or A Breath of Fresh Air...
It's now
officially been 2 full months since the Czech borders slammed shut
and the everyone started wearing masks. Stores closed, restaurants
closed, pubs closed, and a certain Wide Body Jetsetter huddled in his
hovel while he shivered, shook, and gently rocked back and forth in a
fetal position.
No, I am
not afraid of getting the coronavirus. All that shivering, shaking,
and gentle rocking was withdrawal symptoms. How in the holy hell was
I supposed to get my pivo
and smažený
sýr?
Straight From Mother Nature's Poxy Lips
Just
when you thought it was safe to go about your normal dull routine,
Mother Nature chucks a killer virus into the world for shits n
giggles. Thanks, Ma. Aren't there enough things already out there to
kill us? Sharks, grizzlies, tornadoes, lightning, drunk drivers,
cancer, terrorists, and NRA members? Nope. Apparently we humans are
getting too big for our britches and we must be stopped at all costs.
Mother Nature is a bitch.
That ho
has been trying to kill us since we crawled out of the primordial
ooze. After millions of years grunting and flinging poo at each
other in caves, we finally got the renaissance retrofit. Age of
reason, mental expansion, and the ability to kill each other in
larger and larger numbers. So why does Ma keep chucking all these
fucking viruses at us? Black plague, small pox, AIDS, SARS, MERS, and
COVID-19. Mother Nature hates us, I tell you. Her and the animal
rights activists.
But we
keep coming up with cures for most of the evil kisses blown from
Mother Nature's Poxy Lips. As soon as we do, we let our guard down.
We go back to our dull routines until the next crisis comes along.
Not a Plot
The
worse thing about the internet is that there's no filter. The sheer
megatons of bullshit circles the globe at lightning speed through broadband lines pushing gigaquads of data into the minds of people
with no judgement whatsoever. Social media is one giant incubator for
cockamamie ideas, and no idea is too silly to share. Hmm. This
here wackjob comment has 3.2 million shares. It must be true,
thought nobody with a brain, ever.
 |
| Fourth Horseman |
We were
put into panic mode while people started dying. So we looked for
answers from the media, the internet, our 'fearless leaders.' WRONG.
Nobody knew shit. Especially the politicians. Did you hear the one
about how the virus was deliberately created in a lab in China? You
did? You really shouldn't listen to Trump. You'll rot your brain. Or
you'll inject weed killer or some dumbass thing.
A nice
doco I watched on Netflix (the only thing to do during lockdown) was
called Coronavirus Explained. All those charts and graphs were neato,
especially with jazzy background music. The condensed version: this
virus is a clever little bugger. For something not even considered to
be a living thing, a virus reproduces like rabbits on meth. And the
creepy part: it evolves to become a more effective killing machine.
All
those charts and graphs showed how a virus like SARS killed people
too quickly, so we got a handle on it by this little concept called
quarantine. But this COVID bugger doesn't kill everyone. It wants to
survive to reproduce, so killing all of its hosts is
counterproductive. This tricky bitch hides in carriers without
symptoms, who go on with their dull routines, passing in on to other
carriers and/or killing buttloads of people. This virus is hip to the
whole quarantine bag.
So while
people in China and Italy started dying in huge numbers, the Czech
Republic slammed the borders shut and locked down the country. Prague
became a ghost town, people huddled in their hovels, and the country
practically stalled. Meanwhile, over in Merrucka, El Trumpo and his
Quixotic lapdogs managed to do fuckall, and now the U.S. has more
coronavirus deaths than anywhere else in the world combined.
Can We Breathe Yet?
People
are slowly hitting the Prague streets again, some with masks, most
with their noses sticking out over the top. The tension was loosening
and I could feel the pent-up frustration of pent-up people
dissolving.
So I
decided to have a Sunday outing, first by returning a newly-purchased
laptop for service (they don't make 'em like they use to!) at Alza. I
wandered through the near-vacant Prague Market area after I dropped
off my lappy at the geek hut, and I heard the sweet sound of live
jazz music wafting on the breeze. I followed it like a spastic
beatnik until I found the source: a jam session in a fenced-in beer
garden. They weren't serving beer, but damn those cats could jam. I
sat on a bench nearby and listened for a while. It was the sound of
freedom.
 |
| For Strength! |
Then I
decided to go and test out the free movement principle, since the
beer windows in select pubs are also serving food. So I went over to
the same pub mentioned in my first Notes
from the Lockdown post, U Sadu. I missed my Sunday Guinness, what
can I say?
So I sat
there on outdoor seating conveniently spaced 2 meters apart, and
ordered my Guinness from an actual waitress, who actually brought it
to me at my table. I stared at the glorious cascade of black and tan
beer bubbles shimmering and rising to form the creamy head. You can't
tell from the photo; I was wearing shades and a mask. But I was
getting all misty, I tell ya.
I took
in the lay of the land. Joggers blew by with sneakers plopping over
cobblestones, a baby chirped at a table nearby, and the waitress
brought me a menu. When I asked if I could order fried cheese, she
said yes. I wanted to fall on the cobblestones like a sack of
beer-soaked potatoes and kiss her feet with joy. But I didn't. Social
distancing and such.
I
lowered my mask to drink my first pint. I had to. Sucking a pint of
Guinness through my mask would be like being waterboarded by the
Irish Republican Army. Soon I was on to my second, third, and fourth
Guinness. And then the fried cheese. The mask lay unworn on the
table.
After 2
months without fried cheese and beer in an actual pub, the clouds
parted, the heavens opened, and a ray of sunshine beamed upon my full
moon face. I completely forgot coronavirus for exactly the amount of
time it took me to wolf down 4 pints of Guinness and a plate of fried
cheese and french fries.
And O
the joy which flooded my soul. And my guts!