Mason Baveux and the Flu

Davey said I could write some more, as he’s still goin like the Battery Bunny on that course he’s writing.  You know, this is hard this bloggery stuff, as you got to think some and do some hunting out the facts.

Like this swine flu.  Everyone’s all up on their back legs that Mexican pigs are going to kill us all with a flu that’ll make your gonads drop off and your eyes turn to cinders just before you wake up at the pearly gates and say what th’ hell was that?

First off, you can’t get it from pigs, even Mexican pigs, so’s its still OK to eat the bacon, or the roasts, or the chops.  It’s called a swine flu as that’s one of the places it came from.  Apparently, she’s also a bit of bird flu and just your normal, garden variety, human flu. 

Flu, yessiree, she’s flu, but the swine part, is like calling all cars Martha’s Arse, as it’s got a big trunk what bounces open from time to time.  It’s still just a car and your car ain’t the same as my car.

Now, as for how you get the Mexican flu?  Well, I looked her up, as Davey said I had to.

When somebody sneezes on you, there’s a bunch of microscopic snots and wet spots what come flying out.  That’s where the little flu bugs live.  On the snots and wet spots. Not that kind of wet spot.  These are microscopic small wet spots what you need a microscope for to see’em.

The bugs can live outside your body for a while and that’s how they get from one person to the other.  They need a way into your body and here’s how they do it.  You know when you got one of them dry air February boogers back in there, that feels like you’ve got a half a tablespoon of pearl barley up your nose? 

Well, as soon as you go diggin, the flu bugs what you might have on your finger decide “Jeeze that’s a fine booger vault, I’ll go live there”, then they jump off while you’re up to the second knuckle.  Or, if you rub your eyes.  Or eatin a sandwich.  That’s all she takes.  One little bug and only one time, in just one place in.

Once inside, the little bugger starts multiplying like Evangelicals without condoms.  Soon you got the shits, the shakes, the pukes and the snots.  That would be the flu.  Any flu.  Swine, Bird, Fish, Sofa, 24 bottle, 40 ounce, five day, ten day, don’t matter.  The flu.

The scary damn part is all the things what live on your hands.  Now do some thinking.  How many door handles, elevator buttons, excalator hand rails, titless tellers and other things do you touch every day? 

It’s a jeezly big number and then add up all the other people what touched them just before you and just after.  Another jeezly big number, but with a capital J.  Jeezly big. 

Up the line here, it’s not as much as a problem, but in the city now, think of just the excalators in the Subway.  Everybody holds onto them and I’s willing to bet there’s some prick what’s just cleaned his cat’s litter box then gone to work and not so much as spit on his hands.  On that excalator is the bugs from his cats arse goin round and round just waitng for someone to glom onto.  Well, the same’s true for the flu bugs. 

Next time you’re out shopping or going to work on the transit, pull your head out of your arse for a moment and look around.  Folks coughing and sneezin and not so much as a hanky or kleenex in front of their pie and snot holes, spraying crap everywhere. 

All it takes is one prick with the swine flu is to sneeze one off at the Danforth station and he’s gone and thrown a zillion bugs all over the place, right next to a couple of hundred other folks on the Subway.

Davey told me something a while back.  There’s an international airport in Toronto, what gets flights from all over the world.  In twenty-four hours, maybe less, he could be in Bangkok, havin sharkfin soup, then be back in Toronto the next day, having been walking around half-way round the world, then right back to his place in Mississauga, exposed to every goddam bug you could imagine.  All it’d take is money and time and not a lot of skill, except being bored stupid long enough to take the airplanes.

Now, if I’da gone to Bangkok, it wouldn’t be for no soup.  And it wouldn’t be just for a day.  I think what he’s trying to say is that we’re awful close to everyone else these days and there’s not much we can do about it, except look out for ourselves first.

You know your mom told you to wash up after using the shitter.  There was a reason she told you that.  It was to get them invisible bugs off your skin.  Soap and water.  It ain’t complicated.  Soap and water.  Even I get it.

Second, them Nurse Nancy masks?  Ain’t worth a shit.  The flu bugs are smaller than Harper’s brain and some piece of cloth won’t stop much but the big chunks.  And the bugs can still get in through your eyes, as the tear ducts are all connected up to your sinuses and a moist like a nose hole.  The Swine Flu don’t care.  Swallow’em, breathe’em, rub’em.  Don’t matter. 

There are masks what are designed for stopping the flu bugs, but they gotta fit perfectly every time and they’re not cheap.  Like $10-$12 a go and if they’re off of place just a bit, whoops!  In comes the Swine Flu, and that’s assuming there’s none on your hands, what’s been on the excalator on the Subway with fourteen thousand of your closest friends this morning.

So’s it looks to me like about the only way you can not get any bugs is to wrap yourself in drycleaner plastic for the next forty days and live in the basement, under a tarp.

Instead of that, how bout this:

If you’re gonna sneeze or cough, cover your goddam face with a hanky, or a kleenex or cough into your arm.  Something.  Anythng.  Don’t just let’er wail all over everyone.  Ain’t polite and ain’t healthy neither.  I don’t want your snots and wet spots, thanks.

Two:  Wash your goddam hands with soap and water a lot.  They say it takes a full fifteen seconds to wash your hands right.  Just slucing off the piss drops isn’t good enough.  Soap’em up and rinse them off.  Your hands I mean.

Three:  Don’t be licking door handles, unless you know where’s the door handle’s been and who’se been touching it in the last couple of weeks.

Four:  If you’ve got the flu, stay the hell home.  If you sneeze on me, you’re going to find out what bugs I’ve got on my right hand, as I’m gonna punch you one in the mouth, ya inconsiderate arsehole.

Five:  Beer is always around 5 percent alcohol, which is plenty to kill the flu bugs, if your pour beer on your hands.  That’s a terrible waste of good beer.  Too bad you can’t kill the flu bugs by drinkin the beer, as I could get behind that kind of medicine.

Six:  I got nothing here, so’s I guess I’m done.  Thanks for reading.  Now go wash your hands.