Greetings from the Quarantined Underground

Like a thousand other blog postings from a thousand other bloggers these past few days, couldn’t think of a better title for this one.

As you’ve no doubt come to experience, it’s a weird surreal sort of vibe we’re living. The weather’s been crappy these past four days, dreary overcast skies that occasionally drizzle wet cold tears. Four of us within these four close walls. The itching to get out and do something – anything. This past Sunday I drove around with Little One and saw every school playground and town park barred by red and white barriers supported by traffic cones: No Admittance.

The girls are still studiously involved with their virtual schooling and finish by early afternoon. They giggle and play together and do creative things. This is hardly a blip on their radar. They will look back on this as adults, perhaps, with a vaguely fond sense of nostalgia. Much as I, perhaps, have looked back upon the tumult of the late 70s – Three-Mile Island, the Iranian hostage crisis, the Son of Sam murders – in these electronic pages. Which I suppose is the best outcome for them. At this stage of my life, that is what I am living for.

For us, the wife and myself, anxiety has quickly – supernaturally speedily – set in. Like a condemned man awaiting execution and hopeful for a last-minute reprieve from the governor, we are awaiting the inevitable job layoff. It’s already happening in my wife’s company. She is a higher up, so the first round of layoffs have not affected her, but her salary is high enough to make her an attractive target. Me, I’m a nobody in a large organization who performs an essential regular function. But having been laid off three times in the span of six years just a little while back, I can read the tea leaves. They asked me, for example, to write out the policies and procedures for my job and to train a backup … “just in case.”

At the end of January things were so optimistic. We met with a financial planner and were willing to sign up with him to help navigate college expenses for two girls and our retirement. The wife’s quarterly bonus was the biggest yet. I was looking forward to a nice bonus myself for the stressful hard work done from August to January implementing new software company-wide. Now all that is, at best, on hold, and at worst, a nice memory from another time.

What has Hopper been doing to maintain his sanity in our enforced worldwide quarantine? Well, I was walking until the neverending rains came to town. I still eat well and take a whole host of supplements and vitamin C. I’m up to two cups of tea a day. Thinking about throwing the weights around again after a six-week layoff. I should, as I know of no faster way to one-eighty depression.

But reading has been my solace. Finally finished the absolutely wonderful, delightful, page-turning Count of Monte Cristo. Kudos for Patch for asking me to read it with her. I’m looking forward to writing my thoughts on the great work, and you should read those thoughts, too. In the spirit of Easter, which we won’t be having this year I suppose, I have now moved on to Exodus by Leon Uris, a book that’s been sitting in the On Deck Circle for nearly eight years. Spiritually, my new guru is keeping me focused on what truly counts (Hint: it’s a three-letter word beginning with the letter “G”). Which is good, as the Catholic Church has essentially rolled over and played dead these past couple of weeks, leaving her flocks leaderless, at least from a temporal perspective.

My historical novel is slowly inching along. Have about 80 percent of the outline completed, and as far as research goes, I have two slim books to digest. If this thing comes off half as good as I’m imagining it to be, I’ll be satisfied. Excitedly so. Have characters created, scenes visualized, the spine of a plot in place. A theme, possibly more than one, coalescing from the fog of genesis. This weekend I’m going to work out the rust by penning my opening scene. It’ll be painful, but at the first draft stage you’re only focused on word count.

Little One continues to develop her cuisanary skillz, which we are all enjoying to no end, and Patch is creative as ever, always doing something arts-n-crafty, or writing poetry, or composing music on her laptop, or a dozen other things. Her soccer coach sends her a daily workout which she does, videos, and returns to him along with all her other isolated teammates. We all have been in an action-spy-thriller groove for our post-dinner entertainment this past fortnight, watching the Krasinski Jack Ryan Netflix series, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, and, over the past two nights, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.

Well, I see some work emails have accumulated. More to follow. Monte Cristo review scheduled in two days …

It Could Be Worse ...

“Giant Snail Attack,” spontaneous artwork from Patch, age 11.

Thoughts on Corona

LET

US

GET

BACK

TO

WORK!

The Wuhan Flu is exaggerated beyond reasonable, precautionary fear.

Fear is being inflamed to the point of panic by those with agendas.

Those over 65 and with underlying conditions can self-quarantine, and should receive economic assistance if necessary.

Let the young and healthy get back to being productive.

The economy is suffering unnecessarily.

The cure is worse than the disease.

And I write this as a 52-year-old man with one functioning lung who comes down with bronchitis every year.

Let us get back to work!

Cabin Fever

I don’t mind being cooped up in the house. The problem is, I’m cooped up with three other people, all ladies, plus a dog!

What a surreal time. Last week, if you weren’t watching or listening to the news, everything looked perfectly normal and fine. Kids were outside shooting hoops, riding bikes, people were walking dogs. Lots of traffic. Yeah, it got pretty freaky this run on food and basic supplies, and part of it affected the Mrs, but with things now like Amazon we can have such items delivered to our door. We’re well-stocked with food and supplies for the next two weeks or so.

Now, looking out my window at work, it’s a ghost town. The building across from mine is completely empty. Another is at perhaps ten percent staff, based on the number of cars I see in the parking lot. At my own company, I’m one of a dozen here today as I write this, out of a regular staff of thirty. I have a laptop prepped and bring all my work home every night in case the building is shut down overnight.

Don’t want to jinx myself, but I’ve never been healthier. I’ve eaten two oranges a day for the past ten days, along with taking all my supplements, especially the vitamin D. Also walked a mile and a half every day this week. Haven’t had a beer or glass of Pinot Noir all year. And with restaurants shut down, I’ve been denied my el guapo, pizza. I’d be at minus-five if it wasn’t for that order of Girl Scout cookies that came in just before this all hit.

Remote schooling has been a success. In fact, I think the girls are working harder than they do while in school. The dog is having a blast because everyone’s home all the time = more petting and affection. The wife works from home in our semi-refurnished basement where our desks are. But she’s getting stressed out due to her job and the economic slowdown and uncertainty and a bunch of other factors and variables which I do not entertain on this blog.

We keep our sanity in various ways. The girls, 15 and 11, now hang out in each other’s rooms, giggling, making dopey but funny videos, playing Minecraft and other retro games on their phones, practicing their instruments (clarinet and sax) and even reading. The wife and my oldest cook together, and as a family we’ve been watching the Jack Ryan Netflix series. We watched A Hard Day’s Night a few evenings back, as we’re all Beatles fans. On Tuesday we played a round of Scrabble at the dining room table.

I’m speeding up through The Count of Monte Cristo, a monster of a book I am reading with Patch, on her recommendation. I’m on page 878, she’s coming up to 300.  I am pleasantly surprised, and it’s turned out to be a great read. More on that later, probably in a month when it’s finished (I have 364 more pages to go – it’s longer than The Lord of the Rings trilogy). I also found a new guru (again, more on that later) and keep working diligently on my historical novel. So, we’re all keeping busy.

Not to belittle the tragic aspect of the Wu Flu, but I do think our nation is over-reacting. That’s my gut, not my mind, speaking. My mind really knows very little about infectious disease. But I like to think I have a high BS-detector, and I think it’s really been given a workout this month. So much contradictory information and opinion out there. I’ve basically skipped all the hysterical internet commentary as well as TV news. There is an agenda out there; I think one would be foolish to deny that. But, as with everything, the truth always lies somewhere in the middle. Where that middle is, I don’t know. But I tend to think it’s closer to the “this too shall pass” side than the “coronapocalypse” one.

Well, stay safe and healthy.

In an Alternate Timeline...

FIRST NEWSCASTER: There you have it, first words on the Wuhan virus from President Hillary Clinton.

SECOND NEWSCASTER: To recap, President Clinton advised us all to go out without fear, not to change plans, to get out into the stores and the malls, to carry on with business, to keep the economy improving in its sluggish recovery since Election Day 2016.

THIRD NEWSCASTER: For those who haven’t heard, the Wuhan virus is a slightly different version of the flu that has originated in China. The first cases sprung up there three months ago, and the Chinese authorities seem to have a handle on it.

FIRST: And to reiterate what Vice President Kane said, there is no cause for alarm.

SECOND: Of course, as the President said – rather, the Director of the CDC, who was on the podium with President Clinton – of course, if you are feeling ill –

THIRD: Or over age 65, a high risk group –

FIRST: Yes, over 65, of course, and you’re feeling ill, then you are advised to stay home –

SECOND: Exactly if you had the flu.

THIRD: Yes. The Wuhan virus is no more deadly than a bad case of the flu.

FIRST: As President Clinton said in her speech. The other warning …

SECOND: If you have an underlying condition …

THIRD: Yes, if you have an underlying condition, also, it’s good to stay home. Keep a low profile.

FIRST: Both President Clinton and Vice President Kane have said that they’ve had the flu, and have had no serious complications.

SECOND: I’ve had the flu, most of my family had this winter, and we’ve had no issues. We’ll be out shopping all this week.

THIRD: So, if you are healthy, in the words of our President, “carry on with business,” and “keep the economy improving.” I plan to do my part [laughter] and so does my wife! [more laughter]

FIRST: And to highlight this “business-as-normal” approach to this flu, Bill Clinton, the First Gentleman, will be out playing nine holes in the Senior Celebrity Golf Open over in Hawaii tomorrow afternoon.

SECOND: Proceeds of the benefit to go to Planned Parenthood …

THIRD: We’ll be there covering it live!

Pilish

“Yes, I want a small breakfast of banana bread and apple fritters, expensive alcohol, improving all my old features”

That is something I just wrote in Pilish.

What is Pilish? you may be asking.

Well, Pilish is writing in a way that the number of letters in each word corresponds to a digit of π, in proper order.

To recap, the fist 20 digits of π are:

3.14159 26535 89793 23846….

If you double check the line I wrote above, you’ll see that, yes, it is written in authentic Pilish.

Pilish has been around since the early 20th century. One early example, one much much more witty than my somewhat average example, was written by Physicist Sir James Jean:

“How I need a drink, alcoholic in nature, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.”

Now that’s a great Pilish line!

I encourage you today, Pi Day 2020, to try your hand at the Pilishtic dialect, especially now that we’ve all been confined to small groups within our homes to save mankind from the superflu. One man, I’ve read, has even written an entire book in Pilish, and there is a sub- sub- subgenre of poetry called Pi-ku, which uses the standard 5-7-5 syllabic pattern of the traditional haiku, but word length must follow the digits in Pi.

Go ahead and try it! It’s less restrictive than a crossword puzzle and more creative than sudoku.

Happy π Day everyone!

Loner's Fortnight

Well, here on Planet Panic, it looks like we’ll all be spending some time alone as everything in this cancel culture of ours has been, well, canceled.

The girls’ schools have closed for the next two weeks. So have the malls, my wife’s working grounds. My superiors here at work are in the process of providing me with a souped up laptop to do payroll and all its assorted tasks from home. Soccer tournaments, matches, and practices have been canceled. Heck, even the libraries are closed, so there’s nowhere to go this weekend to score some interesting reads. Have to avoid the internet, because no matter where you go the soundtrack is REM’s “It’s the End of the World,” droning on and on and on.

I, for one, am looking forward to this.

No more crowds. No more chatty parents on the sidelines. No more rushing to do this, rushing to do that, hurry up and wait here, hurry up and wait there. Yeah, the economy is going to suffer. Family Hopper will lose $5,000-$10,000 because of the Wu Flu shutdown, and that’s only if things pick back up by April Fool’s Day. But, hey, anything to whip the herd to panic mode to vote blue in November. Or get more clicks.

Now, I may sound cavalier, but a small percentage of me is worried. Maybe 2 percent. I do have family members in the red zone so to speak. I myself have a defective lung from my hospital follies a decade ago. Other than that, though, my spidey sense tells me this, like just about every other black swan in 21st century America, is overhyped at exponential velocities. It used to be the-trial-of-the-century-of-the-week. Now it’s the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-hot-on-the-heels-of-the-last-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it.

I feel fine.

I’ve been upbeat. Listening to a lot of Sinatra – particularly his definitive, caricature-like tunes, like “Come Fly With Me” – if you can use some exotic booze, there’s a bar in far Bombay – and “I’ve Got the World on a String.” They’re fun, mindless, PC antidotes. The girls and I have been watching Season 1 of “Jack Ryan” on Netflix starring Jim from the Office, so we’ll finish that. Patch will do her Dribble-Up every day (that’s soccer foot drills on the iPad), the Mrs. will crack a book, Little One will binge on The Twilight Zone and World War II in Color.

I will work on my book. I am in the zone, that area I unpredictably visit a handful of times a decade, and I am in heaven. In the book we follow four men, three on one side, the other on, uh, the other, during the course of one battle during the Civil War. I have a dozen maps, charts, pages and pages of notes, a plot with potential, character names and a skeleton of an outline. This weekend I want to flesh out the character histories and get a fully-formed working outline.

Then, to begin the first draft. The mindless melding of the mind into that vision beyond the whiteness of a blank Word Doc, where one loses oneself in time and space and creates at the speed of a thousand words a day. Three, four months later, the first draft is done, and the right brain brushes its hands in triumphant satisfaction. Then, the left brain shoves the right one off the chair and says, “Now it’s up to me to make this mishmash make sense!”

So that’s where Hopper and Co. stand on the brink of the Great Curve Flattening, our country’s first offensive in the war against the Rona Virus.

The Earned Voting Act of 2028

My youngest, Patch, who’s in middle school, excitedly told me about learning amendments to the Constitution. She rattled off a few she had memorized. Among them was the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote a hundred years ago.

Now, at the risk of sounding controversial, this is how I responded: “I don’t believe everyone should have the right to vote.”

This shocked her.

“No, it’s not that I’m against the 19th Amendment,” I clarified. “But not everyone should be able to vote, to have a say in who gets to be elected to office.”

Currently, if you are under the age of 18, you cannot vote. Nor if you are a convicted felon. I am okay with both exclusions. However, after giving it some thought, I would like to add others. In fact, if I may be allowed the luxury of entertaining this pipe dream (while it’s still allowed without mandatory attendance at a re-education camp), I can envision a whole new voting process.

Let’s start with youth. We lowered the minimum voting age from 21 to 18 with the 26th Amendment in 1971. This was done because of the draft, which applied to men as young as 18. If you could die for your country, the line of reasoning went, you should be able to vote for those who would lead you. I had thought this was an effect of the Vietnam War, but, no, actually support for lowering the minimum age to 18 began during World War II when FDR lowered the draft age.

Allow me to now propose the Earned Voting Act. EVA, for short.

EVA would begin with resetting the minimum age for voting back to 21.

When you turn 21, you get a vote of 1.

But what about the draft, you ask?

Well, there hasn’t been a draft in 47 years. But EVA has a solution for that.

If you served in the military, you get another vote. If you are still active, you get 2. Over 21 and in the armed forces? Your weighted vote is now 3, but if you are out of the service it drops to 2.

What other additional “votes” does EVA propose?

After spending some time in deep thought while showering, Hopper arrived at the following:

Married – 1 additional vote. (Note: marriage = 1 man + 1 woman.) (Also note: divorced = you lose that extra additional vote.)

Have children – 1 additional vote for one child, 2 for two, and 3 additional votes if you have three or more.

Age – in your 30s, 1 additional vote. 40s, 2. 50s, 3. It ends at 3.

Own a small business (not sure of the definition, but let’s start at, say, ten employees and $500,000 in gross receipts) – 1 additional vote.

Own a large business (100 employees and $10 million gross receipts) – 2 additional votes.

Are a registered doctor or nurse – 1 additional vote.

Are a college professor? – minus a vote. (Just kidding! Teaching adds no extra weight.)

Are a member of the clergy? – 1 additional vote.

College degree – hmmm. Surely education should be valued, encouraged, and reward, but I am not confident in today’s higher education system. Don’t know on this one.

The goal is to maintain a sense of steadiness, certainty, heritage, throughout the culture. Those politicking for office would be encouraged to play to the middle, the “center” as opposed to the fringes. The economy would function better – a benefit for all – with this certitude. Those with the most at stake, those with families and who are productive member or society, or provide a means for those members, would have the more important voices to be heard. Doctors would have a greater input for health issues. Clergy for issues of morality.

Hopper’s vote, for example, would be weighted at 7. That’s seven times the impact of the twentysomething hippie grad student who pays no taxes, produces nothing of value (yet, anyway) and has no family which he couldn’t support without a job.

But some over-achieving Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force who moonlights as a brain surgeon while putting his four children through West Point and MIT would be weighted at 11.

Again, to ensure continuity of culture, to keep the country aligned to its founding mission statement (i.e., “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” not “fundamental change”), I think the idea has merits. I admit it needs work; I did spend all of ten or fifteen minutes on it today.

But shouldn’t those with the greatest stake, who have given the most in terms of time, treasure, and progeny (remember, offspring = future taxpayers), have the greatest say?

Priorities

Circulating on Catholic blogs this weekend …

Well, at least they put an end to that insipid “offer each other a sign of peace.”

Never Trust Wikipedia

That’s what my high-school and middle-school daughters have been urging me, since, well, they were in grammar school.

I captured an exemplary case this morning. While watching a Premiere League soccer match with the Mrs (our journey into Premiere League soccer is a long one worthy of its own post), we watched Liverpool’s #7, James Milner, perform a phenomenal inches-to-spare save. Wanting the man’s backstory, I went to Wikipedia and here’s what it displayed:

Did you catch that? I read it aloud to the family, and Patch says incredulously, “Who is he, Hercules?”

I went back not five minutes later, and the lion wrestling line was removed.

“Just a couple of mates at the pub, having fun,” the wife stated, and I have to agree.

$550 Million

So Bloomberg dropped out of the race for the Democrat nomination for the Presidency, spending $550 million dollars to win American Samoa and, at this writing, a total of 18 delegates (out of 1,991 to win).

That’s $550,000,000.00

One of the first things I did was break out the calculator.

What would 550 million dollars buy?

If you built a small, cheap home for $50,000, that would be 11,000 new homes constructed.

If a meal costs $20, that could have been spent on 27,500,000 meals. That would be the same as feeding 11,000 families-of-four for a whole year.

How about college education? Hopper is faced with funding his two daughters’ upcoming college careers. They tell me that we can expect to pay on average $250,000 for a college degree nowadays. So instead of throwing all that money away on a pipe dream, Bloomberg could have paid for 2,200 four-year college educations of deserving individuals.

Should Mayor Mike have felt generous and decided to gift $10,000 to underprivileged families, he could have helped 55,000 of them have a nice Christmas or a nice, once-in-a-lifetime vacation.

But no, he frittered it all away on an ego trip.

Politics aside, what a waste.