So I guess there are some people (pig farmers and such) that don't like the idea that referring to the H1N1 flu virus as "swine flu" could create a negative image for pork products and cut into sales. And because of this, we should just stop calling it "swine flu".

I totally agree. But the alternative is to refer to it as "H1N1", and how boring is that? We're not robots, we don't create common names with numbers in them!

To get around this, I propose that we pronounce the "1"s in "H1N1" as if they were the letter "I", and pronounce the "I" sound as "EE" like in the word "Hawaii". What does this get us? Instead of "Ay-ch one en one" flu, now we have "HEENEE Flu"! And that's 10x awesomer!

Uh oh! Better not catch the Heenee flu!

Here at work, we've been asked to help plan for an imaginary scenario where a swine-flu epidemic causes the University to physically close. So far this has included figuring out which of our job duties we could potentially do from home (so we can still get paid), and updating contact information and such.

Right from the beginning I've gone into this pretending that I misheard "H1N1 outbreak scenario" as "'H1N1 outbreak' or 'Zombie attack' scenario".

It definitely makes the emails and discussions more interesting. What's even better is that my boss is even referring to it as a zombie attack now, rather than just this silly piggy-flu.

I'm looking for ideas for brightening up the situation regarding this darn swine flu that I can't stop hearing about. Here are a couple of things that I've come up with:

1) Relabel maps that show the spread of swine flu with titles like "Places Where People Weren't Taught How To Was Their Hands", or "Progression Of Zombie Apocalypse".

2) Pretend that confirmed cases of swine flu are actually confirmed cases of zombie threat. Remember, they can only be stopped by removing the head, or destroying the brain!