’s average lifespan is 3 times as long as it was in Jesus’ day. I am tired of hearing people justify what they eat by saying things like “I eat meat and potatoes - a hundred years ago, that’s what people ate!” A hundred years ago, people didn’t know that eating certain foods would eventually lead to heart disease and/or cancer because everyone usually just died of diphtheria when they were 25. That’s IF they survived childhood.

Personally, I like to strike a balance between natural foods like fruit and whole grains with processed foods like Entenmann’s chocolate covered donuts. I should publish the “What Would Keri Eat” Cookbook. Like Jesus’ cookbook, mine would be quite short, but most of my recipes would start with “Pour a glass of red wine and go to www.delivery.com…” None of my recipes would call for insects of any kind, and while my diet may not be considered “spiritual”, I do hear heavenly angel music whenever I unwrap a Cadbury Creme Egg.

And so far, I haven’t gotten leprosy or diphtheria, so I think I’m on the right track.