The Plague House

 Charlie Pierce hands his joint over to an ER doc in the middle west who tells us of how the modern peasantry is dealing with the infection of the modern Great Plague:

"Had several people come in with symptoms or just to be tested. Mostly younger than 40. Of course zero vaccinations, and when I asked why, I don’t get the “cause the internet, cause screw the libs, I think it’s dangerous” excuses. I don’t get any excuses at all. They just shrug their shoulders and say they didn’t need it. It’s just part of their psyche now. Sun rises in the east, Jesus will return to judge the quick and the dead, you just don’t get vaccinated."

Now. I get that these people didn't come up with this weapons-grade stupid all by their ownselves. Every talking head they listen to, from fucking Trump all the way down to skeevy broadcast pimps like Tucker Carlson, is filling their fat heads with this "you just don't get vaccinated" nonsense.

But I'm a right bastard and a member of the polio-and-smallpox generations. You have a pathogen? You get fucking vaccinated. Not for yourself alone, but because you live in a society, in a community, in a nation, and you owe all of them a duty not to be a completely selfish asshole.

So I am utterly done with these people. I have no pity. I have no mercy left in me. Having - as a 63-year-old at high risk of bad outcomes if infected - lived for a year under the shadow of this damn plague I am perfectly fine condemning them to death now that there is a light that lifts that shadow and these ignorant people refuse to step out into it.

They want to respond to a plague like 15th Century peasants? 

Fine. They get 15th Century "treatment", then.

Put them on the death cart back to whatever shit-hovel they inhabit. Toss them inside. Nail the doors and windows shut and mark them with the red cross of Infection. Post the guards to shoot them if they try to emerge or shoot anyone who tries to free them.

And then let the disease take them.

Whoever remains alive in the month after the infection has run its course?

May be allowed to creep out into the daylight again to be reviled and cursed as the dangerous fools they are.

Damn these people, and damn the political party that is fostering them.

Techbros

My iPhone does this thing where if I respond immediately to an email it refuses to copy the earlier emails in the thread into the reply. 

 

I have to open the email, close, reopen, then wait a bit and then it’ll copy. 

 

My boss gets fussy every time it fails to do this, like today.

My Boss: Why don’t you copy all the earlier emails when you reply? It makes it hard to follow the conversation.

Me: (explains about the iPhone thing)...so when I’m doing four things at once, like today (hint) and don’t have time to be patient and wait, you don’t get the other stuff.’

MB: Well, it’s very distracting.

Me: Why? How hard is it to remember what you read two minutes earlier?

MB: Why doesn’t it just do it automatically?

Me: Because I am it’s bitch and every so often it has to prove it to me.

MB:

Me:

MB: Just do the thing that makes it copy, okay?

Me: What fun is that? Okay, fine. You useta be a lot more fun when you were just project level.

 

A Week of Solitude

 Last Sunday evening I picked up the rest of the family at Portland Airport.

The Bride and kiddos had been visiting the grands in Massachusetts, making the week-long "duty visit" that grandparents require every so often.

FWIW, it was reported to have been dreary but tolerable except for the weather, baking and humid the first part of the week, cold and raining the second.

Everyone was tired and bored and happy to be home.

Within a day everyone was also happily back in their respective ruts; The Bride on her paddleboard on the Willamette, the Boy in his headset in front of his gaming computer, the Girl with her trowel in the garden.

Me, looking over what had been a quiet house now full of not just them but all their stuff.

I missed them when they were gone. 

The house was desperately quiet and more than a little lonely without them. I got up alone, went to work, came home alone. Cooked a solitary dinner, read or watched the television, played with or was tolerated by the cats. 

Went to bed alone in the silent dark house.

I was like being a childless widower, and that wasn't a comforting thought. 

Now they're home, though...I remember all the things I liked about it.

The principal one being the tidiness.

I'm not obsessively cleanly, but I retain a pretty strong sense of military order. I like things to be clean and stowed neatly where they belong. During the previous week the kitchen was spotless, the bathroom clean, the floors swept, the counters and table empty.

Suddenly there was people's stuff everywhere. The Girl, who - although I'm the primary cook - likes to make her peculiar spicy versions of whatever food is in the house, has put the paprika on the over-the-stove shelf where it doesn't belong and has left dirty dishes in the sink (my particular button-pusher...). The Boy has dumped his laundry on his floor again and who the hell left the goddamn paper scraps on the bathroom floor?

At least my Bride is as neat as I am, so there's that.

I love them dearly.

I just wish that life with them wasn't so...messy.

Which is kind of a good metaphor for Life in general, isn't it.

Well. I've gotta go do the dishes, so here's a cat.

Aww. Isn't that...hey. Wait.

Okay. That's a good kitty. That's...hey, wait!

Ack!