The PVP Diaries #37

I didn’t prep the coffee last night. Shame on me. But it isn’t hard to make me happy when it comes to coffee (or in general, really), so the instant stuff from Trader Joe’s is more than good enough.

Almost strictly single digits for the last week or so. 5, 2, 10, 9, 11, 8, 5, 7.  Maybe it’s just that I’m not a worrier, by nature. Maybe it’s that I don’t project outcomes of misery and defeat as a default condition. Maybe it’s just that I’m a pathetic little optimist, a pesky Pollyanna, for whom no apocalypse is without a silver lining. I’m skeptical of pessimism, dubious of doubt. I think that people who are unsatisfied with their own intelligence use objection and obstruction as a proxy for wit. They carry the belief that no smart person ever simply accepts what is put in front of him, and will foresee eventual failure in any seemingly successful arrangement.

A crisis is always exacerbated by that tendency – the unwillingness to say “we’ll be ok,” combined with the fear of being duped by reality. So we shave off all the little parts that can’t be used to distinguish ourselves in some way, abandon the idea of acceptance (and with it, advancement) until we’ve whittled a nice, round reality into a square peg that doesn’t fit anywhere except our own hip pockets.

So yeah, maybe I don’t do enough doubting, enough questioning, enough worrying. But all of the obsession with appearing smart is keeping us locked up and locked down and not getting anywhere, figuratively or literally. If it takes a mediocre mind to move on, to advance, to progress, then by all means pass me over for all the accolades ever made for the mighty. Forget me, please. You’re only slowing me down, anyway.

………

The golf courses in Seattle have been given the green light.  It’s so easy to get snarky about the smell of privilege and elitism that wafts in from the club house in a move like this. Of all the things for the champagne clinkers on Capitol Hill to free from confinement first, it’s the traditional pastime of the rich. But two things:

1. I’ve golfed a lot and I know that most of the people on the course are knuckle-dragging day drinkers trying to escape from their families for half a day to flirt with the girl on the beer cart.
2. It’s one less restriction. Is it enough? Surely not. Is it good for me? No, I don’t golf anymore, and I have no urge to do it now. But as much as I would like to grab a few guns and throw a tantrum at the Capitol, I know that’s not going to move anything any faster.

You’ll say I’ve grown too happy with the scraps that my masters deign to throw into my cage, but frankly, beyond those assinine arrests that have happened around the country, and the short-lived nailing of 2×4’s to park benches so nobody could sit there, I don’t see a whole lot that’s been unreasonable. Unnecessary, yes, but we had two options once the flu arrived from China: underreact or overreact. Either way would have been fraught with complication and failure, and would have been met with protests and anger from some, gratitude and joy from others. And if there’s anything that’s true about all that breath I wasted in the first section of this post, the overreaction was the only course that was ever really possible. Nobody in a position of power had or has the mental fortitude to appear unintelligent by believing in the wisdom of acceptance. When your audience is packed with idiots, they have no idea what it looks like when you’ve done something smart, so you have to dumb down in order not to alienate them. It’s the only way to get re-elected.

………

Overall, Governor Inslee, I say you’re doing fine, brother. Hiccups and imperfections, yes. But in this state the voters who elected you were, and continue to be, clamoring for restrictions, so you are doing your job by listening. A few hiccups here and there, but of course. This one was pretty jarring, though: When a reporter asked Inslee  a question about businesses and how they would handle the phased re-opening, etc, he responded by saying that he spoke with the Starbucks leadership, and so he is confident that it will go well. Now, maybe I’m an idiot, but I’m guessing that the reporter wasn’t asking about the Starbuckses and Amazons and Boeings, but about the small businesses – the mom-and-pops, all that. So that was a blisteringly horrible response. Bad Jay, bad. I don’t think that public speaking is his strong suit, though, and boy howdy do I ever sympathize.

………

The boy dissected an owl pellet yesterday, found a vole skull:

I dug more:

Forgot to post this rabbit yesterday:

………

Your “Homeless in Coronafornia” update is back, and here it is:

well, everyone is out and about
but still not many people working

Sounds about right. Here in West Seattle we’re not as active and busy as we were in the days before the plague, but it’s hardly a ghost town. Plenty of people out and about, and more than enough traffic on the road to prevent anyone from thinking “where is everybody.” It’s just about perfect, actually, people-wise. It would be nice if things were always like this, except with, you know, freedom.

—It’s gonna be ok, Comrade Citizen!—