Doctor Swinehart or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love H1N1

blah blah blah swine flu. blah blah blah we're all gonna die. Blah blah blah ahh-choo?

But seriously, I'm enthralled by this media spectacle for more reasons than I can count. And I can't say that I'm entirely immune to the overexposed and relentless over-the-top coverage of what may be yet another in a long line of influenza bugs that continuously sweep over the globe. The early spin on this media fastball was that this flu was more dangerous because... well, why exactly was that again? Dig even a little bit below the surface and you discover the gross exaggerations and outright lies that have been spread, maliciously or not, and eagerly accepted by your average fairly well informed human being. 24 hours a go I actually thought there was a chance that my days were numbered and that I might actually die from this thing. Then my dear wife helped me come to terms with my obvious hypochondria. It seems I've read too many sci-fi "End of Days" pulp novels.

In one such novel, Stephen King's The Stand, a horrific portrait of a flu pandemic is illustrated in the story's earliest chapters. The army has designed a 'super-flu' that is 99.99% communicable and incredibly lethal. The fear of disease is swiftly circumscribed by a government response, equal parts cover-up and violent suppression until things fall apart and the center doesn't hold. (See, although in a completely different context, even King knows you can't trust the media...) However the spread of the virus must have been researched very carefully because the recent strain of influenza has spread in an eerily similar manner. In the novel a few cases in Texas end up spreading first to NYC and California, popping up in isolated towns in the midwest before blanketing the country.

It is very obvious that the kind of latent fear of death and disease that makes this horror story so effective is the same one that has led the media to blow this thing up to elephantine proportions. News outlets offer us a service, at a price. The want us to follow current events, but most of all they want ratings. And people will tune in to this kind of story, at least for a while, because it is downright scary. It is frightening to think that in our modern age of superior health care, there are things that can sweep up over night and kill people. Never mind the fact that nobody outside of Mexico has died, and that those fatalities might be the result of extreme poverty. It is scary because it appears downright unstoppable. One can take all the proper precautions, but this might very well be one of those 'if you're gonna get it, you're gonna get it' phenomena. You know, the kind of flus that are out and about every year that kill people just as easily, but that everybody has seemingly forgot about.

I loathe disease. It creeps me out. I am a complete germophobe and am continuously washing my hands, spraying my work keyboard, mouse and phone, which cowrokers occassionally share, with disinfectant. I always get my flu-shots. Why is this? Because the flu is annoying as hell. Two weeks of feeling like shit? Where do i sign up? But I'm not going to go so far as to stockpile Tamiflu and bottled water (although I offhandedly suggested the very same to my wife the other night). Maybe I'm not entirely convinced as I thought.

What is stunning is the amount of misinformation out there that is greedily gobbled up and spewed out all over the place. The very name of this bug, for instance, is completely inaccurate. People aren't getting this from pigs. But that won't stop them from costing the pork industry millions of dollars in losses. Seriously people? You think you are going to get sick from eating bacon? Cooked bacon? More for me then. From what I've read the strain is a new combo of swine, avian, and human influenza that is passed from person to person exclusively. Many have hollered that it shouldn't be called swine flu at all, but perhaps 'novel' flu or as one wag has put it, 'media' flu.

The one good thing that I can see coming from this is that maybe, just maybe people will stop being quite so gross for the next few weeks. Masks here and there, sure. But hands being washed too. Coughs and sneezes being covered up. You know, like actual human beings. Funny how it sometimes takes a virus, something scientists aren't even sure to classify as alive or dead, to achieve this.

The Ferd Who Ruined Christmas and Most of January as Well

I wouldn't say a monkey can do my job, but it's not like I'm welding jet engines together or taming lions or something. I'd say 25% of my job is meticulous organization, another 25% research, and the rest all public relations. Because honestly, sometimes I feel like I am this place's presidential press secretary. I've learned how to soothe people, smarm my way into getting what I want, and deflect questions so deftly that the person asking them ends up asking something totally different, and usually is happy with the answer they weren't looking for in the first place.

But sometimes I wish I had a monkey's sensitivity. That I didn't worry so much about what other monkeys thought, and could just respond in kind to the screeching and poop-flinging that inevitably comes my way. Case in point: the past 4 weeks.

The situation is complicated and silly, but in the end, simplistically stupid. We get stuff for people. Sometimes we end up failing to get that stuff on time and the people get mad.

Last October I began fielding orders for books needed in January. It's particularly important I receive orders for foreign titles early, as they have to cross the pond to get to us. Well I placed the foreign orders in November thinking all was well, that the books would be in by December. Because that is how a normal organization works. You acquire things from other people for a fee, then sell said product for a profit. Well, when December came around and still no foreign books I began to get worried.

Turns out our man paying the fees wasn't actually paying them. "Got to pick your battles," they said, referring to the fact that we were doling out what $$$$ we could to whom we could when we could. 'Stupid recession,' I thought to myself, but surely they'd get around to paying folks who needed a lot of extra time, right? Not so much. And since certain foreign countries take extra long amounts of time off for the Winter holidays (a month!? Can I live there?), my books were never sent out until January. As in when the classes they were needed for had already begun.

So for the last 3 weeks I've been fielding calls that should never have been necessary in the first place from white hot angry professors, confused secretaries caught in the middle, and uppity TAs trying to play hero calling to find out when their books might arrive. And I have absolutely nothing to tell them. I've endured dismissive exasperated shrugs, a truckload of yelling, cursing that would make a teamster blanch, and perhaps worst of all, polite little professors saying things like "I'm just dismayed by all this" which is somehow much worse than Mr. Named Professor popping his top like some sort of King yelling "off with his head!"

And it all could have been avoided. If the distributors were paid on time. If I'd emailed the professors and told them there was problem back in December when i first found out (see I'm partly to blame after all. But what could I have said besides your books aren't here? people usually require more information than that, and i wasn't comfortable defaming my place of employment or others who work therein). If the damn books were just here when they were supposed to be.

But in an odd twist of irony, if the books were actually here, well, I wouldn't have much of a job to do, would I.

Today I Looked Death in the Face and Laughed

When I stepped outside today it was cold--colder than it should have been. Although it is really hard to guesstimate just how it's going to feel outside by looking out the window, past history and weather.com suggested mild with a touch of Autumnal crispness. Which made the shroud of debilitating chill that descended upon me bend so sinister it fronted the ominous side.

More ominous still, were the cackling crows streaming in and out of the large tree down the street. They were furious, or scared, or just having a good time, but noisily so and they caught my attention.

Then, in a sequence that could have been lifted from a Peter Jackson epic, my eyes fell from the crows circling above and glanced down the row of trees lining the sidewalk like a colonnade and there, at the very end of a long tunnel like space, in a black cloak which from this distance obscured any recognizable features, was a figure that frightened me to my core, walking swiftly away from me, or was it toward me? It was impossible to tell. The world around me appeared to go dim. The crows went even more nuts, and it felt as if my blood were slowing down in my veins.

Now I'm not exactly a spiritual man, I consider myself a moral and ethical man, but that is not the same and as far as Faith goes I'm a pauper. But I can't shake the feeling that what I encountered this morning somehow transcends normal 'real world' classification. As in i wasn't supposed to see it. I'm not sure what or who the black-cloaked figure was or what they were doing, but whatever it was it was deeply unsettling. And as much as I'd like to forget it, I can't seem to.

the day the crazy guy at work was arrested

understatement of the year: people are freaking weird. yet this weirdness is exacerbated when you put lots of different people together. like at work. there are any number of truly strange individuals in your office or firm or fastfood restaurantorium, but seeing them all together let you really get a good sense of whose freak flag flies highest.

Gorbachev was that guy at my work. That's not his real name of course, and I say was because he is no longer employed here. because he was arrested. and fired. and now there is a restraining order against his ever setting foot in the building or the immediate blocks around it. Police thought the restraining order was a good idea considering what Gorby did to get arrested in the first place. but before that, some back-story.

Gorby had worked here for ten years or so. Kind of a lumbering guy, big and slow moving, useful in physical tasks like moving stock around and stuff like that. He was also counted on to shovel the walk and take care of what little grounds needed to be taken care of, and since he got to work as early as 6am, this proved useful for everyone else. But Gorby wasn't all there 'upstairs.' Any brief conversation with the man would tip you off. He was constantly talking, to himself and anyone he was around. It was an anxious voice, like he was nervous all the time and felt he needed to talk or make jokes to relieve tension nobody else felt, well, until he was around.

And his jokes were never mean-spirited and almost always only funny to him. I don't think he had a mean bone in his body, or didn't, rather, before the incident. You see Gorby liked to play pranks on the other tenants of this building. If they put up fliers on the communal bulletin board in the elevator he would deface them, always subtly, like he was afraid of getting caught but just couldn't help himself. From time to time mail would get delivered to our office which was not for us, which was for someone many floors up, and once this mail included several heavy boxes. Our boss told Gorby he needed to take these packages to their rightful owner, and Gorby resented this deeply. Not that anyone knew this right away, he never said a word, just smiled and went to his task. yet if you were a fly on the wall of whatever hallways he was lumbering down with those boxes, one by one, I'm sure you would have been privy to a very long and random stream of disgruntled consciousness.

So Gorby decided to exact some revenge. Over a period of months, he would often pillage a control box, or circuit board (mother board?) on the floor of the person who so deeply wounded him. He would unplug wires and tangle them, plug them in the wrong slots, and this caused all kinds of network problems for the entire floor. Not exactly a smart prank, even though he often did this well before anyone was in the building, let alone on the floor in question. Seeing as it was not even on my office's property, it was all the worse. Eventually the tenants planted a sting, purposely broke the circuit panel door so that it had to be pried open, then watched as Gorby came by, fiddled, left, came back with a screw-driver and levered the door open. he then began to messing with the wires and with that, the trap was sprung and the dude was arrested.

His original statement? "I just saw that the wiring were broken and was trying to fix it." Only after a half hour or so did the strange revenge drama come out. Needless to say, he was fired on the spot, and not just because he committed these acts against the same people we rent our space from (awkward!). We then got an disconcerting message on our intra-email system warning us to keep a look out, and to call the police if we saw Gorby anywhere near his former workplace.

So, for the past week I have perfected my drop and roll into the adjacent room. I have my back to the front door and if anyone came barging in with a rifle or anything, well, it's nice knowing you all for as long as I have. I am left only with the memory of on old prank he perpetrated on a colleague of mine on Halloween. From what I heard Gorby snuck into this guy's office wearing a Reagan mask and carrying a 2x4. he then lurked in the corner before the guy came back, sat down, and saw him in the reflection of his computer screen. I still remember the scream of terror.

How Many Assholes We Got On This Ship, Anyhow?

My mind has been focused on work lately, and not in a good way. Yesterday was a struggle to find anything to do, mostly, and ironically, because I've attained a position where lots of things I used to do are considered beneath me and are left for part-timers and others to do. In other words, since I make the big bucks, its more important i do the important things, of which there is currently a dearth. A dearth i say! a dearth.

Its one of those, if I got paid less, I'd have to do more situations, and please don't feel like i'm either bragging or complaining. Its niether, really. A huge part of me likes the fact that i can come and go as I please, read this or that on the intry-net and compose inane posts for my blog. But another equally large part of me is uncomfortable being paid at all for doing next to nothing, and this brought me to the following conclusion. The worst type of work behavior, bar none, is the guy who criticizes others for doing less work than s/he does. The big talkin' work hypocrite. let me 'splain.

The whole constellation of most annoying work behavior originated out of many things, mostly an article i read (dreamed up?) where one of the most popular grievances was food smells. Most often they were bad food smells, like burnt pop-corn or strange ethnic/vegan/organic foodsmells wafting into one's workspace and disrupting one's peace of nose.

I can relate, I've had to work with plenty of stink-eaters, but this issue goes both ways, because its equally distracting to others when your food smells good. Just ask the croft. She gets comments from co-workers several times a day regarding the nice smelling qualities of her snacks'n'snacks. But in the end, peeps gotta eat. So this is a wash for me. I then tried to think of inexucsable behavior, something that not only shouldn't exit, and does, but both affronts the subjected as well as making the subjector into something of a huge asshole.

Which is how i landed on the "I work more than anyone else" hypocrite. Because everyone, everyone has down time, when they've just completed a project, or are in between things, or just need 5 minutes (or hours) to not work for once. Everyone does this, even the most necessary of public servants. There aren't always fires to put out for every firefighter. Sometimes nobody's spine needs operating on for every spinal surgeon. And a lowly merchant may not have anything to merch every second of the day.

yet some people in authority have huge problems with this. When you are working hard, everyone else seems to be slacking off, especially one's subordinates, and you just want to give them an arm-load of something to do, even if they aren't trained to do it and would completely fuck it up. Its petty, but most people have had this superiority complex, and lots succumb to it and all of a sudden become the biggest jerk in the office. because the most reasonable amongst the accused are going to realize that said braggart is going to find himself with some downtime at some point, so just chill already.

And this attitude is a direct front to the most common rule of thumb for nearly every organization that employs human beings, i.e. everyone does just enough to not get fired or run the business into the ground, and sometimes, when push comes to shove, maybe even just the former.

When i was home from college after my freshman year i took a job a beverage distributor. The place was alternately radically overstaffed and drastically understaffed. Somedays everyone would just sit around playing cards. other days you had to bust your hump, wheeling kegs out to cars. Everyone knew how things worked and felt like they were being remunerated properly (more or less). But if you suddenly got up while everyone was taking it easy and tried tidying up or moving stock, you'd immediately be excommunicated as a show-off loser brown-noser. Similarly, if you slacked off during the busy time everyone would yell at you for making them work harder (and in this instance that seems perfectly justified seeing as everybody did more or less the same thing together).

I guess the moral is just because its work and they are paying you to be there doesn't mean you should suddenly lose all self-awareness and treat others like assholes for reasons that if you just stepped back and thought about it a little would reveal to you that we're all in this together and our patriotic mission for decreasing workplace assholery starts at home, with you yourself, not them.