Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Those Deadly Swine II

Sorry about the phantom post.
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So you may be wondering why I am posting with such regularity. There is a simple answer. One that I think will answer pretty much all variations and details of the above question. The answer is this:

Not sure really....

Glad I could help.
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So apparently H1N1, the dreaded Swine Flu, is a pandemic. As in, like an epidemic, but worse, and with more screaming involved. As far as how deadly it is, it kills nowhere near as many as the regular flu's 1500 or so per year ( not sure what the actual numbers are involved with the Swine version, but from what I understand there has been one death so far in my area and a small handful across Canada... I'll get back to that in a minute). So it's not the actual deadlyness of it... apparently it's how many people are catching it. Apparently it is effecting way more people than the normal flu. This says to me (stop me if I'm wrong here) that each individual case is LESS dangerous than the regular flu. And if it's just the number of people being effected, where is the panic about the common cold...?

HOWEVER...

There have been a lot of talk about making the Swine Flu shot manditory. As in Compulsory with a capital Comp. To throw this in perspective: AIDS is considered probably the nastiest virus we have going these days, being extremely virulent and very determined to cause a long, slow, unpleasant death, and there is no cure, however there are a number of hideously expensive and also nasty treatments. AIDS has almost by itself destroyed Africa, an entire continent... Cancer is caused by the breakdown of genetic matter within the cell, and as such we all will eventually get it unless we die of something else first. And of course the regular flu, which we discussed earlier. None of these qualify as serious enough to curb our freedoms for our own good. Neither were the Bird Flu, SARS, the West Nile Virus (which I and my family caught, nasty but generally flulike), and any of the other horrifying viral threats to the world in the past 10 years. Nope, they all are small potatoes compared to the Swine Flu.

In actual fact, experts are not even actually worried about what the Swine Flu can do, much like the Bird Flu, it is essentially just a regular flu for the moment. BUT, they are worried about what it could mutate into... you know, if it actually became deadly and was already as widespread as this, then we'd really be in trouble... yadda yadda yadda. Of course, mutation doesn't work like that, suddenly and across populations of trillions of individual viruses... it works, by definition, in an infinitessimally small majority. and of course, it also works in any of an infinite variety of ways and at any time. Further, if it is that likely to mutate into a more dangerous form, it is just as likely to mutate into a less dangerous form. In other words, it's not deadly (relatively speaking) now, it most likely won't become deadly, and if it does it most likely won't stay deadly for long.

So the government has decided to force us all to take the Swine Flu vaccination, but not because it is any more dangerous than any other virus. Cute.

Further, Flu shots are only minimally effective because the flu in any form, mutates often. By this I don't mean into Horrifying Super Viruses, just regular, relatively innocuous mutations. Normally when the head honchos in charge decide to make a new flu shot for the coming year, they GUESS how the flu is likely to mutate and they make a vaccination for that. They are always wrong as to how it will turn out (at least so far) and because the flu is a cockroachly tough little bug the vaccination has to be ultra-specific to work.

To recap further- the government has decide to suspend our freedoms to prevent a virus that is not especially deadly with a vaccination that likely will not work. As I said before, cute.

So why are they pulling this nonsense? I mean, we are in a massive economic slump, our deficits are ballooning out of control, and we have bigger fish to fry. Do we actually need the expense for no significant reason? Couldn't we use that money, for example, to give our idiot politicians another huge undeserved raise? Maybe give it away to GM to help them take jobs away from us and encourage them to also avoid the best people for the decision making jobs?

I'm not even going to suggest they use it to build more recycling plants. For one, I already have suggested it, and second, there is no way our politicians would choose that over an undeserved raise.

No, in my humble opinion, seeing as how our own government is not the only one following this anane line of reasoning, it is the pharmaceutical companies which manufacture the vaccines. They are the self-professed experts in the field, they are the ones which would be doing any research which might contradict these ideas, they are the ones which train our doctors (the second line of experts one would guess) and they are the only ones who are likely to benefit from it financially. So they are bossing our governments around much like the auto manufacturers were not too long ago, whether anyone admits it or not. Big Pharma no longer works for our governments and us, it's the other way around. They are using us as research subjects. Just screwing around to see what happens. Because they can and because it'll make them some fast cash. They've been doing it for a while- it's a matter of public record our governments were complicit in experimenting on the black populatin of the 1930's with syphilis, there was the MK Ultra experiments in Quebec in the 60's, and the laws governing Indian Reserves outlaw their right to refuse medical treatment or experimentation whatsoever.
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So on the off chance you think the government will actually listen to our opinion, maybe we should say no. You know, unless you have some kind of health problem which would mean flu is a serious risk for you. Ultimately if a majority of the population refuses the shot, there is nothing the government can actually do about it. Think about it, it's like voting... it's your democratic responsibilty.
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You know, or just go along. I'm sure Big Pharma is much more interested in our welfare than the government, and they'll probably let us vote for their CEOs and so on. Really.
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Well, that's enough ranting for now, I have a Man in Black knocking at my door who doesn't know about my security cameras... he thinks I can't see his 14 buddies and the stunguns. Hee hee hee...
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Bye bye,
The Schismatic Lexiphage.

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Those deadly swine

Thursday, October 22, 2009

The Almighty Dollar

Hello again, greetings from the Lair...
Flying in the face of convention I have decided to post again in the same month, prompting widespread angst among the Worldwide Circle of Evil.
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So I know you're all expecting me to lay the metaphorical beating to our lovable premier Dalton McGuinty. You would be right to expect this. A year or two ago Dalton warned us that we "may" fall into a deficit in the neighbourhood of a few hundred million dollars... in those short months he has upgraded that possibility of a minor deficit to ABSOLUTELY, CERTAINLY, THE BIGGEST DEFICIT ONTARIO HAS EVER SEEN. This is quite something considering the heady days of the Bob Rae NDP, who single handedly brought Ontario to the brink of bankruptcy. Well folks, McGuinty's possible little deficit is DOUBLE the size of Bob Rae's biggest shortfall. The important thing to remember, stammers McGuinty, is that this is NOT HIS FAULT. A great comfort to us all no doubt. Of course spending money like a crack-addicted lottery winner has nothing to do with it... the $4.8 billion in program spending? Not an issue. Spending $650 million on the goofy Swine Flu paranoia? Not an issue. Handing billions over to auto companies to facilitate their moving jobs to Mexico? Also not an issue. In fact, despite the world economy being down by 12% (which accounts for maybe half of the problem) and Mike Harris, who has been out of office for more than half a decade, what is the problem, Mr. McGuinty?

"Er... well... harmonizing the sales taxes is the most important move we can make for Ontario's economy."

"Errrr... Okay Mr. McGuinty... not that that answered my question, but what do you mean? How is this so big and important a step? What will it do to help business?"

"Er... Uhhhmmmm... harmonizing the sales taxes is the most important step we can take for Ontario's economy."

"Yeah but how? This just sounds like another enormous tax grab. It sounds like it'll terribly maim businesses to save them two lines of paperwork. How's this gonna dig us out of our financial hole?"

"Errrrrrmmmmm... harmonizing the sales taxes is the biggest and best thing we can do for Ontario's economy."

"Ooooooookay... thanks, Weiner Boy."
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Also on the Weenie's agenda: increasing the minimum distance between a power windmill and residential space to 2 kilometers. This is to reduce noise and vibrations, which apparently are not caused by traffic, subways, trains, air conditioners, heating systems, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, stereos, weather, playing the drums, naturally flowing bodies of water, wind chimes, and people living in the area in general. And of course we can't get engineers to minimize these problems. No, much better to subject our population to unscrubbed coal pollution and toxic waste. Much less of a hazard.
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Also apparently on the Education Premier's table is an ongoing campaign to remove the Elder Smurf from Autism therapy. Apparently despite his rapidly advancing speech and social skills he is not progressing in any manner and should be removed in a few months as keeping him there would be unethical.
Despite the Circle of Evil's assertions to the contrary, the Elder Smurf is advancing rapidly- he is mostly toilet trained, can dress himself with minimal assistance (he needs fasteners and socks done for him, and a little help with his arms and shoes). The Younger Smurf is also advancing rapidly, although there have been many issues with dumping whole pitchers of milk on the floor that have been giving me a slight psychotic break. No biggie.
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Welllll... I'd like to complain a bit more but the loonies who run our utopia have given me far too much to work with, so I'm gonna go watch zombie movies and eat spaghetti in bed. Ahhh, luxury.
Talk atcha soon,
The Rancorous Lexiphage.

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Saturday, October 10, 2009

My longest sabbatical yet

Hello everyone... seems people have been looking at my leavings even when I wasn't, prompting me back to the director's seat for another episode... Sorry about the little vacation I took; I assure you that although it was a blogging vacation my time was full of other death-defying challenges so I didn't get lazy (quite).
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So, to bring you up to speed, in the past year the smurfs have exceeded the racial average of three apples tall... The elder smurf is mostly toilet trained and dresses himself with minimal assistance, the younger smurf has been pushing the toilet training but is still a creature of diaperial habit. However she has been learning to fix herself snacks- and can pour herself a drink of milk or butter a slice of bread with a modicum of supervision and mess. Both have been talking much more; the elder using sentences in excess of four words when in the right mood, and two words together whenever he likes. The younger is still using single and double words, but can recite the alphabet or the numbers up to 30.
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I am still single but no longer chronically; I get out upon occasion with persons of the female persuasion despite the efforts of the Neighbour Lady, perhaps once a month or so... I still telecommunicate on a pretty regular basis with my P.A.L., who has recently shed her female companion to some extent or other and is therefore in more or less the same scenario as I... with a similar Neighbour Lady (P.A.N.L. for short)... perhaps we can work out an exit strategy we can share with anyone who happens to find themselves in the Middle East.
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Recently had another battle with the Cable Company; not sure why they insist on these regular duels on bridges over lava (oops, magma)... but perhaps instead of vanquishing them in this method I should buy some form of repellant. Speaking of evil cable company schemes, you have probably heard of the recent bid by the CRTC and the cable companies to raise tax money for the purpose of supporting local TV despite the fact that they already squander a similar levy... Of course when I give someone money for a specific purpose and they squander it on buying themselves a new stereo, my solution is to immediately give them more money... we can trust them with this one, folks... (ahem)... Of course this has nothing to do with the fact the TV system has been switching over to digital... analog antennas being the most obvious competition for local TV, now that that is more or less eliminated they have time on their hands they need spending money for.
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Speaking of evil idiots, Dalton McGuinty has fallen in line with the tradition of Jean Cretien by losing a billion dollars on a pointless and incomplete project strangely remeniscent of the HRDC "What's a billion" era and their big-brother computer. Apparently Ontario has been working on a province-wide OHIP database which will contain all of our medical information... to construct this they handed out a billion worth of untendered and unsupervised contracts to various parties with no effective obligations attached to it, and assumed that a functioning system would magically result. Of course handing our our private information to hundreds of people without that level of supervision couldn't possibly be a bad thing, especially seeing as how we all will still have trouble accessing out own health records but captains of industry have their own copies now available for a light read on the toilet if they wish. Let's hope they occasionally supervise their employees with our information, Weiner Boy won't do it.
Of course the thing to remember here is that whatever happens, however this stuff is misused or lost, it isn't McGuinty's fault. That's why Joe Voter should keep him on deck for re-election- throwing our money and private information out to whoever feels like having it is much better than allowing anyone to build a Muslim school. Ahem.
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Well that's a fairly solid recap after nearly a year on hold... I'll try to keep up a somewhat faster rate of posting in the impending future... Ciao for now, The Abstruse and Loquacious Lexiphage. :)

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