Scared Shitless

There was a time, before America was in a constant state of being scared shitless, when things were cool. In truth, it is hard to remember those days since at 19, a person only has so much history. And I think the cool pre-dated my birth. In fact, as best as I can determine the halcyon time was 1967. More or less...

Back then, flowers were power, coitus was a way of saying hello and there was no AIDS. Come to think of it, there weren't many venereal disorders around. Well, except for syphilis and the clap. But back then, a shot of penicillin and an infected fucker was good to go. And the drugs... who knew back then what all the frig they were sniffing, snorting, ingesting or injecting, but it must have been some good geddy-up.

Really though, there is no need to look back. It does little good and if anything tends to bog a person down. Having to drag the weight of history forwards is lugubrious and too sobering. After all, history implies death and death is one ponderous brain shock. Speaking of scared shitless...

Hand sanitizers.... Those liquid alcohol based concoctions that sprang up like acne pimples on a fifteen year old a few years ago. It was a time when my parents were H1N1 fucks. President Obama, who by the way is as white as he is black, got Americans jacked up about the risk of getting the flu and right, dying. From what the p-units were saying, there was a big flu epidemic in 1918 (or was that '28) and millions of people passed. And the new swine flu (there was an old swine flu jack up in 1976) portended to be a big hitter, like Ryan Howard.

Yeah, there was this picture of the Obamate getting his own flu shot. It was in the Town Crier. With his sleeve rolled up, he looked like a poster model from 1955. Back then folks were scared shitless about polio and they were all getting vaccinated. But in 1955 a black man wouldn't be illustrated in any poster in America. The kicker is that even though PObama is as white as he is black, he is black... Get it? I don't.

Stockpiling of medicine to halt the influenza virus in its tracks was in vogue back then. At the first signs of fluing up, the victim was to dose with these medicines in order to survive. Yeah, Celia and Pete had at least 50 tablets of Tamiflu neatly stacked in sample boxes next to the salt and pepper shaker in the middle kitchen cabinet. Pete works in pharmaceuticals for Pfizer and he has connections deep in Mexico.

It was then when the hands were fingered (ha-ha) as the culprits of transmission of all things microbial.  Wash your hands! was the mantra of the day. The CDC and everyone else yapped on about hands. The wackiness got so bad that some jerkwaters began to even wear surgical masks as well. Some brilliant-o opined that the flu was transmitted by aerosol droplets and that by covering your mouth and nose reduced the chances of inhaling death. Yeah, mask manufacturers began to triple shift. They must have made a lot of kincaid. What ever happened to all of the asinine masks?

For as long as I can remember hand sanitizers have been part of the landscape. In restaurants, convenience stores, gas stations, car rental counters and EVERYWHERE, dispensers sit at the ready to save the world. A couple of pumps and the cool cum liquid squirts out onto the user's palm. And in short order after smearing it around and letting it dry - death to any and all microbes. Yay!

Well, just sayin', the flu epidemic was a bust. It didn't happen, like Ryan Howard in playoff play. To describe the scare as a tempest in a teapot is apropos. Nonetheless, the sanitizers have lived on. Rightfully so in a scared shitless society, where the fear of demise by a hand transmitted germ remains. Hmm, come to think of it, back then people stopped shaking hands and started coughing into their elbow crook. And as a aside my friend Larry dips his cock in rubbing alcohol to keep it fresh and bacteria free. But he's not circumcised.

Perhaps the hoot in all of this biological warfare is that the kids nowadays are drinking hand sanitizers to get high. Many of the products are made with 62% ethyl alcohol, the kind found in rum and vodka. Who in their right mind would put good drinking alcohol in hand sanitizers? Is it actually a surprise kids would get high with this stuff?

A few of the smoother yout purify the alcohol in the sanitizers by salt extraction or by distillation. The salt liquifies the gel making the alcohol separable through filtration while the distillate of almost pure alcohol is derived through the physical principle of the lower boiling point of EtOH. If only high school chemistry were taught properly, it would be fun.

As for me, I have contacts at Maury's spirit shoppe. Yeah, it's through sterile dick Larry. His brother Cletus runs a cleaning service and Maury is a customer. We got a copy key for the back door of the liquor store. Larry and I stop in on Sunday right after they close up and we take a couple bottles for the week. Not enough for anybody to notice. And let me tell you Johnny Walker (Red only) is way better than the sanitizer alcohol. I tried some derived sanitizer alcohol the other day and it sucked. My little brother Petey doesn't know any better. Kids...

Salute (ital.)