Week of 07/13/2020

Asking For A Friend In 2020
– by David Matthews 2

So one of the more annoying digs in social media is the passive-aggressive “Asking for a friend” statement.

You know, when someone asks a question like “Hey 2020, can you just stop finding new ways to torment us every month?”  And then they follow up with “You know... asking for a friend.”

Yeah, we know that you’re not “asking for a friend”.  It’s like that equally passive-aggressive meme that gets dropped that uses the manager from the movie “Office Space” that ends every direction with “that’d be great.” Yeah... it gets annoying after a while.

But, you know, I can understand why people do it.  They want to get their point out there without coming off like complete jackasses – to put it mildly – so they pretend that they’re just relaying what someone else said.  Where I would incorporate “let’s get brutally honest here...” into my rants, they would rather pass things off on a hypothetical friend.

So I decided to drop a few of those passive-aggressive questions on a variety of subjects.  But... let’s get brutally honest here... we all know that the only “friend” I’m asking for is the one in the mirror.  And, you know, he’s more of a frenemy sometimes.

To all the people that throw child-in-Walmart tantrums when they’re told to wear a mask... can you explain to the rest of the world how you don’t have a problem with “no shirt, no shoes, no service” and have your kids go through metal detectors in school and have you wait in long lines at the airport so you can go through metal detectors and have your luggage randomly searched, but you draw the line at putting on any kind of face covering?  Asking for a friend.

To all the people that are piously whining about protesters against police abuses that think those protesters are all welfare recipients, can you keep your class warfare elitist attitudes to yourselves until this COVID pandemic is done and all of the businesses are opened again before writing people off as being “welfare recipients”?  Because it’s hard to tell who is really “on welfare” and who is waiting for those unemployment checks and their “stimulus check” to even show up after several months, never mind being able to work again.  You know, asking for a friend.

Speaking of which, if you think that all protesters that protest in the middle of the day are welfare recipients, can you explain to me how the red-hats screaming at local politicians for cities and states to “open up” are somehow on welfare?  You know, the ones that look like they’ve never missed a meal, never mind a rent payment.  The ones that whine about not being able to get their hair or their mani-pedi done.  And how are those red-hat protesters able to get firearms if they’re “on welfare”?  That always bothers me how certain people on welfare have to jump over hurdles and have every purchase they make micromanaged, but it doesn’t apply to certain other people getting firearms or those who run businesses that still get welfare.  Same friend asking.

To those of you who are having to spend your time at home during this pandemic, can you please stop saying “I don’t know what day of the week it is, time has no meaning”?  You have a computer, a smart TV, a smartphone, and even a smartwatch that tell you what time it is and what day of the week it is.  If you know when reruns of “The Bachelor” and “Hell’s Kitchen” air, then you certainly know what day of the week it is.  Asking for an annoyed friend.

To those of you that think that keeping statues and monuments of Confederate soldiers is about “preserving history”, can you explain to me how we still remember who the leader of Iraq was during Operation Desert Storm and the Iraq War when we destroyed and tore down all of that leader’s statues?  And how did we know who ran Germany during World War II after we blew up all the statues and symbols of that group after Germany surrendered?  Asking for a friend who is a student of history.

To Google and the admins of YouTube, can you please stop putting in propaganda ads for a certain orange-skinned narcissist to articles and videos are carry content critical of said orange-skinned narcissist?  That’s like sandwiching a review for a Ford F-150 with commercials for Toyota.  Or putting an article about Chick-Fil-A between two ads for Popeye’s Chicken.  Asking for a friend sick of the propaganda.

To all the online businesses... if you have a sale running and the items “on sale” are sold out, can you at least stop putting it “on sale”?  If you have a refrigerator “on sale” and it is “sold out”, it’s useless to say it’s “on sale” because you have nothing you can sell, sale or no-sale.  I can offer a lot of things “on sale” that I don’t have, but if I do it, then it’s called fraud.  So wouldn’t that make what you are doing a fraud as well?  Asking for a curious friend.

To the lifestyle news feed people, if you’re going to post an article about an over-thirty celebrity or model looking great in a swimsuit, can you at least show the image in question?  Oh, and wearing a cover-up over said swimwear doesn’t cut it.  Also, can you please explain why this is even worthy of a news feed?  Asking for a male friend sick of the needless crap.

To the online businesses that offer “rewards” programs... can you at least make the rewards worth it?  It’s a little hard to put in the effort to rack up the points only to find there’s nothing worth spending the points on.  Hundreds of dollars spent for a $5 gift card?  A thousand points collected for a digital wallpaper?  What’s the use of doing it if you have nothing worth me getting?  Asking for a friend that is a little pissed off.

Finally, to the bureaucrats and politicians that want to follow a certain orange-skinned narcissist’s directive to open the schools and restart professional sports regardless of the viral outbreak still going on, can you at least not make such grandiose announcements on the same day that you’re posting record levels of infections and deaths?  At this point, you’re pretty much the crew of the Titanic that spent their time as the ship sank rearranging the deck chairs.  Asking for a friend sick of the death cult crap.  You know, if you could, like, not be so eager for people to get painfully sick and die... yeah, that’d be great.

Week of 07/06/2020

COVID Resurgence: This One is on Us
– by David Matthews 2

As of this article’s posting, it is the start of July, 2020.  And while most of the world is getting better and slowly reopening from the COVID-19 global pandemic, the United States is doing the opposite. 

We are posting record numbers of infections in all the states that were quick to open up to appease a certain orange-skinned narcissist.  Record deaths will most likely follow.  It does take time for the virus to wreak total havoc on the body, even with drugs and ventilators.  Meanwhile hospitals in America are again swamped with new patients and resources already stretched thin are pretty much gone.

And, you know what?  This is all on us.  I mean, we, the people of the United States of America.  We only have ourselves to blame for this viral resurgence that makes us the embarrassment of the world community.

The two things I keep hearing from people is that their plans will vary “depending on what the virus will do”, and that we re-opened up for business “way too soon”.

Both statements are bunk.

First of all, the coronavirus will “do” nothing to make things better or worse.  The COVID-19 virus is a very simple thing.  As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, it has two goals: thrive and multiply.  If it can do the former, it will do the latter automatically.  There is no brain involved with this.  No strategy.  No sinister plot.  It doesn’t pick and choose where it goes or what it does.  It doesn’t care about race or creed or ethnicity or gender or preference or age or political affiliation or religious beliefs or wealth.  It doesn’t care if you’re a celebrity or if you’re some dude that works at McDonald’s.  It will get you all the same.

So it’s not about what “the virus will do”, because the virus will do the same thing it has been doing all this time: thriving and multiplying.  It has always been what *we* will do to respond to it.

As for whether or not America reopened “way too soon”, I have realized that it really does not matter when we decided to reopen the country and get businesses back to work.  It could have been this past May or May of next year, it would not matter in the least.  Because as long as there are people infected, the risk of spreading it would always be there.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: the decision to reopen the businesses depended entirely on us, the people, to wear masks and practice social distancing and to wash our hands.  There is nothing about coming up with a cure or some kind of immunization, because those will take at least a year before any of it can become available to the masses.

And you know what happened once those pandemic restrictions started lifting.  We, the great self-centered self-important self-entitled ignorant lot, carried on as though there was no more coronavirus.  We refused to wear masks, we refused to social distance, we refused to wash our hands.  We went out and we demanded that our world continue like there was no coronavirus. 

Some workplaces even demanded that their employees work without masks and without social distancing or else lose their jobs.  Having to choose between getting infected and possibly dying or being unemployed in the midst of an economic collapse and risking bankruptcy and foreclosure.  Either way, people were endangered.  And all for money.  All for greed!

Granted, it would help if the virus was a little quicker on the attack.  It takes two weeks before we know something is wrong with us and, by then, the damage is already done to ourselves.  That’s two weeks of spreading it to our friends and co-workers and our family members and to anyone else we come in contact with that don’t wear a mask or practice social distancing.  Because they proudly claim - and I have personally heard them claim - “I don’t have the COVID”... until they do.  Yeah, it would help if it attacked sooner.  Like instantaneously.  And leave bright purple blotches where people can see them so we know who is infected.  Would be preferable.  Too bad COVID doesn’t work like that.

Let’s get brutally honest here... this is all on us.  Entirely.  America’s fault.  *Our* fault.  The COVID resurgence would not have happened if we continued to do our part and continued to stay home unless necessary and wear masks and carry out social distancing and wash our hands and clean like germophobes. 

Yes, we listened to the wrong people.  We listened to an orange-skinned narcissist who spent half the time proclaiming that the pandemic was a “hoax” and claiming that it would soon just “disappear” and the other half of the time pretending that it’s over with and he’s the “wartime savior” of America and the explosive recovery is right around the bend.  We listened to ignorant ass-kissing governors who wanted to appease said orange-skinned narcissist and put businesses over people.  We listened to the propaganda of talk radio and certain cable TV channels that pretend to be “news” as they regurgitated the delusions of said orange-skinned narcissist and his proclamations that the pandemic was “a hoax” and that it would just “disappear” and that it was no worse than the flu and that the “recovery” was on the way.  And then we listened to our friends and total strangers about how it’s all a “hoax” and that it would just “disappear” and that we shouldn’t be forced to wear masks.

But it is still on us.  All of it.  On us.  We had one job: stay safe.  We’re failing that.  We’re getting infected.  We’re getting sick.  We’re dying.  From the co-worker at your workplace all the way up to the White House Cabinet and the girlfriend of the narcissist’s oldest son.  That’s our collective fault.

So now we are being told to just deal with it.  We’re not closing.  We’re not shutting down.  We’re not stopping.  We’re not going to get a break or a bailout.  This is it.  It’s here.  Live with it.

And, again, that’s on us. Not China or any other nation.  All on us.

We have a choice, people.  We can either mask up and practice social distancing or we can continue to be ignorant self-entitled idiots and throw temper tantrums like spoiled children and continue to spread the virus amongst ourselves.  The longer we chose to act like children, the longer this will go on.  And that, too, is on us.