Hulk Hogan Beer Pong Training Camp

We recently watched the Chernobyl HBO miniseries about the nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union. It was crazy to see their government preside over a disaster that they then ignored then covered up resulting in a great loss of life. I can't imagine what that must have been like.

In the series they have a Geiger counter at the power plan that blew up. One of the non-idiot characters says something like "that meter only goes up to 75, so we need to maybe get a better one." His manager does not get a better one, and instead just tells his superiors that the instruments read 75 whatevers of horrible radiation. The powers that be then repeat amongst themselves over and over that 75 isn't that bad so this isn't that big of a disaster and it will be easily controlled.

Well the game show host that Russia and the south elected to be our president talks the exact same idiot way:

"The media likes to say we have the most cases, but we do, by far, the most testing.  If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad."

"Don’t forget, we have more cases than anyone in the world, but why? Because we do more testing. When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases."

"You know, testing is a double-edged sword. We’ve tested now 25 million people. It’s probably 20 million people more than anybody else. German’s done a lot. South Korea’s done a lot. They called me, they said the job you’re doing (trails off). Here’s the bad part. When you’re testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’"

A recent knucklehead retort to the rising coronavirus death toll is that the people who were dead had other conditions. Rather than confront the truth that the government has bungled their response to this, people that did not do well in high school science class are suddenly armchair epidemiologists. Well one of those comorbidities happens to be being fat. And 73.6% adults in this country are overweight. So why apologists act like "only previously sick people are dying" means anyone is safe is mystifying.

A dream of mine, maybe my most dearly held dream of all, has been to rock a Hulk Hogan horseshoe mustache. Unfortunately "interacting with others who would ridicule me" always held me back form becoming my true self. No longer!

Zoe was always the one with the beer pong table. Well all that power went to her head, and she would cheat and cheat. Well I showed her! We have enough time to train that I think we will be ready for the beer pong olympics when this is all over.

A Stroll About Town

Roof, roof!

After the mask shortage it became fashionable for handy people to make their own. Lydia's stepmom made us a couple and we modeled them around the city. Mine's got like a little smile so that people know how friendly I am.

People are clearly getting pretty desperate for social interaction.

"In 1891 the Wainwright Building was constructed for St. Louis businessman Ellis Wainwright. It was designed by Louis H. Sullivan, a Chicago architect.

The Wainwright Building is the father of the contemporary skyscraper. Sullivan's design emphasized open, spacious interiors. Sullivan combined a load-bearing steel framework with architectural details taken from earlier load-bearing masonry structures. His large windows flooded the Wainwright Building with natural light. The airy construction allowed by the steel framework was a radical departure from the heavy concrete buildings of the time.

The Wainwright Building became a turning point in architectural history. It is now regarded as the pioneer of contemporary building design."

One Cardinal Way, the apartment building connected to Ballpark Village looks like it is about finished. I was annoyed because they were giving "hard hat tours" of the place while we were in Kenya and now it's too risky... so I may never get to see the inside of the place now!

Lydia demanded that we rewatch my favorite movie ever: The Matrix. She enjoyed that so much that she then insisted that we watch the rest of the trilogy and then the Animatrix too!

My work commute took almost two hours a day, so now that I work from home I have more time for things like leisurely bubble baths. You know, man stuff.

A Granite City Stroll

As everyone is trying to get groceries delivered or at least curbside all at once, we sometimes have to go out of our way in order to... eat. 

This time we had to cross the border and get groceries at the Walmart in Granite City, Illinois. I noticed some people walking along a trail by the highway, so after we secured our food we went over and investigated.

There is an active train track along the trail which gave plenty of interesting things to look at. This seems like someone built an office out of an old shipping container.

You know things are bad when the government postpones Tax Day.

Parking Lot Hangout

It's funny now that our social calendars are non-existent something as mundane as hanging out with a couple of people in a parking lot is suddenly something I look forward to all week.

The first time we saw any of our friends since returning from Kenya was in the abandoned parking lot of a Red Robin. We circled our cars and chatted out the windows.

Vinny was there too.