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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Letters to Strangers and Friends

Dear Mom,

Happy Monday, and Happy October. Isn't October always so weird?

I'm sorry I missed your call yesterday afternoon, and I'm so glad we got to talk this morning, if just for a quick minute. I hadn't been able to get to sleep Saturday night, and so Joe let me sleep until past three o'clock. That's why I missed your call. I was sleeping. He came padding in for a cuddle when he heard me stirring, and when he told me what time it was, I said "Are you fucking kidding me right now."

So this morning I was literally just at that moment looking at my phone when you called, because of course I was. For some people, that might be no big shocker, what with the way the world is ruled by phones now. But for me...let's just say that these days, I don't even know where my phone is, or if it's even charged, a great deal of the time. (I have a theory about why that is, but I'll save it until I see you this weekend, should the topic of crippling anxiety and depression due to post-traumatic stress happen to come up in the course of conversation.) All these years and that kind of coincidence still happens. Remember how Hub used to call that "the Vortex"? The way there always seem to be weird things, way past mere coincidence, that extend two, three levels deep. Did I ever tell you that Hub believed you and I were psychically connected, like at the cellular level? Apparently when we were together, the way that you and I would interact would, from time to time, freak him out. Apparently there was one time in the Davenport Road house when you and I were cooking and setting the table. Hub pointed out that I answered a question that you hadn't asked yet, and he says that you replied without comment, like that was no big deal. Hub had, and still has, a lot of theories like that. For a stubborn know-it-all driven by the pursuit of math and science, he certainly does retain a great deal of supernatural beliefs. I guess I was always drawn to paradox, wasn't I? And he may have something there. Do you remember that time we hadn't talked in months and then you called me right when I was meeting with my boss? I remember looking down at the phone trying not to let the tears fall out of my eyes and seeing your name come up on the caller ID. Hub is positive that you know when I am in distress, all these miles away. These days he doesn't even freak out or say "VORTEX!" anymore. He just goes, "Well, ya know."

Joe just shrugs. My Joey thinks everything is magical, because his brain knows how to convert math into music. I submit to you: is there anything more magical than that? Oddly enough, the Vortex is strong this week. Last night there was a real boomerang...you know it's hard to know where to start when telling about these things. Start anywhere, the Vortex brings it back around again. So...

...back in the 90s there was a local band called Angry Salad that Hub and I liked. I hadn't thought about Angry Salad in a long time. But here's the thing. Just last weekend they came up in conversation with Joe.

Joe and I were in the studio and he was showing me some new synth plugins, and we got on the topic of cover songs using alternate instrumentation. You know, like when you hear a rock song played on a ukulele, that sort of thing. I was trying to locate a video of Angry Salad covering Devil Went Down to Georgia so Joe could hear that Angry Salad had this guitar player who slayed the fiddle part. That guy was awesome. But it's not on any of their records and I realized I'd only seen them do it live. So I described it to Joe, and then spent some time listening to a lot of Angry Salad. And then randomly, last night Hub sent me a link to an Angry Salad video. Why though.

I told him that the guitar player went on to join a reunited Quiet Riot, and he told me that the lead singer died. That's terrible. I guess he OD'd in LA in 2007 a few days before Thanksgiving. I could never live in LA. Not that we don't kill ourselves in Boston.

Okay, back to this weekend. Update. Since my friend Chris is giving me a lift to Connecticut, that means I can bring more than just my one small bag. Maybe I should bring some of the dolls that I've been making so that you can appraise them? I have started using the jewelry bits and parts, but I realize that I don't know what I'm looking at...what if I price my doll to sell, and it turns out I've used a real pearl on the damn thing worth twice that alone? Let's talk again before Thursday, that might work out. I could also use some advice about selling in general. I'm an expert in back office operations, logistics and customer service...sales, I always relied on a whole 'nother kind of crew for that!

I should also a finish a doll that I've been thinking would be a gift for Fernando Fox from his auntie. I texted Michael that I'd always thought I'd be more like Aunt Sharon, and it turns out I'm a Carol. Living out of state and never seen. I remember always being surprised at what she looked like, because I think I only ever saw Carol a total of...maybe seven times, total? I can't believe I haven't met Fox yet. Does that baby boy even know about me?

So let's talk again. I'll keep my phone close by, so that I can get your call in the next few days. I know that you get up before God in the morning, so I'll keep it by the bed. And charged.

Love you,

 

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Open Letter: The Night Before

Dear Friends,

I voted early. Tomorrow, November 8th, I've got sinus surgery to correct what's apparently been the root cause of my recurring troubles throughout my adult life, including sinus headache and ear infections. Put simply, I'm all jacked up in there. Since I'll be sleeping through the whole thing, that means that I won't be on hand all day for the election coverage. This is probably a gift to me, from the universe. So. Some thoughts on the eve of what will surely be an insane Tuesday.

First of all, I know I'm not the only one flat-out astonished that it's come to this. That Donald Trump ever became the actual real life Republican candidate. Do people understand the whole Trump...thing? I guess not. I guess just the fact of being on TV means...something...to...certain people? Maybe so, I mean parents are triggering new outbreaks of measles and mumps because some rando hair-do on TV told them to, so...USA! USA!

Look. I grew up in Connecticut, the part that's pretty close to New York. Here's the thing -- that part of Connecticut is a kind of woodsy enclave what they call a "bedroom community," meaning close enough to the city so people could drive or take the train. There, you talk about going into "the city" and doing some shopping. It's the Connecticut that roots for the Yankees (not the Sox), and we'd go to baseball games. Get some Italian ice in Little Italy, my parents saw a ton of Broadway shows and sometimes took us to Saturday matinees. I saw West Side Story with Rita Moreno as Anita. We listened to Howard Stern every morning before school. A lady named Liz Smith wrote a gossip column where "The Donald" and Ivana were always in her column for some glitzy reason or another. I'm saying this dude was around a lot, for us, and you know something? He was always a joke. There was never a time when Donald Trump represented anything smart, charming or admirable. He was this tacky society idiot that showed up on Howard Stern and tried to be funny. We cracked up, but if memory serves, Howard was just egging him on so we could all laugh at him.

New York in the 1980s: 
Howard Stern was a king. Donald Trump was a fool.

My working class family happened to be friendly with a number of rather affluent people. Very wealthy. Sprawling homes and land. They had homes in New York. They traveled the world, spoke several languages, played tennis and kept horses and that kind of thing. Lovely people who were nice to us, who seemed just comfortable and I guess what you might, today, call "woke." I have stories. But let me tell ya, I cannot recall knowing a single affluent person in my life that ever looked, sounded or acted like that crass, crude, blowhard Donald Trump. Money cannot buy grace. Dollars do not equal class. Plenty of people have money and gravitas. You can become obscenely rich without becoming obscene, but not that guy. And now he's running for President? How the f...?

And that is the primary problem that I have with Trump supporters. What exactly are they supporting? He doesn't know anything about anything. "He's a business man" is the top thing I hear these people say, and that is dumbest thing ever. First of all, what does that even mean? When I hear the "businessman" crowd cheering, I want to ask for a specific list of actual skills. Secondly, even if Trump were in possession of an outstanding business mind—he isn't, in fact it's well known that he's a straight-up crook—that quality does not meet the minimum requirements of the damn job. That's like saying your garbage man would make an excellent baker because he gets up early in the morning. There is no correlation.

Next problem I have with Trump supporters is more personal. You see, Hillary Clinton wasn't my favorite a year ago. I've got essays here in my blog that say as much. But over the past six months or so, I've done deeper digging, into her record, but truthfully, digging mostly into my own reasons for disliking her. I came up with dick. Nothing, zero. Just a vague feeling. So basically I was being ridiculous. I was an idiot.

Newsflash: 
You Don't Have To Feel Warm Fuzzies About Your Representatives

Without going too deep into a whole litany of findings, I'll just say that through a combination of research and contemplation, I'm all in for Hillary now. I'm with her. The fact is that she has been working her entire life since law school towards this day, and her record is stunning. Outstanding. More qualified a candidate, I don't think we have ever had, and I mean that sincerely. It isn't up for debate. Put her CV side by side with any other candidate. It's a fact -- she's the right person for right now. She might be the best POTUS we've ever had, flaws and all.

Finally, I want to make a point about the difference between conservatives and liberals. Being liberal means unconditional acceptance of, and empathy for, and if possible fellowship with people that aren't the exact same as you, thoughtful attention to preserving the planet's natural resources and limiting and repairing the impact of our our human footprint, and warmth and charity to shore up those less fortunate. That's the "liberal agenda." But this litany of hopes and dreams for the people of our country is what gets you the moniker "libtard." A brutal insult, and for what? For learning? For trying to be a decent person? I don't understand how it's bad to want everyone to be safe, educated, have enough food to eat, a home, clean water, clean air...how does decency and equal rights and sharing become the evil thing, while people are applauding and supporting corrupt billionaires and politicians out for personal financial gain with no regard for anyone or anything? I guess if you squint...no, I'm sorry, I'm having a really hard time understanding, and I have tried and tried. I think that the reason these deplorable haters have been so far able to keep waving their signs and spewing just terrible, awful things is because "libtards" keep right on supporting their right to write those signs and say those things. We say hey, we may not agree with what you're saying, but we defend your right to say it. We say this even as they're calling us nasty libtard bitches. "Hang the bitch" and all the horrifying chants, and we're over here saying well, that's free speech. You know what? It's hate speech, actually. That's different. And I, for one, am done tolerating this hate. I retract my support. So I suppose I need to accept the label: I'm a libtard bitch, hi, how are you? Is it just me, or can I invite to go fuck themselves anyone who can't understand what's really going on here?

So, in sum, I'm pretty angry right now. Really, really angry. They've called me and my sisters nasty libtard bitches long enough now that, congrats Trumpers, you've summoned the seether, who is all in for Hillary, and I'm all done tolerating your ignorance, racism, misogyny and blind faith. Just so you know. That's where we're at, here. Because my bucket came up dry the last time I reached down for tolerance for the Trump fans, the 3rd party people, and the "anyone but Hillary" and "never Hillary" peanut gallery. This is important and you are blowing it. So say "Benghazi" or "emails" to me one more goddamn time, I fucking dare you.

Friends, good luck to you tomorrow. Good luck to me. Good luck to all of us,

Yours,

md/lk
@SuperLowBudge

Related: What Did I Miss?

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YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL: Stop Competing In Beauty Contests

feministfightclub.com

Hey, Women,

Hi, how ya doing? So yesterday was weird, right? Two days before the second Presidential debate, an old tape surfaced that shows the Republican nominee bragging about how he forcefully gropes and kisses any woman that he finds attractive, married or not. Then the internet exploded. Why this latest pile of word vomit is worse than any other in his relentless spew, I couldn't say. Same shit, different day with this clown, innit? When will he go back to that cheap-ass castle of his and get the hell off TV, right? I guess what I'm thinking today is: why this time? He's been spewing this kinda thing like, literally, the whole entire time I've been alive. "Trump is a joke" is like "coffee is hot." Wait. That is a chilling analogy. Fer fuck's sake, what is happening right now. Mitt Romney got creamed in 2012 just for saying he had "binders full of women," when all he meant was he'd collected the curriculum vitae of many women qualified for top jobs. Surely, this is Trump's swan song, right?

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Dear White Christian Lawmaker: How Are You Getting Away With It?

Dear White Christian Lawmaker,

I just don't understand how you're getting away with it. Has the nation gone so numb at this point that no one is willing to stop you? Have people forgotten that as state leaders you are not endowed with any sort of divine status? Put simply, you aren't actually allowed to legislate based on your personal religious beliefs, signing bills into law based on nothing but scripture. Not any more.

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