Hong Kong is going nuts with this swine flu scare.

I went to dinner last night and the buttons in the elevator were covered with a plastic sheet and a sign saying “Disinfected every two hours”. But if you walked around the corner and took a look down the alley you could see they had raw meat sitting out in the open for hours.

Someone really needs to get their priorities straight.

There was a huge demonstration in DC today. It made getting on the freeway hell, and the hotel and shops are packed with tea-baggers. It reminded me of why I find hippies so annoying.

I’m all for protest; regardless of your point of view. It’s a good thing. A duty really. Public involvement is needed for a heathy democracy to exist. I even enjoy the loony fringe that turns out at these events. Many people calling Obama a fascist and communist or a Nazi and a Marxist on the same sign without a hint of irony. People wearing an American flag tee-shit carrying a placard saying “Not MY President.” The overwhelming number of Hitler references is troubling, but in general, it’s all good.

The only thing I find annoying about the hippies and tea-baggers is the false sense of self-importance and paranoid sense of persecution. Walking around, I hear a lot of older white folks speaking in thick southern accents saying things like “They tried everything they could, but they could not stop us.” “I think we really have them scared now.”

No one ever seems to know who “them” is, but they are sure that “them” is working very hard in secret ways to prevent “us” from telling “them” what “us” really feel.

At least the hippies had good music.

I was in LA yesterday and took Ami to Pink’s — the best hot dogs on the West coast! A month back, she begged me to take her, but when we actually picked up our order, Ami sat there staring down at her 12″ Jalapeno Dog with a mixture of shock and disgust. After some not so gentle prodding I got her to try it.

For the next several minutes Ami expressed her amazement that Americans could eat such things, at which point she realized that she had finished her dog and reluctantly admitted that it was pretty good.

Another Pink’s fan is born!