The people have begun to hold up their end of the bargain.
I’m staying away from the news. This is what I imagine is going on today:
I’m trying to not even look at media. Whatever happens will happen. It’ll happen far far far above my pay grade. If anyone had a damn lick of common sense it wouldn’t have gone this far anyway.
I voted and that may or may not have mattered. I cannot un-know the math skills I gained over the years so I have a pretty solid hunch. You do too. If it didn’t matter how I voted last November it won’t matter ever again. You know that too.
That got me thinking about Major Kong. Dude was trapped in a script that had no way of wining. Kong and his brass balls rode the thing to the end. Kong got the job done. I salute Major Kong:
“Well, boys, I reckon this is it – nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies. Now look, boys, I ain’t much of a hand at makin’ speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin’ on back there. And I got a fair idea the kinda personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinkin’. Heck, I reckon you wouldn’t even be human bein’s if you didn’t have some pretty strong personal feelin’s about nuclear combat. I want you to remember one thing, the folks back home is a-countin’ on you and by golly, we ain’t about to let ’em down. I tell you something else, if this thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be, I’d say that you’re all in line for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing’s over with. That goes for ever’ last one of you regardless of your race, color or your creed. Now let’s get this thing on the hump – we got some flyin’ to do.”
Today’s the day. I don’t know what will happen. You don’t either. We shall find out together. What a glorious and awful time to be alive.
We face unavoidable conflict when society chooses to handle COVID en masse. But there are a few things I suspect we can agree upon. Points of commonality. Stuff we perhaps don’t know and would like to know. Is that not a good start?
None of this is rocket science but you can bet your ass the media (and most people) want nothing to do with it. It’s more fun to pick teams and scream. Slogans and bitching about “the other” just comes naturally to all of us.
Here are observations of the Curmudgeon:
Whether lockdowns are effective not is, at the very least, muddied. Everyone likes to pick their favorite point of view and run with it. “Lockdowns saved eleventy million lives in New York.” Did they? “The absence of lockdowns in South Dakota wasn’t a big deal.” Is that true? It seems like we’d know by now.
Here’s a real fun one. What if both are true? Yowza! Maybe a solution appropriate for subway riding New Yorkers is just plain nuts for a Montana rancher. What about diversity in the same state? Should a Manhattan stockbroker and an Appalachian dairy farmer follow the same rules because they’re in the same state?
This is a big thought from 2020:
The common ground here is that each nation and every State has tried political solutions. None have had a huge, lasting, and incontrovertible effect that can unequivocally be chosen as “right”. I think that might be a point of commonality.
COVID got to every nation. It got to every State. No quarantine held for long. Yet there’s a “quarantine” that keeps me from driving from America (which has COVID) to Canada (which also has COVID). Why? Is Canadian COVID politer? Does it speak French? Does American COVID carry guns and suck at soccer?
Florida loosened controls and COVID didn’t wipe out everyone. New York went so far as to literally crack down on “Jews in the attic”. Ironically, New York lost more people than 49 other states (including Florida). Maybe it would have been even worse in New York if the government hadn’t stepped in… or maybe it wouldn’t. Every human on earth deserves to know if lockdowns really work.
Note: I’m talking about mandatory limitations. If you want to voluntarily wear a mask or avoid crowds that’s nobody’s business but yours. I avoid crowds too. I get ya’ man!
COVID is, at the very least, well within the risk tolerance of some people; and that should be OK. Mandatory limits are debated only when risks are somewhat tolerable. If COVID just flat out killed your ass, there would be no need to promulgate regulations. COVID isn’t the black plague. That’s damn good news!
Huge risks don’t even need rules. I don’t consult state laws when I’m pondering whether to put strychnine in my coffee. I won’t stick my head in a woodchipper even if it lacks a warning label. That’s a level of risk where you don’t need the government to tell you what to do.
COVID clearly did not reach that level for everyone. That should be OK. Different points of view and personal values are a wonder of the human condition.
Alas, tolerance tends to go only one way. In 2020 risk aversion was hella cool. Nobody harasses you on the street because you’re risk averse. If you haven’t gone skydiving or entered a rodeo no Karen will rip you a new one.
It doesn’t go the other way. I went skydiving (long story) and rode a mechanical bull (super-fun!). I’ve never forced (or even recommended) anyone follow my path. Wouldn’t it be weird if I ran around shitting on people who haven’t been skydiving?
I think this is a new thing. Someone somewhere chooses a specific level of risk and we all follow; “this is the proper amount of risk and if you don’t like it, you suck”. People who accept risk are treated as lunatics. People who avoid risk get carte blanche to act like total assholes to risk takers. What’s up with that?
Put another way, if you’re shrieking at someone because they aren’t properly freaking out about COVID you’re not considering their point of view. Also, if someone is freaking out about COVID, don’t be a dipshit and and sneeze on them. Act like a goddamn civilized being.
The degree to which masks affect COVID, when worn by everyone in general environments, is uncertain. It probably helps some. How much? Nobody really knows. Spare me thought experiments about farting through fabric or conflicting pronouncement from the CDC. Plain old basic studies about masks in the general world are sparse.
Yes, Dr. Lister encouraged the wearing of masks during open heart surgery. This doesn’t necessarily scale to making folks wear a bandanna at Wal-Mart. It would be nice if someday we had better facts. I’d love to read “a sample of n-bajillion people under circumstances A, B, and C yielded a net positive result with of p<0.0001 when the bandanna was red on Tuesdays”. After a whole year, this ought to be known big time.
How many people died of COVID is unclear. We can know that; provided we wish to find out. I’m not sure we want to know. Clearly COVID killed many people. How many people is “a lot” in a population of 400,000,000? Did we reach the “a lot” threshold? Is the “a lot” mitigated by other forms of death? Is it fishy there are no flu cases? How many gunshots does it take to die of COVID?
This isn’t an unreasonable question. Yet the CDC has done a terrible job of sussing out and communicating the truth (assuming they actually know). The universal basic statistic is “how many people would have died normally and how many died given COVID exists“.
It ought to be child’s play to roughly answer that simple question.
This thing can be figured out. In general, when an American dies, someone always counts the body. How many dead people were counted in a given year is a hard umber to fake!
In 2019 a certain number of people died. In 2020 a certain number of people died. Lets find out what changed and how much. It’s fuckin’ subtraction!
I suspect 2020 deaths are higher than 2019. I’m suspicious that maybe it’s not by a lot. Possibly it’s a lot less than some people think. Maybe I’m wrong. I’d love to know the actual true number of corpses counted in each month of both 2019 and 2020.
We can theorize and kvetch about the actual affect of COVID but I want a “dead people count” before (2019) and “dead people count” after (2020). It should already be common knowledge.
Limitation on human lives in response to COVID are not fully evaluated. My earlier points hint at this. Did crushing our economy all year save lots of lives? Did it offset annoying the fuck out of everyone? People have different values. Is it wise to piss off every damn citizen just to save one life? How about a thousand? How about six? If North Korea has less COVID than Canada does that mean North Korea is better governed?
This is a slippery one. I place a different value on some freedoms versus others. Maybe it was wise wise to cancel a rock concert (which isn’t that hard on me) but was fuckin’ brutal to cancel my fishing trip to the Canadian wilderness! Was it worth it to cancel some kid’s graduation ceremony? What about weddings or the county fair? I submit that making choices about how other people should best live their lives is a place where angels fear to tread.
The Howard Hughes Sliding Scale. I think we all should watch out for Howard Hughes issues. Howard Hughes was a fuckin’ stud! Pilot, movie guy, gazillionare. Pretty epic dude. He got to date Betty Davis. Yum!
As he aged, he declined. His choices about germs and isolation got out of synch with others of his time. There’s a spectrum between “reclusive” and “mentally ill” and most folks thought Hughes was closer to the latter.
When does one go from “reclusive and odd” to “mentally ill”? In the late 1960’s Hughes was “nuts” because he “became hindered in normal life function”. I felt “hindered” in 2020?
I think intent and context comes into play. If I’m afraid to eat breakfast at Denny’s because the space bats will read my mind, then I’m mentally ill. If I’m unwilling to eat breakfast at Denny’s because I wish to avoid contagion, it depends on the year. In 2019 it would be “a bit flaky”. In 2020 it would be “mandated by law”. And in 2021… what? Is it “being a good citizen” or not? You can eat at Denny’s in South Dakota but not New York. Does that make you sane in SD and nuts in NY?
I wonder if Howard Hughes would be “normal” in 2020 despite being “mentally ill” in 1969. More to the point, there was a time when “shut in” was considered unhealthy and that time was just a few months ago. Now it’s (somewhat) required and that can’t be good.
Right now, we just assume the impact of isolating family units, stifling economies, and disrupting normal human social interaction is “worth it”. If there are more suicides I haven’t seen the statistics but I haven’t heard many people thinking about it either. In the short term our isolation is “free” and possibly wise. In the long term it’s unsustainable and we might be messing people up very seriously. It’s a question of merit. It’s very rarely mentioned. We might as well think about it.
How long can you be afraid (or banned) from eating at Denny’s before you’ve become Howard Hughes? How big is the gap between “afraid to” and “banned from”?
Well, that’s enough navel gazing for one day. I don’t mean to be a downer.
I suspect we can all agree that there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know. We can examine assumptions that “everyone believes” and see if there’s data to support it. At the very least we ought to measure the shit we can measure. Finally: it wouldn’t hurt to consider the costs as well as the benefits of choices.
I said I was going to talk about COVID and then I emote about my workshop? Am I mental?
No, I’m a man.
I work and recreate with all sorts of dangerous, loud, sharp, pointy things. I’m happy doing so. Yet, my shop is pretty much the worst nightmare for a lot of people. A condominium dwelling white collar urbanite might look at my shop and think it a death-trap… for them that’s exactly what it is. Not for me. For them.
Now think about COVID restrictions. The same rules theoretically apply to me and a skittish urbane weak vegan poet. I ride motorcycles. They’re as dangerous as fuck. Hell, I got tired of riding on “safe” pavement and bought a dirt bike which I promptly drove into a lake. I did that for fun. How can regulation appropriate to me work for someone who can’t operate a clutch? How can regulation appropriate to someone who can barely drive, work for me… who will drive anything (with or without wheels) just for the joy of it?
That’s a root cause of COVID stress. If I spend Saturday afternoon cutting firewood it means I spent hours alone in the snow; holding a roaring 2 stroke engine bolted to a 20″ rotating toothy chain of disembowelment and knocking over 90′ tall six ton aggregations of dead half rotten trees. After that, I cannot bring myself to be worried about COVID. There’s 0.005% +/- whatever the CDC is saying this week risk that I might get sick and die. Or, the saw could rip me to shreds in a heartbeat.
I already picked up the saw, voluntarily, for fun, as part of my lifestyle. There could be a virus that freaks me out. This aint’ it. The numbers just don’t work to me. But they’re flat out terrifying to someone else. Which is OK.
The only time we get into conflict is when we’re forced to accept each other’s risk profile. I can’t abide closing the McDonalds dining room during a rare McRib season over this particular risk. Others can’t abide taking risks like a motorcycle riding, chainsaw wielding, gun toting, maniac who likes to vaporize metal as a hobby.
We both have valid points of view. Left to our own resources we’d rarely meet. Our natural habitats are not the same. And that’s good! We’re so much happier when we have no impact on each other’s lives. But increasingly (and turning the dial to eleven in 2020) society forces us both to toe the same arbitrary middle line.
I fuckin’ hate it. So too does my equal and opposite member of society.
That’s the problem. We’re at each other’s throats… politically… because we were forced to live each other’s world.
I don’t know how to find peace in the current political Thunderdome of “All Must Obey”. Yet I try to see the other side’s point of view. Nobody who pines for an autodriver feature on their Prius should have to ride my motorcycle. Motorcycles are powerful, uncomfortable, and stupidly dangerous. They don’t want to live like me. I get it. I’d like the same respect afforded me.
It’s a hard gap to bridge, it’s how COVID became the Grand Canyon.
Stay tuned, there’s more…
It is 298 days since I first “took action” about COVID. We’ve each walked our own path (or been dragged down it) in 2020. I can’t lie, it’s wearing me down. It’s been a long two weeks to flatten the curve. It has and will continue to take a toll.
This is partly because I’m naïve. For a brief moment I thought this would be a “moonshot moment”. In a world already gone mad with politics, the universe had provided all of humanity (or at least my society & nation) a non-political and well defined threat. What better time or reason to come together and work as one?
Holy shit was I wrong!
But I’m not here to piss and moan. I’m here to laud a well reasoned article, and maybe add a little more based on my own point of view. First, a solid “well done” goes to Assistant Village Idiot which recently posted Ways Of Knowing. It’s a reasoned discourse on how people make decisions based on their own experience. Their personal world leads to human (and therefore understandably biased) choices; including which “expert” to believe. Please read it. What better thing are you doing today? Here’s a quote to entice you:
“However, I am qualified to ask you to look carefully at what your sample and your experience is…
And next, how much does this personal bias, which is a natural but unscientific influence your assessments. There’s no quiz on this. No one is grading your answers except yourself.”
It’s a good point. Do you base your reaction to COVID on your daily interactions as a nurse at the old folk’s home or is it based on your life as a solo long haul trucker?
I was ruminating on this. How could I add to it?
When I’m thinking, I’m usually building. I put thoughts of blogs on the back burner and began messing about in my shop. I was welding some shit to some other shit when Mrs. Curmudgeon gingerly entered. She only peeked in, stepping a mere foot into the shop. She looked around with concern; as if she’d just entered a mad scientist’s laboratory… which is basically what she’d done.
I was holding the electrode to a SMAW (shielded metal arc welding) unit. Mrs. Curmudgeon cares less about welding than a trout cares about interest rates, so she knows little about how they work. One thing was clear, I was holding a device that melts metal. Over my face was a huge Darth Vader-ish mask. Why? If you look directly at welding in process it can burn your retinas out.
I’m thinking “how cool is this new little welder”. Mrs. Curmudgeon is thinking everything but that. Her husband is faffing about with a device that uses an unholy amount of electricity to turn metal into something akin to molten lava; all the while emitting something like the direct rays of the sun… That ‘aint normal.
Actually it is. But it’s normal for me. Not for her.
To my left was my coffee cup. It was perched on my radial arm saw. A rotating arm with a shiny toothed blade ready to sever a finger with the flip of a switch. My shop is awash in toothy sharp devices. Any of them would happily disembowel an idiot who misuses them.
I started to look about with a different point of view. I was happily puttering about in a room that’s basically a staging area for scary shit. A chainsaw in the corner. A motorcycle tire hung on the wall. A rifle on a rack. (I’m a redneck, wherever I am, there’s a firearm in the vicinity.) Tools were scattered everywhere; each capable of diverse and freaky mayhem. I’m a slob so there were a half dozen empty beer bottles scattered about; right next to a shelf filled with every chemical known to man (all of which have warnings for Californians).
Paints, adhesives, and epoxies… Cables, bolts, and wires… Spark plugs, screwdrivers, and sawblades…
This is how civilization is actually built. Few people ever see it.
Heavy metal was blaring from my radio and the piece of steel I’d been futzing with was still smoking. It was a real pleasant atmosphere.
My coffee cup was empty and Mrs. Curmudgeon had kindly popped in to tell me she’d brewed a fresh pot. Excellent news!
I warmly greeted Mrs. Curmudgeon but she fled. My shop, my “safe space” and “man cave”, is a dangerous mess. It’ll kill you if you’re not careful. Which is why Mrs. Curmudgeon wouldn’t go further than a few steps past the door. I’ll spend all day in the same space and love it.
This… this is what I’ve learned about COVID.
Stay tuned…
Christmas has been magic; as it always was and always will be. I hope you had a good holiday as well. Now it’s time for a long winter’s nap.
The following is one of the dumbest phrases ever uttered in the English language:
“Failure is not an option.”
Strike that infantilizing slogan from your mind right now! Quoth the Curmudgeon:
Failure is always an option.
Failure is a necessary step on the path to accomplishment. While I’m at it; lets drop a few more truth bombs. Someday you’re going to die, the Easter Bunny doesn’t shit chocolate eggs, and governments cannot tax a nation into prosperity. It’s wrongthink to type the truth in 2020, but it was once “common sense”.
It’s said the phrase was associated with the Apollo missions. I doubted it; because it’s bullshit. Smart, serious, hard working people intent on a true achievement (like spaceflight!) don’t bluff. Politicians and college professors swim in bullshit, but people of real accomplishment don’t have that luxury.
Failure is always an option. Deep at heart we know this. If you try to bluff reality, you deserve what you get. This is why politicans suck at almost everything. They make a living based on talking but not doing. They get their hands on levers of power that exceed their accomplishment and invariably drive things into the ditch.
Wikipedia indicates the phrase came from scriptwriting for the 1995 movie Apollo 13. That sounds right to me. It’s the husk of a greater, deeper, and more subtle thought process. Engineer says smart thing. Hollywood hack translates it into dumb thing that sounds heroic. Not recognizing true heroism, people repeat dumb thing.
Why am I telling you this? Because I risk failure all the time. Maybe you do to? We were not put on this earth to endlessly repeat shit we already know. (The Movie Groundhog day was not about how fun it was to be stuck in time!)
Every challenge undertaken is an opportunity to faceplant. Identify something you don’t know how to do… then do it. It’s a difficult process. It can get expensive.
Sometimes people laugh at my struggles. Sometimes they do this while chained to the exact geometric center of their comfort zone.
Such endeavors are out of synch with social media. When people post on FaceGram or InstaBook they only show their successes… and often shallow ones at that. “I’m in Cancun. Here’s a photo of me standing on the beach. I sat like a sack of potatoes in a jet flown by an accomplished, skilled pilot. Here’s a photo of my food. It was made by a really awesome cook, who’s not in the photo.”
I keep many endeavors to myself. Why publicly document every last thing at which I suck? OK, if it’s a good story with a fun punchline that’s different. I’d post my own death by woodchipper for a laugh! But during the learning process I generally only post after I’ve climbed the mountain du jour… that’s my right.
However, it’s Christmas and we need a diversion. We just had a full year of self imposed misery… followed by the election of mystery. The underlying things that led to 2020 didn’t just magically resolve; so they will continue. Who can face another year of madness?
We need dreams… challenging yet attainable ones. How better to offer a light in the darkness?
But first… another digression!
A couple years ago I wrote about my tiny little sailboat. The story is in the “Walkabout” page; header bar, far left, “Spring 2019”. If you’re looking for a diversion, pour a cup of coffee and enjoy the trip. (I took that trip back in the before times when Americans were free. In long ago ancient 2019, hiding from the world in your house was a sign of mental illness. Now it’s mandated by various governors. Oh how those primitive people back then differed from us now!)
Here’s a picture of me camped on a beach with my little boat. (Can you see me? I’m the guy holding the camera.)
It’s a good memory. I share it with you.
I built that boat. Every fucking inch of it. It works! It floats and it’s properly balanced. It goes where my inexperienced sailing skills point it. It handles waters greater than what I expected from a craft that small; it punches above it’s weight class.
It was a time of quiet hoy. I camped in that tent, drank beer by the fire, watched the stars at night, and sailed alone in the day. I didn’t drown. The boat didn’t sink. Predictions of my demise went unfulfilled.
Everyone who told me to give up and buy(!) a fiberglass payment plan was far away. There were many who’d told me to quit but they were irrelevant as I drifted on the waves. I sailed the boat I made. I was Tom Sawyer. I was a 12 year old pirate. I was Captain Cook on exploration. I was at peace.
A crude boat of plywood and sailcloth came with fulfilment beyond what many folks will ever experience.
I felt happy. Because I’d earned it..
What’s not obvious from the photo is that the whole thing started out badly. I had three successive failures. This was my fourth attempt.
Fail once, fail twice, fail a third time, and then announce to Mrs. Curmudgeon:
“Fuck it. I’m going to try again. This time from scratch.”
She understood. She smiled and watched me charge off to tilt at windmills… again.
The fourth attempt worked. The little bugger sailed like a boss. I felt like a goddamn God!
I didn’t blog about my failures as I experienced them. I only posted the boat after I got the sails up. In fact, I only put the little boat online to encourage others.
If you’re thinking of building a boat… do it. Start now!
Recently I started another “project”. It is not a boat. Now that I have some basic boatwright skills, that flame has faded.
The new project requires skills I don’t have. I’m a shitty mechanic, lousy welder, and crappy fabricator. Yet, I’m trying to build a thing for which I have no formal plans. I’ve never physically encountered an example of the thing I’m making. I’ve never operated one. I only know it can be done… by people with more skill than me.
I don’t know if I’ll succeed or fail. That’s the point.
Normally I’d struggle in secrecy. Posting neither my failures nor my successes. That’s how I roll… and also who wants to look like a fool on their own damn blog?
But it’s Christmas and we all need to spur the imagination. So here’s a tiny hint.
It’s got a Hemi:
Wish me luck!
Merry Christmas,
A.C.
