03.11.11:
There are certain housekeeping matters that an extreme backpacker like myself must attend to when the opportunity presents: teeth, spectacles, tax returns etc. One of the most important is keeping on top of your inoculations. I’d like you to now give over five minutes of your life to read a quick rant about mothers who refuse to get their kids vaccinated against some of the most deadly diseases in the world.
Let me make myself quite clear: I’d have porn star Jenny McCathy and all her brain-dead acolytes charged with child abuse.
I mean, a catholic priest raping your child is pretty bad, and it kinda ensures a life of trauma, misery, drug abuse and possibly suicide. But parents generally don’t leave their children in the care of priests in the full knowledge that they’ll be raped. Well, they do now, but in the twentieth century things were different (I suppose). Knowingly sentencing your own child AND THOSE AROUND THEM to a incredibly increased chance of DEATH just because science makes your head hurt is disgracefully bad form. Not only should the idiots who go down that route have their children taken from them to be raised by people born with a brain, they should be charged with a serious crime: the crime of bringing human life into this world and not knowing how to care for it.
Which isn’t a crime, but damn well should be.
I don’t care if there’s now seven billion of us on this planet, there’s probably seven billion diamonds in the world, it doesn’t make a single diamond any less precious. Or any less beautiful.
But I don’t have any kids (a shame really – I’d be a great dad) so I’m only concerned with number one. And I don’t want to die of some horrible face-melting tropical disease and have my brother Mike finish The Odyssey Expedition for me with my ashes in an urn. So every ten years (I know… such a drag) I have to go for a Yellow Fever inoculation. Today I went to the Travel Health Clinic in Melbourne (393 Lt. Collins Street: well recommended) and along with Yellow Fever, I topped up my Meningitis as well as my Rabies protection. Great stuff: it makes you feel like you’ve just drunk some elixir in World of Warcraft that protects you from all evil spells. Although it did make my left arm ache somewhat.
Oh well, at least it didn’t give me autism.
