"ordinary days in between extraordinary bullshit, most of it happening to someone else"

When will America finally collapse under the weight of its leadership vacuum and systemic inequalities based on race and class?  Sri Lankan writer Indi Samarajiva says it already has:

"If you’re waiting for a moment where you’re like 'this is it,' I’m telling you, it never comes. Nobody comes on TV and says 'things are officially bad.' There’s no launch party for decay. It’s just a pileup of outrages and atrocities in between friendships and weddings and perhaps an unusual amount of alcohol.

Perhaps you’re waiting for some moment when the adrenaline kicks in and you’re fighting the virus or fascism all the time, but it’s not like that. Life is not a movie, and if it were, you’re certainly not the star. You’re just an extra. If something good or bad happens to you it’ll be random and no one will care. If you’re unlucky you’re a statistic. If you’re lucky, no one notices you at all.

Collapse is just a series of ordinary days in between extraordinary bullshit, most of it happening to someone else. That’s all it is."

Over 200,000 Americans are dead because of Trump's anti-science incompetence regarding coronavirus.

Hong Kong is doomed and neither Trump nor Johnson is lifting a finger to stop it.

A world-wide depression is about to kick in.

I mean, is there even enough oxygen left within American political discourse to remember that a quack government "doctor" has been forcing hysterectomies on migrant women?

Yawn

Kamala did fine.  (Notice a pattern here?)  I might have missed it, but she didn't mention Merrick Garland's name when Pence asked about court packing, which stood out for me as a missed opportunity.  Then again, maybe that's too much inside baseball for most Americans.

Mike Pence is obviously not quite as deranged at his master.  I don't see that carrying much weight in late 2020.

Biden is well within his rights to cancel the last two debates with Typhoid Cheeto.  They won't move the scale one inch either way.

Good lord, let's get this over with.

RIP Johnny Nash, Eddie V.

 

Johnny Nash, "I Can See Clearly Now" live

This might be overshadowed by the equally sad death of Eddie Van Halen.  They both deserve to be remembered for their very different but very excellent contributions to music.  Also, Nash was apparently the first non-Jamaican to record records in Kingston.

Too soon, too soon.

Things Are Still Awful

You can't "go back to normal" as long as the coronavirus is still active.  Even in South Korea, the country with the most success in fighting the virus, things are still in a deep rut:

"A shortage of job opportunities is another unexpected problem. College students who need part-time jobs can’t find any.

 

Lee Joo-yeon, a 24-year-old Hanyang University student, says she's trying but having little luck.

 

'When I had a job interview with a cafe owner, he said he was looking for an experienced worker,' Lee said. 'According to him, he used to have two part-time workers but had to cut one as he can’t afford paying them amid the Covid-19 pandemic.'

 

Mr. Lee, a 28-year-old studying for the civil service exam, said he was recently laid off from his part-time job.

 

'While studying for the exam, I used to work at a pub in front of Hanyang University at night to earn money for monthly living expenses,' Lee said. 'After I lost the job, it’s been really tough for me to get another opportunity.'”

Have I mentioned that I'll probably be moving back to America next year, and that I'm terrified at the prospect of finding work?

"All In" Is A Weak Move, Not A Strong One

In poker terms, Trump has gone "all in."  In moving back to the White House he'll have his bully pulpit back, and some modicum of control over a narrative that is increasingly looking good for Joe Biden after an objectively disastrous debate performance.

Of course, "all in" means you've also played your last move.

Here, it also  means further risking the lives of the White House staffers around him, the Secret Service, White House janitorial and management, and of course, literally all of their family members.

Obviously, this shocks nobody.  There has always been a Jonestown quality to Trump's support, both officially (Republicans cowed into not wearing masks) and unofficially (crowds of supporters herded into indoor arenas).

It's still two or three days before we know just how severe a case of COVID-19 Trump has picked up.  If he goes straight back onto the campaign trail, only to flee back to Walter Reed with inflamed lungs and needing oxygen, he'll look even weaker than the overweight, under-exercised, 74 year-old he actually is.  Game over, figuratively at best.

Republicans are still going to try and do everything they can to steal this election, but Trump's "outs" are growing scarcer and more dangerous by the day.  (Hour?)  Gas-lighting a pusillanimous and easily-led US media is one thing.  Playing games with a goddamn killer virus is another.

Again, this is not at all a call for complacency.  I'm just pointing out that these are the final, desperate moves of someone who knows he's in trouble (politically and physically) and more importantly, knows he has no options left.

Anybody familiar with Texas Hold'em (even rank amateurs like me) knows that moving all your chips in is usually the desperate move, not the strong one.  Nine times out of ten, it signals "please don't realize how fucked I really am," not "recognize my status as a preternatural He-Man."

Staying put at Walter Reed and milking hourly empathy points from FOX, and probably even to a lesser extent CNN would have been the confident move.  "For any American suffering from the China Virus, I know how difficult it is!"

But alas, this is a lifelong loser making what might be his final loser move.

It's only a question of how many actual human lives he manages to take with him before it's over.

"genuinely afraid of where this could lead"

With a new, non-surgical, treatment for dwarfism advancing rapidly, who's to say whether or not it's a "disease" in the first place?  The Guardian takes a look at the medical, ethical, and social issues involved:

"There are, says Gillian Martin, a tutor and chair of the Restricted Growth Association, the British charity that supports people with dwarfism, 'people who are genuinely afraid of where this could lead'. Because about 80% of children with achondroplasia are born to parents without it, some 'adults with dwarfism in the community feel that average-height parents are being an advocate for a disability that doesn’t directly affect them. There is a fear – irrational in my view – that this research is leading the way to eradicate dwarfism.'

This view tends to be stronger in the US, where there is, says Joe Stramondo, a professor of philosophy at San Diego State University and a disability rights activist, 'a more robust dwarf culture and identity. With that kind of cultural context, you’re going to get a very different response to something like this than other areas of the world where people with dwarfism don’t associate with each other as often. We recognise our situation as being one of oppression, and of being subjected to stigma as being the main source of our difficulty in the world. When you have that community, that sounding board, you’re going to have more pushback to a drug like this.' But it’s far from the only view, he says. 'We have people who are very much against the use of the drug, and you have folks who are enthusiastic about it, and say: "Maybe it’s stigma, but it still makes my life harder. I don’t want that for my children." You have a lot of people who are somewhere in between, who are saying: "Let’s wait and see what the drug actually does. Let’s see if it has the capability of dealing with some of these co-morbidities such as sleep apnoea, or spinal stenosis." I think if it were shown to do some of that, there would be lots of people who would be pretty enthusiastic about it.'”

As medical science advances, it's interesting to think about "diseases" that really don't need to be cured.  (Autism as a sign of potential genius rather than an inability to function socially, for example.)  And of course, more conservative societies might even mandate these types of treatment rather than allowing parents and their children to decide if they want to be "fixed."

The future, if we make it past Trump, is going to be complicated as hell.

Thoughts And Prayers

I say we treat a sick and / or dying President Trump with the same respect and deference he has shown to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or Hillary Clinton.

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) October 3, 2020

Monorail!

Daegu, South Korea.

It occurs to me that after ten years in lovely Daegu I really haven't taken more pictures of my more immediate neighborhood of Chilgok / North Daegu.

It's a perfectly nice area, but before COVID arrived I spent much more of my free time in other parts of the city, either downtown or way to the east at the ballpark.

What's cool here is that you can see a few things that have definitely improved the area recently.  The glass building on the left is Guam Station, on the Line Three Monorail (in addition to Lines One and Two, traditional subway lines).  Getting downtown is now a breeze compared to the bus lines.

Also, they've finished construction on a really nice foot and bike path along this stream.  When the weather is good (like it was today) people flock to the stream side.  I know it doesn't look amazing, but it's a big change from what used to be pretty much an overlooked drainage ditch.

Spam Spam Spam

 

Yes, Spam is a traditional (and expensive) gift here in South Korea for major holidays.

Daegu, South Korea.

Dalmatian Station

Daegu, South Korea.

Happy Chuseok!

It's Chuseok again, Korean Thanksgiving, and the city, or at least the northern suburb where I live, is totally quiet.  There's the occasional shriek of kids playing, but that's about it.  The weather is Platonically ideal at 75 with a few clouds, and I'm in the middle of a five-day weekend staycation.

I had pizza for dinner last night, which I haven't had in over a year if I'm remembering correctly.

For what it's worth, there is decent South Korean pizza out there but the place I ordered from on a bit of a whim was not it.

Insert bad pizza / sex jokes here.

It's already October.  Three months left to ago in this hell-year.  I got an e-mail from Washington State to let me know my e-ballot has been received.

It's something, I guess.

Happy Chuseok to you and your family.

(To get technical, far too often Korean pizza cheese and toppings don't "meld" with the crust.  They sort glide on top and come off way too easily.  The flavors are there, but the marriage between crust and cheese and toppings never seems to come together like it should.  And I'm pretty sure this places makes their dough from scratch, so the problem is somehow in the cooking process, not the ingredients.)