Day 1224 – Social Distancing – Smocial Distancing

Day 1224 – Social Distancing – Smocial Distancing

Tuesday May 26, 2020 

159 Days until the election on November 3^rd

239 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

What are these people thinking?

I got my first piece of spam infection email from Russia today. The campaign is now officially on! (Hot flaming tip! You can hover over the address in the email and the real sender’s address will appear. If that address ends in “.ru” it came from Russia!!!)

Back to the main thread …

Last night I saw pictures of people in a giant pool where they could stand around tables and I guess drink and talk. There were lots of people. Every spot was taken. Around the pool was crowded. There was a sign on the wall saying “Practice Social Distancing.”

I’m guessing most of these people can read, but critical thinking is not part of the quiver of intellectual gifts (maybe? I don’t know.) 

Is it really worth your life to stand in a pool where someone is going to be too lazy to get out to go to the bathroom to talk to people you don’t really know?

I don’t get it.

Then there are my right wing friends who are cranking up the conspiracy hoax blame Obama inaccurate headline stuff. 

My favorite so far is the one of Obama eating a snow-cone. He’s wearing black and has sunglasses on. To make it look more menacing they threw a dark shading over the whole thing. The caption says something about how this former president criticized the current one and that has never been done before. Yeah. Right. (And the current president criticizing the past president? What about that? How many times before you have to say, “Enuf.”)

It got so bad over Memorial Day that I even went to the trouble to google a few of the outrageous or purposely misleading headlines and replied. “28 million mail-in ballots went missing” – Uh no, not every mail-in ballot was returned would be more accurate. I guess that’s why many states send out applications now first, eh? Oh that’s right. Our pres criticized a democratic state for doing that. Well, no, not exactly. He was misinformed and said the state sent out ballots. The Secretary of the State of Michigan responded – twice – to correct the president and to point out that four or five Republican states do exactly the same thing.

This brings me to the critiquing of Nancy Pelosi because she didn’t allow the House to remotely vote. Oh shocking. The nerve. (“Jane, you ignorant slut.”) Oh wait, neither did Kevin McCarthy or Mitch McConnell. I guess  the person doing the headline decided not to mention that. But hey let’s do a little mind experiment shall we? Let’s say Nancy Pelosi allows remote voting and let’s say a vote goes through that my right wing misleading headline posting friends don’t like. 

What are the chances that the next headline post will be something about the Speaker of the House willfully ignoring the Constitution? I mean there is that bit in the Constitution that says how a vote must take place and that people must be present in the chamber. All Pelosi did was to opine that a remote vote was vague Constitutionally. OMG! Get out the fat f*cks with their AR-15s.

And speaking of those gentlemen. When are they going to be arrested for battery?

I am so sick and tired of some idiot walking around with a weapon that could wipe out the crowd in five seconds. It’s stupid. 

It’s like the kid who pointed an uncapped paint ball gun at me at point blank range and said, “Don’t worry it’s not loaded.” (“Listen, you little turd, I don’t want my eye or my life dependent on your word.”) 

Okay so here’s my plan to wipe out the virus in one simple easy move. Are you ready?

Everybody stay at home for two weeks. 

I think as soon as Joe gets in he should announce that you’ve got a week to get all the toilet paper you need for two weeks stay at home then Boom, the hammer comes down.

Today or tomorrow we will pass the one hundred thousand dead mark and five or six days later we will pass the mark of more dead than we lost in WWI.

In other news Rolling Stone did a piece on the four men to blame for the pandemic in the U.S. I was surprise Jared wasn’t on the list. 

However, the guy who runs the CDC I didn’t know much about. Turns out he’s aligned with the Christian right and is a believer in HIV is god’s punishment for being gay crowd, etc. No wonder the CDC has lost some of its luster.

Who are the four? Trump, Azar, Redfield (the CDC guy), and I think Pence. They managed time and time again to dismiss, ignore, and not do anything. The best defense they have in some cases is that they were and are dramatically unqualified to work in these areas. That is – they didn’t know what they were doing or even how to do it. They still don’t.

Take for instance the testing fiasco. South Korea immediately teamed with their biotech private industry and got test kits out. We did not. Why? Those at the top didn’t really know how to do it, nor did they “believe” it necessary, or they thought the CDC could pull it out. This ignored many crucial points, none more important that even if the test worked perfectly the CDC didn’t have the capacity to process the number of tests the country was going to need. 

Instead of unleashing the biotech industry here, these four men sidelined and hobbled our private sector.  A failure of leadership and basic understanding coupled with a muddled disregard for truth led to this state of affairs.

Moving on, we watched the Amy Schumer show about her husband trying to teach her to cook while quarantined. I like him. I found Amy kind of annoying or something. However, her husband mentioned and defined terms and taught some good straight forward techniques. For instance, I didn’t really know what macerating meant. I kind of did, but he told me.

Also, Vivian Howard’s new series on PBS “Somewhere South” is wonderful. It’s calming as opposed to most cooking shows that are competitions against each other and the clock. She takes time to learn, to talk to others, to show technique, to eat – highly recommend. We watch a lot of cooking shows – btw.

Speaking of cooking shows, let’s talk about porn – like food porn, and cooking show porn and archaeology porn shows. 

I think Shelby and I have kind of drawn up respective lines that we realize we will not cross or let the other person be dragged across.

She will watch “The British Baking Show” or “Worst Cooks In America” when I am not in the room. By and large, not a rule but a realization that, well, how many times do I need to see someone bite into a giant cake and say, “it’s a little bit dry”?

And I will not force her to watch “Unearthed,” “Secrets of the Pyramids,” or “Destination Unknown.” 

We come together on “Top Chef,” “The Voice,” “Rachel,” “Songland,” and miscellaneous other shows. But when “Chopped” or “Guy’s Grocery Wars” or “The Top Ten Most Mysterious … on Earth” or “Abandoned” we each respect the other’s need not to have to watch.

Another thing, it seems everyone wants to hold a Zoom meeting on Wednesday at 4, 5, or 6. What’s up with that? There are other days, other times. Please pick one of six other days. Thank you.

Did you hear? Trump has decided to take his job seriously and listen to others who know what they are doing? Ha ha – just kidding.

Given how fat he appeared on the clips of him swinging a golf club I’m kind of surprised he was able to swing the club. I think he should challenge Kim Jung Un to a match. Whoever loses has to give up their nuclear weapons. Fortunately, Donnie wouldn’t have to play Kim’s old man, You know he got five holes in one on one round of golf? It’s in a museum in North Korea. It’s true. (True that it’s in a museum in North Korea.) Hey, and don’t worry about our losing the match. Donald, like Kim, wouldn’t keep his word.

I think it would be fun to have the match televised and coming from North Korea. “Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr, Un is taking out an eight iron to try to get out of the tall grass where he shanked the ball …”

“We are sorry for the interruption Bob Kostas just had a bag put over his head and was hauled out of the booth…”

“Our glorious leader just scored another hole-in-one!”

Go team.

159 Days until the election on November 3^rd

239 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS The Gathering Storm