The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Coronavirus

Sticking with the slightly biblical theme of yesterday’s post I thought that today we should delve a little deeper into who exactly are the saints and the sinners of Covid-19.

Let’s start with the easy one – the saints: naturally the list includes anyone working for any healthcare service anywhere in the world with a big shout out for Kim Jong-ding-dongs poor about to be decapitated physicians, but also care givers (particularly elderly care providers in the thick of it), delivery people, supermarket staff and generally anyone supporting us through lockdown lock-me-up-and-throw-the-key-away-hell-after-all-have-you-met-my-teens? Added to this list should be Milan’s town planner who’s just figured out that pedestrianising the city is the best way to keep Italian drivers off the streets and keep everyone else alive. And a last saintly hat tip goes to Netflix for bringing us ‘Tiger King’ cos we naively thought that shit couldn’t get weirder than this Corona thing!

But, that’s the obvious list. And the one we should all keep raving about and shouting or clapping or singing or walking round and round the garden on a zimmer frame for or climb endless Everest like stairs or Christ even binge watch the Kardashians for. You see, while politicians may have dawdled/dragged their proverbials/hid in the nice house yet somehow paraded their shiz all over prime-time press conferences the saintly ones have been out there holding us all together. You know actually doing stuff called work and getting us what we need to get through lockdown-looneys. And the great irony is, now we’re stuck at home in gracious perpetuity (with the teens), we’d bight off any of their left feet or arm or pretty much any limb just to be able to go back to work. Yes, the same work we’ve been bitchin’ and moaning about for the last God knows how long suddenly seems as attractive as a simple back massage from Pamela Anderson. The same bosses we’ve been whining about and trying to undermine at every turn now seem almost, well, saintly. Particularly when those bosses are politicians who seem to think its OK for them to go back to work but that we still can’t cos we haven’t figured out how to work Zoom.

But there are also unsung hero’s (obviously not Andrea Bocelli) and we’d (not weed) like to shout them out. There’s the Pope who wears a weird robe thingy while walking the empty streets of Rome with some shady looking dudes in black suits stalking him as he tirelessly searches the alleyways for his flock cos they haven’t shown up at St Peters Square the last few Sundays. There’s Mick Jagger who gets the prize for shutting himself in a pint sized room for that online concert to make himself look bigger and presumably poorer to provide a cover for the fact that he pays Charlie Watts so little he can’t even afford a drum kit and also for the fact that he’s the only man on earth smaller than Tom Cruise. There’s Mike Pence for putting up with Donnie and there’s anyone working with Pence for putting up with him and there’s obviously the entire British population for putting up with you know who.

There’s CNN’s Chris Cuomo for getting Covid-19 and being forced to stay on air while his dad gets it up the rear from Donnie and there’s all of us for having to watch their kinda weird English finance news presenter dude bang on about hoping we all have a ‘profitable hour’! A f****** ‘profitable hour’ tard, how in pandemic hell are we supposed to have ANY ‘profitable hour’ when we’re all bankrupt or doled up or paying others to take our oil cos we lost the manual that explained how to switch the goddamned well off or just plain friggin broke thanks to this Corona thing which, seemingly, he’s the last dunce on the planet to think is not a pandemic but a friggin Mexican beer. Christ, does he watch his own news? Maybe he finds himself as annoying as the rest of us and dozes off when he’s on.

There’s my plumber who’s gotta deserve a shout out in the vain hope that he might show up this decade once we’re set free and hopefully won’t hit me up the ass with partial amber friggin traffic light ‘special’ lockdown-looney pricing. Then there’s my mother, who let’s face it, is the only person out there that actually bothers to read this crap. Love you mum. But, last of all, there’s me. Yep, me. For doing nothing more than putting up with the teens. You see, when they had to go to school for real they could get themselves up just fine. Now you know who has to get them up for ‘school’ every friggin day which you would have thought has gotten easier given their commute is exactly five steps past the kitchen which they raid on the way and all they have to do all day is to sit on the couch and pretend to listen to some poor teacher politely bang on to them online while instead they watch TV, do their nails, fall asleep, raid the fridge a little more, social media meme each other and scream the moment I ask them to do anything what so friggin ever as all of a sudden they miraculously (yes Francis they can do it too) have way too much school stuff on one screen when they’re actually watching Kim, and I don’t mean Kim Jong-ding-dong. Then, of course, when it comes to them having dinner or exercise or anything that doesn’t involve them lying on the couch pretending to be at school they just shout out about how school online means it runs all day and night and seven days a week and could we please just keep bringing the food and drinks so they can keep 100% focused on their studies really, honest, promise. And yet, somehow, I can only hear the odd bit of teacher coming out of the room that they keep tightly locked like a government backed loan, but really all I friggin hear ALL day is Kim or Kylie or Bieber-still-with-a-baby-face-no-matter-how-hard-he-tries-to-be, well, hard or friggin Billie Eilish I-got-my-hair-stuck-in-the-paint-machine and the entire goddamned cast of Glee.

And seeing as that list took a while/my sanity I guess I’m gonna go put my feet up with the teens and you’ll have to read my next post for the list of Coronavirus bad and uglies.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

Life after Covid-19 and a New Set of Commandments

I know it’s hard to imagine a life after Coronavirus, particularly if you’re living in one of those countries still in the early phases of lockdown with a mirage of an exit plan and a leader in exile. But there has to be life after Coronavirus a little like there had to be life after Napoleon, the great depression, WW2, the Vietnam war, the Cuban missile crisis and even life after Ted Bundy.

But what will life look like after we sweep away this disease? And, while we’re at it, surely we have to ask ourselves more celestially vital questions like how much of the next reality TV dystopian norm will feature the Kardashians? Everyone talks about unprecedented times or maybe it’s just politician cover-my-back-end-lingo or perhaps this time round we will get a chance to reboot the planet and answer the biggest, biggest question of all (yes, even bigger than the Kardashians) which is – do we restart later this year exactly where we started off? (Christ another four years of the Donnie and Bozzer show). Or do we start back in a different way? Do we learn our collective lessons and change course? A timely question given this week, Wednesday to be precise, is Earth Day.

You see we keep telling ourselves that Coronavirus is the biggest public health crisis in modern times. But, what if it’s not? What if there’s an even larger public health crisis just around the corner and the next one’s the real deal? What if David Attenborough (for President – you heard it here first) and every single friggin climate scientist on this entire goddamned planet is actually right and Donnie, Marie and friggin tweedle dum(b) are wrong and the Climate virus will make the Corona virus look like a nano drop in the proverbial Mexican bottled beer. What if Covid-19 is just a dress rehearsal for the real pandemic, nature’s back to ice-age next extinction, that when it unleashes its full fury on us in a decade or two means we ALL get wiped?? You know, the bye bye human race kinda wiped.

Or, what if we use Earth Day to make a new list of commandments. The I don’t want to find out that Donnie/Bozzer/Bolso-I’m-a-nut-naro are actually completely full of, well, nothing and we should have listened to Dave boy Attenborough and ALL those thousands and thousands and thousands of climate scientists who actually know their shit kinda ten commandments. And in anycase, seeing as we all have a bit more time on our hands, you could logically argue that the ten commendments should be up for a bit of a refresh.

Here are the new revised Ten Commandments (2.0):

1. Thou shalt not create any unnecessary waste including food waste, plastic waste, clothing waste, energy waste or crap tv.

2. Thou shalt listen to Elon Musk at all times and driveth electric cars and not just hybrids and moveth to electric heating and renewable energy sources for all thine energy needs saying a collective goodbye to the multi-headed hydras reminiscent of mine devileth nemesis nameth of the SaudiAramco, Rosneft, PteroChina, ExxonMobil, Shell and BP.

3. Thou shalt anointeth leaders and politicians who cometh from more humble loins and knoweth more about facts and telling of the truth and therefore of the persuasion of the scientists or engineers, doctors or environmentalists and NOT thine swine lawyers or accountants, pr people or real estate agents. And should it pleaseth thou tryeth to avoideth thine somewhat less than normal Kardashians. The justeth (not Bieber) new leaders shall putteth thine environment first and solveth the climate crisis straighteth away before any other of the priorities or BREXITeth distractions and they shalt always investeth in the universaleth healthcare systems and research.

4. Thou shalt eat a plant based diet and at a minimum becometh flexitarians partaking of the meat only once or twice per week. Thou shalt try to grow as much of thine vegetables as possible or buyeth locally so limiting the transportation of thine food.

5. Thou shalt fly in the sky by the skyplane only once or twiceth per annum and though shalt support local tourism and particularly eco tourism. Leaveth thine beaches for thine divine turtles, thine forests for the tigers and thine wetlands for thine birds.

6. Thou shalt supporteth slow fashion only and buyeth of thine clothes just twiceth per annum making sure to buyeth of apparel that are sourced ethically and useth sustainable and natural materials that are designeth to lasteth many years. Be careful of the mirage of the undivine celeb endorsement or the advertising agency web of the mumbo jumbo.

7. Thou shalt only worketh for companies that have cleareth and detaileth carbon neutral policies and that alloweth all their workers either to worketh from the home or to traveleth to the physical workplace either on the foot or the bicycle. Only worketh with government organisations and political parties that will not faileth to achieveth carbon neutral by 2030 and haveth clear natural capital economic policies.

8. Thou shalt rewild thy gardens, parks, commons and farms. Thou shalt not throweth the rocks or spears at thy birds in the sky in particular the pheasant, woodcock or thine grouse. Though shalt ban the trade of thine exotic animals and thou shalt closeth off of all wild animal markets and the hunting of thine endangered species or removal of the holy tusks.

9. Thou shalt not harm thy neighbour unless they cuteth down trees, plougheth up fields, destroyeth the hedgerows, cuteth the wild grass unnecessarily, useth of the fake grass or plants, overgrazeth the sheep, cow or pig, wear fast fashion, adorneth their garbage bins with thine single use plastics or eateth at McDonald’s.

10. Though shalt liveth a more kind and generous life, finding thine balance of thine life, enjoying the simpler of the pleasures including helping in thine community, enjoying more idle time witheth thine family and enjoying time in the rewilded nature even with thine (holy) wine. Though shalt listen to thine Lord but not those in the House of the Lord(s) that is full of the blashphemer or the stone slinger unto the glass house or thine unelected chamber. Thou should turneth the cheek and yeteth payeth greater attention to thine health, hospitals, religion and finding of the calm and balanced way. Havith faith that if thine follows theseth commendments that thine future shall be rosy.

Or ignore the above and look forward to Corona 2.0 and a Fort Knox like lockdown that even friggin Houdini himself would never find an exit from. Your choice.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.