Bird flu, are YOU chicken?

My brother-in-law, Terry is a devout vegetarian. Has been for years. The other day, he was eating some takeaway, I guess, and wondered which vegetable is white, soft and tastes like chicken. Well, it turned out that the vegetable he was eating was indeed chicken.

Can you think of anything more ironic than an ardent vegetarian catching the bird flu like that? (Terry's fine, by the way.)

I remember, a couple of years ago it was the mad cow disease. I knew people who stopped eating minced meat because of the media. It probably lasted for two weeks. Now it seems we are all doomed because of the bird flu. People have no idea how they can catch the disease, or even if they can catch it. Cats are now to be kept inside all the time. They can catch the disease if they eat an infected bird, apparently.

I wonder how real the danger can be and would the news be any different if there really was a deadly virus spreading like an epidemic? There are going to be many more catastrophy movies made in Hollywood in the next few years. The international atmosphere of fear sets the scene for those kinds of movies, just like the fears of nuclear destruction in the eighties did. Or are worlwide epidemics just so fashionable, because of Hollywood?

Mostly I think that worldwide epidemic or a pandemic would be outside of my Circle of Influence and it doesn't really help me to worry about something I can do nothing about. I might as well worry about the new baggage retrieval system they got at Heathrow. Instead, I choose to improve and entertain myself by reading books like "The Eight Habit" and "Life of Pi".