Category: Generic

Don’t Read the News

If you enjoy freaking out and panicking over the state of the world related to COVID-19 then by all means go ahead and read the news.  I often start my lunch break by perusing Google News.  I look through the headlines of the topics I follow and if something catches my interest I’ll open it up in a new tab and save it for later.  Once I’ve gone through the front page I pop on over to those other tabs and start-a-readin’.

In our present global situation though, a quiet little lunchtime activity like that is enough to either make me want to punch everyone on Earth square in the face, or curl up in a ball and cry as the world around me collapses into anarchy.  Yeah, both alternatives sound like so much fun.

In one article I read a few minutes ago, the Governor of New York said that things are falling apart much faster than anticipated.  He said the Federal Government (I don’t recall which agency) has a stockpile of about 20,000 respirators.  New York estimates they need 30,000.  The Feds (I think he said FEMA) agreed to send 400.  Four Hundred.

Who was it, the Lt Governor of Texas, I think, who yesterday said that grandparents are willing to die in order to save the US economy.  Really.  I am not kidding you.  Some numb nuts actually said that.  The nerve… the gall… the stupidity.  I said it in a post yesterday and I’ll say it again.  These fascists clearly care more about giving money to billionaires than they do about the lives of the people who put them in their offices.  Their constituents are worth less to them then their bank balance.  If that isn’t evil, then what is?

A few weeks ago I got into a minor online argument with a maga cult member who swore that electing a socialist like Joe Biden… as if Joe Biden had a socialist bone in his body… would burn down the entire country.  As of this moment, there is a bill being hammered out in the US Legislature that is by all accounts near completion that will see the US government send checks of $2400 to married couples, with an additional $500 per child.  Funny… I don’t hear those maga cult members I was arguing with complaining about socialism now.  Now that the high priest of fascism, the cheeto himself has come out in favor of this plan.  Is socialism no longer the devil that you swore it was?  How does that work?  Is it not socialism if a republican does it?  Hypocrites.

Okay, I’m done with the news today.  I’m going to put my headphones back on and listen to podcasts about Sunday’s episode of The Walking Dead.  After that, maybe some prog rock.  Probably no blues today… my heart can’t really take that right now.

Wash your damn hands.

 

Their Money or Your Life

Trump and his collaborators are talking about ending the stay at home coronavirus response so that people will go back to work and the economy will recover.

If you thought for a second that your life was more important to them than their donors’ money then you are as big a moron as they think you are.

Please Take This Seriously

Well we sure had the rug pulled out from under us yesterday.

Social Distancing.  We’re doing it.  We’re working from home, we’re staying away from other people as much as humanly possible, we’re cutting back on our trips to the store and all that fun stuff.

We’re not necessarily staying at home, though that might change, but we are not coming anywhere near other humans.  We are taking walks around the neighborhood.  Other people are around and we wave and say hello, but we aren’t approaching anyone.  We also go for drives.  We only get out of the car if we’ve been going too long and need to stretch our legs, in which case we find an empty parking lot, or if we need gas, in which case we don’t go near other people.

We thought that was the way it was all around.  We were wrong.

Our first quarantine road trip was just a couple of exists up route 93.  Our second was much longer.  We drove to Concord, NH and then to Rochester, NH and then home.  Yesterday, for road trip three, I had the bright idea to drive up to the ocean and wander up the coast.  I suggested it for two reasons.  One, seeing the ocean always feels good.  Two, it would be fun to see the beaches empty on a weekend day.  You know, everyone will be home so we’ll have the road to ourselves.

Wrong.

We drove to Salisbury Beach.  We didn’t approach the beach itself, but at the end of the runway there were some cars parked on the road and a few people could be seen in the distance.  Nothing much different than what I expected.  The parking lots were empty.  Then we turned north and headed to Hampton Beach across the state line and the bubble burst.

Hampton Beach is much bigger than Salisbury, and the ocean can be seen from the road.  That’s why I like that drive.  There is crap tons of parking and nice sidewalks for folks to hang out on before walking onto the beach.  Yesterday we were shocked.  The parking lots were nearly full and the sidewalks, while not mobbed exactly, were really busy.  I didn’t see any specific groups of larger than 10 people.  I saw what looked like a family of seven, and a group of eight older teenage kids.  No one was in a group of 10, but on the sidewalk there were 100 or so groups of two and three, all walking up and down the street together.  Were they all six feet apart?  Absolutely not.  It was a typical busy street.  The traffic was crazy too.  It wasn’t summertime at the beach traffic, but it was about normal for a cold day in early spring.

If one person in that sidewalk crowd was carrying the virus without showing symptoms then hundreds (at least) of people were exposed.  What the hell were these people thinking?  Worst of all?  Almost all of the people we saw were middle age and older.  They were almost all in the high risk group.  All of them.  Hundreds of them.  Again, what the hell are these people doing?

I felt stupid just being in the same time zone as these people.  I thought we were being as safe as we could be.  Now this.  Just amazing.  Every single one of those people had their head shoved firmly up their own ass.  I still can’t believe it.  It makes me want to stay at home with the doors locked.  I knew that the average person in America was kinda dumb (half of them voted for Trump after all) but my faith in my fellow man has been completely shit on.

Stay home, you friggin’ morons.

British Actors

There are only like 10 British actors at any given time. I think, at least.

We are spending some of our social distance time watching Downton Abby. It good. I mean, the world was obsessed with it for a reason.

It’s confirmed my suspicion that, while television in the UK can be excellent, they all have the same cast.

So far Downton Abby has had Ygritte and Ser Jorah “Sir Friendzone” Mormont from Game of Thrones, and both Daredevil and Legion from the Marvel TV universe. I expect at some point we will see the cast of Absolutely Fabulous and Monty Python’s Flying Circus as well.

On a side note, I saw one scene where Rose Leslie, aka Ygritte, was standing in a crowd of people and I thought to myself, gee Robert… wasn’t she was taller than that? That’s when I remembered her real life husband, Kit Harrington, aka Jon Snow, aka you know nothing, is supposed to be tiny in person. I guess I thought she was tall because next to him she looks like some kind of comic book rendition of an Amazon warrior or something.

And that, kids, is the ridiculously tall guy making a short joke while stressing out over social distancing. You’re welcome.