April No Foolin’

Not this year, anyway. Which is something of a good thing, as I find it rather annoying. Check me out, looking on the bright side of a pandemic panic...it only get worse from here. You’ve been warned.

It’s ha-ha funny and eew-weird funny all at once, waking up thinking it’s Wednesday when it’s Friday. I’ve been living the self-quarantined life long before it became a government mandate and here I am losing track of time like a common normie. Strange days have found us; strange days have dragged us down. #MeToo. Heh.

Here’s to 1990s-era gas furnaces that still function, daytime temperatures in the high 50s/low 60s F and rising, and my wife, who slaps those “Live, Laugh, Love”-esque decals in the most delightfully random places.

Speaking of ha-ha funny, I noticed an absolute dearth of April Fool’s themed material on the Web. There was even a meme to that effect, that we’ve had all the foolery we can stand for right now without the usual first-of-April shenanigans. 

I hate that kind of humor anyway so this goes into the win column for me.

Everyone’s talking about (and likely will always remember thus) the instantaneous shortages of toilet paper, but this was the canned goods/dry goods (e.g., Ramen noodles) aisle at the Walmart in Alamosa, CO, midday on St. Patrick’s Day.

One commentator online noted, in so many words I wished I’d come up with myself, “This is the first time anyone’s ever thought to turn a country off just to see what would happen.”

You don’t see this mentioned at volume in the mainstream propaganda feed, but think about it: We canceled St. Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick’s Day is the first unofficially sanctioned American drinking holiday since Super Bowl Sunday six weeks before. No green beer this year, though. No parades. No bars, taphouses, breweries, etc. scoring one of their biggest paydays of the year since Super Bowl Sunday, and until maybe March Madness, and until then, maybe football season.

The hammer was brought down where I am the very day before. I don’t know anyone with the COVID-19, but I do know people who took a big hit when St. Patrick’s Day was canceled, when the restaurants and taphouses and bars got shut down altogether until—Easter? Now the end of April. I pray they do not take it this far, but it looks now as if they just might.

By the way, I’ll be interested to hear how many, “I don’t know anyone with this stupid flu, but I know people hurting from these shutdowns and quarantines and crap” stories start cropping up. I’m blackpilled on this, which is to say I don’t think they’ll be afforded enough of a voice to make a difference. Besides, fewer people own businesses than don’t, and the resentments of the latter group can easily be turned against the former. 

The store shelves aren’t all that’s emptied. I’m having flashbacks to 2016 when we moved into a depressed rural town with nothing going on. The economy took off in 2017 and many vacant, long-abandoned spaces were bought up or leased and put to work. Nothing left to do now but wait and see whose investment survives this.

A note on the cancellation of March Madness: I don’t think the college basketball championship nearly as popular as made out to be by the media but it’s a lot of money a few people are not making this year. These aren’t the kind of people who “take one for the team” so the fallout from this should be interesting. As should the pushback from people who gave up on televised sports a long time ago for the numerous reasons occasioned by the media and the sport’s management.

Again, restaurants and bars that count on better-than-normal income from people coming in to watch the games over beer and nachos took a hit from this. There have been a few memes sneering at how some people are more concerned with the economy than people’s lives, but the economy is people’s lives. It’s how they make what it takes to live. You shouldn’t have to be of the owner class to appreciate that. Especially if you depend on something being open so you can draw a paycheck from it.

As I’m seeing as of this writing on Palm Sunday 2020, the sentiment is there had better be some bodies stacked in the street by the end of next week, the week after that at the latest, or...or.... 

Probably nothing at all, but that’s just me, and no mere mortal with Internet access will know until we get there. To be clear, I won’t be disappointed if it’s not the great apocalyptic pandemic this Chinese Deathflu is being sold as. Not at all. Some may have cause to be upset to learn they’ve been duped, however.

Just saying.

Vernal Equinox 2020, the first of only two tines in the year when the sun sets right in the middle of the front gate and walkway towards our due-westward facing house.

Because I mean it when I say nihilism is for losers, I’ll end by passing along this upbeat note I’ve seen ringing around the boards this past week.  Another meme going around notes that in the rush to get back to normal, maybe there are some parts of “normal” we could do without. Most people are pretty blank and just go with the flow but those inclined to question things are getting all kinds of answers to questions they didn’t know they had. 

Some may even act on those answers. The Plexiglas barriers between cashiers and customers at the supermarket won’t be the only change wrought by this panic. Priorities are being questioned. 

It’s about time, a fine occasion as any, I say. Best of luck and love to all of you out there asking the questions in these most unprecedented times. Whether it’s “Where’s the toilet paper?” or “Is this really what I want to do with my life?” either one is as important. Funny how that works out. Almost ha-ha funny.

The answers reveal themselves daily. Let us do all of those things that keep us out of trouble and endeavor to be here for them.

“There’s a feeling I get/When I look to the west/And my spirit is crying for...” turning around and going home. It’s good to have a home.