Swine Flu

On the night before I was due to take my very first high school math final, I felt a pain in my face. It was sharp, like someone had stabbed me in the jawbone, and no matter how many painkillers I ingested, it would not go away. It hurt to swallow. It hurt to move my lips. I didn't know what was wrong, and I could barely articulate what it felt like, because the more I flexed my mouth muscles, the worse it became. My situation seemed grave, but like with most pains, I decided to sleep on it and see if it improved in the morning. It didn't.

Never mind that I hardly studied for my test--having to sit through the final with my face throbbing, while at the same time trying to remember geometric formulas, was a chore in and of itself. By the afternoon, it hurt to walk. Every step triggered a precise blast of pain to my face, and it was beginning to seem apparent that I needed to see a doctor. Fast forward a few hours, and I was lying in a hospital bed, an IV needle shoved into an unlucky vein on my left hand and filling it with intense doses of antibiotics. By this point, the right side of my face had swelled to the point of making me look like a blowfish's cousin. It still hurt to swallow, so food was out of the question, but at least I knew my ailment: by some unlucky chance, one of my salivary glands had been infected. The doctors couldn't theorize how it happened--it just did. And there I was, having to deal with it.

I stayed in the hospital for three days.

The point of recounting this story is to show the idiocy of how the American media (and government) is reacting to the recent outbreak of swine flu. But what does a young girl's salivary gland infection have to do with contracting a nasty bout of flu, you might ask. Well let me tell you something: shit happens. I could wake up tomorrow, and my stomach could be in bits, and I could find out I have ovarian cancer, which is essentially what happened to someone very close to me not long ago. Or I could step out onto the street, and a car could come whizzing by, the driver drunk or distracted or just afflicted with a lead foot, and that would be the end of me. I could have an aneurysm, or I could suffer from internal hemmorhaging of the brain after a fall. A million things could happen to me, so what makes swine flu any different? Why doesn't the American media just tell us all to stay indoors and clothe ourselves in bubble wrap? People die of allergic reactions every day, but you don't see the media up in arms about it being allergy season. And people get the flu all the time (I had a horrible strain of it two months ago), but, transversely, that doesn't mean death is imminent. We live in a country where the health care system, albeit expensive, is sufficient. We can vaccinate and pump ourselves full of antibiotics, and if we're lucky to have working immune systems (which most people I know are), then our bodies will fight and recover. It is that simple.

Okay, but what if swine flu spreads, you ask. Okay, I say, then it spreads. The scientific answer to scientific problems is man-made, so what makes anyone think we won't develop something to combat this in record time? At least in the States, we are going to be fine. If I were living in a third world country, I might fear a pandemic. But not here. The cases are so few, and the number of deaths resulting from those cases is even fewer, and since we don't know the details surrounding those deaths, what is the point of causing panic among a nation full of hypochondriacs? The people who have died might have had shitty immune systems. Or they might have had the flu for too long for medication to take sufficient effect. WE DO NOT KNOW. All we can do is be alert, and try to take steps to be as healthy as possible. Washing one's hands is ALWAYS a good idea. Coughing into one's sleeve (and not in the face of others) is ALWAYS a good idea (not to mention polite).

I guess I can laugh about all this when I'm dead, but until then, I will continue to live my life as a fun-seeking young person. Call me naïve, but seriously, swine flu can suck it!

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Leggings: NOT Pants

"LEGGINGS ARE NOT PANTS!" is my battlecry.

Most days, though, it feels like a losing battle.

Yet, there is a part of me that cannot dismiss this unfortunate phenomenon as part of the ever-growing "KIDS! GET OFF MY LAWN!" curmudgeonly impulses that have accompanied my senior year of college. Am I so out of touch that I can no longer recognize pants when I see them? Are today's youth changing the very definition of the word "pants"? The acceptance of leggings as pants is akin to the bastardization of the English language through netspeak. I've heard that language carries an inclination toward simplication, but I am morally opposed to leggings as pants in the same way that I am against the improper usage of "you're" versus "your". I believe in personal freedom; however it should be noted that each person's individual rights should not infringe upon those of others. Therefore, while everyone should be able to dress themselves as they see fit, eventually you must take into account that some fashion choices infringe upon the rights of those who must look upon you.

Let me clarify. I do not hate those who wear leggings as pants. I only hate what they do. This is especially true if I have just woken up, and I am sitting in a morning class surrounded by leggings-as-pants-wearing girls. Honestly, you might as well just not wear pants. I am not anti-pantslessness; I want to stress the difference between not wearing pants and wearing leggings as pants, since both states of being involve the world being able to see every curve and dimple of your derriere. You see, leggings as pants is the equivalent of a pretentious film: they are trying to be pants, but they fall short of one of the basic uses of pants, which is basic coverage of the hindquarters. A pretentious film attempts to be profound, but does not accomplish what it sets out to do. Pantslessness, on the other hand, makes no pretenses to be more than what it is. There is no illusion of trying-to-be-pants.

Nomi, one of my fellow Rants and Raven co-authors, has a theory that wearing leggings as pants could be linked to increasing likelihood of yeast infections, due to the increased probability that non-air-circulating fabric will be worn more often than those who wear them under skirts and dresses. However, at press time, we have as of yet been unable to verify or refute the theory. I suspect that the culprits of the leggings-as-pants crime would not respond favorably to questions about their yeast-infection status.

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Trendy Baby Names and Celebrity Child Names

Picture this: in a couple years, you are a kindergarten teacher in Los Angeles and you are asking your kindergarteners on the first day of school to go around and say their names. You would most likely have about 5 Madisons, 5 Olivias, 5 Jaydens, and then a slew of really questionably-dubbed tykes thanks to their wealthy and/or famous parents with nomens such as Zuma, Apple, Coco, Suri, Bronx, Jermajesty and Prince Michael II. How as a teacher would you (a) possibly keep a straight face, (b) come up with nicknames for the children with all the same name [Mad Dog? Liver?] (c) and make sure you spelled all the ridiculous variants [Kaytlynn, Mikhaeyla] properly so their parents wouldn't thrust a lawsuit on your poor addled head?
I'm not advocating that every kid should be named John or Sarah or some common, easy to pronounce and spell-sort-of name. Far from it. Many less "Top 10" names are simple and lovely and can reflect a child's heritage or honor an ancestor. But girls' names that are derived from cars and WASP family surnames and former boys' names (so that the poor boys can never reclaim the names--I'm certain even still-androgynous names like Morgan will become predominantly female in years to come)? WHY? And celebrities who name their children after fruit and New York boroughs and sneakers and weird variants of their own names? Cruel and unusual punishment. Kids, as we all well know, are mean bastards and love finding easy ways to mock their peers--names are generally a great way do this and it really makes the bullying as smooth as pie if you saddle your little sweetiepoo with a label like Phinneas or Rockett.
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Fuck Twitter

Twitter --WTF? How has it come to the world that we can now only express ourselves in 140 characters or less. Do I care that you woke up this morning and brushed your teeth? Do I care that you ate a sandwich? NO. And not only that, I don't want to see AOL Instant Message-style abbreviations like "2B" and "do u lyk this" written by people who ostensibly received at least a third-grade education. And the word "tweet" as a verb used in conjunction with the disgusting, deplorable Twitter world is a cantankerously God-awful bastardization of the glorious English language. Noah Webster is TURNING IN HIS GRAVE. Also, "tweeple." Grown men and women referring to themselves as TWEEPLE? Are we BIRDS? Nay, we are but men! Rock! Facebook has tried to take Twitter's shining beacon of an example in the social media world by revamping its format so it now looks like Steve Jobs copulated with a poop nugget and exploded onto my computer screen. Unacceptable. Newer isn't always better. Trends pass. If Facebook wants to last, it shouldn't join in with the the Tweet horrors of the Shredded Tweet generation. If Facebook is trying to compete with a primary force why would they try and be just like them? To be fair, there are a few heroes of Twitter, specifically Shaquille O'Neal. HOWEVER, why don't they just start a BLOG and write FULL SENTENCES AND PARAGRAPHS? I guess that would be TOO HARD. A sad commentary on our society that our attention spans are comparable to a three-year-old on acid. (And three-year-olds should not be on acid.) And senators Tweeting from Congress? How about...wait...gasp...doing your job and not fucking around on the internet on the worst website known to mankind? I guess that would be also too hard to ask. It's just so revolutionary not to waste time and for public servants to do their job. Not even Obama can effect that kind of change.
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the purpose and structure of this blog

There are so many things in this world to be highly critical and persnickety about. The authors of this blog take this up a notch, ranting and raving about issues that perhaps seem trivial to most denizens of this blue marble we call earth, but to us are probably on the level of global warming and sleazy politicians of things to get in an articulate huff about.
Welome to Rants and Raven.
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