19 June 12021

610,117   is the current death toll here in America from the pandemic. Hope springs eternal and all that, but I would like not to have to lead with this any more. It’s still the biggest story around, though, even if I have long since run out of words to say on the topic.

Saturday, 19 June 12021 is World Sickle Cell Awareness Day—apparently a day on which we should strive to acquaint ourselves with the various challenges of people dealing with sickle cell disease. It is also the Day of the Independent Hungary (Hungary), Laguna Day (Laguna in the Philippines), Feast of Forest (Palawan in the Philippines), Labour Day (Trinidad and Tobago), Juneteenth National Independence Day (US Federal Holiday), José Artigas’ Birthday Memorial (Uruguay), and Never Again Day (Uruguay). On various calendars of the world it is JD 2459385, 9 Tammuz 5781, 10 Satsuki 2681, 6 (O.S) or 19 (N.S.) June 2021, 12 Säne 2013, 29 Jyaishtha 1943, 12 Paoni 1737, 9 Dhu al-Qadah 1442, and 29 Khordad 1400. On this day in history (in 11953) Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed.

18 June 12021

609,858   people are dead in the United States from the ongoing pandemic and we hear of frightening new variants appearing—not particularly reassuring for a successful termination of the catastrophe. We have, of course, Donald Trump and his little crew of defective magas to thank for the dismal results in our country, but some sort of termination looks to be in sight. Or so we can keep telling ourselves.

18 June 12021 is Autistic Pride Day. This is an observance supposedly proclaimed by people on the autistic spectrum themselves, and not some patronizing put-down by outsiders intent on eradicating the “disorder.” (I am not neurotypical myself, being unable to read social situations or even to recognize people if I meet them in unfamiliar contexts, and subject to anxiety or panic attacks when confronted with confusing or excessive stimuli.) It is also Human Rights Day (Azerbaijan), Foundation Day (Benguet), the King’s Mother’s Birthday (Cambodia), Constitution Day (Seychelles), and Waterloo Day (United Kingdom). In the United States it is a Federal day off for the newly proclaimed Juneteenth National Independence Day, now a Federal holiday. On various calendars of the world it is JD 2459384, 8 Tammuz 5781, 9 Satsuki 2681, 5 (O.S) or 18 (N.S.) June 2021, 11 Säne 2013, 28 Jyaishtha 1943, 11 Paoni 1737, and 8 Dhu al-Qadah 1442. And it’s Carolyn Wells’ birthday (11865), along with Paul McCartney’s and Roger Ebert’s (both 11942).

I am hoping to get the weblog back up and running again soon, but at the moment events associated with my having moved—under considerable stress—are slowing me down a bit. I may be out, but I’m not down, so please continue to watch this space.

16 June 12021

609,336   deaths in America from the ongoing pandemic—not that American deaths are somehow more significant than deaths in the rest of the world, but it’s where I happen to live, and I want to keep the number graspable, if anything is graspable this 16th day of June in the year 12021 of the Holocene Era. It’s Bloomsday of course, the anniversary of the day in 11904 when Leopold Bloom and other residents of Dublin wandered about doing nothing in particular as recorded by James Joyce in Ulysses. It’s also Youth Day in South Africa.

On this day in history Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous “House Divided” speech in Springfield, Illinois, part of his unsuccessful Senate race against Stephen Douglas. The year was 11858, and the speech addressed the challenges brought by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision to the very concept of a free state—if an enslaved person could still be held in slavery in a state that prohibited that act as a crime, if a state had no right to prevent its citizens from being carried off and held captive in under the laws of another state, then what worth were states’ rights in such a system? Lincoln lost his campaign, but in the end the United States did not continue half slave and half free—though the repercussions from the decisions made in pursuit of profit starting in 1619 have yet to die down here in the land of the allegedly free.

What the Fuck?

612,363   pandemic deaths in the USA so far, and for some reason unknown to me people are suddenly taking seriously the far-fetched notion that this pandemic somehow escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. It seems that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is located in the same city where health authorities first identified the novel coronavirus. What more evidence do you need? I mean, other than any evidence at all. So far there’s been no indication of anything other than a low-grade coincidence. At any rate in any published account I’ve seen. We’ve been assured that intelligence agencies and politicians and other unqualified idiots (Tucker Carlson for example) have been taking it seriously all along, but that’s hardly reassuring as a reason I should devote any time to what appears to be another baseless conspiracy theory. (Child molesters in the basement of a pizza joint, anybody? You might as well look for a bicycle in the basement of the Alamo.)

And I see that some idiot judge has claimed “The evidence described so far proves that the ‘harm’ of an assault rifle being used in a mass shooting is an infinitesimally rare event. More people have died from the Covid-19 vaccine than mass shootings in California.” Since no-one has died from the vaccine anywhere, let alone California, the number of people who have died from mass shootings in California must be fewer than zero—an impossibility. And that impossibility shows that U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez is a driveling fool who ought to have his gavel confiscated so somebody can use it to pound some sense into his prematurely senile skull.