La Boîteuse

One week post-op 2, and it's about like you'd expect. I'm tired and achy, my legs hurt, and to make them "not-hurt" in the future I have to make them hurt worse now - my physical therapy involves forcing joints that are a mess of scar tissue and damaged tendons and tendon sheaths to move through that damaged material, which, obviously, they don't want to. 

It's about as much fun as you'd think. Here's a post-exercise icing session to give you an idea.

Anyway, they're coming along. More slowly than I'd like, but not as slowly as possible, so things cold be worse.

So that's what I'm doing; resting, exercising, resting again, reading, watching television. I'm still in the post-op "not feeling well" phase, so my appetite is poor and I'm too shaky to do much cooking, so I'm kind of at the mercy of my Bride ("If you wait long enough they'll just eat cereal...") so the mess hall has been kind of...iffy.

You'd think this would be opportune for binging TV series, and it is. The weird part of that is the only things I've found to binge are a couple of wuxia series (well, one wuxia and one wuxia-adjacent-sorta show). My favorite is something called My Heroic Husband, a 2019 production from the PRC.

It's pure fluff; a romantic comedy set in some sort of generic medieval-Chinese period. Our hero, the husband of the title, gets time-swapped into the body of a "matrilocal" marriage victim - apparently this means that the husband, instead of being properly Confucian and patriarchal, is a sort of trophy-husband to a more socially powerful wife.

Our boy Ning Yi awakes to find that his knowledge of the 20th Century is intact but he's supposed to be an appendage to Su Ta'ner, his cloth-merchant bride. She, in turn, is vying with her male relatives (as well as her male competitors) to make the Su family store the biggest deal in Jiangning.

So the story consists of our hero using his modern business savvy to McGyver his way out of whatever trouble the various rivals try and engineer for the Su clan. Which he always does and in so doing is winning the genuine affection of his wife (who originally agrees to take him on only until she wins the family business).

The two leads have a genuinely sweet and funny chemistry, the plots are goofy and entertaining, and the heroic husband is proving to be a solid lead character.

The story is taking a much more serious turn, though. Suddenly events outside Jiangning are intruding; the state of Wu our heroes inhabit is nervously eyeing events to the north, where one of the other two major powers looks to be conquering the other. When Jing gets done with Liang it seems inevitable that it will look south hungrily, and the last episode involved some sort of tricky political gimmick where rival players at the court of Wu came looking for "tribute cloth" to send to Jing, and it looks like our gang might be tossed into politics like it or not. We'll see.

I'm all in, anyway.

Speaking of politics (and by the way of political/medical stuff...)

One thing this rehab has given me lots of time for is observing the state of our Union, and, frankly, I'm even more depressed than usual. I mean...look at this fucking idiotic thing.

Of all the fucking weapons-grade stupid ideas...the horse paste is a vermicide. COVID-19 is a respiratory pathogen. You can't fucking treat respiratory illness with a medication designed to kill intestinal worms. Period. There's no physically possible means that the one will interact with the other in any meaningful way. It's like treating a bump on the head by applying skin cream to your foot.

But this is where the GQP is now.

What's frankly terrifying is that this has gone beyond just the "own the libs" contrarianism. This is a full on cult. This is impervious to argument, debate, or reason. To paraphrase Voltaire, whoever can make you believe that a horse de-wormer can treat a respiratory pathogen can make you commit fascism.

Look at the reaction to the equally ridiculous Arizona Cyber Ninja scam.

Having proven to be nothing like an actual "audit", this joke took months and millions only to end up with what we knew almost a year ago; that the Maricopa County voting was perfectly legit and reported correctly.

You'd think that, having had about ten "recounts" by now including this nonsense that ended up in the exact same place, that everyone would throw up their hands and say "Well, okay, there it is."

No.

The wingnuts are still roaring about fraud and preparing to steal the election in 2024. The Trumpkins still insist their bloated nitwit won. Even after all the proof. Even after all the facts.

Roughly a third of the U.S. public is not going to be persuadable by any normal means that anything other than a Trump win is possible.

That's...not workable any more than using horse paste to treat COVID.

And I don't see any way to get back to sanity by somehow managing to brain-wipe that rogue 30% short of bloodshed.

Well...shit.

Anyway, I'm going to get back to my exercises and my heroic husband and try not to borrow trouble. 

I have an unpleasant suspicion that trouble will be coming along all by itself.

Acting 1SG Lawes reads the morning formation announcements

Comp-ney, Atten-shun!

At ease.

Okay just one thing today, so listen up.

Had a chat with Chief Schrum down at the TMC today. Based on this I understand that there's a hard nut of you GI Joe Real American heroes that have been passing on this Plague vaccination. 

Chief says that y'all got a shit-ton of reasons why y'all ain't gonna get a teeny-weeny little prick and no, Private Black, that is not a personal observation and I see no reason for you to give me that look. You and me, after this formation.

Notregardless, here's the straight dope, gentlemen.

There's a minefield out there.

Now on the one hand, seeing as you know that said minefield is out there but have no way of telling where it is, or how fucked up it is, or whether or when one or more of you might wander into it, you can do it one way. Let's call it...let's see...oh, yeah, let's call it the "Dumb Fucking Way".

You can just bumblefuck around until you get into it.

And once therein you will discover you have fucked around and found out. Some of you will wander out again just fine. 

Some of you won't.

Or.

There's another way. Let's call this one the "Let's Not Just Wander Into The Fucking Minefield" way.

You can accept the issue of things that will give you a better chance in case you find yourselfs in the minefield. Things like this little paper mask thing that makes you look all sexy like the girls in the Candy Striper movie that I found S&T Platoon watching on the dayroom TV again having already reminded you that said TV is in a location accessible to family members including minor dependents and their mommies and no, Specialist Gutierrez, "that's how you make children" is not sufficient justification for the three days of phone calls I got after that particular incident thankyewverymuch.

You can get the vaccination which is kind of like those big ol' EOD suits that keep you from being blown into small independent republics if the mine does go off.

These fucking things are there not just to help you but to help the people around you who can't use them, like little kiddos and your aged granny who's on chemo for the third time because she's hooked on Swisher Sweets.

And here's the thing.

Knowing all this, if you refuse to take advantage of all these useful items and get stuck in the minefield, hopefully it will not surprise you if those of the rest of us who have are a trifle unsympathetic to your ass. 

"Freedom", gentlemen, is not "license". "Freedom" is a combination of rights and responsibilities that we as citizens agree to in order to form a more perfect fucking union.

You do not have the freedom to go prancing out into the minefield and bring back a mine to the mess hall which reminds me to discuss that stuff you had the utter gall enough to describe as "vegetarian lasagne", Mess Section, at some point between now and dinner chow.

So quit dicking around, people. Get the goddamn shot.

Because ain't nobody here going into the minefield after you if you don't.

Any questions?

I didn't think so.

Comp-ney, Atten-shun!

Platoon sergeants, take charge.

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.

Just as I was about to step off into the minefield...

 ...looks like I might be getting a mine-plow;

Here's the sad part.

This was a mistake on the part of the Oregon Health Authority.

Despite my age, and my position as the Designated Geezer in a house with two kids in public school, I was not "eligible" per the Oregon vaccination schedule to get my Anti-COVID Armor until late-mid-April. Despite a fair sized chunk of the Oregon public, like the rest of the country, being unwilling to even GET this goddamn shot. Despite the simple epidemiological reality that the single best way to beat this bug is to get as many needles in as many arms as fast as possible...I should have been shit out of luck.

But.

The OHA has, at least, been willing to honor it's fuckup and not shot-block those of us who jumped on the chance to schedule this thing.

So...