Rightly is they called swine  Globe and Mail Blog Post  Public
stress and gallows humour, as inseparable a combination as
Nichols and MayAbelard and Eloise, peanut butter and jam - or
Burke and Hare. And nothing is more likely to focus the mind, or
tickle our sense of the macabre than the prospect of a plague.
For which "pandemic" is a euphemism, I'd almost say a secular
euphemism, since it takes the punitive connotations out.  Story
continues below ad  The humour given rise to by the Swine flu
epidemic that impends is very much in that vein. And there's a
lot of it. I typed "swine flu jokes" into Google's search engine
and got 2.35 million results. Only checked a few and gave up;
too many jokes of the following variety:  "The only known cure
for Swine Flu has been found to be the liberal application of
oinkment." And that's one of the better ones.  In the course of
these, er, researches, I was reminded by my friend A. of the
timeless, self-reflexive and very funny phrase, "Rightly is they
called swine." But