Friesen’s Top Five List #48: Conquered Diseases

Holy shit, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything.  My transition from Columbia’s premier “dick joke blogger” to its premiere “dick joke stand up comedian” has not been without it’s victims, most notably the steady stream of writing posted here.  And that makes you, my dear reader, a victim too.  And I can’t have that.  I can’t stand idly by and watch as my beloved readers get turned into tomorrow’s “people victimized by a hilariously handsome humor blogger” statistics.

Thus, it’s time for me to return to proper form, and what better way is there to do that than by doing something I haven’t done in a while: make a definitive list about something I know very, very little about.

Today’s list is one that hits me very close to where I live: it’s the Top Five Conquered Diseases.  I’m not really a hypochondriac, but I do have a bizarre fascination with the human body.  It’s not so much a fascination in that it leads me to study biology or something lame like that.  It’s more like I have really stupid (or insightful?) questions about biology (e.g. “why can’t humans perform photosynthesis?” or “what do you mean humans don’t have chlorophyll?” or “what do you mean you couldn’t inject people with chlorophyll and thereby make them capable of photosynthesis, which would in turn solve the world’s food crisis?”), which I pose to Cibi, my friend who’s currently in med school.  These conversations rarely result in me learning anything about the human body, but almost always end up deteriorating into violent arguments between Cibi and I about whether or not I have a dangerous obsession with poo.

In compiling this list, I’ve come across a few problems.  One: we (the humans) haven’t really cured all that many diseases.  We’re great at coming up with a lot of treatments for shit, but we aren’t the best at preemptively curing things.  Two: I’m not entirely sure what “conquered disease” means. My list assigner, The Crain Train, gave me this assignment, and I’m damn glad he worded it so vaguely.  I’m taking full advantage of it and using this wiggle room to as much of an advantage as I can.

Alright, here it comes.  It’s the Top Five Conquered Diseases.  Let’s get it on.

5) Periods

I hear that “being on your period” is bad times.  I hear that there’s a lot of pain and bloating involved and that the condition makes you bleed from your vagina.  Once upon a time, girls had to catch this “disease” once a month, but now, thanks to the miracles of modern science, it’s possible for them to only catch it four times a year, and theoretically never at all.  Uh oh, ladies; it looks like one of the pillars in your whole “it’s so hard to be a woman” argument is crumbling.

4) The Whooping Cough

The Whooping Cough is gone, but you know what’s not?  The Whooping Crane.  Thank God.  Without them, who would eat all the lizards?

3) Chicken Pox

I hear that chicken pox have been cured, which to me is bad news.  Chicken pox may be painful, and it may be responsible for a lot of deaths in third world countries, but to me, chicken pox was a good excuse to not go to school for an extended period of time.  Let’s all just hope they never cure that mono.

2) Polio

Again, I hear that polio was some bad news, but now thanks to vaccinations, the world is pretty much done with being worried about polio.  Like all diseases, polio is still a problem in the third world.  It’s like, come on third world, get it together.  Yet, there’s an untold story of pain involved with polio.  Everyone talks about how painful it must be to have polio.  Everybody talks about the pain a family must go through when a relative has to suffer with the disease.  But what no one talks about is the poor iron lung manufacturers who have lost their livelihoods now that no one’s getting polio anymore.  I mean, what else are they going to use that thing for?  Managing “odine’s curse?”  I’m not even sure that’s a real thing.

1) Pelican Pox

Alright, maybe this one’s not a real disease, but damn if that’s not one sexy pelican.  This would also be the picture I would use if I were writing about how we can cure feline AIDS, but I don’t think we can do that yet.  And I’m not sure if people can get it.  Regardless, if I were writing about how we defeated feline AIDS, I would use this picture with a caption that said “Researchers Take A Big Bite Out Of Feline AIDS.”  Oh man, what if the doctor who cured feline AIDS was named Dr. Pelican?  That would just be too perfect.