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shadowkatThe television shows are interesting - they did the COVID thing last year, and now they are bored with the whole thing, so are pretending as if the pandemic only lasted a year, and its over now. Grey's had this big disclaimer stating that the show takes place in a fictional post-pandemic world, where the pandemic is completely over now.
And I thought...it would be nice if I could forget the pandemic too and just move on. I wore a mask to do laundry, I wore a mask to go to the grocery store. I wore a mask inside it. I did take it off for a few blocks, but not completely - other people were walking by too. Some chatting.
Not everyone wears masks in my apartment building. Same at work. It's inconsistent. There's a young couple that never did. Two.
I don't understand people. Maybe they believe they are untouchable? Maybe they are?
On FB, church acquaintance, posted that she's lonely and isolated and afraid of getting the vaccine. She has metastasized breast cancer. And is immuncompromised. And not sure about the vaccine.
I told her after someone else posted that their mother who'd gone through chemotherapy, that I have a co-worker who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January, got it removed, and had intense chemotherapy, then got vaccinated with the Pfizer. He's fine, and the cancer is in remission now.
It was pancreatic cancer.
***
Mother has returned home, and is happy there. She's resigned herself to what has happened to Dad, now. And that she can't bring him home. I think she's moved through the five stages of grief, but here's the thing I've learned about grief? You think you are done, and then when you least expect it hits you in the gut like a two-by-four, and you think fuck, I can't get up under the weight of it. I'll just lie here, by myself, sobbing. And you find yourself going through all five stages again.
Or, often the five stages are out of order. Human's aren't neat. We don't follow rules or by the book. And we aren't definable.
**
Watching the Tina Turner's last concert in Wembley Stadium on PBS - I recorded it this week. I like Tina Turner. I'm kind of eclectic about music.
**
I'm currently reading and listening to Gentleman Jim - which I got via a Kindle sale, for about $1.99, and free audiobook apparently. I'm enjoying it - but it is frustrating at times. I keep wanting to kick various characters - except for the hero, who I kind of adore for reasons. The female character or heroine though is annoying me at the moment. I admittedly have no real understanding of wanting to own land or a house or property. That desire is lost on me. It seems more trouble than its worth.
I don't like "owning" certain things. I'm not materialistic at all - it's not what I spend money on. And houses, land, etc is high maintenance. So the heroine's love of her family's estate and difficulty letting it go - is hard for me to understand. The conflict is she has to marry a man she despises (a bully and thug) to keep her family's estate. He has a legal guardianship over her - and if she doesn't marry him or someone he approves of, two years before she reaches a certain age, she loses the estate. The hero has his own wealthy estate, and a title he's fighting for. But is she marries him she loses the estate and land she loves. And I'm thinking why do you love it?
The writer hasn't really done a good job of pulling me inside her head - partly due to the split point of view. I find the hero more interesting, he's a highway man, who is fighting to have his father's title, even though he's most likely his father's bastard son. The heroine feels a bit weak to me at the moment and kind of whiny. That could change. It's a problem I have with romance novels - often the women come across as bit too weak or powerless.
I'm only 48% of the way through though, so we'll see.
I need to start working on my books again.
***
Covid
The US is quickly approaching another milestone, 700,000 deaths. We're very close. And the death toll per 28 days has risen in the US from 48,000 to 51,000 and continues to rise. Most are in the unvaccinated South.
From the NY Times Briefing:
* An overwhelming majority of Americans who have died in recent months, a period in which the U.S. has offered broad access to shots, were unvaccinated. The latest deaths were concentrated in the South, and there were more young victims than at any other point in the pandemic. Every age group under 55 saw its highest death toll of the pandemic this August.
The new and alarming surge of deaths this summer, when the Delta variant was spreading, means that the coronavirus pandemic has become the deadliest in U.S. history, overtaking the toll from the influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919, which killed about 675,000 people.
The deaths that followed the wide availability of vaccines, one expert said, were “absolutely needless.”
If you want to know the NY numbers - go here. We still have folks dying and contracting the virus in NY. Most of the cases are upstate and in Long Island - the rural and suburban areas where the folks who don't think the virus is a problem live. The city itself percentage wise is down. We have about 2,300 cases out of 1 Million tests.
COVID has officially killed more folks in the United States than anything else in two centuries. Why? Because people in the US are stupid. I swear there's a lot of selfish dumb people in this country. More than I thought possible. And no, they aren't necessarily the dead ones. Unfortunately.
*Portugal’s Covid vaccine campaign has been so successful that there is virtually no one left to vaccinate.
About 98 percent of those eligible have been fully vaccinated. That is a sharp turnaround from earlier this year, when the country’s health care system was on the verge of collapse and its vaccine program was in shambles.
To right the ship, the government turned to Vice Adm. Henrique Gouveia e Melo, a former submarine squadron commander. The key to his success: treat the pandemic like a war, and keep politics out of it.
Okay, I don't know about anyone else? But I want to move to Portugal. I may travel to Portugal next year. Never been. Hear they have some cool islands.
* Australia is starting to reopen. It plans to lift its bans on international travel in November, allowing fully vaccinated citizens and permanent residents to cross borders for the first time since March 2020. Foreign tourists will not be able to visit immediately. [ Keep in mind the US has allowed Americans to wander freely about, and foreigners to come in and out as well. There's a reason the US has the highest death rate in the world, and Australia among the lowest - all together now: The US is stupid.]
Not COVID, because there's other stuff happening too..
* The National Women’s Soccer League canceled five matches amid a misconduct scandal in which several coaches were accused of abusing players.
The league, which has faced charges that it has done little to protect its athletes, announced the cancellations in a brief statement that said that “the gravity of the events of the last week” had made it impossible to ask its teams to play. That's it - how about we just disallow heterosexual male coaches in women's sports? Because clearly they can't behave themselves.
* Scientists have found that a mustard plant infected with a certain parasite becomes something like a mix between a vampire that never ages and a zombie host whose body serves the needs of its parasite. The plant’s neighbors grow old, reproduce and die, but the pathogen’s eerily youthful host persists.
When the insects ingest the parasite, they spread it to new hosts, and the whole “Night of the Living Dead”-meets-Dracula cycle repeats. Scientists have discovered that some of these creepy alterations are driven by the work of a single protein from the parasite.
Confused? So am I. And no, that didn't make it clearer. I should provide a link: Zombie Plants Parasites
A mustard plant infected with a certain parasite grows strangely, its development warped by tiny invaders. Its leaves take on odd shapes, its stems form a bushy structure called a witches’ broom and it may grow flowers that do not produce seed. Most peculiarly of all, it lives longer than its uninfected brethren, in a state of perpetual adolescence.
“It looks like it stays in a juvenile phase,” said Saskia Hogenhout, a scientist at the John Innes Centre in England, who studies the life cycle of the parasite, which is called Aster Yellows phytoplasma.
The plant’s neighbors grow old, reproduce and die, but the phytoplasma’s eerily youthful host persists. It becomes something like a mix between a vampire that never ages and a zombie host whose body serves the needs of its parasite, namely, tempting sap-sucking insects to feast on the plant’s bodily fluids as long as possible. When the insects ingest the parasite, they spread it to new hosts, and the whole “Night of the Living Dead-meets-Dracula” cycle repeats.
So has anyone else's mind come up with a bizarre scenario where some mad scientist figures out how to replicate this to infect humans and turn them into youthful zombies? Or is that just me?
***
Mother rattled off niece's first semester courses at London School of Economics...(She has four courses)
* Geography and Race
* Social Policy and NGOS
* International Public Policy Law
* Philosophy and public policy
Mother didn't understand what social policy and NGOS have to do with each other. I explained that it's about how social policy can work around them, resolve the problems concerning them, and creates them.
Mother to her conservative friend: Granddaughter is pursuing a degree in human rights.
Conservative Friend: [Pause] - I take it they are very liberal?
Mother: yep. [Mother is too. My whole family kind of is.]
Me: Sigh. Conservatives can be such assholes sometimes.
And so too can liberals...
Mother: Ah, (niece) might meet a really hot guy in Britain.
Brother: doubtful, the British aren't that attractive.
Me to Mother (who has repeated this conversation to me): Geeze. I disagree with that. It's not like I'm god's gift. (Granted Bro is, but his wife isn't.) And bro is very shallow.
Mother:Yeah, I thought it was funny too.
Granted, they don't look great on British Television - but they do on American Television - which means they sent them all the attractive folks here, or the US is just better at photo-shopping and the whole makeup thing. (I'm willing to bet its the latter. I've seen Bridgerton and Masterpiece Theater.)
Niece has been stuck in her dorm room for the last few weeks. Suffering a cold along with her roommate. And it's raining.
Mother: I need pictures. I'm living vicariously through you.
Niece: Ha! I'm stuck in my dorm room watching television on a computer.
***
Moved on from Tina Turner to 50 Years at Lincoln Center - which has some great performances. I'm loving this violin virtuoso, the folk group, and this weird ass dance routine. The guy was wearing the oddest white pantsuit. I was very distracted by it. It had an opening at the crouch and I kept waiting for his penis to peek out.
I need to go to Lincoln Center sometime this year or next again. I miss live theater and the arts.
***
Not sure what's up tomorrow. I need to clean. I may take a walk in Prospect Park to the waterfall with or without Wales.
Random photo of the night
And I thought...it would be nice if I could forget the pandemic too and just move on. I wore a mask to do laundry, I wore a mask to go to the grocery store. I wore a mask inside it. I did take it off for a few blocks, but not completely - other people were walking by too. Some chatting.
Not everyone wears masks in my apartment building. Same at work. It's inconsistent. There's a young couple that never did. Two.
I don't understand people. Maybe they believe they are untouchable? Maybe they are?
On FB, church acquaintance, posted that she's lonely and isolated and afraid of getting the vaccine. She has metastasized breast cancer. And is immuncompromised. And not sure about the vaccine.
I told her after someone else posted that their mother who'd gone through chemotherapy, that I have a co-worker who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January, got it removed, and had intense chemotherapy, then got vaccinated with the Pfizer. He's fine, and the cancer is in remission now.
It was pancreatic cancer.
***
Mother has returned home, and is happy there. She's resigned herself to what has happened to Dad, now. And that she can't bring him home. I think she's moved through the five stages of grief, but here's the thing I've learned about grief? You think you are done, and then when you least expect it hits you in the gut like a two-by-four, and you think fuck, I can't get up under the weight of it. I'll just lie here, by myself, sobbing. And you find yourself going through all five stages again.
Or, often the five stages are out of order. Human's aren't neat. We don't follow rules or by the book. And we aren't definable.
**
Watching the Tina Turner's last concert in Wembley Stadium on PBS - I recorded it this week. I like Tina Turner. I'm kind of eclectic about music.
**
I'm currently reading and listening to Gentleman Jim - which I got via a Kindle sale, for about $1.99, and free audiobook apparently. I'm enjoying it - but it is frustrating at times. I keep wanting to kick various characters - except for the hero, who I kind of adore for reasons. The female character or heroine though is annoying me at the moment. I admittedly have no real understanding of wanting to own land or a house or property. That desire is lost on me. It seems more trouble than its worth.
I don't like "owning" certain things. I'm not materialistic at all - it's not what I spend money on. And houses, land, etc is high maintenance. So the heroine's love of her family's estate and difficulty letting it go - is hard for me to understand. The conflict is she has to marry a man she despises (a bully and thug) to keep her family's estate. He has a legal guardianship over her - and if she doesn't marry him or someone he approves of, two years before she reaches a certain age, she loses the estate. The hero has his own wealthy estate, and a title he's fighting for. But is she marries him she loses the estate and land she loves. And I'm thinking why do you love it?
The writer hasn't really done a good job of pulling me inside her head - partly due to the split point of view. I find the hero more interesting, he's a highway man, who is fighting to have his father's title, even though he's most likely his father's bastard son. The heroine feels a bit weak to me at the moment and kind of whiny. That could change. It's a problem I have with romance novels - often the women come across as bit too weak or powerless.
I'm only 48% of the way through though, so we'll see.
I need to start working on my books again.
***
Covid
The US is quickly approaching another milestone, 700,000 deaths. We're very close. And the death toll per 28 days has risen in the US from 48,000 to 51,000 and continues to rise. Most are in the unvaccinated South.
From the NY Times Briefing:
* An overwhelming majority of Americans who have died in recent months, a period in which the U.S. has offered broad access to shots, were unvaccinated. The latest deaths were concentrated in the South, and there were more young victims than at any other point in the pandemic. Every age group under 55 saw its highest death toll of the pandemic this August.
The new and alarming surge of deaths this summer, when the Delta variant was spreading, means that the coronavirus pandemic has become the deadliest in U.S. history, overtaking the toll from the influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919, which killed about 675,000 people.
The deaths that followed the wide availability of vaccines, one expert said, were “absolutely needless.”
If you want to know the NY numbers - go here. We still have folks dying and contracting the virus in NY. Most of the cases are upstate and in Long Island - the rural and suburban areas where the folks who don't think the virus is a problem live. The city itself percentage wise is down. We have about 2,300 cases out of 1 Million tests.
COVID has officially killed more folks in the United States than anything else in two centuries. Why? Because people in the US are stupid. I swear there's a lot of selfish dumb people in this country. More than I thought possible. And no, they aren't necessarily the dead ones. Unfortunately.
*Portugal’s Covid vaccine campaign has been so successful that there is virtually no one left to vaccinate.
About 98 percent of those eligible have been fully vaccinated. That is a sharp turnaround from earlier this year, when the country’s health care system was on the verge of collapse and its vaccine program was in shambles.
To right the ship, the government turned to Vice Adm. Henrique Gouveia e Melo, a former submarine squadron commander. The key to his success: treat the pandemic like a war, and keep politics out of it.
Okay, I don't know about anyone else? But I want to move to Portugal. I may travel to Portugal next year. Never been. Hear they have some cool islands.
* Australia is starting to reopen. It plans to lift its bans on international travel in November, allowing fully vaccinated citizens and permanent residents to cross borders for the first time since March 2020. Foreign tourists will not be able to visit immediately. [ Keep in mind the US has allowed Americans to wander freely about, and foreigners to come in and out as well. There's a reason the US has the highest death rate in the world, and Australia among the lowest - all together now: The US is stupid.]
Not COVID, because there's other stuff happening too..
* The National Women’s Soccer League canceled five matches amid a misconduct scandal in which several coaches were accused of abusing players.
The league, which has faced charges that it has done little to protect its athletes, announced the cancellations in a brief statement that said that “the gravity of the events of the last week” had made it impossible to ask its teams to play. That's it - how about we just disallow heterosexual male coaches in women's sports? Because clearly they can't behave themselves.
* Scientists have found that a mustard plant infected with a certain parasite becomes something like a mix between a vampire that never ages and a zombie host whose body serves the needs of its parasite. The plant’s neighbors grow old, reproduce and die, but the pathogen’s eerily youthful host persists.
When the insects ingest the parasite, they spread it to new hosts, and the whole “Night of the Living Dead”-meets-Dracula cycle repeats. Scientists have discovered that some of these creepy alterations are driven by the work of a single protein from the parasite.
Confused? So am I. And no, that didn't make it clearer. I should provide a link: Zombie Plants Parasites
A mustard plant infected with a certain parasite grows strangely, its development warped by tiny invaders. Its leaves take on odd shapes, its stems form a bushy structure called a witches’ broom and it may grow flowers that do not produce seed. Most peculiarly of all, it lives longer than its uninfected brethren, in a state of perpetual adolescence.
“It looks like it stays in a juvenile phase,” said Saskia Hogenhout, a scientist at the John Innes Centre in England, who studies the life cycle of the parasite, which is called Aster Yellows phytoplasma.
The plant’s neighbors grow old, reproduce and die, but the phytoplasma’s eerily youthful host persists. It becomes something like a mix between a vampire that never ages and a zombie host whose body serves the needs of its parasite, namely, tempting sap-sucking insects to feast on the plant’s bodily fluids as long as possible. When the insects ingest the parasite, they spread it to new hosts, and the whole “Night of the Living Dead-meets-Dracula” cycle repeats.
So has anyone else's mind come up with a bizarre scenario where some mad scientist figures out how to replicate this to infect humans and turn them into youthful zombies? Or is that just me?
***
Mother rattled off niece's first semester courses at London School of Economics...(She has four courses)
* Geography and Race
* Social Policy and NGOS
* International Public Policy Law
* Philosophy and public policy
Mother didn't understand what social policy and NGOS have to do with each other. I explained that it's about how social policy can work around them, resolve the problems concerning them, and creates them.
Mother to her conservative friend: Granddaughter is pursuing a degree in human rights.
Conservative Friend: [Pause] - I take it they are very liberal?
Mother: yep. [Mother is too. My whole family kind of is.]
Me: Sigh. Conservatives can be such assholes sometimes.
And so too can liberals...
Mother: Ah, (niece) might meet a really hot guy in Britain.
Brother: doubtful, the British aren't that attractive.
Me to Mother (who has repeated this conversation to me): Geeze. I disagree with that. It's not like I'm god's gift. (Granted Bro is, but his wife isn't.) And bro is very shallow.
Mother:Yeah, I thought it was funny too.
Granted, they don't look great on British Television - but they do on American Television - which means they sent them all the attractive folks here, or the US is just better at photo-shopping and the whole makeup thing. (I'm willing to bet its the latter. I've seen Bridgerton and Masterpiece Theater.)
Niece has been stuck in her dorm room for the last few weeks. Suffering a cold along with her roommate. And it's raining.
Mother: I need pictures. I'm living vicariously through you.
Niece: Ha! I'm stuck in my dorm room watching television on a computer.
***
Moved on from Tina Turner to 50 Years at Lincoln Center - which has some great performances. I'm loving this violin virtuoso, the folk group, and this weird ass dance routine. The guy was wearing the oddest white pantsuit. I was very distracted by it. It had an opening at the crouch and I kept waiting for his penis to peek out.
I need to go to Lincoln Center sometime this year or next again. I miss live theater and the arts.
***
Not sure what's up tomorrow. I need to clean. I may take a walk in Prospect Park to the waterfall with or without Wales.
Random photo of the night
no subject
Date: 2021-10-02 06:03 pm (UTC)Wow your co-worker is lucky. Pancreatic cancer has a high mortality rate so it's great they're in remission.
The British have their share of attractive people but the difference is that they're more natural there. When they come over here to work they often have plastic surgery, dental work, skin treatments, hair changes, etc. I agree that the U.S. places a premium on attractiveness but I suspect it's also that they don't want those reasons to stand in their way of getting work. Emma Thompson for example had some of that between Henry V and Junior, for example.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-02 09:22 pm (UTC)The US is very...what's the word? Vain? Shallow? IDK. We're weird.
Co-worker apparently has dodged more than one bullet. He'd also had leukemia in the past. I wasn't sure if he was kidding me or not, but no, he was being truthful. They caught the pancreatic cancer early - apparently that's the trick, operated, took it out, treated with chemo, got the COVID shot, voila.
He's not the only one with cancer that I've known to get the vaccine. I know another couple - whose husband has a rare form of cancer that can only be treated with a radioactive isotope in Germany. So he's been flying back and forth to Munich to get the treatment, and he got the vaccine.