Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

Thank You For Playing Darwinism, Now Move To The Side As You Die, Please

Take these numbers in.  Roll them around your cerebellum.  Pull out some of that sixth grade math that resides in a dusty box on a rear shelf in your head - next to the crates of old sitcom tunes and commercial jingles - and apply a little "<" and ">" to them.

Currently: 26,448 cases/day
5 days ago: 19,103 cases/day
10 days ago: 13,387 cases/day
15 days ago: 12,474 cases/day
20 days ago: 10,525 cases/day

Notice anything?  

That's right, the number before is greater than the number after, right down the line.  In every single state, COVID cases are surging, aided by an aggressively easy to contract variant and an aggressively belligerent and stupid section of the populace that still refuses to roll up their sleeves.

In Florida alone, home of the governor now nicknamed DeathSantis, this past week Florida accounted for 1 out of every 5 new cases in this country.  A state where it should be spelled goobernatorial given the stroke inducing idiocy of the man in charge.  He is responsible for the 8,225 new Florida cases added in the past 24 hours alone.  He is responsible for the deaths, the fact that his state ranks 26th in terms of vaccination rate in this country.  He is responsible for the cruise industry still suffering, having scuttled their safety plans by implementing a $5,000 fine each time a business asks a customer's vaccine status.

Without exception, every red led state in this nation is sucking hind tit on the vaccine cow - of their own choice.  And their citizens are filling the hospitals accordingly.  I wrote last week that hospitals are again straining under the influx of patients who are 99.7% NOT vaccinated.  

And I have zero sympathy for the COVIDiots.  I am reserving it for the doctors and nurses and custodial workers who staff these hospitals and have to care for people who didn't care for themselves.  So full of their own bullshit, so certain they knew more than the doctors because they read something in a Facebook group led by an anti-vax Karen, and now so frightened by the lack of oxygen their bodies are acquiring - I do not care how frightened they are.  I just don't.

Honestly - if you bleated about it being a hoax or no worse than the flu or any of the garbage your orange hero spewed from his cavern of fetid breath and ignorance; if you refused the chance to receive a free and life saving vaccine; and now if you contract COVID? Sit your ass at home and tough it out. You have zero right to beg for medical care, take up a ventilator, hog the precious few lungs that come available for transplant, or to risk infecting anyone else.  

Hardcore?  Yes.  Heartless?  Now, yes.  They have been begged with, pleaded with for over a year.  Rational thought, discussion, dialogue, FACTS have been tried to woo them to see the light (and not the one Trump suggested be shoved up their asses).  They had their chance.  CHANCES.

They had their CHANCES.  Months of them.  They have had access to the same information, death count, precautions, experts as the rest of us.  The difference is they were more interested in their own hubris, bullshit, and watching so many of us beseech them to hold up their part of the social contract.  The Fuck Your Feelings crowd deserves to have that same mantra shoved back in their wheezing faces.

I am especially galled by the ones who flouted the precautions, laughed at the vaccine, caught COVID, sucked up precious resources as they were transported to MULTIPLE hospitals for months, and were then put at the front of the transplant line for lungs.  Lungs that others have waited for.  Lungs that others who took every precaution for, whether because of their own diseases or illnesses, or because of COVID, and then watched as a COVIDiot leapfrogged the line.

It is infuriating.

Just today, as the Delta variant is cutting an ever bigger swath through the populace, places like the Bay Area, Las Vegas, Los Angeles county are reinstating their mask mandates.  Mask mandates that never should have been loosened, much less canceled.  When the CDC declared a month ago that fully vaccinated people could remove their masks, but that unvaccinated people should continue to wear theirs, any thinking person kept theirs on.  Anyone with a shred of rational thought in their head knew that the least reliable sources of honesty and probity are the unvaccinated who LOVED the mask mandates being removed.

And in a country that still has no true way to confirm a COVID vaccination status, I trust no one out in public.  My mask stays put.

This never should have been political.  EVER.  But we were saddled with Trump.  And to borrow from Ryan Bernardoni in his brilliant description of Ted Cruz - I now extend it to describe that flaccid, bloated orange corpse:  Trump is 500 rats inside a person suit and each rat is 50 cockroaches inside a rat suit.

Because of that oozing lesion on the body politic, nothing was taken seriously, his slack jawed followers embraced his carefree approach about COVID, and now nearly 625,000 people are dead, with far more on the way to the graveyards.  Because of him, because of them, we could likely be heading back to shutdowns, an ailing economy, an uncertain future.  ALL PREVENTABLE.

There just is no excuse.  We have not one, but multiple vaccines available for free.  Countries around the globe stare at us open mouthed, in shock.  They cannot get enough vaccines for their citizens and our citizens are stupidly turning their backs on the opportunity to save their own damned lives.

At this point, my attitude is - FINE.  Do what you will, MAGAts, low iQanoners, and Facebook scholars.  The rest of us will keep our masks on, get boosters if that is what is recommended, and we will continue to live.  You continue to play the Darwinism game.  Just do us a favor and move to the side as you die.  You have been in our way long enough and we have a nation to get back on track.

Update On Coco

As always, I am humbled by the outpouring of support and trust shown by the readers of this blog.  Actually, "readers" just is not the right descriptor.  It feels, as it has for over a decade, that there is a family here.  And as a member of that family, your trust when I reach out for your help in supporting a stranger is one of the great honors of my life.

By the end of the first night I was able to Zelle $500 to Coco's owner to help contribute to the cost of the surgery that was needed.  Any donations that continue to come in will be sent subsequently.

Last night, the long time DGMSer who reached out on behalf of Coco's owner Suzi, provided me with an update for you all.

Coconut was just released from surgery. They did find some additional injury to fat and connective tissue up his whole side and even over the back requiring a drain for full healing, but no major muscle tears, abdominal wounds and no spinal injuries. The surgeon explained "I had to take out a lot of tissue but it was all tissue he doesn't really need." The FHO (femoral head ostectomy) itself was uncomplicated and he is expected to make a full recovery.

I'll be posting another update tomorrow when he comes home and changing the goal from estimate to actual. He's allowed to be moving around the house but not running, jumping or active playing. Wish us luck on that front...

Suzi also explained that another reason they strongly recommended he stay with at the vet while waiting for surgery, other than needing pain management, was that, as long as he was with them, he stayed high in the urgent surgery queue. If he went home, he'd be moved to the regular surgery queue and his surgery would have been delayed 3 or more weeks.

Our beautiful dog, Oreo, had the FHO surgery on both femurs during her life.  While neither was the result of an attack, rather her anatomical make-up that made for severely shallow hip sockets, I can attest that waiting any length of time is pure suffering for the pet.  (In FHO surgery, the head and neck of the femur is removed and the scar tissue that develops creates an artificial "joint" - I was amazed both times at the recovery and mobility Oreo regained post surgery.) So thank you for helping make the operation possible and timely.

I promise to keep you all updated as I hear more from Suzi and Alexandra, who reached out to ask for our help.  

As always, I am eternally grateful to be reminded that the world still has far more good people than bad - the good just work quietly while the bad make all the noise.

Linda

Coco in his kennel at the vet.

A Furry Friend In Need

Funny how things seem to coincide in life.  You think of something random and then suddenly you see it pop up somewhere in your life - a commercial, a note from a friend, a billboard.  The universe is odd that way.  Coincidence?  Serendipity?  Mere happenstance?

As I have been spending much time of late cleaning and packing at my parents' home, and traveling back and forth each day, my mind has had ample time to meander down side roads, off ramps, memory lanes, etc.  This blog was at the fore in my thoughts a couple days ago.  

Writing is what fills my soul.  It also empties my emotions when they threaten to overflow.  For 16 years, this spot has been where I come to purge, share, commune, rail, laugh, and provide help.  The help part evolved as the blog gained new followers who found their way in via a recap, a rant, a link shared between friends.  And it was the helping part that had me thinking back this past week.  Not the Yes, Virginia holiday effort with which most people are now familiar, but the very first time I sat here - three years after the advent of this blog - and reached out on behalf of a DGMS member in need.  Her furry family member actually.  

It was her cat, much loved, that had been attacked by a dog and was needing much in the way of veterinary aid.  The way so many of you rallied and helped save Boo Radley was truly humbling, and when I knew something wonderful was happening in and around this blog - we were not only sharing and laughing with each other, but DGMS was collecting a family of likeminded, openhearted souls.  Through the years since, your donations have helped send kids to college, bought vast amounts of groceries, gifts, beds, coats, comforted our own as they left this world, covered funerary expenses, and yes, helped save even more pets.

Having been thinking about that first time, I felt the universe wink at me when I opened an email last night from a longtime DGMSer.  She was writing on behalf of a friend whose precious puppy had just been attacked by a large dog.  And she was asking if our fund had anything in it to help.

As COVID continues its destructive path through so many lives, our fund has been used to help provide groceries throughout 2020 and 2021.  As such it has been at zero for a while with Rudy and I helping who we can, as we can.

As I am actually home today, I promised I would sit down and put out a call to see if we can help with donations to offset some of the puppies upcoming expenses.

This is the baby.  And this is Coco's story.

On July 9, my son and I were walking our small dog Coconut around our block.  On the doorstep of another house a large black dog was sitting, unleashed and unattended.  He ran across the lawn toward Coco, who was wagging his tail and looking friendly.  The dog lunged at him, grabbed him in his mouth and shook.  As soon as he let go I fell on Coco and scooped him up.  He was barking and in pain.  The black dog also chased another nearby dog, who happily was not caught.  

Coconut sustained a severely broken femur, just at the hip joint where it cannot be securely splinted, as well as comparatively minor puncture wounds.  He needs to be kept in hospital until surgery to repair the joint as they state he is in too much pain to be managed at home.  He'll be there 3 nights, away from his new home, which is adding significantly to the cost of his injury.

 

As no owner was present at the attack and Animal Control has taken over 24 hours and has not yet investigated, I strongly suspect I will not be able to locate the owner and ask them to cover Coconut's medical care.

 

Coconut is only 6 months old.  We rescued him just over a month ago from the Humane Society of Silicon Valley.  He's super friendly and outgoing, and always assumes other dogs are as well.

 

As the DGMS family contains so many animal lovers who hold their pets to be true members of their own families, I am asking for your help.  While I know we cannot allay the entire cost of what is ahead, if we can help make an initial dent in the surgical cost it would be so very much appreciated by Coco's family.

 

This is one of those "reaching out by reaching in" moments I write about.  And in a world still caught up in crisis, turmoil, uncertainty, and fear - being able to help another is some of the best soul balm available.  

 

But back to the notion of coincidence.  Novelist Ann Brashares writes, "I always interpret coincidences as little clues to our destiny."  I agree.  Something had me thinking this past week about Boo Radley and our first foray into reaching out as a group.  Now it's Coco's turn to feel the love.  Because if I am sure of nothing else but this, I know in the very fabric of my being that this amazing collection of souls came together not only to laugh at American Idol or rant about politics, but to help one another and each other.  That is our destiny.

 

You know the drill -  donations may be made via www.paypal.com > [email protected] . 

 

On behalf of the family and this little boy in particular - thank you for anything you can do. ~ Linda

An Earthquake of Stupidity, A Tsunami of COVID

December 26, 2004 - the worst tsunami in recorded history swallowed whole the lives of over 230,000 people in Thailand, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka.  But a tsunami of that magnitude is not born in a vacuum.  It is preceded by an equally monstrous earthquake - in this case, 9.1 on the Richter scale - that displaced and triggered a wall of water.  Estimates put the water that engulfed Banda Aceh (sits on the tip of Sumatra) at 100 feet high.  With no warning, the ten story building of ocean swept away the lives of over 100,000 people from that city alone.

And I still remember the video that came from Phuket - one of the most picturesque beaches in the world - the wide, fast moving water sweeping away everyone and everything in its path.  As one does when watching others fight for their lives, I imagined what I would do if I found myself in those circumstances.  Run? The water was faster than Usain Bolt.  Swim?  In a raging current of debris, cars, trucks, houses?  It is still heartbreaking to think about the images that filled our screens that day and in the days that followed.

Those people had done nothing to deserve the carnage; nothing to bring about their own demise; nothing to trigger the destruction that rolled in and over them all.  It was simply a matter of cause and effect - underwater earthquake > tsunami.

I look about the landscape of our nation and cannot help but draw disturbing comparisons, only this time the tsunami is the Delta variant of COVID, and the trigger is a stupidity earthquake that is off the charts.

Fed initially by the stupidest blob of organic matter ever to soil a suit - the former guy - his legions of mouthbreathing clods ate up every piece of verbal chaff he threw them.  COVID's not that bad!  COVID's a hoax perpetuated by Democrats!  Only old people get it!  Masks are unmaskuline! Mask mandates were nothing short of another holocaust!  Hydroxychloroquine will cure what ails you!  Shove a lightbulb up yer ass!  Drink some bleach!

What resulted was a summer of super spreader bar hopping, water parking, swimming pools, and rallies.  And the numbers climbed as predicted.  As Memorial Day weekend got underway we were adding over 20,000 new cases a day and losing nearly 700 lives daily.  That number would begin averaging 1,000 lives lost each day by the end of that week, with cases jumping to 30,000 a day.  By the end of the Memorial Day week, we lost an additional 7,742 people.

Yet it mattered not to the MAGAts.  They live on hubris and bullshit on the best of days, so a pandemic was not about to slow them down - unless of course they had a ventilator tube shoved down their gaping, wheezing maws.

To the rest of us - us being the people who understand even basic science and appreciate the people who have dedicated their lives to studying diseases, viruses, and vaccines - we were understandably aghast.  What in the fresh fuck was so hard about wearing a mask to protect yourself and others?  What was so massively inconvenient about social distancing, washing your hands?

Sadly, the answer was and is all too easy to suss out.  If, in their wisdumb, it makes liberals cry, then they double down.  The Titanic Twat in the Oval did not help matters by never urging caution, never encouraging mask wearing, never supporting the science.  After all, he knows more about everything than anyone, right?

By the time his own hubris and ignorance caught up with him and he contracted COVID himself (October 2), we were now averaging 140,000 new cases daily and 1,300 lives lost every 24 hours.  Anyone who thought it would humble him, make him change course, emerge a better leader (at least in regards to the virus) has never paid attention to Trump.  Availing himself of treatments out of the reach of ordinary citizens and pumped with steroids that would make a dying elephant walk tall (temporarily), he came back to the White House, removed his mask, wheezed in and out, and simply got on with his version of presidenting (aka: grifting and golfing).

The rubes in Qanon and MAGAland - two circles in a Venn diagram that were quickly moving towards being a single circle - took his recovery as further proof that COVID was no big deal.  By the end of October we would have lost 235,453 people.  710 out of every million citizens had died from COVID so far.

Yet their stupidity knew no bounds.  Videos filled social media daily showing them throwing tantrums in stores over mask wearing; catching them spitting on people, even babies in strollers; and documenting their vile behavior, lies, and contempt for society at every turn.  And because of them the numbers continued upward.

By Christmas, we had lost 338,438 lives, were averaging 3,000 dead daily, and adding 250,000 new cases a day.

I think about those numbers a lot.  I think about where they would have gone had that vermin been allowed to remain in office.  How many of us would be dead because of the absolute neglect of the government and the abject, blinding stupidity of Trump and his MAGA horde?  Biden and Harris could not be sworn in fast enough.

By Inauguration Day, we had lost 411,657 people.  We were still adding over 250,000 new cases every 24 hours.

With experienced adults now at the helm, science again at the fore, and an urgency that was never present in the Tangerine Regime, vaccine testing was hyper focused and ramped up production was soon underway.  While the first dose was administered to a nurse in December of 2020, implementation and distribution (not profiteering and side deals as was the hallmark of the Maskhole Administration) was the top priority for the Biden team.  The goal set was 100 million vaccinated by the end of March.

We stepped up and did well.  By month's end, 143 million doses had been injected.  Of those, 53 million people had received both doses and were considered fully vaccinated.  The feeling of hope was palpable.  Everyone I knew could not wait to get a time slot to begin their own two jabs.  The morning my age group opened, I was online hitting refresh repeatedly and managed to get an appointment for that day at the massive stadium 30 minutes from my home.  

Pulling in, I was so heartened to see the lines of cars.  All people who had time slots reserved and were eagerly queuing up to drive through the gauntlet of volunteers, have numbers written on their windshields, and finally enter a line to slowly move towards a nurse who would inject you while you sat in your car; slowly move towards a brighter future for all of us.  We were going to beat this thing.

Only we weren't.  Because the overlapping circle of Qanon and MAGAland had now added a new circle on top - the anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists.  And the bullshit they believed, still believe, would be hilarious if it were not for the life or death implications of their willful idiocy. 

Bill Gates was implanting us all with a tracking chip via the vaccine needle.  That chip would be activated by the new 5G cellular being touted by cell phone companies.

The vaccine would cause everything from autism to gout.

The vaccine is the mark of the beast.

The vaccine would alter your DNA.

The vaccine would end your ability to conceive.  Hell, even standing next to a vaccinated person could end your childbearing chances.

Oh, and the kicker - the vaccine magnetized you, supported of course by all those Tik Tok videos in which people pretended a key or magnet would stick to their forehead or vaccination site.  (Pssst, brain trusts, those videos were made to see just how stupid you all are.  Congrats on showing up at town hall meetings and proving the point.)

So, as we - the rational, thinking, civic minded people - were rolling up our sleeves and getting the shots, COVID was doing what a virus does in order to survive.  It was mutating, creating variants that are much more easily transmitted, and capable of reaching a wider audience.

Welcome to the Delta variant.

Just as we had managed to slow our case rates down to less than 60,000 new cases per week, and lives lost to roughly 1,000 per week, the Delta tsunami hit our shores and began seeking out those whose stupidity earthquake had summoned it.  We now sit at 117,000 new cases in the past 7 days.  The 7 days prior to that we only had 97,000.  And it is not surprising where the Delta's waves are striking - Republican led states, thinly vaccinated portions of the country.  The result?  Hospitals are beginning to again feel the strains they endured a year ago.  Ventilators are in short supply.  And 99% of all those being admitted and dying from COVID are UNVACCINATED.

For instance, Arkansas has one of the lowest rates of vaccinated people in this country - less than 35%.  At the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, doctors there are dealing with an influx of severely ill COVID patients they describe as "nearly 100 percent preventable."  

"We are starting to see some new concerning and emerging trends," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a briefing Thursday. "Simply put, in areas of low vaccination coverage, cases and hospitalizations are up."

Color us shocked.  

In Missouri, where less than 40% have done the smart thing, a hospital in Springfield is struggling under 125 severe COVID cases all the while begging fellow hospitals for ventilators and nurses.  All avoidable.

History will look back on Trump and his grifting cronies and chronicle their enabling of this national disaster accurately.  They were inept, inexperienced, self interested, full of clashing egos, and more concerned with how to make a buck off this deadly pandemic than in protecting the citizens of this country.

History will also look back with 20/20 vision on the galling stupidity of those who read Facebook conspiracy groups while on the toilet and chose the paths of deadly ignorance because liberal tears taste good and and they loved the feeling of belonging to something "Qool".

Well, this Delta variant loves them.  Sadly it has also roared in loving their children.  Hospitals are seeing ever increasing numbers of young adults, teens, and children.  These dolts who chose to not get the vaccine have left their children - who cannot yet receive it - wide open to contracting it.  From them.

The children are really the only ones for whom I feel sorry.  They don't deserve to suffer from their parents' conceit.  They do not deserve the long term effects of having contracted COVID - effects that so many find themselves enduring - just because of their guardians' pomposity.  And they do not deserve to die just because they lost the life lottery and were born to people too stupid to know how stupid they are.

The adults made their choices.  And if they die, so be it.  If a MAGA man gets it, survives, but can never get wood again?  You were warned, Floppy.  If a woman gets it, manages to get better but never has full lung capacity again?  Wheeze over there, Karen, you're in the way.

Can they still get vaccinated?  Yes.  It is still available throughout the land FOR FREE.  But at this point, the unvaccinated stupidity earthquake has already shaken this country to its core, and the waves of the Delta tsunami have arrived. 

My advice is to head to the higher ground of a Walgreens, CVS, or local pharmacy as fast as you can.  Maybe you MAGAts will have better luck outrunning your tsunami than the people of Banda Aceh did theirs in 2004.     

After all they had zero warning and you have had a year and a half.  Idiots.

  P.S. We have now lost 622,564 lives.