It’s just like deja vu all over again…only worse! Back in January 2021, there was hope the vaccines would end the Coronavirus Pandemic. Sure, we got our Moderna shots and Booster, but millions of anti-vaxxers and anti-mask doofuses set the stage for the Summer surge of the Delta Variant. And now we’re facing the even more contagious Omicron Variant. The chances of contracting Covid-19 have never been greater!
The velocity of the spread of Omicron staggers our healthcare system. We’re dealing with early a million new positive tests per day, the last 7-day average of Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. was 1,664. On top of that, a shortage of Covid-19 test kits, Ron DeSantis’s casual insouciance in throwing away a million test kits “because they weren’t necessary,” long lines at testing sites, and a huge undercount of infections because people testing positive at home aren’t factored into the statistics adds to the mess.
Our hospitals are overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients. Elective surgeries have been canceled. Most schools and colleges in our area retreated to “remote learning.”
Amid all this chaos, the wit and wisdom of Patti, Jeff, Deb, Rick, Beth, Todd, Art, Willam, Maggie, Bob, Tracy, Carl, Lauren, Steve, Jerry, Wolf, Stan, Dan, Neeru, Michael, Byron, Elgin, Angela, Scott, Jim, John, Kevin, Randy, James, Kent, Fred, and Matthew as well as all of you who make this blog a part of your day brought hope and sanity in these times of despair and outrage and frustration.
Thank you, thank you very much.
George, yours is the first blog I visit every morning. I never know what your subject will be—a new favorite protein bar, a dreadful movie, a door-stopper anthology of horror stories, a home remodeling project, a CD of obscure 70s bands, the list goes on—but I always know your take on it will be thoughtful, elegantly-written, and generous. Yes, we’re living through times that try our souls, but there are some bright spots…and your blog is one of them. I look forward to your trenchant take on pop culture and events throughout 2022.
Deb, thank you for your kind words! But while I host this blog and present the content, the party doesn’t get started until you and Jeff, Patti and Jerry, Dan and Bob, Rick and Tracy, Wolf and Michael show up with great comments!
Hmm. Would have thought the state of your blog was New York.
2022 does hold some challenges. More and more variants will show up, enough so they run out of Greek letters to name them so the last one will probably be billed “Gack!” 2022 will most likely bring back some old diseases as well: polio, smallpox, catarrh, dropsy, and the vapors — because 2020 and 2021 were just the leadup.
Thanks, George, for your hat tip to my governor (ew…I get a bad taste in my mouth when I say those last words). Florida has been jokingly referred to as God’s waiting room. Thanks to DeSantis, Florida residents now will have to wait too long.
Your blog has been a beacon in the darkness. Please keep it up. Pretty please. Pretty please with sugar on it.
Jerry, love the “Florida is God’s Waiting Room” saying. I’ve read that 80% of Florida residents have had Covid-19! Yikes! I hope to keep this blog going as long as excellent commentators like you keep showing up with brilliant comments…and some wonderful humor!
Jerry, we made our first – and believe me, last – visit to the (Palm Beach) Gardens Mall on Saturday and were appalled. The food court was a petri dish of a hundred or more teenagers crowded together, NONE of them masked, and we felt infect being anywhere near there. Macy’s put up self-serving [lies] signs claiming they were following CDC recommendations – stay six feet apart! Not onne word about wearing masks. The only place we saw run by people with brains was the Apple Store – roped-off lines, absolute mask requirement, only 10 or so people allowed in at a time, etc. The rest was Ron DeSantis’s wet dream – “freedom” at the cost of infection, illness and death.
Jeff, Ron DeSantis might draw the ire of some Florida residents for tossing away a million Covid-19 test kits.
The closest thing to a good thing that can be said about DeSantis is that he Might divide the Trump-Ass vote in the latter’s attempts to have himself installed at the national level again.
Todd, Trump’s latest NPR interview was an embarrassment. The man is delusional!
George, Stephen Colbert was the first to drop the knowledge on me that the FDA decided to lengthen the expiration dates.
At least it allowed Colbert to do an amusing riff on some canned sausage he’d been cohabiting with since the 1970s.
Todd, Stephen Colbert is a comic genius!
No thoughtful person can be called Paranoid today; we ARE being persecuted.
Dan, the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll reports 66% of Americans feel that our Democracy is under attack. No one polled me, but I’d tell the pollsters our voting system need protection.
Yup. 6 January was a deadly riot, but not a serious coup. The attempts by Republicans particularly to distort election results going forward is a Lot closer to a real coup potential. It’d be nice if Biden, et al., might get their asses in gear to disallow that.
Todd, the Democrats need to find a way to protect the Election process, especially the counting and certifying the Vote.
I’ve long been a reader of blogs but was never much for commenting, and this is the first blog where I’ve become a regular. Seems like my first comment was on a post about a horrendously long James Jones novel, SOME CAME RUNNING, that I’d read and knew something about. And once I’d broken the ice, commenting here became a habit. I’m generally grumpy, but try not to be too grumpy here. Mostly I try to follow Thumper’s mother’s rule: “if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all.”, but sometimes I slip. And on some occasions there’s a topic about which there’s nothing nice to be said and I cut loose. But thanks to you, George, for providing us with this friendly platform to rant.
Michael, there are many things happening today to make us grumpy so you have a lot of company. I remember reading that 1000+ page James Jones novel, SOME CAME RUNNING, and your insightful comment. I’m glad you’ve become a regular and joined this band of intrepid individuals with diverse tastes and opinions. I learn more from you guys than you learn from me!
Your positivity is a definite balm in this world, George. I always appreciate how rarely you don’t find something to like, something to enthuse over.
Patti, as you figured out, I’m basically a positive person. I know we’re surrounded by Darkness, but if I can bring a little Light and Fun to our group, I’ll do it. Thank you for supporting this blog with your insightful comments!
You do seem to Not Follow grump protocol in blogging, George. And good for you.
Todd, plenty of things make me grumpy, but I tend not to show it online.
I have the opposite stance from Deb’s – I save your blog for last! No one else does the same variety of books, terrible ’80s CDs, movies, Marvel and Disney + fare, home improvements, and just plain off-the-wall fun (and sexy pictures) as this one. Occasionally, I go on and the previous day’s item is still up and I think. where’s George? I need my fix!
Keep up the good work.
Jeff, thanks for the kind words! Sometimes, WORDPRESS plays tricks on me and delays my posts. I try to liven things up with a variety of content. When I started blogging, Bill Crider–a master blogger–advised me to add new material to my blog every day. I took his advice and followed it to this day.
George, thanks back at ya. The blog is always a pleasure. In a sane world, Covid would have been declared a threat to national security from day one, all mitigation measures would have had the force of federal, state, and local law, Covid vax would have been mandatory once the vaccine was developed, and the U.S. would have rolled out a modern-day Marshall Plan to further global containment if not eradication. That would have been the world that I grew up in, for all its other imperfections. The best we can hope for now, I think, is the ability of yearly ongoing boosters to blunt the worst effects of the virus and future mutations.
Fred, with America so fragmented, any coordinated action by the CDC, FDA, or NIH would be opposed by those who feel masks and vaccines are intrusions on their Liberty. What we’re left with is Natural Selection where those who get vaccinated and Boosted have a better chance for health and survival than those who don’t.
I’m preaching to the choir, but imagine if we had about 40% of our population saying, “It’s an infringement on my personal freedom to have to stop at stop signs and red lights. I’m going to drive through them because the government can’t tell me what to do.” And, as a result, thousands of people were dying and our medical infrastructure was totally overwhelmed by victims of traffic accidents—accidents that could easily have been avoided if people had simply obeyed traffic laws. Meanwhile, the rest of us continue stopping for stop signs and red lights and can do little but pray that the car approaching the intersection isn’t being driven by a “traffic-light denier.”
Yes, that’s where we are now.
Deb, so many Americans feel like they’re losing their “freedoms” by following simple, commonsense steps to avoid contracting the Coronavirus. But, they forget that “freedom” isn’t free. If they ignore mask mandates, refuse to get vaccinated, don’t Social Distance, and drink Cow De-wormer, there’s a Price to paid.
RIGHT ON, DEB!
Deb, I love your “trrffic light denier” line!
To say nothing of the tyrannical Must Wear Something Around Our Groins thugs!
My new obsession is the online game Wordle. A new game is posted every midnight, and my brother and I are sitting there, waiting for it to come up so we can see who can solve it fastest. You have to figure out each day’s five-letter word, and each guess you make it tells you if you got any letters right. You only get six tries, and sometimes you really have to wrack your brain to shift letters around in your head. (You don’t have to play at midnight; each game is up for 24 hours, and you can play anytime.) I’ve been playing for 19 days now, and have solved it every time, but twice it’s taken me all six guesses — typing in that sixth guess is pretty nerve-wracking.
If you decide to try it, you have to make sure you go to the correct site. Search engines tend to send you to wordles.com, a completely different site. The correct site is powerlanguage.co.uk
My contribution to George’s very welcome blog.
Jeff, thanks for the heads up on Wordle! I’ll have to check it out! I appreciate your comments especially on the music posts!
Thanks, Jeff. Even though I had no clue of what I was doing, I got the word in 5 tries! My mother would absolutely have loved this game.
My mother, too. She played the “Jumble” in the newspaper every morning.
George, thank you for your blog, with its very diverse content. Nice picture; I didn’t remember Diane’s hair was that long. I stop in here every day, soon after my first cup, by which time most everyone else has come and gone, but that’s time zones for you. The state of the U.S. is appalling, but other than hunkering down and doing idiot avoidance when possible. I like coming here to your blog, though I don’t always agree with what I read, but I’m a grumpy old sonofa, so it’s to be expected and I appreciate your putting up with it.
In addition to losing weight, my 2022 efforts are aimed at more regular posting on my own blog. When I do, I’ll hope to see you there.
Rick, I check your blog every day hoping for new content! I can’t tell you how many books you’ve reviewed that I’ve ended up buying! Thank you so much!
I always enjoy your blog, George, and that includes when the topic isn’t one of my interests.
You always expand my horizons – even when I don’t.
May it continue for a long time in the future!
Beth, thank you for your kind words! I’m in on the blog for the Long Haul!
Dear George, your blog with its very diverse but always interesting content every morning makes my day!
I still remember how I found it looking for info on “Earl Dumarest” and was surprised that you not only discussed SF here but all aspects of the USA which had been one of my favourite holiday destinations and continues to fascinate me.
Reading your and the other people’s comments here gives me hope – what we see and read in Europe right now usually is not a nice picture of the USA.
So keep up the good work!
A bot OT:
On our last trip almost 11 years ago – from Nashville (my wife’s nephews is a prof at Vanderbilt) via the Blue Ridge mountains, Charleston and Savannah to Orlando and the Space Center was so full of great sights so I’m really confused on what’s going on right now in the South, especially Florida.
Wish you all the very best, stay healthy and boostered like we do!
Wolf, we’re vaccinated and Boosted, but many residents of Southern States resist commonsense precautions to protect against Covid-19. Trump disdained masks for protection against the Coronavirus and that somehow got politicized as Republicans/Conservatives don’t wear masks while wimpy Democrats/Liberals do. It’s stupid and infuriating, but that’s the state of American epidemiology today.
George, discovering your blog (via an IMDB link) was one of the few bright spots in last year’s train wreck of a year. So many of the news and cultural websites I used to frequent (AV Club, Vanity Fair, New York) have essentially narrowed their focus to the most disposable of pop culture (with less of a shelf life than the food in my fridge) and click bait rants disguised misrepresented as news. Even The New Yorker and New York Times have really dropped the ball, reviewing little more than the same streaming fare as everyone else. All everyone seems to care about these days is television while the state of music writing is as grim as much of the new music out there and the book review is a fast vanishing species. Worst of all, far too much pseudo-criticism these days reads like it was written by hyperactive 10-year olds.
I personally find it refreshing to read reviews that encompass both the old and the new and even if its not something I would check out it’s nice to get a taste of something outside of my range of interests. I check your blog every day and while I may only post the occasional comment that’s only because I hold off unless I feel I have something worthwhile to contribute.
Sadly, it looks like this coming year is going to be an even more grueling haul than last year, proving that you can’t possibly lower the bar too much for the human race. It’s insane enough that so many nut-jobs refuse to get vaccinated but now we have all these people who got their initial doses but are now dragging their heels about the booster (they’re all now talking about the Omnicom like it’s just another seasonal bug). In all honesty, I think it might not be such a bad thing to clear the planet of some of enough of these fools to make a difference next election season. I just read earlier today that hospitals are so short staffed that they are allowing staff who have contracted the virus to continue working. Insane…
I look forward to many a typically thoughtful and entertaining post from you in the coming year. Stay safe and best wishes for you and your loved ones. With any luck you’ll be able to take your wife to a movie or live show before the year is out.
All the best.
P.S.,
Book, CD and vinyl sales were all up dramatically this last year. CDs in fact had their best year in two decades and I for one certainly had a hand in that. Maybe we’re not so anachronistic after all..
P.S.S.,
I forgot to comment on yesterday’s post. I’m a hardcore winter lover as well. Enjoy the snow!
Byron, your analysis of the current state of reviewing is spot on! It’s harder and harder to find books, music CDs, and movies/TV programs that appeal to me (and hopefully you and others) amid the shitstorm of hype and marketing that rains down every time I access the Internet. So many magazines have folded, so many newspapers…gone. Word-of-mouth from reliable sources seems to be the best way to locate excellent books, music, and movies. Your thoughtful comments and insights have only made the blog better in the past year!
Online reviewing isn’t Uniformly terrible, any more than new music is, but the larger commercial interests are mostly not interested in the best work, no.
thanks for having the blog. I don’t remember to check often lately, but like knowing it’s there.
Maggie, we miss you and your wonderful comments!
Thanks for all the good work, and the shout-outs. The diversity of your topics covered and the regularity remain inspirations, as were Bill’s.
Keep on! Recalcitrant WordPress and all! And thanks for commenting on my posts.
Todd, Bill Crider encouraged me and mentored me on blogging when I first got started. Many of the aspects you praise are the results of Bill’s wise advice and council.
And thanks to you, George, for your always enthusiastic and interesting blog posts!
Angela, I’m always happy when you stop by the blog! I try to keep my posts interesting, but I can’t match the variety your father featured on his blog!
Me: Wit and Wisdom!!! Thanks for making me laugh George. Sorry, late to the post but I’ll add to the chorus and say that I love your blog because of its diversity and well just the way you write. Thanks a lot.
Neeru, thank you for you kind words. I would venture to say your knowledge of classic crime novels (and some of the obscure titles) impresses all of us. Diversity is the Spice of Life. You, and all the other commentators, make this blog what it is. I’m just your genial host.