The Daily Grill

Pigfluenza Panicdemic

Maybe it's just me (it usually is) but it's the swell of panic over the Swine Flu scare that seems to be what's reaching epidemic proportions rather than the malady itself. 149 deaths in Mexico City as of this posting. 149 since the start of this craziness last week? More people than that have been killed in car accidents in just the past two days in the United States...and not a single death reported as yet here from the dreaded pigfluenza.

What's amazing to me is the mechanism that's fanned the panic flames. When the World Health Organization TRIED to get us all feverish and bothered over the bird flu, it ran for over two years and failed to really ignite a global scare. What is it about bovines versus avians that's making such a difference? Or maybe it's the state of the economy -- would people would rather focus on the level of the mercury in their thermometer rather than their bank balance right now?

It's given every news outlet from Alaska to Florida something to flap their gums about. And created an excuse for health officials from the local to the national level to scramble around and look worried. And what a hero the druglomerate is going to be that comes up with the "cure" for this piggy plague wannabe.

Until there's definitive word that we're all being stalked by  the viral equivalent of Jack the Ripper, I'm just going to be using a touch more Purell after I shake hands.

Comcraptic!

I'm hereby lodging a hue and cry against my local Comcast "service" in Half Moon Bay, California. Their lameness here is perpetual -- still no On Demand, for instance -- while their rates are the same outrageousness as elsewhere. The last couple of weeks seems to be a new low.

My high speed Internet access has become a joke. It goes on and off intermittently, with no rhyme or reason, for hours at a time. As for the TV side of things, it suffers outages as well, but not during the same periods as the web stumbles. And not all the channels go out -- weirdly, the premiums like HBO stay up while the basics fail.

On the one hand, the unpredictabilty is quaint, not unlike living as a character in the old "Green Acres". I actually have gotten a lot of reading done! On the other hand, a lot of actual work isn't getting done during normal working hours.

To my point (not that this rant constitutes work), I'm having to write and post this with my iPhone.

The Adventure Continues...

Don't miss 'Sode 2 of Ogden, The Inappropriate Yoga Guy at the Yoga Journal website! Look for yours truly appearing as Marc, the associate editor, as I give Ogden a tour of the facilities.