Rant #2,597: The Safety Dance

Terrible, terrible, terrible.
 
It has been reported that coronavirus deaths have nearly reached past 500.000 in this country, not only the largest number of deaths of any country in the world, but more deaths than there were in World Wars I and II and the Vietnam War combined.
 
I think that it is kind of wrong to compare deaths during a pandemic with deaths during war-time conflicts, but I guess if you are going to label what we are going through as being a “war” with an invisible enemy, then you can make such a comparison.
 
The good news is that overall, new cases of the disease are down sharply and deaths are slowing.
 
You would think that has to do with the vaccine rollout, but with so many people still desiring to get inoculated and who can’t get their vaccine, you even have to question if the vaccine is working to lower the toll, or maybe just that people have become smarter a year after the pandemic hit here, wearing masks, practicing social distancing, etc.
 
I just don’t know at this point in time. More and more things are opening up, but you have to pay a price for these openings.
 
Stadiums and arenas are opening up for business again, at lesser capacities, but you have to go through a mountain of things to attend, including being tested before you arrive at the venue and sometimes even when you are there, increased contact tracing, etc.
 
It is a hassle, one that personally, I can live without.
 
I would love to attend a basketball game or a baseball game or a concert, but the last thing I want to do is to go through medical procedures in order to do so.
 
I know others will jump at the chance to get out and support their teams or their favorite artists, but me, I am very happy to watch what I can watch from the comfort of my home on television.
 
And my family and I have not eaten out in a restaurant in many months. My wife, in particular, is hesitant to do so, so we pickup food and eat it at home.
 
I know some people would vehemently disagree with my stance, but funny, such a stance has kept myself and my family disease-free for the entirety of the pandemic.
 
My wife, my son and myself have not even had a cold since this thing started, so whatever we are doing appears to be working, so who’s to argue?
 
We haven’t exactly sat at the kitchen table with our hands folded for the past year.
 
We have gone out to shop, gone to our doctors, gone to bowling alleys and other recreational places where our son participates.
 
We have enjoyed occasions with our immediate families, and we have gone out to other places when it is necessary.
 
We pickup food on the weekend at our local restaurants and fast food venues, and we go out when we feel it is necessary, like to shovel snow, take out the garbage, and things like that.

And most importantly, my wife and son have ventured out to work, and done their jobs while interacting directly with the public.
 
But unlike others, we still really haven’t spread ourselves around as much, which has evidently been beneficial.
 
I won’t argue with others who have treated the pandemic as something that is simply a nuisance, but for us, our lifestyle that we have exhibited has treated us just fine.
 
And over the weekend, we were told that we can expect to wear masks through 2022, at the very least, and we were told last week that two is better than one.
 
You have to draw the limit somewhere, and my family ahs decided that we will continue to wear masks when we venture from the house, but one is what we will wear.
 
We can’t breathe well in one—I know that I can’t—and two is a bit much. To be honest with you.
 
We have seen people in supermarkets not even wearing a single mask, and I have to wonder about their sanity, but one mask is fine with me, and unless it is mandated, we won’t be wearing two of them anytime soon.
 
Now, when do we get our vaccines?
 
Since this rollout was just so poorly planned on every level, we are now being told that the general population will be able to get inoculated by the late summer.
 
If you believe that, I do have a bridge to sell you dirt cheap.
 
I feel—and believe me, I hope I am wrong about this—that we won’t be able to get the vaccine until the fall or even the early winter.
 
Too much double talk, too many delays, and again, if you believe anything that we are being told, then really, you are quite gullible.
 
I am personally ready to take the vaccine whenever it is available to me.
 
Funny, when I took my mother to get vaccinated, the nurses there asked me if I got my shot, and I told them point blank:
 
“No. I am too young and in the wrong line of work.”
 
Maybe if I had lied, I could have skirted in there and gotten my vaccine, but I was so focused on getting my mother inoculated, it actually never crossed my mind.
 
One nurse there even told me that I should have asked if they had any leftover vaccines that needed to be used before they expired, but I felt that this was not the time to be looking out for myself, so I didn’t do it.
 
In retrospect, maybe I should have.
 
But since I didn’t, I will wait in line like everyone else.
 
And boy, is that a long, long line. 

Rant #2,596: Lies

I have been saying at this site and throughout social media that the one way for common folk like us to get back at what is happening in our nation’s Capital and on a statewide basis with our politicians is to vote them out of office the first chance we get, starting with this year’s Election Day in November.
 
I don’t care if they are Republicans or Democrats, get rid of every incumbent on the ballot, and that is what I intend to do.
 
I am not stating that my thoughts have led a national charge, but I am reading the same thing from people across the country.
 
You want to really clean the swamp, get rid of Republicans and Democrats who are clogging it up.
 
Two recent actions—one involving a Democrat, the other a Republican--have fortified my belief that common people like us must take control of who we vote for in November.
 
One is right here in New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, is embroiled in a situation of his own doing related to deaths in nursing homes during the height of the pandemic.
 
Cuomo has been lauded for his FDR-like actions during the pandemic, but now, word has gotten out about the under-reporting of deaths related to our elderly, many of whom he shoved back into nursing homes when they tested positive for COVOD, thus making these homes Petri dishes for the disease to jump from one person to another.
 
And the under-reporting came from his own office, as his personal assistant let the cat out of the bag.
 
Many of us in the know have been stating that there has been something fishy about these numbers since the get go, and now, it appears that there truly are some irregularities that will be looked into.
 
Cuomo, whose un-FDR-like blaming of everyone else but himself for everything, actually takes the blame for not communicating the information correctly to the public about nursing home deaths, but takes no other blame in this matter.
 
Both Republicans and Democrats have demanded if not his ouster then at least the removal of his emergency powers, and I am sure he sits up at night wondering about not only his political future, but his personal future too.
 
But New York voters are some of the most ignorant voters on the planet, and recent polls suggest that they think he has done a good job during the pandemic.
 
I am sure that his constituents who lost loved ones in nursing homes would vehemently disagree.
 
And then we have the Republican case, where Senator Ted Cruz of Texas decided that now was the time to take a vacation … not only right smack dab in the middle of a pandemic, but right smack dab in the middle of perhaps the worst winter weather situation his state of Texas has ever experienced.
 
Texas is going through some strange weather, and whether you want to blame it on global warming or whatever, warming is not what happened in that state.
 
Not only has the state gone through a deep freeze never seen before, but it has received tons of snow, upsetting an infrastructure that was never built to be able to withstand such an onslaught.
 
But heck, Cruz doesn’t like the situation either, so instead of trying to get through it like his fellow Texans, he has decided the best way out is to take a vacation with his family in Cancun, Mexico …
 
Well, he didn’t decide it, as according to the legislator, his daughters pressed him for a vacation, he promised them, and, you know, he never breaks a promise.
 
Well, in abandoning his state—if only for a day, as the longer vacation he was supposed to be on was pared down to just a single day—hasn’t he reneged on a promise to his state to be there when the populace needed him?
 
He has faced an incredible backlash in Texas and around the country, even more so than Cuomo has, but they are both WRONG. Do I need to spell it out to you—they are both W-R-O-N-G.
 
Each of these well-paid politicians have reneged on the promises they have made to their constituents, and both must be punished for their own stupidity.
 
And the way to punish each of them is to get rid of them. Period.
 
They are liars of the highest order, and no apologies that they can give can cover up the fact that they have proven, once and for all, that they come first, with their constituents a distant second.
 
They should both be ashamed of themselves for their actions, and for the public, this might just be the last straw.

Sure, they have both apologized for their actions, but when you get caught red-handed with your pants down, the apologies are nothing but words strung together that don't mean very much.
 
Again, I ask you and I beg you and implore you to do as I will do, and vote out any and all incumbents during the next few elections, and do it until I am satisfied that the garbage has been taken t to the curb and put in its proper place.
 
Their behavior has added to the current situation we have in this country, both large and small, and they must understand that when we vote for them, we put our full confidence in them … and they have lost our confidence.
 
Now that I have said that, it is time for me to go out and deal with the elements, but while I will be moving snow around outside, what I said in this column is no snow job.
 
Use your head in November … and don’t forget things like this when you step in the voting booth.
 
Have a good weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.

Rant #2,595: Snowbird

It is supposed to snow again today.
 
I guess you can say that it is “just another day on Long island.”
 
I mean, the tax man has already rained on my parade, so why not get pummeled by the snow, too?
 
I would like to say that this has all made me snow blind, but it hasn’t.
 
I will continue to hate every snowflake that comes down out of the sky for the rest of my life.
 
As a kid, in Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, we were a new community, the perfect place for a little kid to grow up.
 
Things were rising every day in our community, whether it be a new building or a new place to shop, and eventually, we would have the first mall to do our shopping in, an indoor mall—kind of revolutionary for the time—with not only retail, but medical offices.
 
How does this relate to snow?
 
Well, there was a hill right by one of the entrances to the mall, and when it would snow, just about every kid in the development took their sleds and went to that hill to slide down on the fresh snow.
 
At one time, there might have been 200 kids there, then replaced by 200 more, and so on, throughout those snowy days.
 
I would go there with my friends—and sometimes with my sister—and we would go up and down the hill with our sleds.
 
One time, somehow, I got my right hand caught under the sled as it was plowing down the mountain, and the sled blade literally ripped off my glove from my hand.
 
As I hate to wear gloves to this day, it was truly fortuitous that I was wearing my gloves that day, because without the glove on my right hand, I don’t know if I would still have had a hand after sledding over it—the glove was truly ripped to shreds by that blade.
 
I remember those days very fondly … and the photo above is from that period, from 1969 I believe. 

But I also remember moving to Long Island, and having my sledding days completely curtailed by the new responsibility that I had—I was the one who had to shovel the snow when we had a snowstorm.
 
What a difference a year made—1971, still going down that hill by the first mall, 1972, shoveling snow from the driveway and walks around my house.
 
And that stark contrast has stuck with me for all the decades since.
 
I loved the snow as a kid, and hate it as an adult.
 
I remember the snow ball fights I participated in as a kid, the snowmen we built—mine never looked quite right—but I also remember the piles and piles of snow that I have shoveled over the years … I am so fond of the former but so hate the latter.
 
Now, I kind of had a snow “renaissance” when my kids were young. I took them around on their sleds, but they weren’t that much into the snow as I was at their age.
 
Maybe my hate of the snow came through and reflected on them, but they have never been snowbirds at all.
 
I remember my daughter making snow angels, I remember taking my son sledding, but neither event lasted long, and we were back in the house in no time.
 
Maybe if I am ever fortunate enough to be a grandfather, I will experience the true fun of snow again, but who knows if that is ever going to happen?
 
Those days in Rochdale Village sledding down that hill seem so far away now, so many years away that they are just a very small footnote on my life.
 
But at least I experienced it, and experienced the other end of it, too, with the shoveling.
 
I can rightly say that when the snow comes, I know that I will be forced into duty as the snow picker upper in my family—with my wife, of course.
 
And with the snow now coming in areas that you wouldn’t think would ever get any—Texas, for one—I guess you can run, you can hide, but you simply cannot avoid the snow.
 
Snow more! Mush! 

Rant #2,594: Wrong

Well, my family’s taxes were completed yesterday.
 
The good news is that our son did pretty well.
 
The bad news is that my wife and I did not do too well, mainly because of my situation during the past year.
 
We truly got zonked, period.
 
I made out the checks to pay what we owe—truly disgraceful for someone who was out of work for virtually the entire year—and they will be out of here as soon as I can get to the post office this morning.
 
I also made sure that my Social Security payments are in order, too, so that our 2021 taxes maybe will be a bit more forgiving than our 2020 taxes were.
 
But honestly, who knows at this point?
 
I knew were going to get hit this year, as many families will, due to pandemic-related tax situations that presented themselves in the past very unusual year.
 
But we got zonked because of my situation, and that makes me boiling mad, but there really is nothing that could have been done about it.
 
It is what it is, but hopefully, 2021 won’t be as bad as 2020 was. That is all we can hope, and I mean across the board, including tax-wise.
 
Now I am going to sequeway to something that you just can’t smoothly sequeway to, but I am going to do it anyway.
 
After our taxes were done, it was late in the afternoon, so we went to the drive through at one popular fast food place, the only one my wife will eat the food from.
 
Lately, every time I go to this place and use the drive-through, there is a problem with my order; they leave out things, don’t give us what we ordered—and I mean totally screw up the order—or they tell me I am done without giving me my change—I kid you not.
 
Most recently, I went there with my mother after she got her second coronavirus vaccine shot, and they so totally messed up the order—telling me one price at the drive-up order screen and another, higher price when I got to the window--that I actually asked the guy at the window, “Do you know what you are doing?” and when we finally got home, the order was still completely messed up, giving us MORE than we ordered.
 
Anyway, se went there yesterday, and there was no one on line. We drove right up, placed our order, picked it up, and pretty much held our collective breath that the order was filled.
 
We got home, and emptied the bag of food out on the table. Everything seemed right … until we got to the chicken nuggets.
 
We ordered one extra four-piece spicy chicken nuggets and one extra four-piece regular nuggets, but they gave us two regular four piece chicken nuggets with no spicy ones in sight.
 
Well, we can almost shrug that off, although my wife is fond of their spicy nuggets.
 
But then the piece de resistance of total incompetence …
 
I bit into my sandwich, and I noticed that something was not right, it simply did not taste the way it ordinarily does.
 
I swallowed the first bite, and then opened up the sandwich—there was no hamburger in there, but there was a chicken patty in my sandwich.
 
Regular readers of this column know that I hate chicken, abhor this fowl, and would not eat it under any circumstances.
 
Well, I ordered a hamburger and I got chicken. Even the wrapper said “Hamburger.”
 
You know, after getting zonked with taxes, I had no strength to call up the place and tell them that they gave me the wrong sandwich like I have in the past … and yes, this is not the first time that this has happened.
 
So I dutifully ate my chicken sandwich, because I was both hungry and defeated, two things you do not want to be separately and definitely don’t want to be in tandem with each other.
 
And then I wrote out the checks for the taxes, which further put me in a shimmy.
 
I fell asleep at about 8:30 p.m., which was no surprise based on the agita I had both in my stomach and my head.
 
I feel that I just cannot win.
 
Everything I do that is right ends up being wrong.
 
Maybe I should just sit home with my hands folded all day … and somehow that will turn out wrong too.
 
Onward and upward!