Back to Work on the 28th; Finished Watching the Last Dance; Barriers; Not Wearing a Mask; What I'm Going to Miss about the Lockout?; Not in the Doghouse, Hopefully;

• Back to work on the 28^th, I am. But it will be a whimper. I can't see myself being overwhelmed with classes to start, and on the day I go to work, I will be the lone foreigner on the premises. So, no grand exchanges of experiences. This is probably just as well. I don't have much to say for myself.

• Tony & I finished watching the Last Dance documentary series about the 1990s Michael Jordan lead Chicago Bulls. It was an interesting series but I could tell it was doing some narrative constructing. If another documentary had done a series about the dynasty, it would have focused on different aspects of the story. The best thing about watching the series was how Tony impressed me with his knowledge of basketball history. When the Bulls were down by three points in the last minute of the decisive sixth game of the 1998 final, as was being shown in the documentary, Tony told me what had happened so that Jordan could get the game winning shot. What didn't impress me was Obama's appearance in the final episode and what he had to say about Jordan's legacy. What Obama said was like what he said earlier in the series: just utter pablum. It was along the gist of Jordan did a great thing for the advancement of black people. To which I could only respond Huh? In the construction of a narrative, the observer should be aware of things that are left out. In this documentary series, I found it interesting that the documentary makers obviously wanted Obama to seem to be part of the Chicago scene in the 90s, but they didn't actually say what Obama was doing in Chicago in the 90s.

• More barriers in the area. Because of the lockdown, there are more barriers in the area to free movement. In the complex, that containeth Compound Kaulins (see previous entry for explanation of this new terminology), one of two car entrance gate has been closed. At my wife's office building, an entrance linking her office building and an underground parking lot has been closed. At the local Sports Center and Football Ground, gates through which people could walk onto the grounds were closed. (On the ground as well, they inexplicably put barriers to stairways.) But the most interesting case of barrier erection I have seen has taken place on a stretch of road that runs in front of my wife's office building. On one side of this road is my wife's office building, a shopping mall and a complex containing banks. On the other side of the road is a government canteen, a public square, a library, another office building and another shopping complex. The road is about six lanes wide and in the center is a wide boulevard that requires extensive landscaping maintenance, and it is about a kilometer long. There are about four places where pedestrians can cross on this stretch of road. The problem is that these crossings are not well situated, and so there are four or five other places where pedestrians do cross instead. They wear paths into the grounds that disfigure the boulevard landscaping. So, to try to get people to only use the designated crossings, the authorities tried a campaign of fining people who were using the informal crossings. From what I could see, once the campaign stopped, people went back to using the undesignated crossings. So, what the authorities have done, is refurbish the boulevards and put fences on them. (I shall publish a photo of this, when I take one, in my photoblog.) You have to wonder about the idiocy of planners when they try to design paths for pedestrians. How often have I seen paths worn into the ground because the planners never anticipated people would want to get to a place more directly.

• I am not wearing a mask. I said this in my last entry but I want to say it again. I am against the spirit of the idiots of this time. (Written in an urge to say something even though I really didn't have anything to say.)

• Even the most stupid and evil things, like this lockdown, can have their good points. For example, one good thing about Stalin's great terror was that it killed a lot of the people who were responsible for the Bolshevik rise to power. That revolutions eat their own is a good thing. What I am going to miss about this lockdown is the not having to see people who I hadn't missed seeing during the lockdown.

• Hopefully, this weekend doesn't result in me being in another doghouse on account of my wife Jenny getting mad at me for something that she decided she wanted to be angry about.