Too much COVID crap going on. Way too much. Make it all stop. Please!

Just as I’ve been saying that they both need to and should do, the State of Illinois is firing up a resurgence mitigation plan for dealing with a pretty major flare up of COVID-19 cases in a regions 7 and 8 around the Chicagoland area. This will begin on Friday, October 23.

I know he’s not the greatest candidate. I know he may not be everyone’s first choice.

I really had no idea what I was going to blog about today and then the news came down the wire... Eddie Van Halen, lead guitarist and founding member of Van Halen, succumbed to cancer at the age of 65. 

“Because you weren’t President screwing things up!”

–Joe Biden

’nuff said.

I thought I had seen everything there was to see regarding footage of the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. A buddy sent me the link to this documentary made by two French filmmakers who were there. 

Blew my mind earlier tonight to hear that Chadwick Boseman — the brilliance who starred as Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, and James Brown, as well as bringing to life T’Challa, also known as the Black Panther — died from stage 4 colon cancer at the age of 42, Jackie’s jersey number. 43.

Because I get my prescriptions from Walgreens, I’m subscribed to every email under the sun that they send out. Typically, I delete them sight unseen. But one came in today with the following subject line that caught my attention immediately...

I’ve paid very little attention to any sort of sports this season mostly because they’ve all either been canceled, postponed, or abbreviated to the point where they feel pointless. Don’t get me wrong, I miss sports, but I’ve missed them for years now. 

It’s official! Joe Biden’s running mate for the 2020 U.S. Presidential election is California Senator and former Attorney General Kamala Harris. 

One thing I’ve noticed when going out on walks or trekking across the occasional parking lot or stopping at a busy intersection is that the regular assortment of outdoor litter is now being supplemented or supplanted by face masks. 

I've gone a little hypocritical here in that, despite (or maybe "in spite of") my antiracist cries, when it was announced that the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company was retiring their Native American "maiden" logo, Katie and I may have gone online and ordered some maiden-adorned apparel. Please don't judge us too harshly.

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A coworker, who is a fellow parent and part-time teacher like me, shared this video. I am, in turn, sharing it with you. It's powerful. And heartbreaking. 

I've been following the news of more and more states defying Republican hopes (prayers?) and instituting vote-by-mail full scale for the November General Election. It's been very good for my heart and soul to see this happening. 

I know most of you have, at the very least, heard of the band Rage Against the Machine. They were a heavy metal/rap-rock band that started in the early 1990s and are very well known for their highly politicized songwriting. They are, IMHO, the guitar-driven equivalent of my beloved Public Enemy, although Megadeth is up there as well.

On the negative side of today, Netflix’s Space Force was, um, strange to say the very least. Some of the driest humor to come from Greg Daniels ever. 

I wish I could focus on the cool stuff that happened today, like Falcon 9 successfully going to space and whatever else. But I cannot.

I'm going to be honest, I have not been a space exploration nut since I was a kid. I used to love shuttle launches and I even saw Sally Ride's first launch live. I had toy space shuttles and posters and postcards and photographs in my room until my teen years.

I remember a joke I've heard several times over the course of my life that goes something akin to "What's the one profession where you can miss 7 out of 10 times and still be considered an all star? A baseball player."

If social media is any indication, people are at least trying to maintain a healthy sense of humor in the age of the Coronavirus pandemic. Here are some faves...

A certain Midwest-based furniture chain announced recently that they are going out of business. Why do I care? Well, I owe them money for a mattress that we financed a couple Black Fridays ago.

Kirk Douglas has died. Bumblebees may soon be extinct. Donald Trump was acquitted.

This is why quality control and training are tantamount in this day and age. 

As a library junkie, the husband of a library junkie, the father of a budding library junkie, and a former member of my local library's Foundation association, it warms my heart to no end to read this Gallup article about how library visits topped U.S. leisure activities in 2019, even outpacing visits to movie theaters and sporting events.

This past Christmas, a big to-do was made about the Hallmark Channel pulling an ad that featured a gay couple getting married. A hate group called One Million Moms protested the ad as disgusting and threw around their weight (obviously from sitting around on their couches all day espousing hate via the Web) and convinced Hallmark to pull the ad. 

It is 59° and sunny here in far west Chicagoland. Skies are blue. People are wearing t-shirts, riding bikes, and driving with their car windows open.

In a bit of good news today, it was announced that Twitter will be banning all political ads on its platform rather than deal with with false and misleading ads being placed. 

Ohmigod. Some parts of the U.S. are supposed to see upwards of a 50ºF drop in under 24 hours later this week and into this weekend with some areas seeing anywhere from 1 to 2 feet of snow in that time. Holy cow. 

As someone who has been overweight most of his life, has dieted, gotten to a “good” weight, put it back on, lost it again, lather, rinse, repeat and had bullies attack him the whole time, I want to publicly thank James Corden for his reasoned and honest retort to that bumbling sack of shit known as Bill Maher.

[image courtesy of Electric102.com]

It's pretty funny that after writing that post about my Discover card design change, I realized that there is a major missed marketing opportunity right now by Discover Card and New Line Cinema.

The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The. The.

The big news item in the Chicago area -- that has nothing to do with violence, politics, or the weather -- is that Union Pacific steam engine 4014, dubbed "Big Boy," is in town right now. Well, not Chicago exactly. West Chicago... far to the west of the Chicago proper, but only one town east of where I live. 

Will any of you be tuning in to listen to Robert Mueller's testimony tomorrow on the Trump Investigation? Will you watch? Listen? Follow on social media?