Saturday, March 21, 2020

Now I Wonder How Others Are Doing; Disinformation; Playing Catch with Tony; The State of the Casa Kaulins Apartment Complex Basketball Court; Ides of March Meme; More People at the Basketball Court; Peeing on the Basketball Court;


  • Funny, the virus crisis started out with me sending messages to people in North America to say I was doing okay; now, I am asking people in North America how they are doing. My mother tells me that they are panicking in Brandon, Manitoba of all places. Brandon is two hundred kilometres from a city that has an airport that doesn't have many international connections. To get to Brandon, you must drive, and if you don't have a reason to visit it, you don't. And yet the residents are panicking. Schools in Brandon are closing for three weeks.

  • So much disinformation is getting out there about what Trump and the USA are doing about the virus that I have to tune out. The TDS sufferers would say that Trump was doing a bad job of it. So, whether he is or not is hard to say.

  • My son Tony & I have been playing catch every day just about. We are playing on our apartment complex's basketball court. We can play baseball on a basketball court, unfortunately, because the hoop at one end of the court now has no backboard which makes it near useless to shoot at. We do have to work around kids who are riding bikes and the occasional persons shooting at the bad basket because they can't shot at the other hoop and they are tired of waiting for a break in the near constant pick-up game being played, by the same group of people every day, at the good hoop. And this good hoop now seems to be bent. Anyway, Tony is getting more confident at throwing at catching the baseball. We have even been doing a bit of batting. Tony is still hopeless at fungoing the ball, but he can present a good stance when I am lobbing pitches at him to try to hit.

  • The basketball court is a microcosm of what is wrong and right about Chinese civilisation. 1)The state of disrepair of the basketball court is annoying. I have been asking for a year at least why the backboard on the bad hoop hasn't been repaired. My wife has told me that there is no money. Western civilisation, in its heyday, wouldn't have allowed this to stand. Someone would have done something about it and maybe have put the onus on his self to fix the hoop. In China, it seems that everyone accepts it. 2)The fact that the same people everyday are playing a pick up game and keeping the same other people everyday from playing points out another flaw of the locals. Their absolute selfishness in public. And these selfish types are the adults. Western civilisation, in its hey day (I don't know now anymore) would have seen the adults making arrangements so that everyone could get a good proportion of playing time. (Of course, the other hoop actually being repaired by an adult would have solved the problem in the first place. But one character flaw brings out others.) 3)The basketball court area is very dirty. I have had to retrieve a mis-thrown or not-caught baseball many a time in my playing catch with Tony and so have had a good close-up look at bushes and the ground around the basketball court. The adage that one shouldn't look at China close-up (at least than ten meters) is so true. The locals shamelessly litter and let their pets shit everywhere.

  • To mark the Ides of March and the assassination of Caesar, I created a meme with a picture of a man wearing a tin foil hat and had the meme say: "There was a conspiracy to kill to Caesar. Just not the one they would have you believe." I sent it to a friend who replied: "Very funny. Two Sid references." I was momentarily befuddled as to what he was talking about. I then realised that the one Sid reference he made was to the meme. He took the "one" in it to refer to "Caesar" – I had meant the "one" to refer to "conspiracy." Stupidly, I hadn't realised the dangling modification error I had made in the meme. The meme should have said: There was a conspiracy to kill Caesar. Just not the conspiracy that they would have you believe." and/or "There was a conspiracy to kill Caesar. Just not the Caesar that they would have you believe." The second Sid reference was a mistake on my friend's part that I figured out. I had earlier sent him a Keith Richards meme that said if the China Virus killed Keith that it would kill us all. He thought Keith was Sid Vicious.

  • One day, to pick up packages, I drove, instead of walking, to Jenny's office building. On the way, I saw, ahead of me, that the police had pulled over a truck. I also saw an e-biker trying to pass the truck get stopped by a policeman. The e-biker, a man, either didn't want to be stopped or didn't understand what the policeman wanted. I was passing the truck when this happened. Then, in my rearview mirror, I saw the policeman run and grab onto the e-biker to get him to stop. It looked like another cop came to assist... This is not the first time I have seen this sort of thing happen. Many locals will try to race through police roadblocks.

  • {Later} More and more people are showing up at that basketball court area where Tony & I have been playing catch and where I have have lobbing balls at Tony to hit. The people showing up are little children and their handlers. It is annoying for Tony & I because they frequently walk in the path of our ball exchanges. But there is nothing we can do about it. We have to be patient because we very much don't need to hit someone, especially a little child, with a ball. Still, it is hard to stay patient because these people who we are now seeing are exhibiting the stereotypical Chinese lack of self-awareness, Chinese lack of consideration for others, and Chinese lack of basic hygiene. Two days in a row I saw that someone was hanging their laundry in the basketball court area. We also saw one grandmother let their child take a pee on the basketball court surface. (Seeing the latter thing, which happened right after Tony had made his best hit of a ball I had lobbed to him, so disgusted me & Tony that we decided to just go back to Casa Kaulins.)

  • The grandmother letting her child pee on the basketball court makes me think that the most likely cause of the virus was lack of hygiene in Wuhan coupled with a stupid attempt by the Chicoms to suppress news about it. The story of it being a bio-chemical weapon seems far-fetched to me. But the point is that Trump is right to call it the Chinese virus.


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