Someone pass the Vaseline, please...

...I think I've been bum-rushed. In fact, I think the entire planet has been fucked over.

Yes, it's another Covid-19 posting, but I am quite fuckin angry and need to vent.

/Rant ON

I have been stuck in the house for the past five weeks, believing (like many others) that I was doing my part to prevent the spread of a deadly virus. True, the virus has been deadly to many people, for many different reasons which I am not going into.

Having had just about enough of the sight of the inside of our house, I arranged with a friend to meet at a clandestine spot so that I could pass him some home-brewing kit (fermenter, bubbler, tube, iodiphor, rubber bung) that he is going to use to brew some pineapple beer (all the rage at the moment, thanks to the lockdown).

I left the garage feeling like a naughty child, wondering whether I was going to get stopped by the cops and fined or arrested for breaking the law. I had even put on jeans and a nice shirt, thinking I might tell them I was on my way to a job interview.

I needn't have bothered.

I was astounded at the number of people out on the roads, either walking, cycling or driving. Granted, most of the people we saw in the mall we met in were wearing cloth face masks, but for the most part of the people outside of the mall there wasn't a mask or pair of surgical gloves to be seen, which got me to thinking that we have been taken for a giant fuckin ride.

I have come to the conclusion that the need for the declaration of the pandemic, and the subsequent lockdown, have all been for fuckall. I DON'T BELIEVE IT ANYMORE!!!!

I now want to know the whole gamut of answers, the who, why, when, where and WTF of Covid. And I think the global population needs answers from our politicians and business leaders, who stand most to gain from it all.

Until then, fuck your lockdown.

/Rant OFF

It's about time...

...that this fuckin lockdown was over.

People have lives to lead and, unless you are one of the "essential services" companies, you are stuffed. Stay at home, we are told.

There are too many thoughts running through people's heads, okay through mine, about this fuckin pandemic.

Is it, or isn't it a pandemic?

If it is, why isn't it killing more people? We haven't gotten that much smarter since the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918. Well, let me qualify that a bit more...a whole lot of people haven't gotten any smarter. Some European countries are taking a beating and blaming thousands of deaths on the Covid-bug. But are they really? There may also be underlying conditions that the bug is exploiting, resulting in the high death numbers. But just how many is the bug itself killing? I don't think we will ever know.

Africa, with all its underlying problems and issues, isn't experiencing the large number of deaths it was expected to. Yet. Perhaps its time is still coming, who knows? Having seen the lack of "social-distancing" skills of the local population, I think the numbers are still going to escalate dramatically. Our winter is on its way, the traditional flu season, so we will see folks picking up the "normal" flu and, with immune systems already low, more people getitng (possibly dying) from the Covid-bug or related issues.

If it isn't a pandemic, how is it possible that global governments can hold an entire planet to ransom? Given what we have seen so far, it is obviously possible for (say) 10,000 people to hold 7.5 billion people at bay. And how, you may ask? FUD....Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Instil fear into the masses through mass media campaigns. Create uncertainty by telling them you don't know the way the bug moves, how it came about, that you have no antidote for it. Then create doubt in their minds by not keeping people up to date on the true numbers behind the virus, exactly how many have died, whether the "curve" in your country is positive or negative, that you don't know how long it is going to take for an antidote to be made.

And when you've done all that, tell the masses that the way to control this thing is by putting the entire planet on a lockdown. Shut the entire planet down!! If that doesn't get the FUD going, I don't know what will.

But I do think the people have woken up to the possibility that the whole thing has just been a massive hoax. There are already groups threatening to take China to court for starting all the shit (good luck with that), learned people like doctors stating that they are convinced it is a hoax and giving their reasons why, other "woke" groups claiming that the whole thing has been elaborately planned by governments to realign economies.

Whichever is the right answer, or the right response to the lockdown, has yet to be seen. But rest assured, when it comes, it is not going to be pretty. Someone is going to take the fall for the outbreak. Hell, we may even have WW3 on our hands.

If, on the other hand, it is a genuine pandemic, it needs to take down 4 to 5 billion people if the human population is to survive more than another 100 years or so.

In the meantime, cancel this stupid lockdown. People are doing their own thing anyway. If it catches or kills them, they were warned. Let's get the rest of this planet back to the new "normal".

There's life, Jim, but not as we know it...

...said Spock when they landed on some or other planet in some or other Star Trek movie.

And it is quite apt for what we are going through these days in this COVID-19 lockdown. It is four weeks today since I left the property, apart from two seperate trips to one of the malls to get some supplies. And it is boring the pants off me.

Life, since being retrenched for the third time in forty years, is quite literally becoming a drag. I'm lucky if I crawl out of bed at around 10am, after being woken at about 7am (if I'm lucky) by either the cats fighting, the cottage tenant tripping the fuckin' burglar alarm, or SWAMBO waking me up with her snoring. Fuckit, I wish I could sleep through half the shit she can.

Once I'm awake, that's it. I cannot get back to sleep again. The only thing I haven't tried is a sleeping tablet, partly because I dont't have any and I don't like to throw that kind of shit down my throat anyway.

So, I read. Until four weeks ago, I was reading about a book a week. Now, I am reading a book every three days, at most. While it probably isn't a bad thing, I am struggling to find good books to read. So much so, that I am now reading the old Sidney Sheldon novels again. I probably read those about thirty years ago, so they seem pretty new to me again.

I have read all the Baldacci, Childs, Follett, Hassel, et al, books and am struggling through Sheldon for want of something newer and/or better. I have a bunch of Cussler novels on the tablet too, but the plot and characters in his novels are all the same. Just change the dates, locations and the bad guy's names and you have the next Cussler novel. Ka-Ching on the way to the bank for Mr Cussler.

When I eventually drag myself out of my bed, I have some breakfast, potter about the house a bit, do some chores, watch an episode of some old series (lately I watched the whole series of Band of Brothers again, and am now on The Pacific - both WW2-based), have a cup of tea, wander about the property, rinse and repeat.

B-o-r-i-n-g.

I need the hardware stores re-opened. Then I can get some more paint and wood supplies so that I can finish my projects around the house.

Until then, b-o-r-i-n-g.

Come on, Cyril, use the establishment to make better use of the resources you have at your disposal. Get the country working again.

Rinse. Repeat.

Do we need more...

All the postings about how nature is changing (Thailand showing record numbers of turtle hatches, giraffes wandering the streets of Nelspruit, etc) got me thinking...

Do we need to have a global lockdown more regularly, perhaps every ten years or so? No diseases, just a lockdown, for nature to correct the world a bit...

W T A F...

It's been seven years and ten days since I last posted anything here.

Other social media platforms seem to have killed off blogging to a large extent, and people requiring a quick response to something that someone else has said have probably contributed too.

I don't know if anyone is still following this blog, but if there is, let me know and I will start writing again. Fuck knows, I have the time. I got retrenched two weeks ago....bastard.