If you follow me on Facebook, you won’t be hearing from me for awhile. I’m in Facebook jail, again, for thirty days for posting this incredibly insensitive and controversial statement. Back in May.
Yep, it was so outrageous that it took Facebook five months to realize they should have been outraged almost half a year ago. What sort of twisted human sifts through five fucking months of Facebook posts? Not even super-creepy stalkers do that kind of shit!!
There are no appeals in the kangaroo court of Facebook. I should know. I’ve been in Facebook jail so many times I’m like unto Norm on Cheers. Everybody there knows my name.
* * * *
If you’re not familiar with the film Waiting for Guffman you should check it out. It’s fucking hilarious, and you could probably use a laugh right about now. You’ll definitely need one when the second quarantine starts after Trump loses the election.
I’m kind of hoping that once Trump is gone, someone in America — maybe even the next President — will remember that Science used to be a respectable profession before this putz of a president came along and told his mindless followers that Science was stupid and couldn’t be trusted.
We don’t have to wait for the election for that to happen here. Starting Friday evening, we’re turning the clocks back to March or April and initiating another lockdown. Lea has been reading the restrictions to me as I write this. It’s not going to be a complete shutdown, but it sounds like there are going to be a significant amount of restrictions, especially at night and on the weekends.
And if you have to be out and about, you had better be wearing a facemask, amigo.
Enrique Alfaro Ramírez, the governor of Jalisco, has been threatening to reimpose a lockdown for the last couple of months because he’s dismayed by the number of COVID-19 cases in his country. And he apparently thinks he can do something to change that.
* * * *
According to the latest statistics available, there have been 901,268 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Mexico, resulting in 89,814 deaths. And Mexico has done an horrendous job of compiling accurate data. In the state of Jalisco, there have been 33,339 confirmed cases with 3,967 deaths.
* * * *
Despite those appalling numbers, an increasing number of people down here have ceased using any and all personal protective measures.
I call it Pandemic Precaution Fatigue. And the thought process goes something like unto this: I am over this. I’m going to come down with this crap and live, or I’m going to come down with this crap and die. Either way, I don’t care what happens anymore. I just want my fucking life back.
In an previous post, I wrote about something I called Spousal Fatigue. It’s a term I coined to describe what happens to some retired people when they find themselves trapped with the person they married without a break, day after day after day…
This year, you didn’t necessarily have to be retired to find yourself in that situation.
Okay. I remember the richer or poorer part. Sickness and health. Yep, for better or worse… But I don’t remember anything about twenty-four hours a day, every goddamn day!
Perhaps that’s one reason why some people are willing to take their chances with contracting the Coronavirus. Oh yeah, and a vaccine is going to be available any day now, right? Didn’t President Trump say that, what, about…eight… months ago?
Whether they become infected with COVID-19 or not, there’s a fair chance that the life they want back won’t exist once this pandemic is finally over. I don’t know if this good or bad, all I know for sure right now is there doesn’t appear to be a whole lots of people that seem to understand this fact.
And there’s this: there’s no such thing as a flu vaccine that is 100% effective. Most of them fall well below, and I mean way below that mark. The COVID-19 vaccine, whenever it’s finally unveiled, isn’t going to be the panacea that some people believe. And given the stance of the anti-vaxxers, there will likely be as many people, or more, who will choose not to be vaccinated, so there’s that to take into consideration.
* * * *
I’m kind of going through my own sense of fatigue right now. I spent a fair amount of time over the last couple of years trying to convince several people that Donald Trump is a pig of a human being, a criminal, and a traitor to his country. And not one of the people I preached to has had a change of heart, not even with the preponderance of evidence that I feel proved my argument beyond a shadow of a doubt.
We are all of us, most likely, tired of something right now. Even my Muses have been strangely quiescent of late. I’m not sure what to make of that. Maybe they’re under quarantine, too. Or maybe they’ve been replaced by the infrequent tactile hallucination I’ve been experiencing for the last couple of months.
* * * *
Tactile hallucinations aren’t the most common form of false sensory perceptions that people can experience, but they’re not rare by any means either. I’d elaborate on this more, but my wife has practically begged me not to say anything about it. To anyone. After I told her.
I’m guessing she also meant I shouldn’t write about it…
My lovely supermodel wife has always said she considers me to be quirky and unique. I don’t think she’s ever seriously considered me to be, you know, crazy. Until now. I’m sure she’ll let me know how she feels after she reads this.
Sorry honey, I have to say something about this.
This phenomenon happened maybe a dozen times in a row, in two different rooms of our house. I felt someone, or something, very solidly hitting/tapping my right hand twice, when I was performing a very specific…task.
Yes, it was kind of freaky. No, I’m not going to elaborate on this any further. Trust me, you really don’t want to know.
I simply changed the manner in which I perform this…task, and I may have outsmarted my hallucination because it hasn’t happened since. I seemingly have to work around some of the things that happen inside of my head far more often than I’d like to admit.
* * * *
Fortunately for me, I don’t have to physically interact with any of the people I’m disappointed in right now because none of them live in the Lakeside Area. Those wouldn’t be pleasant conversations for anyone.
Equally unfortunately, I doubt the governor’s actions are going to accomplish much of anything to change the attitudes of the people he’s trying to save. It’s been my experience as a psych nurse that when people stop caring about whether they live or die, there’s nothing you can do to help them until they decide they want to live again.
Nor do I think that his actions are going to appreciably alter or slow the progression of COVID-19 here in the Lakeside Area at this point in the game. It doesn’t make much sense to fix the fence after all the livestock have escaped, but at least he’ll be able to say he tried to do something.
Buena suerte, Governor Alfaro. You’re going to need all the luck you can find for this plan to work.
* * * *
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first global pandemic I’ve faced in my life. Some of my Trump-supporting friends have cited other flu-like outbreaks from previous years, and the fact that more people died from that year’s combination of letters and numbers disease than this year’s letters and numbers disease.
Cold and flu season strikes every year. Does that mean we’ve been visited by a pandemic every year, and, what, we were just too busy to notice? I don’t recall any extraordinary global measures being instituted to try to save lives and prevent the spread of those past disease events. Do you?
Consider this: There’s a football season every year, too. Does that make every football game played the Super Bowl?
I’m pretty sure that even Donald Trump and all of his supporters understand that there’s only one Super Bowl. And it will remain that way until the Donald tells his fanatics there’s actually more than one Super Bowl, and then they’ll believe that shit, too.
Interestingly, Trump’s supporters all claim that they don’t blindly believe everything he says, until you question them about the basis of their political views. And you will discover that, yeah, they really do blindly believe everything The Donald says — no matter how ludicrous it is. I also find it very strange that they don’t seem to realize that they do this, even after you point it out to them.
Don’t believe me? Trump says the only way he can lose this election is because of voter fraud. And, yes, his supporters believe that, too. As for the rest of us, we all know what a non-issue this has been in American politics over the last two centuries.
Just sit back and watch what his supporters do and say when he loses. Personally, I can’t wait. I might even drink a glass of champagne…
That said, I am also filled with dread and apprehension regarding this election. There’s one thing that Donald Trump’s supporters don’t realize —
My mistake. You’re right. There are many things…
This is the thing I had in mind: Every principle and ideal that the United States of America was founded on is on trial in this election. Trump’s supporters see him as the last defender of freedom in America. They cannot see that he has been systematically dismantling the last shreds of democracy that remained while he’s been in office.
Trump’s supporters think they possess some arcane knowledge about this president that no one else has. They are absolutely committed to him, they will do anything he suggests to them, and they have guns. A lots and lots and lots of them.
They’ve been preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse for decades, somehow missing the fact that they’ve become zombies themselves.
Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools… Romans 1:22
* * * *
This could become very ugly, very fast. The curtain has been pulled back, and what it has revealed about America under the Trump administration, for the most part, hasn’t been pretty. Long after Mr. Trump no longer sits in the Oval Office, his supporters are still going to be out there. If that thought doesn’t daunt you, it should.
They are the reason I believe that America isn’t in danger of losing the qualities that made it the most celebrated country on the planet.
It already has.
* * * *
When the last quarantine went into effect, Todd and I decided to become gardeners. Guess what we’re going to do during this lockdown!
A couple of weeks ago, Todd and I started attacking the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow on the south side of the Chula Vista Resort and Spa. I’m going to guess that it was planted about the same time that our gringo mansion was built, way back in the 1950’s or 60’s.
That, more than likely, was also the last time it was manicured. The Royal and Ancient Hedgerow stands roughly twenty feet high, and is probably eight to ten feet thick. In layman’s terms, it’s a jungle out there.
You never know what will pop up on a Google image search…
The primary shrub in our overgrown hedgerow is bougainvillea. It’s a hardy plant that’s virtually impossible to kill. And it has thorns. Some of the thorns in the branches in our hedgerow are over an inch long. And they are incredibly sharp.
When we attacked the hedgerow, it attacked back. Todd and I both look like we’ve been wrestling jaguars. And it doesn’t look like we’ve been winning.
But we are.
We have taken some significant hunks out of the Royal and Ancient Hedgerow. You can actually see Lake Chapala from a few spots in our yard now, and sunlight filters into the bedrooms on the South Wing for the first time in decades.
That said, we still have a long way to go to tame the beast. It will easily take us another month to complete subdue it, and that’s probably about how long the second quarantine/lockdown is likely to last.
Todd and I have been discussing adding some flowering vines into the areas that have been opened up again. The flowers will add some color, and vines don’t generally have thorns. That’s a big plus. After that, it will just be a matter of keeping the hedgerow regularly trimmed. It should look better than it ever has by the time we’re done.
* * * *
Waiting for Guffman is a 1996 American film loosely based on Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot. The movie mockingly documents a community theater musical that tells the history of a sleepy little Missouri town called Blaine. The director is an eccentric outsider, who claims he knows an important Broadway producer in New York City named Mort Guffman, whom he has invited to come to see the show.
The director tells his cast if Mr. Guffman writes a favorable review of the play, they could all end up in a Big Broadway Show. They’ll all be able to get the hell out of Blaine, and they’ll probably all become world famous or something like unto that.
The play is beyond awful. I’ve gone to a few of these small town productions in my lifetime. The only word I can think of to describe these shows is painful. Guffman never shows up, a rave review is never written, and everyone involved with the show more or less goes back to their mundane lives once the show is over.
It might not sound like much, but I think it’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. Oddly enough, one could make the argument that the movie could be interpreted as an apt metaphor of current day America. Well, the voices inside my head seem to think so…
Okay. I see where you’re going with this. The eccentric director is Donald Trump, right? The awful play is the Trump administration’s response to the Coronavirus, correct? Or, it could be everything the Trump administration has done because you don’t really like this guy much. The cast would then have to be Trump’s supporters.
How am I doing so far? I guess there’s only one thing I don’t get. Who, or what, is Guffman? Wait a minute! I’ve got it! Guffman — is the vaccine!
Damn! There’s nothing funny about that ending. This fucking sucks, dude.
Yes. Maybe now you understand.
Reflections/Life in Mexico 