Scientists at the Center for Disease Creation (CDC) in Atlanta said today that the next big thing will be billygoat fever. Symptoms include sneezing, butting heads, unusually powerful spasms of ambition and eating other people’s clothing.
Some children who come down with this particular strain of fever may want to lick the glue off of tin cans, which no longer exist. Despite this, parents are advised to keep them away from recycling bins.
Another common symptom is climbing or leaping on top of things, such as the goat shed.
Trends speculators and mental health professionals worldwide were proposing that this could be an extremely popular form of fever anxiety.
“Most people find goats quite frightening,” said psychologist Dr. Gabby Horn. “That have that ‘reputation’, it’s unsettling. It’s healthy to be very worried about this. In fact I would be more concerned if you’re not worried. That may be a sign of a much deeper problem. Not being scared may be a sign that you have issues.”
“Goats have huge egos that have obviously run out of control,” said Paul Morrison, a musician and guru. “All they do is complain. Have you ever heard a goat say something constructive? They just bleat all the time. They’re obviously doing this for recognition and no other reason.”
“We have reason to be alarmed, but don’t freak out or anything,” said Barack Obama, reached moments ago on his BlackBerry. “With goat fever you have to be calm, or you’ll scare the goats.” Obama has several planets in Capricorn, according to most of his charts.
Chickens may be involved; they were seen cavorting in the same barnyard. As a result, the acclaimed Mid-Atlantic Chicken and Goat Show, scheduled for next weekend, was canceled.
A total of three cases of billygoat fever have been reported in the United States. Schools will be closed from coast to coast on Wednesday, as a precaution.
The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a travel ban for goats.
“They are no longer allowed to fly, not even business class,” said FAA spokesman Don Capra. “We had an incident today in Washington where a goat tried to board the Newark shuttle. If you’re a goat, stay home. Repeat, goats: stay home.”
Amtrak would also be banning goats or anyone suspected of being one. Grayhound and Trailways quickly followed suit, leading to fears that there would be herds of hitchhiking goats along the nation’s highways.
Former Senator Joe Biden said that he had been having nightmares of being chased by herds of wild mountain goats and didn’t plan to leave the grounds of U.S. Naval Observatory, where he lives, for several more weeks. “I’m worried,” he said, peering up from a telescope, trained at the ground rather than the sky. “Everyone should be worried. Don’t ride with a goat in your car, and if you see one in an elevator, stay out and tell your family to stay out.”
The vice presidential barber shaved off Biden’s mutton chops earlier today, saying that nobody wanted to take any chances.
One other thing to remember is that plagues are an old human fear, archetypal and primordial. And only slightly less old is the impulse of certain individuals to profit from disaster. Pessimism is also a problem, but on our planet it is understandable enough.
I’m more inclined to think that most of the federal agencies are running a little gun shy right now, especially after Katrina and a few other failures – like peanut butter e-coli et al. The public screams like a bunch of maniacal demons everytime someone in government farts sideways instead of up. It is amazing there are any tomato farmers left after the tomato disaster that wasn’t.
If swine flu turns into a pandemic, government is blamed. If swine flu doesn’t turn into pandemic flu, government will still be blamed. Lots of people will make money from flu, plague or no plague, just because fear is so rampant. It will cost the taxpayers a fortune, and what else is new?
I know that most federal employees take their work very seriously, and worry about the data being correct on reports. No-one can be 100 percent accountable because no-one is perfect, unless it is a parachute stuffer or an airplane mechanic. All in all I think most people who actually work for a living are pretty darned honest and strive to do their best everyday. When a mistake happens in government (or not – maybe someone in private industry screwed up and wasn’t caught), someone’s head is nearly always chopped off, so the federal employees are scared too.
How did we get to be such a mean-spirited bunch of people? We have this union mentality that tries to enforce rules on everyone and everything – and it isn’t natural at all. You can’t sell an onion at a farmer’s market without adequate insurance, because some idiot might eat a speck of manure that is still attached to the roots.
HalfdeWitte… I am sorry I can’t give this a weightier attention, but across the board I cannot assume that those who hold a certain amount of economic power are all that prescient. For the most part they are hapless schlubbs (the wealthy I know, anyway), with hordes of people expecting them to use their money responsibly (uh, “responsibly” vis a vis xyz corporation, extended-family, foundation). Oh it’s all very cosa nostra to be sure, but there is huge pressure on all sides not to be a malevolent asshole, too.
I spoze I’m just not in that ‘eat the rich’ mood.
But you go ahead…
Also, taking soundings from the phenomenological method of Chomsky and Herman, exemplified in their propaganda model, the skilled viewer learns to ‘read between the lines’ or discern what is not said.
Let’s take a look: First we have HN51 Bird Flu. There is talk by the authorities of a catastrophic pandemic, unlike any seen since 1918, that wiped out millions.
If you look merely at the fear tactic and its patent absurdity you are being enticed to miss something.
The subtext is “A virus is coming, (from a non-human source, you understand) that has power to wipe out millions because, en masse, we will lack pre-existing immunity”
“We are stockpiling tamiflu in anticipation” they ‘reassure’ us. The danger is purportedly that a natural virus will mutate (notice the interesting grooming?). Things may progress from bird-bird to bird-human.
A few birds die.
Now, we have ‘swine flu’ (a misnomer). It is great that pigs are now implicated because the subliminal message is the one picked up by Anatoly “it’s transmuting. Billy goats next, then rats, then cats and dogs, then…”
So, why all this investment? Why are leaflets and advice being sent out to every household in the UK? (What the US policy is, I know not).
Again the subtext is that we are being assured that a global pandemic is going to happen. How can people in authority KNOW that, such that they predict it with certainty?
If we all read it as a fear tactic alone, then the lie has conceivably been smuggled in under a veil of lesser, traditional deceptions. When you look at things in terms of an invisible subtext, it gets clearer. ALL deceptions leave a trail/trace. Deception reveals a surface level story that decoys from the deeper agenda.
Here, the clever lie is turning deception against itself. “If we propagandize them with a level of bullshit that is obvious, they will only read it as a crude fear tactic”. The fact that this ruse is so transparent should tell us that we are being deceived into believing that this is only a crude fear tactic, all the while being prepared for the “we told you so” guilt trip that would inevitably follow.
We have been ‘told’ since bird flu and now into swine flu that, there is going to be a virus that will have a human source (er, not on a cosmetic level, see?), it will transmute in a deadly way, such that there will be a devastating global effect, potentially killing gazillions. The government will “try its best” to stockpile antivirus tamiflu (e.g. some level of protection will exist somewhere and be accessible to ‘some’ people – who exactly?) – an antivirus which cannot possibly be optimally effective for the mutating virus anyhow.
We have been given a scenario with definitives, that we who have been saturated by the lies will decode as the ‘deception’ it always was, and so impute to a mere control strategy. Meanwhile, we have been prepared. Who will be able to say afterward that we were not warned? Watertight.
All that is needed is said virus. How great if you could design your own, with precision, and eventually blame the walruses?
I think the key is the absurdity of the current exaggerations. They smell of overkill, obviousness.
Of course, reading between the lines is a risky business. But there is information in all publicized lies and frameworks/trajectories can be discerned.
It’s all very well citing rich philanthropists, mystes (such as Gates) but that isn’t the point, really.
I have stated a position that does not need to be watertight, merely suggestive.
Did you stop to think that the powerful indulge paranoia regarding the powerless?
Look at the G20. When enough people are left with the choice of 1) peaceful protest that governments allow but completely ignore or 2) other forms of activism that might make a real difference but governments label/malign/outlaw how long will it be before the powerful (who are supposed to govern on our behalf, but govern on their own) say “oh dear, this lot are becoming more than a little unmanageable, seemingly we can’t contain them with the time honoured strategies any more” and subsequently ‘engineer’ the solution to their problem, particularly via the use of man made viruses.
Is this really so unthinkable?
My point is that if you assume that it is, well, there’s one Grand Canyon of a blind spot for you! So maybe it is all about Pascal’s wager. If I’m wrong well great, but if I’m correct, well, keeping awake might just be of some use.. No?
Hmmm…
“The monster that had been created, can no longer be domesticated, so in the end, it must be sacrificed. It’s them or us: The powerful few or the vulnerable masses. This is NOT fiction.”
De Witte… this *is* a little over the top, no?
“All becomes imaginable when conscience has died within the elite – self preservation ascends the throne.”
Five Richest: Gates (ehgghh mas o menos decent), Buffett (yeaaaahhh!), Carlos Slim (a sweetheart), Larry Ellison (oh, brother), Ingmar Kamprad (yeeeeah! woohoo!)
Although I’m not in love with Gates or Ellison, none of the five people who own the world’s first trillion dollars between them show any symptoms of being zombie elite.
A decade or two of investigative reporting taught me there is such a thing as paranoia. And there is such a thing as something to be worried about.
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Great observations Eric! A call for balance. My original post was intended as a polarity in the dialectic – a stimulation point.
In sorting this out, however, I suggest that economics be the first factor in establishing the veracity of a fear; that profit motive be examined; that the cost of implementing something, and the economic impact be considered.
——–
Economics – oikonomia: How expansive is the house? How sustainable its growth? How renewable/available its resources?
Water scarcity. Food scarcity. Population explosion. Historically, nations have proven themselves capable of justifying genocide for ny of a number of warped reasons – probably anything but, rational and defensible.
For example, why kill a lot of people when you can just scare them and get them to do what you want, such as spend money? The United States seems perfectly willing to do its own special form of friendly fascism, but it has to be profitable, and it has to be pretty cheap. In other words, you have to do the cost-benefit analysis from the viewpoint of the people you’re worried about.
——–
Of course, ‘institutional psychopathy’ is a growing phenomenon. There doesn’t have to be a ‘why?’ Nevertheless, if one was to develop Foucault’s theory of the Panopticon (all-seeing eye), toward contemporary planetary contingencies, one sees that internalising (implanting) this panopticon successfully is increasingly challenging on a large scale. Ultimately, fear is an analgesic, not simply a strategy for maintaining compliance and consumerist hegemony. At a certain point of the scale, a groundswell eventually develop tolerance, people unite, they begin to laugh at the lies and eventually, enough people start to penetrate the mendacity and wake up. They form new consciousness. They develop immunity. A fulcrum point is tipped.
Sheer logistics speak of eventual revolt. It is inevitable.
The monster that had been created, can no longer be domesticated, so in the end, it must be sacrificed. It’s them or us: The powerful few or the vulnerable masses. This is NOT fiction.
All becomes imaginable when conscience has died within the elite – self preservation ascends the throne.
A decade or two of investigative reporting taught me there is such a thing as paranoia. And there is such a thing as something to be worried about. In sorting this out, however, I suggest that economics be the first factor in establishing the veracity of a fear; that profit motive be examined; that the cost of implementing something, and the economic impact be considered.
For example, why kill a lot of people when you can just scare them and get them to do what you want, such as spend money? The United States seems perfectly willing to do its own special form of friendly fascism, but it has to be profitable, and it has to be pretty cheap. In other words, you have to do the cost-benefit analysis from the viewpoint of the people you’re worried about.
The boy sees many conversations, and wants to play tag.
Is it not time we all relax a bit and stick to the guns that are pointed at our own heads? I’m thinkin’ it’s probably best to negotiate one’s own demise, prior to negotiating another’s.
I could be wrong. All’s cool.
All I do know is there are a lot of thoughts flying… It’s beautiful psychic land, I see a space where people have the opportunity to freely ditch the heavies, no offenses all around, accepted as individuals acknowledging, our own space in time, which is where the present moment exists, which is where peace or happiness, or whatever, exists.
I’m waiting for Sea-star sickness, where we start to grow extra limbs! I’ve always thought I needed more arms! Wouldn’t 4 arms be cool?!
Sleepy laughter,
Jere
LOL, Hoot’n’Holler.
Good Morning, America!
paranoia = pejorative word. This is tantamount to politicizing the status quo.
Who defines what paranoia is? Usually, the oppressor. Being dismissive is rarely a virtue! Think on that..
Oh goddess, I love the smell of paranoia in the morning.
Mockery, the bedfellow of complacency?
Inoculate against ‘reality’ by rejecting a manipulative construct, then maybe the usually awake, also fall asleep?
The real threat is one of us being groomed to ignore a virus that has been manufactured, with stockpiles of antivirus being in the hands of only the powerful.
Where the authorities can ‘blame’ nature for its own calculated atrocities, has to be the dream scene for them, surely..?? Poetry in motion for the powerful. A clever cull.
Stay awake!
Cabron!
“Symptoms include sneezing, fever, butting heads, unusually powerful spasms of ambition and eating other people’s clothing.”
Eating other people’s clothes? does that come with dressing (groan if you must)… And butting heads *while* sneezing a fever. Oh. My. God… sign me up! Shall we rent a tour-bus? Infection Express!!