So I was gone for the last week as we had a friend visiting from out of town and my wife had the whole week off. It was good to talk to someone who had recently sold a house, and she assured us it wouldn’t take long. Flash to today, our house went on the market yesterday, and there are three showings already scheduled for this afternoon and evening. I suspect we won’t have to wait long, and I’m sort of hoping for a bidding war. It’s not that fancy of a house, but I can dream. I suspect by this time next month I will be in another part of the world. When everything is wrapped up, papers signed, tickets purchased, I’ll share details about where I am going.
Here is this week’s Spotify playlist.
Also, we just dropped a mini-episode for the A24 film Zola; it is fantastic.
So COVID-19 is back in America just as I knew it would be. According to covidactnow.org, the states in Critical states are California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North & South Carolinas, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and my own Tenne-fuckin-see. Louisiana is listed as in Severe condition. It takes just a few minutes of looking at news headlines to see hospitals filling up again, people being intubated again, but pediatric ICUs are filling quickly this time.
This will be the first “back to school” period I have not participated in in a decade. I don’t feel an ounce of a disappointment, though, because my state is certainly stupid as hell. Our state Speaker of the House even threatened to call a special session to penalize districts implementing a mask mandate. The number of fully vaccinated is at 39% and creeps along with each day infractions. With this current vaccination, Tennessee will never reach herd immunity level before the virus has so many new variants that new shots have to be developed and rolled out. My corner of this world is one full of proudly ignorant hogs. I grew up around them, and now at 40, I can finally see with clear eyes how utterly rotten they are.
More information is also coming out about long haul COVID, with news that some have lost gray matter leading to memory issues. Parts of the brain affected are associated with the senses, emotion, and memory. This is why survival rates aren’t the end-all, be-all for me. Just getting sick with COVID can leave you disabled for the rest of your life. I guess at some point, Americans will be so broken down and weakened because of their own actions that it will make the country easy for China or some other world power to sweep in and take over. When the military can’t remember how to repair or operate their equipment, it will be hard to defeat the enemy.
Biden, Pelosi, and the CDC have allowed the eviction moratorium to end while pointing fingers at each other for the blame. Now millions of Americans are poised to be tossed out on the street while the pandemic still rages. There was a news article out of New Orleans yesterday talking about how the police are making sure they are vaxxed up as they will perform mass evictions. This is the beautiful freedom we want to import to Cuba, I guess? This nation is on the precipice of total societal collapse. Now, the neoliberal powers that work the machine will do everything to patch it up and keep things going, as the poor and the working class are crushed deeper and deeper. They should not be surprised when violent uprisings become widespread and daily. I also wonder at what point will Americans become refugees and start fleeing to the borders? When will the U.S. close the border to people trying to leave? I mean, you can’t let the laboring cogs escape; who will do all the undesirable labor?
Dark days are ahead for America, and I hope to watch it all from a distance. I keep reiterating that there is no perfect place in this world, but many places are better than the United States.
PopCult Reviews 