Well, except for the Republicans. But in a heart (or other organ) warming effort, PornHub is making their premium accounts free.
Not my thing, but hey, everyone has to contribute what they can.
Look, she’s just a baby and she knows what to do.
One anchor of sanity I still have is that I have a FaceTime call with my wife every night. Or, rather, I call my wife’s phone, which my granddaughter Iliana monopolizes immediately.
Sometimes, she sees me and immediately yells “Momo!”, which is how she pronounces “Elmo”. I have an Elmo puppet and she likes to say hello.
Sometimes, she says “Ca’!”, which means I have to go hunt down the cat. Our cat never obligingly curls up in my lap, she’s always off somewhere else, so I have to wander around the house to find her, and then when she sees me coming with the phone, she runs off to hide. Iliana associates me with a cat, though, so I have to track her down.
And sometimes she just shouts “Bampa!” like she’s happy to see me. Then I’m expected to follow her around as she shows off her toys. Or rather, Mary has to follow her around keeping her in view. I might get one or two sentences with Mary on these calls. That’s OK, we grandparents have a moral duty, and I aim to fulfill it.
I guess that means those lovely days of sitting alone in my home office in my underwear with Radiohead playing on the speakers while I struggle to prepare teaching materials are over, and instead I begin those lovely days of sitting alone in my home office in my underwear with Radiohead playing on the speakers while I struggle to deliver teaching material online.
Maybe I should put on pants to highlight the subtle distinctions here.
Dyed my grey beard purple.
Considered dyeing the cat to match, but I’m not that bored. Yet.
Maybe next week…
There are rumors that, by the calendar, we had the first day of spring. The calendar lies. It’s -7°C out here, and while a lot of snow has melted away, the trees are still bare and the lawn is sere.
I’m not calling it spring until I find the first spider outdoors and Mary comes home.
We were incredibly lucky — we had our campus job searches at the end of fall term/beginning of spring term, and we signed on two new faculty just before the coronavirus hit the fan. If we hadn’t, we probably would have postponed the searches until next year and left a lot of good people hanging, wondering what next. I can’t imagine the stress of trying to search for a job right now in the middle of this chaos.
Abe at Oceanoxia doesn’t have to imagine it — he and his wife are both smack in the middle employment uncertainty. He does good work. If you’re in a more fortunate position, check him out and do what you can to help.
I’m reading about the news from Italy, and here’s a dramatic scene for you: a line of army trucks hauling away coffins from Bergamo, where the crematoria are overwhelmed by the number of dead they have to deal with. It’s like a scene out of a disaster movie.
A #Bergamo hanno dovuto chiamare l'esercito per caricare camion e camion di bare da destinare a crematori fuori regione. Prima di lamentarvi della proroga del #lockdown riguardatevi sto video in loop.#coronavirusitalia pic.twitter.com/ofR1raGVTb
— Alessandro Zanoni (@AlexZan87) March 19, 2020
Then the mail was delivered here. Look what I got!
The local funeral home wants me to do some “advance planning”. Sorry, guys, bad timing. My plan right now is to have my corpse thrown into a military truck, driven to some remote spot, and flung into a mass grave and covered over by a bulldozer. Won’t cost me a thing!
I’m going to try again — a few friends and I will be trying to stream on YouTube tonight, at 7pm Central. Last time, I somehow botched the YouTube connection, but this time it might work. If it doesn’t, I’ll shut it down and restart and hope it all finally comes together.
Anyway, we’re just going to talk, drink, swear, weep, all the things I’m doing in private, only in public.
Hey, I actually got everything to work this time!
Unfortunately, watching the frantic back-pedaling and sudden about face of loud conservatives is only good for entertainment value.
After mocking the coronavirus panic, Jerry Falwell Jr. has closed Liberty University.
Paula White, the venal “spiritual advisor” to Donald Trump, used a prayer meeting to beg for cash, and plugged a big evangelical event that would have “spiritual protections” against the coronavirus. The event has since been cancelled.
The Museum of the Bible spent a lot of money looting artifacts from the Middle East illegally. Now it’s been discovered that many of them are fakes.
After doing their best to downplay the pandemic, Fox News is now changing their tune and pretending they knew it all along.
It’s a sick sad world when we are watching everything crash and burn but can take some pleasure in seeing the assholes in flames, too.
