Entertaining misery

Well, I have no appetite now. I just read this review of Michelin-starred restaurant in Italy, and even at a distance of thousands of miles and with no prospects (or desires) to visit this pretentious little place, it quite killed my interest in food for a while. It was 27 “courses” dribbled out over four and a half hours.

This, for instance, is one full course: it’s a cast of the chef’s mouth filled with some kind of foam. There were no utensils, you were expected to lick the ‘food’ out of there.

I think, if ever I get to Italy (which I would love to do sometime), I’ll just order the pizza.

It may be cold out there, but this is fake

So stop sending it to me!

I have no idea how that could have formed naturally, but the first big clue that it’s fake is the lack of provenance. The second clue is the shape of the capture lines — this was made by someone who never really looked at an orb web. A third clue is that when you look for where it came from, you discover that it’s cropped to remove the ice sculpture of a giant spider at the bottom. Or you find that an entomologist had already debunked it.

Good morning, omicron!

We’ve got the omicron variant in Minnesota.

Minnesota has the second confirmed case of omicron COVID-19 variant in the United States, after California announced the nation’s first confirmed case on Wednesday. The Minnesota resident tested positive for COVID-19 on Nov. 24, shortly after attending an anime convention at the Javits Center.

The Minnesota Department of Health says they confirmed the presence of the omicron variant Wednesday afternoon. They say the man, who lives in Hennepin County, is quarantining at home. He experienced mild symptoms and is recovering. The man “most likely” contracted the variant in New York, authorities said.

This is not grounds for panic. We don’t know enough about the omicron variant to get too worked up about it — it may be a bit nastier than the delta variant, but if you’ve been vaccinated, it’s probably not going to affect you directly. Of course, that’s only the case if you’re some kind of weird Libertarian hermit with no friends who has retreated from society. The rest of us should be concerned about our unvaccinated (for any reason) loved ones, or other contributing members of our communities.

What does worry me is that this is a symptom of our lackadaisical approach to dealing with a worldwide pandemic. It’s like our health care system is an old car that we maintain poorly — sure, there’s some rust on the body, and the muffler is held in place with a twist of wire, and the engine makes a funny noise when it first turns over in the morning, but it would cost money to patch it up, and it still runs, so we can ignore it for a few more months or years. So what if it just now started leaking oil? It’s fine.

New variants are what you get when you let the virus run rampant in large segments of the population, when you slack off on basic preventive measures, and when you figure I’ve got mine, so what if there isn’t enough vaccine in India or Bulgaria or whatever — that’s not our problem. Until it is.

Four day weekends are a lie

I’m still recovering from mine. These long weekends are a trap: you decide that hey, I can take a day or two off to play with a three year old or something similarly harmless, but the trick is that the work doesn’t stop flowing over the transom and through the keyhole and under the door, and suddenly you realize on the third day that you weren’t actually supposed to stop working when you find yourself buried up to the nostrils in obligations. The last couple of days have been ugly, frantic efforts to catch back up, and today I find myself back where I started, with the worst over with and just the usual accumulation of too-much-to-do.

I’m never going to fall for the myth of the long weekend ever again. It’s how they get you.

Two weeks until the semester ends. Or, that is, until I stop piling assignments on the students and the work comes home to roost on my desk (Christmas break: also a lie.)

My new holiday greeting

I’m gearing up for the Christmas season.

Other steps: smashing the radio so I don’t have to suffer with those damn Christmas carols. Digging up my Santa hat so I can wander the streets of Morris telling excited children that I’ll be bringing them spiders. It’s a good time of year to be a curmudgeon.

I’ve got my booster shot, have you?

While we’re possibly out visiting family and friends on this traditional family holiday, I hope you’ve done what is necessary to protect yourself.

Also keep in mind that we’re probably going to see a surge of infection among the unvaccinated in a few weeks. Stay home if you aren’t up-to-date on the vaccines.