"The Red Green Show is kind of like the flu; not everybody gets it." - Red, The Red Green Show

 

Downtown Houston at sunset. The buildings are tall, but they won’t save you from a plague of frogs.

The Mrs. made the mistake of exposing The Boy to the term “flash flood” during when we were turned back by wet highway patrolmen recently as the highway we were driving on began to resemble a bayou (that’s a local term that replaces “fetid swamp filled with reptiles and pond scum” for the non-Southerners in teh Intarwebs). Driving in a bayou is not good if you use the standard-issue Texas Mercedes™ or Jaguar©. A little-known fact is that the State of Texas purchases a new Mercedes® for each driver as a standard issue car when you get your driver’s license down here. If you have a good driving record and sufficient plastic surgery to be a TWIT (Trophy Wife In Training), you get the Jaguar™.

So, after Houston flooded, it was announced that Texas officially had developed Swine Flu. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Swine Flu (different that Sine Flue, where you calculate trig problems all day) but Swine Flu is perhaps the SECOND HORSEMAN of the APORKALYPSE. I knew Texas had felt a bit warm recently, but I never would have guessed. Sadly, I guess that means I’m not supposed to eat bacon (mmmm, sweet, crunchy baaaaaacon) or ham (mmmmm, salty pink ham). An aside - Ma Wilder always wept when I ate ham, because I slathered it in ketchup, which was okay because I would slather anything classified as an “animal” – turkey, fish sticks, sausage – with ketchup when I ate it. This must mean that corn is an animal, because it got ketchup, too. (Full disclosure – that’s really still the case – meat is just an excuse to eat more ketchup, and on more than one occasion I ate two pieces of bread with ketchup as the only filling – but enough about college.)

Since we’re in Biblical punishment mode, I’m guessing that a plague of non-Muppet™ frogs will be hitting us soon. When I was ten or so, watching Charlton Heston tell God that he could have his Commandments back from his cold, dead fingers, I always wondered why a plague of frogs was bad. Frankly, I still do. What do frogs do that is worse than the whole “river of blood” and “curse of baldness on Yul Brenner”? I suppose it would be bad if the frogs were zombie frogs, or perhaps if they were just really big frogs that were hurled from the sky at 200 miles per hour and dented your car chariot, but I think it was just a plague of frogs.

I think if Hollywood were to redo the Ten Commandments, it would probably star Brad Pitt as Moses, since, hey, why the hell not? I think Ramses, Pharaoh of all Egypt would probably be played by Alan Greenspan, or maybe Vin Diesel if they wanted to go younger. I could see them updating it, and Pharaoh would be confronted with:

Instead of rivers of blood, perhaps we could replace that with, oh, Nancy Pelosi?
Instead of baldness, why not a mysterious flu?
Instead of falling frogs, failing megabanks that would cripple the economy?

Okay, maybe I got some of those a little wrong, but you get the idea. Then Brad Pitt would show up in Congress and say, “Let my Texas go!” They’d say “no” and then he’d turn a briefcase into a child he’d adopted from Canada, or some other place without the Internet. Then he’d give congress huge wads of campaign cash, and they’d say, “Whatever, dude.”

Then Utah (would we really miss it?) would flood and trap the people attempting to flee California, and Texas could finally be free.

I think this might work out, especially if I have enough ketchup, because I think it might taste good on frog. And, really, who has ever heard of frog flu? Heck, if you say it – it sounds like a martial art – frog flu. It’s certainly better than Hammageddon.