Wag the Pig

Hi Folks,

This is Planet Waves shortstop Cam Hassard chiming in with some of the day’s juicier nuggets. If you have other bits of exciting or odd news, please do post them to the comments area below or email me at cam.hassard (at) gmail.com. They said after my 111th column I would get my own Planet Waves email address, so you’ll be hearing from me a lot.

To say it’s been a difficult task to get away from the media saturation is a fair understatement. It’s like getting away from pork at a wedding. After waking up in a warm sweat this morning, I was thrilled to find that it was more due to the overheated roasting Sun spilling across Queens rather than a personal outbreak of swine flu. Despite growing reports of flu cases around the world, respectfully, no one has lost their life from it outside Mexico. Meanwhile thousands have died of complications from ordinary influenza this year; this is an ongoing issue. Flu is not good for you or other living things.

In an interesting lowdown from the ABC [kind of like the BBC, only American] the writers demonstrate a history of pandemic-esque circumstances and our collective tendency toward panic. it seems that when the big boys cry wolf, anxiety sets in so much that we remain essentially unsure whether to ignore it, pat it or shoot it.

We reported yesterday that the dubious corporation Baxter stands to make a lot of money from this whole situation, despite well-reported prior negligence where the health of the public is concerned. For big pharmaceuticals it’s business as usual — or, perhaps, unusual. With probable boosts in profit from anti-swine medicine, a number of drug companies’ share prices went up significantly this week, particularly Gilead Sciences, manufacturer of Tamiflu. (Gilead, in case you were wondering, was where Rummy used to make big, responsible decisions before becoming Bush’s number one defense lackey, and the co-inventor of that brilliant thing known as Iraq.)

Gilead shares would no doubt explode in the event of a pandemic: the FDA has just created measures for Tamiflu to be broadly dispensed in an emergency — even to children under the age of 1, which goes against requirements of the drug’s own label. The problem with Tamiflu is that it’s ineffective unless used within 48 hours after exposure, that is to say, considerably before symptoms have appeared. So what do you do, take it every day? As a supplement? A prophylactic?

Additionally, Time primes the scene for a dose of collective jabbing, harking back to lessons apparently learned from the more mild swine flu outbreak of 1976. Without screaming paranoid rants about government control and New World Order (I’ll save that for late at night, when everyone is a little extra paranoid), I find this stuff highly dubious as well as interesting.

Ultimately, it’s very noticeable how after consuming the plate for the past few weeks, pesky economic issues and things like torture memos have suddenly and very rapidly fallen by the wayside. Maybe we’re dealing with our first major case of �Wag the Pig’. As usual, the ever-faithful Onion reports promotes some healthy perspective.

Until next time, for Planet Waves this is

Cam Hassard
New York City

20 thoughts on “Wag the Pig”

  1. Patty, thanks for the reminder about “Disappearance of the Universe”. It is no understatement to say that book changed my life completely in the few days it took to read it.

    I think I’m going to order another copy from Amazon right now. 🙂

    — S

  6. I thought the chemical ahem, I mean, pharmecutical companies were already feeding “it” to us by way of all those great mind/body altering drugs passing through us and coming round again via our water supply?

    I’m a Mad Cow(pig/deer) and I’m Not Gonna Take “It” Any More.

  7. A company called Gilead is in charge of handing out vaccines during a panic? Call me bonkers, but I can’t think of that without pinging on The Handmaid’s Tale.

  8. Victoria, I grew up on a farm too. Pigs are probably the most intelligent farm animal. They select a spot in their pen for using the restroom, and will not eat or sleep there. Cow’s crap and pee everywhere, but they won’t eat where they pee’d or pooped the year before, hence the little tufts of tall grass all over the pasture.

    Imagine the stress of both animals, being confined to a feedlot!! the wasting diseases started when animal remains were ground up into their feed – it is called tankage. Tankage was fed to the deer population out west (they said it was an accident) and now the deer have the wasting disease too, and it is called Mad Cow Disease. Tankage is a little bit like Soylent Green (from the movie). Any day now the pharmacy companies will start feeding it to humans.

    I started reading ‘The disappearance of the universe’ again this week, and my goodness doesn’t the ‘ego’ script just keep getting more and more fantastic? We really must replace our fear with faith and love. We can rise above it – and maybe making fun of it is one way to do that.

  9. I read that the govt. of Egypt has ordered that all the swine in their country be slaughtered as a precautionary measure. *More head shaking*

  10. word, pigs are somethng to watch eat. They insert there snouts in the food and the food flies all over the place. Much noise emanates from the pig at the trough. The pig is much better at eating free range than out of a container.

    I was thinking yoga for weight watchers, but a pig game, much better. And much more fun.

    The local group spent their time playing with balls in lieu of the usual focus on starvation. So play, yes.

  11. http://www.passthepigs.com/

    I propose a Planet Waves version of the game, based on Flying Pigs (as planets) and rather than a dice game, let’s use the idea of “Twister” — ?

    Surely grappling to take position on Neptune or Venus whilst posing as a pig (each player MUST wear halloween fairy wings and a plastic pig nose before taking a turn) would be worth many more points than tossing pig-shaped dice? ROTFL 😉

    Or, in the aftermath of Bushco – and those who could not let go – pharmecutical companies, perhaps? — I see them now gasping in desperation as we laugh away their fearmongering playing a VERY (fun and) child-like game of Twist Away the Flying Pigs.

    (Highly recommended for those Weight Watchers currently overeating due to the stress of it all, as mentioned in a different post.)

  12. wait, no wait — I mean “slurrping” down that Big Gulp (don’t pigs slurp a lot?) or perhaps as a current event, “choking” it down.

  13. I do have favorite Animal Farm positions when playing a personal version of Pass the Pigs. (Or is that anytime sex? No matter.)

    Oh yes, the bio engineered thing is one of the many fearumors.

    I still flashback to the college student/s on primetime a couple weeks ago insisting that they were not remotely considering cancelling their Spring Break/s in Cancun even though armed militia roamed theoretically providing protection. Eerie, that was — a premonition, perhaps of things to come.

    Too Good (re: ignorant with a hearty lack of empathy?) for war, perhaps, but not for a hearty round of Pass the Pigs whilst sipping down that Big Gulp.

  14. To the gamers, I love it. Sounds like much more fun than the game I played called Feed the Pigs.

    I have a pink sow and six little pink pigelets posed on my window sill. I am going to collect them and give them a roll. Heck I am going to take them outside and put them in the mud and let em roll.

  16. I wasn’t gonna go whole hog on the pig thing. But I got a call from a disgruntled (no pun intended) member of a weight watchers group. The members have all gained since the last meeting and attribute it to stress and eating like pigs (her words, not mine). Now there is much to say about the sun shining on our other friend, the cow, on this. But it is the hooves of the pig that I hear stampeding at the moment.

    I see these pigs stampeding out of the gates of captivity to the thing they really value. Nearby there is a resort. They break down the walls, take a flying leap, and land in the mud bath. There is no sweeter smile than that of a pig in the mud.

    I’m not sure about mud, the mixture of dirt and water warmed by the sun, but perhaps it would clear the mucous allowing the pig to breathe in the air. One cannot have a Sherlock, without a Watson. It is elementary.

    And contrary to popular belief, the pig is a clean animal. If I remember correctly, the pig is one farm animal that will not shit where it sleeps. (This is not to be confused with OCDs who can only take a shit at home. ) What is going on in the hovel?

    A CA playboy whisked me away to a resort of palms once. Found out later our frollicking was on his mother’s credit card. I guess he thought it was okay cuz she had alzheimers. He was caught. But it was inside those gates where I sank into green mud.

  17. www dot youtube dot com/watch?v=GBeKB7aKzOs

    This scientist claims that the new swine flu was bioengineered.

  19. a fine game! Could never manage to score the ‘leaning jowler’ though. Surely impossible…:)

  20. I got out “Pass the Pigs” from my game cupboard. You know this game? lots of little piggies and a tally sheet; whatever way the pigs land (when you roll them like dice) you get points. And special points for special positions.

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