C22 - Beauty of the Coronavirus
If you look at a bunch of viruses under a scanning electron microscope, they tend to look like a tadpole which is suspended atop a camera stand of many legs. If I can draw you a better mental picture, think of Humpty Dumpty from Play School sitting on a six legged camera stand.
Since it is debatable about whether or not a virus is alive or not, it is also debatable about whether or not they have any actual desire to do anything. Setting that aside (please ignore the obvious logical hypocrisy here), just like every living thing they like to make more of themselves but lack the ability to do so; so they have to recruit some other thing to become a factory for them. Our Humpty Dumpty Camera Stand virus finds a living cell, stands on top of it, then winds down a spike from in between its legs and then injects the instructions for that cell to become an involuntary factory to make more Humpty Dumpty Camera Stand viruses.
Our maybe/maybe not living Humpty Dumpty Camera Stand virus has the ability to jam its stinger into actual living cells and get those things to do its work for it; because by itself it lacks the ability to do so.
COVID-19 is mechanically different and dare I say it, almost beautiful. As a coronavirus, it is built like an Adidas Telstar football. It is a round structure (hence the reason why it is called a coronavirus) and at each of the intersections, it has almost little suction cup devices that it can attach itself with, to then use its wee little stingers to recruit its involuntary factories.
It is a little bit more fragile than regular Humpty Dumpty Camera Stand viruses and those suction cup devices can be gummed up with fats (wash your filthy little hands, people) but because it isn't sensitive about which direction it is oriented, it can bounce around inside a human body like the happy little bouncing ball of death that it is.
To say that your enemy is almost beautiful is rather gauche but as a piece of engineering, I think that it is brilliant. As a piece of engineering which has a job and does that job elegantly, I think that I am allowed to appreciate that; even if it is a nasty death monster.
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R13 - Resentment
Let's go all the way back to the most fundamental question of what money is. Money is within the confines of a nation, a catholic coupon system for the exchange of goods and services. It is a coupon system in the sense that of itself money has no intrinsic worth and it is catholic in the sense that there is only one system which everyone agrees upon. I live in Australia and if someone gave me Euros or Sterling Pounds or even New Zealand Dollars, all of those things while they might be fun are still useless to me. As someone living in Australia, I need Australian Dollars; not because they are intrinsically better or worse than other national coupon systems but because they are the only coupons acceptable here.
The second fundamental thing to remember is that money is exchanged for only five reasons.
- Either for the sale of goods and services; of which labour is included.
- As payment for the rent of land, buildings, plant and equipment.
- As the reward for lending out money; which is paid back in the form of interest.
- As the reward for running a business: which is paid back in the form of profit share (which is called a dividend).
- As given to people by way of government transfer payments, lottery winnings, of other spontaneous gifting like inheritance payments.
The problem which is extremely evident during the pandemic is that the same kinds of people who do not really want to pay people proper wages, also resent the fact that the government is paying people in the form of transfer payments because someone somewhere will have to make up for the shortfall in the government's books by the means of taxation.
This is the roundabout way of saying that the people who felt as though they have no responsibility whatsoever to the people of the nation and wanted the ability to do whatever they wanted, really hate the idea that the pandemic has brought into sharp focus that the people who live in a nation actually are responsible to each other, to some minor degree.
The real fear is that at some point, the government will come cap in hand and ask politely for the debt which has been incurred to be repaid. The government can not ask very poor people to pay for the debt incurred since they have no money, owing to the fact that they weren't given much in the first place; this means that the government will have to ask richer people, who are the same people who derive the most benefit from the proper functioning of the economy and are also less likely to want to be responsible for it.
If there was some common enemy who was backed by the force of arms and soldiers, then those same people would be the first to press others into conscription, for the purpose of the physical protection of their stuff. It should come as no surprise to anyone that apart from an officer class who saw honour and valour as intangible prizes worth fighting for, which also translated into becoming pilots, the bulk of the boots on the ground people who spilled their blood all over the fields of Europe in the two major disturbances last century, were all from the working class. When it came to the upper class actually fighting in the trenches, they were far less likely to be found and perversely, also more likely to be rewarded with medals as well.
This unseen enemy, is more or less treated with that same spirit except that this is a war which is impossible to avoid being in and unlike a physical war, there are no rewards for valour or honour to be won. Poorer people are however still very much expendable and some commentators border on psychopathy in demanding that poorer people just get out there and die for the vague notion of the economy.
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M19 - Aloneliness
I think that I am better prepared for this period of awkwardness and social isolation by virtue of having trained for it for 41 and a bit years. Before I was born, I was blissfully unaware of the world outside although exactly what kind of awareness an unborn baby has is perhaps unknowable, and having long since established and being repeatedly reminded that I am different from everyone else in the world (in some instances in entirely unfriendly terms), any sense of minor social isolation which we are currently going through is magnitudes smaller than my abiding sense of cosmic existential loneliness. Once you accept the base premise that it is impossible to see the world from any other perspective than your own, then the physical distance which might exist is positively microscopic in comparison with the vast gaping distances which exist between people's minds.
I was asked the question about who I have been in close proximity to over the past few months and the number of people whom I have spent more than ten minutes with (apart from commuters on public transportation) is exactly twelve. Even interactions with clients have been minimal.
I find it to be one of the cruel ironies of 2020 that after having waited 30 years for Liverpool to win the football league, witnessing a league win for a club with the words "You'll Never Walk Alone" on the club crest, has been an experience which was very much alone for me.
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C7 - Cantona Was The Best 7
The reason why Cantona was able to control the centre of the pitch with such authority was not due to his physical strength (although that helped considerably) but rather due to the way he read the game and then moved before the game shifted. I do not think that Cantona had either the deftest of touches or was necessarily the most accurate of passers but he more than made up for that by being where he needed to be before he needed to be there and then had a sufficiently large personality to be able to direct traffic around him; so that everyone else around him was also able to be where they needed to be.
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B2 - Bath Bombs
Bath Bombs as far as I can tell, were invented in 1989 by a lady in the UK called Mo Constantine; who was inspired by looking at a Berocca tablet effervescing in a glass of water, after a particularly large night out on the town and on the tiles. She would go on to co-found the company Lush; which is also as far as I can tell, the world's largest producer and seller of bath bombs.
The reason why I have no strong opinion one way or the other when it was to bath bombs, is that I have almost no opportunity to take a bath and even when I do because I am on holiday, the enduring problem of trying to fit my six foot tall stature into a five foot four space, makes taking a bath less than the pleasant experience which is enjoyed by others. In fact, the only truly enjoyable bath that has lived in my memory, was when I was in the Nikko Winds Hotel in Narita in 2003. That bath space which was outside at night at just after midnight, in ambient temperatures that were barely above freezing, coupled with a very hot bath in a garden; was simultaneously wonderful and kind of heartbreaking because I realised in the moment that I would never have anything like this ever again.
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L16 - A Stroll Across Lafayette Square
Before 1824, Lafayette Square in Washington DC was a saleyard where people bought and sold other people. Those other people, were legally considered as only 3/5ths of a person for statistical purposes and 0/5ths of a person when it came to extending the rights which you claim.
Where were you when in 1789, sweaty white men (they were all white, they were all men, and given that it was the summer and they were stuck in a small room before the invention of air conditioning they were all sweaty) argued about what form of government that the new nation would adopt and who to exclude from the rights which you claim?
Where were you in 1824 when Lafayette Square was transformed from the market where people bought and sold other people, into a public park? Those other people who were still deemed to be worth only 3/5ths of a person for statistical purposes and 0/5ths of a person for rights considerations, were still excluded from going into the new public park, which was now demarcated with a small fence to indicate that it was a public park and especially that these other people were excluded from it.
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New States that should be added to the United States:
The Great State of Denial
The Great State of Confusion
The Great State of Disorder
The Great State of Happiness
The Great State of Mind
The Great State of Emergency
Someone who has many abilities:
Barbie Nine Jobs
Jack Of All Trades
Xi Of Many Chickens
John With Many Hammers
John Who Plays With Steam In Alleys
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BT 70 - Why Do We Need Even More Batman? Isn't Batman Done?
The world does not need any more darker and edgier Batmans. Arguably every Batman beyond Michael Keaton was absolutely unnecessary and has added nothing to the character. The only reason that we are getting this Batman is because of The Joker movie; which someone has deemed necessary to produce a sequel to.
The only Batmans that the world actually needs are the Adam West Batman because that series trod the line of silliness and earnestness so very very well and the Will Arnett Batman from The Lego Movies because that plays with the idiocy of the idea of Batman in the first place.
If I was Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else then I would recast Batman as a detective, like he originally was in the 1930s, give him a Ford Mondeo and put him in Gotham, Nottinghamshire. Have Batman solve actual crime instead of this weird insane fever dream.
The Joker, The Penguin, Mr Freeze, the Catwoman etc. are all perfectly serviceable villains but if they came from the Home Counties, Yorkshire, Merseyside, Manchester etc. then they'd be far more believable.
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