Happy Nine Million Day

Let’s all celebrate! The white house says the pandemic is over and to demonstrate this undeniable fact, the United States has crossed the nine million infection mark!

The Johns Hopkins dashboard puts us at 9,007,298 cases. We’re #1!

It took 23 days to go from five million cases to six million cases.
It took 26 days to go from six million cases to seven million cases.
It took 22 days to go from seven million cases to eight million cases.
It took 15 days to go from eight million cases to nine million cases.

On October 1, 2020 at around 4:00pm we were at 7,273,244 cases. There have been 1,734,054 new cases in the month of October, and there’s still one day to go.

Happy Halloween, America.

Fall To-Do List

Hockey is over and it won’t be back for a while. Baseball is over and it won’t be back for a while. Movies are over and they won’t be back for a while.

What’s to look forward to?

The Mandalorian comes out tomorrow. Season two. That’s something to look forward to. I have spoken. This is the way.

Star Trek Discovery is back. We’re a couple of episodes into season three but I haven’t watched yet.

The first Marvel series on Disney+ is coming out in December.

I have a new guitar pedal coming. It shipped this morning. National Solo Album Month kicks off on Sunday. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Christmas? Thanksgiving? Covid-19 vaccines? That’s all up in the air still.

Election day? I’ve already voted, but I am cautiously optimistic that the fascists will be eradicated.

Are They Sure it’s Stopped?

The White House Science Office said yesterday that they have stopped the pandemic. I wonder… did they ask the 1,100 people who died of Covid-19 today?

That’s right. More then 1,100 people died of Covid-19 today. Today. My math says that there were about 88,000 new cases in the US today. Today.

But the White House Science Office says they’ve stopped the pandemic.

Right. I don’t think that word means what they think it means.

Inside Peek at the White House Science Office

Yesterday the White House Science Office announced that they have stopped the Covid-19 pandemic.

Yup. They did it.

I was able to hack into a hidden camera system inside the White House Science Office and I have video of them stopping the pandemic. This is heavy stuff so be warned….

Disgusting Covid-19 Milestones

My state and my country both hit really horrible milestones today in their Covid-19 numbers. We should be proud of ourselves, and by proud I mean furious and horrified and completely devastated.

In my count of confirmed and probable Covid-19 cases, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts topped 150,000 today.

While the people of Massachusetts were getting sicker and sicker, the people of the United States hit a little bit of a death milestone. 225,000 deaths. Hooray. Let’s have another trump rally to celebrate.

I am so tired of this. Stop being assholes and wear the friggin mask.

Brain Droppings

Random stuff coming……….

I am very pleased that I was able to cast my ballot in the presidential election early and safely. My state and my city have seriously come through for me in these unhealthy, uncertain times. I am proud of what we the people have accomplished in this regard and I am proud that as an American I was able to have my opinion heard.

However…

The downside of voting early is that November 3rd, election day, is kinda irrelevant to me now. Maybe not irrelevant, but more like unimportant. At least until the returns start coming in. I go on social media and have a thousand people asking thousands of other people, what are your voting plans, or how are you going to vote, or are you excited to vote, or everyone get out the vote, etc, etc, and my response is… been there, done that. I took election day off, just in case. I should have taken the day after so I could stay up all night watching returns. On second thought, that would probably be a bad idea. I tend to get a little… animated when fascism is taking over my country and I don’t want to put any added stress on my ticker, or wake up the neighbors, or anything like that.

Basically though… I’m done, there isn’t much excitement about the process left.


Counting today, there are nine days left in October. At the start of the month I decided I wasn’t going to do an album in a month. A few days ago I changed my mind. I’ve got 10 songs in the pipeline. They are all short. They are all weird. They are all simple things based around little poly-rhythmic tricks, or guitarmonies. I haven’t written any lyrics or melodies yet. None of the songs will be instrumentals, but they will all be mostly instrumentals. There aren’t going to be any hooks. Vocal tracks will be short and simple and lyrics will probably just be a line or two. The point of it all is to hear a guitar playing in 4/4 in your left ear, and a guitar playing almost the same thing in 7/8 in your right ear, and how they occasionally line up with each other. Or, songs where the “melody” is just three guitars with tons of fuzz playing in harmony.

In other words, October Music is Robbie’s “I’ve been listening to King Crimson” month.


I still can’t believe that Massachusetts had 1,000 new Covid-19 cases yesterday. The last time we’d had 1,000 cases was in May. All of the progress we made has been flushed down the toilet. How are we as a society capable of landing a space ship on an asteroid 300 million kilometers away and bring it home with a sample of asteroid rocks, but not able to stay in our houses so we don’t get sick. Why are we incapable of just wearing friggin masks and washing our friggin hands?


I thought I was going to have more this morning, but I’m letting myself get distracted. In closing, let me paraphrase my favorite line from this week’s episode of Archer.

I’m your rampage sherpa.

Talk to you all later. Happy Friday.

Covid-19 Numbers

Note that the Massachusetts numbers are the probable and confirmed cases combined.

Here’s what we have for today…….

  • Massachusetts
    • Total Cases: 147,215 (up 1,049 from yesterday)
    • Deaths: 9,810
    • Death Rate: 6.66%
  • United States
    • Total Cases: 8,386,634 (up 74,525 from yesterday)
    • Deaths: 222,766
    • Death Rate: 2.66%

Over a thousand cases in Massachusetts. What the fuck?

The Stir Crazy Files – Episode 63

This just dawned on me…. Holy crap….

I’m having a crazy day here at the home office. Busy. My 1:00PM lunch break didn’t start until 2:45. My 16 hour fast lasted 17:45 today. Crazy!

As I eat my PB&J with a side of Ritz crackers I am listening to the Puck Soup podcast. Our favorite hockey writer podcast is having an in depth discussion of appetizers. One of them just said he loves going to a tex-mex place and having a big bowl of chips and salsa.

So do I, I thought. Minus the salsa, of course. That’s when it hit me.

I haven’t been to The Border Cafe in over seven months.

As if the existence of Covid-19 wasn’t bad enough, now I realize that I haven’t been to my favorite restaurant in over half a year. The entire Spring and the entire Summer passed without me having a single bite of Tejas chicken, or their blackened chicken, or the French quarter chicken, or the tortilla chips.

Good lord, what has the world come to?

The Stir Crazy Files – Episode 62

I think the stir crazy for this installment of the stir crazy files is more of an abstract idea. It’s kinda of a philosophical stir crazy, if you will.

The stir crazy is… I don’t really feel stir crazy anymore. How did that happen? Quarantine/Lock Down/Extreme Social Distance… it’s normal now. We don’t go out, we work from home, we only drive the cars around a little just to make sure they still work, we don’t see people, we instacart groceries and amazon everything else. We try picking up new hobbies, then we drop the new hobbies and look for new, new hobbies. We tweak our work spaces here and there. We stress over the kids going to school. We stress over the possibility of being asked to go back to the office. We stress over sick family members and then stress again over not being able to help sick family members.

All of it sucks out loud, but it’s all normal now. It’s not this new, insane thing that we have to deal with, it’s just life. It should feel wackier than it does, shouldn’t it?

Oh well. At least we get a new season of The Mandolorian in a couple of weeks. This is the way.