#twolegsbad

We open with the image of a guinea pig being used as a mine canary to detect human flu. They literally stick an adorable pet in a room with Stu to see if it dies. 1) I’m not a scientist, but that ... doesn’t sound helpful. 2) All we need now is to put a lab rat on a scale with a woman to prove she’s a witch. Then we’ll have crossed over all test-animal jokes. 

“Like what happened to those sheep in Utah thirty years ago.”

Wait. What? 

This, I had to know. Apparently in 1968, at a fucking place called Skull Valley, weapons tests at an army lab spread off the proving grounds and annihilated thousands of sheep. The army made a whoopsie and nerve-gassed an entire county of fuzzy animals. 

Which, wait a minute ... yeah, of course I’m not the first to notice that this was the red herring plot from Close Encounters of The Third Kind. I can’t quickly find any interviews or documents from Spielberg et. al confirming this. But it would be a hell of a coincidence. 

Also, apparently that testing ground has been the cause of many accidents. They mailed live anthrax to civilian labs this year. Christ! A little more of The Stand: Future Documentary, and I’ll prep a bug-out bag and invest in a bunker. When my children ask me what happened I’ll say, first they came for the sheep. 

Speaking of predictions, the prophetic dreams have started.

“He looked, and saw two burning red eyes far back in the corn. Those eyes filled him with the paralyzed, helpless horror that the hen feels for the weasel.”

That was good. But it’s like this chapter was written by Dr. Dolittle.

Joe Bob has died. Rest in peace Joe Bob. 

The virus now gets loose in the CDC. Without a real explanation. I guess it can teleport now. 

“he was all but shitting green apples over that one.”

In the CDC segments, they directly address the fact that the disease’s onset period and symptoms are all over the map. Which I guess is true of real flus. And then the fact that it’s perfectly and universally contagious. Which is not true of anything. (Even anti-sheep bombs.) But acknowledged or no, all of this makes for a strange mix of plausible germ, wrath of God, and author’s little helper. Reading these sections is a little like hearing Atul Gawande describe the plague of the firstborn. 

“who only looked at you and wouldn’t say boo to a goose.”

Loyd and Poke, the first members of Team Villain, enter here. Murdering and running drugs. Unlike The Aristocrat, their ugliness is really well-drawn. The scumbag logic of their actions is understandable. The desert they’re rampaging through feels real. 

Speaking of. RIP, Aristocrat.

One of the murders they commit is very, very much like one in Infinite Jest that’s played for black comedy. The odds this is an accident are low. 

“He advanced on the cowboy, a rural Dr. Sardonicus.”

Learning great references today!