Guns

Last week, a gunman here in Atlanta killed 8 people, including six women of Asian descent.

This week, a gunman walked into a Colorado supermarket. Ten dead.

Will America do something about it?  Is it finally time to pass common-sense gun laws supported by 4 out of 5 Americans?

No.  Nothing will be done.  After Sandy Hook in 2012, when a gunman killed 26 people in an elementary school, including 20 children between six and seven years old, we proved that we won't take responsibility for our actions no matter how drastic the consequences.

We're well past the point of accountability.  We like our guns, and we don't care how many people have to die to allow us to keep them.

Re-Entry, Part II

After 9 months of retirement, followed by a full year of pandemic isolation, I'm still trying to adjust to the new, New Normal.  I'm now fully vaccinated, for whatever that's worth - it certainly doesn't mean that I'm free to live like I did back in the carefree summer of 2019.

I'm still trying to figure out what I can and can't do and what I'm comfortable and uncomfortable with doing.  But today was a mini-breakthrough - even though it's not yet Taco Tuesday, I went out today and picked up some take-out tacos at a nearby taqueria, my first restaurant-prepared meal in over a year.  

Hankook is a Korean barbeque taqueria, and I got three sweet-and-spicy fried-fish tacos - think Chinese sweet-and-sour chicken, but with fried fish instead of chicken.  It was delicious.

That's one small step for introverted urban monks and one giant step for, well, that's one small step for me.

I bought this record sometime around 1977 or '78 while I was a college student, based on John Cage's reputation and Brian  Eno's involvement with the project.  I was not disappointed.

All Day, composed by Jan Steele, features Fred Frith and Stuart Jones on guitar, Steve Beresford on bass, Phil Buckle on percussion, Kevin Edwards on vibraphone, and the voice of Janet Sherbourne. Lyrics are by James Joyce.

Sunset on Mars

We live in a time when photographs like this are possible. What a world!

It's Been A Year

Posting on this blog on March 13 last year, I wrote:

I'm pretty well stocked on food and groceries, but I still need kitty litter and cat food in case we get locked down by the authorities.  I thought I'd be smart this morning and hit the supermarket early to avoid the crowds stocking up for the weekend.  I was wrong - at 10:30, the parking lot was near capacity and the store was packed.  The entire toilet paper aisle was completely empty, there was no ground beef or other meat in the coolers, the soap and disinfectant shelves were pretty thoroughly picked through, and there was no more water.  

Even worse, everyone was in panic mode, rudely cutting each other off along the aisles as if they were on a Black Friday shopping spree and this was the last Walmart on earth.  

I also noted that the so-called "president" gave  a speech about the coronavirus earlier that week, and the stock market responded with the biggest collapse since the crash of 1987.  He was scheduled to speak again later that  afternoon, and I shuddered to think what might come in the aftermath of a address on a Friday the 13th.

"This will all be over in a few weeks and we’ll come out of this a better, stronger country, I believe," I optimistically declared a few days later. "That which does not kill you makes you stronger, etc., plus as a nation I think a little adversity will do us good. Remind us of our own mortality, so that we can appreciate life a little more while we still have it." Poor, naïve thing that I was.  

Our new president is saying that with a little cooperation from the public, life could finally return to normal or something like normal by July 4, 2021, some 16 months after it had all begun.  Let's hope that prediction ages better than my March 2020 "a few more weeks" forecast did.

Coulrophobia (Fear of Clowns)

Thanks and a tip of the hat to Michael Gira for making me aware of this.

Quelle Cinéma

Expose Yourself To Art!

 

Cyberpunk

 

According to my Steam statistics, I have now played more hours of Cyberpunk 2077 (427.5 hours) than Assassin's Creed Odyssey (344 hours), Skyrim (308 hours), or The Witcher III (273 hours).  The only games with more hours at this point is Fallout 4 (639.5 hours).

The Fallout record is likely to stand, as I'm now near my third full playthrough of Cyberpunk, and don't know if I have it in me to play a fourth, or another 212 hours of Cyberpunk.  It's getting near time to move on to another game. 

Still, that's not a bad record for a game that's been so widely reviled and dismissed by critics and players alike.  Pro tip: the game's not nearly as bad as the press makes it out to be.  In fact, it's quite good.

Here are some random screen shots of various scenes from the game:

Re-Entry

"There are no rules."  That's the mantra that's pretty much gotten me through the past 12 months.

I saw it on line - I   don't recall if it was a meme or a text post; I don't recall if it was Facebook or Instagram or Reddit.  But the point of the message was that this pandemic, with its lockdown, social distancing, and work from home, is difficult enough for everyone without some random rules about how you're supposed to survive imposed on you by others.

Stay up until 3 am and then sleep until noon?  It's alright - there are no rules on waking/sleeping hours during a pandemic.  Eat the same dish three days in a row?  It's up to you - there are no rules.  Some people spent their time redecorating their homes and finally tackling those long-delayed home-improvement projects; others didn't do anything remotely like that and instead spent all their time online and playing video games.  Either way, it's alright - there is no right way or wrong way to pass the time during a pandemic, as there are no rules.

"Whatever gets you through the night, it's alright," John Lennon once sang, and the same is true for the pandemic - whatever gets you through the long days of isolation, it's alright.  There are no rules. Meditation or masturbation - it's up to you.  Booze binging or sobriety - your choice. Netflix or book reading - there are no rules.

We aren't through the pandemic yet, but the outlook is quite good right now and the end is in sight.  I've already been fully vaccinated - two injections of the Moderna vaccine - and I wryly noticed that I got my second injection before Dolly Parton got her first, and she's older than me and donated one million of her own dollars toward research for the Moderna vaccine. Nice to see that at least one celebrity didn't jump to the front of the line to get vaccinated, although she probably had a better alibi than almost anyone.

But now that I'm vaccinated, how do I go back to "normal" life?  Do I even remember what "normal" was?  I had retired a mere nine months before the quarantines started and was still adjusting to my own personal new normal, and then suddenly had a newer new normal to which to adjust.

I know that despite the vaccine, I'm still capable of potentially spreading the virus to others, so I still wear a mask when out in public, but that was never a big issue to me.  But I used to try to minimize the number of times I went out grocery shopping and tried to buy two to three weeks worth of provisions each time I went out, and then go without some supplies as they ran out for as long as possible. But just the other day, when I was out at the store, it dawned on me that I didn't have to buy everything right now.  I could just buy what I needed and come back later as it suited my needs.  

Bars and restaurants are still mostly only offering take-out service, so going out for a post-vaccination celebration isn't really practical.  And of course, we're still many months away from live music, and even further from crowding together in a small sweaty club to hear some new band crank out a set.

I'm glad I'm vaccinated, but I guess what I'm trying to say is I've gotten so used to my newer new normal life as an urban monk, that I've forgotten what it means not to be a hermit anymore.

This is the Atlanta Police Department aerial surveillance footage of the Kroger's Supermarket where I got my covids vaccination.  Footage was shot at 2:00 am Saturday night (technically, early Sunday morning, February 21).   

Drag racing, laying drag, and stunt driving have become prevalent here in Atlanta, and in other cities too from what I understand.  The "fun" starts at around the 3:00-minute mark.

The 22-year-old driver was charged with reckless driving and laying drag, and taken to the Atlanta City Detention Center. His Dodge Charger (it's always a Dodge Charger) was impounded. 

I just like the look and sound of this aerial surveillance.  Police surveillance may be an invasion of privacy and we can have a conversation about its constitutionality, but it does have a pretty cool, retro-futurist, military vibe to it.