The heart and pork of the matter

Valentine’s Day requires a veneer of social distancing.

HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRIPE-VINE: OUR NEW ABNORMAL PHILIP CU UNJIENG

Happy Day of Hearts everyone! This certainly is a strange new world we now live in, when Valentine’s Day requires a veneer of social distancing, with face masks and shields on, while walking “alcohol washed” hand and hand with the one we love... if we dare. It’s getting so couples have to first swap results of their PCR, antigen, or saliva tests (I did say tests, the actual saliva swapping can follow) before making those “right” moves that spell intimacy or closeness. And like the home pregnancy tests of old, we’re overjoyed to find out we have negative results.

So if it’s not your partner or loved one getting the special treatment this 2021, who is? Have you read about hog lanes? It would seem that one point, with the shortage in pork products and the swine fever, there were “hog lanes” being established to ensure the swift movement and delivery of pork to the local markets. Unfortunately, the fact that this accessibility was coupled with instituting price ceilings on these same pork products meant the dedicated “lanes” were there, but the hog growers and traders felt the ceilings made the commercial endeavor a “fail” from the start – leading the government to liberalize the importation of pork products. So chalk that up as special treatment for our local pigs that really wasn’t – no lover’s lane there.