3/19/20
Waiting for my stepfather to pick me up for work. Mom’s picking me up after. No more COTA for me for a minute. They’re retirees… what else do they have to do?

We’ll see if the CFO’s back in.
Of course he is.

I gave the GOB money to pick me up a Wendy’s triple hamburger for lunch as everything else around here is closed. I’ll walk to the pharmacy at lunch to pick up my extra nerve pills… you know… the ones that take the corners off after the edges have been rounded. They have more of that special ointment for me, too.

Some dumb millennial dude was wandering around the pharmacy gabbing to his girlfriend on speakerphone. She sounded like a brain-dead Baby Alive. His phone volume must’ve been up full blast and I tried to overlook it until we ended up in the skin care aisle together, all three of us. Apparently he was trying to locate some facial product for her, to be determined in real time with the aid of his phone camera and blithering active ingredient recitations. She was talking to him and someone else that was in the room with her. Maybe she was home sick. I couldn’t immediately find what I was looking for, so I had to endure this inane, tech age version of foraging for longer than my nerves could stand. I held it together. Exhaustion helps me stay calm… except when it doesn’t. I didn’t blow up when I had to practically collapse myself to get around him because he needed the whole aisle to act out his little cuck drama. I didn’t even bellow at him after he farted- not three feet from my head- as I knelt to survey the shelves for a product I wouldn’t find. I was pre-chuffed coming into this establishment, and here, now, the universe was conspiring *again* to test my limits. Pushing my immunoenvelope. I scoffed at him, grabbed a bottle of something that seemed like what I was looking for and hightailed it to the checkout. I didn’t want to hang around waiting for that pinhead’s fart cloud to hit my face any longer than I had. In retrospect, I wish I would’ve blown his hair back. I’m still pissed about it, obviously. Farts are said to be good transmitters of Plague Three Point Oh.

3/17/20
Working from home, day one. I changed two of my passwords for work databases yesterday and couldn’t, for the death of me, remember them this morning. I’ve been pestering the agency’s help desk. I didn’t think to bring my password cheat sheet home. But, I could see myself getting used to this double-you eff aytch jazz. Most of my day consisted of figuring out the new process. I was able to reset my passwords easily enough. I will be able to do my regular ordering tomorrow.

After I logged out of work at day’s end, I guess I hadn’t had enough screen time, so I watched depressing videos of folks clobbering each other in the aisles of ‘big box stores’. Feeling the wrong amount of bludgeoned, I was forced to recalibrate by watching wrestling videos.

College wrestling seems to calm the nerves and soothe the eyes.

I should give money to Truthstream’s Patreon. They have nothing whatsoever to do with wrestling.

I’ve been living in clouds of pot, frankincense and myrrh. Been downing vitamins and oregano oil in caplets. My asthma is making me cough but that’s not unusual. I, of course, don’t want to do it in public; I might be mobbed. It’s an uncomfortable time for asthmatics and allergy sufferers, beyond the discomfort of those conditions.

3/18/20
It seems like our Cultural Confucians, our Capitalistic Kierkegaards, are working the Seven Elevens, the Get-Gos, the Kwik-E-Marts or the Bee Pees. I been gathering all the nuts they been droppin. I’m storin em up for the withering summer ahead… the summer of desolation. Now, more than ever, it’s easy to be a nihilist.

3/19/20
Working from home day three; busy morning ordering copier toner. We’re burning through the ink faster than ever printing out hundreds of cancelations. For a paperless agency we probably go through a quarter of a rainforest per year.

The only time I went out yesterday was to go to the Tobacco Outlet, where the behind the counter prophet was laying down the smoothest and scariest jive from behind amber tinted aviators. The old lady minding the counter with him (not the usual Asian woman) just sat there, drooped and tragically corrugated, shaking her head with each nugg o wisdom he dropped.

It’s a game of dodge ball except with diseases. I’m decidedly resigned but accept this challenge which will engage my strategic capabilities. With Saint Michael’s veiny, ringed hand I’ll maneuver through the atmosphere, gamer-like, with the deftness necessary to avoid combat fire. The key is to NOT DRAW FIRE IN THE FIRST PLACE!

It’s no small feat that I’ve crafted my life in the ways only a man of my metal makeup can. I have no offspring beholden to me. I work for Big Brother’s Holding Company, so I have job security. I’m making that shitball CFO of mine look golden. I have job and shelter security. Is this white privilege working for me? Or is it something else… something more crafty and insidious? By the way, the CFO can only look so golden given his interpersonally violent reputation. I reserve my psychosis for my loved ones. Pliant strangers get my best treatment.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

One part bleach to three parts one fifty one rum, three parts Fireball whiskey with RedHots crumbled on top and set aflame: this will be the official recipe for the post-apocalyptic cocktail, ‘Fire-Breathing Dragon’. It’s Garbage and Games as far as the eye can see. So, a few shots of Fire-Breathing Dragon’ll smoove those feathers when they’re a-ruffle. Smooth em waaaaaay down. That’ll be the tagline. The slow gun.

3/20/20
I never found the particulate masks, by the way.

This day has been a coprophagic’s eclair: shit-filled. I’ve been busier than a two-cocked cowboy at The Pussycat Ranch. Only, I’m not having all that cowpoke fun. Haven’t for far too long. In fact… this epoch is anti-fun. Been heading down that road for at least two decades, maybe longer.Time to dust off that Scattergories bored game, Daddy: the TV’s getting tired. Time to bake your own beer and brew your own bread. Start that Victory Garden you’ve never wanted. ¿Who knows? You may grow to love it… like anything you may throw at yourself… it’s an acquired taste. If you go this route, grow the plants indoors. That way you won’t have to post sentry over them lest the neighbors decide to pillage your spoils. It gets so complicated when you start fully unpacking it.The Era of Cringe just leveled us all up; The Age of Aquarius was stillborn.This is….

I don’t even know what this is.

The Century of Cancer?
The Triune Trimester of Taurus?
The Semi-Centennial of Sagittarius?
Whatever the case… it’s antibiotic.Where is Oprah with her rah rah hope-rah swinging at the end of give em enough rah rah rope-rah? What good does it do to sit around and rah rah mope-rah?
Pull out your flags in a show of artificially turgid solidarity.
Throw your last teeth at the tooth fairy. Then we can scram like hams with wings
eating frozen pizza rolls
and an array of
constipating things.
After all, the less we enjoy the go the less we’ll want to.
It’s a whole different world opens up to you when you use a bucket for a loo.

I can.
Can you?

Maybe you have Prince Albert between your rusty can and your loafin spam.
Who’m I to judge? As long as it’s crystal-clean and smeared with jam.
This is The New Mussolini’s lingua franca poetry corner.
It’s a Little Hitler production; he’s ever in the background pulling the pudly strings; dude can make those strings sing sing.
My own private Prince Albert is vibrating like a tuning fork.

Cringing the night aweh-hey!

When I get my Prince Albert resonating on the same frequency as that sonic bidet, I’ll never get off the tarlet. I’ll never leave this house. I’ll have pies delivered and you’ll bring them up to me and shovel them, scoops at a time, into my cake hole. Why, you love me so much, you won’t even mind the stench or the risk of contagion. In one end and out the other; I’m a MACHINE, Mama! I’m a fuel tank for a PooPoo engine, Daddy-O! Push my pie in and watch me goooooo. I’ll shoot gobs of sanitizer from my dispenser anywhere you like and even places you don’t. I don’t discriminate… with much of anything. It’s these wretched animals that are the problem.

3/22/20
Lying in bed listening to Monsieur snore. I’ve turned into a real snorer, too. Not in the social sense… if anything, I’m becoming more ‘eccentric’… or so I’m told. Complicated and eccentric collide with morbid and compulsive. Howdy doo! But I sleep and wake heavily. I got lead hands and feet make quite a racket.

I always wanted to live in the Addams family house. Monsieur’s said that if it were up to me this place would look like a circus sideshow. That’s what the inside of my head looks like, so why not?

Taking my temperature in the morning and at night per work directives: staying at ninety-nine point seven. When I arrived at work Friday morning, the guards were guiding everyone to the medical office where we were questioned by a nebbish little fellow with a nasally voice— questions like did we have diarrhea or a cough. I admitted to my usual asthmatic cough, but it’s the same as it’s ever been. I forgot to take my temp, so I lied about it. The medical officer wasn’t taking anyone’s temperature.

I’ve heard you can still find plenty of food and supplies at the local Asian markets. There are several stores down the road; international grocers line Whore Corridor a.k.a. Sullivant Avenue.

It’s the game… the game of Viral Infection… masks and sanitizers won’t do a damn thing if your immune system’s in the dumper. This isn’t something that is stressed. All these handwashing posters, everywhere, but nothing reminding people to get plenty of rest and eat balanced meals. The entire thrust of mass information is modified for the lazy… because most Americans maintain idiotic dietary habits. Take a vitamin (a luxury item), eat greens if you can still find them… drink Kambucha, eat yogurt or take a probiotic. While the Popeye’s franchise will be at the epicenter of the next civil war, their fare will not sustain us through Plague three point oh.

Gunshots echo through the Hilltop.
A man in pajama bottoms and Crocs is shoveling dog shit from his yard onto the sidewalk. This is my neighborhood. Howdy neighbor!

More gunshots.

At least… I think it’s dog shit. Around here, it’s anyone’s guess.

Across the street, someone’s home alarm has been going off since I got home at quarter after five. It’s almost nine, now.

The skin on the back of my legs is driving me nuts. I’m starting to writhe in my meat-suit again… scratching my thighs, my ankles. My back, where I can’t reach… between the wings. Our alligator claw backscratcher is no longer useful as two of the digits broke off when I dropped it last week. It’s lasted this long; it’s about twenty years old. I bought it when my ex-wife and I were vacationing in Orlando. She was going to an associate conference for some vitamin company she tried working for. Orlando blows. The only thing worthwhile there isn’t Disneyworld. It may be Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum. Yet, as good as Ripley’s is, it cannot compare to the seedy splendor of The Parliament House… a combination gay bar and motel. I saw a drag show, went to the little antique shop on the motel’s lower level. I remember a whole slew of good-looking black boys hanging over the railings in front of their rooms catcalling me… beckoning me to come on up and party with them. I wasn’t as bold back then. My wife was at her associate’s dinner (spouses not permitted), so, naturally, I told her I was going drinking at the closest gay bar to our hotel. I remember that I got pretty drunk on long island iced teas and was driving a rental car. I knew I better leave before I had more drinks and the temptation to throw caution and sense to the wind became too strong.

The alarm across the street’s just a-chirping away… at ten o’clock… who knows how long it was squawking before I got home.We’re watching Law and Ordure Ess Vee You. But, I’m laying here thinking about a porn I watched that starred a guy that looked like a lot like Sgreem but not as pretty; I jacked it pretty hard to that one. I think about how, in a room dense with hookah smoke & male body odor, he told me he considered going into porn. He claimed that his ‘dick isn’t huge’ but is ‘good enough for porn work’. I struggled, thinking about being able to take all of him in from the comfort and safety of my office, but I eventually discouraged it. We smoked from the same hookah; he had a cold. I got quite sick the next day and stayed so for the next week.

The areas underneath my calves are driving me mad. I want to rake at my chest.Law and Ordure Ess Vee You is a real boner killer… I’ll tell you that. I mean… any show with the words ‘molestation’ and ‘rape’ streaming across the screen with the names of its stars isn’t going to make a well-adjusted person feel amorous– emphasis on well-adjusted. I imagine someone, somewhere out there, gets aroused watching this show.

I guess the alarm across the street hasn’t stopped. Monsieur’s wondering if he should call the police…
‘Somebody could be dead in there.’
I give my usual retort… ‘Some busybody has already called’.

Then he remembers that I’ve forbidden calls to the fuzz.
Not that that stops him.
However, he’s seen the futility and latent danger involved in such action.

3/24/20
It’s not a revelation that Plague three point oh is airborne. I feel that small bits of exposure, microdoses if you will, are a homeopathic way of dealing with it.

Then again…maybe not.

Maybe the nimbus of frankincense and myrrh I’ve been floating in is a self-deception so sly that I’ve actually fooled myself into thinking I’ve found proof to back up my kooky theories. Time will tell. In the meantime, I’ll light another three sticks. I need to mummify myself with the oil next. Then I can find an eighty year old sugar daddy who’ll take us under his bony vulture wings and other things and, in return, will pay for our bones to be replaced with Adamantium. We’ll be unbreakable. After the fun and games- which I imagine would be starkly bereft of delight- grow stale, I’ll call for the old man’s life and we can move to that socially isolated island in the Bermuda Triangle I’ve been fantasizing about with the blood money.

I really need to go to sleep. You know, rest is vitally important to a healthy immune system. The sound of the alarm across the street and the ghetto bird will harmonize a lullaby to send me off to whatever mall I’ll dream of shopping in.

******

I desperately need to eat. I’ve worked virtually non-stop since seven fifty ay emm. I’ve been doing push-ups every once in a while because my ass has been sore (and it’s not from being fucked or other sorts of squats). The only downside I can see in all of this… and it’s a considerable one… is carpal tunnel and considerable blue light exposure. My screen time is off the charts as far as I’m concerned… and I’M CONCERNED.

C A S C A D I N G C O N S E Q U E N C E S…

Gargling with distilled, white vinegar every day, sometimes twice. It takes your breath away. I swallow some, too… just to clean my esophagus. This is followed by a saline nasal flush which amounts to me snorting warm, distilled salt water from a tea cup. It burns like hell.I can smoke pot while I work. I like this. I can work naked; this is always cited as a plus (by guys in particular). These are the clichés of our lives.The McDonald thinks this will be cleared up in two weeks. I just heard, during the cue and ay, liquor production workers are considered essential. Sure they are— the vices are always booming, no matter the economic forecast. As a matter of fact, the more gloomy the prognosis, the Bigger the Boom.

3/25/20
I’m thinking about all the people working from remote… all the unsecured information now up for grabs… because, you know, most surfs don’t have the firewalls necessary to maintain professional confidentiality. Their own mouths don’t even possess it. I use the word surf to mean both surf as in internet surf and serf as in scum.

Pond scum… like you and me.

When he said drain the swamp, we were the frogs living in that ecosystem. Did he mean he’s taking the ecosystem down with it? All the wildlife is dying and we’re swirling down the drain in a vortex of lost revenue.

I hope the stay at home parents are spending a little extra quality time with their kids. The kids have been asking for it in different ways. Who is listening?

I guess the Tobacco Outlet and its Cambellian Custodian are an essential service and remain open. I’m fool enough to walk over there. A cute, pocket-sized brown couple are chatting in the chop shop parking lot. That’s chop shop number two, across the alley behind chop shop number one. Maybe they’re one and the same.

Telemedicine, telework, teleteletelelife. Pack up your shitty in your old mess bag and snile, snile, snile.

Our agency’s budget has been frozen. There’s no buying or selling at this time; not until the governor slashes each agency’s budget by an estimated twenty percent. The funds will theoretically be diverted into emergency services.From watching these press conferences, I’m learning that the governors are deliberately being misled by Big Brother’s Holding Company, as much as the rest of us. The snow-job isn’t just for the plebs. I suppose that should be comforting? The Lieutenant Governor Freudian-slipped the term ‘hellcare’ for our medical community… he fumbled and, barely, recovered.Wearing nothing but underwear, I went to retrieve a package of doomsday supplies from my porch. Nobody gives a shit in this neighborhood. It’s kind of liberating. The unexpected is ALWAYS expected, here.There’re sex offenders on every corner of this block. If you pinpoint us on a sex offender map, the Hilltop will be the red blob amid scattered flags… until you get to Linden… or The Ohio State University. Those are blobs, too. Most of the creepers on campus are tenured staff, though, so it’s ok. Our block is barely over a thousand feet from an elementary school. If it’s creepers, we got em, bruh. These folks don’t care a whit about social distancing. These are the same folks that saunter across a busy street like their pants’re going to fall down at any moment— because they are.

That’s within a two mile radius. These are those officially ‘registered’. Doesn’t account for the freelancers.

3/26/20
I’m slathered in ointment after an evening of being unable to concentrate because of the tickling in my skin. Watching Law and Ordure ess vee ewe, listing starboard.

3/27/20
In my home office… I’m scanning documents using my fifteen year old scanner that, when running, sounds like someone’s torturing a cat on the rack. The schlubs I work with are struggling with this work from home business. I’m running circles around the majority of them and I’m not that savvy. How is this happening? I’ll tell you how… I’m an athlete among cripples. I’m an outta the box-er… a ready or not, sir. At least I’d like to portray myself as such– Monsieur’d probably tell you a different story. I do try to live by Hunter’s adage- especially in times of crisis- ‘when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro’.I missed another credit card payment on another one of my credit cards. It was zero percent interest so I’m more than likely fucked with an inflated ay pee are. I will have to call that particular bank during regular business hours on Monday. Maybe I should claim hardship: hardship of idiocies. Either my mail’s getting stolen, mislaid or sucked into the undertow of bullshit mail that gets tossed aside or discarded. Historically, I am not irresponsible with my bill payments. Yet, since I’ve lived at this address I’ve found myself entangled in a pattern of disorganization or inattention as it relates to the incoming mail. I have lost utter control in this arena. And it pisses me off. My response is to start drinking some of the wine my mother gave us. She pushed four different bottles, which had varying amounts of white and red but never less than half, at me and who am I to refuse liquor.

Crotch’s Instacram is an homage to desperate virility. It’s also a tedious chronical of the vapidly mundane. His new physique’s probably netting him plenty of fish… at the swinger’s club… in Fetlife….

His T-shirt speaks the truth and I couldn’t be more embarrassed for him. Losing that weight probably makes his dick look even larger. I would like a full frontal before and after, but I’ll settle for the pics I’ve got of his doughboy phase. He was cuter then, anyway. I’m sure he’s a hit at the Princeton. I guess I’ll never know. I wonder if his wife has lost weight as well, but, the last time I checked her Instacram, she was still looking like an Oh Ess Ewe swaddled meatball. She’s squeezed out three pups, now, and she’s an Ohioan… what more can anyone logically expect?

Meatball Metropolis… we are here.

We’re here for you… to slap you across the lips with our grace… to wave our spam in your vacant face. You like potted meat spread? Come live with us in the womb that doubles as an armpit. Interchangeable and reversible. When we surround your girth you’ll positively explode in gobs of bubbling flab. Your eyes will go out. You will inhale only armpit vapors… that’s what the new oxygen tastes like. Welcome to the heart of it all. Pigs love it here. They’re community oriented, status inclined. I guess that makes me as much a swine as the next porkule waddling down the hamdicapped ramplet. I don’t care. I’m wallowing in it; it’s gone far beyond plain old soaking. I have yet to push maximum gravitational density. Mythrax willing, my metabolism won’t outrun me… or is it the other way around? The Ohia State of mind hasn’t had it’s way with my physique. The pies aren’t putting a DENT. I am holding steady at a respectable two hundred el bees.

Speaking of pie, I can probably still have them delivered. The governor was plugging the food delivery services. He also trotted out some frightening statistics of the projected spread of plague three point oh. One apple… one coconut cream. Ohhhhh… how I love you. Raspberries for the Rapture … a raspberry torte. I cherry cobbler for my burgeoning gobbler. See how I’m making the apocalypse work for me? Deliver me unto flaky crusts and cream filled puffs: A tub of Vaseline and a greasy remote: I mean… er marital aid.These are the flights of fancy that keep me up at night…. or WOULD keep me up at night if not for big, bad pharmacology.That leads me to Dr. Berverly Nasim, bless her naive mommy heart. I had a phone in follow-up appointment with her today. She was acting like it was news that I’m bipolar. That I have a mood disorder. My first psychiatrist- the horse lady- diagnosed me as such. She did so with a black eye, and I’m taking THAT to the bank. THE POT BANK. I spoke to Dr. Berverly Nasim of my yearnin for a medical marijuaner card so’s I can forsake the GlaxoSmithKline I’s engluttin. She doesn’t want to help a brother out, though. She’s pro pill anti weed and a square to boot. She’s got a personified peach emoji with heart eyes and librarian glasses for a brain. That’s probably too generous. She’s a croaker of the highest middling order.

But… y’know?… I kinda need a script happy dimwit in my corner… especially in these cringey, desperate timez.

She phones it in even when she’s not phoning it in. No biggie.

Hope you sleep well tonight, Berverly, on this eve of the eve of an eternity of destructions. And remember what you said: the flu kills more people every year than this Plague three point oh ever will. You probably think that everything’ll be back to normative in two weeks, too. I waved your flu shot away with an overwashed hand. You thought my papular eczema was shingles, ferchrissake! I found out that I wasn’t diagnosed with Morgellons after all. Monsieur will be relieved— he seemed angry about the whole affair. ‘That guy’s a quack! You’re NOT nuts!’ He was like a broken record. He was trying to convince himself. The diagnosis was split between Grovers Disease and papular eczema. This makes sense and the medical photos accurately represent my outbreaks.

3/31/20
My mother picked me up from work and we went to two grocery stores and a Home Depot. At Home Depot, they lock you in and someone lets you out. This is necessary control for essential businesses. Ex marks the spot when you’re waiting in line. Stand on your ex or be thrashed within inches of your grave. Cross the line if you dare. God won’t help you if you sneeze; he’ll be, as they say, OUTIE.

Standing in the checkout at Aldi, watchin all the burkas go by.

However polarized my mother and I may be in our political beliefs, we found unity ogling some mulletted and pale Italian boy wearing his plaid shirt tucked in to reveal a Leatherman rebar clipped to the belt strung through his button-fly jeans. I’ll abandon this topic by offering one final observation: he filled them out beautifully.

Then, it’s onward to redneck Kroger’s where all the boys’ pants are held up by their dicks alone… and just barely. Sweatpants extravaganza in the soda aisle, sausage party in the condiments and mutable meat in the freezer section where I pick up another creamy pie.

Mom’s wearing gloves and a particulate mask while I’m trying not to inhale anyone’s backdraft. She said some woman screamed at her yesterday because she was standing too close. Her response was a simple, ‘Wow’. I’ve used that technique when someone’s tried to get red with me before. It works very well.

I like standing back from people because
I like people standing back from me.
I need room. Lots of room.
I am not stingy.
I’ll give you yours too.You need room?
Here ya go, hon.

4/1/20
It’s gray…. all gray… everything. Gray Skies, Gray Teeth (too much fluoride), Gray Matter, Jean Gray, Joel Gray, Gray Seal, Gray Men, Gray Conversion Therapy, Gray Drugs, and, ultimately, Gray Liberation to choke the colors of glory out of and into you isochronally.

Let’s paint this town Gray to match the Hilltop… YOUESSAY! YOUESSAY! YOUESSAY!

People are pining for the sun they loved in their youth but know it’ll never be the same again. Replaced with a coarse carbon reducing lantern to bleach us all a lighter shade of gray… the shade thrown… the hue we’re slowly becoming: gray has its way. Each and every day, siphoning the funk out of our trunks. Those sagging appendices, the meaningless parentheses… Endless shit curls. Gray crumbles and blows away… down the avenues of sorrow, the city of post tomorrow.

I haven’t ridden the bus in a month and a half now. They haven’t shut COTA down yet, but it’s coming.

I have prepared two bandanas for use in lieu of a proper particulate mask. I still have a few left from my bandana wearin daze. That was when I passed for a hippy. When I was mistaken for Chris Cornell in Soundgarden circa 1989. I used to wear them tied in the front… which ran/runs counter to white, redneck style.

4/2/20
This bandana is a cool Plague accessory. I am glad to wear it. I might still wear it after the coast is clear. Paid for a liter of mandarin flavored vodka with it over my f-f-f-face. The cashier isn’t wearing gloves. Essential business.

Wash my face with v-v-v-vodka.

Vodka and vinegar… lapping against my innards. Fill the gaps, cover the hot spots. Guidance is at a premium. The valve is screaming. I am leaving early.So much for leaving early… I have been waiting for my mother outside of the agency for an hour… enough time for two strangers to approach me. One only hovered around… skinny, with some.sort of sweat gear mask. He minded his own business yet threw off the vibe he wanted to interact. The second was a rolypoly gal with lanyard who asked if I worked, and if I have done my taxes (?!) She was closer to me than six feet. I didn’t scream at her, although I was hella tempted. When I answered ‘yes’ to both questions, she simply walked away.

We’re just huddled here behind these prickling plasma walls enjoying a good ripper. We got rippers what turns into sniffers- what more can ya ax for? Before long, we’ll need a football field’s worth of distance between ourselves and any other primate.

Back to itchy town. My shoulders, neck, legs, arms… every part of me… bugging out. Tonight’s cinematic selection is: Erin Brockovich. Julia Roberts is right down there with Tom Hanks at the bottom of my critical swamp. She appears to still be using her Pretty Woman wardrobe in this flick. Tartsy wartsy!

4/3/2020
Home today. Started work before worktime… now I’m waiting for my morning teleconference. My supervisor, that wacky, big-titted supervisor is going off as usual. I love that mute button when I’m talking on the phone. She’s the quintessential barefooted hillbilly stereotype. She’ll snatch off your wig and kick you square in the snatch. She talks so goddamned fast, a real steamroller. Steamrolling is a powerful communication style, y’know. She always accuses people of overtalking while overtalking them.

Another guy in my department… let’s call him Chet… well, Chet’s a bit of a macho-crotch-o fuckup… his ever-ballooning form is taking on the shape of the agency. Remember what I’ve said about that place? Our beloved agency? He was twenty minutes late to a twenty five minute meeting today. He has been consistently late to our morning teleconferences when he’s been ‘operating’ from home. It’s not like he’s tech illiterate, either… as is my hillbilly supervisor.

He’s got grown kids…. they probably hate him. I sure do.

Never-ending marital problems. They’re always embroiled in games of dominance— she’s got a diagnosis. Sounds like a borderline personality to me. Her family’s from Youngstown. That’s enough to qualify someone as certifiable right there. A few years back, he found pictures of his wife with her black personal trainer in flagrante delicto; I think he was looking through her phone, emails or she left a chat up on their PC… some stupid shit like that. I don’t blame her… although I believe she’s a plus size (which the brothers- more often than not- enjoy), I bet Chet looks a mess with his clothes off because he looks like one with them on. The only thing cute about him at this point is his long hair. Long hair can sometimes be a saving grace——- not in this instance.

Chet is the grillmaster. He’s the turkey smoker and fryer.

He’s being driven deeper into debt. I think he’s filed for bankruptcy due to his wife’s spree spending. This is part of Chet’s deal… he’s on his work phone arguing and threatening his family members regularly. His deep voice carries, but he doesn’t try to hush it, either. Everybody knows his personal business. This is the opposite of me. I don’t respect his approach. My respect for others is also rising and falling stock.

The tides of black goo continue to rise. The Spring of Paranoia is nigh.

Monsieur said he wanted me to burn the frankincense and myrrh if I opened the window. ‘This virus is airborne.’ I tell him that I’m keenly aware. I was cognizant of this fact at the outset. When we were first told the three foot rule, I expanded it to six feet. Now… in order to get ahead of the curve, I’ve widened that distance to a football field: ninety one point five meters.
‘Those drug dealing neighbors are still having people coming and going, day and night. None of them are wearing gloves or masks.’
What does he expect? They’re young and fortified by whatever they’re popping. They’ll live forever. Monsieur thinks… knows… that our neighborhood is toxic on many levels. The shit is concentrated, floating on the breeze.

I spoke with Midget from work and asked how his Chinese wife has been treated by the general public now that The Chinese Virus has taken hold stateside.
‘She’s afraid to go out… and if someone said something to her…’ he shakes his head ‘… I’d have to drop them right then and there.’ He could… he’s got belts in Kenpō. ‘Usually, when somebody does say something, it’s older women.’
I added: ‘Old, white women.’
‘Yup!’
This is part of the demographic that, hopefully, will be among the first annihilated.
‘You won’t hesitate to throat-punch some boomer caucasoid broad if she cracked wise.’ I know I wouldn’t. Beware the vile carrion winds. Los aires.

I want to open the window, but I told Monsieur I wouldn’t. ‘I know you like fresh air and all…’ The neighbors can’t be trusted. They’ve all proven this… with the exception of the couple that lives on the other side of our duplex.

Building a bruised future with building blocks of fear, therefore, anger.

The Director of the Ohio Department of Health is from Youngstown. Again… her face is another tell. She’s wearing ‘some bling lol’ which is a golden pin from Y-town State University on her lapel. The Governor shouted out to Youngstown using her as his megaphone. I wouldn’t want to do it directly, either, teabeeaytch. I ain’t mad at him. He’s holding it together better than The McDonald. His head’s in the game, to stick with sports clichés.

One of the Governor’s sign language interpreters has comical facial expressions that often don’t match what the officials are saying. I’ve taken a series of pictures of her and her cartoonish gesticulations.

Mahoning County in Ohia leads the charge in the number of Plague related deaths. Mahoning County pretty much contains the grim reality that IS Youngstown. Trumbull County as well. Gawdawful place: a latrine of suicidal amoebic life under perennially less-than-ideal conditions.

‘They don’t have a swab. Don’t have a swab. They might need a tube to put the liquid in. They don’t have a tube. Plenty of liquid and NO TUBE.’

The Director of Oh Dee Aytch has a friendly side, however picayune, that bubbles to her carefully crafted surface when she’s before a camera. She reads well. She has all the earmarks of an earnest health official… down to her conservative meaningful gestures. She unloads an alarming lopsided smirk at unexpected moments.

Monsieur brewed a batch tea using lavendar, buchu, juniper berries and pleurisy root. We added this to the antiviral slash immunobooster regimen. Buchu has been used historically in the treatment of gonorrhea.