Mostly Apolitical Thread for Discussing/Venting our Rational/Irrational COVID-19 Fears and Experiences in 2020

aw ty all. will have plenty of time to dink around on instruments in coming weeks.

what's everybody up to tonight?

My weekly board game group is downloading the 7 Wonders app so we can do a virtual board game night! Small joys

watched Two-Lane Blacktop

it was good

grading papers : /

working my way through a pile of my more under-played folkways records and deciding which ones are keepers.

reading

mostly trying not to become sick with anxiety over the article morbs shared in the “outbreak” thread tbh

catching up on s5 of Hill Street Blues

ahhh budo jeru now i had to click on it. i didn't see anything surprising there? what particularly is worrying you about it?

would love to hear if you have any particular faves out of those folkways records!

otm, Neanderthal is a very very good singer. And a very good criss cross sitter.

catching up and Neanderthal performing at high levels!

so if you’re shut in and decide to order non-local, amazon’s fastest option is five days out now

I might have to put on my full plague doctor regalia, which would get a knowing nod from people and not panic/jokes, and go to my regular Target store mid-day

caveman got chops!

i also like Neanderthal’s video ! turned my day around actually

xp upon reflection i don’t think can explain what was going through my head, not on a phone anyway, and in the mood i’m im. (i’ll post some vids in yr listening thread tho)

of all fuckin' things I forgot to get while I was at the grocery store replacing the roommate's bread I accidentally ate, I forget...body wash!

yay ANOTHER trip! or maybe just wait til the smell gets unbearable enough to the roommate

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/19/economy/unemployment-benefits-goldman-sachs/index.html

Early Thursday, a government report showed 281,000 Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits last week. It was a sudden 33% jump over the week before and the biggest percentage increase since 1992.
But next week's report is likely to be far worse, according to Goldman Sachs economists.
They predict the report will show 2.25 million Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits this week — eight times the number of people who filed last week and the highest level on record.

today hit me hard - i think it was the combination of work emailing me to tell me i have to come in tomorrow to pick up my stuff for wfh (haven't left the apartment since saturday) and the news about the 34 year old dying. plus i ate bean burritos for lunch and that made me feel like i was dying of something most of the day.

a shitty side effect of all of this - not as bad as people actually dying of course - but my partner's debilitating chronic pain from degenerative disc disease is back now that she's gone 2 weeks without swimming. this is something she's dealt with for years but it got so bad she was basically bedridden for half of last year. everything changed when a doctor told her to try swimming every day (following specific instructions, in a wetsuit). it's the only thing in the world that gives any sort of relief outside of prescription painkillers. we knew this was going to happen, it just really sucks, and there's nothing she can do about it. who knows how long the gyms are going to be closed, and even if they were open she wouldn't want to risk getting/spreading.

Post Office staff very cheerful. I feel like a bad man still going there even.

you live near THE cheerful PO?

setting off on my hourlong rainy chemo walk

god spare me from group texts i am SO OVER IT

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, March 19, 2020 9:52 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

also being bombarded by this right now

Nice job Neanderthal. Lol at the combo of the ukulele and Bathory shirt.

We just did self isolation movie night with some friends. Using google hangouts and Netflix. The new Netflix mark wahlberg movie is really fucking stupid, even by the standard of Marky Mark movies.

heh, i see our management is now referring to the company-wide 20% pay cut as a "20% hair cut"

basically we all got a bowl cut, and not even a good bowl cut

Heh, a friend let his kids give him a mohawk. My kids have been asking to dye my beard, but I'm going to save that for a rainy day. Or, at the rate we're going, for a day that's not rainy.

the only thing worse than pay cuts is your company deciding to use a "cute" euphemism for it

Just feeling a tremendous wave of relief at finally hearing from Fandango. These are difficult times, and as things improve they fully intend to provide the same great service I've become accustomed to.

Whew.

one of my main complaints right now personally is that I did not get a haircut before all this went down so 2020 will be super shaggy

The Defected Virtual Festival, currently live-streaming on FB, is making my afternoon: https://www.facebook.com/DefectedRecords/videos/636324983813473/?v=636324983813473

i have clippers at home and plan to shave my head today or tomorrow
xp

Most on-brand thing ever: in the absence of holding services, the pastor from our local U-U church (we're not members, but we have a lot of friends there) just posted a video of him strumming an acoustic guitar and singing "With or Without You."

without bass guitar that shit just ain't boss

group texts are how i keep in touch with people during normal times -- i welcome them!

neanderthal -- so fun to see you (i had no idea what you looked like) and your voice is indeed truly something else but why the crotch cam?! :D someone get this guy a tripod or a chair!

i would like to see more people -- maybe this is the time i finally get over making videos of myself playing drums. who cares at this point right?

I also need a fucking haircut, which is being exacerbated by my horrified realisation that presumably due to stress/grief as well as advancing middle age, that I'm going fucking bald round my crown and it looks really awful with longer hair (probably will look awful with short hair too, but at least then nobody would think I'm trying to cover it up or something)

Haha thank you LL. So in many moves i decided to get very light in possessions and actually chucked my only "inside" chair. I should probably dig up the beach chair i have next time.

Btw yes pls make vids people. I'm always curious what posters sound like.

A drum vid would rule LL

CP, balding is ok, you just need a set of clippers, saves money on going to the hairdresser, also I always hated going anyway.

LOL @ everyone shaving their heads while I, who's done this pretty regularly for the past two decades, have apparently just said 'eff it' and decided to see what male pattern baldness has left me to work with.

Mohawk imo

Old Punk Lunch

Btw yes pls make vids people. I'm always curious what posters sound like.

Thinking when I last went to the hairdresser and it was almost certainly 2006, I had to learn how to say "I want a shaved head, please shave all my hair off" in Chinese. They still managed to get it wrong, somehow.

I would have to settle for the Keith Flint reverse mohawk, I'm afraid, but perhaps the time has come.

maybe it would cheer everybody up if we all sang “Imagine” and someone spliced it together...
― beard papa, Friday, March 20, 2020 10:44 AM bookmarkflaglink

That might be the coolest idea

not imagine, maybe we could do "balloon"

I gave myself a reverse mohawk the day before yesterday to anticipate the ultimate course of my balding-on-top. It is not everything I hoped for.

CP, balding is ok, you just need a set of clippers, saves money on going to the hairdresser, also I always hated going anyway.

trouble is I hate having short hair (I know I may not have a choice about this at some point) so I don't actually want to shave it off, just trim it a few inches... but I guess it's not like anyone is actually seeing it now anyway, it looks OKish from the front so video calls are OK

also unrelated to videos but related to humans getting along -- gotta admit that i am enjoying the gentle "wtf who cares pandemic" release from social norms and inhibitions. this time of year people tend to get so...irritable? and complaining about other people had reached a real pitch before this went down (thinking of the political sniping mostly). i am enjoying some relief from it!

i would consider shaving my head but we are trying to learn how to teach online and i don't want to scare my students. they already think I'm weird enough.

xxp You could do the reverse mohawk AKA Keith Flint Hair as suggested above?

I have vowed for many years to proudly rock my baldness when it arrives. i.e. refuse to shave head all the way down as per today's standard...but now with this experiment I'm realizing that may not be possible.

Looking more Bozo the clown than Ed Harris atm.

a girl at my high school shaved her hair, we thought it was cool but my grandma saw her once and went on about it for years, she thought it was a sign of a dangerous mental breakdown for some reason