...I'm going to tell you a cute story, as I'm so fond of doing. And if you don't yet understand how a pig can create such a hot topic news headline, you'll walk away feeling enlightened.

So let's set the scene. We're in a neighborhood, but this neighborhood is filled with pigs, goats, horses, chickens, and all kinds of animals. And let's just give them that cartoonish sense of style, just so I can stretch your suspension of disbelief to it's maximum (and you'll give me more literary and conceptual toys to play with) and we'll say they live in a nice quaint town because all animals have evolved into something like us and have shown a strange talent for utilizing tools and BAM! A few millions of years later they're like us. Maybe on another planet, or in a different dimension. It really doesn't matter, I'm just trying to help you get a nicer grasp of the picture.

Alright, still with me? Here's our two main characters. A pig, and a bird. Let's call them Charlotte and Tweedy, shall we?

So, Jeff and Charlotte are touring and meet up with each other and they begin romping around. The thing is, Mister Jeff Tweedy (the bird) is sick. He has this little cough and an infection in his lungs. Miss Harlot (because even after millions of years, there's still a double standard)..err, Charlotte, doesn't really think much of it. She's a beautiful girl, healthy and feeling oh so perky. What could go wrong?

Well, not much, actually. Not initially, anyway.

So these two people get their freak on and become friends (with benefits, natch) and begin to spend a lot of time around each other. Maybe they're so fond of each other they're now on a new tour and it consists of their two gigs side by side. (Hey, even Metallica toured with a brass band, it could happen.)

So that little cough has matured into an infection generations down the line. So, even if Tweedy (the bird) wasn't officially able to make Charlotte (the pig) sick to begin with, the bacteria of Tweedy's infection has had plenty of time to go through generations of permutations and evolutions.

One day, out of the blue, Charlotte gets a cough.

She doesn't like that, or the big pompous dork Mr. Tweedy is becoming, she's decided to go hang out with Joe, who is of human descent.

So Joe and Tweedy buddy up because Tweedy is a rock star, after all, and he thinks its best to keep enemies close and Joe is no exception.

Charlotte and Joe chill out when Tweedy is up to his tricks, and then after it cools down, Charlotte goes back to Tweedy because that's what her girlfriends and Cosmo told her to do.

And Charlotte's still got that cough, Tweedy is getting sicker, and Charlotte feels a fever coming on too.

Joe, being such a nice guy, thinking he has a chance to secure the fancy of such a shallow puddle as Charlotte, still hangs around them. Now Charlotte (the pig) and Tweedy (the bird) and Joe (the human) are in a closed space where that little cough is becoming a sneeze, hot and cold flashes, and all the fun that comes with influenza.

And it's not before long that Joe's got that cough, that fever, those ^hot _cold ^flashes.

But he couldn't get it from Tweedy, 'cause Tweedy is a bird, and birds seldom have a disease easily communicable between humans. But Charlotte, the pig, can get a bird's disease easier.

And then that pig and bird swap these two things, and over time, the disease becomes virulent enough to go to a human...because pigs can make humans sick, you see.

And now, my friends, you know the rest of the story about H1N1.

_{(*In case you're wondering why this piece is entitled as it is, take a look at H1N1, and then...all the capitalizations in the name of the article. It's deceptively simple.)}