For those about to die.

Last night after class I watched the 20/20 special on the three disasters most likely to strike the US in the next few years. At the top of the list was the latest and most deadly strain of Avian flu, H5N1. Afterwards, I felt compelled to re-read Camus's The Plague, but couldn't find it in my intuitive shelving system. Not that it would make anyone (i.e. me) feel any better about the coming epidemic. But I did keep waiting for someone to mention it in the interviews they did. Perhaps the allegory doesn't quite fit; after all millions of people actually dying from a deadly strain of the flu isn't an allegory for anything, I don't think. Still, a little existentialism might put things in perspective, and TV often likes to cloak itself in literary garb whenever it addresses serious, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it issues.