Kung Flu Update: Good news and bad news


Posted On: Wednesday - October 7th 2020 7:20PM MST
In Topics: 
  Peak Stupidity Roadshow  Kung Flu Stupidity

No, this post is not about President Trump, though we will discuss the COVID news about him tomorrow. It's not about the disease itself. Part of this post is something commenter Ganderson reminded me that I was going to write about from over a week back, and the other part is from this week.

Do you want the good news first? Nah, you'd rather hear the bad first, right? I'm the same way. No, no, no, this isn't a doctor joke either, dammit, but I've got some.



My 9 y/o and I played 12 "holes" of frisbee golf, excuse me "disk golf", so sorry, professionals. There are the professional-style frisbees , DISKS, dammit, that the real players use, different weights/styles for different "strokes". On the way to the car we saw a white disk and a blue disk of this style, and a couple over a hundred yards away. They were headed the other direction, toward their car. I was surprised they could have left the both, so I yelled over to them. They indicated these 2 were theirs.

Were they marking something? I didn't want to mess up something, so I asked. "No" is what I got out of this reticent pair. I think that's what the woman said. We started tossing the disks their way, and it took a couple of throws each. Well, now the disks were 20 ft from them, and I just made sure "you wanted them back, right?" The guy was just silent. "DO YOU WANT THESE?", I tried, really slowly. (Maybe the guy was deaf.) He finally just said he'd rather we left the disks alone. Whaaaa? I didn't even think of the Kung Flu germ worries. I thought all that contact contagion bit was behind us.

That's what it was though. This guy, no more than 30 y/o, was scared to death of germs on his frisbee!! Perhaps he'd have been safer staying at the house on this beautiful day. I made some remark about "we can get wipes out of the car ... ", as if I were his Mama. Actually, there were no wipes in this car, just insurance, registration and change for parking meters. I wish he'd just said "keep 'em!". I really want to use some better equipment some time, seeing as I averaged only 6 throws per basket and my kid about 11 1/2.

I wish I hadn't bothered trying to help, though. People do have the right to be left alone with their, if you asked me, it's stupidity.

That was the bad news, people still being freaked out. A road trip had the good news.

The kind of place I stopped at:



Mr. Ganderson mentioned a gas station along the way on his roadtrip from MSP airport up into Minnesota on the way to Nisswa, in a town called Royalton. I'd never heard of EITHER, and man, I've been everywhere in this here land! Well, Nisswa is a little ways north northwest of Brainerd, dontcha' know, while Royalton is 75 miles along the trip from the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport.

I was on a road trip myself, a kind of stressful one, having run a few minutes late on the way to something important in a far away part of the State. Everything ended up fine, so I was relaxed on the way home and stopped to gas up, pee, and get some snacks for the rest of the trip back. This little gas station had 2 friendly women behind the counter. I didn't bother with a mask, and they didn't either*. I wondered, from also observing in the town I'd visited earlier, whether this part of the State was more relaxed about this stuff. It seemed like that.

I remarked about the masks and we all were in agreement about the stupidity going on. I did need to use the bathroom, but his little place had no bathroom at all. I've never seen that before. "OK, I'll guess I'll use the one in the back then." They knew what I meant, and we discussed the best spot. This was at a fork in the road with quite a bit of traffic, so I had to go back into the trees some. This was urgent, come to think of it, so I came back in for the snacks afterwards. "See, now you two can't do that." They smiled, rather than getting offended. Come to think of it, what the heck do they do?

That stop really brightened up the road trip.



* There was an inch and a half of plexiglas keeping out the Kung Flu germies (not a bad section of town from what I could see, but most places seem to have this now). If it can stop your average bullet, well that ought to do the trick on COVID-19. There is that airspace at the bottom, and the girls had stocking duties too. I guess the manager just had some common sense.

Comments:
Hail
Monday - October 12th 2020 7:35AM MST
PS

"Hail site’s been blank for awhile, and I haven’t seen him post anywhere else. I, too hope he’s OK."

Thanks for inquiring. I am doing well.
Hail
Monday - October 12th 2020 7:07AM MST
PS

RE: frisbee golf

There is a course I am familiar with. I remember in late May seeing they had actually physically removed all the baskets (and about late March had also boarded up all the basketball hoops), in order to prevent people from playing against Lockdown orders.

I couldn't believe it.

I don't know when they put them back in, but they were back by September.

This is the kind of anecdote that will have young people years from now incredulous about the whole thing. "What the heck was wrong with people? Overreaction!"
Moderator
Saturday - October 10th 2020 6:45PM MST
PS: Thank you, Mr. Ganderson, for the reports.

Regarding Mr. Hail, I assume by "blank" you mean nothing new. He quit almost cold turkey commenting on unz.com after Mr. Sailer (the main one for him) was constantly on about the Kung Flu for 3 months. I give Steve a break for this one, though he never said he was wrong. Now, I don't mean he doesn't live and learn and change his writing accordingly. I mean he never wanted to admit that he'd been taken in quite a bit by the Lyin' Press on the purported enormity of the thing. He's the last guy that should have been.

I hope we can hear from E.F. Hail some more. Hopefully, it was just his life getting busier.

I'm just not much of a sports fan and we have no one on any teams (I like individual sports better). As far as playing them here, a middle school near us still has the damn whole field with the 1/4 mile track around it, closed off by extra fencing. We could go over it, but there are too many nosy neighbors that WILL call the cops.

OTOH, there is a big park not too far away with soccer fields with lots of people practicing and playing, a skateboard park that's been full of people for 3 months now, and that frisbee golf course nearby. I don't see 1 mask in 100 people out there.

Some schools will be letting kids attend a portion of each week pretty soon. The college nearby is still sad. The bars near the college can be really hopping though, with hotties out the ying-yang!

Ganderson
Saturday - October 10th 2020 6:52AM MST
PS. Hail site’s been blank for awhile, and I haven’t seen him post anywhere else. I, too hope he’s OK.

Here in Central MN it’s Trump country all the way. Our landlady is a very nice lady with a huge case of TDS. I’ll let her off the hook, as her brother-in-law’ was a long time MN Congress Critter (D)
And the house is very nice,

In bad news, NESCAC, arguably the best DIII conference in the country, has cancelled winter sports. No hockey, neither men’s nor women’s. My guess is Spring sports are next - no lax. Biddy Martin, the president of Amherst is getting her wish to get rid of sports altogether.

We also got the news that Hockey East will most likely play to no spectators.

All for ... what exactly?
Moderator
Saturday - October 10th 2020 4:41AM MST
PS: Mr. Ganderson, I am looking forward to your reports.

I'd read some of your reports on what's been going on in the People's Republic of Mass. on E.H. Hail's site. However, his last post was over 2 months back. I hope he is doing OK and will write some more. Since that type of comment thread on there makes it harder to find the most recent, can you tell me if you or he have been doing any more writing lately?
Ganderson
Friday - October 9th 2020 6:45PM MST
PS. The mask thing is much more relaxed here in Crow Wing County. The sense I get is people are pissed at governor T Bone, but feel helpless. Weather’s been great, courses are in great shape. Playing tomorrow- more to come...
Adam Smith
Friday - October 9th 2020 8:05AM MST
PS: You're welcome Mr. Moderator...

Glad to hear the links were helpful. As I've never manually installed a ssl certificate on a web server I didn't know if they would be helpful.

I hope the process wasn't too onerous.


Moderator
Friday - October 9th 2020 4:49AM MST
PS: Mr. Smith, thank you very much for checking. A friend who I was pretty sure has never gotten on here before on his regular computer tried it for me and had no problem.

Yeah, I had to think "90 days", not "3 months" though, and I set the alarm a few days before that date. I don't want people to hit those warning pages again.

As I wrote in the latest post (as of this time), I had to use a combination of instructions from here and there. Some of them weren't literal enough for a guy who knows nothing about what's really going on, but I got though that. Thank you again for all your helpful links.
Adam Smith
Thursday - October 8th 2020 10:59PM MST
PS: Good evening Mr. Moderator...

"Is it just a matter of deleting the history or cache to test this myself? (Problem is, I like to keep all that stuff.)"

Yes. Clearing your browser history would be akin to using a "virgin" browser. If you don't want to clear your history because you'd like to keep all that stuff, you could install another web browser or two (or more) and use one or some of those as "virgin" browsers.

Looks like you did a great job installing your ZeroSSL certificate. Everything works on my computer in both firefox and chromium, virgin or otherwise.

Please remember your certificate expires on January 6, 2021.
(I do imagine it will be easier to generate a new certificate next time as you now have the hookup.)


Moderator
Thursday - October 8th 2020 1:06PM MST
PS: I am so sorry, Bill. I worked too fast on my dBase interface to delete your extra comments and deleted your bigger problem you had.

Just for the record, it was about your seeing the text get cut off quite a bit horizontally, on the right side, then getting fixed somehow after you got a comment typed in. (Also, there was a vertical scroll bar.) Anyway, I apologize for your problems and this deletion.

I tried to rollback the deletion but no such thing here. I do back-up things, in case anyone's wondering. With the additional commenting that's been going on over the last ~6 months, I will back up more often for those.

Thanks to anyone who brings up problems.

I think I've got my SSL stuff straight, but I will get some feedback from friends with browsers "virgin" to this site to make sure. Perhaps Adam could tell me: Is it just a matter of deleting the history or cache to test this myself? (Problem is, I like to keep all that stuff.)
Moderator
Thursday - October 8th 2020 10:11AM MST
PS: Bill H, that should have nothing at all to do with the recent SSL stuff. Are you using the same device/browser as always.

I know about the vertical scroll bar, that only appears when my long posts (15/page) add up past the limit I set. This horizontal thing is much worse. I don't see it myself, but I'll check if anyone else I know has a problem, or commenters here, of course.

I'll delete your duplicate comments in a little while.
Adam Smith
Thursday - October 8th 2020 9:50AM MST
PS: Good afternoon Mr. Moderator...

I'm just curious if this will work...


Bill H
Thursday - October 8th 2020 9:41AM MST
PS Don't know if it has to do with your SSL cert or what. but your site format is fubar. The column with is too narrow, and the right side of the text is cut off. There is a vertical scroll (which makes the problem worse) but no horizontal scroll, so every line is truncated, and one has to guess at what is eliminated from the context of the next line. Looks like quite a bit is cut off, because sometimes it's unclear what you are saying.

What makes it more confusing is that as I'm typing this, the text in the box made the column wider, so as of now the column is wide enough to read the post just fine.
MBlanc46
Thursday - October 8th 2020 7:40AM MST
PS I have some childhood recollections of America when it was a lot more like that place and a lot less like chain-this and chain-that everywhere you go. We old guys tend to see the past through rose-colored glasses, but it would take a lot of convincing to get me to believe that things weren’t better then.
Moderator
Thursday - October 8th 2020 2:36AM MST
PS: True, dat. I've seen it done, Robert, back in my teenage years, out of a non-moving car. It looked REALLY awkward. Nope, they can't write their names in the snow, and they can't make monsters on the wall behind the bar.

I really wondered later if there was some bathroom for employees tucked in the place. I just wondered how they go through a shift.

I wonder how the debate went. One of either Sailer or Audacious Epigone on unz will probably have something.
Robert
Wednesday - October 7th 2020 9:51PM MST
PS: Breaking News!

Fly lands on Pence's hair during vice presidential debate

Yes, that was the headline.
Robert
Wednesday - October 7th 2020 8:52PM MST
PS: Actually, Mr. Moderator, they can and do. It is just a little more involved, depending on what they are wearing.

What they can't do (without borrowing) is write their name in the snow. They can create life, and we can write in the snow.
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