Because One Day I'll Leave You
​​​​​​​A Phantom To Lead You

Fan(s?) of nerdsholmferret crosswords will recognize the first one, which I answered with glee.  Do not get me started on "Rick Pitino" or "Malcolm Gladwell", which I nearly answered, with gnashing of teeth.

In the movie "Better Off Dead", Johnny the paperboy repeatedly demands what quantity of money?

What Paul Simon song starts with "When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all" ?

What movie features this quote:  "We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back to see how far they've come" ?

What 18th century Prussian monarch composed flute sonatas and corresponded with Voltaire about philosophy, in addition to waging wars of conquest?

Remember that you are dust, and also these bits of trivia:

This science-fictional character had the prime directives "Serve the public trust.  Protect the innocent.  Uphold the law."

This capital city has an unofficial slogan urging its inhabitants to keep it weird.

This politician appeared in a short film depicting his 1896 Republican nomination for the presidency.

Portrayed by Frank Langella, Adam Sandler, and Nicholas Cage, this is the most portrayed literary character.

Today I decided to stop using the name of the chain that operates the 24hr pharmacy in my neighborhood, the one that operates the overwhelming fraction of the pharmacies that serve the entire metropolitan area in which the city where I live is located.

Henceforth, I shall not call it “Walgreens” and it shall be known to me going forward as The Prison Commissary.

Please make a note of it.

I have scheduled a measles booster for Monday (after confirming with Mom that I had only a single measles vaccine in 1972). It would be so stupid to die or even be sickened by a 20th Century disease. It would be even more stupid to find next month that I can't get vaccines because health insurance no longer has to—or is forbidden from—cover  it. Or hospitals and their associated primary care clinics will have funding withheld if they offer them so they've stopped. Or that there simply are no vaccines available because their development manufacture has been suspended in the U.S. or decimated because there's no funding and everyone's been fired.

If you think those scenarios are impossible—or even unlikely—you lack necessary critical thinking skills or have completely buried your head in the sand.

I am so angry about this for several reasons. But I'm going to focus on just one of those reasons for a moment: the small-scale economic devastation of failing to control preventable illness through vaccines and public health investment.

In early March 2020, when the COVID pandemic was just a rumor, Spouse was already 100% remote at his job, and my job had no in-office requirement, except for meetings. Spouse and I  had flown home from Tahoe over the weekend and I was in my office for a staff meeting that Monday the 2nd. At the staff meeting, I told my boss that on the advice of my father-in-law, I was going to stay at home as much as possible for a little while and would not be coming into the office at all if he was okay with that. 

Friday that week, I was supposed to meet Mom & Sister at the Art Institute, but we canceled. I went to the LBTQ Giving Circle fundraiser at Beauty Bar that Friday anyway and stopped in at the Pop Up Karaoke show down the block. But I felt weird and went home early. That was the last time I went out for a long time.

 I don't know if it was Pop Up's last show, but it had to be close to it because Illinois closed bars and restaurants for dining-in on the 15th and closed schools on March 17. 

March 17th was the day Illinois recorded its first official death—although the first reported case in Chicago was in January. The first person-to-person transmission in the US was also in Chicago, on January 30. The first recorded death in the U.S. was on February 6 in San Jose, California (a death in Kirkland, Washington on February 29 was originally identified as the first U.S. COVID-related death).

At any rate, this was early March before people really began reacting with alarm.  But it was not a big deal for me to just stay home, work from my personal laptop, cut back on the social activities for a while. I had no idea how disconnected and devastating the next year would be, but the disruption to my income, to my career, to the work-a-day lives in my household was nearly imperceptible, starting from that first casual comment to my boss that I was going to work exclusively from home for a while.

My job has never returned to in-office work, except for occasional meetings or voluntary in-office days. 

So what does this have to do with the measles booster I'm getting on Monday? And with my anger at the right-wing lunatics running the government who have canceled planning for seasonal vaccines?

I have a lot of friends who are service industry and hospitality professionals. People who manage restaurants or bars; who handle events at hotels; who run or provide the entertainment at venues (the karaoke, the live lit, the cabaret); who tend bar; who emcee. When they can't go to work, they don't earn income. They lose clients. They lose their jobs. And when they can go back to work? Those clients are not still there.

When mass-scale illness prevents them from working, their present livelihoods, as well as their futures, disappear. Their careers suffer and they may never recover.

It's not just that the next pandemic, which is likely coming, will devastate them, ordinary flu season threatens them. If they can't vaccinate themselves, they are at risk. If their audiences and patrons can't vaccinate themselves. the patrons  either stay home, reducing incomes, or they come anyway and make everyone sick. Either way, the people who work to keep the venues open and interesting are the ones who suffer both immediate income loss and diminished income potential. Bars, restaurants, clubs are still broken from the last time. What will the next time do to them? 

And it's so unnecessary.

What is the intent of withholding ordinary effective seasonal vaccines from the general population? I have my opinions on that, but my opinions on intent are unimportant because where intent is unproven, impact is not. We have seen what uncontrolled, easily spread illness does to the livelihoods and lives of businesses and business people who can't just work from home. I have seen what it did to friends and colleagues.

More than merely unnecessary to expect them to bear those risks, it's immoral. It's cruel. But it's also profoundly stupid, It's policy designed by a person without any concept of how businesses work, much less how societies, economies and governments do. 

I am so angry at this.

So I'm getting a measles booster because I can control that. Just like I got a pneumonia vaccine last month. And my Covid and flu shots every year. As long as they remain available, I'll get them. And when my insurance company stops paying for them, I can probably afford to keep up with them.

And I will because the only truth I know is: none of us is responsible only for ourself.

.

Don’t be fooled by Lutheran intellectuals who nail inflammatory manifestos to the church doors about “freedom” and “equality” and “social justice” while their entire personal lifestyle management system depends totally on the patronage of the feudal noble classes. Unless you want your corpses hung up in cages from posts outside city hall, and replaced with sculptures of your corpses hanging in cages when the originals wear out and the example they set must be kept around for several more centuries. If that’s what you want, then good luck storming the castle, fellas.

I am grateful for the oppportunity to do trivia nights, and tonight was another fun one.  We had a guest emcee who played a pleasing (to me) playlist of Billy Joel and Simon & Garfunkel.  It didn't hurt that My Favorite Team has continued its winning ways!

On November 17, 1968 an NFL game between the Jets and the Raiders was interrupted by this scheduled made-for-TV movie.

This 1962 children's picture book by Ezra Jack Keats features an African-American boy enjoying wintry activities.

The franking privilege permits members of Congress to do what?

A major U.S. airport is named for this aviator who was the Navy's first fighter ace of World War II.

One of the moments in Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis where I had an epiphany was when he talks about how you can know you are talking to somebody whose brain has been captured completely by the cloud feudalists: they talk about things like Amazon, for example, like those platforms are The Market, and when you point out that Amazon is nothing like an actual market, and it is in fact the opposite of The Market, they get mad at you and refuse to consider it even possible that you’re not some kind of dangerous loon.

This is the cultural hegemony that we are pressed most urgently to overthrow.

After several auditions as a substitute, I was formally inducted into a trivia team tonight, and we won a runaway victory.  I'm sure the emcee was gratified to announce "My Favorite Team are the winners with 108 points."  Memorable questions included:

Better known by this pen name, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson​​​​​​​ published his most famous children's novel in 1865.

This desert covers parts of Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa.

After Pac-Man and Space Invaders, the second installment of this martial arts arcade game is the third highest-grossing arcade game of all time.

This Dallas-based department store chain founded in 1907 is known for its Christmas catalog with outlandish gifts.