What the world needs right now - Covidiots!!!


Saturday, 21st March 2020
Can you feel it? The edges of your personal world shrinking around you like the scene in the first Star Wars film where Luke Skywalker and someone else (I’m not a nerdie fan, sorry) are in that trash compacter… Get out there in that Spring sunshine while you can, folks, before a Community Support Officer pepper sprays you for daring to put your rubbish in the bin without a permit from the government saying you are a keyworker and thus exempt from binge-watching Netflix and eating your own bin contents because there’s nothing on the shelves in Tesco’s.

Today, I’m going to focus on Covidiots (I’ve coined this term but feel free to spread it around). A Covidiot is bravely defying all the advice about social distancing and self-isolation and, probably, sees coronavirus as a myth cooked up by a spotty, anarchist incel with a chemistry degree so no-one gets laid because he couldn’t. A Covidiot will crowbar the pub open and take some selfies of him downing pints in an empty pub to put on his Instagram story: “Yo, snowflakes! Still out here doing my thang!” Thankfully, the Covidiots will be the first to go. They’ll high-five each other to death or share a spliff and die in a skunk haze with a bottle of Fanta in one hand and an empty packet of Maoams at their feet.
Today’s Covidiot has to be a straight shootout between JD Wetherspoons boss, Tim Martin, and Kim Jong-Un. Let’s start with Tim who was standing defiant yesterday that it would be business as usual at his chain of pubs. “My instinct,” he said, “is that closure won’t save lives…” I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to base my social life around Tim Martin’s instinct, then you might see these blog posts cut abruptly short. In the worst ever use of a rhetorical question, Martin defended his views with this: “Am I out of my depth? I’m obviously not an expert…” I would like to reply: Yes, Martin, you’re out of your depth and no, Martin, you’re not an expert; you’re a Covidiot.
And have you seen the typical Wetherspoons drinker, sitting outside this winter, pulling nicotine into their lungs with the vigour of a new-born on its mother’s tit? Grey-faced, often wheelchair bound with a bottle of oxygen for their lungs tucked underneath the seat, arthritic, diabetic, overweight or so thin you can’t see them if they turn sideways, their best years so far behind them that even if they could turn their necks more than 15 degrees in either direction, they couldn’t catch a glimpse: Tim, these guys (and they’re mostly guys), already have one calloused foot in the grave already without being given a push. If your business ‘strategy’ is to kill off your clientele, it might, just might eat into your profits more than shutting your pubs for a few weeks. Just a thought…
So, onto Kim Jong-Un, who, in an effort to reach out to neighbouring countries struggling to contain a deadly pandemic, fired some missiles into the Sea of Japan. It must have been a massive relief for South Korea that a few weeks previously, he had sent a message of ‘comfort’ to President Moon. Phew, that’s alright then. Fire away; missile-test to your hearts content; we all need some fireworks and a little distraction right now. It’s good to know that as countries the world over shut their borders, someone out there is still seeing this as an opportunity to ‘refine their weapons capabilities’: he’s not known as the ‘Great Leader’ for nothing. So, if you’re feeling down over the next few days, you could always print off a picture of the inspirational Generallisimo Kim Jong-Un to hang on your wall and do as the schoolchildren of North Korea do, marching on the spot and singing ‘General on a Galloping White Horse’ or ‘Bumper Harvest in the Chongsang Plain’ (available to stream on Spotify*). Cos, you know, it’s all about reaching out our invisible hands across the globe and ‘connecting.’**
Today, I did a streamed yoga class in my front room and an improvised boxing fitness class in the garden with my fifteen-year-old son and some music pumping. As a novelty, it was good fun (even though the temptation for my son and I to get all Oedipal and start slugging it out for a bit couldn’t be resisted). This is how I chose to spend my time today but then I don’t have a spare nuclear arsenal lying around and a grudge against the rest of the world. So, hey Kim: breathe, chillax, take a bath, eat some cheese. Don’t be a Covidiot; spread love like a cheap supermarket margarine (because some fucker bulk-bought all the butter for their bunker life). And remember: Trump has a shiny big red button, it’s bigger than yours, and he needs a war to distract from the fact that he dismantled the very government department full of experts that he needs to deal with the current crisis.
Peace, I’m outta here. Until tomorrow…

* Not really: please don’t look for it
** It seems yesterday’s burst of sincerity has passed and I’m back to my cynical, snarky self (phew!)
Latest data for the UK (as of 5:30pm):
Infected: 4,094
Deaths: 233
Celebrity Deaths: None. However, Kim Kardashian posted on Twitter a photo of a book by a psychic called Sylvia Brown who predicted that a severe pneumonia disease will strike the world in 2020. Unfortunately, before we all bow down before her psychic prowess, you should read the entry above the prediction of our current pandemic which is also visible in the photo. This reads as follows: ‘…will arrive in 2010, transmitted to humans by almost microscopic mites undetectably imported on exotic birds. Known medications and antibiotics will be completely ineffective against this funguslike, extremely contagious disease, and its victims will be quarantined until it’s discovered that the bacteria can be destroyed through some combination of electrical currents and extreme heat.’ I don’t know about you but I don’t remember getting this or hearing about it which is fortunate since it looks like the only way to kill it off is a lightning strike! If Sylvia Brown dies in her ‘predicted’ pandemic, I will declare the next decade the official ‘Age of Irony.’
People I know who are infected: 0
People I know who have died: 0
Song for the day: ‘The Party’s Over’ – Willie Nelson

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