Swine Flu Overtakes Susan Boyle Fever

With aplomb comparable to Jill Scott's character on The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, I'm going ahead and declaring "Susan Boyle & The Case of the Not-So-Ugly Duckling" solved, shut, and shelved. Well, until her debut. But by then, we'll still be over her. Sorry, Entertainment Weekly! New hotness: swine flu!

Thanks largely to symptoms of stiff joints, puking, and possibly a fatal loss of consciousness, swine flu, like SB and #AmazonFail before it, is what’s spiking America’s heart-tweets this fortnight. And good thing too as we all kind of started wearying of our BFFs blathering, “Who knew such ugly people could sing so beautifully!” or “Susie B., like Jessica Lange in Grey Gardens, is really relatable,” or “Wow, really? They gave that lady judge from Britain’s Got Talent her own show here in the US based on the fact that she isn’t Paula Abdul?”

Sadly, it seems that the same charming fauxnomaly that made La Boyle so winsome is also the same thing that’ll prevent the rabble from falling ill—provided they can resist kissing their pigs. Worse yet, swine flu’s been upgraded from “adorably-named affliction” to apparent “public health emergency”.

But this affliction is only restricted to the types of pigs with hooves and snouts, so fear not, Chris Brown’s new, unfortunate lady-friend! And while public health emergencies rarely have much of an upside, consider this: If avian flu inspired M.I.A. to conjure this bauble of bhangra-infused hip-hop, just think of the pop genius waiting to burst out of “Swine Flu.”