It is a Saturday morning in late August near Athens, Georgia. I have stepped outside, and there is a slight coolness in the air that lets me know that Fall is coming. I am currently seated at our kitchen table, which has been converted to my and my loving wife’s work space due to a global pandemic. The sun has risen, the coffee has been brewed, the dishes have been washed, and I have finally sat down to get started on this blog. My brain is already tempting me with other tasks: take out the compost, sweep the floor, balance your checkbook (does anyone even do that anymore, you old, old man?). But no, we are pressing on with this blog.
Hello. I am Jon. I play a character called the Reverend Florist on the hit podcast The Armageddon Afterparty. He is a lot like me, but often drunker and more talkative. But let’s not kid ourselves. If you are here, you probably already know all of that. So what don’t you know, you may be asking? Well that is just a terrible question. I cannot possibly even attempt to guess all the things that you don’t know, stupid. Also, this is not your blog. I’ll ask the questions here.
Okay, clearly we are off to a rocky start. Let’s refocus. Saturday morning, sun’s up, and currently I am being stared at by a very cute and very despondent dog with a cone of shame on one end and a diaper on the other. But those are stories for another day. What I want to talk about are the times in which we have found ourselves.
So let’s see…Interesting times….Hey, the United States has elected a crazy person to be the president for a while. I think that even his most loyal supporters would grant me that he is insane, at least on some level. Now I am a person who is typically able to maintain a pretty solid level of calm no matter who is driving the car. And I am speaking both literally and metaphorically. I have discovered that being a super-calm passenger is one of my more unusual attributes. I do occasionally tense up when my wife has to slam on the brakes, but most of the time I feel pretty safe no matter what kind of nonsense is going on in the driver’s seat. I have never been one to overvalue the actual power of the President or to go into any election thinking, as both parties incessantly point out, that this is the most important election of our lifetime! But, I am definitely curious to see how this one turns out. There are some serious problems going on in this county right now, and I disagree with the people that think that our current president is the cause. He has most certainly taken advantage of a lot of racism, fear, and outright lies to gain power, and he has stoked those fires to keep what he perceives as his base motivated, but I lay very little of the issues in America right now directly at his feet. My fellow Americans, we definitely have some things that we need to work on, but perhaps more on that later.
What it’s like (very mediocre beatboxing break) having the Rona: Hey if anyone out there gets that reference, please leave a comment below. Or you can always send an email if you would like to keep your shame private. If your reference is correct, you will most certainly be rewarded. But I digress. Folks, we got a global pandemic going on right now, and it is really starting to wear on people. People are getting sick and people are dying. Folks are limited and locked down to varying degrees. I don’t feel comfortable hugging my dad. Large numbers of people cannot work at all or cannot work enough. Rent is due. The economy is suffering (but apparently not the US stock market, oddly enough). People are stressed out over their kids going back to school. The debate over wearing a piece of cloth over your breathing parts has reached an unforeseen level of insanity and intensity. White people certainly seem to be losing their damn minds, and for some reason, completely disregarding the fact that someone is clearly recording video of them. People are sinking into deep depression over the idea that they will not have the opportunity this Fall to be entertained by unpaid children putting their bodies at risk of serious harm playing a game on Saturdays. My god, we just want to feel some sense of normalcy again!
Covid 19, like our current President, has proven to be a pretty amazing stress test on numerous systems in America. I have always been fascinated by the way that people think, so it has been very interesting to me seeing what this strain has brought out in people, as evidenced by the media, both social and actual, and numerous conversations with friends and acquaintances. I really like an observation made by Sam Harris about the current state of things in the United States. I am not sure when he first made it, but I became aware of it post-Trump’s election and pre-Covid. He made the observation that our current situation feels like people are watching two different movies at the same time. Everyone is getting the same basic facts, but they are seeing two totally different things. It goes without saying that our country has always been divided to varying degrees, but I feel that through the gathering and presenting of facts, through debate and discussion, and through cooperation and compromise we have been able to overcome our differences and move toward what is best. I truly think that all of us have to do some serious work toward getting back on the same page. We have to put some major effort into getting ourselves back to a place where we have the desire and the ability to take part in civil discussion, which of course includes being able to respectfully disagree with one another. I don’t think there is any other way that we can move forward. Also, for the love of god, please just wear a mask.
Folks, we most certainly live in interesting times. I have seen the title of this blog post put forth as an ironic curse, but after some thought, I don’t believe that always has to be the case. I can certainly value some of aspects of what may appear to be an uninteresting and perhaps even boring time period in one’s life. Personally, I really enjoy the satisfaction of completing very basic tasks in my yard: tending to my blueberry bushes, repairing tools, piddling in the garden. (Looking back, that last one looks a little weird. Piddling, or piddlin’, is something that my dad says, and I am pretty that it means letting your mind wander around to smaller tasks without much focus on the big picture. I guess it could also be interpreted as peeing in the garden, but that’s not what I meant there. And, just to clarify , I am also not saying that I don’t pee the garden.) Now where was I?
Anyway, I am going to close on two points. First, you don’t really have any control over whether or not you live in interesting times, so my recommendation is that you just suck it up and deal with it, loser. But, secondly, I would also say that interesting times make your brain fire, and if your brain is firing, that should serve as a constant reminder that you are alive, that you are still capable of learning, and that you have things left to do.
So get up. Seriously, today, get off your ass and do something. Call your parents. Find someone with whom you strongly disagree and have a civil conversation, probably not online if possible. Call a neighbor, check up, and see how they are doing in these weird times. Write a stupid blog. Delete your stupid Facebook app. Get some exercise. Plant something and make plans to take proper care of it. Go and get that dog. Listen to an episode of The Armageddon Afterparty and maybe rate it on Apple Podcasts. Okay, this post has very clearly devolved. Let’s go ahead and close things out for today.