Wareham is NOT part of Cape Cod.

I aim this specifically at the Taunton Gazette, which ran a story with the following opening:

A Cape Cod woman could face multiple theft charges after police said they caught her Sunday trying to either sell or exchange merchandise for drugs.

Nicole Petronelli, 23, of 1 Highland St., Wareham, was arrested by Taunton police at around 4:30 p.m. in the parking lot of the Cumberland Farms on Broadway, after cops say they saw her pick up a suspicious man seen walking out of Fairfax Gardens Housing Complex on DeWert Avenue.

No, no, a thousand times, no.

Cape Cod is a geographically distinct region, a collection of 15 towns in Barnstable County, and Wareham is not one of those 15 towns, no matter how hard it wishes it were.

Wareham is part of Plymouth County. The closest it comes to being part of Cape Cod is the fact it is part of the Second Plymouth District, which overlaps with Bourne, and its self-proclaimed status as the “gateway to Cape Cod.” Wareham’s major export is Geena Davis.

The management concedes this is a very petty gripe, but as a native Cape Codder from a long line of Cape and Island natives, I’m genetically predisposed toward putting Wareham in its place.

SWINE FLU!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!! SWINE FLU! The swine flu is upon us! We’re all gonna die! Repent! REPENT!

Or not.

All right, people, pull your heads out from between your butt cheeks for a second, okay? Good, now listen up. This swine flu – or as they want to call it now, the H1N1 flu (how sexy) – is…are you ready?

THE FLU.

A strain transmittable between animals and humans, and yeah, that’s unusual, but even that isn’t a factor here; the strain hitting the U.S. now is not “zoonotic,” which means it doesn’t jump species.

What makes this strain so special (read: unnecessarily terrifying)? Let’s see what the Centers for Disease Control says about that:

The symptoms of this new influenza A H1N1 virus in people are similar to the symptoms of regular human flu and include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. A significant number of people who have been infected with this virus also have reported diarrhea and vomiting.  Also, like seasonal flu, severe illnesses and death has occurred as a result of illness associated with this virus.

Wow, that’s…uh…that’s completely ordinary. In fact, most resources I’ve found say that something as simple as Tamiflu will fix people up nicely.

But wait, you say! What about that “death” thing the CDC mentioned? Isn’t that worth flying into a screaming panic fit?

No, you dolt, it isn’t. In a given year, a normal flu virus (or complications from the same) kills about 36,000 people, and that’s an estimate. Many of those people are the ones who are told every winter to get a flu shot as they’re especially vulnerable: kids, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems.

As I post this on Monday morning, the CDC has confirmed 226 cases of H1N1 and only one death, an infant – hardly a sign that in a few days half of us will be going to hook up with Randall Flagg in Las Vegas while the rest of us go to chill with Mother Abigail in Nebraska.

But it’s a pandemic, you fool! you’re most likely screaming at the screen now. What have you got to say about that, Mr. Smart Guy?!

The word “pandemic” is the new greatly misunderstood word of the week (supplanting “socialism” and “fascism”). A true pandemic refers to a disease that is relatively new to a given population center that, in part because of its unfamiliarity to the natives, spreads quickly and easily.

The H1N1 virus was the culprit behind the 1918 pandemic that killed an estimated 20 million to 100 million people worldwide, and what really took out a lot of those people – very healthy people, I add – was a condition called a “cytokine storm,” in which the person’s immune system went into crazy overdrive trying to fend off the virus and winds up attacking healthy cells. So far the CDC has found no evidence that this strain stands to trigger a similar reaction in the infected, or even stands to be more severe than your garden variety flu.

This doesn’t mean that you can go around licking every stranger with a cough — I mean, let’s be sensible, shall we? — but we’re not looking at the Black Plague of the 21st century either. So, in the immortal words of the (ironically) late Douglas Adams, don’t panic.

If you oppose abortion on the basis it is taking a life, i.e., against the sixth commandment (fifth if you’re Roman Catholic or a Lutheran), then you cannot also support the death penalty. It’s more than contradictory, it’s hypocritical.

No, you cannot argue the point based on specific conditions, e.g., an unborn baby is innocent while a death row convict is guilty of a heinous crime. There’s no asterisk next to the commandment. It says Thou shalt not kill, period.

You also can’t support war in any form. Jesus advocated peace and the turning of cheeks. Support war and you oppose Christ’s teachings.

Yeah, it’s that time again: time for everyone to get into a pointless knot over which greeting they receive at retail stores.

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: I don’t give a toss whether I get a “Merry Christmas” or a “Happy Holidays”…as long as they’re not telling me “Go **** yourself,” I’m cool.

The argument, as always, is over the exorcism of Christ from Christmas; the argument is that refusing to even say the word is part of some greater effort to secularize the holiday and strip it of its alleged Christian roots. I say “alleged” because Christmas is a essentially co-opted pagan holiday, and sorry, people, there’s ample historical proof to back me up on that one.

I disagree. I see running with a very generic slogan as a wholly understandable (if kinda gutless) reaction by the retail industry to those people on the opposite end of this foolishness: those who get themselves in a knot over a greeting that excludes everything but Christmas. Going with the all-inclusive, if bland, “Happy Holidays” is the best option in a no-win scenario, because you know it’s happened somewhere: someone went and scrounged themselves up a lawyer to sue a place for not offering a Christmas-specific platitude. Even in today’s frivolous litigation-happy society, you really have to push the bounds of jerkdom to claim you suffered emotional distress because someone wished you well in the most general of manners, so in simple terms of liability, I’d think “Happy Holidays” is more defensible than “Merry Christmas.”

(If there are any lawyers out there who would care to expound upon this — without claiming billable hours — please do.)

Whatever holiday you subscribe to, chances are it’s somehow based in a philosophy of peace, love, acceptance — you know, the good stuff in life. Why crap all over that just because someone’s being nice to you, just not in the precise way you’d like them to be?