a humorous pause before impending doom

[mellowtigger]

People at work were taking plants home from the office today, like they were expecting not to return for a month. I wondered why everyone was in such a panic. I stopped after work at a nearby brewery to get their discounted 3-for-2 pricing on crowlers to put in my refrigerator. Another patron asked why it was so empty and quiet there today. The bartenders said it was because the news all day had been terrible. I went from there to the local Aldi (cheap grocery) store.  The parking lot was nearly full, even on a Thursday evening. This photo shows the shelf where they usually have paper towels and toilet paper.

I got home from work and scanned the headlines. Wow. Maybe it's time for one of those beers and a few jokes to lighten the mood.

1. It's weird that people keep stockpiling toilet paper, when they should be buying condoms. If the USA goes on mandatory lockdown for 2-4 weeks, does anybody else expect a spike of births in 9 months?  Okay, maybe, maybe not.


2. All these companies expecting people to work from home across the whole USA at the same time are going to be in for a surprise.  You're there at home, repeatedly dropping out of teleconference sessions that worked fine last month, because your neighbors now are all watching watching Netflix and YouTube on 4K televisions, using up bandwidth on the home neighborhood networks.  Monopolies and their lack of infrastructure investment.  Gotta love it.  I mean, what else can we possibly do? 


3. It's weird that Trump prohibited incoming travel from Europe when the USA is already 8th internationally for COVID-19 cases.  We're barely even testing for the virus, and we're still 8th.  If guesses are right, we're actually #1 internationally, including China itself.  Maybe everyone else should ban incoming travel from the USA.  Ha ha.  That's funny because Trump's an idiot, and he's our president.  The joke is on us, and about 2% of infected Americans will die.

I'll write a serious post tomorrow, something about concrete steps to take that will actually help in this ongoing epidemic.  For now, I'll crack open one of those crowlers and chill in front of the tv for a while.  Doom can wait.