Shutdown Diary
Anyone familiar with my segments in this series knows I love to look at weekly/biweekly shopping trips to Walmart. I do not claim that my local Walmart trips are representative; readers may have nuanced differences. I noticed nearly wiped stocks on all-purpose cleaners. I think I saw one bottle of Lysol cleaner this week, and they still had at least two cleaners like Pine-Sol at aisle ends in decent supply but the shelves were otherwise still barren this weekend.
There's no doubt that we are in a new hoarding phase. I haven't seen such huge gaps in unstocked shelves for months until now. Some things might just be seasonal; I love turkey and buy turkey parts throughout the year (like legs and wings) and wanted to have some on Thanksgiving. Walmart had plenty of frozen turkeys and breasts, but I only have a compact refrigerator, basically no room. Well, not everything: I saw some packages of turkey necks.
But Saturday I must have counted at least 3 or 4 carts with at least two multi-packs of branded toilet paper--probably a Walmart quota limit. Dude! Seriously? Like how much do you really need? Granted, they may have multiple people in their household, but a single roll lasts me for weeks. Walmart still had a lot of stock in the toilet paper aisle, but probably two-thirds of the aisle was empty.
But still, a lot of patchiness I hadn't seen in months. Nothing really hitting my limited shopping list, but as one of my sisters remarked, "People are crazy."
Well, only a few weeks ago, my work team started transitioning back to work on site. But as the third wave of the coronavirus took hold with local area rates creeping back up, it was just a matter of time before they decided to return the team to full remote duties.
After my mocking Blue State Dem governors targeting curfews, at least during the Thanksgiving interlude, for bars and restaurants, MD GOP Governor Hogan instituted his own 10 PM rule. Now I'm a rare drinker; I think I last had a glass of wine while visiting my Mom 11 months ago (I've never gone to a liquor store while living in Maryland: you can't buy beer or wine at a supermarket) , and I probably last ate out on my flight home from Texas. So it's not that Hogan's edicts are personally affecting me; I just don't think rule making is effective or constitutional. It's one thing if you know an individual is infected. Masks and other measures are marginally useful against the airborne virus; it's immoral to set unrealistic expectations. I personally engage in recommended behavior but I oppose arbitrary rulemaking and enforcement.
Twitter Is Annoying Me Again
I've sometimes attracted the attention of some well-known people on Twitter, but it's hard to tell because there are parody accounts, etc. One reasonably well-known media conservative followed me on my retired account, I've gotten likes on tweets I've praised clips featured on Reason.com by the original contributor, etc. But I suspect that no celebrity wants to give me the publicity of a public exchange, and/or they probably attract the attention of hundreds of trolls and never bother to read them assuming they see them. (In fact, I only see a fraction of reported replies to my own tweets.) There was a time I thought Trump himself responded to one of my tweets, but when I checked the account, it was clearly a parody account.
So I had tweeted solidarity with the protesters at Huntington Beach, CA, when a Twitter user, with the name of a well-known past television actress (maybe just a coincidence), responded with something like, "Dude, are you for real?", in a clearly not complimentary way. What annoyed me was some other troll pointing out my (current) account started this past summer and I had only 6 followers. It's not the first time I've been accused of being, e.g., a Russian bot.
Now I really don't give a damn what California progressives think. In fact, my career would have probably been more successful if I had held my tongue instead of being blunt with the wrong people. And the vast majority of times I won't respond to various indignities, even direct insults from former students. Why let other people yank your chain? They aren't people I want to impress.
I don't do my blog or Twitter for statistics. When I restarted my Twitter account, I didn't contact my 77 or so former followers (I did mention my new account to a relative and an old friend). Of course, I pay attention to the stats, and every writer is grateful to his readership. But I didn't stop writing because I've been in extended slumps on both my blog and Twitter. Not that the troll in question deserved a response but I wanted to point out that I had been on Twitter for years with over 12 times the followers. But unfortunately I used the "r word" (retard) and the Twitter gods cracked down on me for violating their petty rules. I know Ron Paul's co-host got kicked off Twitter for using it. It's not only hypocritical for Twitter to enforce a rule arbitrarily, but progressives routinely attack others personally all the time. Twitter forced me to delete the tweet to regain use of the account and warned next time I might get banned.
I've debated for years now whether to continue putting up with Twitter's nonsense, knowing the morons who run Twitter don't engage in due process or consistent enforcement. I've generally avoided using the "r word" knowing their politically correct rubbish; I used the word to "bitch slap" the asshole troll. It probably doesn't win friends or influence other people. I shouldn't have let the troll bother me with his/her nonsense. Sometimes what I do is vent into an email I never send. Or maybe I'll write some troll-stomping posts off the Twitter portal.
Entertainment Notes
Well, the WWE had Survivor Series, this year without their NXT brand, and as I expected McIntyre jobbed to Reigns. I thought, though, they would do a gimmick to protect both champions, e.g., Orton or Jey Uso interfere in the match, forcing a disqualification. One of the dumbest bookings I've ever seen was having Nia Jax, the tormentor of Lana, and Bianca suffer a double countout during the women teams' battle, leaving Lana, kept out of the battle, the winning survivor. On RAW last night they had two faces joined by heel AJ Styles to face off next week for face champion McIntyre's next challenger. Of course Styles faced off with heel Orton, which didn't make sense, other than develop a storyline with Wyatt/The Fiend. Probably the most interesting storyline is Alexa Bliss' transformation as Wyatt's groupie, including her adaptation of his Sister Abigail finisher.
