Going to Disney World with the kids was definitely something that was going to be inevitable, given its place as far as mythical wife and I are concerned. A wedding in central Florida where the wife was to be one of the bridesmaids accelerated the trip, and no matter how ready or not we were, the time had arrived to take the girls down to Orlando for a lengthy trip that was chock full of memories, lessons, trials and tribulations, as far as I was concerned.
Tag: coronavirus
“Ready to fight” doesn’t quite describe bringing MMA gloves to a courtroom
I don’t really have much to say about the situation in Taiwan, or have any inkling of an idea of how coronavirus response has been. But when my friends showed me this story, the photo alone was most definitely worth a thousand words.
I guess there’s some nationalist party out in Taiwan who is less than satisfied with how the democratic party of the country has been handling the coronavirus, so they felt that their only appropriate course of action at this point, was to start a melee in the courtroom.
Sure, there’s all sorts of pacifist belief that violence doesn’t solve anything, and I could make all sorts of smarmy jokes about the level of civility that exists coming out of Taiwan, but let’s just skip to the part where one woman showed up to the courtroom, equipped in straight up MMA gloves.
Not only did she roll up to the courtroom ready to fight, she wanted optimal protection for her hands, so she could try and deliver haymakers without risking breaking any fingers or knuckles in the process.
It’s almost as if there might be belief that Taiwanese law might be like Final Fight, where defeating the opposing parties in hand-to-hand combat means your party takes over, no questions asked. And those who show up ready to fight stand a better chance at possibly taking power, than those who didn’t come to work with their own MMA gloves.
556 days later
I went into the office for the first time since March 16, 2020. I know this to be true, because the desk calendar of daily dad jokes that I have, that’s the last date that was shown, and my my morning routine typically consisted of setting my coffee down, tearing away the prior day’s dad joke, turning it into a paper ninja star, and putting it into the spindle lid, as shown above.
The thing is, I left on the 16th with no intention of returning to the office for a while, because it was not long after the birth of #1, and I was going to flex some work from home in order to best be available as brand new parents. Sure, I had an inkling of the news rapidly spreading around the world about how coronavirus was ravaging China, and initially finding their way stateside, but little did myself or anyone else really know or understand that the office was on the verge of indefinite closure on this particular day.
By the end of the week, the building was vastly shut down on account of the rapid spread of coronavirus throughout the country, and businesses and offices all across the world were doing the same thing. In between learning how to be a dad for the first time, and trying to keep up with the new rhythm of the work day, I had to sign off and fill in numerous requisition forms for my reports to be taking their physical iMacs home with them, so that they could embark on the new world of working from home.
Frankly, this is no new story for just about anyone with an office job, and I’m stopping myself from reminiscing too much, because I’m trying to remind myself that I’ve got many other retroactive topics I want to brog about and a very finite amount of time in which I can do such.
Regardless, the plant pictured to the right, now that was one of the few things that actually worried about, at the office, when the world shut down. It was but just a small succulent that was given to all employees at the door in promotion to spread awareness of the arrival of spring, and seeing as how I have a window cube, it was quite easy for me to put it on the sill, and see how long it would take before I would invariably end up neglecting it and it dying.
But succulents are some tough motherfuckers, and it persisted all through occasional watering droughts, time off, my wedding and honeymoon, and not only survived, but thrived. What started out as a little nugget of a plant branched out into these lengthy, snakey vines, and to where I eventually put a little bit of effort into its general growth and development, like the tape-rubberband combo to help it stretch out and sun.
However, as pandemics do, 500+ days is too much to ask of any plant, and when I popped into the office for the first time in 556 days, the anticipation of what I’d see from my little succulent was answered, in a reddish, dead husk of a succulent, almost frozen in time, by virtue of never being molested at all during that stretch.
And with my biggest curiosity answered, I finished up doing what I came to the office for in the first place: removing all of my personal effects in an attempt to low-key clean out my desk, because I have no intention of ever coming back to this office again in my life, if things go my way.
But as many of my peers and co-workers have said to me, it was as they described – it was almost as if the entire floor were frozen in time, as if the calendar never moved on from March 16, 2020. Calendars all around the floor were still in March, name plates of numerous people who have moved out or moved on are still in place, and lord only knows what’s living in the break room fridge at this point, but it was an interesting field trip all the same, and I’m glad that all my personal shit is out of there, but sad all the same, to see the fate of my determined little succulent friend.
RE: A pandemic Dragon*Con
Over the weekend, I observed over social media as people converged on Atlanta over Labor Day weekend for Dragon*Con. Obviously, my complicated relationship with the con and cons in general notwithstanding, I’m happy for the people who still get tremendous amounts of enjoyment them, and I’m a little envious that they’re able to get to a place where they can, because I sure as shit couldn’t seem to anymore.
Regardless, I couldn’t help but observe with, for lack of a better term, fascination at the fact that it was still going on. Last time I checked, the world is still very much in a pandemic, coronavirus is never going to go away, and even in spite of people getting vaccinated, there are still hundreds of thousands of people in the world, hidden in plain sight, that are among us, unvaccinated, uninterested in getting vaccinated, and content with being vulnerable and spreading sickness. And contrary to the belief that all Dragon*Con-going geeks are all liberal vaxxers, there are obviously going to many among the throngs of people attending the con, who aren’t, whom might be carrying, and whom could be the ones to turn the whole thing into a giant tragic superspreader event.
Anyway, throughout the weekend, I’d see various people doing the usual spiel of posting their photos, be it of themselves in costume, drunk selfies, the usual humblebragging of I’m here you’re not, and all sorts of glimpses of what’s going on downtown. And depending on the source would determine just how many masks were seen, or not seen, and I have a hard time wondering what I found more sad: all the people running around the convention without masks, or all the people with them, having to add them to their costumes, preferring to look a little out of place, but considerate to the health of others.
Like I’d see pictures of Starlight from The Boys wearing a mask, or Batman wearing a mask over the cowl, obscuring 100% of skin at that point, and I’m thinking, kind of weird, but at least they’re taking health rules as serious as voluntarily going to an event that draws well into the tens of thousands.
But then I’m seeing photos of people in room parties where nobody’s wearing a mask, or the usual mish-mash of humanity that all conglomerates at the Marriott or the Hilton, and my skin is crawling at the idea of so much regurgitated air being cycled among people, potentially spreading disease.
But that’s just the shit going on through my head. Obviously, I wouldn’t have gone to the convention even if there were no pandemic, but there’s absolutely no way in hell that I would have gone, even if I were still gung-ho about conventions. All the same, I still hope all of the friends of mine who went still had good times, and are hopefully healthy and symptom free in the weeks after the con. If conventions drove me away without a pandemic, who knows if and when I’ll ever get back into them in the future again.
I hope the afterlife is ready to get their asses destroyed
By now, I would wager that just about everyone has someone they can name off the top of their heads as someone whom they think has been the greatest casualty of the coronavirus. Whether it’s a family member, or family of a friend, or a friend of family, a celebrity, regional personality, or what not, at this point it’s probably not a stretch for people to be able to have been affected to some degree of sadness at the death or someone they cared about.
For me, short of anyone in my family, the news of the passing of actor and martial arts legend, Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba is without question, the one death that stands out above all others in my personal little world, and it upset me tremendously to have learned of the passing of this icon.
At 82 years old, it’s not like he hasn’t lived a full and fruitful life in his own right, but the fact that he passed due to pneumonia associated with coronavirus says to me that he still died in a pointless, unfortunate and completely avoidable manner. I won’t sugarcoat the disappointment that I felt to learn that he also wasn’t vaccinated, but given his age, I’m hoping he was more of the type to be concerned over a vaccine of such nature to a person of his age, versus someone who was just anti-vax, and flat out refused it, but this is something that I guess we’ll never know.
I don’t even really know where to go with the rest of this post. I wanted to make sure that even in spite of my complete lack of any time to do any writing, that when I started writing this, I wanted to be clear headed, and relatively available to gather my thoughts and write, because most anyone who knows me probably knows that I’ve always been a die-hard Sonny Chiba fan, and that I saw him as more than a martial artist and an actor, and more like an icon and a personal hero, that started kind of as a joke, but really grew into something genuine and meaningful.
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The world will one day drown in cardboard
Every other Sunday, I spend an inordinate amount of time outside with a box cutter, slashing up cardboard boxes as if I were plotting to hijack an airplane. This is an activity that I have grown quite exhausted with, and every other Sunday, I curse my waste management company for being greedy pricks who have handcuffed my general area with a monopoly of the waste disposal everywhere.
Seriously, they’ve literally purchased all of their competitors, and regardless of the fact that there are waste bins with three different companies, it turns out that they’re all owned by the monopoly and it’s just more cost efficient to let all the other-brand bins remain as-is. I know, because I’ve reached out to these other companies to seek an alternative waste provider, only to be told this.
The monopoly has grown complacent and lazy with their service, and used coronavirus as an excuse to curb their recycling pickup to every other week, citing safety for their workers or some other bullshit, but really it’s probably to reduce overhead and maximize profits, especially considering the reduction in service seemed to coincide with an increase of cost.
As it is, every two weeks, my household has the capability to generate an absurd amount of cardboard that needs to be recycled, because we do pretty much all of our shopping online, and we’re purchasing a ton of shit because we’ve got a second kid on the way. Needless to say, without any sort of actual physical effort involved, the amount of cardboard we typically amass is usually impossible to be securely placed inside of the pedestrian 96-gallon waste bin provided by our waste management company.
So every two weeks, when I’m in the driveway cutting boxes down to more compactable chunks, all I can think is that the world is destined to drown in cardboard, because of all the online shopping that is done these days. And as convenient as Amazon is, they’re the ones probably leading the forefront of this inevitable destiny, and I can’t imagine that no matter the claims of recycled materials or environmentally-friendly initiatives, I’m dubious that the recycling of all this cardboard can keep up with the demand for shipping boxes, and that the world is really headed for a future where we’ll drown in all this brown corrugated shit.
Given the endless escalation of Amazon Prime, and online shopping, I would wager that I am the only household that generates ridiculous amounts of cardboard on a regular basis, and it’s simply a game of basic math; all the households that generate tons of cardboard every single week, versus the time and resources it takes to break down, sort and actually recycle all this shit, and we’re all on borrowed time.
Unless someone invents a way to turn all this cardboard into masses of land to plop into the water like the landfills in Sim City, I do think that if coronavirus doesn’t kill us, overpopulation doesn’t kill us, climate change doesn’t kill us, then drowning in cardboard probably stands a chance to land on the endless list of things that will one day overrun the earth.
Not entirely sure what’s worse
White people during the pandemic, or white people amidst the “end” of the pandemic?
Serious question. Because at least during the pandemic, when you saw white people* running around maskless, it was pretty clear where they stood – deniers, racists, idiots, or all of the above, and it was nice to have a defined line to know when to stay the fuck away from people.
*or anyone for that matter, it just so happens to be that the vast majority of anti-maskers in America just so happen to be white
But now that a whopping like 23%** of the country has been vaccinated, all across America white people* have been whipping off their masks and running around maskless and arrogant and thinking they’re invulnerable as if it were 2019 all over again. Suddenly, the clear distinctions between unvaccinated idiots and the vaccinated are completely gone, and especially considering at the time I’m writing this, those under the age of 12 are still ineligible for vaccination, that terrifies the ever-living shit out of me knowing that people are all over the place unknowingly potentially spreading coronavirus everywhere.
**not willing to try to find an accurate number
I ran some errands the other day; a trip to the inside of a bank, followed by a trip to the grocery store. Sure, they’re two incidents that has formulated this entire overarching statement, but what the fuck ever; the conclusion on from such a brief outing was sufficient enough for me to determine that white people simply cannot wear masks. A cursory Google search when I got back to my computer reveals a gabillion hits, with among them studies like this that all but confirm the assumption.
At the bank, there mercifully were not a lot of people inside when I went, but two white males and one white female were the only people there without masks on. Everyone else there, who were minorities of various ethnicities were wearing masks.
When I went to the grocery store next, ironically the only white people I saw that were actually wearing masks were an elderly couple; color me surprised. But literally every single other white person in the store, and even a surprising amount of store employees, the white ones naturally, were now sans-masks. This isn’t to say that I didn’t see a few people of color not wearing masks, but it goes without question that the overwhelming majority of no-maskers now are unmistakably white.
I mean already, not a day goes by where I don’t opine my disgust and disappointment in America, but this gradual increasing of people arrogantly throwing their masks away most certainly doesn’t help changing my opinions. Coronavirus is most definitely not gone, and as I’ve stated before, I have no intention of going maskless in public until like 2024, and if white people don’t get their fucking arrogance in check, it might end up stretching out until 2026 at this rate.
One, I have a child and soon children, under 12 years of age, and I’m sure the vaccination age will continue to drop as time passes, but I’m still not willing to put myself in harm’s way which would put them in harm’s way by running around maskless just because it’s occasionally uncomfortable, my glasses fog up, I don’t like the smell of my own breath or the occasional break out. I mean seriously, if those are the inconveniences I have to put up with in order to help keep the human fucking race safer, then my god, burn all these fucking masks.
But two, being Asian, in a country where anti-Asian sentiment is bubbling up, it doesn’t seem like a good idea for me to run around without a mask and potentially feed some over-armed Georgia redneck that I’m a Chinese carrier here to spread coronavirus or anything. I haven’t personally experienced overt blatant racism in a while, but I don’t want to reset that clock any time soon unless it came by some Fortune 100 company whom I could then sue and get Oprahrich but that’ll probably never happen.
Getting back to the original query though, frankly, I think things are worse right now, with white people arrogantly ditching their masks, regardless of their state of vaccination. Because it’s allowing the anti-vaxxing morons to blend in in plain sight among those that are vaccinated, because the vaxxed that have been vaccinated are simply too selfish and unconcerned about their fellow man, were too inconvenienced to continue to wear masks, that they’ve basically become just like their anti-vaxxed brethren.