Remember the good ol' days of pandemic panic and Tamiflu? When bird flu was on the tip of everyone's tongue, and we were frantically hoping someone else would come up with a cure? Has anyone heard anything about it lately?

It was all over the news, about how the dirty, dirty birds were giving this avian flu to the bird-people who were sleeping in the bird shit (because just like your mama said, sleeping in bird shit will make you sick) and the bird-people were sick and dying because of the dirty, dirty bird flu. And we were all next! Even on the local news, which today dedicates about .5 seconds to Israel/Hezbollah news, would go into great detail about this one case where a fifteen-year old girl who was eating bird shit for three meals a day somehow contracted the dirty, dirty bird flu. And now, nothing. The last thing I heard about avian flu was a poorly-written sketch on a crappy sketch show that comes on before SNL. And it was a rerun.

Where is the panic? Were we directed to focus on the dirty, dirty bird flu so that we wouldn't focus on something else? Did we all forget about how the dirty, dirty birds were going to come over here from Asia and shit in our open mouths and give us the worst flu EVER KNOWN TO MAN AND WE WILL ALL DIE TOMORROW?

I would like some direction, please, on what to do with my lock-box full of Tamiflu, which sits comfortably next to the duct tape I bought to keep out the bio-germies and the gigantic Y2K kit I put together so that I can live FOREVER in secret, not sharing with anyone, in case of widespread catastrophe.

I'd like an update, or at least some confirmation that the dirty, dirty bird flu isn't my own creation, some paranoid psychosis of which I am unaware. Maybe the dirty, dirty bird flu came down with SARS and is at home lying in bed and watching Dr. Phil, sucking down all of the Tamiflu it could hoard.