The 35th Precinct

Who knew the vaunted system of checks and balances so revered by my history teachers in high school was such a flimsy and impotent tissue upon which to base a republic?

My new nukebox arrived right on time, and it's all sleek and shiny. We've yet to put it through its paces, however, because Roomie doesn't like our initial spot for it. It's too close to the sink, for one thing, and it takes away his prep space for another. So as soon as it strikes his fancy, we'll move it to the opposite side of the kitchen.

I bought myself a new microwave today. It should be here Tuesday. I say "should" because I very much doubt that it will even ship until then. I suspect the real arrival date will be Thursday or Friday. Here's hoping it's not obliterated in shipping.

I've always been reticent to shop for big-ticket items and electronic items online, lest they arrive mangled beyond repair and leave me bereft of my item and my money and saddled with the duty of returning the sad wreckage to sender, but as with so much else, COVID-19 has forced me to adapt or do without. I can't do without a microwave, so best to seize the bull by the horns and get it done.

I saw a few reviews sniping about the size of the microwave, but as long as it heats my soup, thaws my beef, nukes my ready-to-eat bacon, and pops my popcorn, I don't care.

15,300 cases in Florida in a single day. But sure, I should've come down there to ride out quarantine hell with the family, which would've meant being stuck in one place in the house for hours at a stretch and listening to Fox News. No, thank you. Quarantine here might be boring as hell, but at least I can choose my own misery instead of having it inflicted upon me.

I peeped my mother's Facebook in hopes that Trump's gross ineptitude and brazen indifference to the COVID-19 crisis had persuaded her that voting for him was a mistake, but no such luck. She's still ride or die for that "good Republican businessman" and his white classy family, and she's showing her racist ass all over with "Black Beans Matter" memes. It's disheartening when you confront the reality that the family who raised you are not just stupid, but terrible. I've never liked my mother very much, and I've always known she was prejudiced, but these past few years have exposed just hows deeply her racism runs. It's not just the reflexive parroting of the racist canards both my maternal grandparents embraced as inviolate truisms; it's active and malignant. She would clutch her pearls and hotly deny it, but I don't think she sees Black people as people, much less equals. Knowing your mother is a dumb asshole who will never forgive you for being disabled is one thing, but realizing she would likely volunteer to bring the green beans to a lynching shifts the foundations of your world.

Roomie has doddled off to pick up my hold from the library and grab some wings from my new favorite place. It's slated to rain later today, but right now, the sky is a brilliant, tranquil blue and the cicadas are in fine fettle, and I'm glad to be alive.

I ordered some cooling towels off Amazon. I'm not sure if they'll work, but I'll try anything to offset the smothering humidity and lack of an air conditioner.

Dragoncon officially pulled the plug today. I am sad for the fun that will not be, but utterly unsurprised, as this nightmare of plague and governmental incompetence shows no sign of slowing down. They're making game noises about a virtual con, but I have zero interest in paying to watch uninspired panels on my laptop, so I'll leave them to it and cancel my room reservation. My only regret is that that means no visit to the aquarium this year. I adore it, and I was so excited to see Shila, the baby beluga and the albino alligators.

And if I see one more dribbling Pollyanna offer me or any other disappointed soul the sad sop of, "Think how awesome next year is going to be!", I'm going to punch them in the throat. Stop lying to yourselves and to everybody else. COVID-19 isn't going to disappear in a puff of smoke and fairy dust at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2021. It can't be wished away by the power of positive thinking. Fun as we know it is over for a long time, and when it comes back, it won't be as we remember it. Accept this nasty nugget of turd crunch and let people be sad and angry about it.

The paper bill that arrived in the mail last week said XX.X5. The one I looked up online this morning said XX.X4. And you better believe I checked all the account details three times to be sure I wasn't pulling my second financial dumbass in a week and paying someone else's bill. Nope. All details were correct, but there was the one-cent discrepancy. So I paid the online amount, and I'll check back in a week or so to make sure it hasn't decided I now owe them a penny.

I'm going to foam at the mouth if I have to schlep down to their overbuilt pile outside of town just to give them a cent.

Roomie has doodled off to gather supplies for the weekend so we don't have to battle the hordes this weekend. Because fuck the pandemic, we've got America's birthday to celebrate! Americans are willful and deeply stupid people; the town is overrun with tourists, according to Roomie's dolorous call from the grocery store. It is stupid and dangerous, and there will be consequences this area is utterly unequipped to carry, but I'm not going to lay all the blame on the people. The country's leadership has been abysmal during this crisis, too busy trying to bury the stink of its own shit to provide consistent and meaningful guidance, and the CDC and the WHO have demolished their credibility here by lying about the utility of masks early on in a bid to conserve them for the frontline personnel. They lied and admitted it, and now the American public has tuned them out. They've decided to wring what joy they can out of this stifled, miserable existence that is pushing them deeper into rural isolation and poverty, and on a purely emotional level, I can't blame them. It's lonely and boring, and half the population in my neck of the woods has neither TV nor Internet to pass the time, and it's not going to get better any time soon. Best to make a little money and have a little fun before this indifferent government kills you.

Happy 4th.

Roomie has fetched his mask and gone to get the oil changed before we are inevitably forced back into total lockdown by a surge in COVID-19 cases. I am noodling aimlessly on the Internet until he returns, hopefully with a mess of wings.

My filled molar is very sore. It's not sensitive to hot or cold, and it doesn't hurt to chew even the hardest food, but there's a sense of it being too snug in the socket. I can't feel any swelling in the gum, but it just feels off. Maybe teeth with composite fillings are more sensitive to grinding? It's something to keep an eye on, I guess, but I feel like a total failure as a dental patient.

Google thinks I'm a bot. Well, Chrome does, any road. Firefox thinks I'm splendid. I ran a quick virus and malware scan that turned up nothing and cleared the cache, but it's still pissily telling me that it's detecting unusual traffic on my network. But only in Chrome. I'll give it a longer, more complete scan tonight while I'm watching the DVD player. If it finds nada, then I can only assume it's related to the Internet outages we've been having for a couple of days now. I tried calling my ISP about it yesterday, but never got past hold, so I'm guessing I'm not the only one.

As I mentioned above, we finally hooked up the DVD player so that I could watch it while Roomie used my laptop during a storm in a bid to meet a creative deadline. It was nice to have noise from that side of the house again. The TV has been gathering dust since our ISP got out of the cable business a few months back. And it was nice to look at something other than a smudged, spotty laptop screen.

I watched Hereditary this morning. After all the hype about its profoundly-disturbing climax, I expected more, but what I found was bog-standard modern, pretentious horror. As horror, it was nothing special, but it was magnificent as a story about the effects of grief and the disintegration of a family. Toni Colette acted her ass off, and though there were a few moments near the end when she veered into the overwrought, the movie lived and died by her conviction.

What a waste of Gabriel Byrne. I bet he was relieved when he went up in flames.

Florida had 10,000 new COVID-19 cases today, and North Carolina 1,700, but everything is under control, says our government. Nothing at all amiss here. And don't listen to those godless, Satan-fucking whiny hippies who want to steal your freedom by forcing you to wear a mask and repudiate God in the doing.

I am so tired. What must it be like to live in a sane country?

Maybe that's why I've done nothing today. Nothing seems worth the limited and dwindling energy I have left.

Today was such a lovely day, and then... Our electric furnace, which has been turned off since March, made an alarming sizzling noise, followed by the smell of burnt dust. Uh oh. Roomie shot out of his chair and hurried to the heater, where he discovered that the casing was hot. Well, shit. He opened the casing.

"It's hot," he said.

No expert I, but that sounded like impending doom. I told Roomie to turn it off at the breaker, and we called the HVAC techs.

Say what you will, but sometimes, just sometimes, living in a small town is nice. They had a man here in fifteen minutes even though it was past closing. He diagnosed the problem in five, fixed it in another ten, and even checked the voltage to be sure it wasn't the wiring. Nope, according to him. Just an immolated sequencer that had spat the dummy in spectacular fashion. The entire affair took less than an hour and will probably cost $250-$350. I say probably because he claimed his tablet wouldn't let him in to input the part number. So, he's sending me a bill in a few days. Bless that man and that company. It wasn't how I planned or wanted to spend $350, but I am grateful. When it first happened, I was sure we were looking at a new furnace and some rewiring.

The breaker is still off, by the by. I'm taking no chances until I can get an electrician to check the circuit and the wiring in general. And while the electrician is here, I might ask about upgrading the one for the wall A/C to a dedicated line or maybe even a 220.