CORONA-CATION DAY 41: And you thought he was just your 'run-of-the-mill' idiot

 CORONA-CATION DAY 41: And you thought he was just your “run of the mill” idiot.

I have tried desperately to stay away from politics in this blog, not just in this blog, but every day.  However, it has become so absurd that I just can’t help myself.  I will shout out here to a friend of Sue’s, Joel, who recognized Trump’s genius (I can no longer bear to call him The President) following his most recent Daily Press Fiasco (DPF, scientists love acronyms).  In the DPF he called for us to use UV light to kill the COVID virus, 

hoping not so secretly that Nancy Pelosi would be similarly affected by said UV, and he gave a little bonus by suggesting that we might take a page from the drug dealers handbook of torture and inject ourselves with cleaning solution to “cleanse our bodies” of said virus.  The later has religious overtones.   Joel recognized Trump’s genius immediately, noting that he is really pulling from the Star Trek Handbook on Infestation Control.

In the Star Trek original series episode Operation – Annihilate! The planet Denevan are under attack by a neural parasite which attaches itself to victims and causes them through intense pain to do their bidding.  Kinda like what must happen to a Trump Pandemic Task Force medical member to force them to stand, as a professional and witness the idiocy of “hey I’m just saying I got talent so I have these ideas….” every day. 

Short of it was that Spock (the Fauci of the Starship Enterprise) was infected and suffered immense pain, which he of course could control using his Vulcan mind.  They used UV light on Spock to drive the parasite from his body, but it blinded him (this eventually all got sorted out, the dangers of employing a cure without proper testing).

Fauci-Spock endures this type of pain every day, you can see it on his face.  Unlike Spock he does not have an inner eyelid to save him from being blinded if we were to use UV light to “kill the parasite”.  So the parasite just drones on and on, every day. Until, like on Denevan, the pain becomes too much and Fauci-Spock goes on Fox and Friends and does the parasite’s bidding.  Sad.

We could, as has been suggested by the parasite, inject cleaning solution in our veins to “cleanse us from this virus”.  Wow, let’s unpack that.  I actually searched this out because I thought “surely they have taken this out of context”. Nope, they did not.  He actually said this with a straight face.  My suggestion might be for Trump to make a show of faith and offer to be the first person to test this cure. Maybe he could try Kool-Aid.  It has been done before.

I don’t even know what to say about this, except that I do think Trump IS treating this like a reality TV show, and we are too stupid to just turn it off, preferring as so many people do to watch the absurdity and continue to allow him the ratings that he will use to drum up votes in November.   As for me, I am just going to not watch such a ridiculous farce.  Just turn it off. 

Mountain Pig….Out.

CORONA-CATION DAY 37: Corona-cookin'

CORNA-CATION DAY 37: Corona-cookin’

My Granny made awesome chicken and dumplins.  I got about 23 before I realized that,  if I was going to have my Granny’s cookin or anyone’s for that matter, all my life, then I had better get on tryin’ to figure out how they made important things like…well chicken and dumplins, squirrel gravy and biscuits, but also cinnamon rolls.  OMG!  My Granny made insane cinnamon rolls!  I know at least that they were yeast bread cinnamon rolls, huge – 3 or 4 inch diameter sugar-glazed, full of butter and cinnamon sugar.  Wow, well lucky for me I could get that recipe or I would be 400 pounds.  My Aunt Emmelene, my Granny’s daughter had no idea how she made them.  All she would tell me is “She probably had a recipe off a Martha White Self-Risin Flour bag.” My Aunt Helen and my mom were just as clueless as to how she cooked most of what she did. They had their own secrets, an unspoken pack to keep them close to the chest I think.  

I asked my Granny one time “Granny what is your recipe for chicken and dumplin’s?”.  I was armed and ready with paper and pad.  She was sitting by the fireplace in her rocker, and she leaned over and said, “Well you get an old hen,….”, at this point I was writing frantically, and I said “an old hen?  Does it have to be old or can it be young and how do you tell the difference?!?”, and she said “Well, I guess old hens have more fat so I reckon it does matter.”  This was my first realization that this old timey cookin’ was a science, born of generations of living on the land and living on what you grew on the land.  Recipes were passed down and if you wanted to do them right, you better pay attention to the details.  ‘Ok old fat hen, not young lean hen.’

My granny made squirrel gravy and cat head biscuits every weekend.  This was a backwood’s Arkansas delicacy that my wife, when she was still my southern California-born girlfriend, was leery of even considering, but when my sweet Granny put a plate in front of her, she could not imagine disappointing.  After some tentative tasting, Sue dug into that plate like it was the finest thing she could think about passing her morning lips.   I asked my Granny for the recipe and she said “You get a squirrel, usually it is a slow one.” And then she smiled as I wrote this down. “You skin it, clean it, split it in to quarters, and par boil it.  Then you roll it in some salt and pepper flour and fry it up.  Set it on a plate with a paper towel, then get some flour and you see you use the fry grease and scrapin’s to make a paste like.  Then you use the water u par boiled the squirrel in and make a gravy.”  I had a hand cramp. This was so simple and yet so elegant.  I made this dish for my students a couple of years ago.  One told me that the wing was his favorite part.  Another said she liked it because it was organic and sustainable.  Not your typical crowd-around-the-trough compliments but I took ‘em.

Today, during day 37 of Corna-cation,  I made Red Cabbage.  I had a recipe that I had draaaaawn out of Sue’s Aunt Millie, or Tante Moni, as she was known before she passed.  It was tough to get.  I had to wait until happy hour, when Tante had taken in just the right amount of Manhattens.  She actually wrote it in her own hand, well it WAS happy hour hand writing so it is a bit hard to read, but I feel lucky to have it.  The very first line says “Cabbage 1# or whatever…”?!?!?  I mean, what is that supposed to mean, or whatever?!  My mom was more specific with her recipes.  

She doesn’t just say “add oil” , she calls it out “Add Wesson Oil”.  She was doing recipe inheritance for dummies.

Whatever you cook tonight, make it like you mean it.

Mountain Pig…out.

CORONA-CATION Day 35: Whaaaat?!? Corona-refugia

I can't believe that I have been "sheltering in place" for 35 days.  I believe I will be a better person when I emerge, but that will not be soon.  Personal choice.

So there is a theory on the biodiversity of the Amazon called Refugia Hypothesis.  Put simply it says that the incredible biodiversity that we see today in the Amazon jungle is a product of millions of years of the Amazon basin transitioning back and forth between a large lake with various islands and a big river drainage.  See as the Andes popped up, they would periodically weigh down the western side of South America and tilt the continent to the west, causing all the drainage to cease and form a big interior lake called Lagos Amazonas.  All the critters would run to the islands, sort of like Carnival in the Caribbean and party their heart’s out, drinking, “engaging” and ….well, bio-diversifying like crazy.  

When erosion released the weigh on the western margin of South America, the continent would “rebound” or pop back up and the proto-Amazon River would drain the continent and Party Over! All the newly diverse populations of critters would disperse out into the larger forest, all hung over from their refugia experience.  Spring Break on a massive scale.

I predict similar refugia-driven diversification of culture when corona-cation is over.  

Here we set on our little island’s of culture, taking MASTER CLASSES, doing puzzles, reading absurd amounts, surfing the internet for obscure definitions and topics like “Amalfi Coast Italy”, just waiting for the proverbial “lake to drain” so that we can go across the street and tell our neighbors “Did you know that the Amalfi coast was controlled by the Principality of Salermo, until it was sacked by the Republic of Pisa in 1137?”. 

When we blow off back into the virus-reduced, curve-flattened world, what will we add to the diversity of the world? Maybe we have been honing our dog-walking skills (“if you hold the leash with your left hand, then you can raise the glass of wine without worrying if your dog will spill it”), or our reality TV knowledge (“it was clear that he was never going to choose her because she loved him too much”) or our ZOOM skills (“you can put up a cool picture of the beach so people will thing that you are zooming from – the – beach! Seriously!”). Still yet, maybe this experience as truly solidified our political leanings.  Better yet, maybe it is not what you bring to the jungle, but what you bring to the refugia within which you exist.  After all, there are some critters that chose to stay on the island, preferring it to the rest of the world.  As we become more and more saturated with TV, social networking and TED Talks, honestly, my refugia is looking better every day.

Mountain Pig …. Out.

CORONA-CATION DAY 22: Free stuff

While posting to the SAND twitter site on how great my two graduate students are who successfully defended their doctoral dissertation (Dr. Sebastian Cardona) and master thesis (Alden Griffin, MS), I came across this tweet. “In partnership with @UnitedWay we’re donating $1 milllion and 1 million rolls of #toiletpaper to help those who need it most.  And if you post how you are able to #ShareASquare, we’ll donate $1 through June 1 (up to $100,000) #Cottonelle.”  Wow.  I am not going to dis the effort here, but there is soooo much here that it deserves unpacking.

Number one, “…in partnership with United Way”.  Let’s start with the positive, so I am not sure who at Cottonelle decided that United Way was the perfect partner for this, but come to find out UW IS a good place to donate.  It spends ~94% of every dollar donated to services for the communities it serves so good on ya UW.  But maybe they could just dump it on the nursing homes.  There are ~ 15,600 nursing homes in the US.  That is 64 rolls of toilet paper for every nursing home in America.  Just one suggestion.

Number two, “…what the heck is Share a Square”!?!? Wow. What marketing ZOOM meeting generated that.  That just seems almost illegal in its connotations.  I mean, we are in the middle of a social distancing crackdown, and people are “sharing a square”?!  I am gonna let someone else tell me how that works.

And finally, number three, “…to help those who need it most.”  So what do you think might be the criteria by which they decide “…those who need it most”.  In an effort to make such choices fair and balanced (I can’t believe I said that) maybe they could use an excellent piece of research that was done by my doctoral student to assess submarine landslide “risk of failure” and assess TP gifts on the basis of potential to fail, because regarding the need for toilet paper, nobody wants to find themselves in a “failure” situation.   So let’s define the key variables that can help us risk “…those who need it most.”

I have come up with the following list and reasons why I have included it.  You can certainly modify at will, but someone had to start somewhere.

--AGE (Impacts the ability to shop early)
--PROXIMITY TO A WALMART
--INCOME (Ability to purchase TP on the blackmarket)
--CHILDREN  (Multiply need by about 37X for each child, or 57X for each child under 5 yrs of age - the snotty nose threshold, or for each male child over 13.  I'm just saying...).
--CATS (Will play with and destroy TP)
--TEEN AGE GIRLS (BRA STUFFING, still needed during social isolation due to quality of laptop cameras)
--HISTORY OF HOARDING (ALREADY HAVE 200 ROLLS IN THE GARAGE LOCK OFF. You know who you are!)
--MEXICAN OR INDIAN FOOD CONSUMPTION (I will just let that one lie there with no further explanation).
--VEGETARIANS (see item above).

So if we take all these and put them in a visual tool. (Forgive me Sebastian, but you did say this morning that you felt your major contribution was “…the methodology and the broad application thereof” J.)  See results below. 

I am prepared to provide this tool free of charge to Cottonelle because a gift like this should not be left to chance.

Mountain Pig…out.

CORONA-CATION DAY 21: Coronaccomplishments

The other morning, after firing up my laptop and staring at the same gray blob on my login page for a year, you know the one, 

I decided to put a “Sue and Les Selfie” in the little sign-on circle on my laptop instead of the upside down “U” with a “head”.   

This felt like an amazing accomplishment. It got me wondering during this forced “honey-do” time what other accomplishments I was failing to acknowledge.  So I decided I needed a list of them, so that when it came time for “Corono-cation Performance Evaluation (CPE)” I could properly revise my resume. In addition, as with all PEs I need to classify these by contribution levels ie., significant, moderate or minor.  So here we go:

• Realized that one did not need to take a bath once a day, but once a week was good (data on this one is still being collected and analyzed).  Yes I do consider that an accomplishment, it could change my life. Potentially, Significant.,

• Organized and cleaned out the area underneath the sinks and vanity (actually Sue was the lead on this but since we are a team, everyone knows that in 360 evaluations this counts). I now have shampoo and conditioner in single servings for about four weeks. Minor.

• Planted cucumbers, lettuce, peas (only things that will grow in the cold).  Potentially Significant. This is actually an upcoming accomplishment but everyone knows that when you revise your resume you list your “in review” accomplishments, planning to accomplish by the time CPE actually happens.

• Went through the “cookbook area” because it had become “an area” with bits of recipes and papers, etc. and cleaned it out (also a team accomplishment, but that led to other things – see below). Minor.

• Cooked a bunch of stuff that I had forgotten I had recipes to, like Soba Noodles with Chicken and Peanut Sauce.  Moderate.

• Took the Chiweenie for a walk – shocked the neighborhood (that was a twofer).  Significant for the Chiweenie.  Moderate for me. Minor for the neighborhood.

• Restarted my Blog. Significant for the entire world, obviously. 
• Had tenure approved (that felt like giving birth so I include it here). Significant.
• Set up account to start new stock investments, because stock are so low that you need a spatula to scrape them off the investment pavement (also a team success).  Potentially Significant. 

• Decided to call my Dad 2-3 times a week and to email him once a day. Significant.  I mean, what a poor child I have been.  Phone calls are free.  Emails are free.  Why would you not talk with the person who has enabled your entire life several times a week.? Call your parents. 

• Went through today and calculated the extent of our toilet paper holdings, and how long we can hold out with our current supply (Results will be conveyed on Monday). Significant.

I know that this list will grow.  I would already, under self evaluation, give myself a Top 10% for Corona-cation survival.  Hey! I hear you guys!  Haters gonna hate.  If you wanna run with the big dogs the you better pick up your Corona-cation game.  We got a long way to go here.

Mountain Pig...out.

CORONA-CATION DAY 19: Pandemic: The Game

Pandemic:  The Game

Have you noticed that nobody seems to care much about what the Kardashians are doing, or maybe I never cared and it just SEEMS like nobody cares that Kim and ….whatever other K daughter she is fighting with are going at it.  I mean that is some ridiculous stuff.  Watching the Kardashians is kinda like going to church.  When you are five or six, you go to church because your mom wants you to go to church and you don’t really know why you are going except you get free cookies and punch afterwards.  I always went to Vacation Bible School for the cookies, but I digress.  Your mom thinks if she can sit you in church for long enough then it will dawn on you that you really need to be there. I don’t go to church now.  Nobody goes to church at five or six because you are filled with the Holy Spirit.  You go for the cookies.  Similarly, you don’t watch the Kardashians when you are pre-teen because you “understand the nature of their relationship and can see it reflected in your own life!”  Nope, you watch it for the cookies.

What are people doing to pass their time if they are not watching the Kardashians?  Sue bought us this game. Pandemic.   It came via Amazon, I mean doesn’t everything?   I was skeptical, but it is an awesome game!  Let me tell you, you play one round of Pandemic and you will FULLY understand the situation we are in.  People in Florida want to go to church so Miami has an “outbreak”.  You quell Los Angeles into submission and those F---in’ people in Miami, ALLLL with a desire to get to heaven, spread the virus to Atlanta on a Church Revival and boom!  So it becomes quite apparent that everyone has to focus on eliminating the various contagions or we are all going to hell in a handbasket.

Me, being the Researcher, I was able to share information but I was not a Scientist.  The Scientist could cure a contagion with only four city cards instead of five (That bitch thinks she is such hot stuff!).  I really just wanted to work with the Quarantine Specialist because I thought she was hot. Sue, being a dispatcher was …well, doing her best but mostly telling people about stuff. But working together we did our best and eventually quelled the contagions.  Then we figured out that we missed a few infections and BOOM, game on!  It was pretty frustrating to see Delhi go down like that, but there were whole cities that we ignored to focus on Milan. Those Italians should appreciate us. I know, I sound like Donald J. Trump, only I am not running for re-election and using a pandemic to leverage votes. Except for that slimy difference, yep virtually similar.

I highly recommend this game, but you probably need more than one person to play it.  I am not encouraging socializing.  The rare few of you who can channel multiple personalities can play it … alone I guess. Or you can all download the Kim Kardashian video game and go that direction.

Mountain Pig…out.

CORONA-CATION DAY 18: Shopping in the Time of Pandemic

No it is not, Love in the Time of Cholera, but it is damn close.

Sue came back from a walk with our neighbors Tania and Dana yesterday and said “I am worried about Tania and Dana.  Neither of them have any toilet paper.”  This concerned me too, for the obvious reason of where this failure to provide for their own families could lead.  “I would give the some of our,” she said “but what if we need it!”  I told Sue that I had noticed several boxes of Kleenex in the grocery when I was there, and I should have snagged them some. Sue could not believe that I had passed up Kleenex boxes. I had to promise that I would never make such a mistake again. Truly Sue would give the toilet paper off her….roll to her friends if they needed it.

The next day, I saw Dana getting packages out of her car on my morning walk with Cali, and she excitedly told me that she had been to CostCo and found all that she needed.  She pronounced it “A good day!”

This foraging behavior is a fascination to me.  Things that we would not have given a passing glance to finding a month ago, now are praised upon our return from hunting like we have just snagged meat to feed the tribe for the entire winter.  I walked in from the grocery last Sunday, began unpacking and Sue said “Ohhh! You found egg noodles!” and I did a small dance around the kitchen island singing “Tuna – Noodle – Casserole – ugh! Tuna – Noodle – Casserole – ugh!” with a twist of the hip to accentuate my excitement. Life was good. I felt like Laura Ingalls Wilder, when Pa returned with wood for the fire so they could survive another winter in Plum Creek, Minnesota!  God. 

Sue had to run in to Home Depot (which is next to the WalMart in Evergreen).  I stayed in the car, apparently she has decided that I am the old and weak of the family and, like my Grandmother, I am encouraged now to “just stay in the car, I will run in”.  Anyway, I am sitting there and I see a woman come running down the paved embankment with a WalMart shopping cart full to the brim, including a large package of Kirkland, Big Roll, two-ply.

She was apparently afraid that someone would mug her for it, so she was movin’!  She crosses paths with another woman with a Home Depot cart going the opposite direction, who gasps and says, in my best English accent “Where on Earth did you find that toilet paper?!?!” To which the first woman, eyes the English Lady warily and says “It is on the shelf at the WalMart, but you better hurry.  There is very little left!!”  The English Lady then cranks her cart up in to fourth gear and runs up the paved embankment to try and score some Kirkland TP’.  Wow.  Has it really come to this degree of pitifulness?

 

We finished our walk yesterday and on the way up the hill, Cali chased a rabbit, which pretty much left her in the dust.  “Oh well, no dinner tonight”, I said and we walked dejectedly up to the house,…but there is always Tuna Noodle Casserole.

Mountain Pig....out. 

CORONA-CATION DAY 17: Amazon has us right where they want us, with our credit cards out.

Amazon has America by the balls, at least those of us that still have some. 

They are continuing to ship us anything we need while were are under house seclusion.  If they strike, we will give them anything they ask for to keep up the flow of puzzles, games, food, movies --- basically everything moving freely!!  When I walk down the road with my dog, there are Amazon boxes littering the roadsides beneath the mailboxes.  The US Postal Service, FedEx, UPS all deliver Amazon purchased good, because they are smart enough to know a juggernaut when they see one. We need Amazon, more than we ever have, and they know it.

When I was growing up in Dardanelle Arkansas, population 3, 261, Sonny Warren owned Warren’s Grocery, a hole in the wall grocery store in downtown Dardanelle.  I would walk down to the grocery with my Aunt Mary to get an assortment of stuff, including bologna.  I was often barefooted, stubbing toes along the way on sidewalks that had been down so long that they had been undergrow by roots, elevating them to toe-stubbing level. Warren’s grocery was like the Amazon of Dardanelle.  Mr. Warren and his “staff”of two would deliver to your front door if needed. He had about three rows of groceries and goods, but I most remember the meat counter.  Sonny had these HUGE cannons of bologna and he would slice off a piece “thickas yur thumb” and wrap it up in white butcher paper.   There were no plastic bags, and my Aunt Mary carried her groceries home in a cloth sack or a simple brown grocery bag (these were recycled by my Aunt Robbie as book bags J).  I guess my point is, if Mr. Warren were still alive and still serving up slices of bologna in this time of Pandemic, he would be delivering, and he would still have his doors open because people needed him. He had a sense of responsibility.  He put everyone’s purchases “On Account” which people settled up at the end of the month, or didn’t depending on your situation. 

Things are different now.  Amazon is not Sonny Warren.  They do not deliver out of “a sense of responsibility”.  They deliver because people will pay them, and they in turn will employ desperate people to package and deliver critical things….like puzzles, games, food and movies. I don’t think that this is wrong, just different.  Let’s hope that we never run out of money, and Amazon never runs out of desperate employees.

 Mountain Pig....out