don't let the bastards get you down

Suddenly I pine for the days when the news only talked about taser use in Canada.

I find that the media has one particularly bad habit - they like to choose a topic and beat it until it can't move anymore.

For a long time it seemed as though the Canadian media couldn't get enough of the Robert Dziekanski case. Every other word out of newscasters' mouths seemed to be 'taser'.

Now we've switched to swine flu. Personally, I got more enjoyment out of the tales of police brutality.

I don't want to diminish the threat posed by a potential global pandemic - I don't want to stand here and say that this isn't the big one while major populations get wiped out.

But am I a defeatist to think that if this is the big one there's nothing we can do about it? That there are things we can fix in this world and things that we can't and this may fit into the 'can't' category?

I'll admit that I don't take this particular outbreak all that seriously. In my personal opinion, the world has been submitted to an awful lot of crap over the past few months (see global recession, major earthquakes, large scale flooding, etc.) but now we've gotten ourselves so worked up that we're convinced the sky is falling.

Quite frankly, this is no black death. Islands are not disappearing into the sea (yet). The rivers have not turned to blood. I have yet to see a single locust: frogs are also in short supply. I killed a couple of flies last night, but it was hardly a plague.

We seem to engage in a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth any time life gets a little uncomfortable. It strikes me as being a lot of wasted energy.

More than anything, tales of economic collapse and impending pandemic have turned into get-out-of-jail-free passes for governments of all levels. Important environmental initiatives are abandoned in the name of saving the economy. Civil liberties are suspended to battle a flu that may or may not (probably may not) cause widespread death.

Wasn't it Hermann Goring who said "All you have to tell them is that they're being attacked" in order to make people do the bidding of the leaders?

This time, apparently, the attacker is one we cannot see. But they assure us he's there.

Dear reader, fear not. Things are not as bad as we may hear. The world, although a scary place, is not falling apart around our ears.

There's a lot wrong with this country, society, world, but people have made it through worse.

That being said, I think I'll lay in a supply of guns and amo. Maybe some tinned food. Set up a perimeter around my house.

Just to be on the safe side.

Regards from Alberta's brush plain.