I Need An App

A number of states that don't include mine are offering a free phone app to help you know how terrified you should be that you've been exposed to COVID-19. And if you have been, you can choose to take proper precautions such as isolating yourself or hiding in the closet sucking your thumb or beginning to take the precautions you hadn't bothered with before, or something. I'm not sure what I'd do with the information. I'd prefer something more immediate like a live warning system that you're about to get too close to an infected person. Something along the lines of that exploding dye packet that they put in the ransom money.

I mean, they used to do that in the olden days. They used to put big pustules or black boils on people, and if they could do that in medieval times, why can't they do it now? Now they have germy teenagers that look totally normal and although it's always a good idea to avoid those people anyway, it can't always be managed, especially if you want a pizza delivered.

I'm not terribly worried on a daily basis because I do take precautions. I assume that anyone I meet is riddled with disease. My favorites are the sneezy people who wave their hands in a friendly manner and holler that it's just a cold. Pardon me? If you have a cold, you have swapped snot with somebody in some way. You have. If you've been doing this pandemic right, you shouldn't have Sniffle One.

Because I can be exceptionally dense, I had to read several paragraphs about the app before I figured out how it works. As everyone who is not me knows, it works because it is assumed your phone is adhered to your body at all times. Apparently, that is a reasonable assumption. I'm the only person who says things like "Call me in the afternoon, I should be home by two," and I don't get how weird that sounds until I get the puzzled look.

As far as the Big Eye In The Sky is concerned, I have been sitting on my kitchen counter for days.

I also fail to remember that most people use their phones for way more than communicating with people. That's just about all I can do on mine. They say it's "smart," but that's just so as not to damage its self-esteem. Every time I try to download an app it tells me it's way too small to have such a big app shoved into it, and I should consider unloading something first, even though there's nothing in it. It's just a bulimic little piece of shit, is what it is. As a consequence I have learned to live without most of the life-simplifiers that litter our brainscape. I'll still walk a few miles to a store and find out it doesn't carry what I want and say Thanks Anyway and walk home again, and feel no sense of betrayal. Other people wave their phones in the air and get the nearest pizza paid for and dropped by drone through the sunroof while they're still driving. They check their blood pressure and then they check their portfolio and then probably their blood pressure again, and meanwhile I don't even check to see if anyone called once I get home, which is where my phone is, probably.

Nevertheless, the same people who are afraid Bill Gates wants to microchip them with a vaccine have a phone pocket sewn into their pajamas and don't think a thing of it. Everyone from the FBI to Walmart knows where they are. And I'm definitely not letting my phone go out and get sneezed on by all those other phones. I don't know where they've been.

But somebody does.

Thirty Questions You Totally Shouldn't Be Asking

Here you go, straight from Conspiracy Central: thirty loaded questions about the pandemic that "people should be asking themselves," most of them heavily implying something sinister is afoot, something we need to get to the bottom of. I admit it: I read all thirty. I'm not making these up. And the reason I'm not asking myself these questions is I already know the answers. So obviously I'm just the person to clear up this crap before it goes coronaviral. Ready?

4. Why should you stay inside but yet heat and sunlight kill the virus? You, in particular, should stay inside so you can read up on how things work. But no one is telling anyone to stay inside. Get on out there, Petunia! Get some fresh air! Sunlight plus time is a disinfectant, so you can leave a plastic bin, for instance, outside for a few days and there shouldn't be any virus on it. If you leave your personal self outside for a few days and stay real still and don't move and don't touch any orifices, yours or a friend's, probably people could lay a finger right on you and not get a virus. Try not to breathe on them though.

5. Why can't kids (who are not at high risk) play on an outdoor playground, where sun kills this virus? Okay. Sure! Let the little buggers play on the playground! Kids are famous for not touching each other or bunching up or getting each other smeary or leaking fluids out of their orifices, so everything should be just fine, as long as one of them hasn't acquired the virus somewhere else! They wouldn't, like, share the playground equipment, would they? Or laugh, or talk, or shriek, or snot on things? Then they're good to go. Oh, that high risk bit? Your kids can get real sick too, but you're right, it's mainly Grandma we're protecting by trying to contain this thing. Although another way to go might be to have the oldsters laminated and park them in the basement. Send down a bucket of creamed peas and a fruit cup every few days.

7. Why is it okay for government officials to get a haircut, but not common citizens? Really? This is a thing? You mean government officials like the President? That's not a haircut, that's an installation. I'm guessing no "government official," whatever you mean by that, is getting a haircut unless they have someone who lives with them cutting their hair, or unless they're stupid or vain. Same as "common citizens."

8. Why the fear, when this virus has less than a 1% death rate? This virus is so new and so little data have been gathered that no one really knows the mortality rate yet, although it's generally pegged at over 1%. I guess we can only speak for ourselves on this one. The death rate for people in my age group is more like 4-11%, and it's not a nice death, and you get to die alone. I don't want it. Also, if my chances of getting killed in a car were one in a hundred trips, I wouldn't get in a car. You go ahead on, though, you tiger, you!

9. Why are areas like Chicago and New York gearing up for mass vaccination? Because they're smart and well-run.

11. Doesn't shelter in home mean there is a whole population of people not staying home so we can? Excellent question. Yes.

12. Why are they dividing us? Another good question. Wait. Who are you calling "they?"

13. How do people not know that we are a Republic, not a democracy? Huh. A little off-topic, there. I'm going with "nobody learns anything in school anymore," because as an Oldster I certainly know that we are a republic, meaning we elect our own representatives to legislate, rather than just everybody voting on every little thing all the time and seeing what shakes out. We are also a democracy, in that we democratically elect our representatives. I'm going out on a limb here, but something about your question makes me suspect you don't know any of this, but think this has something to do with our two major parties?

14. Where has the flu gone? Oo! Oo! I know this one. Bill Gates had the flu shipped out for the warmer months per his usual schedule and will have it re-installed next October, just in time to terrify people into accepting his vaccines, through which he intends to microchip everyone in the world, and then do, well, I don't know what. Something sneaky.

15. Why do the homeless consistently demonstrate the lowest infection rate? They don't. Jesus.

17. Why are they telling us to mask up after two months of lockdown? Really? Uh, because we still have no cure or vaccine for a dangerous and highly infectious disease. I'm not sure you're paying attention.

21. Why are the common people being controlled by government and no one is controlling the government? Hey, I've got one for you. What the hell is wrong with you?

23. Why are some doctors speaking out and then getting silenced? You mean Dr. Fauci?

25. What does a computer geek have to do with a pandemic and why does he want 7 billion coronavirus vaccines? He's a humanitarian.

28. Why did Dr. Fauci say in 2017 that there would be a "SURPRISE PANDEMIC" and then runs the pandemic team? Same answer, both clauses: because he is an expert on pandemics.

29. Why are they infringing on Christians [sic] freedoms? Whuh? Who? They who? Calm down.

And just for fun, let's go back to #3, which we skipped earlier.

3. Why can't you have an elective surgery, but you can have an abortion which is elective? Elective surgeries are those that are either unnecessary (like cosmetic surgery) or that can be reasonably postponed. Abortions, whether medically necessary or legally requested, cannot be reasonably postponed. This question doesn't seem to have much to do with our pandemic response. It feels more like a sniper shot from the Pro-Life movement, herein defined as a group advocating for the right to life for humans from blob till birth, and for a while after that, with exceptions for capital punishment, war, famine, black people running around blackly where they don't belong, and of course people over 65 during a dangerous pandemic.

The Flyover

Well, they all showed up on the same day. April 8. What a bunch of goofs.

April 8: Housefly Day. Not a ton of flies. Well, possibly a ton, but not a large number. These are the biggest, slowest, logiest bunch of fattycakes I've ever seen. They don't even fly so much as they lumber. They remind me of the big-bellied prop planes that used to trudge across the sky over our house when I was little. You saw them coming and you had time to go inside for a popsicle before they were all the way done with going over your house. They came from National Airport, which was relatively close by. That's the one that got renamed the Ronald Reagan Union-Busting Libertarian Assholes Airport, but by that time, the planes had a little more pep and we had a lot more confidence they weren't going to plop into the back yard.

I have no idea what was keeping them in the air. The houseflies either. In fact I've been watching them, and they don't all stay in the air. Some of them end up on the floor from sheer excess of avoirdupois. I coaxed three of them out the window already. You know how you open the window for a fly but it always goes buzzing off in the wrong direction? These guys just lifted off from the windowsill, I went to get a popsicle, and then I popped them on their fannies in mid-air and they bumbled their way out.

The larger house spiders are watching the flies warily and wondering if they're well-marbled. Spiders are not known for hunting cooperatively but it wouldn't be the worst idea in this case. Early humans could live off squirrels but if they banded together and took down a mastodon they were set for the winter. The smaller house spiders, meanwhile, are boarding up and latching the shutters. They assume mastodons are mostly aspirational anyway. You don't want one falling on your house.

I figure this was a single hatch, since they showed up all at once. The maggots had to be the size of pinto beans. I don't know how they got in. This is why people used to think flies were spontaneously generated from meat. You'd have a lovely piece of meat and then out of nowhere it flang out maggots. It took people a remarkably long time to recognize that the maggots came from fly eggs, even though the experiments involved were simple. (Cover the meat.) It was just easier for them to imagine flies came out of nowhere. Isn't that silly?

But we're way smarter these days. I've been researching a lot of typing on the internet, and it's perfectly obvious that my flies came from Bill Gates. Bill Gates is a multi-billionaire who keeps trying to do good works with some of his money, which most of us agree is highly suspicious. He has already been caught trying to depopulate the world using his dastardly vaccines, and now, with the coronavirus, the word on the street is he's working on a vaccine that essentially implants a microchip in the unfortunate recipients so that he can control everyone. You can see the potential for big mischief here, if you're paying attention at all. The odder the conspiracy theory, after all, the more likely it is to be true, because the best conspirators are known to be very sneaky by nature. As lots of typists on the internet are saying, Wake up.

So I'm sure that's what the deal is with my flies. Bill Gates developed them. Clearly, they're drones. They're spying on us every minute. Somewhere Bill is sitting in a lavish bunker watching video footage from my flies and I have half a mind (this helps) to show him my big white fanny. But I won't. He's just wily enough to have snuck in a real decoy fly, and I don't want to get into a personal maggot situation.

Money, Honey

Can we talk about money?

By now you've probably heard that most of today's money is in only a few pockets. Not that many at all. And the rest of us, well--some of us are doing okay, but a whole lot are barely scraping by. There were always rich people but not like this. And they're really not kicking in the taxes so much anymore. They're leaving that part of the social contract to us.

I understand how we got into this predicament--the system is rigged twelve ways to Hallelujah--but what I don't understand is how the rich people got the poor people on their side. So many people wish they were rich that they actually admire rich people, no matter what. There's something about obscene wealth that makes people think: oh, they totally earned that. Why? They must have, because they have it. We really don't ask for much more proof than that.

Speaking of the Queen--we're the same way with royals. They get poop stains in their drawers like everybody else but we think they're special because of the crown. They've got the kit, they've got the outfit.  Of course, your own daughter wears that stupid princess costume and you might drop her a curtsey once or twice just to play along, but you still expect the sequined little pinkster to do the dishes and clean up her room. We all have responsibilities. You shouldn't be able to get out of them by waving a scepter around.

We teach our sons and daughters to share. Rich people, though, are to be admired and commended for  accumulating just as much as they can, and keeping it to themselves. They shouldn't have to pony up much for the good of society--that's commie talk. "I might be rich some day," ordinary folks say, "and I won't want my loot taken away, either."

Sugarcakes? Don't fret. Nobody's coming after your Dodge Caravan anytime soon.

Even the crappiest widget-maker on the line thinks she works harder than her coworkers. It's easy to talk her out of the union; easy to get her to believe her poker prowess will set her up prettier than a dull, plodding old pension plan. It's a snap to get her to hand over her money to a newly liberated financial sector, operating under newly minimal oversight. So a lot of our richest people siphoned off middle-class cash into opaque financial instruments constructed of pure bullshit. They won the big score, and now they're set. It's quite the caper they pulled off.

But aren't rich people the job creators? Shouldn't we leave them alone so they don't get in a snit and quit making us jobs?

Hmm. Let's see. Some of the most successful players got that way by doing the exact opposite of creating jobs. They arranged acquisitions and mergers and destroyed companies and unions and (by the way) lives.

One of the steamiest piles of money originated through the hard work of a single entrepreneur named Sam Walton, who may ultimately have done more than anyone else to destroy the middle class. He created plenty of jobs, but they weren't in this country. And three of the top twenty richest Americans got on the list by cleverly also being Waltons, and for no other reason. They made shrewd sperm selections. That's earning it, all right.

You know who the job creators are? You and I are, if we are so fortunate to have just enough money to buy a haircut, and a latte, and a book, and dinner out. Doesn't need to be a lot of money, either, just enough that we feel comfortable swapping our dollars around. We don't have to be rich to be rich enough.

But wait--how about Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg, and that gang? Didn't they invent things and develop things and earn their money?

Well paint me red and call me Natasha, but I'm saying no. Not all of it. Maybe the first half billion. Maybe two billion. Draw the line wherever you like, but there's a number out there it is not possible to be worth. Not really. You get to that number, scoop it on up and enjoy your life. Put it in the win column. We're confiscating the rest.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett know this. That's why they started The Giving Pledge, promising to give away at least half of their fortunes. It's a start, and it still leaves them plenty of walking-around money. Plus, they'll even let you wait to give it away when you're dead. But for most of these luminaries on the Forbes list, the thought of scraping by on a half a crap-ton of money is a real scrotum-shrinker. Right now they're sitting pretty. They've got nothing left to worry about but their souls, and the consensus is that can wait a bit.

How can anybody acquainted with his own mortality hoard so much treasure in good conscience? And if he in fact does not have a sense of his own mortality, is there anything we can do to drive it home?

Don't make us get our pitchforks.