Fun, Flowers and Flu

PLACES TO GO FOR THINGS TO SEE:
Having fun, being silly sometimes doesn’t seem as if it is a respectable adult activity. I’m always on the look out for the unexpected times when people share their fun sides. Finding these silly times make me feel more comfortable with the fact that, no matter how elderly I am on the outside, I’ve never really grown up inside.

The Guerrilla Gardeners have found a way to help the environment, make city life more plant friendly and have fun at the same time. They are also happy to share their techniques so others can have fun with plant bombs, midnight plantings and street meridian veggie crops. I love it! I’m gonna make myself some seed paper to write notes on so people can eat my words!


Being an Urban Gardener is not so silly. Being an urban improv comedian is! The Urban Improv Comedian, wacky group of fun lovers, organizes activities on a grand scale. I could do it on a smaller one. Instead of having all of Grand Central Station take a freeze frame for a few minutes, I could get two or three friends to stop on our local shopping street, The Fred. (Fredrick Hendricklaan) I don’t know enough red heads to do their version of the Redheaded League but five people or more could do the High Five Escalator Ride. The Starbuck’s Time Loop is something you’d have to work up to….and besides, we don’t have Starbuck’s in Den Haag.

LIKES AND DISLIKES:
I’m feeling manipulated. Last week the International Herald Tribe, CNN and Time were obsessed with the “drug war” being fought along the Mexican–US border. It seemed as if that was the most important war going on in today’s world. After all, Iraq was becoming boring. Tourists were actually making visits! The Somali pirates were getting rich without many deaths. And Pakistan? Well, few people seemed to care much that over 700 men, women and children have died in order to eliminate 14 known terrorist.

But that was last week. This week the world is fighting a new war: the war against swine flue. The news reports are full of the 1,600 suspected swine flu cases and the 152 deaths that are possibly caused by the flu. Laboratories have confirmed only 26 of Mexico's cases, including seven deaths, as swine flu. And today a two year old died from swine flu in Texas.

Yet these deaths dominate today’s news. What happened to the concern over the 7000 deaths reported in Pakistan so far this year? Or the thousands of deaths in Mexico and US cities caused by that other war? And, hey, In the U.S. alone, the CDC says about 36,000 people a year die of flu.

Yet, people are now asking if Paul and I are still going to Southern California and Cabo San Lucas this summer. Why weren’t they worried about biannual our trips previous years? I think they just weren’t thinking about it. Deaths in Mexico and San Diego weren’t in the news.

Maybe the economy needs the increase in the pharmaceutical right now. Maybe Obama’s first 100 days haven’t been negative enough to make good news. Maybe it is because Mexicans and Americans have the flu and we could all get it, not just drug dealers. Maybe I’m paradoid.

Maybe. It could be all of these and much more I’ve not thought about. And maybe this new flu war will develop into a world pandemic killing millions. How do you feel about it?
QUOTE QUIP:
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.

Philip K. Dick, How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later (1978)