I got to hang out in a doctor’s office this morning, because I have “massive, extreme” [her words] bone spurs on my left heel. Yay, what else can go wrong? Also learned from the X-rays that I’m a mutant, with a congenital fusion of two of my foot bones that gives me very high arches but also increases the impact of my heel hitting the ground. So cool, when nature gives you defects, artifice gives you fancy boots.

I get to wear this for a few weeks to get the inflammation down, then we assess.

It’s just in time for Halloween. I was thinking…sexy cyborg? Sexy robot? Sexy Frankenstein’s monster?

After I posted about how so many comedians are disappointing people, I found that Abbey had written about Neil Gaiman and how you shouldn’t have heroes except Gaiman seems to be living up to expectations.

“Don’t have heroes” is a huge important philosophical axiom for me, born out of long sad experience that it isn’t safe to have them. Once upon a time, I liked Harry Potter; I liked Father Ted and The IT Crowd. I thought the latter was particularly interesting as a learnable style of humor. We know how those turned out. But those are extreme author behaviors and minor influences. Back in the day, I was a huge fan of Firefly and it still holds a place in my heart (and thereby writing); I used to consider Joss Whedon the pinnacle influence for screenwriting, and sought to be like him… before we found out that the “him” I would have wanted to be like was mostly PR vapor and he was the usual kind of abusive douche that all men with a grain of power in Hollywood seem to be. But I can’t shake it with Gaiman, because he keeps living up to it, the bastard.

Jinx, jinx, JINX! I’m not usually this superstitious, but the pattern of people we thought good collapsing as their clay feet slump into goo is so consistent that I think we need to keep the pressure on. Don’t praise him. Give him nothing but squinky-eyed looks. Make sure he knows you have a big knife hanging on your belt, and when (not if, WHEN) he slips up, you’ll be there ready to go all sewing machine on his kidneys. It is the way. It is the only way. Fear will keep him on the straight and narrow.

That shouldn’t be a problem, it shouldn’t be at all discouraging to Neil. It’s not as if anyone should be behaving well for praise, you know.

The police are constantly begging for more, more, more: more money, more guns, more surplus military equipment, because, after all, killing unarmed black people in their cars is hard, dangerous work. But now they are opposing vaccine mandates because, I don’t know, it’s not macho to protect your health in the same way as wearing a bullet proof vest and carrying a big gun is? They’re kind of failing a basic risk assessment test here.

There were 245 law enforcement deaths from Covid-19 in 2020, according to ODMP.
The coronavirus has become the leading cause of death for officers despite law enforcement being among the first groups eligible to receive the vaccine at the end of 2020. The total stands at 476 Covid-19 related deaths since the start of the pandemic, compared to 94 from gunfire in the same period.

Don’t give guns to people who are too stupid to get vaccinated, please.

Climbing up in the polls, Minnesota takes the 7th position in number of COVID-19 hospitalizations. Why? Because nobody here is taking it seriously. No masks, no vaccine requirements, public schools are wide open, who cares if Grandma dies.

I talked with my son the Army Major this afternoon, and the military takes it seriously, that’s for sure. They require vaccinations. He has just been shipped off to participate in planning a Southeast Asian military exercise, and they make sure the Army isn’t infecting the world. First thing, they park him in quarantine quarters in Bangkok: no visits, can’t leave the room, can’t fraternize with his fellow soldiers, nothing. It’s like prison for a week before they let him out to make restricted, official duty tours to check on the status of the exercise, then he comes back to Bangkok for organizational meetings and to get thoroughly tested before flying him back. It’s no fun, but I’m impressed. That’s what it takes.

Meanwhile, the University of Minnesota just casually opened its doors to all the students, let them come flooding back in, with very few restrictions other than requiring masks in campus buildings. I am not impressed. The state’s response to the growing pre-winter surge in infections is to offer $200 to teenagers who get vaccinated (that’s good), encourage oldsters to get booster shots (I qualify!), and nada else. I say bring back the mask mandate, demand that people have to carry a vaccine passport to use public facilities, and get serious about dealing with the problem once and for all.

Also, tell the lunatic man-babies who whine about muh freedumbs to sit the fuck down, shut up, and be responsible adults.

It’s now official. Iliana blows out the candles on her chocolate covered chocolate donut with chocolate ice cream.

There was a problem. The donut was covered with gooey chocolate and the ice cream was melting, which made picking it up with her fingers problematic. Problem solved.

When the bulk had been gnawed down, then it was time for a little finesse.

Donut conquered. Do not get in the way of this fierce three year old.

Now it’s time for presents. There’s a cat trapped in the chimney of the dollhouse, so she’ll teach it how to use claws to climb down.

What a strange video.

It makes perfect sense — if you’re asked to show proof of vaccination, just show them. I’ve got my vaccination card in my wallet right now. If you’re asked to put on a mask, put on a mask. Easy. I’ve always got one, and a spare in my pocket.

What’s disturbing is that I have never, not once, been asked to show that I’m vaccinated. We aren’t required to wear a mask anywhere in local businesses (I do, anyway), and even when the state had a mask mandate, I’d go to the store and see half the people running around maskless, and no one except me would ask them to put them on. A couple of times people made furious scenes when I pointed them at the signs.

Here’s Stevens County, Minnesota this month.

We had a big spike in cases a few weeks ago, and now it’s steadily rising. Does anyone care? Oh hell no. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to need advice on how to respond to a request to show my vaccination card, it’s about as necessary as being told I need to have a license to walk my dragon. These things are equally nonexistent in my community.

This was me yesterday: the diners demanded to be fed, so I was flicking tasty flies to my spider friends. We still have supply chain issues — I barely had enough for the mob — but they’re easing with many maggoty bottles promising to produce a bounty in the next few days. You probably don’t know the relief of seeing a half dozen bottles swarming with fat active maggots, but spider people do.

Lio

Today, though, I have to scurry out of the relatively benign kingdom of Minnesota to visit the Republican stronghold of Wisconsin, which currently holds my sweet innocent granddaughter hostage. We’re celebrating Iliana’s birthday, so I get to go hang out at a three year old’s party, and have chocolate cake and chocolate ice cream (hold the flies) and read children’s books and play let’s-pretend games.

We come back first thing tomorrow, when I must complete a mass of grading. It’s Fall Break, we get a whole two days off, which really isn’t time off because it’s just there to allow us to catch up on the backlog of work from the first half of the semester before we snap.

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