MEXICO: THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

I went to Commissioners Court today and heard a briefing by the Public Health Department on Swine Flu.

First of all, no one seems to know why they call this the Swine Flu. There is no evidence that pigs or hogs are involved (other than politicians). And that name causes problems for those people in the world that have a problem with swine for religious and cultural reasons (as opposed to the fact that they are dirty, filty animals that will eat anything and besides do you really want to eat stuff you have to cook to a certain temperature to prevent infesting yourself with parasites?)

Anyway.

Jews and Muslims have problems with each other but are united in this one thing: they don't like swine. Israelis have decided to call the Swine Flu the Mexican Flu so that they do not offend observant Jews and Muslims.

This is not because they do not want to offend pigs, although that is no doubt what PETA would prefer.

Actually, they do not want to imply that the infected persons (that term has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?) had contact with Swine. I guess there is no problem implying that the infected person had contacts with Mexicans. If I have any Mexican readers, they can comment and tell me if they are offended and want it called Jewish Flu.

Swine Producers (otherwise known as pig farmers, especially at Howard Payne University) want the media to call it The Hybrid Flu. I guess that implies the Infected Person (I'm making this a proper noun now) had contact with a Toyota Prius. Of course, the Swine Producers believe the name Swine Flu will hurt their sales. That could be true because Americans are pretty stupid about these things. I mean, what how will Jessica Simpson figure this out? She is still working on that "Chicken of the Sea" thing.

The good news for Swine Producers is that pigs do not seem to be getting sick around the world. Whereas, large numbers of Mexicans seem to be.

The World Organization for Animal Health wants to use the name “North American Influenza”. This is based on the medical tradition of naming influenza pandemics for the regions where they were first identified. However, under that reasoning, Mexican Flu still works and keeps us from defaming Canada. And we hate to defame Canada because it already has this huge inferiority complex and worry about being a suburb of Dallas.

Historically, however, most flu can be traced to Asia. I think there is likely a flu factory in North Korea where the crazy guy lets loose now and then. Unfortunately, one of the reasons scientists think so many flu strains start in Asia is that a lot of people live close to pigs there. So, we could still end up back at Swine Flu.

Well, you know how I hate it when things like this are left up in the air (heh), so I made a few calls to see what THE GOVERNMENT was doing about it. Because THE GOVERNMENT is supposed to fix stuff. Right?

Here is what I found out.

Rumor is Congress is voting to call it the George Bush flu, under the reasoning that everything else bad in the world is the fault of George Bush, so this must be also.

The bill has stalled, however, as all the Democratic Congressmen are adding so many pork laden riders to the bill it resembles a bucket of slop.

President Obama will have a press conference and announce that he has a plan for solving the impending crisis and, therefore, if no crisis results, we can rest assured he solved it.

The North Koreans have threatened the entire universe saying it will strap a pig to a missle and explode infected bacon all over the atmosphere, infecting the entire existence of everything with Swine Flu unless the world immediately sends enough groceries to to feed the country for the next ten years, including Cognac.

Iran's president also issued a statement declaring that swine flu was invented by Israel and is further proof that Israel should be wiped off the map. In fact, he is sure that the Biblical rules against eating swine are a cover up for the fact that Jews have been hatching swine flu for years to release on poor unsuspecting Muslims and that is why Iran needs a nuclear program to purge the Middle East of this virus. And the Swine Flu.

Most Americans were last seen asking their cubicle mates what "swine" means.

This has been a round up of world news at no extra charge.