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Man, This World Is Sick
Jan. 17th, 2022 02:23 pmThis weekend, we visited Beth's mom and uncle in New Jersey, then my family in Pennsylvania. We hadn't seen each other since before Christmas, so we gave them the gifts we'd gotten for them, except my sister's present hadn't come yet. For my nephew, I found a cute-looking board game and a Tyrannosaurus that eats Play-Doh and belches. Kind of gross, but little kids love that kind of thing. And my mom seemed to like the wren-shaped planter I bought at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. We got an Olive Garden gift card from my sister, and my mom gave us some food. So did Beth's mom, for that matter. Someone had also found my old Garfield hand puppet, although he needs to be cleaned.
Beth recognized it as an early design, since his eyes don't overlap.
The night before that, we watched The Sparks Brothers, a documentary on the band Sparks, which Beth has recently gotten interested in. She's recently gotten music by them and by Harry Nilsson, both of whom Neko Case covered on her 2009 album. She covered Robyn Hitchcock on the one after that, and I'm a fan of his, but Beth doesn't care for him. Anyway, Sparks is a band that's been around since the early seventies, but I'm mostly unfamiliar with them, and their music seems like something I would like. Beth has noted some similarity to They Might Be Giants, especially with Ron being the more introverted, esoteric one, sort of like John Linnell. I've never known Linnell to have a Hitler mustache, though. They've also worked in a lot of styles, used synthesizers quite a bit, and their lyrics are funny without totally veering into novelty stuff. Weird Al appeared in the documentary, and his "Virus Alert" was a Sparks style parody, although I didn't know that when I first heard it. His earlier song "I Remember Larry" was done in the style of Hilly Michaels' solo work, and he drummed for Sparks in the 70s. I just haven't had the opportunity to listen to music like I used to. I've started listening to a few podcasts recently, and those are even more difficult to find the occasion to listen to, as they require more attention.
I feel like I haven't accomplished much recently, and I mean in terms of stuff I do for fun. I haven't been writing anything except blog posts, and even in terms of video games I've mostly been playing ongoing ones (Animal Crossing: New Horizons and The Sims 4), so there's no real progress. I did make it to Shangri-Spa in Paper Mario: The Origami King, and having Kamek as an ally is pretty cool.
On a whim, I started making notes on Ozian family trees, basing them on whatever references I could find, including some pretty obscure ones. Joe Bongiorno's Lost Histories from the Royal Librarian of Oz gives family relations for some of the early rulers in Oz, both ones from the books and newly invented ones. I actually read something the other day about how it's common for fantasy writers to do too much worldbuilding as opposed to actual stories, and I'm not even inventing my own fantasy world.
I think I've already mentioned that my work has gone back to being fully in the office, and there's no indication that they'll bring back remote work despite the increase in COVID cases. I'm probably not as worried about that as I should be, but I do think that, practically, the government in general has stopped even pretending to care about health issues. Dr. Fauci even admitted that the CDC reduced necessary quarantine time because it was hurting business, even though you can't have business if everyone is sick. The only real concession is that we still have to wear masks, which is a good idea if we're required to go to public buildings, but wouldn't it be easier if it weren't necessary to do that so often? Wearing a mask in public was a lot less of a hassle when it was only for an hour or so per week. But when I say that, I still went grocery shopping back when there was a stay-at-home order (really more of a stay-at-home suggestion), and the employees there still had to go in to work and wear masks. No one really seems to be enforcing social distancing anymore, and that probably should be a thing even when there's no pandemic. That said, I never much liked the term; it comes across to me (and probably nobody else) as kind of pretentious. I've seen some people online insist that Biden isn't doing any better than Trump was at fighting Coronavirus; apparently these people forget that the last president insisted it was a hoax and/or a Chinese plot. But it is true that Biden is part of the same system that works to maintain the status quo. While Democrats are better than Republicans in this respect, it still doesn't seem to be a major priority for them; it's more "Let's get things back to normal" than "Let's make sure we're better equipped to handle such things in the future." The news I see suggests the government is more worried about inflation and supply chain issues, even though those things have to be exacerbated, if not outright caused, by much of the workforce getting sick and/or dying. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the anti-science crowd that tries to insist masks and vaccines don't work, but there need to be societal solutions as well as individual ones. It's like, there are definitely reasons to be suspicious of authority, but telling people to take basic safety precautions are not among them. Putting business over health is such a reason, but as far as I can tell, nobody is even trying to hide that.
Beth recognized it as an early design, since his eyes don't overlap.
The night before that, we watched The Sparks Brothers, a documentary on the band Sparks, which Beth has recently gotten interested in. She's recently gotten music by them and by Harry Nilsson, both of whom Neko Case covered on her 2009 album. She covered Robyn Hitchcock on the one after that, and I'm a fan of his, but Beth doesn't care for him. Anyway, Sparks is a band that's been around since the early seventies, but I'm mostly unfamiliar with them, and their music seems like something I would like. Beth has noted some similarity to They Might Be Giants, especially with Ron being the more introverted, esoteric one, sort of like John Linnell. I've never known Linnell to have a Hitler mustache, though. They've also worked in a lot of styles, used synthesizers quite a bit, and their lyrics are funny without totally veering into novelty stuff. Weird Al appeared in the documentary, and his "Virus Alert" was a Sparks style parody, although I didn't know that when I first heard it. His earlier song "I Remember Larry" was done in the style of Hilly Michaels' solo work, and he drummed for Sparks in the 70s. I just haven't had the opportunity to listen to music like I used to. I've started listening to a few podcasts recently, and those are even more difficult to find the occasion to listen to, as they require more attention.
I feel like I haven't accomplished much recently, and I mean in terms of stuff I do for fun. I haven't been writing anything except blog posts, and even in terms of video games I've mostly been playing ongoing ones (Animal Crossing: New Horizons and The Sims 4), so there's no real progress. I did make it to Shangri-Spa in Paper Mario: The Origami King, and having Kamek as an ally is pretty cool.
On a whim, I started making notes on Ozian family trees, basing them on whatever references I could find, including some pretty obscure ones. Joe Bongiorno's Lost Histories from the Royal Librarian of Oz gives family relations for some of the early rulers in Oz, both ones from the books and newly invented ones. I actually read something the other day about how it's common for fantasy writers to do too much worldbuilding as opposed to actual stories, and I'm not even inventing my own fantasy world.
I think I've already mentioned that my work has gone back to being fully in the office, and there's no indication that they'll bring back remote work despite the increase in COVID cases. I'm probably not as worried about that as I should be, but I do think that, practically, the government in general has stopped even pretending to care about health issues. Dr. Fauci even admitted that the CDC reduced necessary quarantine time because it was hurting business, even though you can't have business if everyone is sick. The only real concession is that we still have to wear masks, which is a good idea if we're required to go to public buildings, but wouldn't it be easier if it weren't necessary to do that so often? Wearing a mask in public was a lot less of a hassle when it was only for an hour or so per week. But when I say that, I still went grocery shopping back when there was a stay-at-home order (really more of a stay-at-home suggestion), and the employees there still had to go in to work and wear masks. No one really seems to be enforcing social distancing anymore, and that probably should be a thing even when there's no pandemic. That said, I never much liked the term; it comes across to me (and probably nobody else) as kind of pretentious. I've seen some people online insist that Biden isn't doing any better than Trump was at fighting Coronavirus; apparently these people forget that the last president insisted it was a hoax and/or a Chinese plot. But it is true that Biden is part of the same system that works to maintain the status quo. While Democrats are better than Republicans in this respect, it still doesn't seem to be a major priority for them; it's more "Let's get things back to normal" than "Let's make sure we're better equipped to handle such things in the future." The news I see suggests the government is more worried about inflation and supply chain issues, even though those things have to be exacerbated, if not outright caused, by much of the workforce getting sick and/or dying. I don't have a lot of sympathy for the anti-science crowd that tries to insist masks and vaccines don't work, but there need to be societal solutions as well as individual ones. It's like, there are definitely reasons to be suspicious of authority, but telling people to take basic safety precautions are not among them. Putting business over health is such a reason, but as far as I can tell, nobody is even trying to hide that.
