By Scott Buckner
Not too long ago, I happened to re-read Of Mice And Men. Even saw it on film. George. Lenny. Squiggy. Going off to farm rabbits as long as some hot babe didn’t get in the way. It was one of those classic works of literature that everyone in my high school was forced to endure at some point, like The Bell Jar or To Kill Mockingbird or Lord Jim or Behind the Green Door.
I don’t know why, but the preoccupation by this city’s media with the Swine Flu – which has been made into a We Think It Could Be An Epidemic Even Though Nobody’s Confirmed It in the same way the media heaps a quarter-inch of snow into a blizzard or anything said by Drew Peterson into a confession – made me think of ol’ George and Lenny and Squiggy wanting to just go off into the desert or the country or wherever to just raise rabbits and be happy about it.
Except nobody’s letting them. Everyone needs to know why George is so abusive. Why Lenny is so slow and gave up the Wolfman gig. And why Lenny and Squiggy never nailed Laverne and Shirley before Carmine showed up. In high school English Lit, you only had to live through The Grapes of Wrath once in your life. Yet the Joads have had had to re-live the same bullshit from bitchy students like us year after year. Truth is, the Joads got considerably sicker of us long before we got sick of them.
So goes it now, to the point where I’ve actually made it a point of turning off the media. Completely. TV. Radio. Everything. Off. If Swine Flu was stalking me outside my window, I wouldn’t know it. Nor would I care. Because guess what? I’ve lived through it before just fine, thanks! But yet omifuckinggod – Swine Flu walks among us! Let’s lock the whole city down, shall we? Screw the Olympics and whatever the hell Todd Stroger’s doing because, hopefully, there will be A Postman in our future to save us from everything, including ourselves. The Swine Flu is nothing to be fucked with, we’re told, because well, people just die from it. Which is fine as long as, y’know, they’re not dying from it in our streets or in the schools or something. Y’know? Especially if in the middle of summer.
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Posted on May 1, 2009
