COVID Chronicles
WADE CROWDER
May 19, 2020
I: The Rapture
Life has changed and likely it will never go back to what we once considered normal.
I think a good story would be COVID-22. As the virus mutates, many of the 19 to 45-year-old males die off and old fucks are left to repopulate the planet. No more wars because we old guys have lived long enough to grow out of the stupidity required to sacrifice one's self for country. Women run the government and do it much better than the men left--who are basically good for only two things: plumbing and reproduction.
Engineering viruses to remove despicable segments of the population (mostly males) seems like a pretty good idea to me, probably no worse than eating genetically modified tomatoes. Let women have a go at it for several centuries; it's their turn. And they can fix the planet or fuck it up even more, as they choose.
There will be no more organized sports, just free yoga and Zumba classes streaming live 24/7.
I don't even miss professional sports and find it absolutely incredible that The Dallas Morning News and Houston Chronicle continue to run sports pages when sports no longer exist, but they got rid of most of their food and cooking writers just as the entire fucking planet started preparing three meals a day at home for the first time in several hundred years.
Fuck pro sports: football, baseball, and basketball, in that order. Those bastards were overpaid and valued. I couldn't afford to go to a game anyway. And watching sports on TV meant mostly watching advertisements for crap I'd never buy even if I did have the cash.
Even more: I'm so fucking glad I'll never have to go to another Pier 1 Imports again in my life.: The Rapture! My wife liked Pier 1 and when I told her how I felt, she explained that not everyone was like me. We agreed on that.
Furthermore, I may never set foot inside a shopping mall again; life just keeps getting better.
Thrift stores aren't going anywhere and because everyone is unemployed, there will be even more thrifts. I can't wait.
And now a lot of movies stream for free. Paywalls are dropping faster than the NASDAQ!
Shit's free now and what isn't free is just getting cheaper. We will soon live in a welfare state in one of the poorest, most broken and infected countries in the world with a jobless rate that will make the Great Depression seem like a picnic.
I am not afraid of this broken new world where the most pressing questions in my life can be answered by my own degraded sense of smell: How long has it been since I showered? How many days have I been wearing these shorts? Does the bathroom really need cleaning? Is the cornbread ready to come out of the oven?
That's the dystopian novel that is COVID-22.
There's no catch; just fallout.
II: Nextdoor
Life here in East Dallas has not changed since we last talked, so there really isn't that much to report.
Only this: the weekly late-night gunshots have become routine and much more frequent. It's a rare evening indeed that I don't hear the rapid-fire of what sounds like a large caliber handgun with an extended clip; sometimes fire is even returned. Then, usually within minutes, at least two or three neighbors have recorded the shots on their RING audio/video app and posted on Nextdoor, so if you're of a mind you can listen to the gun blasts in digitally recorded perpetuity, even listen in stereo if you're capable of tiling windows and playing audio simultaneously from another post of the same shots, creating a virtual symphony of high caliber mayhem.
You may think the aforementioned as disturbing, and until I acclimated to this urban habitat I call home, it was somewhat anxiety-inducing and fraught with the uncertainty that I might be shot while sleeping in my own bed.
The first year or two I lived here, sometimes, to hedge my bets, I slept on my floor in anticipation of dodging a stray bullet, but I no longer do that because my vacuum cleaner is broken and I'd rather be shot in the head than sleep on a dirty floor, pay for my vacuum to be fixed, buy a new one, or rip out the carpet and replace with hardwood. There is something counterintuitive and redundant about living in a war zone while simultaneously living through a pandemic, also described by many as a war. My algebra is weak but the multiplication of two negatives really does equal a positive, in some situations. Two nights ago, there was no shooting, no dog or catfights, no car wrecks, no emergency vehicle sirens. . .through the profound urban silence, I couldn't sleep for shit, so I got on Nextdoor and posted a diatribe about how incredibly quiet the eye of a pandemic could actually be, and certainly, someone's going to start shooting any minute? Have all the fucking crazed shooters got COVID and died? But no one started shooting and I was left alone with my thoughts, more frightening than being caught in a crossfire. Should I load the 12-gauge, fire off a few rounds into the night sky just to activate the neighborhood RINGs and scratch up some Nextdoor blog activity? Worse things have happened in my life, in my neighborhood. Goddamnit, I want communion, even if it's virtual and self-induced and initiated from the wrong end of a gun, like a volunteer fireman who sets his neighbor's barn ablaze. It's ironic, insidious, and most of all superfluous, but it works to kill time, to make the nut, as it were.
And during daylight hours, the parade of heretofore cloistered and marshmallowed dog walkers is endless. At a glance, I can tell these are the well-larded bastards hoarding food and toilet paper. And their dogs are fighting. They've gotten off-leash and joined roaming packs of feral beasts. I carry a lock blade Buck knife, and sometimes, if I'm not feeling up to close combat, an old 7-iron, for my daily walk.
On Nextdoor, there's an entire blog dedicated to how to fend off savage dogs. The list is long and exhaustive. PETA extremists have discovered the blog and threatened legal action on some of the neighbors' more extreme countermeasures to dog attacks: body slam, eye-gouging, and unloading .357 magnum are just a few that come to mind. And this is the intersection of neighbors concerned about dog attacks and the discharging of high caliber handguns in close proximity to mostly innocent, sleeping victims I call my neighbors.
Not everyone knows what it's like to live in a war zone, but more than ever, people are learning, and I am staying home, fearlessly prostrating myself to help flatten the curve and keep America great.
III: Wildlife – Dystopian Blue
In the second month of quarantine, I am pleased to see that the reduced air and surface traffic in Dallas skies and on highways and streets has had a profound effect on clearing the air. This brilliant dystopian blue hasn't existed in North Texas for more than thirty years. Wildlife also has resurfaced and begun to flourish again.
Something strange and preternatural as an unintended consequence of reduced traffic in my own neighborhood, I've noticed a marked reduction in roadkill, and turkey buzzards are also out of work as they loiter on lamp posts and circle ravenously in the freshly scrubbed urban sky.
And just this morning when my neighbor's landscaping crew arrives early to disturb my first cup of coffee, I retreat from the porch to the indoors and only come back outside when I hear the tailgate on their trailer slam shut, and they drive away some twenty minutes later. They are fast and efficient but have blown the clippings and leaves into the middle of the street instead of picking them up. Why is this not illegal?
Freshly uncovered acorns abound, and pretty soon several squirrels are feasting in the middle of the street just in front of my driveway. Since the squirrels trim my trees and dig up my potted plants, I don't care so much for their company. They are nothing more than vermin, rats with furry tails, and really good PR. Then a car, the first in over an hour, drives by slowly and almost stops before scattering the squirrels. That's when I see the red hawk flash by in the shadow of the tree line then swoop down, with talons fully extended, and snatch one distracted squirrel off the curb. I hear its terrified squeak and see a jettisoning of bowels as the rodent literally takes a flying shit, its final and perhaps most emphatic. And then silence as the hawk disappears with its payload.
In the squirrel's death throw, I can't help but see the surreal image of Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones' agonized face trapped in the clutches of natural selection, an even more powerful force than capitalism. The microscopic COVID-19 has brought down small businesses and behemoths alike. But my sympathy is highly selective, and while I hate to see local restaurants, bars, and most other businesses struggle or close, I feel no such compunction for much of corporate America. Because pro football games are predicated on zero-line social distancing for fans and full contact for players, the 2020 season looks like a wash, and my sense of schadenfreude has lightened my step and even helped me believe that our planet Earth may have a chance at recovering its brilliance, vibrant colors, and robust future.
And for the red hawk, my heart is aflutter for the apex predator's own athleticism. It is a noble demonstration of nature's instant karma working overtime to regain a balance that is clearly overdue but also more entertaining than any football game I've ever watched, live or otherwise.
In Dallas, it's good to hear the birds again and seems almost like the city has stepped back and is taking a respite from its heretofore frenetic, adrenaline-charged pace.
It smells so good to be outside again.
WADE CROWDER teaches communication at University of Texas at Dallas.
