Hey! Did ya hear about the dead guy they pulled out of the harbor? He’d been shot twenty-seven times, hanged, burned, and dragged behind a car before being encased in concrete and tossed in the water. Dr. Fauci said it was the worst case of Corona he’s seen yet...
Ah! It was Sunday morning. Easter Sunday and Tournament Sunday! I woke up happy. Outside the window, the sun was shining and all the little birds and lizards were carrying on as if nothing was amiss. Therefore, I discounted as a bad dream what I thought had befallen me on Saturday.
In my dream, wanting to do a little writing amidst a different setting, I had driven to the local Starbucks. But, it was closed. So, I went to the public library, only to find it also closed. Next, I ventured over to the old cigar shop. It too was closed. I tried the bar. Closed. The other bar. Closed. The gym. Closed. Bookstore. Closed. As I drove around, I noticed that just about every single business was shuttered. There were few souls about. Disheartened as I wondered how any of these essential businesses could possibly survive, I wanted some comfort food. The grocery store was open! But, at the front door, standing beside a roped-off queue, was a manager in a hazmat suit. When I approached, he yelled something about “one more!” into a walkie-talkie. Peering inside, I saw a host of sullen, frightened, mask-wearing zombies shuffling around like cattle while trying to follow arrows taped to the floor. The intercom screeched about “saaaaaaaafety.” I left.
But, it was all a dream, I thought. So, I ate breakfast and headed over to Saint Mary’s for Easter Mass. However, I found the front (and side) doors locked. Posted conspicuously was a sign which informed me that no services would be held “for the duration.” It instructed that none were permitted inside and that I was to “seek shelter immediately,” although I was free to drop a monetary offering through the mail slot. The sign also encouraged me to join, via the fake reality of television, “pope” Bergoglio for a fake mass complete with fake communion.
Desiring something real, something orthodox, I drove down the street to Saint Ignatius Melkite Church. The real deal, I thought! Their door was unlocked, but when I tried to enter, I was met by a Deacon wearing a gas mask. He bore me backward with a Lexan police shield and ordered me off: “Join us on Facebook!” he invited - if one could call it that. I heard the door lock from inside as I staggered sideways toward the street.
Sensing that something was definitely wrong, I decided to try one of the churches in protest. Alas, each - Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopal, even the rock ‘n roll warehouse joint - were closed down. A few allegedly offered something online. All, it seemed, were still willing to accept cash in-person - the cash, but not the person. I’d heard that in other states, they were arresting and hunting Christians (well, the few they could find anymore) so I assumed this absence was defensive if overly reactionary. But downtown, I finally found a working preacher, or what I mistook for one. It turned out he was just a crazy homeless character, ranting away on a corner. His “sermon” centered around little green men trying to take his bottle. He, too, was accepting of fiscal donation.
I took matters into my own hands and simply said a prayer. As if in answer, the notion came immediately to my brain that I could head to the National and get a better parking space. I knew that I couldn’t purchase a beer until after noontime, but I figured I could watch practice chips and wander through the gift shop while I waited. So, off I went, excitedly wondering if Tiger could pull it off again.
It was eerie. The only traffic I passed, coming off the Calhoun Expressway onto Washington Road, was a tumbleweed. I indeed found the very best parking space, the one immediately adjacent to the main patron gate. It was me and me alone in the vast, grassy parking lot under the pines. And, like the churches, the gate was closed and locked. I was reading a sign that said something about “try us in November, if any of us survive,” when a loud, tinny voice spoke from behind at a distance. It was a Sheriff’s deputy barking disjointedly into his car’s loudspeaker. He said something about “shelter in place” or, it might have been “save yourself,” and then he departed at a high rate of speed as if the virus itself was after him.
Bewildered, I went home. After lunch, I decided to put out a few signs of my own. With colorful chalk, uh, donated by the kids next door, I set about leaving inspirational messages on the sidewalk for my fellows. I wrote, “It’s A Hoax!” I was in the process of scribbling out, “COVID is Chinese for Big Lie,” when it started raining. All my work was washed away.
Anthony Fauci is the Chicken Little of epidemiology though I think he actually believes some of his own hysteria. Well, really, he’s a chicken little with the guns of a police state behind him. But anyway, he does bring to mind Mencken’s warning: “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.” You’ve probably thought this through, already, and if so, you’re right. The odds that the government which hasn’t told the truth about anything in 150 years is finally telling the truth about a cold bug are somewhere between zero and absolute zero. They literally label homicide victims, terminal cancer cases, suicides, and heart attacks as Corona “related” deaths. And they still can't get the numbers high enough. Meanwhile, the Monopoly money flows and the economy burns.
Yet and still, for whatever reason, the masses have fallen for the predictable lunacy once again. The elites aren’t just covering for the monetary mess they made; they’re angling for total control of the population. Two hundred years ago, the population would have, by now, strung them all from lampposts. Today, the people play along, even getting ahead of the “leaders” in a mad rush to impose solitary confinement on themselves and to sacrifice any remaining vestiges of liberty.
Mencken, again: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” The man said, “Boo!” so get to clamoring, cattle. As Jerome Adams might say, “do it fo yo pop-pop!” The alert is extreme! See:
Moments before my heat vision incinerated the phone. Picture © by Perrin Lovett.
Patrick Henry said something about forgetting God and forging chains. Sam Adams hoped the chains would set lightly upon the would-be slaves. I’d just as soon see the chains used as whips to drive our “elites” far, far away. (I’ll likely sooner see the green man who stole Preacher’s bottle). So, this is what a late-stage Empire in terminal decline looks like during its very last days. Cool! I’ll have national affairs to write about forever, or until such time as I make like the yinshi.
What’s next? Let’s see… I think I’m first going with the laughable closure of the failed government schools. There’s a lot going on, theoretically, though very little, educationally. There’s the new normal and all the fun it brings. And, will it be Venezuela, Iran, Russia, China, some other innocent target, or a combination thereof? Time will tell and you’ll read it here.
