Bullet points

The quarantine and the constant rain are playing with my head and my circadian rhythms.  I woke up really early, warmed up with my electronic instruments for a minute to make sure that the world had not come to an end while I was sleeping and then went back to bed.

Didn't wake up until eleven. What for? Not like I have any work to go to... But the manner of being woken was different. It was the squawking of the scrub jay. "Hey man, feed me."

I'm like "Hey yourself, what do you think this is, a government program?"

He wasn't listening. Kept at it. I swear, someday I'm going to smoke that jay.

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The rain has been epic this week, twice what was expected. Neighbor was at 5.3" this morning so we have to be up over 6" now.

Rainbow Creek is really high and the river is pretty insane too. Hope our bridge doesn't get tested again like in '93.

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I am not a text person. Hate them, always have, for a variety of reasons. People, myself included, turn into dig artists and it is by nature, a total monologue. A nastier monologue.

Call me an old fashioned romantic, I happen to like discourse and dialogue.

So it is with great pleasure that I can tell you that I have not had any text downloads for about ten days. No memes, no videos. Nothing. Beautiful. Leslie's phone has been the same.

I called ATT today and found out that there is a tower that has been down about two miles away. Should be fixed tomorrow. Damn. What a nice break it has been.

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I have been on the chat line with Bank of America for the last two days. I am self employed and the application for us folks was supposed to work today. But it asked me to certify that I had employees, which I do not. The chat guy says just fill it out to the best of your ability and gave me a link to a government website that also knew nothing.

So I did my best but it was not a good fit whatsoever and I may have just committed a felony. So maddening.

Similar to what happened at EDD. People from both the Supervisor's office and the Congressional liaison said fill it out with your own business as employer. Which I did, only to find out that the portal is also not ready. So will I get penalized for listening to a government person who it turns out knew as little as I did? We shall see.

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I have a friend who has had a rocky road the last decade or so and we were discussing the current existential catastrophe, which I contend is far more personally earth shattering than the two major cataclysms of my lifetime, the JFK assassination and 9-11. And we both chuckled because of the beautiful democracy of the thing, everybody, no matter what their station, is essentially eating the same shit sandwich (except for some notable exceptions way beyond my paygrade, I am sure.)

Even the pearl clutchers have been knocked about in their hermetically sealed bubbles. The tragedy is so equal opportunity. But those of us who have taken some hits from fate over the years are seemingly in better shape to deal with the emotional turmoil because we had little faith in the solidity of the life situation anyway.

Disaster has been nipping at my heels since I was about thirteen years of age, like a little vicious terrier, never far away, no matter how far I get ahead, so I can sort of laugh a little bit even though the future forecast looks so downright shitty. Does that make any sense? You make peace with it.

As Robert Crumb once so ably put it; Have another hamburger, nobody gets out of here alive anyway.

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I am getting serious for a second. Probably deserves its own post but I wanted to bring something up, with as much respect and deference for the perspective of both sides as I can, so close to Easter.

There is an interesting conversation going on in Kansas, between the Democratic Governor and the Republican legislature. The Governor, Laura Kelley, issued an executive order telling people to, among other things, shelter in place and limit church gatherings. The Republican legislature overturned her order, saying that she was encroaching on religious liberty.

She is now suing them back.

Mission San Luis Rey de Francia chapel interior

Now I respect religious liberty myself, the freedom to believe or not believe is very important to me. But it is not absolute.

I can agree for the sake of argument that it is maybe not fair to make a baker bake a cake for a same sex couple if it goes against their sincere religious convictions. Or officiate a wedding.

We can debate it but I can make a case for either side for the sake of our hypothetical.

But if a landlord says, no renting to same sex couples, my understanding of the bible forbids it, or a restaurant says, no jews allowed, or an employer says that I won't give you a job because your spouse is of a different race, well then I do have a problem with it.

And while you may enjoy your freedom of religion the rest of us all should also have certain rights to have a freedom from your religion.

Congregating during a pandemic is just such an occasion. Your faith notwithstanding, you are putting others, believers and non believers alike, at significant risk.

Now I have heard religious folks say, well, you run into people at the grocery store too and no one says anything about that? Religion is just as essential to us. And they say it with sincerity.

And with equal respect and sincerity, I would contend that the necessity of feeding ourselves and our families trumps the need to worship collectively.

Some will not agree with me. That is cool too.

It is definitely a two way street but your faith should not trump my safety.

Happy Easter anyway.

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I thought that I was a liberal but I actually think I am a conservative now. Take the pandemic; there are a large number of Republicans advocating for a return to work, somewhere around the first of May, irregardless of where the state of the pandemic stands. Now how is that conservative? They contend that the cost of dead people is < the problems of an economic collapse, which will lead to depression and suicide numbers that, blah, blah, blah.

I would think that a truly conservative person would say, hey, wait let's be sure.

Let's be sure. We do not yet know about the exact nature of this beach, way too early to be declaring a premature victory. Let's be truly conservative. And not come out of our smials until it is safe.

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As a San Diego native I am getting a little tired of the California bashers. There's the door. We are the strongest economy in the nation, one of the strongest in the world, we want to take care of our state, and its people, or most of us anyway, and we go our own way. We have the sierras, the redwoods, the beaches and deserts. You don't like it here, leave, you will not be missed. Sure there is a tough housing market, we have high gas prices and taxes and homeless problems, yes, we have them. There is only so much water and so much room. So take off, enjoy Prescott or Boise, get away from the liberals. Be our guest. We won't miss you.

We are okay with that. Or most of us anyway. Check out the Mayor Pro tem of Lake Elsinore. Somebody buy him a bus ticket.