Soul, Man

There are things everyone says, so they're assumed to be true.

This is why I keep some things to myself.

Don't speak ill of the dead. Don't wish ill on the living.

That whole notion--that all human life is precious, that our souls make us something special--has never made sense. Perhaps all people are precious to God, but they're not to me. If Beethoven had a soul, it's worth more than Donald Trump's. There are people I will mourn and other people I won't miss at all.

I'm not sure what a soul is. It seems like something you invent to get out of dying. If I do have a soul, I'm quite certain my chickadee Studley does too. In any case, every one of us will die. Our souls will survive us, or they will fade back into fiction.

So I don't, mostly, wish ill on a living person. At least out loud. COVID-19 is purely awful. And I wouldn't, as the mandatory sentiment would have it, wish it on anyone.

But if I did, bingo, he would totally be the guy. I hope he recovers. And lives long enough to go to prison.

Why? Not because I enjoy imagining someone suffering. I don't. I'm at least that much of a liberal. But this man has been jaw-droppingly careless with other people's lives. People of color, immigrants, peaceful protestors, and, in the face of a pandemic, every still-breathing American. 

And now, for him, finally, the shit got real.

It got real for someone who doesn't believe anything is real and has duped half the population with his whims and fantasies and play-acting and ever-flowing fountain of bullshit. I can celebrate that. I do.

Because it's not just a pandemic. We're also well on the way to destroying our planet as a livable habitat for us and most of our fellow travelers. We know exactly how we got here, we know what to do about it--but criminally greedy souls are pretending we don't, and are blithely sacrificing their children. And yours. And Studley's children too. They are willing to risk it all, for a little bit of money. It makes no difference if half the people are willing to swallow their lies whole and ask for seconds. It doesn't make it less real. Shit needs to get real. If it takes a dead man to do it, I'm good with that.

I do not particularly believe that human life is sacred, or at least any more sacred than other life. But tonight, I was thinking about our souls and our pretense to immortality, and I put on a recording of Beethoven's Ninth, second movement. I cranked it way up. I lost my breath.

The top of my head tingled and dissolved and lifted off until it soared with the angels I don't believe in. It was as real as anything I know.

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.

Dispatch From The Shutdown

Here's how my haircuts usually go. Things look spiffy when I leave the barber shop ("Seniors $15"). After that I look spiffy if I take the time to blow-dry my hair before I go to bed and use Product, which I might do for a day or two. By Day 3 I am washing my hair before I go to bed and permitting my pillow to do all the styling, and any Product used came out of my face. Results are random and sometimes startling to others, but not me because the last thing I do in the morning is put on my glasses and then I don't look in the mirror, for the same reason I don't check the rear-view if I thump over something in my car.

Then there is one day, one glorious day, when my hair is exactly the right length. And the very next day it's gone over the edge and I need a haircut, bad. That day was a month ago. My barber shop is closed. Fortunately, like everyone else, I can now shrug helplessly and say "COVID-19" and point to my head and everyone understands. No one ever mentions my hair always looks this weird because--deep down--nobody cares. That's just something girls worry about for no reason.

This would be one of your lesser impacts of a world-wide plague.

Also too, the Easter Bunny didn't come to our house this year for the first time in over forty years. The governor put the kibosh on it and besides there was a problem in the supply chain. The Easter Bunny and I go way back. At first He brought enormous quantities of chocolate and hid it around the house. There'd be a chocolate bunny and a few good truffles and then mounds and mounds of M&Ms like rainbow rodent poop everywhere. In the middle years the Buns stepped up the quality and lowered the quantity, upping the truffle-to-crap ratio. And then, after consulting his investments and noting the earnest and hopeful gleam in Pootie's eye-buttons, he just started hauling in the good chocolate by the buttload. This year, nothing.

So that's more concerning. Impact-wise.

Others face more pressing obstacles. To get a flavor of this, it's always good to take a cruise on the NextDoor site. This is an online community of your immediate neighbors, through which you can take heart in the goodness of others, and also you can find out exactly who is leaving rhetorical bags of flaming poop on your porch, because they up and tell you.

Last night's thread began with one woman's measured request we observe physical distancing whilst walking by neighbors who might be gardening near the sidewalk--to pay attention and veer away to the degree possible. And it ended up with two or three missives from the Division of the Grammatically Impaired to stay the fuck in your basement if you're so fucking scared and people have the right to walk wherever they want. Followed by a suggestion to just fucking die already.

Which is a timely reminder that yes, we old people should be prepared to check out at any time, in general, and allow young people to eventually grow into mature and considerate adults with broader perspectives. It's only fair.

And the most helpful advice of all came from a Dear Abby column I shall reproduce in bullet points:

• Love conquers all
• Every day may not be good, but there is good in every day
• Don't count the  days--make the days count
• When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and:
• Laughter is the best medicine!

All righty then! I can only add: 

• It takes more muscles to frown than to smile, so bulk up. 
• Think of your NextDoor neighbor as an ass that is both half empty and half-cocked.
• Dance like nobody's watching because they're inside drinking heavily and binge-watching Night Court. And:
• When life gives you weird hair, make excuses.

The Price Of Freedom, TBD

You really have to hand it to the Republicans. They can call up a standing army at any time and not even pay the soldiers. The pawns can be found everywhere, like little dormant seeds in the soil, and all the Rs have to do is plop in some manure and boom, up they spring in their little flag outfits, loud and proud and fully armed, ready to take on the enemies of the plutocracy. And boy oh boy do they have plenty of manure. They ain't running out of that anytime soon.

Their aim is pretty transparent. They would like to be in power forever in order to funnel all the money from as many people as possible to the lucky few that own the propaganda arm, the presidency, and the courts. Of course that's a lousy way to raise an army. You can't get people up in literal arms by telling them you want them to work for minimum wage or lower with no sick leave and no pension and no medical insurance, just so a small number of people can own everything in the world. That's where the manure comes in. They have to make the people believe they give one shiny shit about gun rights and abortion and [cough cough] freedom and then, just like that, they've got their sad little soldiers, marching as to war.

Not really sure what a bunch of people screaming and honking and wiping their noses on the flag because of a public health order has to do with the right to bear arms, but in certain circles that case can be made without any logic involved whatsoever. You could accuse your mom of trying to take your Second Amendment rights away if she runs out of Nestlé's Quik, and nobody'd even blink an eye anymore.

I mean, what's the good of open-carry laws if they're making you march around the living room with your toddler all day long? The point is to brandish. Can't brandish by yourself. Look at them! All dolled up in bullet-proof this-and-that, bristling with firepower! Nothing's going to take them down, by God. Psst: Do they know just how small a virus is? Perhaps they're planning to rain bullets into the air in case we get a locust plague next. That, at least, would take down one or two locusts, making it more effective than trying to kill a virus with an antibiotic--Mr. President Science-Boy, sir.

And if you can't rouse enough rabble with an imaginary assault on gun rights, you can always remind people how many fetuses have been lost compared with the number of grandmas dying ghastly deaths alone in the ICU. That old chestnut! Never gets old.

Hell, you can raise an army by telling people Democrat Governors want to shut down their states until December just so people can't say Merry Christmas to each other. You can make up any old thing. There will always be willing buyers. Seeds...manure...sprinkle, sprinkle. Boom.

The demonstrations in Michigan and elsewhere have had some adorable touches. "Don't carpool," one organizer tweeted, "gas is cheap!" And so in a new natural world that has gone blessedly quiet and started showing signs of environmental repair and recovery in a few short weeks, amassing the maximum number of vehicles making the maximum amount of noise is bound to have the bonus effect of annoying liberals. Awesome, my dudes! Now, don't you feel better?

You don't?

Excellent. That means you're still exploitable.

When you get your socialist stimulus check from The Little People, a.k.a. the chumps who aren't rich enough to quit paying taxes, just mail them to Betsy DeVos and her family, who have sunk a buttload of dough into your little "grass-roots" organization. That's really her point, stripped down. She and her friends want the rest of your money.

Covered For Covid

Don't worry about us old people. Sure, we tip over a lot--you would too if you had one foot in the grave. But check this, Junior. We're going to sail right through your little virus dealie. Because we got Life Skills. We got Lore. We got Laudanum. We'll be fine.

Shoot, we been training for this forever. We're supposed to start looking at children as little disease vectors? Way ahead of you. And we know exactly how far apart six feet is. It's coffin depth. It's the gap you keep from the person in front of you at the ATM. It's the distance between Rob and Laura Petrie's beds. It's the length of a proper dog leash. You young people with the retractable beagles are the ones getting confused.

Six feet is weird anyway. Supposedly that recommendation comes from the idea that it is the distance an infectious droplet can travel when coughed out. Well ain't that precious. Doesn't anybody smoke anymore? We had an old man down the street from us growing up who could launch a loogie ten yards into a headwind. He'd get started hacking and you'd think someone had tied tin cans to his bumper. Speaking of bumpers he had a hell of a tailwind too. Mr. Frank was a deeply frightening man, to a little kid. We kept our germs well away from him. He had to get sick all by himself using nothing but Viceroys but that's the kind of can-do initiative people used to have, before we had to have fancy imported viruses.

What else? Wash our hands all day long? Oh fine, but there's a limit. Our tissues are thinner. You start soaping off too many layers and you're getting into a damaged-packaging situation. And then we're supposed to stop touching our faces? What's left to touch that we can still reach without bending over?

Old Person Amusing Himself

Besides I only touch my nose ten or twelve times an hour, just to get the crusty bits on the outside. I don't do any actual excavation unless there's no one else around, so that's safe. And I hardly ever have to go in past the first knuckle. What I really do a lot of is stick my finger on my eyeball. I do that because I wore hard contact lenses for forty years and completely lost the revulsion factor. Sticking your finger on your actual eyeball is the best way of getting those stray eyelashes out. Of course, you have to lick it first. Anyway, I haven't seen anything specific about not sticking your licked finger on your eyeball. I'm fine. Also, I've made extra sure I wipe my nose thoroughly on my sleeve and my hands thoroughly on my doorknobs. The doorknobs are metal and viruses slide right off.

You want contagious, you should try measles. One kid could easily measle up a whole class of fourth-graders. But we measled in rolling shifts for efficiency. That way we could still maintain dodge-ball teams all winter, which was an important lesson in survival skills, especially for your smaller and squishier children.

I'm in fine shape. I spent a good portion of my life learning how to amuse myself. I can hole up here in the house for months. And thanks to our lack of weatherstripping, we can get a pizza slid right under the front door without losing a mushroom.

But we've got another ace in the hole: nobody visits old people. We only have hard candies and our breath is bad.

Love In The Time Of COVID-19

Well look at that--big fat flakes are coming down and things could hardly look festiver. It's mid-March and this is certainly not unprecedented, but it's still a surprise, and I can't remember if we had any snow this winter. In fact the winter has seemed unusually mild. Our normal winter days are rainy and top out in the mid-forties, but it's been a good ten degrees warmer than that, enough to make me wake up in the middle of the night and kick off my beloved slab of blankets and fret about what summer will be like on our new, remodeled planet.

What else? Oh. There's a new virus in town, perhaps you heard. If you drew a Venn diagram of People Who Should Be Real Worried and Me, you'd have one big dark circle. Nevertheless I find myself not real worried. This is mainly a matter of principle. Worry has always been the least helpful tool in my kit and often as not I can't even find it in among the store receipts, pennies, and itty bitty screws.

I am not yet a complete dunce, however, and have adopted all the protocols recommended by scientists in the Deep State, a.k.a. the remaining still-functional bureaucrats whose salaries I am happy to pay with my tax money. Even though I am well over sixty I believe I would survive an infection. I worry more about Dave, who, despite being apparently bionic in fundamental ways, was a smoker of long standing, and the creative things he can do with a simple respiratory ailment are legendary around here. We're hunkering down.

The thing that's weirder about my state of mind is that I find all of this actually exciting, in almost the same way I find our imminent mega-earthquake exciting. I'm always impressed by massive real events beyond our control. Things that shake us up. In this case we have a tiny item, a virus, which, like all other living things, is doing its level best to reproduce itself, which it must do inside a "host"--in this case bats, or us. "Host" is a mighty accommodating word and suggests a degree of hospitality we might not actually feel. "Mark" might be a better term. The virus catches a ride on a suitable cell and shlorps itself inside, where it cajoles the cell into helping it replicate, slips on a new jacket, and busts out of Dodge, which is real bad for Dodge, and then it hops the next available mark, eventually existing in, conceivably, half the world's human population, plus a number of bats.

Meanwhile, we continue to hurtle toward environmental doom, even though we know full well what we need to do about it--because we knew we needed to do it fifty years ago. No politician on the planet could overcome the stubborn short-sightedness of our rapacious consumption. The disruption to our economic system would be so severe that people will not consider the far heavier price of doing nothing. The entire system needs to be overhauled, and there's little support or political will for that. Certainly not among the plutocrats, and not among the powerless serfs so easily gulled by them. I always vote as hard as I can, but it's clear to me that only some crazy outside catastrophe could turn this ship around.

But looky here: commerce is grinding to a halt. The transportation sector is nosediving. Unearned treasure is losing its value. The systems are crumbling. A crafty 120-nanometer sphere of protein and DNA has done this. It's a little viral miracle.

Scientists don't agree on whether viruses are living or not. They can't generate their own energy or live for long outside their hosts. But they're hardly inert. They're as successful as an internet rumor. Or xenophobia, which spreads rapidly but can't exist for long outside Fox News.

So that's what's filling my sails. There is something right now that has managed to bind all us individual hosts together, all over the globe. We are in a state of heightened awareness of each other's basic humanity, of what we have in common, what we each need, what we need from each other, and what we can live without. And we finally understand that what we do affects everyone else. This virus dissolves false boundaries.

We might as well call it Empathy.