Pandemic Archives • Page 30 of 34 • kemeny.ca | Website and Blog of Horatio Kemeny

July 16, 2020

It’s been one of those days where I haven’t had much time to think, let alone write anything… so I will simply dig into my trove of cool words and pull out this beauty:

Semaphorism (noun): a conversational hint that you have something personal to say on the subject but don’t go any further—an emphatic nod, a half-told anecdote, an enigmatic ‘I know the feeling’—which you place into conversations like those little flags that warn diggers of something buried underground: maybe a cable that secretly powers your house, maybe a fiberoptic link to some foreign country.

I didn’t write that definition; I literally cut-and-pasted it… but I’ll give you my 2 cents, because, like some many oddities these days, it’s relevant.

I’m finding that as things migrate from the complete “WTF is going on” that we all felt in March and April… to May and June where we got used to the weirdness… that here’s what July and August will look like; very familiar, yet unfamiliar. It’s worth noting that this has all been (and continues to be) the strangest of times, and that applies to us all equally…. like, my life has been derailed in ways that make it completely unrelatable to what I was used to. You can say the same thing; everyone can. But what used to be normal for you was never normal for me to begin with. You’’ve been dealing with your own issues, as have I.

Forget the pandemic for a moment… even without it, we’ve all been absorbed in our little worlds from the day we were born. We’ve all had unique experiences. But suddenly, we’re all in the same boat, and it’s curious to think that the present derailed versions of what we’re all going through have a lot more in common with each other than ever… 6 months ago, we were all so different. Now we’re all derailed… and much more similar. Recall that word Sonder… the realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own… isn’t it ironic (don’t you think) that it took a global pandemic to “normalize” life to this extent? A huge earthquake, a meteor strike or a nice, huge unexpected nearby volcanic blast would all achieve the same thing (and let’s hope we don’t find out anytime soon… but 2020 is only halfway done…), but when you think about it, we all have a lot more in common than we used to. We don’t need to fake it in conversations; we know exactly what someone is talking about when they talk about something that until recently, would’ve been completely unfamiliar to all of us.

A bit of a silver lining on the huge cloud… and I’m looking forward to the day when talking about all of that commonality will be within conversations that begin with, “Remember when…”

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:21:23-07:00July 16th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Interesting Words, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Hope, Relevant, Space, Pandemic, Country|5 Comments

July 11, 2020

Greetings from Whistler… where… good news! The pandemic is over! We went for a walk last night in the village… lots of strangers hanging out, having a great time… no social distancing needed! No masks! It’s amazing, eh… a short drive up Highway 99 and it’s a whole other world!

If you ever get depressed about Vancouver weather… and I’m guessing today is as good an example as any, because it can’t be too different from Whistler, where it’s pouring rain… you know, when you open up the Weather App and it’s just a long row of rainclouds for the next week… you know what I mean… ugh.

So… what you do… is check out the weather in San Pedro de Atacama… and pretend that’s our forecast. That’s the place I’ve previously mentioned where it never rains. All you’ll see is an endless row of smiling sunshine. Isn’t that great? Once in a while, a little cloud will show up 5 days from now, wrecking that perfect visual streak. Poor silly little cloud; it’s just lost. Soon, mommy and daddy cloud will find it and take it up north, to B.C., where it belongs.

Yeah, of course, you’re fooling yourself. But maybe it makes you feel a little better, albeit briefly.

Indeed, if you like sticking your head in the sand… it doesn’t need to be in the sand of the Chilean Atacama desert… it can be a lot closer… Florida or Georgia or any of the 50 minus 5 states where case counts are increasing daily. Or, apparently, it can be Whistler too.

One thing has become abundantly clear; this pandemic will not end – truly, end – until there is a vaccine.

There’s a whole other discussion that emerges from that; the vaccine will probably only be X% effective. Many people, especially south of the border where health is a political statement, will refuse that vaccine. So let’s say only Y% of the population gets vaccinated. You end up with X times Y percent of people who are immune, and certainly that number will be far less than what’s needed for herd immunity. And so, this damn little virus will persist… much like the ridiculous outbreaks of measles… for which there’s no reason, other than the insanity of anti-vaxxers. It actually does feel like making one stick their head in the sand. At least it's warm, and not raining.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:21:25-07:00July 11th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver|Tags: Virus, Pandemic, Chile, Vancouver, Vaccine, Masks, News, Cars, British Columbia, Population, Herd Immunity, South|16 Comments

July 10, 2020

We’re heading up to Whistler today, so this space may be emptier than usual for the next little while…and I’ll update the charts and graphs to the proper size eventually…

In the meantime, a couple of somewhat-related words that come to mind as I watch the world, and its contents, spinning around me…

Sonder (noun) The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Onism (noun) The frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time.

It’s kind of mind-bending when you try to step outside your “existence” – in other words, to truly try to visualize things from any other point of view, other than your own. I don’t just mean trying to understand someone else’s opinion; I mean literally, through their eyes. Stop and consider that every single experience and memory you have is from your own, unique point of view. But it’s more than that; all of reality is only what you’ve experienced. There is literally nothing of existence outside of your experiencing it. If you’ve never seen it or heard of it, until you do, it doesn’t actually exist.

Elon Musk thinks we’re all living in a simulation, and the longer it all goes on (life, in general), the more I get the idea that it’s true. The complexity and vastness of the universe, in both directions… infinitely big or small, feels a lot like the way these vast worlds of online games work… there’s a big map (like our universe), but until you actually need to go somewhere, it doesn’t exist… the game just creates that place when it needs to. It would take way too much memory and disk space for it all to be there. What’s the point of generating all of that for some distant galaxy we can barely see? We’ll create it when we get there… which we never will.

Closer to home, as per the words above… this vivid version of reality you hold in your mind; 7.8 billion other people have their own, unique version of it. It’s mind-blowing to think about, and it’s cool that there are words for it. I have this sonder every time I feel onism.

And if this is a simulation, I get the impression someone found some cheat codes and is trying them out on us. Threat of nuclear war? Killer hornets? Pandemic? Massive political upheaval with the world’s biggest superpower? Something new pretty-much every day. Today it’s a new virus in Kazakhstan, potentially worse than COVID-19. Gee, I wonder what this sequence of buttons does…

This unfortunately has the feel of when someone gets bored with a game. You spent some time building villages or planting crops or whatever… you’ve been doing it for a while, but the game has gotten stagnant or boring… so you throw the crazy at it. Storm the villages, burn the crops. Let’s hope that’s not what we’re dealing with… let’s at least hope that if whoever is running the show got bored, there’s that guy behind him watching… and now, saying, “Wait.. wait… seriously, wait… I got this… here, give me control.” Let’s hope… because then we should be good for another 65 million years… before that guy gets bored and sends a big meteor. Or whatever he needs to deal with his own onism at the sonder he sees on earth.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:21:25-07:00July 10th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Interesting Words, Humour, Sports & Gaming, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Idea, COVID-19, Pandemic, Game, Space, Hope, Universe, Mind, Virus, Understand|17 Comments

July 9, 2020

Isn’t in fun when your credit card info gets compromised, and your card gets cancelled… and you have to notify all 38 different auto-billers of the new card number… such a great use of time. Kudos though, to VISA and MC, whose AI fraud-detection these days seem to work quite well. Instantly flagged were $1,000+ online purchases at a number of high-end fashion retailers. Not quite in character for me.

I got sort-of wrongly accused of credit card fraud one time… I was in Calgary, and just before flying home, I filled up the tank of the rental car at the airport gas station before returning it.

Upon landing in Vancouver, I picked up my car from the parking lot and filled it up with gas at that little gas station wedged between the entrance/exit roads to YVR. This was 20 years ago, before pay-at-the-pump was a thing. In fact, before pre-paying for gas was a thing.

I filled up my tank and went inside, and gave the guy my card. He ran it… and his expression changed.

“Uhh… it didn’t go through”.
“Oh, that’s weird… should be fine… I just used it.”
“I’ll call VISA.”
“Sure… actually, don’t bother… here, I’ll pay cash.”
“Yeah… umm… I’m going to call them.”
“Seriously, don’t bother… here’s the cash.”

But he wouldn’t take the cash, and he wouldn’t return the card. And then I started wondering what little message must have popped-up on his machine… Fraud alert? Destroy card? Call police?

It makes some sense… buying gas 2 hours apart with the same physical card… at two gas stations more than 1,000km apart… ok, that’s fair. We got it quickly resolved… but, in fairness, that should have set off some alarm bells.

You know what else sets off alarm bells, but doesn’t get resolved so easily? Disney World in Florida is opening up this weekend.

Trust me, I am well-aware of the financial problems this pandemic is causing. I’m very familiar with plenty of economic forecasts and cash-flow projections that, at present, have zeros for top-line revenue. Do you know how many companies have zeros up there when they’re planning their budgets? Zero. Because, without revenue, you don’t have a business.

Surviving to live another day has been a well-discussed topic, but I’m not going to write about government incentives or job losses… I’m just going to talk about Disney. Disney is a public company, so they have to disclose a bunch of information, and one of the things they disclose is how much cash they have in the bank… defined as cash, or highly-liquid investments that could be redeemed on short notice. Here’s how much cash they’ve had over the last few years:

2017: $4.0 billion
2018: $4.2 billion
2019: $5.4 billion

Up to March 31, 2020: $14.3 billion

I don’t have a clue where that new $9 billion came from. Maybe they bought lots of shares in Zoom. It doesn’t matter… what matters is… that there are a lot of struggling companies that can’t afford to take a hit, but Disney isn’t one of them. They could most certainly afford to sit tight for bit… especially when Florida is seeing record numbers. Like… scary record numbers. Florida has a little more than half the population of Canada. Since July 1st, Canada has had 2,500 new cases. Florida has had 60,000.

At the risk of sounding a little too socialist… hey Disney, pay your people to sit around for another month or two. You can afford it. But your local hospitals can’t afford what you’re about to impose upon them. They already can’t… 56 Florida ICUs are at capacity, 35 others are at less than 10% availability… as Dr. Henry would tell you, “This is not the time.”

It’s easy to ring alarm bells. But it’s seeming difficult to get the right people to hear them.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:21:25-07:00July 9th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Business & Economics, Life in Vancouver, Travel Stories, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Fact, Population, Dr Bonnie Henry, Work, Canada, Pandemic, Business, Vancouver, Cars, Numbers, Government|13 Comments

July 5, 2020

What a beautiful day for a bike ride… so, off I went, on a long one.

Usually, these rides wind up down by the water somewhere… Spanish Banks, Kits, out by Science World, English Bay, Stanley Park. I always manage to wind up at one of them. Today, it was most of them. And certainly, almost always, Vanier Park –- that beautiful, wide-open green space behind the Planetarium. Back in the 90s, when I lived near Granville Island, I was there almost daily. I’d usually walk west from my place… sometimes so lost in thought, I’d suddenly (well, a few hours later) find myself at UBC and have to take a bus back home.

But Vanier Park… there were two reasons I loved that spot. One, my favourite bench (which is still there, overlooking the water) and two… Ray Bethell.

If that name doesn’t ring a bell, it’s about to… because if you were ever down there at some point over the last 40 years, you’ll almost certainly remember the guy whose kite flying was so out-of-this-word that it was hard to imagine that what you were seeing was actually real. The guy flying three kites at once; one from each hand, the third tied to his waist, all three synchronized and doing acrobatics that were hard to believe and astonishingly beautiful.

I got to know Ray pretty well back then, and I’d often stop and chat with him. In fact, when he passed away in December of 2018, I wrote a little bit about it… back in the days when I didn’t post much to Facebook, haha. You can read it here:

https://www.facebook.com/kemeny.ca/posts/10156384761247481

And so today, as I was riding around that corner that used to be his turf, I thought about an interesting aspect of his life; he was older than I am today when he picked up his first kite. He then lived another 38 years… where, over time, he simply became the best in the world. As I wrote in that piece, whether you’ve seen him doing his thing or not, go re-live some memories and/or prepare to be astonished. Just Google the name or find him on YouTube. The dark, leathery tan… the wide grin… the unique cap. A lot of tattoos, with a lot of stories to go with them. And, of course, the kites.

It just goes to show, sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks. Ray himself had a most interesting life, an eclectic collection of jobs. It was after he retired that he took up kites… which led to sponsorships and world travel and a whole 2ⁿᵈ act of his life.

Especially for those from whom this pandemic has been a life pause/reset/restart… or, at least, has led to some sort of introspection that further leads to thinking “what next” -– there you go. It’s never too late to do something else… and to eventually be doing it far better than you ever imagined.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:21:27-07:00July 5th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Remember, Imagine, Stanley Park, Pandemic, Science, Spain, Space, Cars, Fact|6 Comments

June 30, 2020

Lobsters are fascinating creatures… they can live to be over 100 years old, they’re fertile till the day they die, they have blue blood, and every other sea creature generally leaves them alone to live their lives. They live long, untroubled lives… unless they wind up in a dirty tank at the front of a restaurant with their claws trapped by rubber bands.

Many years ago I was at a Chinese restaurant and was looking at the menu which was written in both English and Chinese… so I was trying to map the 3 Chinese characters to what they mean. By comparing “Lemon Chicken” and “Sesame Chicken”, I could figure out “Chicken” and then quickly figure out “Lemon” and “Sesame” and verify it against “Sesame Vegetables” and figure out more from there. A fun brain exercise. A fun game of decoding. Anyway, what I think I figured out is that “Lobster” is described in Chinese as “Little Sea Dragon” — isn’t that cute? I was so proud of myself for figuring that out.

Actually, another restaurant story… this one from Costa Rica… a group of us went to a really good restaurant… seafood, of course, right on the beach. We were there for about 5 hours and consumed at least twice as many bottles of wine. And when we were staggering out of there in the wee hours of the morning, we passed the lobster tank near the door. It was full of normal sized lobsters, and one giant monster. One of my friends… Scotty, who is almost certainly reading this… asked about that lobster… how old is he, how long has he been here? And upon hearing the answers, declared, “I’m freeing him!!”

“What, señor?”

“You heard me! I’m buying that lobster right now, and I’m setting him free!!”

So he did. Not a cheap lobster… but we all ceremoniously marched him down to the water and launched him into the pitch-black abyss of freedom. I’d like to hope he made it into deeper water, and wasn’t to be found back in that tank a week later.

Actually, another side-note… there’s a very interesting/bizarre movie called “The Lobster”. If you want a real “WTF was that?!” movie experience, I highly recommend it. Don’t google it or read about it; just watch it… and… nah, ok, no spoilers.

Lobsters… here’s the thing… a lobster is actually a soft-tissued creature that happens to live in a shell all its life. And as it grows, it needs bigger shells. Multiple times in its life, it’ll shed its shell by a process called “molting”, and inhabit the new one it’s been growing. The interesting thing is that it only grows into a new shell when it’s grown big enough to get uncomfortable in its current one. In other words, the lobster only grows as a result of its discomfort. If he were a happy little lobster never pushing his boundaries of comfort, he’d never grow. Which is all, of course, a bit of a metaphor to simply state that as we navigate through life, it’s sometimes when we push through our points of discomfort and challenge ourselves a bit, that we grow. Correction — that’s pretty much the only time we actually grow. Knowledge can come from the outside, but growth comes from the inside. And if we all sit around getting fat and lazy because life no longer poses any challenges, I guess it’s up to us individually to impose some discomfort onto ourselves and make the best of it.

Certainly this pandemic has thrown us all into an unforeseen amount of discomfort; what we do with it seems to be about the only thing left in our control. And to extend the meaning a bit further… the lobster is most vulnerable when it sheds its shell… for a period of time… between a few minutes up to a few hours, he is without his armour… naked and exposed to the world. The epitome of truly uncomfortable. If that’s the way 2020 has left you feeling so far, you’re not alone… but tomorrow begins the latter half of the year… every day is one day closer to being able to look back at this year with 20/20 hindsight (haha, that used to be a lot funnier) and figure out what we made of it. The shell we’re all trying to grow is a silver lining around a pretty big cloud.. what it all ends up looking like… individually, collectively… remains to be seen.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:21:58-07:00June 30th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Humour, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Pandemic, Game, Movie, Brain, Hope, China|16 Comments

June 27, 2020

Until I run out of interesting words, I’ll keep coming up with them… such as…

Lachesism (noun): The desire to be struck by disaster – to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire.

It’s an interesting one alright… and perhaps one that’s relatable to anyone who at some point in life has felt like they need to hit a big reset button. There are some interesting pieces out there, written by people whose lives have gotten immeasurably better as a result of this pandemic. Trapped in a low-paying crappy job, or crappy living situation… or both… and with no way out. But suddenly… the job is gone. The bad roommate situation dissolves. The government helps. The online business takes off.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from that, it’s that you don’t have to wait for a huge disaster to start making changes. We’re all aware of what keeps us from making those big, life-changing decisions… usually fear. But it’s interesting… that when that decision gets made for you, people often surprise themselves with the ability to step up and deal with it. If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger… and that often means stepping out of your comfort zone. Some people just can’t do it, but are very appreciative, in hindsight, when what’s on the other side of the comfort zone turns out to be a lot better. They just needed a little nudge. Or a huge, unexpected kick.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:21:59-07:00June 27th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Business & Economics, Interesting Words, Travel Stories|Tags: Pandemic, Government, Business|2 Comments

June 25, 2020

Here are today’s numbers and graphs… and, just for fun, a word of the day to make you think a bit:

Exulansis: (noun) The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.

A pretty relatable word these days… like, everyone is going through their own version of “What is going on?!” — no doubt at some point it’s not worth trying to explain your particular version of coping. This word has been around longer than the pandemic, but it’s never been more relevant.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:21:59-07:00June 25th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Interesting Words|Tags: Relevant, Pandemic, Numbers|4 Comments

Day 100 – June 24, 2020

And on the 100ᵗʰ day, he rested. Well, not quite… but let’s see where we’re at…

Precisely 100 days ago was St. Patrick’s Day… March 17ᵗʰ. On that day, the number of cases in Italy was spiralling out of control. The case numbers had doubled in less than 5 days, to over 30,000. In the U.S., the case numbers were at 6,500… but had doubled in less than 3 days. I had seen a chart of that, and graphed it. Then I’d adjusted it, to a common starting point. And then, I added in Canada (whose case count was 600, having doubled in about 3 days as well). We were a week behind the U.S., and around 2½ weeks behind Italy. Huh… interesting… I bet other people might be interested in seeing that. So… I posted it. And that generated enough interest that this became a simple exercise of updating those graphs every day, hoping like mad that we wouldn’t be following the U.S., who in turn hopefully wouldn’t be following Italy.

And so began an interesting journey of analysis, introspection and observation. What was intended to be a brief analysis of the numbers and graphs… quickly turned into my ramblings… you know… while I’m here… maybe I have something to say… so now that I have a little soapbox to stand upon, let’s make the most of it. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep up this pace of an entire article a day, about some eclectic topic that may have possessed me… but let’s go with. I’m pretty proud of hitting 100 days in a row… not a single day missed. Even I’m surprised I had so much to say.

This is starting to sound like a goodbye, but it’s not… but just like the frantic nature of this virus in its early days, around here it’s slowing down… and so am I. I’ll continue to post the daily numbers and graphs, because there are actually some people who are viewing this just for that… but the quality and quantity of posts… like what you’re reading right now… will diminish, especially in the near future as it’s summer and I’m making every effort to unplug as much as possible. I will still endeavour to post… whatever I end up posting… consistently at 5pm… but, you know… it’s summer.

If you’re missing the daily fix, it’s interesting to note that many of these articles have aged well. Not that they’re that old to begin with, but I’m happy to announce that these 100 posts… as well as whatever else I write in the future… will also be available on my own web site… which launched about 10 minutes ago. The advantage of reading there is that the posts are searchable… something that after 100 days, I myself have made use of… (“Didn’t I already write about that…?”). If you visit www.kemeny.ca and click on the seal (the red, waxy kind… not the marine animal that can balance a ball kind), it’ll take you to a beautifully formatted version of these 100 posts… and whatever comes after. It’s very trippy reading back on some of these; it reminds me where my brain was at, on those specific days.

Here’s another one of those cool words:

Jouska: (noun) A hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head.

This blogging thing is kind of fun. Actually, it’s a lot of fun… I guess more than anything, it’s because it’s what that word alludes to… but actually spelled out. A compulsive jumble of thoughts becomes a lot more coherent when you sit down to write it out, word by word, in a form that others will understand. Who knew. It’s given me an urge to write something longer… maybe a book, ideas for which are already brewing. If I mange to get around to it, you will all be the first to know.

Until then… hey, I’m still around… some hopefully interesting content will show up here in the future… I promise… just not every single day. In the meantime, allow me to quote my favourite provincial health officer… whose words should always apply — not just in the midst of a pandemic: Be kind, be calm and be safe.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:40:10-07:00June 24th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Follower Favourites, Interesting Words, Travel Stories, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Pandemic, Canada, Numbers, Future, Virus, Brain, Understand, Italy|34 Comments

Day 99 – June 23, 2020

I’ve written before about how sometimes, new words are needed…. to capture an essence that’s only describable by a lengthy paragraph. It’s great to see that such words often already exist.

Here are a few:

Vemödalen: (noun) The frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist.

On the surface, this comes to mind when you’re at the Leaning Tower of Pisa or Niagara Falls or any other world-class tourist trap… I suppose these days it doesn’t matter; digital pictures cost nothing. But for those of us who’ve been around long enough to remember that pictures came in expensive packs of 24 or 36, it’s a different story. You used to put a lot of thought before pressing the shutter button. And once those pictures were taken, it was several days before you could see the results. As you might imagine, taking pictures of your food wasn’t really a thing. Neither was taking 150 selfies to get the perfect one. Photography is a totally different experience these days, one we take for granted. But there’s more depth to that definition, and it touches on the entire experience that ends up being encapsulated in that photograph. Especially in an aforementioned tourist trap… where we’re trying to capture something we’d hope is unique to us, but deep down you know you’re just one of the insignificant many trying to capture the same thing so many others have tried. It’s an interesting duality, trying to be unique in a sea of similarity.

Occhiolism: (noun) The awareness of the smallness of your perspective.

I’m a good example… I’m here, happy to share my thoughts, but I’m aware I have a unique point of view; it makes sense for me, and I can defend it to the death, but there are those who’ll disagree and have their own points. I can probably argue their sides too, because I often understand them; I just vehemently disagree with them. But I’m well-aware it’s my unique perspective… one that’s the result of my own life experiences… and if I were able to visualize that, perhaps snap a picture of it, no doubt I’d feel a bit of vemödalen… because there’s nothing so special about it.

Liberosis: (noun) The desire to care less about things.

Everyone has their list of what’s important and what isn’t. The tops and bottoms of those lists are easy to define, or at least… should be. Your close family, top of the list. The idiot who cut you off and caused your blood pressure to blow up and caused you to yell a profanity… near the bottom. It’s the stuff in the middle, the stuff that could go either way, that often confounds us. Maybe we end up worrying too much or wasting a lot of time on something that ultimately isn’t so important. I try to apply a rule… don’t spend more than N minutes right now on something that won’t matter in N months. Easier said than done, perhaps due to my occhiolism — and the inability to be truly objective.

Combining all three of those is a good summary of my thinking these days, as I watch the world in what could only be described as a bad movie script. The sort where the writer walks into the meeting with a potential producer, and is laughed out of the office, being told to either write something that’s truly real, or pure science-fiction/fantasy. You can’t have both. A president too narcissistic to see or care that he’s destroying the fabric of his country? A global pandemic that many people aren’t taking seriously? Come on man… why not throw in some out-of-control wildfires in Australia, a near nuclear war with Iran and, for a bit of extra seasoning and comic relief, murder hornets. Get real.

So here we are… I think like many of you, I shake my head at what I’m seeing around me and am frustrated that the people who are supposed to be responsible and in charge and making such a mess of it. It’s not a movie I’d like to see, let alone be a part of. This whole thing is certainly not playing out like a Hollywood movie; maybe one of those dark foreign films, with a lot of black-and-white cut scenes of the past, hallucinogenic, colourful dream sequences, and, of course, lots of fancy, obscure words. The whole thing sometimes adds up to a worthwhile experience. In this case though, when we’ve come to the conclusion that the movie sucks, we can’t just walk out.

One last word:

Énouement: (noun) The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self.

Yeah, let’s all learn that one… you think it’s relevant now… just wait a few years. Or maybe weeks.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:22:24-07:00June 23rd, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Science of COVID-19, Interesting Words, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Australia, Understand, Movie, Imagine, Science, Country, Future, Hope, Mind, Remember, Relevant, Pandemic, President|6 Comments