An Informed Flu Shot...

My very passionate and logical, future-nurse cousin was very disturbed recently by the fact that I was receiving a flu shot. Her (completely valid) feelings are that those that receive flu shots are uninformed society-sheep that are propegating a super virus that will ultimately quickly and painfully wipe out the human race as we know it. My flu vaccine was likened to abuse of antibiotics and wasting electricity by not turning off lights. Now, this is fairly new, since the only time I tend to disagree with her is when she's mad at her nearly saintly boyfriend;)- but here is my informed and thought-out rebuttal- mainly based on my education and understanding of how the body works, since you can find arguments in either direction represented as ultimate fact.
First of all, I am aware of the risks of current medical intervention and especially the issues involved with bacterial mutation due to abuse of antibiotics. I am also aware that the flu viruses used in the annual vaccine is an educated guess and is not a sure shot against illness, especially since many winter illnesses are not influenza, but just mirror the symptoms. I am also aware that the viruses are grown in a chicken and that there is possibly mercury as a perservative in the vaccine.
First of all, the antibiotic argument - antibiotics and flu vaccines are not analogous. Antibiotics, in this instance are man made little soldiers that are intended to seek out and destroy bacteria. They are not always specific and destroy their target as well as helpful and natural bacteria, often causing an upset in your body chemistry. Two major problems are that they are over prescribed - for issues that are not always bacteria related, and their intended cycles are not completed by consumers. These factors essentially allow for a Darwinian "survival of the fittest" of bacteria, rewarding mutations that are resistant to standard antibiotics. Another issue is that you can catch the same bacteria many times without your body building a resistance to it - so in an absence of antibiotics (the enemy) bacteria need not mutate.
Viruses on the other hand, have only lasted the test of time because they constantly mutate - and have been doing so from the beginning. When a person catches a virus, their body NATURALLY developes antibodies to that virus. When you catch one strain of the flu, you will very likely, short of a compromised immune system, never get that strain again. That is why many strains develop and spread every year-vaccine or not. A vaccine is the actual (natural) virus - weakened or deadened, in my flu shot's case - intended to inspire my body to build antibodies to it. This is the EXACT same reaction my body would naturally have if I contracted these strains of the flu in "the wild", was on my back for 2 weeks, lost income, possibly missed important commitments, and risked complications.
I don't agree completely with all vaccines, and think over vaccination of young children needs to be more informed and better regulated. I haven't taken antibiotics for years, but if I develope a bacterial infection that my body doesn't fight off, I fully intend to get antibiotics and I hope to gawd that they work.
It would be fantastic if I didn't have to take precautions that were not 100% safe in order to protect myself. But that requires a gamut of social reconstructions that I garauntee aren't going to happen this winter. Workplaces would be clean and open air, endless time would be given for healing and recovery, alternative treatments would be inexpensive and readily available. Yes, someone is making money off of my flu shot, but the herbalist is making money too. And when you do your work, whether it is massively believed to help or hurt, you will make money, too. And tonight I will have fish for dinner, and very likely be exposed to more mercury than I was last night. And I will drive my car home, even though there is a chance that I will side swiped by a bus. Not all risks are uninformed, not all modern medicine is a conspiracy and I doubt there exists any issue that is black and white in this world, and a good argument always considers the other side.

The Bright Side of Life

Ok, call me a total psycho (I'm sure you have already)...but another great depression sounds like it could be just the thing we need around here. If Karma is real-and a real bitch...(another post, for another day) then this will bite me in the ass, but here's how I see it...
From our nations experience, a Great Depression is a time of extreme economic downfall...resulting in the loss of jobs, reduction in value of the dollar, and mandatory page boy hats for the poor. (I have to give Amy Poehler credit for that last observation)
Consider the under 25 population of today. Now maybe I'm just getting old (almost the big 3-0 for pete's sake!)- but kids these days seem like a bunch of spoiled, over-coddled, lazy, entitled wastes of space...for the most part. There's always exceptions to the rule. Seeing this run rampid in people my age, I feel I am actually somewhat an exception. Whatever...as it stands, today's youth wasn't scored in competative sports so that their feelings didn't get hurt, they were/are drowned in positive reinforcement, and "cool" parents that want to be everyone's friend leading them to believe they are entitled to higher education with a caveat that they get to party their faces off in a different zip code than their parents, even if they slid into a junior college. They want to carry/wear designer labels, on someone elses dime. Certain, un-named shows, on certain un-named channels, geared toward youth and pop culture (and in a round about way, toward music)give kids the impression that the 400 kids invited to your sixteenth birthday party should bear witness to your gift of an escalade or bmw or other such status symbol.

And not to just pick on the younger generations...but everyone is far too comfortable with waste...pre-cut, pre-sliced, pre-packaged, disposable, single portions, 3 copies plus an original...made politically correct by using 15% recycled material (does anyone consider that that means 85% brand new, landfill-bound material?) There's a lot that doesn't need to be one-time use...and if you have to stand in line for it, or dig too deep in the pockets for it, maybe, finally...being green will take an actual substantive turn - even if it only has to do with their own interests and not the future of the planet.

So another widely disagreed upon, but good idea, courtesy of moi.

Waiter...there's a fly in my soup.

Well, as a return from a long hiatus, this is nothing but a sorry, sorry excuse. However it must be mentioned.
I'm sitting at my desk and hear this fly buzzing OVER the sound of planes following their flight path that happens to go virtually THROUGH our office. Now...my office is on the 5th floor with no opening windows...for a fly to get in here they would have had to do the following...
Slipped in the door undetected and unassuming, while someone else was using it.
Made its way to an elevator and AGAIN slip in during a 10 second or so time span.
At the final floor (occupied by roughly 50 people) exited the elevator, again, flying in the correct direction in a fairly small amount of time. THEN flying down the hall and AGAIN making it through a door in the small amount of time its in use by one of the 4 occupants of our office space.
PLUS flies have a lifespan of 15 to 26 days if they're LUCKY (aka - not squished), so I have to assume that this journey took the entire life of this fly.
Crazy shit, huh?

How To Have a Garage Sale

Last weekend, G and I had what I would call quite the successful Garage Sale...not because we came away trafillionairs, and not because it was the peak of organization, BUT because I believe it will live on in infamy for years, if not generations, to come. Here's the recipe, but I'm sure it won't come out AS perfect without our special sauce;)
1. Refuse to throw away the most useless of crap WHILE accumulating more for roughly 30 years (results may vary with cooking time)
2. Throw all said "waste of prime real estate" into a room, toss well.
3. Advertise where white trash/"lower class" individuals frequent...craigslist.com
4. The night before, forgo organizing clothes, prepping set-up, checking supplies, or pricing items. Instead make 4 wacky neon signs with false promises, and get to a BevMo to ensure adequate beverages for the event. On the way home, reminisce over hip hop from high school and dance your heart out in an expedition with car seats in the back.
5. Wake up insanely early, run through traffic to hang previously mentioned obnoxious signs, and start setting up - make sure before any children/husbands are released, they must fend off at least one mentally ill early bird.
6. be at least 1/3 set up before buyers start arriving in packs...at this point, start drinking.
7. Continue Setting up, keep drinking.
8. Sell, keep drinking.
9. Get lunch, wash it down.
10. As things begin to slow down, lower the prices...and your field of vision with more drinking [Helpful Hint: Chamagne is not inappropriate at a garage sale if it is in a can]
11. Just short of heat stroke and dehydration, shlep 3 cars full of crap to the nearest Goodwill
12. Celebrate a job well done with a silly movie...and drinks.

Here's a list of DON'Ts:
1. Don't leave anything out/visible/unlocked. If you have tape, pens, chairs, tables, or 1/2 a beer out, some weirdo WILL try to buy it.
2. Don't pick what will inevitably prove to be one of the hottest weekends in CREATION during what has otherwise been a fairly mild summer.
3. Don't pass judgement about your mailman's mate (obviously an inside joke)
4. Don't put kid stuff within reach of kids...they will destroy your chance of getting $3 for that whatever-it-is.
5. Don't lay down in the grass...you WILL fall asleep, and people WILL still buy things from you...
6. Don't take a sleeping pill the night before to ensure "early to bed, early to rise"...just makes the drive that much blurrier.

Hooray for Hormones

This picture is what I imagine such a purely evil element must look like. The complexity of these chemicles could be used of proof that god exists, the effects of the female specific ones would then be proof that said god is not only a man, but a fat, bitter, divorced, ex-frat boy who can't buy a shiney bass boat because his child support payments for his useless ungrateful children are too high. I. Hate. Hormones.
When something is written off as "oh its just hormones" or "she's just hormonal" its like saying, "yeah there's a mushroom cloud, its just an Atom Bomb." Just because it can be explained doesn't mean it isn't atrocious. Hormones come out of nowhere...(ok, these specific hormones come from the ovaries, but at 12-ish when they pop up...nowhere is just as good an explanation). Basically one day your a kid running with other kids, and the next you can't stop crying even though nothing hurts, you hate everyone, a sparce grove of short and curlies appears in a few random places on your body, and the precursers to boobs just make you look like your fat uncle chester (as do your increased upper lip hair, bushy eyebrows,hairy legs and pit stains that your mother insists you're still far too young to worry about).
You spend the next 30 to 40 years trying to find ways to control them. Within years of their arrival, hormones get themselves on a somewhat regular schedule of dropping by. You move from hating your parents, to randomly yelling at roomates, to wanting to drop your co-workers off on Mars (perchlorate and all...for you loyal readers). Here's an example of inner/outter dialogue on days considered basically numbers 27, 28, and 1 of the female cycle:
"Man, this _______ [insert any inanimate object/defense less creature, vegetable or mineral here] is REALLY pissing me off...whoever invented it should be strung up by their toenails and have their teeth burned in their mouth...OUCH, crap! Who punched me in the boobs?!...Dang it...did I wash these pants in hot water again? maybe if I lay down I can zip...Oh christ, WHO is that ugly elephant being in the mirror?! I swear just yesterday I was cute...is it a trillion degrees in here? Am I in the depths of hell?!....What the...why am I CRYING?!!...oooh, are those chocolate pretzels? From when? 6 years ago...that's fine, hand 'em over..."
Sure there are breaks from this cycle where boobs hurt MORE, MORE water is retained, and crying is MORE out of control. And for a possible couple days of hormone induced elation, there is usually the trade off of barfing, weight gain, boob saggage, stretch marks, and generally turning into a train wreck IF all goes well.
There is however an end in sight...and apparently the big punchline is....when these hormones go away, things go all haywire AGAIN!! Flashes of extreme inner heat and sweating, MORE mood swings, a whole new range of hair growth and or loss, and dryness in places where a small amount of humidity is needed for any sort of comfort at ALL.
Yeah for Grrrrl power - and I can't wait to get old either....

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

Apparently Italy has been cracking down on crime. Personally, the only crime in Italy that I can imagine is a man in a buret, a neckerchief and tight striped sweater making off on a bicycle with a loaf of bread...actually, that might be my image of crime in France...no, the Italian guy has a curly mustache...that's the difference.
Soooo, instead of making an effort to crack down by, I don't know...say, having the seasoned lawmakers increase their workload a tad? Or increasing existing law ENFORCEMENT efforts (because I don't exactly see the logic that a lot of crime indicates a lack of laws anyway)?! No, according to this article Italy has handed out law making privelages to its mayors....resulting in some odd laws, for instance:

In Capri, bikinis are A-OK on the beach...but once you step off the sand not so much. I wonder if there's a stipulation for being wrestled off the sand sumo-style? I wonder if tankinis were grouped into the bikini family even though they cover as much as a one piece? I wonder if the male bikini-counterpart, the speedo (aka banana hammock) is suffering the same scrutiny? What about the multitude of other scenarios where bikinis are perfectly acceptable...pools, dressing rooms, pageants, and photo shoots? Or in the office when its made of post-its...
On the beaches of Ereclea, sandcastle building is forbidden. Does anyone else see the irony in restricting the erection of an authoritarian symbol in this manner? And say a person of Shaq-esque proportions shuffles their feet forming a fairly large mound of sorts...can't this be considered a sand displacement and/or structure of some kind?
Restrictions were spread among large groups (and by large, I mean 3 or more people) lounging in a park after dark, PDA's in a car (wow, take me back to high school), and feeding pigeons.
First of all, I am the QUEEN of catastrophic thinking, and I can't figure for the life of me how these things lead to debauchery. Is a bikini off the beach (as opposed to on the beach, because the look itself was not outlawed) anything more than a severe lapse in appropriate fashion judgment? Is a third person in the vicinity while lounging in the park(probably the most non-threatening action next to petting bunnies) a recipe for mass hysteria from mob mentality that will reach epic proportions? Has sandcastle building gotten so wildly out of control on so many occassions that its just not worth the risk to allow kids to flip over their buckets of wet sand? Are there zoning regulations that just can NOT allow the lack of windows common to many sandcastles or is it just the lack of structural integrity and purely an insurance issue at hand? Whatever it is, if there's a potential problem, and I can't come up with it...then it probably simply doesn't exist.
Also...is there a chance that there are ANY existing laws that have already covered some of the potential disturbances of the peace that these situations present? Like a good old fashion indecent exposure statute would cover scantily clad sun bathers from wandering the streets AS WELL AS any vehicular passion from reaching a point of...well, indecency. A closing time on public parks, while possibly not infallable could probably reduce the problems of groups gathering, if in fact this has become a severe issue...
I think its time for Europe's boot to kick ITSELF back into reality. Stop griping, and make me some gnocci!

Things that should be simple, but aren't....

Sometimes, while my mind is wandering, I wonder how something so easy became so complex.
For instance, the whole process of getting a president...who decided at some point that delegates, super delegates, and nearly 2 years of wackiness would make things easier, more fair, or better in any way? I doubt that person is still alive, I DON'T doubt that person is a man, I doubt that I care enough to google it, and I DON'T doubt that my opinion sounds ignorant. Its not researched, just a passing thought I had, that started like this..."hey self, did you ever wonder why once the registration deadline is up, there's not just a president chosen based on number of democrats versus number of republicans. As a general rule, doesn't each vote in their own direction?"
Also, I can't even stop myself from wondering about stopped traffic on the freeway. It happens every day, normally twice a day all over the place...but what the freak?! Freeways have no stops and even when there is an accident it rarely takes up all the lanes. Also the exits are off to the side for a reason, so that doesn't cut the mustard in my mind either. All I can see in my mind, is the 2-5 line of side by side cars at the front of that group of stopped people...stopped for no reason with a big expanse of road in front of him.
Speaking of the freeway...how do they decide which exit is the original exit...the numero uno. Lately I've gotten off on exit number 430 and 200-something...and wondered where #1 was AND if they extend the freeway in the direction opposite of #2, what is done?
So this is definitely not a complete list of things I would oversimplify in my world, it actually isn't even a good representation...but that's it for now.