(Unsanitized) Notes From a Friday Afternoon

(testing the immunity of my mind)

For your consideration: another curious collection of thoughts, reactions, and observations that didn’t make it into a full-length post this week...

• When I read the first two sentences of yesterday’s front-page lead story (Visitors to an open house in Squirrel Hill last weekend were greeted by the homeowner, but not with a handshake. "We're doing elbow bumps," Janet Anti told her guests, offering the outside of her bent arm.), I thought they must be ironic. When I read the first half of the third sentence (“Because of the national emergency,” she added,), I was convinced they were ironic. When I read the rest of that sentence (...and everyone nodded knowingly.), I realized I was wrong. And I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.

• By the time I got to this sentence — At least one professor at the University of Pittsburgh has asked students to e-mail their assignments rather than turn them in on paper to avoid transmitting the virus — I was ready to get up, go to the kitchen, get some tinfoil, and make myself a hat.

• It’s the flu, people, not the plague. I know three people who got it, went to a bed for a couple of days, got better, and moved on with their lives. In the six weeks or so since it’s hit Allegheny County, exactly two people, both of whom had underlying medical conditions, have died. Which puts this flu on par with pretty much every other flu that comes down the pike. Except, of course, for the hysterical press coverage.

• I’m beginning to think the most viral thing about H1N1 is its marketing.

• Or else its hysteria.

• The lone voice of reason in that front-page freak-out belonged to Natalie Caplan, Director of the great Carriage House Children’s Center in Squirrel Hill: We just do a lot of hand-washing, but no more than we already did. Perhaps because Ms. Caplan, the folks at Carriage House, and other people with sense and reason and good health habits know that you should be washing your hands and keeping them away from your face and coughing and sneezing into your sleeve all the time — not just when the news you watch and the Twitter feeds you read have terrified you into believing that the Black Death Pig awaits anyone who touches more than a properly clothed elbow.  

• And don’t even get me started on the guy I heard on the radio yesterday, no doubt speaking for plenty of other people whose minds are as uncritical as their web browsers, asking Allegheny County Health Department Director Bruce Dixon — who’s been an oasis of reason in this Sahara of paranoia — if the H1N1 vaccine was, indeed, made from mercury and anti-freeze.  

• Dr. Dixon gave the man a far more detailed and thoughtful response than he deserved. Or likely comprehended. What he should have said was: Yes, it is. And there are many terrible side effects. But the good news is you can go outside all winter and not have to wear a coat!

• A White House basketball game with no female players? Really? That’s the reason some liberal columnists and bloggers have decided to beat up on President Obama? I guess now that he’s ended warrantless wiretapping, eliminated military tribunals, refused to support Patriot Act extensions, allowed gays to serve openly in the military, and ended the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have nothing more important to criticize.

• Oh, wait. Never mind.

• Here’s a question, in this week of incessant political commercials, that’s been nagging me for a couple of days: How, exactly, do Superior Court Judges protect my family? What do they do, walk a beat? Run a home security system on the side? Send a bailiff over to my house every now and then to make sure we're alright?

• I must have missed the memo that declared last weekend the It’s Alright to Park in Front of Fire Hydrants Weekend. If my travels were any indication, people in Oakland, in Shadyside, and (especially) at South Side Works must have gotten multiple copies. 

• This week's best bit of Useless Information: Tweety Bird was originally drawn as a baby bird without feathers, until censors decided he looked naked that way.

• An update on the iTunes Facebook page yesterday afternoon offered fans a free, 20-song music sampler while supplies last. Which prompted Adam, my increasingly sardonic fifteen-year-old, to note, Yeah, like they can run out of downloads.

• That line, besides making me laugh, made me think back to the glory days of Usenet newsgroups, when posters were always carping and fretting about running out of bandwidth. You know, as if it were some sort of non-renewable resource like coal or natural gas or competitive Pirates' teams. 

• If you had only the Fox Sports crowd shots to go on, you'd swear that all the fans at Yankee Stadium are nothing but boorish, chest-thumping louts. That can't possibly be true.

• Can it?