COVID Fatigue At the End of 2021

So here we all are as a planet, rushing out of 2021 headlong in 2022 with the slow realization that this latest COVID-19 variant called "Omicron" - why yes, it COULD be a Transformers villain - is rampaging across humanity as the most virulent and infectious variant yet.

And the collective response of at least the American population is "What the hell, now? On the holidays??? Let me at least fly home next to 180 maskless passengers on this plane so I can see my relatives before we all turn up positive for COVID."

Yup. That's where we're at.

It's been more than two years now - if you date the outbreak back to November 2019, at least back to March 2020 when even trump couldn't ignore it anymore - that the entire planet has been coping with this lethal virus and we honestly can't keep up with it, if we ever did.

The isolation / cabin fever of lockdowns early on - combined with the overwhelming over-reliance on social media (Hi, Twitter!) that numbed our common sense - generated what could be best described as "COVID Fatigue," this jaded ennui of losing a certain amount of empathy or concern for self-care and the care of others. 

As a set of vaccines showed up that could combat the spread of the pandemic, a lot of people took that to mean they could get the shots and become fully protected even though what the vaccines DID were to slow the transmissions and reduce the more lethal side-effects - like shredding your lungs and hearts - to prevent more death. It's still not really safe to go about unmasked even if you are vaxxed.

It did not help matters that a sizable chunk of our humanity is made up of contrarian nay-sayers, people like anti-vaccinators who think every scientific medical treatment is a lie or a scam - or in some cases, a Biblical prophecy to Mark us all for the Beast - and would prefer to treat themselves to "holistic" or wholly implausible "natural" cures that did more harm than good. The efforts by Fox Not-News and other Far Right outlets alongside a number of Republican governors like Florida's DeSantis fighting CDC guidelines and federal vaccination mandates - pushed by a Republican party leadership that wants the pandemic to continue under Biden's administration so they could blame HIM for the hundreds of thousands dead and dying - have only added to that contrarian reality where too many of our neighbors and family members are still unvaccinated and fully vulnerable to a lethal fast-spreading disease.

This latest flareup - the Omicron variant that's proven to transmit faster than previous COVID versions, and those were already quick - is just happening to occur during the part of the year in America that happens to involve our busiest family-oriented holidays: Thanksgiving through Christmas/ Hanukkah/ Saturnalia/ Kwanzaa/ New Years. Given how nearly everyone gave up those holidays for 2020 - as the vaccines had yet to clear safety protocols - it is looking like too much to ask for everyone to give those days up again for 2021.

So here we all go, driving off to visit with the folks or the kids/grandkids, traveling to exotic locales for the holidays and New Year's Eve, easily carrying viruses with us that won't show any symptoms until it's too late, and a lot of us refusing to mask up even as we mingle among the thousands of us who haven't gotten vaccinated to prevent further spread.

And count me among those people who selfishly went out in public just as the Omicron numbers are multiplying faster than they ever did with Delta.

My twin brother, like myself, attended University of Florida (Go Gators). Unlike myself, he could afford season tickets to home games, which qualified him to a good deal on bowl game tickets to Tampa's Gasparilla Bowl this year hosting UF playing against University of Central Florida (where his son, my nephew, attends right now). So there was a family reason - I received the invite, thank you Brother Phil - to pack into Raymond James stadium with 60,000 other sports fans of both schools Thursday night to see which in-state school program could beat the other's (DAMMIT GATORS YOU HAD ONE JOB! /cries).

I had gone to a comic con this past November, but it was to a small, city-level event with maybe a couple hundred people. It was also before the Omicron variant was out there and when the Delta variant seemed to have burned itself out. I still dreaded it, and took enough precautions to avoid physical contact and maintain social distancing, and I masked whenever I could.

I used to be a heavy movie goer, attending a new film release - or occasionally rehashing a film I liked - nearly every weekend right up until February 2020 - last movie I saw in the theaters was "Harley Quinn/Birds of Prey" how that's for a trivia answer - and one of the things I hoped to do after getting the vaccine shots was going back to the theaters. Except I haven't. Even as the blockbuster movies I want to see - Black Widow, Shang Chi, Eternals, Godzilla vs Kong, The Suicide Squad - on the big screen came and went, I could not work up the nerve to go to see a single one of them. The latest Spider-Man movie, MAYBE I might go see that while it's out now, but I still cannot bring myself to risk going to a crowded, cramped theater. 

The bowl game last night, I took the risk, and I am so regretting it. Last night was different. Multiplying-the-attendees-into-tens-of-thousands different. Granted, much of the game-watching is spent outdoors where the spread of COVID is less likely to happen, you're still in a situation where there's NO social distancing available and a high risk of being too close to an asymptomatic person long enough to get exposed. It was like being in twenty movie theaters at the same time, and I dreaded hearing anybody coughing to spike my paranoia any higher.

The good news, I've been vaccinated and boosted. I also took a mask with me and wore it as often as possible (only taking it off to eat a hot dog and drink bottled water).

Bad news is, I might have been the only one at that game who stayed masked for much of the night. Maybe one other guy was masked in our seating section, but nearly everyone else I walked past getting in and out of the stadium - other than vendors and staff (and NOT security!) - went without a mask. Even my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew only wore their masks heading into the game: Once it started and after it ended, they went unmasked.

Yes, I am that paranoid about mask-wearing anymore. Working in a public library will do that to you during a pandemic.

That's how bad it is right now with the Omicron variant bearing down on all of us. Too many of us uncaring, unworried with the responsibility of doing even the bare minimum of protecting ourselves and others against a virus because those minimums - wearing a mask over our faces - has become too much a burden.

We all need - myself included - to be more careful during this winter as COVID flares back up again. At least mandating wearing masks in public. Lockdowns would help but too many Red States will fight those again as economy-killing, and given the holidays situation we won't see any move on THAT until after January 2nd.

So here we are, waiting for COVID to get worse again.

Gods help us.

Stay healthy.

Four For the Fourth 2021: What We Were Really Fighting For During the Revolution

When it was all said and done, for our rights as a new nation... for Life, Liberty, and the Property Rights of... oh wait, we traded that out for Pursuit of Happiness, sorry... we truly fought for our rights to brag about our best sports teams!

The Iggles of Philadelphia said some brutal things about Captain Brady falling off a cliff, but I'm pretty sure the British changed their tune when Brady won more battles over the Ramhorns of Los Angeles and the Chieftains of Kansas City.

We fought for the right to root for Tampa Bay to have some of the best winning teams of recent memory! GO BOLTS! GO RAYS! GO BUCS!!! CHAMPA BAY! 

THAT'S WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT, ENGLAND! WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT WINNING!!!

START THE FIREWORKS!!!

Wanna Know How Bad The Coronavirus Spread Is Getting?

It's Wednesday October 14 2020 and this is where we are at as the COVID-19 pandemic enters the autumn season:

The United States is seeing a spike (upwards!) in positive infection reports across much of the nation in the past week, with the likelihood of deaths spiking in the next week.

The National Football League is seeing an uptick in positive cases from team to team, especially a Tennessee Titans team that had members refusing to abide by social distancing guidelines. Celebrity players like Cam Newton were infected. The sport is finding out that when they cannot play in a neutral setting - within a Bubble that enforces testing and reporting - they cannot control the exposure to this highly contagious virus. It's disrupted scheduling to where games might get cancelled, negating the whole point of the NFL playing these games in the first place.

College Football is in worse shape. Combining the recklessness of being on-campus with other students who fail to abide by masking and distancing rules to the reality of traveling to new locations that were and still are COVID hotspots, more teams are reporting cases and cancelling games. This one hits me in the alma mater: up to 18 scholarship players and 3 walk-ons with the Florida Gators tested positive with the odds that more players are infected by them.

And today, the top coach in the Division I programs - Alabama's Nick Saban - tested positive as well (from a university campus that had been having COVID exposure issues already)

What the hell were universities thinking about forcing their students to attend on-campus in tight environs, indoor classrooms, and rule-breaking parties? Oh, right. The universities were thinking about making revenues.

And try this one on for size, trump supporters: trump's teen son Barron may have tested positive (they're now saying he's tested negative). This underscores how rickety and unreliable the testing at trump's White House has been, and it's tragic for anyone to get exposed to a coronavirus that can affect a youth's health further down the road.

It does not help that trump - desperate for the adulation and eager to show off his "strength surviving COVID" - keeps going to cramped, unsafe rallies that are pretty much traveling super-spreader events.

This is where we are at, America.

COVID-19 has not gone away. COVID-19 will not go away until a reliable vaccine is out there for people to take.

trump and his Republican lackeys have fucked up the pandemic response, and he keeps refusing to treat reality with the seriousness that a GOOD President would act.

God help us, vote this moran out of office this November. It's the only way to make sure we can survive past 2021.

If They Boo trump a Third Time, We Call That a MAGA Hat Trick

Oh dear Gods. trump really wants to keep trying this (via Sports Illustrated which apparently can't stick to sports like SOME compromised websites mutter grumble):

BamaCentral has learned that the University of Alabama is making preparations for President Donald Trump to attend the LSU game at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday.
Numerous sources have confirmed his expected visit.

The potential No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup, depending on the initial rankings by the College Football Playoff committee Tuesday night, will be shown on CBS at 2:30p.m. CT. 

trump has already gotten boo'ed at a game he thought he'd be cheered at with baseball, then got boo'ed at a fight night with a crowd he - and a lot of other people - assumed would cheer him.

Now he's going for what he and his peeps HAVE to think is the safest spot for him to show up: Fritters Alabama, uh Tuscaloosa Alabama. The key point is, it's in a safely Redneck Conservative State playing a safely Redneck sporting event for a safely Redneck college conference.

He's shown up for this type of sporting event before, attending the College National Championship game back in 2017 between Alabama and Georgia. So by some level of logic this might be a safe game for him to show up for the cheers he's been desperate to hear. Given it's a game between the TOP TWO programs in the nation with guaranteed viewership, and trump is hoping to get big cheers and adulation to please that toxic ego of his.

Except, well... it might not be that safe.

The crowd for that championship game he attended was a little different than this game's. The big games tend to be stuffed with boosters and alums who are older and richer: This is a regular college game albeit - one with national viewership - but the crowds will have more college-age attendees. And trump is not polling well with college-level voters and especially that age bracket.

And times have changed. In 2017 trump was barely into his office, reactions to his actions still underway. It's been two-three years now and people know what trump represents. There's also the impeachment factor, where the public exposure of trump's scandals are hurting his approval numbers (which have NEVER gotten above 50 percent). Even a "safe" state like Alabama outside of his fanbase rallies may not approve of the man.

Throw in the mood most game attendees will be in. This WAS going to be a major college game to determine who owns the SEC West (and top dibs on the championship game in January). But now it's a political event, where everybody knows that trump attending ONLY so trump can get his damn cheers in front of national television. trump is hijacking a Big Game for his own damn self. And some fans may not take kindly to that and boo him out of spite.

My two cents on the matter is: To the Bama fans and to the LSU fans planning to attend, just don't go in. Keep tailgating in the parking lots. Listen to the game on your radios and watch on portable TVs. Don't let trump hijack YOUR game for HIS ego. Give him an empty stadium and root for your teams in other ways.

You don't have to boo him and you don't have to cheer him. Just let him sit in silence. Right now, that's the punishment trump deserves.

Turkey Sacrifice Day 2018

I need to note that I have finally run into a Pagan - all my friends are Heathens dontcha know - and she was not entirely thrilled to hear me call Thanksgiving a Pagan Turkey Sacrifice Day. Especially since I didn't name which deity the poor bird was getting sacrificed to.

So I need to find out of there's a God/Goddess that oversees the fumbling of footballs that were caused by the unfortunate collisions into the posterior of an offensive linesman.

For yea verily, this IS the 6th year anniversary of the infamous Butt Fumble. (Mark Sanchez is playing today as a backup QB for Washington)

But let's go back discussing to WHOM we are sacrificing turkeys.

I got money on the Native American legend of the Thunderbird.

In the meantime, enjoy your sacrifice of Ben Franklin's favorite feathered foe!

Dear NFL Owners

So the current news flurry - other than the shocking revelations that Manafort was trying to suborn perjury - was how trump tried to cancel the expected Philadelphia Eagles appearance at the White House to honor their Super Bowl win when it turned out that, well, nearly every Eagle player refused to hang out with a lying adulterous cheating scuzbucket.

trump ended up hosting a dismally attended affair filled with government staffers to make it look like football fans showed up, with trump trying to mock NFL players for unpatriotic motives before failing to even sing "God Bless America" correctly.

All in all, an embarrassing display by the President Loser of the Popular Vote, a clear sign of how trump has politicized even the most trivial act of a nation's leader, and underscoring how precarious the professional sports leagues are dealing with this maniacal self-service sonofabitch.

Dear NFL Owners who succumbed to trump's insane ploy to belittle NFL players who were kneeling in protest against police brutality towards unarmed Blacks:

Once you agree to be trump's bitch, you will ALWAYS be trump's bitch.

And you're finding out right now that being his bitch is not a smart move at all.

#TakeAKnee

Take A Knee, America. Tell trump to Go F-ck Himself.

So how can we tell donald trump is a racist white supremacist bastard?

he goes to Alabama and makes a public display of himself:

Speaking to a crowd in Huntsville, Alabama Friday night, President Trump said he hoped NFL players who knelt during the national anthem—which they've done to protest unjustified police killings of black Americans—would lose their jobs.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners,  when somebody disrespects our flag,” Trump said, “to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out. He’s fired. He’s fired!’ ” ...The president appeared to be referring to  former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who last year began kneeling during the national anthem to draw attention to unjustified killings of black men by law enforcement.

Just to note, Kaepernick is currently out of the football league because NFL owners are refusing - even when the coaches and GMs want to sign him - to hire Kaep because of his Black Lives Matter stance.

Hold on, there's more.

...On Saturday morning, Trump singled out Steph Curry of the NBA champion Golden State Warriors, saying he had rescinded an invitation for them to come to the White House. “Going to the White House is considered a great honor for a championship team. Stephen Curry is hesitating, therefore invitation is withdrawn!” the president tweeted. (Curry had announced in June that he did not want to go, and had recently reiterated that opposition.)

In response, LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers tweeted that Trump was a “bum,” writing, “U bum @StephenCurry30 already said he ain't going! So therefore ain't no invite. Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!”

The president’s harsh condemnations of Kaepernick and like-minded players, as well as (ESPN pundit Jemele) Hill, stand in stark contrast to his earlier, sluggish reaction to the white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, in which a counter-protester, Heather Heyer, was killed, allegedly by a white supremacist.

That protest, the president insisted, had “very fine people on both sides.”

We're talking about a guy in trump who uses these outbursts to stir up HIS voter base, which happens to be mostly White, mostly male, and mostly racist.

Meanwhile, here's hoping the NFL players use this Sunday game schedule to #TakeAKnee in solidarity with Kaepernick and in direct opposition to trump's divisive, foolish, spiteful rhetoric.

We all need to, America. For the Love of GOD, tell this bullying shitgibbon he doesn't speak for you.

Update: I also rant about how bad the Tampa Bay Bucs play from time to time over at BucsNation.com, and this week's observations included this bit:

9) I know I shouldn't use this as a moment to rant politics - I have other places like my own blog to do that - but having donald trump abuse Colin Kaepernick's right to protest this weekend underscores a serious problem our nation still has regarding racism. What Kaepernick - and the Black Lives Matter people - are protesting is a long history of police brutality aimed at Black communities that has exploded in the past decade into the public spotlight. Trying to label it as an unpatriotic protest against the Flag, or the National Anthem, or our troops and veterans ignores that problem of race. When you see trump continue his attacks against Black athletes and Black sports media people like Jamele Hill, you see him doing it to huge crowds of angry, confederate-flag-waving White audiences at his rallies. It's not that he's employing the "dog whistle" of racial politics, he's using a damn sound system from a Ted Nugent concert.

That a lot of players and coaches - and even a few owners - today signaled their solidarity with Kaepernick - either by Taking A Knee themselves, locking arms with each other along the sidelines, or refusing to come out for the National Anthem period - is a good sign that people will oppose trump's efforts at racism and his efforts to silence criticism aimed at himself or his beliefs. Whether or not you believe racism is a problem in the United States is still up to you. Whether or not you believe this kind of talk doesn't have to involve sports, you'll be ignoring a history of sports where baseball was segregated for decades, where Jesse Owens was treated like crap by his own Olympics team leadership, and you've still got rich Black athletes roughed up by cops under questionable circumstances. And that's just three things I can recall off the top of my head.

I know this is going to get people commenting below, as long as the moderators will leave this up. If you do comment, please avoid severe profanity and questions about my parentage. Thank ye.

I may get some heated responses...

Happy Pagan Turkey Sacrifice Day 2015!

And on this day, the Good Lord let us witness this:

There are few other ways to celebrate this day of crazed, bird-carving ritual of dismemberment and consumption.

Well, there's always football.

Never Forget.

Things I Learned From The Democratic November 2015 Debate

1) That while Memphis is an excellent football team this season, Houston is still a dominant power and deserving of its current unbeaten status.

Wait a minute, hold on...

2) The talk about having Alabama in the playoff lineup is too early to confirm because there are still enough deserving unbeaten teams in Clemson, Ohio State / Iowa (one of them is going to win the Big 10), Oklahoma State, and Houston. I mean, there's also good one-loss programs out there like Notre Dame and Florida and Navy and... and... lemme start over.

3) The impressive improvement out of South Florida's program is the simple fact the Bulls have improved, recovering nicely from the debacle that was the Skip Holtz era and getting to where they have a balanced offense and an effective defense with talented players at key positions. Sure, the Bulls are likely going to an early December minor bowl game, but after the long drought of no postseason play we'll take anything and... and...

4) WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO HAVE A POLITICAL DEBATE DURING COLLEGE FOOTBALL GAMEDAY???

Anniversary: Our Nation's Darkest Day

This is November 22nd.

Our nation's darkest day.

I speak, of course, of the Buttfumble.

...what, there's more?

Oh.  Right.  That.

Soon, those who remember the assassination of John F. Kennedy will fade into history.  All who remain behind will know only of the Buttfumble this dark day (It already has its own separate Wiki entry!).

Feast well, this coming day of pagan sacrifices to elder gods seeking the meat of turkey.  I will post more on that when the time comes.

Also, I'm currently at 40,000 words on NaNo and aiming for 42,000 by tonight.