A Mid-Summer's Feverish Hallucinogenic Afternoon*

 I keep thinking this is a long summer, and the weather here lately lends veracity to my claim. It's 100F degrees (You thought the "F" stood for Fahrenheit? hahahaha) this afternoon, with high humidity. I'm not really whining--just, pity me, is all I'm asking. 

There's not much to say about anything right now. My home state is in the running for smallest percentage of vaccinated residents--yee haw--and all that goes with it. The mask "mandate" is back, and that's fine with me. It's more than a little annoying to realize that this didn't need to happen like this.  We could be done with this now. 

But, a couple of points: One could say that the Delta variant could have been avoided altogether had proper measures been put in place early on and therefore we might be totally in the clear at this point. But--the second point--most of the world is lagging far, far behind in percentage of vaccinated people. I think the entire continent of Africa is at about one percent. So, given that we are living in the post-Columbus, post-Magellan, post-etc. era, it wouldn't have mattered. What we really need is a plan to address the pandemic on a global scale. Because, airplanes and shit. C'mon. 

But we can still do this. The Trumpian, anti-science, anti-common sense pushback is starting to break up, with little chunks falling here and there. Republicans are starting to advocate vaccine so they won't be accused of being murderers next election cycle, and it's the same with the infrastructure bill, for about the same reason. Trump coat-tailers are sort of dialing back the inflammatory, low-I.Q. rhetoric possibly because it's impossible to maintain that much cognitive dissonance for that long, and the lies and misinformation are criss-crossing about the ether, bumping and fighting and clashing their way to the ground. This is all kind of optimistic. 

That's all. I need to get a snack and prop my feet up, because I can. Maybe I'll tweak the thermostat just a bit. Have a good night.  -Roy

* Hyperbolic title a la CNN headlines.