Quarantine Thoughts: Everyone Is A Comedian

#QuarantineThoughts

Michael Marotta
It's weird that my cat doesn't know what Europe is.

@vexedinthecity
Is cereal, technically, considered a breakfast soup?

Sean Drinkwater
Are Burritos why we were put on this planet?

Daniel Bernal
I've had a few ambitions. I think I found a new one. I just want to grow up to be Christopher Walken-ish.

Lamont Price
Any time Fred Flinstone calls Barney "Barn" you know some shit's about TO GO DOWN.

Dan McCool
The word "if" is weird. Say it out loud a few times and look at how it's spelled.

@internetalena
LMNOP is truly the party zone of the alphabet

@seanthecomic
If people that use reddit are called redditors, shouldn’t we call people that use 4chan 4chancelors?

Noelle Boc
How long is it acceptable to wear the same pair of socks? Asking for a friend.

@VickiWasylak
I would like to hold an armadillo

@LPizzle
Cobra Commander was the Barney Fife of evil cartoon bosses

@bensisto
Is Raffi Jonathan Richman for kids, or is Jonathan Richman Raffi for adults?

@morgan_murphy
why don’t women talk about hot sauce as often as men do?

Lainey Schooltree
Raise your hand if you bleep blorped too morp and now you can only clorp

@JeffisTallguy
polar bears poop on an ice hill and watch it slide into the ocean

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Beautiful Day at the End of the World

All the windows are open and sending warm breezes. 

Overheard a nearby neighbor who said: "ARRGHHHhaaahh!"

Now he's singing loud to RUN DMC.

Me too, buddy.

Me too.

#COVID19

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On The Vital Importance of Hairdressers

Are you sitting down? Because in my experience, people are shocked when I tell them: I cut my own hair. In fact, I'm about to do it again. I've done it hundreds of times. There are Reasons I can do it, but because I do it myself, I had never fully appreciated the tremendous impact on society hairdressers have! Based on the depths of desperation on social media vis a vis haircuts, formally genial citizenry are positively freaking out without their hairdressers. It is phenomenal.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide timeline, Douglas Adams puts hairdressers on Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B with all the business consultants, insurance salesmen and PR executives. I fear Mr. Adams may have made a great error. Hairdressers are not among the less useful citizens of the planet. Hairdressers are, in fact, essential and should be on the same grade as psychotherapists for how much they do to help brighten a person's psyche. One of the things psychotherapists suggest when you're depressed is to get a haircut. Maybe the next generation will combine the disciplines and we'll have a whole person: a Psychotherapy/Hairdressing School combo. Everyone gets to go every six weeks to get a combination haircut/therapy session. In a brave new world such a job would exist. These are the ideas Generation X would vote into reality.

When I was little, my mom cut hair at home. In those heady 1970s and 80s, people just opened up their homes as their business. In those days, you could visit a tidy ranch house in the suburbs and drop off a prom dress with the area seamstress. You could sit at a dining room table petting someone else's dog and have your taxes done. And you could visit some young Sicilian lady's kitchen and get a hair cut. She'll give you lemonade, and you'll sit in her paisley kitchen chair that she upholstered herself, with her two grubby kids seated at the table, a small cute boy and an awkward older girl, both busily assembling some Woolworth's arts and crafts project and listening to the adults talk.

I watched my mother clean her combs and scissors while she had a conversation with her customer about what kind of haircut would commence. I watched as she swept a plastic cape around the person's shoulders and tied it around their neck. With every new head, mom wet-combed hair into sections, holding hair with big clips. With her scissors, she went section-by-section, snipping and trimming. Her jeans pockets held combs and scissors, but her greatest tool was her intuition. People loved her cuts so much. There were people who had real money, who drove sports cars and lived in the woods, who would come all the way to Waterbury, CT to get a JoAnna. And I watched every single cut. Mom held hair straight between two fingers, as the scissors in her other hand went zzzp zzzp zzzp and snippety-snip. I liked when she did layers, long locks of hair falling to the floor. When I was older, I swept up the hair.


I'll tell you the only two times I visited a salon. Twice in life I got my hair washed and cut. The first time was in Pelham, NY, during college in the early 1990s. I was walking down the sunny street on a nice day, and I had nothing on my schedule, which felt amazing. On a whim, I went into a hair salon and a very gentle man cut my hair. It was okay. Over twenty years later, a college friend gifted me a haircut when we were on a girls' reunion weekend in Savannah, Georgia. Jenny had booked us all time at a salon, and Lisa got me a haircut. Lisa is appalled that I cut my own hair. I was super grateful to Lisa, but the haircut itself didn't make me spin around and sing or anything. That haircut was fine, too. The guy was nice, and talented. I mean, honestly–it was fine. We all had a good time and that's what counts.

The only person who ever cut my hair in a such a way that made me spin around and sing was my mother. When she cut my hair, I watched her in the mirror she always set up for her customers. She gave me perms, she gave me pixie cuts, she gave me long, shaggy layers. She gave me hair like Dorothy Hamill, Leather Tuskadero and Wendy & Lisa from Prince's band, The Revolution. This went on my whole life until at some point I just took over the task. I probably got help at first, but as far back as I can remember, I could always just kind of do it.

Maybe I would have been better off, and still have my mental health, had I been a hairdresser. Maybe I should have pursued salon dreams, only I never had any. My hairdressing talent aside, there's a big caveat: my hair is the real low-budget superhero here. My hair is incredibly forgiving. Heavy and wavy, it'll hold a curl or it'll comb out in long waves. I've done bangs, I've done long layers. I've colored it many dozens of times. It always comes out how I wanted it. I am very lucky. I cannot thank my hair enough. Especially since I am only just-okay in every other measurement of beauty by today's standards, I'm so happy that at least my hair is outstanding. Even when it gets real big in summer, I still like my hair. Thank you, hair. You're my One Thing.

So I guess what I'm saying is, shout-out to my hair that lets me cut it without the help of a professional hairdresser, but an even bigger shout out to hairdressers, whose absence has really shown what haircuts mean to the mental health of a whole society. During this pandemic, your clientele misses you. What I hope for every hairdresser out there: when this is all over, you enjoy a prosperous, happy life with more respect and more tips than you've ever seen before. ∎

Here is a pile of pictures

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Lockdown Notes: Assembling Jigsaw Puzzles

Joe finished our Boston puzzle today. It's a graphic illustration of the city drawn in black and colored in, bearing names of all the landmark buildings and attractions such as Quincy Market, Faneuil Hall and the State House. He finished it so fast.

It feels so strange to finally see this Boston puzzle assembled. The box is like an old friend that's just kind of always hung around. For about a decade it was the only puzzle in the house until we got one more. So I remember seeing this puzzle in Joe's apartment when we first met. The place was an utter dump. He didn't have much, but there was this puzzle. We were just talking about how the only things we still have from when he lived alone are the bed frame, a set of very good sheets, his bass and this Boston puzzle. Joe thinks someone gave it to him when he'd decided in senior year to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston. 

I found this puzzle impossible to do, because the image details are so very very teeny tiny. I am This-Puzzle-Is-Too-Small years old. Placed here and there around the puzzle are little fun facts, written out in a comic book font that look like the footprints of a fly to me. I could have done it when it first came out, according to the copyright this was published in 1980. Sure, give me my 1980s eyes back. 

Even if I could see the damn thing, it's too hard. You can't go by the map in your head because this is well before Big Dig, and a lot has changed in Boston in the past 40 years. Buildings and businesses have tiny little signs bearing names I don't recognize. Aside from a few landmark places like Union Oyster House, few names ring a bell. There's banks I never heard of, building names that don't ring a bell (what's the Stadtler?) and delivery trucks with logos I've never known. Restaurants, too. What's Jimbo's? There was a German place called Wutzberger? Wut? This whole puzzle was a Wutzberger.

Joe was curious and looked up Chamberlayne Junior College. We learned it had closed and merged with Mount Ida College, which then closed too. You never think of colleges closing. They seem so permanent. My college closed last year, in a simpering disgrace after years of dirty tricks with the money. People are truly awful, terrible things. No wonder the planet is wiping us out. Why wouldn't it, we're the worst.∎ 

The only other puzzle we have is called City Doors. I did this one. I like doors. Joe got this puzzle for me...or wait, did a friend send it? My memory is murky because it was when I first had my nervous breakdown and was in and out of the loony bin. In my tele-health therapy session this afternoon we talked about how amazing it feels to have done something like a whole entire jigsaw puzzle. This is the kind of thing I haven't been able to do for six years due to my broken brain. I have never been able to do this puzzle. I tried once and my brain just couldn't do it. So thi sis great. I did just have an adjustment to my medication, so maybe this is a sign that there is good news to come? That I can maybe actually get better? I'm going to keep trying. Maybe I should try another puzzle. Maybe I should try reading something. I haven't been able to focus on reading a book in years. I miss it. I miss my original brain. Mental illness is awful.

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Dear Anti-Mask Knuckleheads Strutting Around Outside

BOSTON - Being asked to wear a mask as a courtesy wasn't good enough for you, so now your selfishness had to be countered with a law. As of today, everyone over two years old must be wearing a mask when out in public. You're still fighting about it. What don't you understand? The masks are for the good of public safety, to prevent runaway spread of a goddamn contagious, deadly pathogen for which there is no cure. Over 70,000 people are dead in six weeks. If you can't do this one simple thing for the greater good, that's all I need to know about you. You are showing that you could never be counted on in a crisis. Protesting, what's wrong with you? You think that makes you look strong? You can't handle a minor inconvenience for the sake of your country. You are weak. It's offensive.∎

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The Big Clench: Grateful Thru Anxiety

My stomach is constantly clenching and aching. I'm scared and anxious. But I'm trying not to fixate on the horror and instead be grateful. I am grateful for so many things. I am grateful that:

• I cook. 
• I cut my own hair, and Joe's hair too.
• I love where I live.
• We can still afford cable TV kinda.
• I married my best friend.

I cook.
We're living extremely lean because I haven't worked steadily in several years. Since I had my nervous breakdown in February 2014, I was no longer the higher earner in the household and we cut a lot out. No more eating out, no more ordering in, no fancy shopping excursions, none of that. I'd love to support local restaurants, but between being SO broke and my mental health, I've been cooking at home most of the time. It's rare to eat food that I haven't cooked. Thankful that preparing all our meals is no added hardship, I was already doing that.

I cut my own hair, and Joe's hair too.
I was lucky. All growing up my mom cut everyone's hair. Family, friends and actual paying customers. She did it in our kitchen and I hung around listening to adults talk. I swept up the hair. Whenever she had someone sitting in the chair, I could see what my mom was doing: dampening the comb, separating the head into sections with big clips, using two fingers to take small sections of hair and cut across or use upward snipping motions, depending. I've always kept a nice pair of scissors designed for hair cutting, I don't recommend using those big kitchen scissors, sewing shears or the kind used for crafts. Like anything else, get the right tool for the job. I don't expect everyone to be able to cut his or her own hair, but I can do it. Aside from once in college and once back in 2013, I've always cut it myself.  I prefer cutting my hair myself actually. I must acknowledge that my hair is particularly kind, so I consider it almost mistake-proof. My hair is easy. Joe's is easy, too. He's got long super-straight hair like Marcia Brady. Thankful that we are not missing "getting a haircut" because I was already cutting our hair at home anyway.

I love where I live. 
Our apartment is small by my mom's standards, but it's not as small as our old place. We love it here. It'll be ten years in November that we've lived here, and we absolutely tell each other how lucky we are on a regular basis. We have a baby grand piano that is not "in the way" whatsoever, so we must be okay for space, right? We have every kind of instrument including a drum kit. Two, actually, if you count the V-drums in Joe's studio. Just the fact that he has studio where he can go and make music, or just play video games. Amazingly I have my own space too, in what's considered "the sunroom" so that means my little studio has got tons of natural light. Each having our own space means we can have as much "alone time" as needed. We have hundreds of books, art books, art supplies, modeling clay, and lots of doll-making and sewing supplies. We have so many records and CDs, plus a Sonos where lots of those records and CDs are digitized. We have board games, jigsaw puzzles, and crossword puzzles and space to play. There's a chess game always set up on its own little chess table. Our kitchen is well-equipped for all kinds of cooking...mostly thanks to Joe's mom who gifts us appliances all the time. We have a back porch where we can sit and watch the birds, eat or play a game, have chats with neighbors on either side or downstairs. I am so, so grateful to love where I live that the depth of gratitude brings me to tears. Like I said, we have been living extremely lean because I haven't worked in a long time, so no outings to things like concerts, movies, plays or anything. Nothing is what we can afford and it's been this way for a long time. So I'm grateful that we're not missing "going out" because we were already staying home and entertaining ourselves anyway.

We can still afford cable TV kinda.
It's $200 per month for Xfinity TV and Internet, and for that astonishingly high dollar amount, we don't even get most of the movie channels. So I'm lost when people talk about anything on HBO or anything like that. We don't have Amazon Prime, either. But we do have really strong, fast Internet and with that we watch Netflix, Hulu, Shudder and now Joe's thinking about adding Britbox for $6.99/month. Interestingly we have not binge-watched a single thing in this whole six weeks since being locked down. But it's nice to have it, and are lucky that we can still kind of afford that $200 every month for basic service. It's too much, isn't it? Am I high or is it ridiculous that every household pays this much for cable and Internet?

I married my best friend.
This lockdown situation is a tough testing ground for relationships. But I love that Joe's working from home, and we're not sick of each other, and everything is good. That's the thing I'm most grateful for: my amazing husband. Going out to get us supplies (all masked up) and making me coffee every morning, singing praise for everything that I cook or prepare. When Joe doesn't know in advance what I'm making, he eats my food and goes, "I didn't even KNOW this is what I wanted!" Every soup is "the best one you've ever made" and sometimes he does a little happy dance in the kitchen. I mean...you guys, what? I'm so lucky. 

But even with all of this gratitude and amazing luck, I'm all clenched with disturbing bouts of anxiety, and depression. My stomach hurts and I have a headache. My psychiatrist increased my meds on our last telehealth call so we'll see if that helps. Since Joe's home, he gives me reassuring hugs all day long, which helps. Most of all I'm lucky to be on the right side of the grass for now. ∎

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I guess I say nothing, because what's the point?

I miss the library.

Just before I stopped leaving the house altogether, I went for a walk and ran into an older neighbor who told me he is "not buying into all the bullshit." He stood too close and he exhaled his cigarette smoke and he sneered and told me he's just coming home from giving his friend a ride somewhere, that he's not changing anything just because of some virus. He's not the only person that I know who is angrily objecting to the one thing being asked of us: to use an abundance of caution right now, which means to isolate at home so that we can all band together and kill this terrible bug. 

I understand that the lockdown protestors, especially the ones suiting up to apparently shoot someone (?) are frustrated and terrified. But are they not seeing the same updates that I'm seeing? 

link

"BOSTON (CBS) — There were 1,524 new coronavirus cases and 104 additional deaths reported Monday. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health said there have now been 56,462 total cases with 3,003 total deaths in the state.

A total of 244,887 people have been tested in Massachusetts, with 8,787 new tests announced in the last 24 hours.

As of Monday, 3,892 people are currently hospitalized for a coronavirus-related illness, which represents seven percent of all current cases in Massachusetts.

Middlesex County has the most cases with 12,953, followed by Suffolk County with 11,883 cases and Essex County with 7,708.

Long-term care facilities in Massachusetts have been significantly impacted by the coronavirus. A total of 10,635 residents and staff have tested positive. As of Monday, 1,698 residents in those facilities have died from the virus.

There are 8,455 cases among people under 30 years old, 25,937 cases are among people ages 30-59, 7,709 cases between people aged 60-69, and 14,071 cases in people over 70."

Two days ago my friend David posted a Facebook rant about the "bullshit" shelter-in-place advisory and he wrote "wake the fuck up" and called for revolt. Now there is a guy in my Twitter feed fighting everyone about masks, citing it's the mask that's causing him to not be able to breathe. He claimed to pass out while wearing one, and is declaring his liberties are under attack and he's going without food because he is "not allowed inside the grocery store." He also writes, "You are being lied to by media and have for for years. Patients are being treated wrong. There is a virus there always a viruses. It's how your immune systems works. Ventilators are killing people. Not the virus."

Get that? It's face masks and ventilators that actually killed fifty-thousand people, the virus is no problem whatsoever.

There's some incredibly dangerous, magical thinking out there. I don't even know what to say anymore. I guess I say nothing, because what's the point? ∎

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Out of an abundance of caution: In response to a Facebook rant

Yes, most if not all of us have been in contact with it already! Yet we are all putting up with this bullshit! WTF people wake the fuck up, we locked down stopped it's spread built our immunity so now it's time to get back at it! We have something called an immune system remember, if we didn't the human race wouldn't have survived for thousands and thousands and thousands of years! Notice, I didn't say, get the economy moving again, no because that i can give 2 shits about that, but what I do give a shit about is people's livelihoods and purpose, that is what I care about! Stop being cowards of fear and rise up as you profess Americans do, tell our elected officials, they for sure aren't our leaders, to stick it and let's leave our lockdown and get going!

PS, I'm not a Trump supporter, no not at all but I refuse to give up my freedoms cause some asshole told me too! Wake the fuck up all, step outside, mingle with your neighbors and start a revolution, you will be fine and all of us will be too! Let's go!

When the next objective is jump off a bridge to save someone else, I already see who will! I didn't say you had to agree, only said maybe perhaps you alt to consider what the powers that be are saying, and I won't back down and said it before that this thing ain't as contagious as they say and that I bet most of us have come in contact with it already and we are fine! I had a sore throat, runny nose and slight fever in January and l bet it was covit, I want a test for the antibodies and i bet I already have them and that is what this article is about so back the fuck up, if you don't agree so be it, i don't give a fuck! But I refuse to accept something cause someone told me too, if you don't like that then unfriended me, I can give two shits

Dear David,

I feel your aggression. I feel it hit my gut as Fear. I know you want to believe "most if not all of us" have "been in contact" with Covid-19, because that would mean that you've survived already. It would mean you won and there's no need to panic. You want to know that most of us are going to make it. Most of all you don't want to be alone. In your heart you know the truth: we will not all make it. I turned 50 on Tuesday. I wondered if that was my last birthday. I expect it might be. I know why you're angry, buddy. I really do. I know too why you wish "this thing ain't as contagious as they say." But you just said we'll all get it...either it's contagious as hell, or it's not contagious. Both things can't be true. I know you're casting about for another answer, any answer. But Dave, there is no question that many, many people are dying. 

I'm trying to save what's left of my sanity so I was avoiding the news for about a week. But all that did was delay me seeing the truth: how in that one week we went from 3000 dead to 7000, then another week to 20,000 and today it's over 50,000 dead. That's all in the last six weeks. It's still trending upward, and it's not flattening out yet. Experts waffle on the message and what we should do: wear a mask, do not wear a mask, go to church, go to the grocery store. The trend is still going up no matter what we try. More die every week. 

And now they're finding that It doesn't care how old you are, and It doesn't care what your job is, and you don't have immunity from getting it again. It's going to keep coming for your lungs, your heart and possibly some other organs. It's getting children. It's wiping out whole families. It even got some cats. Covid-19 might be an Extinction Event, and we don't know because we are only at the beginning of it and they don't know what It is. It gets on everything and It won't stop killing until it wears Itself right out. THAT'S why we're all on lockdown, Dave. Not because anyone wants to take away your freedom. It's so we don't all die. David, it is wiping us out, zone by zone, all over the whole world. The truth is that top scientific minds don't even know what it is, so THIS is what we are trying. Isolation may be our only weapon we have against the virus. Can you hang in with us, David. We need you.

What you're feeling is terror. That's what everyone is feeling. I can see why people are storming the nation's government with guns. This Covid-19 level of terror is why they've been keeping their guns by their beds all this time. They needed their guns to protect their homes and family. Now this deadly enemy has finally come roaring in like they always knew it would, and a gun is no use after all. But it's all they have and they want SOMEONE to do SOMETHING. They are angry and terrified.

You sound so angry I'm afraid you're going to storm off to join one of these protests. Please don't. You're literally risking your life. What are you protesting? An abundance of caution is all that is being asked of us. We've already failed the planet, failed our children and failed ourselves, must we also fail in doing this most possible thing: stay. the fuck. home. 

HOME is where you SHOULD be right now. Isn't Home what you've been fighting for since the dawn of man? Home is what it's all been about. Home is your one true freedom-washed, pristine den of do-whatever-the-heck-you-want while you're in here place. It's your castle, you're the king in your Home. Don't you wanna be where you're the king? Home is where you SHOULD be right now. Not at the bowling alley, not at the Cheesecake Factory. All that is being asked of us is to use an abundance of caution, and for most that includes staying home and finding ways to help each other through this. That's all we need to do, to go home and help each other hunker down so we can all band together to try to kill this bug. 

I know the helpless feeling where you want to threaten something, someone, anyone in order to be normal again. Trump supporters are showing the grasping desperation of a people who want to get back to 2016 when they could have voted for the email lady instead of this rolling shitshow. 

Back in 2016, this is exactly what we were afraid of, or something like it. It's the monster we've all been drawing, writing about, animating and putting on ice all these centuries. It's here. It's...Outside. I know you're tired of hearing it but: we need you to please Stay Inside. Just until it goes away. Don't be the people in horror movies that go galumphing out in a blaze of gory because they ran TOWARDS the monster.

I understand why you want to rage against something. But don't let it be your friends and family. Please, please don't go full-bore like this Offline, at anyone or anything. You're venting, and that's okay. But please just stay home and tell everyone to go home, be with your family. If you live alone, make yourselves into groups who check in on each other. This is the only time in my life you're going to hear me say this but: USE FACEBOOK. We let Zuckerdrag milk our very souls dry to make his life a super-special one, let's USE this Thing that we made to keep in touch with everyone: IT'S TIME TO KEEP IN TOUCH WITH EVERYONE. GodDAMN you're making me support FACEBOOK. And also: Stop laughing at the Animal Crossing people, they're getting it right. We may have destroyed the real world worshiping our big fat old capitalist ball sacks, but we have cultivated this stupid digital one. Let's get our money's worth off this bitch. If you know a Friend who needs more Friends, tell them to Friend me, I'm pretty okay most of the time. I am heavily medicated. Let's meet in Facebook Groups and discuss side effects and how much we need to sleep. I have easy recipes that use potatoes.

David, I love you and I just don't want you to die. Please stay the fuck home. Out of an abundance of caution.

@SuperLowBudge

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Disinfectant. Injections.

“So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light and I think you said that hasn't been checked but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way... sounds interesting... And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks [the virus] out [from a surface] in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that [by] injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets on the lungs and it does a tremendous number.”

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Out like a lamb my ass.

It's a fierce month of Marpril. It's the Eleventy-ninth of Marpril and the wind is blowing down trees and taking the siding off triple-deckahs in Allston Rock City.

It's been a rough month, kids.

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