Rolling Thunder

Howdy dear reader, hope this finds you well. It's been a hot minute, but, ya know, I've been busy social distancing. Or something like that.

Today's just a quick update. Not much to report either in the query department or new-project-land, unfortunately. But that's ok. Someday.

I guess I popped by today to unload some thoughts about the pandemic that continues its slow, unyielding plod through the US. Well, maybe not so slow anymore. We're currently hitting record numbers day after day for new cases. Which, ya know, is hard to tell if it's actually getting worse than it was, or we just have some system in place for testing (ie people were getting sick at the same rate in March, but el prez* didn't want his numbers to look bad, so poo poo'd testing). We're about 5 months late on getting any actionable significance from the testing anyway, which is to say, when numbers weren't jumping by tens of thousands on a daily basis. Kinda hard to force 63,000 people into quarantine every day. 63? Probably doable. 63,000? There aren't enough resources in play to keep that many people from spreading what they've got.

With testing where it's at now, we basically have 2 of 4 corner pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and our dog ate the top of the box. We know the constraints, but the bigger picture is unclear. Even though we could just phone a friend who has the same puzzle to see what kind of progress they've made and how. But nawww, 'Murica.

I haven't posted a whole lot about real world stuff (aside from personal/creative stuff) on here, but this is what's been top of mind for me recently. Probably everybody, really. But I'm not so hung up on the fact that we're just kind of 'living with it' now. I made peace with that in April seeing as every state was just left on their own to figure it out. Currently, I'm more irritated by the willful ignorance that has put us in the position we're in now, and will continue to dig us deeper into the hole.

With competent leadership, we could have avoided a lot of pain and suffering. And the schmucks taking their cues from what "leadership" we do have? Don't even get me started. Did the compassionate part of some people's brains get overtaken by gun fetishes and misinterpreted constitutional law sometime in the last decade while I wasn't looking?

I know it's unhealthy to focus on the negative, but I can't help it. I'm disappointed. And angry. Especially when the "moral" discussion of the day is whether wearing a piece of fabric on your face to protect your neighbor is right or not. In my mind, there's no question. And you look like a giant asshole for believing otherwise.

If your kid was deathly allergic to peanuts --like, the sight of one would send them into anaphylaxis-- would you still keep peanut butter in the house simply because you liked it? No, right? That's how easy this should be. Are you going to a public place with other people? Put on a fucking mask. Period.

The Black Lives Matter movement has just put further context to this ignorance. Is it a condition of modern America to selfishly ignore a problem hoping it'll go away? Like, "oh it's not my problem, therefore I don't give a shit?" I dunno man. Something's got to change. Probably more than 1 something, really. Because ignoring the problems isn't going to make them go away.

At least one of the problems can be dealt with in November (and hopefully a couple dozen other ones that have been enabling him). Maybe that will generate some momentum for change.

We'll get back to the writing stuff next time, I just had to get that off my chest. Stay safe out there.