Untreated Spewage

A response to a response to the post I posted on that other forum - a toy and action figure collecting forum, if you're inclined to wonder. (Yeah, I know, there goes the last of any credibility I may have had!)


I tell you what, man; in American parlance, I am scared shitless.

Which is just as well, since there is STILL no toilet paper, despite the propaganda that supply chains have not been interrupted and manufacturers are working at full capacity.

I think maybe the "authorities" are trying to spread cholera, because coronavirus isn't sufficiently agonizing and deadly.

I read an article yesterday (in the mainstream press, not on some whack-job conspiracy web site) saying the British government plans to pay every unemployed worker 80% of their normal salary. The article said the British government has "unlimited money" with which to do this.

Unlimited money? Are they simply going to start printing paper play money? This will drive inflation like nothing has ever done before! Those Weimar Republic Germans will seem like the wealthy elite with their wheelbarrows full of cash compared to the effect "unlimited money" will have on prices.

At least the Brits are making an attempt to calm the fears of their people as they lead them to slaughter. Here in the states, the talk is all about bailouts for the airline industry and how you're "killing your grandmother" if you go to the beach.

Who the eff gives a rat's arse about the airline industry? I'd rather have toilet paper and potatoes, but there aren't any!

Oh, but we have been assured that the medical industry is being supplied with "hundreds of millions" of face masks. Why would the medical industry require "hundreds of millions" of face masks? That's more masks than there are people in the country. No wonder there's no toilet paper. All the paper is being used to make face masks.

The obsession by the government over face masks is the equivalent of the general public's obsession over toilet paper. The difference is, the government is getting their masks, but the public still is not getting any toilet paper.

I don't have a mortgage or a car payment, so it will be a while before they can seize my house, but as I am in a tourism-related industry, and I have been spending money to make money, as they say, my cash resources are limited. There's very little business in the winter. March and April are usually the months where we get back on our feet. So this is hitting us at the worst possible time, financially. We can get through a month, maybe two, before we will be unable to make our minimum credit card payments, which will immediately destroy our credit ratings (twenty or thirty years of on-time payments mean nothing if you miss just one), meaning higher interest rates or no credit at all. The banks, in their push toward a "cashless society," have made functioning without credit cards almost impossible in the modern world. Who writes cheques anymore? (Or checks, as we spell it here.) A few old ladies at the grocery market. Those old ladies will soon be dead, if the coronavirus doomsayers are correct.

Anyway, sorry, didn't mean to get amped up again. As I said, I'm allowing terror to overwhelm my thinking. I told myself I would try to remain calm until April 6, three weeks in to the "crisis," and a rather arbitrary date that was indicated as the "end" of the initial lockdowns and restrictions. No dates or timelines are being mentioned anymore. All restrictions are "indefinitely" or "until further notice" or "until the crisis has passed," and I am hearing and reading forecasts of months rather than weeks, usually 8 or twelve or 18 months, as compared to the two or three weeks that were initially suggested for "social distancing" and "temporary closures."

The paranoia that is overtaking me suspects that those cruise ship passengers they set loose in Sydney were done so intentionally, to create a sudden spike in infections in Oz so the government can impose more stringent restrictions.

Clever how they took all the guns away in Australia over the last several years, wasn't it?

I wish I'd purchased a gun and stockpiled ammo... and toilet paper... when I had the chance. I was thinking about getting one last year, for the damned rattlesnakes. At this point, rattlesnakes are the least of my worries.

I added a few more sentences to that previous post, for clarity rather than anything significant, by the way.

Keep Calm and... who am I kidding? IT'S FREAK-OUT TIME!

Here in the States, the "most liberal and progressive" states, all with Democrat leadership - California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois - now have both the highest rates of infection and the most stringent lock-downs in place. Mandatory stay-at-home orders enforced by surveillance drones and the police, with the National Guard (military) on stand-by alert. I cannot believe the American people are standing for this. Every day the restrictions everywhere become more extreme. All businesses, other than medical businesses, are essentially shut down.

Official estimates put the newly unemployed number at 2-million. But all the restaurants are closed, with the exception of small take-out operations being allowed in some areas. I looked up the numbers. There are more than 15-million people employed in the restaurant industry alone, and that does not include restaurant suppliers or related support services. It would not surprise me if the actual unemployment numbers are between 20- and 30-million. These are all people who will, within weeks, fall behind in their mortgages or face eviction from their rental apartments, see their credit ratings destroyed as they begin to miss credit card payments, and soon stop paying their utility bills. Certainly, the government will step in to bail out the card-issuing banks and the insolvent utility companies, but all the people will be homeless, broke, and be ineligible for credit. Longer term, this means total disaster for auto makers and the real estate market.

I'm waiting for someone to convince me that this is not a huge conspiracy on the part of an elite global cabal to transfer most of the wealth of the world in to the hands of a tiny few and essentially reduce most of us to impoverished servitude.

All this to save a relatively small group of "at risk" persons, the aged with pre-existing health concerns. That's the messaging the governments are using - "are you willing to kill your grandmother through your selfishness," the broadcast media keep repeating - to ramp up the fear and guilt to keep everyone in line. And thus far, it is working. Worldwide, so it seems.

International air travel has been shut down. Local public transportation has been shut down. I expect roadblocks any day. And soon enough, once the people in power begin to sense growing unrest, I have no doubt the Internet will go dark. "The bandwidth is needed for medical and emergency services use," will be the excuse, and everyone will comply. (Internet service has already been shut down in Kashmir, Myanmar, and Ethiopia.)

Social engineering theorists are having a field day with this, espousing theories and plans, none of which, not a one, factor in the devastation those plans and theories would have for the "average working-class Joe," the restaurant waiters, the grocery market clerks, the barbers and the auto shop mechanics, the people who hold society together.

Here's the reasoning people are facing in Australia:


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/21/the-case-for-shutting-down-almost-everything-and-restarting-when-coronavirus-is-gone

According to this lofty high-thinker, it's already too late for the United States, but Australia should soon be able to resume trade with China.

I have no hope at this point. None.

Petty bureaucrats are closing beaches here in the States as well. And they have the public at large convinced that it's "for their safety" and for the "protection of the vulnerable." It's all a lie. A huge, evil lie.


It's about power and control.

Marijuana dispensaries have been declared "necessary services" so they can remain open. My spouse has long been saying that the legalization effort has been driven by the intent to keep people complacent and compliant. I now believe that assessment. It certainly seems to be right.

Forty-million people under lockdown in California alone. And they're all, apparently, going along with it. If there is unrest, the media are not reporting it. I do not believe they will. Part of the strategy is to enforce compliance by giving the impression that everyone is unquestioningly compliant.

On a personal level, I have absolutely zero fear of the coronavirus, but I am absolutely terrified by what is happening around the world, and how quietly and obediently people everywhere are going along with it. This is an exercise in propaganda and social engineering on a scale almost too vast to imagine, which is probably part of the reason people are so blind to what is happening. It is simply too big to be believable.

I've never been a "conspiracy theorist" before – well, tongue-in-cheek, maybe, but never seriously – but to me, this seems blatant and obvious.

But what can we do? What can we do?

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2 April 2019 (Tuesday)

I apologize in advance for this post. There's nothing you, or I, or anyone can do about it. I'm just feeling more overwhelmed than I should about something and I'm hoping some rambling and venting will help. You... whoever you are who may be reading this today or in the future... are the lucky recipients.

My youngest brother phoned me today to tell me that our other brother, the middle one, Dan, died suddenly this morning. Nobody knows much yet. He apparently keeled over early in the morning. The people he was living with called an ambulance, but he either died or was pronounced dead at the hospital.

It's not a complete surprise - my brother has led quite a life, with alcohol and other substances playing a big part. His wife left him a several years ago, he let himself spiral out of control, lost his job, lost his house, and has been living with friends for the past year or so. The last times I tried to call him he didn't answer. He had pretty much cut off contact with everybody, except occasionally calling my mom or my dad to ask for money.

But it's still a shock. Your little brother isn't supposed to die. Your little brother certainly isn't supposed to die as a homeless, middle-aged guy.

And even though he obviously isn't... wasn't... a little kid anymore, and looked even older than his early fifty-something years, whenever I picture him in my mind, I picture the kid who was nine or ten years old.

We have not been in close contact for years, for decades even. But it's still hitting me harder than I would have expected.

One of the more fun things I have done over the past few years was to go on a hike in Canada we called the "Pillar of Darkness Expeditions." Prior to the second "Pillar of Darkness Expedition" in 2015, my wife and I stopped in Oregon to visit my parents and relatives. At that time my brother was still semi-sociable. Since he was in to camping and fishing and stuff, I asked him if he knew where to get kerosene lanterns for our upcoming hike to an ice cave. He said, "try Wally's (meaning Walmart), they usually have 'em." A couple of the lanterns and the lamp oil I brought on that trip were from Walmart per my brother's suggestion. He also shared with me at that time a story I had not heard, about he and a couple of friends getting trapped in a lava tube cave in Eastern Oregon for two days by a rock slide.

One of the lanterns I carried on those cave hikes came from my mom's house. It's one that we had when we were kids and took on one camping trip.

I'm not even sure why I'm sharing this on here. I don't mean to be a "bummer train" or anything. I'm more broken up than I would have expected to be, and I just feel a need to unload.

I haven't been what you'd call close to my brother since we became adults. Our lives took totally different paths. But all the "good memories" are flooding back from when we were kids and when we got along, and I'm missing that little kid. And I'm wishing I had tried harder to reach out over the past several years... or over the past several decades... and maybe tried sharing some of those memories from when we were kids to help him get back on track with his life. I know, realistically, it would probably not have done much good.

So yeah, I'm not expecting any "I'm sorry for your loss" kind of words. I mean, harsh as it looks to see in print, since I rarely spoke with him or saw him, his being gone won't really affect my day to day life at all.

But I'm realizing, today, when it's too late, how often I thought about him. How often I remembered stuff we did when we were kids. I was just randomly thinking a couple of days ago, as an example, of a hamburger joint we used to go to once in a while with my grandparents that claimed to serve "the world's largest hamburger," and I was laughing remembering that my brother, when he was nine or ten, insisted that he could eat one by himself... and he did it!

And then I'd think, whenever a memory like that popped into my head, "I should probably try calling him again," even though the last times I called he didn't answer.

Oh, and believe me, he was no angel. He's been a full-on asshole jerk to almost everyone in the family for a lot of years. But he could also be funny, smart, charming, and kind. You just never knew what you were going to get from him.

I'm realizing that there is a complex web of reasons why I'm taking this pretty hard: old memories, shoulda-coulda-mighta-done thoughts, experiences he and I shared that nobody else in the world who's still alive would remember or care about.

My youngest brother is six years younger. We don't have as much in common. For example, he has said that he doesn't even really remember my grandpa. He was too young to remember a lot of the stuff my middle brother and I did together, the games we played... you know, a million zillion things.

A million zillion things that are flooding back to me today, many of which I haven't thought of in years, and most of which nobody in the world knows or cares about except for me.

This doesn't make me special. Every one of the seven billion people on the planet has unique experiences and memories they've shared with other people that only they know or care about. And when the other people are gone, there's a real sense of... loneliness, I guess. Like you're the only one left who <i>knows!</i> Who could ever possibly <i>understand.</i>

There's a real sense of loss.

For example, my mom, of course, still remembers her parents, and remembers them when they became grandparents to us kids. But my brother and I, we are... were... the only ones who remember things we did with our grandpa, who died when I was in high school. Now that my brother is gone, I'm the only one who remembers my grandpa as being my grandpa, if that makes sense. So it's like, as we die off, the older generation, who live only in our memories, dies off, too.

My mom seems to be holding it together so far, but it's only been less than a day. My mom has been having a hard time of it lately, emotionally. She was an only child, so she hasn't lost siblings. But she's remained close to most of her friends from her high school years, and they've been disappearing at a rapid pace. All of her close friends but one are already gone. So she's losing all those shared memories. I don't even know how she's gonna react when the reality of my brother dying kicks in. I think she's still in an emotionally dispassionate denial phase. Maybe her practical way of looking at the world will see her through.

I have to stop now.