Category: 2020

Paper or Plastic?

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Quirky. That’s the first word that comes to mind. Or maybe genuine, if I really think about it. You were always the one who started the conversation when “paper or plastic” was an option. I never knew your name, only your face. Gifted at polite conversation with each guest while the cashier rang up each item, streaming products toward you for bagging. I last saw you last month. You were wearing your mask, of course, and I could tell, in your eyes, you were smiling. You made the day better.

When I entered the store that day, I was anything but happy. I saw a woman in a puffy orange coat in the first aisle, not wearing a mask. Assuming it was an honest oversight, I politely reminded her she had forgotten it. She looked at me and said she hadn’t forgotten it, and she was “all set.” Not at all surprised, given the “politicization of mask-wearing” but disgusted by her response, I said, “Fuck you,” and turned toward the next aisle, adding, “Asshole,” as I turned. Tired of being one of the few to follow the rules, you know, adhering to the arrows at the beginning and end of each aisle, and always wearing a mask, I stopped at the front of the store and asked a bored cashier if masks were mandatory. She said, “Mandatory? I’m not sure, let me ask.” She talked to another woman at the front who came over to say that they were mandatory and that when they saw someone without a mask, a manager would tell them to put one on. I told them a woman wearing a puffy orange coat in produce did not have a mask, thanked them, and continued shopping.

Unfortunately, throughout the store, while I dodged (mostly) elderly shoppers oblivious or defiant of the arrows on the floor, I saw the woman in the puffy orange coat shopping without her mask. So much for the manager managing!

But you made the day better with your hidden smile and pleasant conversation. We talked about the Patriots, the recent snowstorm, and how thin the paper bags were. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the woman in the puffy orange coat get in line, two customers behind me.

Today they buried you. A victim of COVID-19. But not really. Yes, the virus is listed on your death certificate, but ignorance and selfishness killed you. The woman in the puffy orange coat is probably still out there shopping without a mask, similar to how the drunk driver survives the accident that kills the family. I’m sorry. I’m angry. And I’m sad.

Vaporware Fraud

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Texas has threatened secession as long as they’ve been part of the Union (both times). They insist they were an independent country anyway (as if they’ve been doing America a favor all these years (at least since their readmission to the Union)), seems to always linger in the back of their mind like Chekov’s gun. Whenever Washington sends money to a state not named Texas for disaster relief or responsible gun legislation is considered, they drag their secession placards out of the closet and begin talking about tyranny. In the past, I’ve offered to help them pack.

The thing is, now they have friends. Many of them. All of them “ReTrumplican” red. The Republican party is dead, corrupted by Trump, and now bearing his name like a failed casino. No longer are they the party of small government or law and order. They are the party of Trump. There is nothing he could do to lose their support.

He lost the election and claimed he won, in a landslide! Climate control and the coronavirus showed us they did not “believe” in science as if science demands their belief. They’ve extended that to no longer believing in facts or numbers. He claims victory because he received more votes (74 million) than any president in history. That’s like saying the Red Sox won because they scored three runs. Competition is defined as a conflict between two combatants. Two! The Red Sox only win if the other team scored less than three runs. They lose if the other team scores more than 3. Biden received 80 million votes. Let me check… quick math… 80 million is more than 74 million, right? To say nothing of the fact that the electoral college determines presidential elections. So, let’s rerun the numbers. 306 is indeed more than 232. Biden won. Saying Trump won doesn’t make it real. It doesn’t change the numbers. And insisting there was fraud without evidence is fantasy. Christopher Hitchens said, “that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”

And that’s what the Supreme Court said, 9-0, yesterday. Notice the score there? 9-0. It’s good that it was unanimous. Had one justice sided with Trump, he would have claimed he won with ONE vote, ignoring the other eight justice’s opinions. And yet, I see he still thinks he won. Logic and fact vaporize. And his acolytes agree.

And now they want to secede to form a new country. What’s the definition of sedition? Treason? A sitting president has sycophants who want to follow him into a civil war. That’s where we are. Unbelievable. A patriot would die for his country but would much rather live for it. These people are neither patriots nor intelligent, and there is no debating them. There is no common ground from which to begin a discussion. When they choose not to accept fact, there can be no debate. They cannot be persuaded by reason when they are strangers to truth and logic. The best we can hope for is to drag them along while education blossoms. President Kennedy’s aphorism, “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Unfortunately, a self-proclaimed billionaire from NYC claimed to speak for the rural and uneducated, and they believe him. Now they think they are due a victory in the absence of fact because Trump told them so.

American Hubris

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My anger right now is so intense I can taste it. I can taste it! According to science, that probably means I don’t have COVID-19. That’s the good news. The bad news is that over 250,000 Americans are dead, and almost 12 million Americans have the virus. Why? Why is America being hit so hard by this virus compared to the rest of the world? Short answer: American hubris.

Here’s the even shorter answer. We’re stupid. Collectively, we’re so damn stupid we can’t be trusted to do what’s in our own best interest. Because FREEDOM!

Someone, and I can’t find the source, said, “Insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibilities isn’t freedom. It’s adolescence.” But that selfish, entitled, truncated version of “freedom” is America now. We are simply egotistical. We are devoid of responsibility. Especially personal responsibility. “Wearing a mask is a personal choice!” No, it’s not. It’s a common sense, common decency, almost biblical (do unto others) response to a deadly pandemic. But, no, the fake patriot drowns out reason with “I don’t have to wear a mask if I don’t want to.” Stomp your feet and wave your flag, asshole.

Let’s be clear. The house is on fire. Our house is on fire. And it’s killing people because that’s what happens when your house is on fire and 350 million people live inside.

My wedding was scheduled for December 10th. Rather than ignore the fires raging in the kitchen, living room, garage, basement, bedrooms, dining rooms, bathrooms, and porch, we’ve done the responsible thing and canceled it. We’re not alone, and we’re not happy, but we’re doing the right thing to protect those we love. We did everything right and still have to cancel because those who’ve built their homes atop Dunning-Kruger’s Mount Stupid can’t be bothered to do the right thing. In short, America got bored with doing the right thing. Nobody told the virus. And now there will be no wedding reception. Thanks, you selfish twits.

The part that angers me is the fact that it didn’t have to be this way. We know what causes the virus. We know how it is transmitted. But we’re too damn stupid or just so damn arrogant to do what is necessary to save our own lives. How ridiculous does that sound? America seeks to spread democracy throughout the world. Well, the world is watching, and from their less impacted perches, American democracy looks like petulance and hubris in the face of a virus that doesn’t give a shit about our politics or “freedoms.”

So how do we negotiate with someone who doesn’t “believe” in facts or science? You can’t. There is no debate in America anymore. What we call polarization is a breakdown between those that see science and reason as evident and indisputable and those that choose not to “believe” in it. Children believe in the Easter Bunny. Adults are supposed to know better. And science isn’t the Easter Bunny. Science doesn’t ask for or demand your faith. Science is real whether you choose to believe in it or not. Same with the virus.

But here we are, in an America fractured politically. One side is called socialist because they seek equality and justice, science, and reason. The other side is called Republican because millions of uneducated twits and plutocratic Ayn Rand acolytes are convinced that an adolescent, orange narcissist speaks for them. He doesn’t. 

And the virus doesn’t care.

Bulletin from New Washington

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NEW WASHINGTON – Overnight bombing continued in New York City and San Francisco as Day 39 of President Trump’s ongoing purge of “blue” America continued. Following last month’s arrest and detention of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Congressman Adam Schiff, the president shows no sign of pausing the purge or “Red Whitewashing” as he calls it.

Similar to his coronavirus claims that “If you take the blue states out, we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at,” no casualty reports were issued from within any engaged city. Instead, when asked this morning, the president said, “We’re doing very well. One attack helicopter had to make a hard landing following apparent engine trouble, an engine, by the way, that was manufactured in one of the previously, poorly run blue states. Other than that, we can’t manufacture bullets fast enough, despite my authorization of the Red Defense Production Act.”

He further stated, “the stock market is nearing an all-time high, and as of this morning, the LCF (Lives Conversion Factor) is hovering at a number never seen before.” Indeed, at the time of his briefing before OANN and Fox News, each red state death was trading at 6,973 blue state deaths, a high not seen since the opening days of Operation Golden Crimson. Current Pentagon projections estimate that several blue states will, like an overturning iceberg, flip to red within the coming year. If that timeline proves accurate, the president will be poised to win the postponed presidential election with an unprecedented sweep of the revamped Electoral College. This will all but ensure his nomination for a third term even before the New Senate takes up the controversial White House proposal to rename the president’s recognized title from “Mr. President” to “Your High, Golden Wonderfulness.” Another White House proposal remains in limbo, moving the White House to Mar a Lago (New Washington), relocating the Capital to the Russian Embassy, and removing the bald eagle as the national bird in favor of a KFC drumstick.

When asked for comment on the status of the latter proposal, newly appointed Supreme Court Ted Cruz said, “I don’t believe there is any reason… not to allow the proposal to go through. With the other Justices removed… I, as the Supreme Court… whole-heartedly agree with His High, Golden Wonderfulness.”

Similarly, Senate Tsar Lindsey Graham seemed to flip flop on his initial reservations regarding the bald eagle’s removal following a round of presidential golf on Tuesday. Golfing included a KFC luncheon held on the 7th green and a presidential nap on the 13th green. The presidential siesta came complete with My Pillow pillows emblazoned with the new presidential seal (Two crossed drumsticks, one holding a nuclear missile and the other holding a gravy soaked biscuit).

Across town at the Ministry of Truth, Tsar Marco Rubio quoted an unrelated Bible verse when asked about recent, underground science and facts regarding coronavirus death’s topping 1 million. To clarify, he stated, “Jesus wasn’t taught calculus or medicine, and he is the white man we most seek to emulate. Other than His High, Golden Wonderfulness. Amen and pass the mashed potatoes.” Rubio, whose petition to change his last name to Ruby, per Operation Golden Crimson guidelines, saw his case move closer to Supreme Court Cruz (whose own petition to change his name to Oswald is pending presidential approval). When inadvertently pushed to expand on his remarks by Fox News reporter John Roberts (whose disappearance following the news conference was deemed coincidental to his line of questioning, Rubio replied, “Take him, dear Lord, take him.” It was not lost on this reporter that Rubio’s top security man is named Deerloard.

No living Democrats could be located for comment, and no Republicans could locate their vertebral column.

How?

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How is it okay that the president knew about the severity of the virus and said nothing?

How is it okay that 190,000 Americans are dead because the president hid the truth?

How is it okay that people died because Republican state governors took their lead from a lying White House?

How is it okay that the president called the virus a Democrat hoax?

How is it okay that people die because some don’t wear a mask, just like the president?

How is he not legally culpable for the deaths of thousands of Americans?

How is this not illegal?

How is this not premeditated?

How is this not malice aforethought times thousands of deaths?

How is this not reckless criminal homicide/manslaughter time thousands of deaths?

How is this not depraved-heart murder times thousands?

How is this not reckless endangerment times thousands?

How is any of this okay?

How is it okay that elected Republicans never seem to have ever seen a Trump Tweet or will never hear the interviews with Bob Woodward?

How is it okay that the only loquacious Republican is a “formerly elected” Republican?

How is it okay that evangelicals follow Donald Trump?

How is it okay that uneducated whites follow “billionaire” Donald Trump?

How is it okay that the DOJ will now defend someone who was a private citizen from a ’90’s rape charge?

How is it okay that I have to pay for it?

How is it okay that the president denigrates the military as “suckers” and “losers?”

How is it okay that the president allows Russia to put bounties on soldier’s heads with impunity?

How is it okay that the Hatch act now seems quaint?

How is it okay that the president lies? All of the time?

How is it okay that this president has taken our once proud country and dismantled it and reshaped it to his liking?

How is it okay that America now resembles a corrupt plutocracy run by a simple crime family immune to the law and respected conventions?

How can this possibly be a close election?

How?

I’m genuinely confused.

Taking Out the Trash

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For years now, every week I take the trash to the bottom of the driveway my mind begins performing complex combinations and permutations of “if” I’ve set my garbage out correctly for the garbage man. And, more times than not lately, I’ve guessed incorrectly. I lug the uncollected refuse back to the garage turning over and over in my fuming head what I might possibly have done wrong. How did trash pickup become more convoluted than string theory? In fact, it has nothing to do with logic, norms, or guidelines. I’m convinced the garbage man simply decides what trash he deigns to collect and what trash he decides to leave behind.

It serves as the perfect metaphor for America today, where the uneducated run the country, where a president with an eighth grade vocabulary who doesn’t read, speaks for the uneducated white population, the evangelicals (figure that one out), and the boat owning Ayn Randians, where a self-serving millionaire/billionaire is elected to speak for those who went to the “college of hard knocks.” Libertarians unite! Even if he destroys the system you claim you don’t need while you continue to cash the checks.

The bible states, “Blessed are the meek; For they shall inherit the earth.” Somewhere that was bastardized to “the ignorant shall run things now.” Science and logic, facts and reason are passe’. “Manliness”, racism, and “coal rolling” pickup trucks now pass for civilization, and masks are an infringement on individual rights rather than a collective attempt to control a deadly virus. Make America great again, circa 1850.

I’m tired of seeing it play out all day, every day. Every damn day. I’m exhausted. I’m accused of stereotyping people. Guilty. I’m accused of being intolerant of ignorance. I’m not intolerant of ignorance. I’m intolerant of those who choose to remain ignorant but claim knowledge. They’ve built a castle atop Mount Stupid on the Dunning Kruger effect graph from which they now draw pithy conclusions and make the rules. I’m exhausted. Publius has withdrawn and been replaced with Karen.

Election Day is seen by many like me as an opportunity to clean house and take out the trash. Unfortunately, I have no idea if the garbage man will pick it up.

Baseball

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On October 15, 2015, forty-three days after my wife died, I smiled and I cried.


Today, Major League Baseball should be opening its 2020 season. Unfortunately, like life everywhere, it is on hold as the world wobbles off its axis and addresses the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, like now, I am unsure and hesitant, worried about those I love and unsure about the future. Now, like then, I look to baseball to bring structure, excitement, comradery, and normalcy.


Today, MLB.com offered full-length games from its storied past. Without knowing why, I clicked on the American League Division Series Game 5 between the Rangers and Blue Jays. A winner-take-all game, it is better known as the game in which Jose Bautista flipped his bat after homering late in the game.


It started as a great game between pitchers Cole Hamels (Rangers) and Marcus Stroman (Blue Jays). Tied 2-2 going into the seventh inning, Rougned Odor singled for the Rangers and ended up at third after a sacrifice bunt and groundout. After Rangers’ right fielder Shin-Soo Choo took a high pitch, Blue Jays catcher Russell Martin attempted to throw the ball back to pitcher Aaron Sanchez. Unbelievably, the ball hit Shin-Soo Choo’s bat and rolled down the third baseline. Odor took off and easily crossed the plate while the Blue Jays wondered what happened.
After a long conversation between the umpires, Odor was granted home plate as the ball was considered “live.” Needless to say, in a tight game, the Toronto fans erupted in protest. Bottles, cans, and trash were thrown onto the field. Play stopped for what seemed forever. After such a close game, I, too, was upset to see a team lose a playoff series in such a meaningless manner. After failing to save my wife from the relentless attack of cancer, my sense of life’s unfairness seemed to distill itself into this moment. I was incensed. What happened next, through baseball, I still can’t properly process.


In the bottom of the seventh inning, through a series of errors that almost made me believe in (at least a baseball) god and righting the wrong from the previous half-inning, Jose Bautista stepped to the plate. With the fans (and me) standing and on a 1-1 count, pitcher Eric Dyson threw a meatball that righted my world. The monster blast that Bautista hit into the upper deck released every pent up emotion I had no way of handling following my wife’s death 43 days earlier.


With my children back at school, finishing their senior year at the University of Texas at Austin, I was living alone at home with my dying dog who would not see Opening Day the following season. My days at work were blue and my lonely nights and weekends utter blackness. Fortunate enough to have cable and splurging on the MLB package, baseball was my roommate, the television conversation.


To have the game I love bring a sense of fairness, where doing the right thing is rewarded in positive results, meant the world to me. To see the Blue Jays (and Bautista) win the game and set straight a correct but unnatural technicality somehow made me weep as if I had beaten cancer for my wife (or was even a Blue Jays fan). I watched that game today and realized how soon after my wife’s death that game took place and how much it meant to me then and why.


That day, baseball showed me a flicker of fairness. That day, Bautista did something I could not. That day, baseball brought me back.

When it is safe, baseball will bring us back again.

United Prime

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January 1, 2021

Houston – Today marks the beginning of a new era in flight at United Airlines! Gone is the short-lived Basic Economy, lasting less than one year despite being a favorite of company travel departments everywhere. Basic Economy offered a non-refundable ticket, no online check-in, no carry-on (other than a regulation sized candy bar), and the benefit of being the last passenger allowed onboard prior to departure. Replacing Basic Economy is the new, highly vaunted United Prime.

Taking its cues from Amazon Prime, United Prime is a new vision of commercial flight offering two distinct new ways to fly. The first, and most affordable option, is United Prime Corrugated. This option requires passengers to purchase (at a small additional fee of $89) a packing box large enough for one “average” adult and their luggage (providing the passenger’s luggage does not exceed the size or weight of a photo ID). Sealed at the United customer service counter, the box is weighed before being forwarded to the baggage area for “seating” assignment in the cargo hold. Boxes weighing more than 125 lbs. will be subject to a convenience fee of $18.95 per pound over the allotted 125 lbs. To better optimize the guest experience, check-in has also been eliminated, along with seats, lavatories, and pretzels. Rewards points can still be exchanged for air holes.

Star Alliance members will have the opportunity to upgrade to United Prime Corrugated Plus+ for an additional $75. This option offers passengers the option of a brand-new, responsibly sourced packing box with a professionally embossed United logo, an additional 5 lbs. of allotted weight (including the weight of the box), and the option of a new, crew member-installed catheter. In case of emergency mid-flight, this premium packing box has even been classified for use as a coffin, though the user warranty warns that travelers assume all risk for any “surprise cremation” sustained in a crash.

An aggressive advertising campaign is launching to accompany these new options. The media blitz has already featured celebrity endorsements ranging from Captain Chesley Burnett “Sully” Sullenberger to Big Bird, who was used to demonstrate the competitively priced “child crates” United is hoping to roll out sometime later this year. Gone is the dated Gershwin penned Rhapsody in Blue, replaced instead with the hip Alice in Chains classic Man in the Box. The riff kicks in just as the ads fade out and the viewer is saluted by a digitally resurrected Paul Tibbets. United Prime Corrugated and United Prime Corrugated Plus+ are both available now on all domestic and international flights. Other airlines are expected to unveil similar options in the coming weeks.

Despite its recent launch, United is already looking beyond the Prime Corrugated lines. Although they remain unconfirmed, the long-rumored and highly secretive United Drone (reserved for long haul flights) and United Cannonball (for shorter service flights) projects are thought to be well past the development stages and possibly conducting trials at undisclosed locations in the Houston area.

Not without its technical challenges, United Drone has already been linked to several recent accidents. In May, a driver on Interstate 45 near Kingwood was involuntarily man slaughtered when a box bearing a United logo and filled with clay hit his pickup truck. The story was initially misreported as having been “a joke gone bad” after responding officers identified the man’s artfully entombed head as a sculpture. Coroners and lawyers would later announce that the package “transitioned” through the man’s windshield before “opening in an operationally unintended manner” and killing him instantly. Entitled “Ode to Traffic,” the sculpture was eventually moved to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts in October of 2020.

In a possibly related case earlier last year, a cat was killed when another responsibly sourced packing box seemingly fell from the sky in a neighborhood just north of George Bush International Airport (home of United Airlines Research and Development). In both cases, witnesses claimed to have seen drones flying in the area emblazoned with the familiar United tagline, “Fly the Friendly Skies” on their sides, only to see them quickly disappear before authorities could investigate. Local authorities have not responded to a request for comment on the incident, though a veterinarian presented with crime scene photos declared it unlikely that “poor diet” was to blame for the Chernobyl ash shadow imprinted on the sidewalk.

So too has the United Cannonball project been plagued by setbacks. According to a United engineer who spoke to me under the condition of anonymity, one recent Cannon prototype exploded with a test dummy still inside it. The follow-up model, which was specially calibrated to transport valued passengers up to nineteen miles in the direction of their final destination, instead fired a test passenger eighteen feet into the side of a lunch trunk parked in front of the testing facility. The engineer was pushed into early retirement after he attempted to revive the test passenger, whose body was discovered just this past week with a professionally embossed logo on his forehead. It is with both optimism and dismay that I add that the passenger’s final resting place, or “destination,” was a dumpster just over seventeen miles from the United Airlines Research and Development facility.

This story is still being developed. Please return here for occasional updates.