I Don't Live in a Brand

Apparently, according to some talking head on the dumber-than-ever television news, Victoria's "brand" is being damaged because we have the largest amount of people with swine flu per capita in the world outside of Mexico; combine that with the rascist attacks on Indians that have been going on lately (fuelled by the media, I don't hesitate to say), and the Black Saturday fires, and we have a problem with our image.

Maybe the problem is with the media, and with stupid talking heads who insist on calling the space in which we live a "brand". Maybe the problem is that we are just so patently stupid and dumbass a group of people that our news would even dare to feature a variety of different people surmising a whole lot of fluff. The fact that everyone is still bleating on about this bloody swine cold just makes it all that bit creepier.

People eat this fluff without thinking twice. Chuck some chicken salt on it and chug it on down and call it news. Because it's on "the" news. Mistaking the form for the content. That's scary.

Swine Flu Vaccine

So. Swine flu. Out of the entire world, 92 people have died. NINETY TWO PEOPLE. And the US government has just paid 190 million bucks to have a swine flu vaccine developed.

One hundred and ninety million dollars. For something which is sending people into a spin and closing down schools and stuff. For what? For a flu. A flu that has killed only NINETY TWO PEOPLE IN THE ENTIRE BLOODY WORLD!!!!

But wait. The WHO warns us that this thing could mutate in strange ways. Who knows what might happen? Best to freak out, just to be on the safe side.

We're a real bunch of lily-livers these days, aren't we? Wonder how we would cope if we were living in 1918 when MILLIONS of people died from that flu pandemic. That's a pandemic to get worked up over, folks.

Come on, people, now, smile on your brother instead of freaking on him. Even if he is one of the 13,000 people in the world who HAS got swine flu, he's got a pretty good chance of living on to fight another day, seeing only NINETY TWO PEOPLE have died in the entire world.

NINETY TWO.

The world is creeping me out. What's the deal with people SO fearful? I actually think people WANT to be fearmongered. Why? Is it some sort of superstitious thing that if we worry about things then we will stop them from happening to us?

I dunno. The whole thing has me baffled. The media just grows fatter, feeding on our fear. Maybe one day it will grow so fat it will explode, like that Monty Python man in The Meaning of Life. Here's hoping :) In the meantime, it makes me vomit.

Exploding man - 6:01

BE FEARMONGERED! BE FEARMONGERED! THE SKY IS FALLING!

*Picture the robot from Lost in Space flailing its arms around.*

At work today have appeared bottles of antiseptic hand gel. It's taken me all afternoon to click on to why they've appeared now.

It's in reaction to the flu season that is about to be upon us and also to the swine flu that, if you listen to the media, is also about to murder millions of us any day now. Hopefully. The Australian media is having multiple orgasms about it even though there AREN'T EVEN ANY FUCKING CASES IN AUSTRALIA YET. Even though there aren't even enough fatalities worldwide to shove into one office of a World Trade Center building or one square kilometre of African starvation lands. It's not that I don't believe there could be an outbreak. It's that every single time there is a tiny chance that something catastrophic may possibly happen, it is the lead-in of news reports. But the reports aren't about anything substantial that is actually happening. They are about what might POTENTIALLY happen.

Yeah, well, an asteroid might plummet through the roof of my work and kill me. I might get spinal meningitis. I might get a job I vaguely like. I might ever complete and have published a piece of my own writing. I might die a slow and painful death by being driven mad by the fucking media. Millions of things MIGHT happen. Meanwhile, children starve to death all around the world every single day. And I was sick for over six years and never once in my life had I inoculated myself against it by fearing it, and it happened anyway.

Get a grip, workplace. Get a grip media. Who is holding you accountable for your detestable practices? And as an aside, and for future blog posts, when are we, the people, going to start realising that in a very real sense the reality that is out there is the one that we create every day, collectively and individually, by our fears and our insistence on everything being separated, and begin to make some real changes instead of being told we cannot do anything?

(Yes, I know my swearing count has increased again, but when it comes to the media - and the willingness of humanity to be fearmongered - you can't swear enough. )

(I had a squirt of the antibacterial hand gel just in case :)

Links: 'We need to be inoculated against outbreaks of panic': Deborah Orr
The Swine Flu Pandemic - Fact or Fiction?: Dr Mercola