In Which Pigs Can Fly

          In Which Pigs Can Fly

Pigs are flying. Right through the air and into our noses, straight into the blood stream where they reprocreate and replenish their host with more flying Swine. So what’s next, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria, you know, all that biblical shit. Except that merely a fraction of the swine infected people are dying compared to the regular seasonal flu, go figure. But what can one do when the hoopla surrounding this has nearly overrun the media and caused a frenzy unlike anything I’ve seen in recent history. So we go and inject the swine into our bodies in hopes of fighting off the flying pigs. I am not thrilled about getting the vaccine, but I am not completely opposed to it. We do have an unborn girl on the way and a 17 month old son that are more susceptible than we. The media has done a successful job of scaring the shit out of us. So I reluctantly did it.



Upon driving up to the toll booth the attendant stepped out of his shack and I said, “We’re here for the Swine.”

“You’re here to get vaccinated?” He asked.

“Yep.”

“Okay, hold out your arm,” he asked me as he reached back into his booth to grab something.

Caught off guard and in the moment I actually lifted my arm off the door rest and hung it out the window towards him. When he turned back he laughed as if he just heard the funniest joke. He smacked me on the arm twice as he said, “Silly goose, I’m not going to give you the shot big guy.”

It took me a second to process that one and I saved face by saying, “Obviously, I thought you were going to give me a wrist band.” Then he pointed and showed us where to park.

From the parking lot leading into the convention center was a temporary path constructed out of cones and yellow caution tape. It appeared as if we were entering a crime scene. As we followed the yellow taped path two dudes wearing red vests stopped us, and we finally got the green wrist bands I thought the gay toll booth guy was going to give me. My boy did not get wrist banded without putting up a proper fight.

There were three cops at the entrance, supposedly for crowd control, and yet there were no crowds. No mobs of people as we had anticipated. No three to five hour lines such as we’ve seen all over the news about these vaccine stations across the country. The makeshift yellow tape crowd control paths to the swine were useless. Apparently someone forgot to send the memo out.

There were around fifty people inside the convention center, all filling out the paperwork or getting their vaccines at the multiple booths set up. We didn’t have to wait at all. We filled out the forms and walked right up to the vaccine table. Recently, at a local pharmacy they were administering vaccines. The line wrapped around the block and was literally a three hour wait. I know that most doctors have not yet been given the vaccines, so people are still lining up at these weekend setups to get it. But there was hardly anyone there this weekend. The lady behind the table told us they had 7,000 vaccines, and they still had most of them left, and this was already in the afternoon. But these things are only advertised if you check the government websites directly. Otherwise you wouldn’t know about it. And, this one was not listed on the LA county site. We happened to look on the Long Beach cities website to find out about it. I think perhaps that is why it had a small turnout. Their advertising was pathetic, and subsequently a lot of people that currently need the shot, simply don’t know where to get it. They have been extremely slow to distribute the vaccines, and when they do you either wait in a line all day, or you don’t know where to go. Pathetic. But hey, it saved us a long wait.

As I handed my forms to the lady behind the fold out table she looked up at me and asked, “What’s wrong with you. Are you sick or something?”

I construed my face in bewilderment and said, “No, why, do I look sick?”

“It’s for the young, elderly and the sick, right now.”

“Well as you can see,” I said as I pointed to my wife, my son and unborn fetus, “I live with a baby and we currently have one on the way, so we thought it a good idea that I get vaccinated also.” As if that wasn’t smack you right upside the head obvious. She waved us past and pointed to the vaccine tables behind her.

I asked for the nasal spray vaccine. She sprayed it into each nostril as I held my head back. All I was thinking was, did I use my nose hair trimmers recently, I hope so, oh well she won’t mind, she’s old anyway, and I hope they don’t recycle these things. After she injected my nostrils with the Flying Swine, I snorted deeply and felt the bitter drip hit the back of my throat. I immediately recalled the last time I had been in that convention center….. Rewind to ’97, I was there with a mob of friends smoking weed all day at the Bob Marley Fest. It also happened to be the first time I tried coke, and it certainly was not the last, as those evil drugs tend to go. As I snorted down the swine flu vaccine and it hit my throat I could almost feel the long past bitter, numbing, and addicting cocaine-drip gag me back in ’97. There I was using drugs to stay healthy, and the last time I was in that building I was using drugs that were the antagonist of health. A shudder rung through my body, the lady noticed as I said, ‘gross’. She nodded her head. Although, it was virtually tasteless, and obviously painless without the penetrating needle. Not so easy for my boy though, he got a nice fat needle to the thigh. He cried for ten seconds or so, but quickly forgot it ever happened.

After he was injected I asked the lady, "would there be any risk for him contracting the virus if I were to sneeze on him right now?"

"Why, are you about to sneeze," she asked sarcastically as my wife laughed nervously behind me. I always seem to embaress her when we're out in public and I open my mouth and release words to strangers.

"No. But considering that my nasal vaccine was a live version of the virus, and his is not. Aren't they more susceptible to the live virus, that's why they give them the dead one?" I asked.

"Well, yeah, I guess there might be a slight risk of sneezing it on him right after receiving it. Just keep your sneezes to yourself."

"Yeah, okay I'll do that."

Last week I watched John McCain and several other congressman cause an uproar on the floor concerning the lack of the vaccine availability. Only 30,000,000 vaccines have been distributed, 8 billion dollars allotted for it, and they need another 270,000,000 to go. By the time there’s enough to go around, everyone will have already come in contact with the Flying Swine. Way to go….that’s a perfect example of a government run health care at work.