It should be spent on grading, but instead my morning was tied up with blood tests and X-rays. The doctor is suspecting something suspicious is going on, so I donated a quart for blood tests and got thoroughly irradiated for a while.
Might live a little longer, just because I’m getting pissed off.
But I wouldn’t put it past some of the other locals. It seems some of our far-right Trumpkin Americans are blustering on Tik-Tok about rising up and murdering the libs, bragging about putting up black flags as a sign of no quarter given (I think they’re usually accustomed to flying white flags). Their reasoning, though, is bizarre.
So, we’re the enemy, and they’re openly professing to want to execute us… So, why are they doing this?
Covid vaccinations, mostly. They believe that Joe Biden has declared a civil war on them by mandating that employers with over 100 employees and the military have vaccinations.
Yes, they say civil war, and they say it’s already started. But, unfortunately, many of them also live in states where masks and vaccines are required by state governments, healthcare, and law enforcement.
An alarming number of military members have been making Tik Toks talking about how they are being discharged because they refuse the vaccine. It’s alarming because there is probably an equal number of guys on there talking about the civil war plans and actively using Tik Tok to recruit these military and ex-military members.
The biggest message they have been sending out is, “it’s time” or “the time is now.”
They primarily use Tik Tok as a recruiting tool and let others know their willingness to commit violence. Then they tell people to message them or where to find them on Telegram.
I’m not scared. I think this is a small fringe of fanatical assholes, and if they were to rise up they’d cause some people grief and pain before they’d be put down. They rely on hiding in the shadows to have any courage.
What bugs me most is how goddamned stupid their ideas are.
We just got step 3 scribbled in, but now an awful lot of people are trying to bypass it.
See hydroxycholoroquine, bleach injections, betadine gargles, ivermectin, etc., etc., etc.
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.
I attended my granddaughter’s third birthday party yesterday, with some trepidation. I like her very much, but I’m an experienced parent, and I know how these things usually go. Take an excited child, give her lots of attention, stuff her with sweet rich treats, and spoil her with presents, and you just know there’s going to be at least one tantrum and that the event will end in frustrated tears.
This party had more than its share of concerns.
One, a terrible awful grandpa. I’m still dealing with pain and mobility issues from tendinitis, which I’m dealing with with medication that keeps me going through the day, but unfortunately, as it wears off, I crash hard. I was afraid that, come the evening, I was going to turn into a saggy, cranky tired old man. More than usual, anyway.
Two, this turned into a big party, the largest my daughter has held at her house — both sets of grandparents! Cousins! Friends! — all focusing their attention and cheer on one little girl. Overstimulation city, man.
Three, Iliana had helped make her birthday dessert. She chose to get chocolate donuts, which she drenched with chocolate frosting, and topped with chocolate ice cream. I feared those little heaps of sugary intensity.
Fourth, every one of her adult visitors brought one or more presents. They piled up on one wall, and it was going to be an impressive haul.
I predicted doom. All the ingredients were there.
And then everything was fine! I don’t know how, exactly.
Skatje solved the cranky grandpa problem by working all afternoon to make a fabulous vegetarian meal for the adults, a delicious Italian vegetable soup and lasagna. Grandpa turned into a mellow, satisfied old man with a warm glow in his tummy.
Iliana pigged out on chocolate donuts and ice cream by literally sticking her snout in it and licking it all up, happily. She ate as much as she wanted, which was not excessive, and then stopped and skipped off to play. She opened her presents with enthusiasm and was excited about all of them, and solved all the concerns about spoiled little monsters having tantrum by just being darned cheerful about everything. Her mom and grandpa helped assemble her new dollhouse, we played a quiet game for a while (the bunny family and the alpaca family were moving in, but the alpacas were frightened and hiding because the rabbits were such good pouncers). Then she toddled off to bed where her mom read a book to her and she fell asleep.
Thus was I deprived of a dramatic story. My predictions were all falsified. All I can assume is that Skatje and Kyle are better parents than I was, and managed to produce a well-adjusted happy child.
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.
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.
Rob Skiba was a right-wing evangelical preacher who told people that the COVID-19 vaccine was the “mark of the beast”. He bet that he would be proven right, and that his critics would be proven wrong by ending up dead.
You know exactly what happened, right? Is this a little too predictable?
Rob Skiba, an influential figure in flat earth and Christian circles, has died of COVID-19, colleagues announced on Thursday. He had been fighting the virus since at least late August, when he began exhibiting symptoms after “Take On The World,” a biblical flat earth conference. “He has been sick since coming back from TOTW,” a Facebook friend posted in early September, adding that Skiba had been hospitalized for low oxygen levels. One of the country’s most prominent advocates of Flat Earth Theory, Skiba was also skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines and some of the illness’ treatments. On the first day of the Take On The World conference, Skiba authored a Facebook post suggesting that the COVID-19 vaccines were dangerous.
It’s just extra ironic that he caught it at a flat earth conference.
Another person who died recently is the atheist, Tom Flynn.
“He saved the legacy of the Great Agnostic, Robert Green Ingersoll, from obscurity. He carried the torch for atheism, secular humanism, and clear-eyed rationality for decades with his powerful and copious writings and speeches—undoubtedly helping to cause the Rise of the Nones. All while cracking jokes and delighting everyone in his orbit,” said Blumner. “And how lucky we were to be part of it.”
“The death of Tom Flynn is a tragedy of epic proportions for everyone who cares about the equality of atheists anywhere in the world.”
Tom left a rather mixed legacy. Sure, he promoted atheism, but one of the reasons he contributed to the “Rise of the Nones” is that he also drove people away from atheism with his bizarre obsessions with, for instance, hating Christmas (ignore the War on Christmas goof, it’s a secular holiday and that’s how we celebrate it). There was nothing ironic about his death, we all get old and die, and Tom didn’t brag about his invulnerability and the uselessness of modern medicine before succumbing. He also didn’t subscribe to any flat earth theories.
Ken Ham is also sad about the death of Tom Flynn, because now he won’t be able to convert him. Ham got a note from an 11 year old girl and contemplates how Flynn ought to have been as gullible and uneducated as a child.
When I read the news about Tom Flynn, I thought of this young girl and her love for God’s Word and the messages I gave. I thought, “If only Tom Flynn would have had the faith of this child.” As we read in Scripture, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3).
Then I pondered how important it is to do all we can to help undo the work of Tom Flynn. Yes, we are not going to give up, we are going to be more enthusiastic (another word Ellie used) than ever to reach these Nones, and anyone else we can, with the truth of the saving gospel.
A truth that has not been demonstrated, and Ken Ham’s biblical literalist cult is fucking weird. But yeah, Ken, keep on flailing about, you might manage to convert children with your childish stories. With Tom Flynn dead, though, he’s going to have to change his personal project to get a different person before they’re dead.
I often think about the times I had with another famous person in secular circles, Bill Nye, and how I prayed for him while he stood in front of me, and how I pleaded with him to receive the free gift of salvation. But sadly, he rejected this, and as far as I know continues to do so. So we need to be reminded to pray for Bill Nye and do what we can to undo all the damage he has done in spreading his anti-God worldview.
You know, Bill Nye does not promote atheism. He’s an agnostic. What he does is try to teach science, which, in an interesting but unsurprising revelation, Ken Ham considers “anti-God”.
Now I’m curious about an ongoing race, though. Ken Ham is 69, and rich; Bill Nye is 65, and well-off; which one will die first? If it’s Ham, Nye isn’t going to say a word, probably, unless he’s poked at by the media. If it’s Nye, you just know Ham is going to be playing up how “well, he’s discovered the truth now!” and whining about how the poor man failed to find Jesus.
We’re all going to end up dead someday, so what matters is what you do when you’re alive. I think I’d rather be a Flynn or a Nye than a Skiba or a Ham, and that’s something I have the freedom to choose, unlike this fantasy about an afterlife.
