Done

It feels like a break-up -- a break-up where a ground troop invasion, drone strikes, MX missiles and nuclear detonations are possible final outcomes.

Reflecting on the unprovoked trade war the United States of America recently launched against Canada, I cannot decide which is worse: the sheer malignant arbitrariness of this heinous economic aggression, the abject stupidity of it, or the weeny-whiny reaction of American officials over Canada's response.

The worst part about all of this -- and there are about fourteen "worst parts" to all of this -- is the aggressive rumblings from America, the insults against my prime minister, against my country (51st state? "Not a real country" in the words of Elon Musk, the white South African) bends my mind uncomfortably toward generalizations, to thinking of Americans as one composite odious personage. 

Former AIG CEO Maurice Greenberg who lived by the saying: 

"All I want is an unfair advantage." He was lauded in American 

business circles for this attitude

I have lived cheek-by-jowl with America nearly my entire life. I have worked in America -- about nine years in total. Some of my closest, dearest friends and family are American. These are people I love. There is no question in my mind they are as appalled as I am about what is transpiring between our countries.

What brought this into starkest focus for me, however, was an experience the other day: interviewing a public person whose work I have enjoyed for more than forty years; a guy I admire and like (and that's why I'm being vague about his identity).

It was a great interview. Not only did I get the information I sought, but my interview subject adorned it all with some really entertaining stories. I felt great at the end of our hour-long call.

As I got ready to say goodbye, I told this person how much I enjoyed the American city in which he lives, that I have always felt like it was a part of my neighbourhood.

The person I admired chuckled and said: "Well, that's good because I guess you're going to be the fifty-first state very soon!" 

He laughed like it was a great joke. The annexation of my country -- he thought the idea was hysterically funny.

I quietly choked and gaped and blinked, feeling a horrible vintage of bewilderment.

This person reiterated his joke a couple of more times. I was stunned.

It's not often that I am rendered speechless, but that's how this person's comments left me -- all the good feeling and admiration draining out of the whole experience. 

That guy became just another pixel in the composite face of America forming in my mind.

The New York Times reports today that Donald Trump believes the reasoning behind the Canada/U.S. border isn't sound. He also wants to re-examine the treaties both countries have signed regarding the way in which the Great Lakes are shared.

Given Donald's affinity for blood-drenched Russian leader Vladimir Putin, there is no question Donald's version of annexation of Canada would closely resemble Russia's attempt in the Ukraine: an ugly, heinous, hellish mess.

It is a thought that doesn't fit in my mind: there are people in America who want to do this to my country, where my family and I live, where my kids go to school, where my parents are living out their last years, where my friends, neighbours, and fellow citizens are just going about our lives.

All the usual stops and mental safeguards I normally bump up against when considering the lunacy of the United States have vanished. I know what America did in Vietnam. I know what it did in Guatemala, in Iran, in Chile, in El Salvador, in Angola, Panama, in Iraq (twice), Afghanistan. 

I've seen the documentaries Hearts & Minds and Winter Soldier and a hundred others showing America's depravity. 

To think that America's war in Vietnam occurred when there were smart people running the government. Certainly, President Lyndon Johnson was no scholar, but among other people, there was Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy at the spear tip of the Vietnam debacle. McNamara had been one of the most successful corporate executives in the country, heading Ford Motor Company, before taking up his role as senior warmonger with the government. The problem was, McNamara possessed no soul, no human compassion, and unapologetically clutched to his numbers as justification for war crimes to his dying day. McGeorge Bundy achieved a perfect score on his entrance exam to Yale University. He was regarded as a brilliant man, all the way around. In a scholarly paper arguing for America's entry into World War II, Bundy once wrote: "I believe in the dignity of the individual, in government by law, in respect for the truth, and in a good God; these beliefs are worth my life and more; they are not shared by Adolph Hitler."

And, yet, Bundy was a major architect of the Vietnam morass.

Former Sgt. William Marshall of Detroit, Michigan talking about American 

jets accidentally dropping napalm on American soldiers in Vietnam

I have read extensively about the Americans' love of waterboarding and its concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It was with horror and bewilderment that I followed Russia's invasion of the Ukraine in the news. What the Russian military lacked in modern, workable equipment, competence, and logistics, they made up for with sheer barbarity.

After what I have read and seen of America and it's gore-filled foreign military adventures, I have no doubt their attempts to annex Canada would yield much the same destructive, futile results. I mean, a white South African is a central adviser to Donald, whose own cruelty needs no stoking.

Donald's accusations that Canada isn't doing enough to stem the flow of fentanyl into America reminds me of George W. Bush's allegations against Saddam Hussein, the blood-drenched dictator of Iraq (someone, for whom, I do not hold an ounce of sympathy), possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). America was desperate to pin the September 11, 2001 attacks on Iraq to justify an invasion so the U.S. could steal Iraq's oil. 

I remember Colin Powell humiliating himself at the United Nations "making America's case for war" against Iraq. There was no case.

Saddam Hussein said he did not have WMDs. America said he was lying. Saddam Hussein allowed UN weapons inspectors into Iraq to search for the weapons. When no WMDs were found, America said Saddam was hiding them. And then, making it seem as though they had no choice (when they had a multitude of other options), America moved forward with the action they planned to take from the beginning: launching a bloody, unilateral, illegal war, which made up in barbarity what it lacked in actual facts to justify it.

Comedian Bill Hicks speaking truth in the early 1990s

'Murica all the way!

Now, the surreal personage of Donald Trump leads America. 

When dealing with a superficial person, why not begin with a superficial appraisal? The man is orange. A grown man, vain as the devil himself, wears Tan-In-A-Can, as some pathetic attempt at adding pigment to his prissy pink countenance. This reminds me of a scene from the film Talk Radio, in which actor Eric Bogosian, says on the air (as a guest on an established talk show host's show) that white people spend hundreds of millions of dollars on suntan lotion each year because they actually want to be black, because they feel sexually inferior to black people, and that imitating their skin colour will make them equal. 

So it is -- the hardened racist, Donald Trump, adding colour to his colourless hide, feigning potency, asserting his dominance among gourde vegetables.

So, now, America -- a country that can't pay its bills (just ask China) -- is led by a man who has never paid his bills. The American voting public has chosen this grifter as their national symbol, their leader, mocking and denigrating every positive thing their country ever stood for in the past. And this septic goon now has his eye on my country.

Strange as it may sound, I can almost understand why the American voting public elected him twice as the president of the United States.

America refuses to deal with its traumatic past. Sure, it rhapsodizes about the great Civil War when the gallant gentleman of the South made their brave last stand to preserve their hallowed institution of slavery, but otherwise, the national narrative of the United States has been one, long disingenuous conversation. Time and again, the "official narrative" of shocking events, national tragedies, does not match the testimony of eye witnesses and researchers.

Questions were never resolved about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the assassination of Malcolm X, of Martin Luther King, Jr., of Robert Kennedy. To this day, the depths of the Watergate scandal have never been plumbed, much as the subject has been superficially raked-over ad nauseum. The true reasons for the American invasion of Vietnam need to be fully explored, particularly the bogus "Gulf of Tonkin" incident. The October Surprise has never been looked at in any depth. The Iran/Contra scandal remains opaque. Same with the 2,400 service men America abandoned in southeast Asia after it cut and ran from Vietnam in 1973. Jeffrey Epstein.

Everything unpleasant in American life is labeled a "conspiracy theory," a term thrown around with the ease and frequency of  "Communist" in 1950s America. Just because the accusation is made doesn't make it so.

The overwhelming feeling in America is that every person in authority is lying to the general public.

So, in 2016, a startlingly large segment of the American voting public said: "OK, if you're all liars, then we will elect the most bald-faced, easily-debunked, unapologetic scoundrel and liar in the land!"

Donald Trump fit that bill perfectly.

More than that, it seems to me that the American public (77 million of them, at least) have reached their final pain point with American life: the murderous game of Musical Chairs that life in the country has devolved into. Ransoming healthcare to the public. The school system that has been sliding into an abyss for decades. The school shootings. The mass shootings. Its lapdog, complacent, complicit, propagandist media.

Having reached this apex of pain and outrage, Donald's 77 million are doing what other outraged people have done in the past when they reached their pain threshold: they are burning down their own neighbourhoods. It happened in Watts in 1965. It occurred during the 1967 Detroit Riots. After Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in April 1968, communities around the nation were burned to the ground. It happened again during the LA Riots of 1992.

And that's what Donald Trump supporters are doing to America in 2025, mocking the office of the presidency, smearing the government with feces, giving the middle finger to a society they believe has failed them. And in the heat of their madness, they cheer their miscreant on. 

As though to mock the pain suffered at the hands of bad bosses, the humiliation of lost jobs (which also means loss of healthcare coverage in America), Donald has given the richest man in the world a position where he can axe American jobs -- and axe them, he does, by the hundred thousand, with the indiscriminate malice of a drive-by-shooter. 

The process is framed with some meaningless language, but the upshot is that for the first time, the American voting public has chosen its tormentor, and from the depths of its self-loathing, they cheer him on. They find no fault with him. Their devotion to Dear Leader borders on suicidal.

And now this self-pitying horde of willfully ignorant people cheer Donald as he trains his muddled sights on Canada, which hasn't caused the United States one bit of bother since the War of 1812. Certainly, the fragile American ego cannot handle someone disagreeing with it -- and Canada has, at times, disagreed with some of America's bloodier, more egregious foreign military adventures -- but aside from those isolated incidents we have been an agreeable neighbour.

With his followers believing he is playing 5D chess, Donald hit Canadian goods with exorbitant tariffs. In the ongoing tragicomedy of American political life, part of Donald's shifting rationale for this was that previous agreement between Canada and the U.S. was a horrendous "deal" shamelessly slanted toward Canada's benefit -- of course, omitting the fact that he, Donald Trump, negotiated this deal in his previous term as American president.

So, on Tuesday of this week, Donald slapped tariffs on Canadian goods. 

The Canadian response was more than a little heartening to Canadians. Our leaders who are so often the source of dismay, disappointment, and dyspepsia, rose to the occasion -- in shocking fashion.

So shocking, in fact, the Americans are now playing the victim. You know, how they did in Vietnam? In Iraq. In Afghanistan. The poor, aggrieved self-proclaimed Super Power, the only nation to use nuclear weapons against other human beings, perpetrators of countless unjustified horrors -- they... they are the precious defenseless little lambs be assailed by a brute.

That is the Americans' ultimate weapon: their complete and utter lack of reason, their contempt for reality, their undying devotion to "moving the goal posts," their disingenuousness, their gaslighting, their disdain for the truth, for what is right, for what is just. 

It's not enough that they burn down their own neighbourhood, they now want to burn down ours.

I am very pleased and proud to say, my interpretation of Canada's response to America has been: 

Go fuck yourselves!

I get it, the American people are in extreme existential pain. They live in a Second World country that keeps telling them its the greatest nation in the history of all creation. I have watched their decline for decades. American life has curdled for a great number of its citizens. Just look -- the CEO of a healthcare company was gunned down on a New York City sidewalk in December last year (shot in the back no less) and the overwhelming response from the American public was one of cheers, lauding the murderer, calling for his freedom. This is what life in America has devolved into. It is only human nature wanting to strike back at the authors of their misery.

Donald is their Molotov cocktail.

Amid this sprawling debacle, the quietest villains are very nearly the worst: the Democratic Party in the United States.

The Democratic Party has been an absolute enigma to me ever since I began following news closely, during the 1992 presidential election that elevated Bill Clinton to the White House. 

The Democrats are duly sanctimonious, they furrow their brows at most of the right times, they demonstrate some skill in making sounds that mimic compassion. They talk a good game. But I have never seen a group of seemingly intelligent people so consistently self-sabotage themselves. They often suffer from High Road Hypoxia as the Republicans spin circles around them. These limousine liberals simply do not have the courage of their convictions. 

Just think of it -- Donald Trump is very likely the last American president of 85-year-old Nancy Pelosi will ever know. At least her stock portfolio has benefited so greatly from insider trading.

So, we're left with this horrible stalemate, at the moment. I'm left with a feeling that two timelines in the multiverse are colliding, like those merging galaxies photographed by the Webb telescope. To think the American government is ruled by people who admire Nazis...

Actually, not so surprising when one considers another aspect of American history that Americans refuse to look at -- the time Prescott Bush, father of president George H.W. Bush and grandfather to president George W. Bush, approached Retired Major General Smedley Butler (who was at that time the most decorated soldier in U.S. history) with his wealthy cronies in 1933 asking for his help in overthrowing the government of president Franklin D. Roosevelt. Major General Butler did the right thing, strung those traitors along and then revealed the plot -- only to be vilified, himself, and watched the seditionists continue with their lives unbothered by consequences.

The strangest part of this nightmare is the unity it has wrought in Canada. "Elbows up" is the rallying cry, and our complacency and reliance on the United States is being re-examined with an eye toward making major changes.

My hope lies in the tremendous, demonstrated incompetence of Donald Trump. My hope lies in the obvious hubris of Elon Musk. Anything Donald Trump has ever been associated with during his entire misbegotten life has failed. Among other low lights of his business career, he has squandered away a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars inherited from his father and bankrupted two casinos in Atlantic City.

More concretely, my hope lies in the intelligence, resourcefulness, patriotism, and resilience of Canadians. We do not back down from bullies. We've never sought to be the toughest kid on the block, but it would most certainly be a mistake to underestimate us and our love for Canada. It took no time at all for several American officials to be knocked back on their heels by Canada's response to their economic aggression. This is how we do.

Reason 429,313 Why I Could Never Be a Doctor (and not just because I don't really like people)

International traveller among Niagara’s eight new COVID-19 cases 

Patient X languished in his hospital bed, sweaty, feverish, miserable.  

Dr. Gnaukweirst entered the room.

“Doc, you gotta help me!”  Patient X said.  “I feel like I’m dying!”

“Your tests have come back,” Dr. Gnaukweirst said.  “I’m afraid it’s not good news.”

“What is it, Doc?  What have I got?”

“You have COVID-19,” Dr. Gnaukweirst said.

“Oh my God,” Patient X lamented.  “But that’s impossible!”

“That’s always how it seems,” Dr. Gnaukweirst said. “But it is a certainty.  We’ve run several tests.  You have COVID-19.”

“But it’s impossible!  I’ve done everything right!  I check Facebook every five minutes.  I read and upload memes.  I take selfies.”

“Have you worn a mask when you go out of the house.  Have you practiced social distancing?”

Patient X mustered the strength to lean up on one elbow.  “Wear a mask?  And give away my freedoms?  Are you crazy?”  He fell back on his pillow.  Patient X would have then referenced Nazis and Jews, except he didn’t know enough about history to do so.  He had never heard of the Holocaust.

“And ‘social distancing’?”  Patient X said.  “Why would I do that if I don’t have COVID-19?”

“Except, you do.”

“But I didn’t!”

“You have it now,” Dr. Gnaukweirst said.  “Someone gave it to you.”

“Gave it to me?  That’s a conspiracy theory!  To make us wear masks!”

“Actually, it’s science.”

“I don’t know how that happened!”  Patient X moaned.

“We’re going to have to do contact tracing,” Dr. Gnaukweirst said.  “Have you been anywhere in public other than to grocery shop for bare essentials?”

“Been anywhere?”  Patient X said, mulling over the words.

“Yes, where there are other people.  We need to determine who you’ve been in contact with.”

“Well, I did get a really sweet deal on it trip to Europe three weeks ago.”

“Europe?!!”  

“Yeah, it’s that country across the ocean where they speak European and they pay for everything with U-ros.”

“You mean ‘Euros’?”

“Whatever.”

“So, you were out of the country.”

“Not for very long,” Patient said.  “Few weeks.”

“It didn’t dawn on you to maybe curtail travel outside of the country during a global pandemic?”

“And give away my freedoms?  No way!”

Dr. Gnaukweirst looked into the middle distance for a moment.  Here was yet another selfish, shortsighted miscreant who was too impatient to wait until the pandemic had passed in order to carry on with his life.  Whose actions, ironically enough, would prolong the pandemic that everyone was so weary of.

This is the specimen who has taken away my Chinese buffet, Dr. Gnaukweirst thought.  Who has made handshakes and hugs things of quaint old movies.  I'll never see Wayne Newton live, again, because of this son of a bitch.

“Come with me,” Dr. Gnaukweirst said.  “I have a special treatment for you.”

“What?”  Patient X moaned.  “I’m tired as hell and everything hurts!”

“Come on, you can do it,” Dr. Gnaukweirst said.  “I have exactly the thing for you.”

Patient X slowly, painfully shifted in his bed, eased his feet to the floor, wincing and gasping, squinting and muttering sweet self-pitying nothings to himself.  Dr. Gnaukweirst led him to the door.

Slowly -- ever so slowly -- they moved down the corridor.  Dr. Gnaukweirst led Patient X around a far corner to a disused hallway in the hospital.  At the end of it, there was an elevator.  As they approached, Patient X said, “Why are the elevator doors open, but no elevator there?”

“It’s not really an elevator,” Dr. Gnaukweirst said.  “There is a special prize in there for you.”

Patient X brightened slightly within his display of pain and discomfort.  “For me?”

“Just for you.”

As they got closer, Dr. Gnaukweirst stopped.  He coaxed Patient X to continue the final few feet.

“I don’t see anything,” Patient X said.  “Are you sure?  I should get back to my room.”  He moved to leave.

“There is a free iPhone in there for you,” Dr. Gnaukweirst said. 

Patient X’s face brightened.  “Are you kidding?  That’s great!”  He turned, wobbly, and moved toward the open elevator doors.  He looked into the darkened shaft.  “I don’t see anything.  Are you sure?”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Dr. Gnaukweirst said as he raised his right foot and placed it upon Patient X’s rump.  It felt good to do that.  Made him feel like Louis Armstrong when he first walked on the moon, and put one of his moon boots onto a moon rock and said, “I claim this planet in the name of Pink Floyd!”

Dr. Gnaukweirst launched Patient X into the open elevator shaft.  There was a momentary cry, but then it was gone.  Then, a distant thud, as Patient X landed on the pile of other COVIDiots and hypochondriacs Dr. Gnaukweirst had brought here.  One of the first to go in actually had an iPhone in her hand, so that hadn’t been a lie.

Dr. Gnaukweirst turned and went back to the ward and continued treating patients.

Donald Trump Photo-Op During Riots

The Forgotten Victims of COVID-19

As news media covers and world health experts combat the COVID-19 outbreak, there is a contingent of forgotten people who are left to suffer in silence and obscurity: the hypochondriacs.

"It's really hard," says Luc (not his real name).  "I'm usally in the ER two or three times a week because the tip of my nose is numb and I get headaches, and I just don't feel really good..."  He trails off, stares out the window of his rented room.  "But there's the fear."

It's a common thread among hypochondriacs -- fear of contracting an actual ailment by visiting the local hospital emergency room.  Under normal circumstances, it's a risk they are willing to take.  Since the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak, many are rethinking their ER visit schedules.

"It's hard," says Giselle (not her real name).  "I feel really, really... strange.  You know?  In my hands, and then the sensation moves up into my neck.  Sometimes I have to blink my eyes a few times to get them clear."  Giselle dabs her eyes with a tissue.  "What am I supposed to do?"

Federal and provincial governments have asked citizens to self-isolate, and to practice "social distancing" when in public.  News stories about hospitals overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases abound, as do stories of medical staff running low or completely out of supplies, such as masks, gowns and gloves.  Hospitals are soliciting donations from the public.

In the rush to treat the ever rising tide of COVID-19 cases, a major constituency of the medical landscape has been shunted aside -- the hypochondriacs who ordinarily populate the nation's ER waiting rooms with minor coughs, non-specific-non-life-threatening aches and pains, general malaise, minor rashes, strange taste in the mouth, a click in the shoulder when it's moved in a particular way.  The list of imaginary ailments is as varied as the hypochondriacs themselves.

One of the unforeseen consequences of the public anxiety surrounding COVID-19 is that the nation's ERs are much less busy.

"People are stressed," says Roda (not her real name).  "I don't want to go into my local ER, tell them my hair hurts and then get a fatal disease like coronavitis!"  She dabs her eyes with a tissue.  "So, if I want to stay alive, I have to stay away from the hospital!  That's so sick!  That's so backwards!"

At the time of publication, there is no word of an aid package for the nation's hypochondriacs by the federal government.

"We're left to fend for ourselves," says Xander (not his real name).  "Nobody cares.  It's like we don't exist."

There is talk in certain communities, among local activists, of opening faux clinics staffed by actors and volunteers to service the hypochondriacs, but currently efforts are hampered by self-isolation and social distancing orders.

In this time of need, spare a thought for those who believe they are afflicted.

Headbands In A Time Of Pestilence

"Let's enjoy these aimless days while we can..." —Don DeLillo White Noise
__________

It's all in the headband. I own a stretchy NBA headband and a bland blue stretchy headband. On this night, I choose to tie around my head a length of material torn from an old concert shirt that doesn't fit anymore.

People are not neutral about headbands.  It's one of the few statements in modern life that cannot shrugged away.  Strangers in the mall have gone out of their way to tell me: "You know, people don't wear those anymore."

I wear them.  While exercising, of course, but also to the grocery store, watching my kids at karate class, swimming, cutting the grass, checking the communal mailbox. I even have a smart black headband that I wear with my suit to job interviews.

My morning was spent trying to transfer funds from my bank account to my microwave oven. The unhelpful bank person on the phone told me it was impossible because my microwave oven does not have an email address. It does.

Because the markets are chewing the genitals off of my investments.  They are not, precisely, investments.  I think of investments as stocks that have been researched and then purchased after long sober thought.  I'm involved in funds, entangled in plans -- a plan.  A plan whose genitals are being chewed off by the stock market.

They're coming. They're coming for the toilet paper.  I crouch in the bushes in front of my house, headband secured around my head.  My hands grip an old shillelagh my grandfather brought back from Ireland decades ago. This is new Airborne Toxic Event. The Corona Virus -- COVID-19, which makes it sound like a video game -- is something else in this place that suffers no floods, tornadoes, hurricanes or earthquakes.  The worst we suffer are hard rains, terse looks in traffic, squirrels eating our tulip.

It was the absence of toilet paper in the supermarket, that told me, Shit's flying.  In the past, I avoided making that purchase of household goods out of a childish embarrassment, the tacit public admission that I, too, use toilets. But the Panic inspired by the absence of toilet paper, the miles long empty shelf in the supermarket, had nothing to do with commodal works.

If they -- faceless, nameless, without conscience they -- have ransacked the toilet paper aisle, I thought.  What is next?

I use exercise to deal with stress. You can always tell how terrible I feel by how good I look.

This time of pestilence is causing everyone stress because it reminds us all that we are going to die, at some point.  That death will come like a thief in the night even if it comes in the form of a Honda during the day.

The virus is causing trouble not only by making people sick, it's challenging our distractions.  Professional sports are gone.  Public gatherings are finished.  Even going to bars and restaurants is against the public conscience.  We are left with 1970s-era distractions: TV, Internet, cell phones, board games... conversation...  No doubt, there are people beginning to think that death would be preferable.

One of my distractions is riding my stationary bike. Some friends say, "How can you do it, day after day?  You don't go anywhere."

And I wonder, How do you say if I don't go anywhere why am I always different when I get off the bike again?

I also hear: "You don't see people wearing headbands at the gym."

"People still work out at gyms?"  I said.

You are what you do for free. You are what you do when it cost you to do it. You're not a doctor, or a cab driver, or a landscaper. You're a stamp collector, hunter, or a ventriloquist. And when you do it while wearing a headband, you do it with verve.

My nightly vigil is nearly done.  I really feel like I've gotten to know myself while crouching in the bushes.  Who cares if I sleep away the day.  The toilet paper can keep itself safe in the sunlight.

Corona Virus Days - 1st Fiction of the 2020 Corona Virus Outbreak

Reddit "Shower Thought" 3/17/2020:

Due to the earth's rotation, it's orbit around the sun and the suns [sic] orbit in the galaxy, you are the only human who ever has, or ever will occupy your current location in the universe.

Corona Virus Date 0034 days:

Pod battened. Wife objects to my referring to house as "pod".  I apologize, but explain that science fiction times call for science fiction language.

Sixteenth angry tweet directed at Netflix has gone unanswered. Requesting they stream 60s and 70s era home movies made by their viewers.  No word.  They may be suffering.

Toilet paper toilet paper store: +2313 squares.

Progress of toilet paper shrine to Don Delillo is slow. Using far too much in its construction.  There are complaints, dissension.

Corona Virus Date 0037 days:

Idea for a story came while riding my stationary bike in the basement:

Family living in a house during Corona Virus outbreak (write what you know). One day, the hapless husband opens the fuse box for the first time since buying the house years ago. Finds it is not, in fact, a fuse box, but contains rolls and rolls of toilet paper in a cavernous gap in the wall. Corona Virus ravages society, family uses this found toilet paper due to shortages at the supermarket. It seems like regular toilet paper.  There is no indication who put the toilet paper in the fuse box gap, or how long it's been there. 

As the family uses the found TP, they gradually become smarter. How do they/gauge this? In the case of the hapless husband, small tasks around the house that once bedevilled and befuddled him are now simple fixes. He repairs the solid state television, going so far as breaking open the back of the set to access the electronics inside. Husband not only successfully repairs the television, he seamlessly repairs the back of it using his wife's curling iron and strands of her hair, which are the same graphite colour.

Corona Virus Date 0037 days:

Riding stationary bike in basement. Imagining I am pedaling across the ocean on a three foot wide track. Weather service indicates that I have one hour of clear weather before the wind whips up and the ocean swamps my track.

This technique gets my heart rate into that sweet zone.

Don't let me listen to anymore Don Delillo interviews on YouTube.

Corona Virus Date 0038 days:

Scolded eldest son for dismantling one of Don Delillo's wings on the shrine in order to wipe up after bathrooming.

Coronavirus Date 38.5 days:

Wife expelled me from pod, saying: "Get a hold of yourself."

Corona Virus Date 0038.75 days:

Returned to pod. Wife found Corona Virus journal. Objects to be referred to as "Wife" in narrative.

Corona Virus Date 0041 days:

The only benefit of civilization collapsing is that Netflix will be abandoned by its legal counsel and personal security.  I will make the journey to its headquarters in the Himalayas -- part spiritual journey and part customer complaint. "Why does Netflix Austria have so many more offerings than Netflix Canada????  Why so much British content?  I don't care about their Top 10 Conspiracies!!!"

Corona Virus Date 0045 days:

Despair. Cat demolished Don Delillo shrine.

Corona Virus Date 0045.25 days:

Where are our celebrities in this time of crisis? Why have they not mounted webcams in their homes and livestreamed their own self isolation? I would feel less isolated if I could watch such a thing. Also, no word of comfort, yet, from Don Delillo.  I imagine thousands of people gathered outside of his apartment in New York City, waiting, staving off despair.

Corona Virus Date 0045.75 days:

Why can't I find a secret trove of intelligence-generating toilet paper in my house?

Have dreamed for months of connecting my stationary bike to a generator. Tried today. Ruined wife's curling iron in the process. Looking for secret gap in house in which to hide it.

Corona Virus Date 0052 days:

At least I do not have to cut the grass.
_______________________________

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Due to the time distortion wrought by the Corona Virus, all mentions of time in increments of days are in fact increments of hours.

The Bad Future is Here -- I Hate New Technology

Cineplex ticket counter. Computerized kiosks sit in five spaces
where actual human beings used to work.

I am a standard issue North American suburbanite.  Buying things used to be fun.  My first CD player, first DVD player, the tank of a desktop computer in 2004 that I still own, the Apple Mac Classic from 1991, which I still have in my office (and booted up when I turned it on in 2016).

The last laptop I purchased was a run-of-the-mill Windows machine in 2013.  Soon after it arrived, I installed an SSD and the thing just hummed along as I used it to write half a dozen plays, dozens of articles, a few screenplays, worked with Photoshop, and even tried creating a graphic novel.  It was only when I recently had need to edit video on a level beyond Windows Moviemaker, that it was time to expand beyond my old reliable.

After buying a Ford Escape in 2013, I realized the world had passed me by.  With all the attention now placed on "distracted driving" what did Ford put right in the middle of the dashboard?  A video console.  No longer do I have radio buttons that I can feel and know which preprogrammed station will come on.  Now, I must look at the flat screen and press buttons on an interface created by a committee in which not a single soul had usability training.  Yes, the car is equipped with voice command capability.  I do not have time to teach my voice and my worldview to my vehicle.

The Ford Escape will not allow me to close my own trunk door.  I must push a button to have the vehicle do this for me.  The car beeps when I back up.  The beeping grows more urgent and harried if there is something behind me.  There must have been high fives all around among the Ford Motor Company brain trust when that feature was implemented.  Think of all the grateful garbage cans and light posts and fire hydrants.  "Won't anyone think of the fence post?!!!!"  I can almost hear one of the geniuses exclaim with emasculated ebullience.

So, I recently purchased a new Windows laptop.  Reluctantly.  Apprehensively.  Out of necessity.  Still, I hoped there might be a semblance of the old excitement of getting a new machine.  There wasn't.  You see, technology makers are now convinced they know better how I will use their product than I do.  They are wrong, of course.  But like all people with a bad idea, they run like Jim Brown with it.

Within seconds of turning the new machine on and beginning the arduous, needlessly complicated and convoluted set-up process, I was forced to create a Microsoft account.  I have no use for a Microsoft account.  I have tried in the past to create Microsoft accounts after they purchased Skype.  I couldn't figure it out.  It sounds ludicrous, but the manner in which Microsoft insists people create accounts is so confusing that -- in the case of Skype -- I couldn't complete the process.  There was no getting past this step with my new laptop.  That moment soured the entire experience.  I muddled through, gave Microsoft information I didn't want to give to it, and created one of their execrable accounts.

When I had finally hurdled enough hurdles and jumped through enough hoops, my laptop's screen went dark and suddenly a single word appeared in the center of it: "Hi".  I wanted to throw up.

Then the laptop proceeded with its own internal set-up process.  Read: the installation of boatloads of bloatware and bullshit that I would spend the next few days uninstalling.

McAfee Anti-Virus was on the machine.  Really?  I mean, fucking really?  First off, Windows 10 comes with Windows Defender Security Center, which is said to be (in my research) an effective and comprehensive anti-virus program.  So, why put McAfee on, in addition to this?  I can only guess that mega-billion-dollar Microsoft was paid a few more dollars to add this crimp to its customers.

McAfee is the syphillus of software.  I have never had a machine even remotely run well with McAfee on it.  McAfee is not meant for computers.  I don't know what it's meant for.  Maybe it was intended for toaster ovens or certain mid-90s electric sex toys.  Who knows.  Whatever.  McAfee should not be anywhere near a computer, and there it was in the bowels of my new laptop.  It was the first thing I uninstalled.

My new keyboard has LED backlighting.  I love it.

The mouse trackpad buttons are part of the live trackpad, so I am endlessly clicking the wrong buttons, folders, drives and links on my computer.  I'm continusouly, unintentionally enlarging web pages by using the trackpad as I have since 2003 when I purchased my first laptop.

The speakers and/or my headphones don't work with any regularity.  I have to continuously go online to troubleshoot both.  Yesterday, neither worked.  I got the speakers working after watching a few YouTube videos.  Today -- the computer won't recognize that there are headphones plugged in.  My old laptop?  Plug in headphones, music played through the headphones.  Never in my computer-using life have I had to delve so often and so far into arcane settings deep within the machine in order to simply make it work the way it should, out of the box.

UPDATE: Fixed headphone issue after going to the Dell forum about headphones jack not working.  Found the fix, but still pissed that I have to dig so far into this wretched machine to make it work like is should.

There are endless notifications popping up as I try and use my new laptop.  I turn off and deactivate the notifications as quickly as they arise, but it's almost like a full-time job beating back this computer's continuous badgering.

Windows Updates are now whole day events, like Armistice Day and Columbus Day, like the SARS concert.  I succumbed to an update this morning and it took hours to complete.  I just received notice that another update is on deck, sighing loudly and shuffling its feet, like an impatient guy behind me in line at the grocery store.  Fuck you, Windows!  I am a human being!  We will update when I say we update!

The most maddening of these maddening glitches, bugs and pains in the ass is the Lock Screen and Login.  My laptop's set-up process forced me to create a login for my personal laptop.  Which means, when I restart my computer, it comes to a "lock screen" where the boot-up process comes to a complete halt until I login. Meaning, I must wait that much longer to actually use my machine.  My laptop is for home use.  I do not want a login.  There is no reason for it.  I'm willing to assume the responsibility that if my laptop were to fall into the wrong hands, that wrongdoers could access everything on it.  It's my stuff.  I'm willing to take that risk.  But Microsoft will not allow me.  Microsoft thinks it knows better.  It does not know better.

And if you decide to actually telephone Microsoft, their automated phone debacle simply directs you back its useless online resources (which led me to call, in the first place).  The Circle of Microsoft!

Somewhere in the early 2000s, technology bounced off the wall and has become increasingly less useful, less user-friendly.  The makers of technology think their customers are idiots who need the jaunty greeting of "Hi" from their new laptop as bloatware and bullshitware are installed behind the scenes.

The only consolation is that Built-in Obsolescence, shitty workmanship and the general engineering of the early demise of products, just as their warranties expire...

Wait.  There is no consolation.

That brief window where new technology was actually interesting and exciting is gone -- just like the ticket sellers at the cineplex.  Now, it seems, Rube Goldberg has gotten a hold of applets and dynamic link libraries.