Pandemic Report
The latest stats from WaPo:
The latest vaccine data from CDC:
Somehow I typo-ed the almost completed first draft of this post, so I'm painfully reconstructing the post from memory. We saw the basic case count poke up over 30K again. As if we needed a reminder the pandemic persists, the recent Gridiron Dinner turned out to be a super-spreader event, including multiple federal legislators (including Speaker Pelosi), Cabinet members, and high profile White House staffers (VP, FLOTUS). Even the President's sister has been infected, not to mention NYC newest mayor. The hospitalizations are leveling off, but they were already at or near a pandemic low. I've noticed more discussion of longer-term effects of COVID-19 infection, including possible brain disorders and diabetes.
Other Notes
I was worried about egg prices at Lidl last weekend I read due to thinning egg-laying hens over the deadly avian flu that has led to egg prices soaring to nearly $3/dozen at the wholesale level. Nope, at least not yet. I could still buy a dozen under $1. Lidl overall remains highly competitive on price, but I've noticed price increases stealthily climbing. I haven't compared to Walmart lately, e.g., if canned pasta has surged from 60 cents to 95 cents a can; I don't eat a lot of canned pasta as a low-carber. I do have an occasional indulgence for jalapeno kettle chips and recently noticed their chip stocks have thinned out; there are plenty of tortilla chips and bagged popcorn. Not sure if there's a supply problem or they've simply discontinued less profitable items. (I used to buy their whole-wheat English muffins but they disappeared several months ago and haven't returned.) Another indulgence from my grad school days: frozen burritos. Lidl recently started carrying name brand bags of 8, but maybe $1/bag higher than I saw at Walmart last time I checked. You have to know your prices, especially if you're on a diet. For example if you drink sugar-free soda, Lidl basically carries only diet cola. If I want no sugar added Klondike bars, I have to go to Walmart.
Blog and Twitter stats continue to slump; I haven't seen "good" (>100 pageviews) so far this month which seems to be trending to a third straight below average sub-2K month, if not an annual low. My two recent mega tweets have rolled off my 28-day window and I'm down to a few hundred per day, maybe an occasional 1K impression day.
I recently stumbled across an eerily similar version of Hallmark's "A Bride For Christmas" on Amazon Video called "Betting on the Bride". The former was released 5 years earlier, and the latter may have been released on Lifetime. The basic plot is a commitment-phobic young woman is the target of a bet between guys where the protagonist "lady's man", not aware of the target's history of broken relationships, agrees to the challenge of winning her heart. In both versions, the male lead falls in real love with the woman and tries to call off the bet. The female protagonist finds out about the bet and furiously breaks up. There are some subtle differences (e.g., the original's dog/kennel volunteer work with Scouting), but the plot, including the female lead's business partnership with her sister, is uncannily similar with dialogue almost entirely a copy and paste at points.
I have ranted about progressive themes frequently surfacing in Hallmark movies, e.g., a yuppie resort developer buying out a family resort to remodel, a home builder's rejection of his younger brother's green-friendly design, an older homeowner's refusal to sell her lake-facing property to a mall developer, a local snack factory is sold to a large corporation looking to resource production more efficiently elsewhere, etc. It's almost like they're filling out a leftist populist checklist.
So the latest Hallmark movie (once again involving a European royal family member: what is this obsession with the love lives of royalty, especially with American love interests?) A young princess is infatuated with a flirty American portrait artist who has been commissioned to do one on her. He leaves for his home base of Chicago. She schemes of a way to go to America and visit her love interest. It turns out the Queen's openly gay brother is the ambassador to the US and resides in: Los Angeles (?). Seriously, dude? He doesn't live in the DC area? He has an upcoming birthday. The uncle wishes his niece could give him a boyfriend for a present (already my stomach is churning), but a visit by his beloved niece is also a nice surprise. The Queen consents to accompany her daughter to America (and holds her passport, which makes the princess' wish to visit Chicago a problem). The uncle who had apparently followed his own heart for an American love interest compares notes on their common gender love interests (cringe-worthy) and hatches a plan behind the unsuspecting Queen's back for his own straight single security chief to drive the 3200 or so driving miles to Chicago. The rest of the movie is predictable; in Hallmark movie scripts, one can discover one's soulmate on a road trip, the princess comes to realize the artist is self-absorbed and has no real feelings for her, etc.
The point is, there must have been 1000 different plots to write the same story without coming up with a gay relative living in America. Don't get me wrong; I probably have 2 or 3 gay nephews and a niece (they never came out to me personally or through my siblings; it had more to do with certain shared photos) and I wish them to be happy in their lives. There is, however, a distinction between tolerance and acceptance of a gay political agenda.
