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Sometimes interesting idiosyncratic insights emerge from unusually stressful circumstances including physical and psychological isolation, repeated Covid lockdowns, one too many lousy takeout meals and a seemingly endless pandemic accompanied by seemingly endless contradictory information. The situation is only made worse when one next door neighbor says, “Covid is a complete hoax” and another tells you on the very same day, “The hospitals are overflowing. Did you hear about Bill Greenbaum and his family?”

I’m sure solitary confinement and social isolation have led certain highly gifted individuals to come up with a slew of impressive scientific innovations and a number of philosophical and technological advancements in human history. I just cant think of any at the moment. Maybe that’s because lately I’ve been pretty busy during the day trying to manage my own anxiety, fear, anger, insomnia, confusion and bewilderment by watching Tik Tok puppy videos on my cell phone or scrolling through YouTube clips of movies all night I’ve seen before but somehow forgot in the haze of time, retirement and Covid craziness.
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As a psychologist trust me on one thing. People are pretty crazy right now. The Covid virus is pretty bad and growing increasingly more deadly (again) but so are people. In fact it might be somewhat liberating to admit out loud that many quasi self- quarantined individuals are currently at their wits end and possibly approaching the mental state I call “crazy as a freakin’ loony bird” . On the other hand, the positive thing to keep in mind is how WAY WAY WAY MORE CRAY-CRAY other people are as vividly displayed on cable news. Multiple stories of random insanity on airplanes, trains, buses, etc. are occurring as well as in shocking YouTube videos taken by bystanders in grocery stores, shopping malls, Walmart parking lots and in the entire state of Florida. Feel free to compare yourself and your current personal delusions, irrational thinking, intermittent hallucinations and weird behavior to the average batshit crazy Florida resident, serial killer or elected politician. You will feel a lot more normal… if that’s even a thing nowadays. I’m not even mentioning all the random viral video violence, “knock an Asian or senior citizen out” games, car craziness and general “wilding” in the streets of practically every major U.S. city by young people without brains in their head.

Is it me or do you ever pause, reflect and wonder to yourself, “how the fuck did things get to this point?” or “wait, is this just a really long unusually dysphoric dream, completely wacked out election cycle or dystopian nightmare about normal people going insane and proceeding to form nonsensical conspiracy theories and bizarre cults promulgating bullshit beliefs”? Even worse is the dreadful feeling that one has already seen a much better and far more believable horror/zombie film before either on TV or in a proper movie theater with comfortable reclining seats and fresh popcorn about a raving lunatic narcissist President with apocalyptic aspirations, hordes of hive-minded undead people and deadly brain-eating baboon viruses spreading into the general population due to rampant denial, government incompetence, corporate greed or some other dead person’s evil spirit trying to get revenge on living humankind.

What did we (still alive American people) ever do to deserve such a prolonged pandemic, zombie-esque dead/dumb/violent prone citizenry and an impossible-to-kill relentless loudmouth pie hole president with the brain the size of a walnut? Ok, sure that last part was in the past and yeah we pretty much had to cheat, slaughter, rape and pillage our way to our Manifest Destiny, personal freedom and Declaration of Independence. Thats a given. All the other stuff like slavery, smallpox, Civil War, racism, pollution, political corruption, toxic chemicals, greed, gluttony, antisemitism, anti-asian violence, antiballistic missiles and anti everybody else except rich white people and not so wealthy white people with assault weapons, MAGA hats, and toxic artificial plastic Xmas trees from WalMart was just the necessary “collateral damage” of our human evolution/revolution, natural selection “survival of the fittest” as well as our country’s eventual emergence as a major Superpower among nations (translation: apex predator) and “beacon of light” to the rest of the humankind world. Right?

◦ You know what? Now that I think about it… if the novel Covid19 virus (in fantasy) did have a brain and not just its ever-evolving super contagious rDNA downloading medieval mace meets Alien Predator spike proteins that enable it to hunt us down like dumb unvaccinated cattle, fluffy white rabbits and docile ducks in a row by taking full advantage of it’s relative invisibility, attaching itself to our vulnerable respiratory tissue using a simple but elegant “docking maneuver” that both Elon Musk and NASA would be exceedingly impressed by and then injecting/infecting us in poorly ventilated spaces like crowded churches, choir practice, at home birthday bashes, rowdy late night bars, all you can eat buffets and anti-masker restaurants, etc. then I’m pretty darn sure the Covid virus would think the EXACT SAME THING about its own Mainifest Destiny, evolution and biologic Bill of Rights. In other words WE (humankind) are ITS collateral damage. We may turn out to be the dinosaur fossils and heap of brittle bones from an extinct race of hominids that inhabited the planet for a short period of archeological and cosmological time. As a result of our current state of human disunity and national divisiveness (versus sensible bipartisan agreement and unity such as was displayed during WWII) we are Covid19’s proverbial “sitting duck”. Hey you cant blame a pseudo-alive organism or even a single-celled microorganism without a brain or central nervous system for wanting to survive at any cost just like us. Right?
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Speaking of sitting ducks: As a foodie and lover of good Chinese food who doesn’t love a wonderfully prepared and nicely plated Peking Duck on those soft fluffy little white rice buns? Only this time we’re the main entree and metaphorically speaking it’s our buns on the community acquired Sunday Special along with our smorgasbord of blood rich internal organs, ie. juicy hearts, lungs, blood vessels, livers, kidneys, bones, and brains ….at least what’s left of them. He/She/It/We/They/Alpha virus even invited their variant relatives Delta and recently arrived variant Lambda along for the rolling global pandemic/ progressive dinner with their soon to be discovered non-gender revealing vaccine resistant viral offspring. “Chi-na”!!

In my demented state I can almost imagine Gary Larson doing a future The Far Side comic circa 2022 or 2023 showing a bloated Covid virus getting up from a buffet table overflowing with human skulls and bones with a blood-stained napkin tucked into his bulging shirt collar only to remark, “Man oh man was that ever a super spread!!”