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Egas · Guest

Just to get you going today...

SARS Clearance Sale
It’s all gotta go, the items that have the country at fever pitch.

Government Lie Detector Unit: Electric model. Attractive soft, dark brown surface with consistent faecal odor. Red light flashes when the government is lying about the SARS figures. To deactivate red light, unplug unit.

Rubber Face Masks. Don’t be fooled by standard masks with pores the size of an army of viruses. Get these poreless, peerless models. Includes frowny-faces so that you can blend in with the general populace.

6-pack Vinegar. Out they go. Medicinal value indicated by recent sales in the millions of bottles. Those viruses won’t want to know you after you down a good vinegar six-pack.

Whito Bleach. The latest fragrance in these rapidly changing times. Don’t be left out. Spray it on household items; the car; even apply to bodily extremities before making love. Guaranteed to suppress libido and thus minimize transmission opportunities.

SARS Carrier Detector Unit. Insert up anus of suspected SARS carrier. The model that took San Francisco by storm.

Panic Instruction Manual. How to save face by panicking along with the rest of the general population. Don’t appear relaxed when you can join the frenzy. Fully illustrated with appropriate facial expressions of sentient anguish.

The Layman’s Guide To SARS Statistics. Beautifully illustrated with exaggerated and frightening images of death by pestilence. All SARS figures in exaggerated size 68 font to make them look bigger than what they really are, as requested by 98% of men on the street. If you cannot justify your current sense of terror, this is the manual for you. Essential bed-time readings. Editor’s note: All competing data which might suggest that SARS is anything less than the Apocalypse have been respectfully removed to avoid embarrassment for the masses. e.g. references to the usual 20 000 deaths from pneumonia every month in China have been removed by popular request.

Fear Registration Unit. Feeling frustrated because you are feeling relaxed and apathetic while all your friends are in various states of apoplectic terror? The Fear Registration Unit is the answer. Alerts you when levels of adrenalin and cortisone in the brain fall below critical levels, with a violent blow to the parietal lobe (i.e. the back of your head). Don’t let your apathy kill you at a time when panic is the only socially acceptable option.

The Rumor Generator: Don’t be left out at parties when that extrovert has the audience transfixed with anecdotes of our impending doom, government conspiracies and Beijing Medical Hospital backroom gossip. Self-generating and fully automatic, this compact unit includes such popular options as: “What happens when they quarantine Beijing/Shanghai/Guangzhou?”, “They’re burning thousands of SARS corpses behind Beijing Military hospital #13” and “The government already knows about…”. Sorry, numbers are strictly unlimited.

arioch36 · Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 3589

Uhg! You make me feel terrible. Every disease is serious, even SARS. I will not laugh. I will not laugh. I willllll nosm t\sklgjqw Stop

chinasyndrome · Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 3:59 pm Post subject:

Egas, you're the maestro! Do you think the Carrier Detector Unit could be modified into the Redneck Detector Unit? It could be a runaway hit with some of the posters here. Maybe it would help them to stop blowing chunks! Wink

arioch36 · Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 3589

Stop! Stop! You guys are too much. I better stop reading this forum, or my naybors will think I'm crazy when they hear me laughing.

chinasyndrome · Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 4:36 pm Post subject:

Arioch36, it's okay. We'll talk you 'down'. Egas, help us out here! Can we modify the Carrier Detector into a Laughter Minimizer? I'm thinking along the lines of the creative use of the 6-pack of vinegar... Mad

arioch36 · Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 3589

I'm floating on the ceiling now. What will my foreign co-workers think of my strange behaviour. They might think I'm on drugs too.

wOZfromOZ · Joined: 01 Feb 2003 Posts: 272 Location: Shanghai

E-Gas

What a Ripper!!!
Copied, printed for all the others here to LOL to!

wOZ, seriously fromOZ!

Egas · Guest

Well, I'm glad someone is willing to have a little laugh at his time. (of course I'm not poking fun at the disease itself, nor the people who suffer, but the human behavior that's in evidence at the moment. ) I was in the supermarket on Wednesday, and saw the mad rush, so the idea for the SARS sale came to me. Anyone got any other SARS sale items they wanna sell?

once again · Joined: 27 Jan 2003 Posts: 815

SAVE FACE MASK

On sale now for all those that laughed in the face of pestilence and plague. Guaranteed to hide the embarassed looks of guilt and complaceny as the plague comes to their town and kills their social life. Then for use at airports and points of exit to hide the fact that the last helicopter has just left, but your frends wont recongnise your about turn on the risk.

Reconditioned mask from bath house owners in San Fransico who fought to have the bath houses kept open in the face of the last great hysterical disease on sale at reasonbale prices..but as some of these have now become classic "face and business saving devices" price in only available on request.

Please do not take my post as anyway derogatory, just satire from a different angle.

Egas · Guest

once again,

Yes, SARS has certainly put a dampener on the social life and changed life dramatically. But you will notice that the post here is satirising exactly that human response to SARS, not the disease itself. That response still continues to be, in my opinion, infinitely more intense and intriguing than anything the disease is putting our way.

I was at yet another SARS emergency meeting at my school today. More panicky teachers threatening to quit, despite the fact that we have no SARS cases as yet. It seems to me that the actions of authorities, the media and the general population are what has them spooked. Certainly many of the scenarios that were being put forward as neceessary are anything but. So I just shut up when teachers started screaming that they were sending their kids out of the country, even though not a single child has died from SARS anywhere in the world as yet in the four or five months this disease has been with us. I could poke fun at that, but it is really too sad even for satire.

Yes, let's distinguish the behavior from the disease. Then some sanity might prevail. This disease is here for the long haul. Like all mortality risks we are just gonna have to live with it, just like we have done all our lives. The difference to our lives in terms of overall mortality risk is so close to zero you can barely count it. (when you add up all the other ways you can die in China) The world has not changed nearly so much as we think. It is just that the quiet lives people live in denial of their mortality have been shaken. Yes, fragile we are, the humans of this planet.

Seth · Joined: 05 Feb 2003 Posts: 575 Location: in exile

It's indeed the weirdness that's scaring me. I used the little calculator on my computer: 4000 cases in China/1,300,000,000 people = .000003%.

davis · Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2003 4:32 pm Post subject:

[size=18][/size]SARS FREE DOG TO GOOD HOME----MAKE OFFER!!!
[size=12][/size]! small dog -recent pet-no bad habits-has all shots

[size=18][/size]Local Politics Forces Sale
[size=12][/size]Many possible uses....pet....hotpot.....fur-collar....just to name a few...please call your nearest FAO for particulars

davis · Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2003 4:35 pm Post subject:

SARS FREE DOG TO GOOD HOME----MAKE OFFER!!!
! small dog -recent pet-no bad habits-has all shots

Local Politics Forces Sale Many possible uses....pet....hotpot.....fur-collar....just to name a few...please call your nearest FAO for particulars

davis · Posted: Mon Apr 28, 2003 4:40 pm Post subject:

Try to ignore the post with the {size captions} I tried to edit but oooops!!!

chinasyndrome · Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2003 6:07 am Post subject:

[quote="davis"]