So I have swine flu. I mean, probably not, but I did get horribly sick last Tuesday. It's more logical that I just have the regular flu: more people get that one, and the symptoms as far as I can tell are pretty much the same. But because I've always been a sucker for common experiences-American Idol, paying attention to Major League Baseball playoffs, totally missing The Wire the first time around-I'm declaring this bout swine flu. Swine flu-not regular flu-has captured our imagination this year. Swine flu-not regular flu-is what gets Matt and Meredith talking on the Today show. And I want to be part of the conversation.

I've obviously over-thought this. Besides being the new new thing, swine flu, I think, has got people talking because of what the words that comprise it evoke. Which is to say, pigs. Now, pigs are filthy, at least Biblically speaking. And because I kind of agree with those punk Norwegians and think that whatever international conversation Barack got going last November is one worth having, let's say also that pigs are filthy Koran-ically speaking. And right there, we have two of the big three, believing that pigs are filthy. But bacon aside, aren't our Jewish friends and our Muslim friends onto something? Come on. Pigs slop around in their own slop. If a strain of the flu virus slops around with them, well that's just fucking gross. Right?

Which leaves us now with the whole swine thing. Calling it pig flu would be, like I just said, fucking gross enough. But the word swine adds a Germanic flavor to the visual. When I hear swine, I think Herta Mueller and her fellow extras from The Reader. Plus, I think of the stuff that The Reader was about (Nazi guards having sex with kids) and the stuff that The Reader alluded to, but didn't really show (murdering people whose religion tells them pigs are filthy). Last week when I was coughing a fit before boarding my flight, I received many suspicious glares, and I thought of Herta and her friends clogging, with their phlegm-y joylessness and their furtive eyes.

This is of course not to equate having the flu with ethnic literature, ethnic cleansing or ethnic dancing. When I hear swine flu, I imagine Nazi Germany and Nobel Literature prize winners, and to a lesser extent, Nobel Peace prize winners (apparently). When you think of the disease, you may visualize farms and Amish people, and that bizarre year away the Amish teens do where they drink Natty Light and eat Applebee's and vandalize stuff. Maybe you think of that pork belly everyone, but especially Tom, trips over on Top Chef. Or maybe you just think of Tom Colicchio. We all, I think, have our free association stuff: what we think of when we hear or read different words. And isn't that the power of language in a very "Reading Rainbow" sort of way? To take us somewhere else?

Words elicit emotional responses and paint pictures. Which takes me back, like most things, to 10th grade. I remember Father Zanoni prancing around our desks, reciting from memory to us, William Wordsworth's Daffodils. Father Zanoni was a Jesuit and a dandy, and thus required us to memorize and recite poetry. If we whined that we didn't want to, he explained why memorizing stuff was useful and civilized, but then held up cue cards in the back of the room if we stumbled. With Zanoni, the hypocrisies of high school were at least acknowledged, so when he described the flowers, "beside the lake, beneath the trees/ fluttering and dancing in the breeze," we listened. He was our favorite teacher that year.

More to the point, Father Zanoni taught us about the Romantics. That is, how they used imagery, and how revolutionary it was to use language the way they did-evocatively, visually. Is swine flu romantic? Check it. Only the word "swine" separates swine flu from flu flu. In fact, from what I understand, there are bigger differences between bacterial flu and viral flu than between swine flu and flu flu. And yet, swine flu is Adam Lambert (and I don't just mean composed of living and non-living material) and the flu flu is, I guess, some American Idol contestant we don't give a shit about. Words! Such power! Just imagine if we found another word for "healthcare," one that made people imagine "everyone, even poor people." Instead, the word we use now makes some people visualize Kenyans cheering.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Check out your local library for these and other people who talk to themselves.

Luke Mazur, one of our two correspondents on English language usage, is back living with his parents, AND he feels sick, if you can believe that.