The unvaccinated, nosey appliances and King Lear
What more could you want from one essay?
Jesus said the poor we would always have with us, but neglected to warn us about the stupid.
Case in point: I watch a lot of baseball and these days fans are back in the stands and from what I can see on my brand new TV (more on that in a moment) hardly any of them are wearing masks. And since about 45% of Americans have been vaccinated that means about half the crowd is sitting there unvaccinated, happily spreading whatever virus happens to float by.
Also…
Missouri, the state that adopted me after I was found floating down the Kaw River in a basket, (and if you don’t get that joke I blame your religious education) is now number one in new infections in the US of A with a 72% increase over the last two weeks.
Also…
The Delta Variant which sounds like a new Tom Clancy novel (and more on that in a moment as well) has been found in Missouri in 27 of 30 locations tested and our vaccination rate is below the national average so if this thing makes a comeback you know Missouri did its part.
When it comes to concern for others, it’s Missouri: the Blow-Me State. (Patent pending.)
What’s average?
As I recently heard someone say: “Half the people you meet are below average.”
Which is a funny line, but may not be literally true and to make my point we’ll talk about IQ scores and the fact that 100 is the average score which doesn’t necessarily mean half the people you meet are below average because there could be a whole bunch of people clustered around 100 and fewer people at either extreme.
Nevertheless, it does mean millions of Americans are running around making decisions with a two-digit IQ, which ought to scare the shit out of those of us who are at least average. So before you sit down next to somebody at a Royals game you might ask them:
Book is to Reading as Fork is to:
A. Drawing
B. Writing
C. Stirring
D. Eating
And if they answer “nine” maybe you ought to look for different seats.
My Big Brother TV
OK, so I had a Vizio TV and for a while I had to “reboot” it every time I wanted to turn it on, which is geek talk for “unplug it and plug it back in,” but “reboot” sounds way more like something Scotty would say to Captain Kirk on the Starship Enterprise: “We canna start the main thruster until we reboooot the Vizio.”
I was waiting for the day I’d have to start it by pulling on a rope like a recalcitrant lawn mower.
Then it got to the point it would turn on and show me the Vizio logo, but would not continue its electronic journey and show me actual TV shows, a problem I had to deal with by 3 PM last Saturday because the Royals were on TV and I wanted to watch the game so I could see people give each other the Delta Variant.
As you probably already know assuming you got that fork question right, these days it’s cheaper to buy something new than fix something old, so off I went to Best Buy to purchase a new flat screen which had to be a 32-incher to fit in the space between my bookshelves even though the salesman asked me twice if I wouldn’t rather have a TV the size of my garage door.
(Pretty sure he answered C. Stirring.)
But before I can turn on my new Samsung TV I have to complete a 972-part process which includes telling my TV my name and my email address and look at pictures of shapes and tell my TV which shape does not belong because Samsung also wants to know my IQ so they know just how many unsolicited emails they can send me before I put my foot through my latest purchase.
Anyway…
I like to think of myself as cool and calm and most of the time I am, but by the time I have to get help from that dude in India who now answers every business phone, I’m livid about the unnecessary intrusion into my privacy, likes it’s his fault.
It also pisses me off that my TV offers suggestions for movies I might like to watch based on movies I have watched because the movies they suggest seem like they’d appeal to somebody who’d screw up that fork question, like the time it suggested I try Kong: Skull Island.
I mean what kind of low-grade moron does my TV take me for?
Unfortunately for my fit of unjustified anger, I tried Kong: Skull Island and it was freaking awesome which should come as no surprise for a movie that has Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Richard Jenkins, Michael Keaton, J.K. Simmons, Tom Wilkinson and John C. Reilly in supporting roles.
There are Broadway productions of King Lear with less distinguished casts.
So where were we?
Oh, yeah…nosey appliances
So I’m reading a book about the kind of people who operate off the books and do stuff like rescue hostages while killing everybody else in the house (bad night for a villain sleepover) and they get a floor plan of the house they plan to raid by hacking into the bad guys’ Roomba.
Because you clearly need a robot vacuum cleaner if you’re busy kidnapping and torturing people and don’t have time to tidy up afterwards.
Just in case you didn’t know: your new Roomba bumps into stuff when it first starts cleaning your house, but then starts creating a diagram of where stuff is and stores that in the Cloud so if somebody can hack into that so they can free the hostages you have in your basement (like I’m the only one) they can get your floorplan so they don’t trip over the coffee table right after they break down your front door.
Neat, huh?
So as I’ve said before and apparently will again: we’re not only being spied on, we’re paying for it.
Old authors never fade away, they just die…
Tom Clancy who has been thoroughly dead since 2013 still has books coming out which you might think would be technical thrillers based on the Afterlife, but are actually other people continuing his series and I just looked up their names and Tom Clancy is still listed as a contributing author which must involve some kind of séance unless they found some other schmo named Tom Clancy and slapped that name on the cover which publishers aren’t above of doing.
Once a publisher (or movie producer or record company) finds a winner they are slow to give it up, even if the winner in question has the bad taste to die.
Robert B. Parker has had a couple dozen novels published since his death.
Some of them are pretty good and I don’t mind reading them, but it means new authors have trouble getting books published because they’re too busy publishing books by dead authors so I guess I can give up on that dream unless I’m willing to put out a book titled:
MARK TWAIN’S
Ruminations on Modern Life
By Lee Judge
(OK, that joke totally worked in my Word document because I made “MARK TWAIN” huge and “Lee Judge” microscopic, but apparently Substack has no sense of humor when it comes to font size because it made every word the same size so now you’re going to have to imagine how hilarious it was before Substack screwed it up which is not the first time an editor has done that to me, but I can get pissed off at totally accurate movie suggestions so maybe you shouldn’t take my irritation seriously.)
In conclusion…like I’ve actually got one
The answer to that IQ question is D. Eating, be careful who you sit next to at a ballgame and what you say in front of your TV because your appliances are listening and seem to have bigger IQs than some baseball fans.
Jesus should have warned us.
This is must read material. Great one today Lee!
Delta Variant, the musical... that's what I'm waiting for. Enjoyed this one, Lee. As usual.