I'm still a wus

Saturday morning my two kids and I packed our scooters in my trunk and set out for a trek at the Balboa pier, otherwise known as an impeccable COVID-19 hotspot.

We parked in Balboa Island and took the ferry across the Newport Harbor to the Fun Zone. As we were scootering on the boardwalk, we came across a low-height ferris wheel Elin insisted on riding. So the three of us paid our combined $15 riding fee and boarded the ferris wheel in what turned out to be my journey to self rediscovery. After a few rotations, I began feeling queesy. I mean, buckets of horse$hit, are you telling me I can't even handle this pipsqueeck of a ferris wheel? And the answer is a resounding no, I'm still a wus. With every rotation past the 6th or 7th, my resolve to yell "stop the effing ferris wheel" increased exponentially until miraculously, as I was about to unload steelcut oats mixed with bananas and milk (my breakfast a couple of hours earlier) on the unsuspecting pedestrians below, the ferris wheel stopped and we unboarded. Phew....

A glorious birthday

A fire whirl shoots into the sky as flames from the Hog fire

jump highway 3 about 5 miles from Susanville, California

on July 20, 2020

In what was shaping up to be just another day in hood, my birthday suddenly took a turn for the better (and the bizarre).  First, I won a close set in tennis after my work day, 7-5, in the middle of a heat wave the L.A. Times called "climate change kindles extreme weather".  The weather has gotten so f*cked up there's even a new phenomenon called "Firenado"; a fire caused tornado.  For the first time in a long while, my hands became so sweaty it affected my game.  I kept wiping my hand on my shirt for temporary respites.

After tennis, I visited my kids in their backyard for pastries.  Before I took my first bite, I noticed a buncha flies feasting on something on the ground I couldn't identify.  I grabbed a fly swatter, and with my first swat killed 5 flies.  Wowzers - I've found my calling.  From that moment on, the day turned into a glorious massacre, the likes of which I'd never experienced.  By the time I was done, I'd counted 46 casualties (see below).  This wasn't just happy hunting.  I had to prove to myself my eye sight, hand-eye coordination and speed were intact, and with a kill ratio of 95%+ I passed with 'flying' colors.  During the rampage, I remembered the line from Vin Diesel's character Riddick in the movie Pitch Black (the first one), when he slashed a predator alien creature to pieces and said, "did not know who he was f*ckin' with".

My only regret was when I looked up, my kids had left the backyard in disgust.  I stopped and took the picture below before a regiment of ants began marching in.

August 18th, 2020 - the world is a
better place without 'em

A half-ass trip to Santa Barbara in the middle of COVID fire and fury

The Thursday before I picked up Jun for our one-night stay in Santa Barbara, my car died.  I had to have it towed to the Tesla dealership in Costa Mesa to replace the 12V battery.  12V battery??  I thought Teslas had one big bad battery that powered everything, but it turned out there is a 12V battery that performs similar functions as the ones in internal combustion vehicles.  And mine just happened to fail earlier than usual - they're supposed to last up to 4 years.  Anyway, I got my car back the following morning thanks to Tesla's speedy service.

The following day - Friday - I picked up Jun and we headed towards Santa Barbara via the same route (405N to 101N) that I'd traveled once a week for over 3.5 years while I worked in Thousand Oaks.  Except, this time COVID-19 had alleviated bumper to bumper traffic typical of normal driving conditions on the most awful freeway in SoCal:  The 101.

Our Santa Barbara hotel, the Hyatt Place, charged $9.99 for parking per night - not a warm and fuzzy welcome.  I can't remember the last time I was charged a parking fee at a hotel - maybe courtesy of COVID-19?

The following morning, we headed to Mission Santa Barbara, only to find out everything but the gift shop was closed.  So I took a picture of Jun taking a picture of me, and after visiting the gift shop, we drove to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, ordered two tickets online per the parking lot notice posted.  This was an interesting proposition:  Most of the museum's exhibits were indoors and shuttered because of COVID.  The only two attractions were the Butterfly Pavilion, and Dr. Dolphin's shtick on dolphins and whales.  I'm not sure why the fine folks at the museum didn't feel compelled to inform the unsuspecting patrons in advance that COVID had sidelined most exhibits, but had I known, I would've preferred to spend my limited time (and money) elsewhere.  However, since the $30 fee for two is considered tax deductible donation, I'll just think of it charitable support to help the museum through tough times.  

I took this picture of a butterfly with a broken wing.  We saw many such wounded soldiers in the Pavilion, and surprisingly, these missing parts did not seem to affect the butterflies' flight.  We were told by one of the employees broken wings are either from old age, or mishaps from running into things.  Butterflies with broken wings become easier prey as their escape velocity reduces.

And a picture of our exit from the beautiful Butterfly Pavilion.  We left, went downtown, parked near the Sterns Wharf in the Santa Barbara harbor, walked to the end of the wharf and back - later, I found out the top of my head cooked there at some point.  We ate lunch at Helena Avenue Bakery (food was great, but menu limited) - and drove back home.  Along the drive back, we stopped by one of the 'middle of nowhere' beaches with summer homes, and in Thousand Oaks to visit one of my tenants for the first time.  As of late, my tenant and I have become best friends navigating through the maize of feces Home Depot Warranty has laid out for us in our quest to get my LG fridge compressor replaced.  And I thought LG was top of the line..... whatevs.

The Great Escape (from mouth to anus)

In the classic true story WWII movie, "The Great Escape", Steve McQueen's character attempts multiple daring escapes from a German POW camp before he succeeds along with a bunch of his ombres.

Equally impressive is an aquatic beetle named Regimbartia attenuata (Ra), whom once swallowed whole by a frog, escapes through the frog's back end (aka anus) in 4 hours tops.  The record holder Ra clocked in his successful exit at a mere 6 minutes in a Kobe university ecology lab, Japan.

Writing today in the journal Current Biology, Kobe University ecologist Shinji Sugiura describes how the beetle, locked behind the frog’s jaws, turns around and scrambles through its digestive tract. In carefully designed lab experiments, Sugiura found that 93 percent of the beetles he fed to the frog Pelophylax nigromaculatus escaped the predator’s “vent”—aka anus—within four hours, “frequently entangled in fecal pellets,” he writes. The quickest run from mouth to anus was just six minutes. The beetles then went about their day as if they hadn’t just spelunked through a digestive system, and even swam effectively.

COVID-19 my $0.02 - A whole lotta ugly before it gets snugly

On March 11, 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak was characterized as a pandemic by the WHO.  Below, I have compiled a string of unexpected and at times bizarre news related to this pandemic that has crippled the world economies with no end in sight, twice over.

But first, my two cents:  There are lots of opinions on the best approach to contain the virus, whether to quarantine, how to transition back to the normal, or the new normal as it's being referred to.  Clearly, quarantining indefinitely will have diminishing returns as the damage to the economy threatens to become a bigger threat to the population health and well being than the virus.  According to the NY Times article, 'Where Have All the Heart Attacks Gone?," (April 6, 2020), there has been a substantial decline in admissions for heart attacks and strokes, not just in the U.S., but worldwide.  And this phenomenon is not unique to these two debilitating conditions.  Acute appendicitis and acute gall bladder patients have also disappeared from sight.

While it was appropriate to mass quarantine at the onset of the pandemic while medical experts and scientists contemplated the next best course of action, the time for such things has come to an end, provided of course the following criteria are met:

1.  Mass reliable testing
2.  Contact tracing
3.  Quarantining those who have tested positive and those in their immediate contact circle

There's simply no surefire way out of this mess without all of the above, but unfortunately, the U.S. falls woefully short of the first two, which renders the 3rd remedy impotent.  It is no wonder that with a largely ineffective and polarized legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government we are in a bind we cannot effectively fight our way out of.  And therefore, we are relegated to a game of Russian roulette, whereby we must begin the normalization transition, but with the uncertainty of whether we can manage our way through a contagion certainty.  What we clearly cannot afford is a 2nd wave of mass quarantine, regardless of mortality rates or the potential overwhelming of our health care system.  And we can certainly hold out hope for the development and mass administration of an effective vaccine.  Fasten your seat belts folks.  There's a whole lota ugly before it gets snugly, and until then, everybody is Kung-Fu fighting....

And now a few related interesting headlines:

May 5, 2020 - L.A. Times:  Scientists have identified a new strain of the coronavirus that has become dominant worldwide and appears to be more contagious than the versions that spread in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

May 16, 2020 - ABC News:  Feds warn of attacks related to bogus COVID-19 conspiracy theory.  What started as a bizarre and bogus conspiracy theory involving the novel coronavirus in Britain has apparently crossed the Atlantic Ocean, U.S. law enforcement officials believe, and they are now increasingly worried about the possibility for real-world violence.
“We assess conspiracy theories linking the spread of COVID-19 to the expansion of the 5G cellular network are inciting attacks against the communications infrastructure globally and that these threats probably will increase as the disease continues to spread, including calls for violence against telecommunications workers,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported Wednesday in an intelligence report obtained by ABC News.

May 1, 2020 - NY Times: "What Is ‘Covid Toe’? Maybe a Strange Sign of Coronavirus Infection":  "The lesions are emerging as yet another telltale symptom of infection with the new coronavirus. The most prominent signs are a dry cough and shortness of breath, but the virus has been linked to a string of unusual and diverse effects, like mental confusion and a diminished sense of smell," and of course covid toes.

And lastly, a few notable quotes from our dear leader:

1-22-2020:  We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.

1-30-2020 (8 days later):  We only have five people. Hopefully, everything’s going to be great. They have somewhat of a problem, but hopefully, it’s all going to be great. But we’re working with China, just so you know, and other countries very, very closely. So it doesn’t get out of hand. But it’s, you know, it’s something that we have to be very, very careful with, right? We have to be very careful.

2-2-2020:  We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.

2-10-2020: Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. I hope that’s true. But we’re doing great in our country. China, I spoke with President Xi, and they’re working very, very hard. And I think it’s going to all work out fine.

2-26-2020: When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.

3-6-2020: Anybody that wants a test can get a test. That’s what the bottom line is.

..... and then, suddenly and without warning:

3-25-2020:  Nobody would ever believe a thing like that’s possible. Nobody could have ever seen something like this coming, but now we know, and we know it can happen and happen again.

And to round this out, Trump vs. Trump, a president who can't agree with himself:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB8icFsfJe0