Welcome to the Race

Over these past many years I've grown so accustomed to living in Fuckup Nation, it took me far longer than it should've to realize: by world-vaccination-rate standards, we're actually doing something right for a change!

I currently live in Georgia, one of the less-impressive U.S. states where vaccination rates are concerned, but a couple weeks ago they dropped the minimum-age-eligibility requirement from 55 down to 16, so I got my first dose of the Moderna vaccine today, plus an appointment for my second shot in four weeks. For comparison, I have a friend in British Columbia (a male friend, which means I literally, genuinely have a boy friend who is completely real but you've never met him, because he lives in Canada) who does not yet qualify for a shot in his province even though he's 70 -- at his age, if he lived in my neighborhood he'd already have had both of his shots by now.

I've been extra-lucky: not only did I get an appointment relatively soon after qualifying, but mine was scheduled at a Walmart only a couple of miles from my house (I know of people who had to drive up to 200 miles to get a shot). When I got there I only had to wait a minute or two for the pharmacist to return from a brief break and then he saw to me immediately; when he determined I was there for dose #1 he greeted me with the words "Welcome to the race!" (presumably the race to reach herd immunity before the virus inevitably evolves into even-nastier strains).

Important Cultural Issue: What Do Middle-Aged White People Think of Lil Nas X?

Between my age and my “whiter than mayo on Wonderbread” status, it's a safe bet I'd never have heard of, let alone watched, Lil Nas X's latest video if not for the conservative freakout over it. If you haven't seen it, here's what happens: it starts with Nas in the Garden of Eden, innocently playing a [very catchy] song when suddenly, Satan/the Serpent shows up, leading directly to the first time in human history that a gay man had gay sex. Nas climbs on a stripper pole and does some genuinely impressive routines while riding the pole all the way down to hell.

I don't fully understand why conservatives are so opposed to such a perfect encapsulation of what they call “wholesome family values” – gays are of the devil, they are all damned, and the highway to hell is lined with stripper poles – but honesty compels me to admit: Nas worked that pole far better than I could at his age, and I'm only slightly mollified by the thought “Yeah, well, when I was his age I didn't have a six-figure choreography budget and another six figures' worth of CGI enhancement, either.”

Anniversary

This is the one-year anniversary of the day Covid Changed Everything, where Jeff and I were personally concerned. Or, to put it another way: exactly one year ago was the last time Jeff and I left home for what we thought would be a typical forgettable afternoon running pre-covid errands -- though before we'd finished we knew otherwise. Our plan was: first, go to Target (the nearest one is a bit of a haul, from our place); next, visit a couple of thrift stores in Target's general neighborhood; lastly, go to Kroger for the week's grocery run. 

The visit to Target was exactly normal, except we both noticed and exclaimed over how the paper-products aisle was completely empty. (Luckily, we didn't need anything from that aisle anyway.) Then we stopped at a Goodwill and both walked away empty-handed -- but as we exited the store, Jeff checked something on his phone, then told me "DeKalb [our county] just closed the schools for two weeks."

Because of that announcement, I wasn't too surprised when we got to Kroger (which is also the "anchor store" of a fairly large strip mall) and saw that almost every spot in the strip-mall parking lot was taken -- before that, I'd never seen the lot more than half-full even on the eve of Thanksgiving and other "mega-grocery-shopping" days. 

Now, after a year of living in corona-world, if we saw such a parking lot we would immediately turn around and go home. But on March 12, 2020, what we did instead was find a vacant spot in the Siberia part of the lot and go inside the store, which was so crowded, the checkout lines stretched from the cashier's stands all the way to the back of the store, before doubling up upon themselves. (I know this because Jeff and I entered that densely crowded building and personally inspected the size of the crowd and those lines -- another thing we would never do now even with masks on, let alone bare-faced as we were one year ago tonight.)

When did everything change for you, and what was your personal first indication that "From here on through the indefinite future, things are going to be VERY different?"

Pandemic Diary Day 363: Vaccine Envy

 

Hmmph. Harrumph. More and more of my friends are getting their coronavirus vaccine shots, or at least have firm appointments to do so, while I don't have so much as an EMA (estimated month of arrival). 

 

Fortunately, I found an article mentioning lots of useful new German vocabulary words to describe my situation:

 

I am currently feeling** a bit of impfneid, especially since I'm still facing a long wait as a resident of Georgia with no conditions and no plans to become an impfdrängler. But I am definitely coronamüde, especially since I am currently only two days away from my one-year anniversary of living in an anderthalbmetergesellschaft.

 

(Translation: I am currently feeling** a bit of vaccine envy, especially since I'm still facing a long wait as a resident of Georgia with no conditions and no plans to play the system and jump ahead of my government-designated spot in line. But I am definitely tired of dealing with coronavirus-related stuff, especially since I am currently only two days away from my one-year anniversary of living in a 'one and a half meter' society where everybody who goes out in public makes a point of avoiding each other by a social-distancing measure of at least six feet.)

 

** I would like to have worded that first sentence "Despite my feeling happy for my friends who have gotten their shots, I am currently feeling a bit of...." But I didn't because, if German does have a new compound word to succinctly describe "the feeling of being happy for someone specifically because they got their coronavirus shot, even while you wish you could get one too" none of the articles I've read on the theme "Interesting new German words from the past year" have mentioned it.

If I could run the Seuss estate, I'd do it well! I'd be real great!

The controversy du jour is about the Dr. Seuss estate's decision to pull six books from print because of certain racist caricatures found in some of the illustrations. Despite what certain conservative critics claim, this is not a “First Amendment violation” because it's not the government doing it; the Seuss estate has every legal right to decide what, if anything, it will do with works whose copyright they own.

That said: if I ran the Seuss estate then, instead of pulling those six books from circulation, I'd publish them all together in a single volume, alongside commentary from historians and other experts putting the books into historical context. If that weren't enough, I'd also share the profits of that omnibus edition with reputable anti-racism charities.

How can future generations learn the lessons of our history if we whitewash away all the bad parts of it? People of the future need to know: American racism wasn't just something hidden away in the darker corners of the national psyche -- it was considered wholesome enough for children's books and Disney cartoons (such as "Song of the South," another classic I think should remain in print, alongside modern context-giving commentary).

I have similar qualms about the suggestion to digitally remove Donald Trump from that Home Alone movie he was in -- no, don't do it. Future generations need to know: Trump didn't just come out of nowhere -- one day the U.S. Republican Party was perfectly competent and sane, when suddenly a spray-tanned orange asteroid crashed down from out of nowhere and left a smoking crater where once stood a principled political party -- Trump became president after the media spent literal decades building him up as some business-genius folk hero (and the Republicans spent decades pandering to bigots, but that's for another day). We need to preserve these parts of our history, so future generations will know what to avoid.