Giving up on leaving home anytime this month and letting my Busch Gardens FunPass die a lonely death in a few weeks, I started back towards my usual stomping grounds of YouTube for some mindless video consumption. I saw a video of some spring fashion show/concert event in London a few years ago and played it, watching the pretty people (and by pretty I mean rich) all coiffed up. But a few minutes in I caught sight of this wide shot of the event (see below) and I literally cringed.
I was immediately struck by a convulsive reaction of sheer disgust. You see, I, like you, have been newly-conditioned by this now almost two full years journey in this thing to think reflexively that crowding too closely with other people is just so, so utterly unacceptable. And so this image of a large crowd of very clean and well-scrubbed one-percenters piled practically on top of each other seemed so very, very gross.
I've gone down the rabbit hole so far, I forget that before all this, it was normal. It was normal for people to crowd together. Especially the well-to-do. They were without fear. They were simply seated at a very popular event with limited space accordingly. And, back then, no one would have thought anything of it.
It was Life in the Before Times.
We're a little better off than a year ago though, I guess, in so far as being able to attend, gathered with others, all manner of events. But we're still cautioned to keep doing what we now know to do, especially if amongst the unvaccinated. I'm not going to get into how the unvaccinated is like saying the unwashed in so much as they are treated by the media these days. I have a lot of mixed feelings about that.
Of course, precautions or not, it's becoming more and more obvious that soon, perhaps sometime before the end of this winter, we're all going to be "asked" to go back into hiding with new lockdowns. You see, the Omicron has come a callin' and, from what they tell us, this time 'Rona's REALLY gonna fuck you up.
Even my beloved Norwegian Breakaway, which, as you should know, I've sailed on twice, has seen a current breakout of active cases of, I guess, just vanilla Covid. They'll be docking in good ol' New Orleans later today. How did this happen? Don't they test passengers before boarding? Yup. Aren't most, if not all other passengers and crew fully vaccinated? Yup.
Ah well, whatcha gonna do?
Buckle up, Buckaroos. We're in this for the long haul!
Since I already live my life like the Omega Man, I guess I'll see you through 'till we get to the Omega Variant.
Only nine more Greek letters to go.