A sunny day that gave way to rumbles and rain. Apt. A good fit for Mr. Self-Pity here. I have gone from self-righteous indignation to low-level fury to a dial-tone mood of anhedonic glumness, total glumnitude. Veritable glumiosity. There is the stunned sense that it was all for naught. The sort of retrospective realization that hey, you know, maybe the column was never that good, anyway. Why put out a collection? You’d just be embarrassing yourself. The whole thing has been a charade.
So that’s not good.
The damned thing is that I’m still writing the column. It doesn’t go away until August, when the new-and-improved paper rolls out. I could just stop now, but no. I will write every last damned one until they drag it out back behind the barn and kill it.
So I filed a column. Hit send. TAKE THAT. On the way out of the office, I saw this fellow across the street.
I just had to cross the street and tell him I respected the look.
"Tom Wolfe, Leon Redbone, or just you?"
"Just me," he said with a slight smile. "Leon Redbone. There's a name I haven't heard in a while." (He literally said the meme."
"It's the sunglasses."
Redbone, by the way, was born Dickran Gobalian.
Follow-up: I saw the scissor-lift. The brand is not what I thought.
It's a Skyjack. But it's not the one I remember. The brown one that had the yellow lettering. The other day I ran into Colt Lugar, the maintenance guy with whom I chat, and I asked him what the nameplate was. He stopped, stunned - he couldn't remember either, and now it was going to drive him nuts.
Status: unresolved.
Cultural-shift news:
Since when?
Since, oh, 2022. Wonder why.
There are two versions - one made in Russia for the domestic market, and a Latvian-made hooch. The former still has the long name and the Moscow building on the label. The latter let everyone know they were changing the name because of the invasion.
The flavored versions still have a remnant of the Soviet-era label illustrations.
I like the orange. I'm not having it now. This is bourbon night. I am relieved that I was able to change my dental appointment from SEVEN AM to 9 AM, on another day, because dang. "Some people like to have it that early!" said the receiptionist on the phone. I know, I know - people who rise at 5 to get a good start on the day, which means they're probably yawning when the last network show ends and they tease the news. This is not me.
Well, now to finish a piece on the World's Fair for a journal that thinks I'm keen, so there's that, he said with the mulish sulk of a teenager.
On reddit, the gimp box for the the world’s neurotics, shut-ins, internet addicts, and other folk who regard the site as a “community,” I stumbled across a post about Bird Flu.
The Pre-Panicked community is pre-installed. Now, people did talk him down a bit, but there’s going to be more of this. What surprised me was the absence of Bird Flu Doom on my own Twitter feeds. A notice once a day, maybe. And the usual responses: “Must be an election year.” Not even amusing the first time.
Fifty percent mortality rate seems to be bad. It would take something like 50% to make people go along with lockdowns and masks again, unless they’re enforced by the tip of a bayonet.
By the time everyone realized it was 50%, it would be too late.
Anyway, there you have it: people are already stocking up on good masks and goggles and gloves, oh no. Let's all do the Oz chant. Good masks and goggles and gloves, oh no. And I’ve no doubt they are doing so with a certain grim pleasure: this time they’ll be proven right. Not that they were proven wrong before - everything that was done was correct it just wasn’t done hard enough - but this time we’re going to show them.
That is an uncharitable read on a minority of people. They will, however, become the loudest, should the Bird Flu breakout, and consequently they will be the most virtuous.
It’s already out there. Nine hundred cases this year on the planet total, with a mortality rate of 52%. If this sounds horrible, it’s because that’s the average, over 21 years. Two hundred cases in Indonesia in 2024, for example, with a mortality rate of 84%. Which is bad! But none since 2018. Four cases in the US, with a mortality rate of zero.
This latest strain comes from Russia. Thanks, Ivan.
The usual topic of "trusting the authorities and institutions" comes up when the Bird Flu is discussed, and that reminds me of a piece I read in our paper a while ago. It said that we actually do trust our institutions, and we should, because they work! We flip a light switch, the power comes on. We turn the faucet, there's water. And so on. Granted: the boons of Western Civ still function. But these are things that are not subject to intellectual capture. I mean, they are, if you stop hiring for merit and institute struggle sessions for the work force. But I get it. The author then noted that we should have more trust, so we can all focus on solving the important things, like . . . .
Climate change.
Okay. Because we absolutely trust the climate-change advocates to make decisions that do not miraculously coincide with a whole set of unrelated ideas about how life and society should be organized.
It’s 1960.
Air Pulse! I googled the term to see if it had aviation connotations, and only got returns for vibrators.
Promotions all around, boys:
Wonder if anyone worried about stripe inflation.
That’s two weeks away. Lets a fellow get a little lax, if he’s so inclined.
Are you so inclined Private Pyle? Well are you?
The editorial page advises you not to marinate in the news, get one side, and get all depressed about the world.
For example.
Don’t be afraid. It’s just what they want. Which, of course, was true.
Editorial cartoon. I didn’t know that jazz record-store clerks were serving.
SOP. We all know what that means, right? Right.
Well, yes
Well, yes
Going WAY out on a limb here.
Well, yes. Mr. K? Any guesses?
Nicky, not George.
Funnyman Hickerson.
Can’t help but wonder if George is, or was, this guy.
Following his retirement from the military, Collier worked in development at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, served as station manager at classical radio station KMAG, and sold real estate.
Big Confederate history guy. I’ll leave it at that.
Sigh.
Space Lanes! If you google it now, you’ll get the on-base bowling alley: Peacekeeper Lanes.
