Random Thoughts On Frail Existence

Thanks to all the contributors to the comments section for all your outstanding posts and links!

Like everybody else, I'm awaiting the details of the top-secret trillion dollar-plus stimulus package currently being tied up in slippery snakelike ribbons by the Senate racketeers..It's always a bad sign whenever you don't get to see what's in one of these emergency measures before it's too late. It's also a bad sign when the individuals and families allegedly -maybe-  on the receiving end of pennies to the dollar awarded to the usual corporate grifters of the world are being cynically referred to as "workers" and "taxpayers." This would seem to leave out the growing masses of the unemployed, the disabled and others who already are too poor to pay any taxes at all.

The odious "skin in the game" mantra of our neoliberal overlords is as much a part of their rigid brains as the coronavirus becomes a literal and lethal part of every human cell that it invades. 

So, how is everybody coping? 

Whenever panic and depression threaten to overwhelm me, I do artsy-craftsy stuff... for hours on end. I may not have a toilet paper and bleach stash, but I do have my yarn stash, accumulated for more years than I want to admit. There are lots of crocheted hats and maybe an afghan in the future, which I now count by the day rather than by the month or the year.

For pure mindless enjoyment, I also highly recommend adult coloring, which has a similar effect on the brain to valium or xanax.  My set of 36 Prismacolor pencils has become as necessary to me as my daily peanut butter sandwich.  And when I get tired of blending and burnishing, there are plenty of coloring tutorials on YouTube. Watching Chris Cheng do her thing accompanied by Erik Satie's piano music is guaranteed to lull you right to sleep if you're not careful. And of course there is the late painter Bob Ross on Netflix, whose 30 year old PBS demos do much to sooth the savage pandemic panic beast.

If it's stimulation you need, the inimitable Jimmy Dore is now streaming from his Pasadena garage almost daily. Don't just get mad. Get mad and get your news and info from a comedic lefty perspective at the same time.

I find that I have lost much of the concentration necessary to read deeply since the quarantine. Maybe it was the subject matter of Albert Camus's The Plague, which I hadn't read since high school and which took me over a week to slog through before I finally finished it. Too close to home, perhaps. But still, an invaluable psychological and philosophical treatise about the human condition in general as well as what it's like to live through a pandemic. It brings out both the best and worst in people, for sure.

Now I'm reading the much lighter The Devil Aspect by Craig Russell, which I downloaded from the New York Public library. It's about a psychiatrist in interwar Czeckoslovakia who has just taken a job at a hospital for the criminally insane, originally a medieval fortress built above a series of caves once believed to be the entrance of hell. Escapist horror is so much more edifyiing than real horror. Especially when it's well-written.

Speaking of which, here's a New York Times comment I wrote in response to Maureen  Dowd's profile of the national antidote to Trumpian horror, aka renowned epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Given the double peril of Trump's daily press cons and the danger of infection, it's probably time to stop covering them.

This daily ritual is not information, or even run of the mill propaganda. It's pure torture for everybody concerned. Trump's rhetoric is nothing but a giant toxic sneeze of disinformation. Perhaps one pool reporter could attend, based on a Shirley Jackson-inspired lottery system. That way, Trump's magic potion cures and odes to himself could be discreetly muted, if not ignored outright out of an abundance of journalistic responsibility and the ethics which are so sorely lacking in the highest office in the land.

Because which is more dangerous - Trump's reckless handling of the pandemic, or the pandemic itself? That is the question. It's noble enough to quarantine yourself, lose your income and your job and your social contacts, your health, and perhaps even your very life without also having to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Trump-enhanced misfortune.

 I had to stop watching him yesterday because his xenophobic insinuation that migrants and refugees are the ones bringing the virus over our precious border made me want to hurl. It has been the inaction at the highest levels of government, of politicians in service to the uncontained greed and venality of the oligarchs and corporations, which has helped spread the disease all over the world.

We must find a way to quarantine all of them.

  Universal basic income and Medicare For All!

On the bright side: have you noticed that the Coronavirus has at least temporarily quashed the unreal Russiagate scare as well as the media's presidential horse race theatrics? Also, there is a lot less pollution. The pandemic could be nature's own dispassionate way of protecting itself from global warming in particular and mindless capitalism in general.

Dispassionate but not fair, given that the rich historically fare better than the poor during times of catastrophe. There is a whole new media subgenre of coronavirus celebrity. The rich are different in that they get testing and treatment and also the means to escape to their second or third homes or their islands or their yachts. For every thousand diagnoses that go ignored, there's a constant stream of  Idris Elbas and Sophie Trudeaus for the unwashed, untreated, uninsured masses to identify with.

Mike and Karen Pence testing negative makes the headlines and washes all that negativity right away. Where there's a healthy Mike Pence, there is hope, proles! 

Thanks again, readers. Please keep the comments, tips and links coming. I think we can all keep each other sane for the duration. A few laughs now and then would also be in definite order.