sweasel.com

Well, Our fine leaders here in Northern California have gone full bozo “shelter in place” for 6.7 million people in the Bay Area, starting tonight at midnight. I’ve been seeing the veil drop the last few days as these crypto-fascists get their first taste of power “for our own good”. This will not end well. Everyone already knows how to keep social distance, wash hands etc. I need to be onsite at work for at least the next few days as I’m involved with efforts to house students that can’t go home, and also to support our EHS group in their response to the virus. What a stupid time to be alive.

https://tinyurl.com/tk4w5t7

“I think supermarkets need to set up a public webcam aimed at the bread aisle so we don’t waste our time again”

This is a good idea only there should be cams on every aisle so if you’re going to Walmart for paper towel and they have none, you don’t have to waste a trip. Patent the idea before somebody steals it.

Glad your chikken story had a happy ending.

Dallas has just shut all bars, taverns, theaters and restaurants as we are speaking. Restaurants are allowed takeout. I suppose I shall have to go shopping tomorrow although it will just be for some chicken and beef while we can get it. I am trying to convince my wife that if worst comes to worst, cat is pretty tasty, but she says that’s the kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place….

People are just going to have to get used to shopping Soviet style; long hours spent standing in line every day, shopping everyday, buying whatever is on the shelf even if you don’t need or want it – you might be able to trade it for something you need. Keeping secret what you do have, especially from your neighbors who would turn you in to the food police for hoarding if they find out. We are all socialists now.

Skandia Recluse

I have been telling people while shopping that what we have to get used to is East German stores. Your description is absolutely right. Since we have no idea what stores have at any given moment, we have to check each one daily. Which is kind of hard on isolation.

Subotai Bahadur

They shut all the bars and restaurants in Boston yesterday. THE. BARS!!!! How in the hell are we expected to make it thru another month or more of winter if THE BARS ARE CLOSED!!! On the plus side, with most of the city either working from home or not working because the bars and restaurants are closed (not to mention that most hotels are empty), the subway has actually been a not so horrible commute. But then the T decided to screw with everybody and run limited service. Honest to God…my move to the southern tier can not come soon enough.

My part of the NE USA is going into lockdown. Anything social is closed. Schools closed. Work from home.

OTOH, baking bread is pretty easy, as long as you don’t care what it looks like, and so far the flour section hasn’t been wiped out at the grocery stores. Lucky us that bread is one of my hobbies. So is making ammo, in case the foo really really hits the shan.

I’d like to add that I’m really glad your runaway chicken came home safe. I love your chicken blogging almost as much as your very rare banjo blogging, and anything positive right now is a blessing. I’m in limbo right now, temporarily self-quarantining because her coworker had to go to hospital last weekend with a flu fever, and only half her corona test came back negative. Waiting on the other half, but my life is at a standstill right now. My evening drink tonight is a quarantini, which is a regular martini, but you drink it off in a corner by yourself.

Come gather round people, please heed my call
One of my chickens is missing and she’s pretty small
I guess that I’m lucky it’s just one and not all
But my chicken, she’s a missing.

Oh you Hobbyists and Farmers
Who keep Chickens in pens
And keep your eyes open
You admit that they still escape now and then.
And if you’ll help me to find her, promise it won’t happen again
But my Chicken, she’s a missing

Come on foxes and weasels and suchlike all
Please don’t eat my poor lil chicken
Don’t sneak into the hen house or o’er our wall
Cause Uncle Badger will sure as hell shoot you all
And he who gets hurt will have feathers in his paws
There’s a battle and you better listen
I’m gonna sleep in the henhouse and and scare off y’all
For my Chicken, she’s a missing.

The entirety of the island of Luzon is locked down. 57 MILLION people. All schools / universities are closed. Curfew from 8pm until 5am. Stay in your home, only venture outside for food, medical care, etc. Everything is closed, except restaurants (take-out, delivery only), med services, other necessary services. No public transportation (planes, trains, automobiles – plus trikes, taxis, ferries, etc). And this is to go on until mid-April, and maybe longer if the rumors I am hearing are correct.

*sigh*

Living the apocalypse. Isn’t 2020 grand so far? And we had the Taal Volcano eruption on January 13 to start it all off. Ugh.

BTW: I am very happy your chicken has come back to roost.

Mrs D suggested I go to the store this morning to check for ‘bottled water’. This is now a luxury item. Son #3 is going to have to discover that the water from the tap can be used to drink as well as to take 45 minute showers (grrrrrrr).

We’re mostly stocked without having to touch any of the ’emergency’ supplies I keep for, you know, REAL emergencies.

Alas, I expect it will get worse.
Still, as a descendant of the empire whose motto was “keep calm and carry on’ I encourage everyone to do so (as I now daily mumble to myself “keep calm, and try not to kill anyone”).

And finally, thank you for a NOT SAD chicken story, glad she’s home.
Thanks to SomeVeg for the ditty, before you get round to cat, let us know, we’re probably a stone’s throw away.
Good that he didn’t use “Spotted Cow” as his inspiration 🙂

Oh, on a further note – apparently CoronaVirus lurks in dark places. This is the only explanation I can think of that accounts for the spate of curfew orders now being issued.

Well, that and totalitarian buggerheads trying out their new wings.

So do try and stay out of dark places, dungeons, abandoned medical research facilities, castles, etc, unless you have a torch, eh?

To help feed your virus fascination, I have a spreadsheet (Excel) of the latest figures from Johns Hopkins, and some calculations based on them. The Death Rate calcs are very suspect, as noted in the cover sheet, and quite frightening if you don’t take an appropriately large (i.e huge) pinch of salt with them.
There’s also country charts. If you’re on a desktop computer selecting the country can be done by clicking on the country name, and then using the drop-down arrow that appears beside it. This doesn’t work on my Android version of Excel, but you can just type in the country name and it works.
It’s at http://ghytred.com/covid19.xlsx

If anyone’s interested, let me know and I can update it daily.

According to the Daily Fail, British families could be in lock down long enough to have 2 children (if properly timed).

I think people who talk like this need to, as we say hereabouts, “get a grip”.

A question – does that “G” know the words to the ‘oreo-guard’ song from the Wizard of Oz?
(wow, other people called them that…big surprise…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbqwoVUeFbE

Kinda strikes me that our political self-declared betters are intent on destroying the entrepreneurial class. So, shopkeepers of various types, bar owners, and restaurateurs are having their means of self-support removed? I guess that makes them the new kulaks, huh?

Gromulin: So if you break curfew they toss you in the tank with other curfew-breakers, mother-stabbers, and father-rapers?
Given that, then you can sue if your fellow prisoners are not at least three feet away?
But at least you should have free toilet paper.

Oh, yeah — Happy St Paddy’s day, everyone!

And I’m glad your chicken came home.

“War is the health of the state.”

So is disaster generally, and this is a disaster.

Jonah Goldberg quoted a famous social/political scientist as saying that the war regime implemented by Wilson during WW I was the nearest the US has ever come to fascist government. Wilson’s war regime was much more centralized and authoritarian than FDR’s during WW II.

@Rich Rostrom – Take a look also at what Lincoln did during his war against self-government. You’ll get more than a whiff of fascism there as well.

@DurnedYankee:

And finally, thank you for a NOT SAD chicken story, glad she’s home.

Yes, indeed! Stoaty, whenever you’re casting about for a topic for a daily delight post, just give us a pleasant poultry piece, please!

p.s. Idle thought: I guess it would be non-à propos to describe a perseverant chicken as “plucky”.

@Drew458..here in NorCal the baking aisles are as bare of ingredients as the toilet paper shelves. I guess a lot of folks still scratch cook. I buy my baking staples (and other pantry items) from Azure Standard online. I recently got a 50lb bag of bread flour, and they have their own mills so very fresh and top quality grain. Check ’em out. They drive their semis to predetermined “drop sites” organized by local folks and you pick your order up.

@SomeVeg…that was fantastic. Kudoes!!

Weasel,
Don’t be such a wet blanket 🙂

As president Trump said, this will pass. I can’t imagine that the fairs and other country matters would die off as the virus will eventually.