325,000 dead.

 

That's all for today.

I find it funny when liqour is referred to as "the hooch".

Pumpkin Diary Entry 4

One of the most frustrating parts of this whole mess we find ourselves in is that for the first time in history we had the infrastructure and technology to ride out a pandemic with relative ease and with minimal death. I'm not saying losing your job is "easy", if that's something that happened to you, but in terms of meeting basic needs and maintaining some semblance of our normal lifestyles? We had it made in ways that maybe even 10 or 15 years ago weren't possible. Smart phones to quickly order groceries and take out from companies like instacart, grubhub, etc. Zoom/similar apps to work from home for office workers and for people to able to see the people they've had to stay distant from. You don't need to go to a video store or even redbox to rent a movie any more. Amazon, no matter how you feel about the company or how much they've taken over retail, they exist and have made it insanely easy to get things sent to you quickly and cheaply when all of those retail stores had to close. People in more rural areas that maybe don't have fast internet or access to some of these services wouldn't be affected by the infection spread like people in cities anyway. It's like 2020 was the year MADE for a pandemic. We should have just laughed it off, beat this thing within a couple of months, and been like "That's all you got 2020?!". It should have been the most convenient pandemic in human history. We HAD EVERYTHING WE NEEDED yet still a bunch of you fools couldn't handle that. Now 130,000+ people are dead (so far), and we're dragging this thing out into the fall while having national discussions about what an acceptable death-rate for infected school children might be.

Pumpkin Diary Entry 3

All that Constitutional sanctity and American exceptionalism horseshit that was rammed down our throats growing up is really coming back to bite us on the ass.

People know we have a constitution, and they know that it's important, they just don't know specifically what's actually in it, the limits of what's in it, and how the things that are in it can be amended. They also don't seem to realize that a constitution isn't some magical thing unique to the USA.

Thinking that America is the greatest, most infallible nation on earth has just led to regressive thinking and has made it impossible for anything to actually change or get better. A theme that was always hammered home to me was "America might not be perfect, but we're still the best and American style capitalism is still the best for everyone"... Any suggestion that our policies or attitudes should be different and/or more in-line with how the rest of the world does things (when those things are proven to work) is met with belligerent hostility and ignorance. They don't even have a frame of reference to what they're arguing against.

Pumpkin Diary Entry 2

"C19 Diary Entry 2" Sounds a bit melodramatic, but I'm not really sure what else to call them so it doesn't sound creepy and scary. I could use a code word. How about "Pumpkin". It's the Pumpkin Diaries from now on.

It's going on week 3 or 4 of the lockdown. We're having days with over 2000 recorded pumpkin deaths. Southeast MI is getting hit hard, especially Detroit. From a mental health standpoint, I'm not really sure what the correct level of dread I should have on any given day. It's not just dread about the pumpkins, it's dread about the future, our jobs, our way of life such as it is. The GOP asshats think guys like me don't understand, but we do... we're just willing to accept the lives of the vulnerable are more important. From a practical standpoint the dread level doesn't really matter because I have no control over viruses or the political goings on surrounding them. At the start of this thing I was calm and collected. "Would it help to worry?" I would say. I need to take my own advice, clearly. Being high almost every night seems like the only thing getting me through sometimes.

Grandma is doing a bit better and is recovering. Thankfully there was no need for a respirator (which they wouldn't have put her on anyway). Arrangements are being made for where she'll go next. The rest of the family who weren't hit as bad are also doing better, but worn out.

C is hanging in there. She has her bad days dealing with shit just like I do. Fortunately so far they don't seem to overlap too badly so we've been able to help each other. "Bad day" is just a relative term though. That dread is ALWAYS there. It's just how well you can manage to temporarily beat it back and get the bare minimum done for the day.

What's been on my mind today though is *all the things that are on my mind*. I'm getting to a point in my life where I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with my inability to organize my thoughts. I don't know that in any sort of grand sense I think it matters that I do... then again, why apologize for not wanting my brain to feel like a trainwreck all the time. Maybe that's mostly what it's about. Not needing to shout my bullshit at the world, but just being able to have it organized so it's not cluttering up my brain and I'm not tripping over shit. This makes me wonder though, am I assuming this stuff necessarily should lend itself well to organization... when that might not be the case. I guess that's what writing is, in a sense? Translating complex ideas into words, hopefully in a "simple enough" way that they can be understood by someone.

Random things that have been on my mind lately that I hope to write more about:

-Art
-Music
-My role in society
-Entanglement

C19 Diary Entry 1

I suppose for today this is just going to be some informally structured random thoughts from the last week or two.

My grandmother is in the hospital + for covid19. She can breathe on her own, as of right now things are looking up. I've just been trying to distract myself since there's nothing I can do. Can't visit hospitals right now.

Yes, Trump is making things worse, but we knew that would happen. This thing may not have gotten so out of control so fast if his #1 priority wasn't the stock market. The map of the US with all of the various hot zones? That's the price of capitalism-at-any-cost. Governors and local leaders in mostly red states are taking a combative attitude toward CDC advice. This is the cost of ignoring science and adopting a general anti-scienctific attitude and mindset. Scores online believe dangerous conspiracies that are going to kill people. This is the cost of allowing right wing trolls free reign to try and shape the reality to their liking. ... the point I was really trying to make is that it's not just Trump fanning the flames, it's the millions of people that put him in office as well.

C and I were talking about what "good" might come out of all of this. Though the dolphins appearing in Venice story was fake, one does wonder what the net affect of the recession/depression is going to be on the environment. I would certainly never promote the human suffering of a depression for the purpose of advancing some sort of "Green rebirth" idea (sorry conspiracy theorists, nobody wants that)... but, since everyone in our government seems hellbent on making all of this worse and we're just watching this slow-motion train wreck. We already know that cases of sickness from smog in Beijing and elsewhere in China is way down and they estimate there will be thousands of lives saved from pollution related respiratory illness. Could this whole experience be a turning point in the climate change battle (for the US anyway)? A depression won't single-handedly fix the problem, but it might be enough of a kick in the ass to make us change course. 

Mixed messages about face masks. Now the CDC says everyone should have them in most public situations. Guy on FB posted about having some that his company started making and I found myself frantically emailing this guy back and forth (he didn't have a shopping cart set up). I hated that I got that nervous about finding a particular supply. I still don't have any gloves. Not much hand sanitizer.

Oh yeah, the white house said the other day that Federal stockpiles of emergency equipment isn't for states to use. Because states aren't actually a smaller subset of the United States. The crux of the argument seems to be that if they let states use the stockpile, then they'd no longer HAVE the stockpile, and we can't have that. Nobody seems to have a good answer on what the point of stockpiling this stuff was if we're not going to use it for EXACTLY the purpose it was intended. Later they changed the definition of what the stockpile is "for" on the official gov't website to match the bullshit Kushner or whoever let fall out of their mouths.

That's about all I've got the energy for right now.

One thing I've learned over the past month is that a whole lot of people don't understand the not-so-subtle difference between "take things seriously" and "panic".

Then there'a another group that doesn't understand the difference between "don't panic" and "Hold church jamborees and parties and shit, it's cool bro".

I shouldn't be shocked by the nation who still struggles with every brain cell to understand that "Black Lives Matter" doesn't mean "Fuck everyone else".

My top albums of 2019 in no particular order....

Swimming Tapes - Morningside
Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride
Silversun Pickups - Widows Weeds
Turnover - Altogether
White Reaper - You Deserve Love
Fontains DC - Dogrel
Foals - Everything Not Saved Will be Lost parts 1 & 2
Tool - Fear Inoculum
Michael Kiwanuka - Kiwanuka
Hernan Cataneo - Balance Presents Sunset Strip
Menzingers - Hello Exile

2019 Movie List

Movies seen for the first time in 2019. (Out of 4 starts)

1.    The Old Man and the Gun (***)

2.   The Mule (***)

3.    Reign of the Supermen (***½)

4.    Beirut (***)

5.    How to Train Your Dragon 2 (***½)

6.    Bad Times at the El Royal (***)

7.    Creed II (***½)

8.   How to Train Your Dragon 3 (***½)

9.    The Great Escape (****)

10.  Captain Marvel (***)

11.  Thunder Road (****)

12.  Shazam! (****)

13.  Short Term 12 (****)

14.  Roma (***½)

15.  Us (****)

16.  Leave no Trace (***)

17.  Destroyer (***)

18.  Rio Bravo (****)

19.  In the Heat of the Night (****)

20.  Hateful Eight (***½)

21.  Avengers: Endgame (***½)

22.  Arctic (***)

23.  Ready Player One (**)

24.  John Wick 3 (***)

25.  The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (***½)

26.  Cold Pursuit (***)

27.  High Crimes (**)

28.  Senna (***)

29.  Toy Story 4 (****)

30.  State of Play (***)

31.  The Disaster Artist (***)

32.  High Life (***)

33.  Fast Color (***)

34.  Spider-Man: Far From Home (****)

35.  Transit (****)

36.  The Art of Self Defense (****)

37.  Little Woods (****)

38.  The Man From Earth (***)

39.  Detective Pikachu (***)

40.  Miles Ahead (***1/2)

41.  The Farewell (****)

42.  Angry Birds (***)

43.  Secret Life of Pets 2 (***)

44.  Godzilla: King of the Monsters: **½

45.  Le Samourai (****)

46.  Shadow (***½)

47.  Ad Astra (****)

48.  Abominable (***)

49.  Frida (****)

50.  Alien (***)

51.  The Fortune Cookie (***½)

52.  The Lighthouse (****)

53.  Crawl (***)

54.  Tim's Vermeer (****)

55.  Turbo (**½)

56.  Jojo Rabbit (***½)

57.  The Man Who Knew Infinity (***)

58.  Knives Out (****)

59.  The Report (****)

60.  Ford v Ferrari (***½)

61.  The Rise of Skywalker (***½)

62.  The Aeronauts (***)

63.  Bombshell (***)

64.  Peanut Butter Falcon (***½)

65.  Power Rangers (**)