Feeling oh so swine

Swine flu. It's all I hear about these days. On the news, on the web, even on everyone's Facebook and Twitter statuses. I can't escape it. And I'm sure it's no laughing matter, but isn't this whole thing a bit overblown? I looked up the average data on yearly flu related deaths on the CDC website and found the following:

Every year in the United States, on average: 5% to 20% of the population gets the flu; more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu-related complications; and about 36,000 people die from flu-related causes.

Here's the current stats on the swine flu: 109 reported cases, 1 death. Any sort of death is lamentable, but in the grand scheme of things, this strain of flu seems no worse than any other strain of flu that we encounter each and every year. Again from the CDC:

The symptoms of swine flu in people are similar to the symptoms of regular human flu and include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue... Like seasonal flu, swine flu in humans can vary in severity from mild to severe.

But yet, the Mexican Football Federation says all pro soccer games in Mexico this weekend will be played without fans in an effort to slow the spread of swine flu and high school and college games have been cancelled altogether to curb the spread of swine flu. Why don't we do the same to curb the spread of the regular flu if it's just as, or even more deadly? Am I completely underreacting to this? Is underreacting even a word?

Someone please enlighten me if I should be running out and buying a mask tonight. Until then, I'll just react to this the way I've reacted to the bird flu. Wake me up when it's over.

Worst Recession Discount Ever

I got this email from Ticketmaster yesterday:



Sadly, I missed out on saving an extra 5% to something I have no interest in at all because I didn't check my email fast enough. Oh no! How can I live with myself knowing that I could have saved a couple bucks on tickets I would not even spend a couple cents to buy?

How did I even get on a Sparks mailing list? Because I used Ticketmaster to buy Lakers tickets a few times? If the common ground here is basketball, let me throw this out there: Both NYPD Blue and Cop Rock were TV shows about cops, but the approach and the execution were very, very different. Let's not pretend it's all the same, shall we?

Set It and Forget It

Behold. The madness that is the Showtime Rotisserie Grill. For some reason this thing was a crazy hit seller about 10 years back. The only question, why?

Because in reality, you're paying about $200 for this tool, which still doesn't actually do anything, until you:

1. Buy a raw chicken
2. Clean it
3. Prep it
4. Place the raw chicken in the Showtime Grill
5. Set it
6. Forget it
7. Wait 1 hour
8. Pull flaming hot rotisserie chicken out of grill
9. Take flaming hot rotisserie chicken off the flaming hot chicken holding unit
10. Put flaming hot rotisserie chicken on plate
11. Eat rotisserie chicken
12. Go back in the kitchen and clean grill

OR, you could just do the following:

1. Go to grocery store
2. Buy rotisserie chicken
3. Eat rotisserie chicken

All for about $2 more than buying a raw chicken. Um, is this really a difficult decision? You'd have to cook about 100 chickens for the grill to break even on the cost vs. buying the fully cooked chicken, not to mention the 50 other ridiculous steps needed.

Showtime Rotisserie Grill owners... you all fail.

*Special thanks to Jenn for making me think about this lame product this afternoon.