Manimal instincts

I think my cats gave me herpes. When I adopted them from their foster owners, the orange and white one (aka Winston Elliot Floorsie) had a bad case of feline rhinotracheitis virus (aka cat herpes), which basically meant that he sneezed a lot and had a gucky eye. Now my eyes are puffy, my nose is running and I’m sneezing all the time. I’m not even sure how this happened because, according to Doctor Internet, feline herpes is non-transmissible to humans. And besides, I always use a condom whenever I have sex with them—y’know, just in case. Yes, I think my cats gave me herpes, and now I’m going to die.

Okay, I’m just kidding. I’m not gonna die from cat herpes and I would never have sex with my kitties—I love them and I would never do anything to hurt them. Besides, they’re male and I’m not gay (anymore).

But, I must admit, all this talk of spreading disease and swine flu has reactivated a part of my brain that had long been dormant. The present porcine pandemic has triggered the latent hypochondria from my childhood that is currently ruining my life. Now, every time I have a teensy nasal drip (most likely because I’m slightly allergic to my cats), I worry that that my nose is going to morph into a snout (that’s one of the symptoms, right?). Every time I’m in a public space and someone sneezes, it’s like they just pulled out a loaded gun and are waving it in my face. I wash my hands 13 times an hour and carefully type on my keyboard with just the very tip of my fingers like a Puerto Rican girl with crazy long fingernails. I am deathly afraid of becoming deathly ill and I don’t know what to do about it. I suppose I could shut myself in but I’m too lazy to become completely Howard Hughes OCD (although I have spent time watching movies immobile and naked in a chair, more than I’d like to admit), but perhaps I could just be like Howie Mandel and not shake anyone’s hand, ever. Of course my paranoia isn’t helped by all the insane swine flu rumours I’ve heard circulating at cafés and bars around town.

• “I heard patient zero was a Mexican deli guy who had sex with a ham sandwich and then catered a huge three-week peyote orgy.”

• “I heard it was developed by vegan anarchists to eliminate bacon. Everyone knows that shit is vegetarian kryptonite.”

• “I heard Universal Pictures is doing an apocalyptic kids’ film called Babe 3: The Porky Plague.”

But can you really blame people for being so misinformed? It seems that the media has been so quick to latch onto the fear-mongering that it’s hard to know what’s real and what isn’t.

Should we really be scared of swine flu? I mean, just the name itself isn’t that foreboding. Who’s afraid of pigs? Not me. In fact, all these animal diseases seem rather non-threatening. Avian flu? Birds are wimps. Mad cow disease? C’mon, have you ever seen an angry cow? Those guys are so gentle, the worst you’d get would probably be a miffed cow. What’s next? A unicorn virus where the worst that happens is that a rainbow shoots out of your ass every three hours? Call me when they come out with shark syndrome, then I’ll lose my shit. The Black Death, typhoid, scarlet fever—now THOSE are scary sounding diseases (and they also happen to make pretty good Mile-End band names). Back in the day, the names alone would be enough to scare people straight to the doctor for a good leeching. On second thought, maybe there needs to be more fear-mongering. Maybe we can find a way to scare/educate/entertain the public with all this disease talk?

Maybe I’ll host my own cable access show with my own pandemic panelists positing the possibility of post-apocalyptic pandemonium. Or how about an all-disease network covering everything from illness in Illinois to nausea in Nairobi? Or we could get more specific and have STDTV. We could feature a reality show called Bachelor Beach with the tagline: “One is the man of her dreams, the rest hold a dark secret that will cause an itching and burning sensation…in her heart!” Yes! I can see the critical raves now: “I haven’t seen crabs cause this much drama since that food fight at Red Lobster!”—L.A. Times or “Bachelor Beach is gonorrheality television at its best!”—The Poughkeepsie Journal. Maybe I’ll be the mogul at the forefront of this new ailment-ertainment industry! Yes, I can see it now. I’m going to start a company and call it Chlamedia.

RIFF-RAFF@SYMPATICO.CA