Month: April 2020

SOMETIMES THEY SKIP LUNCH

President Trump’s schedule is so packed amid the coronavirus crisis that he sometimes skips lunch, his aides told The Post — refuting a report that the commander-in-chief spends his days obsessing over TV coverage and eating fries. – New York Post, April 26 2020

BORODINO, RUSSIA, AUGUST 15 1812, GENERAL KUTUZOV’S TENT

PRIVATE: Your pelmeni, sir. You should eat them before they get cold.

KUTUZOV: Pel what?

PRIVATE: Pelmeni. Some of the boys found an old woman in the village who…

KUTUZOV: [wearily looking up from his maps] Where are you from, private?

PRIVATE: Smolensk, sir.

KUTUZOV: Nice town, Smolensk. I was stationed there, many years ago. Pretty girls! Of course, the Frogs have it now. But we’ll get it back soon, I promise.

PRIVATE: Yes, sir.

KUTUZOV: Now look, private. I got the whole goddamned Grande Armée coming at me tomorrow morning. So here’s what you can do for me.  Are you listening carefully?

PRIVATE: Yes, General!

KUTUZOV: You can bring me a bottle of good Russian vodka and a kilo of strong Georgian tobacco.

PRIVATE: Yes, General!

KUTUZOV: Then you can stick those fucking pelmeni up your skinny Smolensk ass and get the hell out of my tent!

LONDON DURING THE BLITZ. WINSTON CHURCHILL’S UNDERGROUND BUNKER

MANSERVANT: Your kippers, sir!

CHURCHILL: [wearily, looking up from his maps] Kippers! What’s your name, man?

MANSERVANT: Thadwicke, sir.

CHURCHILL: Now look here, Thadwicke. Somewhere in London there is a decent English housewife whose husband is off fighting in North Africa. She hasn’t seen her children since they were shipped off to live with relatives in the countryside. Last night she lost all of her material possessions when the Hun flattened her building during the air raid, so now she’s staying with a kindly neighbor. Follow me, Thadwicke?

MANSERVANT: I think so, sir.

CHURCHILL: Find that woman, Thadwicke. Find that woman, and give her my kippers.

MANSERVANT: Yes sir.

CHURCHILL: And then if you could rustle me up a nice saddle of lamb and bottle or two of decent port, I do feel a bit peckish.

WASHINGTON, D.C. APRIL 2020, AT THE HEIGHT OF THE COVID-19 GLOBAL EPIDEMIC. THE OVAL OFFICE.

VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: I got your Chick-Fil-A, sir.

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DONALD JOHN TRUMP: Christ, Pence, can’t you wait until I’m done watching my interview with Hannity?

PENCE: Sorry, sir.

TRUMP: Just stick it over there or whatever. You didn’t breathe on it or anything, did you?

Random Thoughts on the Current Unpleasantness

My first thought is resentment at Mother Nature for pulling this on my parents. They made it through the Great Depression, the war, the Cold War, 9/11, the Great Recession, and 3+ ugly Trump years, not to mention various personal trials and tribulations. My mother put her academic career on hold to raise two kids. And at this point in their lives they have to deal with this?

Made-from-scratch mac & cheese is great! Until it’s not.

Thank God(dess) they decided a few years ago that butter and eggs, in moderation, were okay again. Cause I don’t think I could make it through this on egg whites and Country Spread.

I know you’re mad as hell at the President. So am I. It gives us emotional relief to complain to each other about his latest idiocies. But ridiculing Commander Bonespur (and there I go again) is sort of beside the point. It changes nothing, including minds. Like the virus, he is for now a fact of life. We need to help each other through this thing now. And then remember in November.

A natural disaster on a national scale should be a president’s political windfall. It gives him the chance to step up and look magisterial, decisive and compassionate, for managing a horrible problem that he had nothing to do with causing. This is Trump’s 9/11, his Katrina, his Great Recession. It could have sealed his re-election. But this president is just completely out of his depth, and evidently devoid of empathy.

I have been having some sinful thoughts though, lately. Like wondering how many rifle-totin’ MAGA-cap-wearin’ facemask-not-wearin’ Limbaugh-listenin’ morons will get sick after showing up for a ‘Liberate America’ rally.

If it’s my time, it’s my time. But please at least let me see Biden get sworn in!

As a rule I’m too lazy and complacent to wave a sign. But if Trump tries to delay the election, I will join you on the streets.

I understand wanting to reopen your nail salon so that you can feed your family. I don’t understand wanting to visit a nail salon right now. Or a bowling alley or a tattoo parlor. Are you crazy?

Thank goodness for ebooks.And T.V.

I don’t miss basketball or baseball. Won’t miss football. Even less so now after watching the Aaron Hernandez documentary on Netflix. How many thousands or millions of brain concussions in total will our kids be spared because of this year’s missed spring training?

This crisis has fallen very lightly (so far) on me personally. I cannot thank healthcare workers and food industry workers enough. I feel like I’m exploiting the poor folks who work at the grocery store or the drive-thru.

I’m not religious but that doesn’t stop me from hoping that Alex Jones will fry in hell.

I’ve been watching the original Twilight Zone series lately. Several episodes construct allegories out of Cold War anxieties that seem perfectly apt today. The fear of reason. Communities that disintegrate as individuals look for any way out or try to protect themselves at all costs. The most important thing now is to love one’s neighbor. Even Alex Jones, damn his evil soul.

It’s heartening to see how Mother Nature (the nice part, like wild animals and blue skies, not the virus part) responds when we give her a break. Maybe we should figure out how to keep it up.

11 Things We Never Heard Before The Pandemic

I’m okay, but the rubber bands hurt my ears.

Mess with me and I’ll shake your hand.

Stop breathing or move 6 feet away. Your choice.

Hi, this is Rick, the guy who lives down the hall? Yeah, I was just kinda wondering, if you’re not too busy tonight, wouldja like to watch me eat dinner on Zoom?

Sorry mom, I can’t visit you until Coral Gables flattens the curve.

Stay where you are. We’ll put the cheeseburger in your trunk.

I just need to stop by the store for some wipes, ten pounds of dried pinto beans and two cases of Pinot Grigio.  

Thank goodness the liquor store delivers.

If I could interrupt just a sec, let me get out my measuring tape. Cause that doesn’t look like six feet to me…

But on the bright side, have you seen the gas prices lately?

I’m just waiting for my stimulus.

On Science, Religion, and the Corona Virus

Cards on the table, this grim Easter weekend: we’re atheists here in the Garden. We contend (we almost wrote ‘believe’) that all religions, regardless of any elaborate theology, or ethical code, however well-reasoned or admirable, are ultimately based on a myth. To be a person of faith, you have to have…faith in that myth, a faith which is inherently immune to any scientific analysis.

Now science is not an alternative to religion; it’s something else entirely. It’s simply a tool—a critical tool, the only tool we have—for understanding causation in the natural world, and for predicting its future behavior. And pursuing scientific analysis of the Covid virus, and changing our behavior accordingly, is the only way we have of limiting its deadly effects.

That is why it is galling for us to read about evangelical “pastors” like Rodney Howard-Browne calling their flock to worship today in person, and their red-state political allies, like Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who claim in-church worship is an “essential service.” Both of these parties are motivated by fear. The red-state governors are afraid of losing the religious-reactionary vote. The preachers are afraid for their pocketbooks. If you’ve built a career by claiming to have a direct landline to God, and the ability use His awesome powers for healing earthly ailments, and then admit that you can’t protect your donors from catching a little old virus, then what good are you?

Now, I am evidently no theologian, but I am not aware that one’s physical proximity to other worshipers, or to some real-world Elmer Gantry, is a precondition for worship, or prayer, or faith, or good works. But don’t take it from me. Take it from the Vatican, which is live-streaming its Easter services. And these guys have been closely analyzing and making pronouncements on the dos and don’ts of salvation for over 2000 years.

And although I am not a believer, I would advise politicians and preachers who will let us die for the sake of votes and money to dress for warm weather in the afterlife. One can never be sure.

Stay safe, y’all.

A Corona-Virus Glossary

abandanned–how one feels when one’s government urges you to wear surgical masks in order to stay alive, and helpfully suggests that you can make your own out of old bandannas

allergy—the reason I’m coughing and sneezing, I swear to God

auld-lang-ziety—the fear that things will never go back to the way they used to be

bipartisan—describes a problem so terrifying that even politicians try to do something about it

essential service—if my neighborhood is typical, lawn care by underpaid Hispanic day laborers who can’t afford to stay home

heroes—doctors, nurses, EMTs, and the lady who delivers power bowls to your front door

hunker games—games and activities that seemed stupid and boring until late March 2020

Italy—the United States, two or three weeks from now

Kushnertise—the level of medical expertise one expects from one’s son in law. Not the one who went to Harvard Med, but the plumber.

price gouging–commercial activity engaged in by future residents of the warmest locations in hell

Spring Break—a not such a hot idea

strategic resources—PPE’s and pappardelle

“that woman”—the democratically elected governor of a state of about 10 million people who is doing everything she can to keep them alive and well

ventilator—something that vents, but since we don’t have them you’ll have to wait til later

White House depress conference—”daily conference” we find rather depressing

On Wit, Wisdom, and the Corona Virus

Is this the end of irony—and of its kissing cousin, satire?

That was the question people asked in the aftermath of 9/11. It seemed to be something too horrific, too serious to make fun of.  It would have been too disrespectful of the attack’s victims, and of its heroic responders, to joke about it.

But of course irony didn’t stay down for long. An early piece of evidence that I remember was a New Yorker cartoon that appeared sometime that fall, which showed a barfly telling the man next to him, “If I don’t have that third martini, the terrorists win.”

If there were any lingering moral reservations about parodying our response to “the terrorist threat,” they vanished for me during the “shock and awe” of Desert Storm, as we discovered that the frightening spectre of WMD’s, and of Saddam Hussein’s support for Al-Qaeda, were simply lies concocted by the Bush administration. The whole ‘yellow cake’ episode seemed custom-made for parody.  

But this crisis is different. For one thing, we’re still in the middle—if not the beginning—of this mess. A week ago I could laugh at the video of a man watching a video of a smoking barbecue grill, sipping a drink and waving away the ‘smoke’ with a fan. But today it’s not so cute, as I read the grim numbers rising faster every day, and news starts to trickle in of friends of friends falling victim. Not to mention footage of truckloads of coffins lined up outside hospitals in northern Italy.

Out of curiosity, I glanced online today at that standby of irony, The Onion. Could they turn the horrific into funny? They had a lead story about Donald Trump granting billions of dollars to Exxon Mobil to find ventilators by drilling in the arctic. Okay. Clever, apt. Depressing. Funny.

And yet…would that be funny to the doctors and nurses having to decide who gets a ventilator and who doesn’t—doctors and nurses who moreover are risking their own lives? Would it be funny to the family of someone who died because there were no ventilators available? Somehow skewering Trump—and the man deserves to be skewered on so many levels—just seems too easy, especially when the skewering is by those of us with the luxury of being able to just “hunker down.”  Serious journalistic exposure of this inept president’s failures is now more important than ever. But exploiting his clumsy and often mean-spirited missteps—and those of his coterie—just for amusement suddenly feels kind of sacrilegious to me.

And skewering our clumsy, insecure, mean-spirited president has been a mainstay of this blog, as recently as 5 days ago. But it’s just no fun anymore. So now what? What is the right thing to do? Do we go satire-silent? (I avoid the question: does anyone care?) I don’t have the answer. But I need a laugh now more than ever. Isn’t that ironic?