Same, Tiger King. Same.
Hey, all you cool cats and kittens. It’s Virginia Montanez from Breathing Space and I am forking obsessed with Tiger King on Netflix.
What a treasure. What a beautiful, chaotic slice of batshittery in a gone-batshit world.
If COVID takes me, please add “A beautiful, chaotic slice of batshittery in a gone-batshit world” to my gravestone. And then let the census people know my census form is no longer up-to-date. Then hide all the bad peyote-high nudes I painted.
(I’m not gonna lie. I feel like I just tempted the cruel mistress Irony with that paragraph. The things I do for you people. Risking my life like this. DON’T TAKE ME, IRONY!)
Now, since last we met some intangible number of time periods ago, here’s what has changed. Abso-fu—
Sorry. My dad is reading. You get the picture. Nothing. Nothing has changed. Time is fiction. Days are lore. Hours are urban legends. They don’t exist anymore. All that exists is this space right here. Right now. So let’s get to it! Inhale …
Well, it happened. My quarantined parents reached their breaking point. What was it that pushed them into their descent to madness? Boredom? Fear? Anxiety? A tickle in their throats?
No. It was a puzzle. You see, they were bored, so my sister Marcia gave them a puzzle (I assume she Lysol-ed it. Let’s say she did. Don’t email me. Life is hard. I don’t want to hear from you unless you are writing to tell me how beautiful I am even though my gray eyebrow hairs are as proudly erect as your —)
Eh. My dad is reading this. You get the picture. ANYWAY. So my sister gave them a puzzle and those cute geezers got to WERK, Beyoncé. They had a purpose to live. A reason to get up in the morning. They even timed how long it took them to do this puzzle. They sent us updates — “The frame is started! The frame is done!” You’d have thought they were raising a barn.
But then, it happened. They “finished” it. And disaster struck. And they flung themselves off the edge of sanity and swan dived into the abyss of madness while holding hands like river otters.
A missing piece. Then the texts came:
They are seriously asking my 17-year-old artist son to PAINT THE MISSING PIECE onto cardboard so they can complete their puzzle. They have become paranoid that one of us snuck into their home while they slept and stole a piece.
At this point, my sisters and I are all daring each other to give them another puzzle … with one piece removed. It’s only a matter of time before we get a shaky video from my mom of my crazed shirtless dad setting fire to a puzzle in the backyard while he screams obscenities at the sky. I can’t wait.
We have reached the math/Pittsburgh history portion of this newsletter. Don’t leave! I promise you’ll find this interesting even if, like me, you know in your soul that math is the devil’s work.
As you’ve heard, dead-eyed human-skin-wearing-alien Mark Zuckerberg and his wife have donated $25 million to Bill and Melinda Gates’ foundation for COVID-19 treatment research.
This is commendable. But it did raise the question of how much is $25 million to a billionaire, really? And each and every time the question of charity as it relates to the vomitously rich comes up, I come armed with one name. Carnegie.
Carnegie was perhaps the first to state publicly that the rich have a moral obligation to give away their fortunes. In 1889, he wrote The Gospel of Wealth, in which he asserted that all personal wealth beyond that required to supply the needs of one's family should be regarded as a trust fund to be administered for the benefit of the community.
And Carnegie gave and gave and gave. To the tune of about 90% of his wealth. All told he gave away $350 million. At his peak, he was worth $380 million (about $310 BILLION today). So, if the atrociously wealthy Americans gave what Carnegie did, how much would they be giving away and how much would they STILL have left? Let’s do math!
Jeff Bezos: worth $120 billion. Would need to give away $108 billion. He would still have $12 billion left.
Mark Zuckerberg: worth $55.1 billion. Would need to give away $49.6 billion. He would still have $5.5 billion left.
Warren Buffett: Worth $72.6 billion. Would need to give away $65.3 billion. He would still have $7.3 billion left.
Michael Bloomberg: Worth $58.7 billion. Would need to give away $52.8 billion. He would still have $5.9 billion left.
Alice Walton: Worth $49.7 billion. Would need to give away $44.7 billion. She would still have $5 billion left. She could conceivably give every single Walmart associate in America (1.5 million people) a one-time payment of $29,000 and SHE WOULD STILL HAVE FIVE BILLION DOLLARS TO LIVE ON.
In fact, if a person was worth a measly $500 MILLION and they gave away what Carnegie did, they’d give away $450 million. THEY WOULD STILL HAVE $50 MILLION to play around with! My point is this: Carnegie made lots of mistakes, but his example of generosity is absolutely astounding and almost unheard of in terms of today’s billionaires.
They should all be giving away much more money than they are. They should be giving 90% of it away.
Fight me. I’m ready.
If you’ve been playing the “Look for the helpers” drinking game, I would like to take a moment to absolve myself from any legal liability as it relates to the state of your liver by the time this whole mess is over.
Thoughts and prayers to your major organs as they work to pick up your liver’s slack. I assume that’s how organs work. Remember: don’t email me except to praise me. I’m very fragile right now.
Speaking of drinking, if you add a little manuka honey as well as minced jalapeno and cilantro to your nightly (hourly? what is time?) margarita, it counts as both medicine AND salad. Little lifehack there for you. Spread it around. I AM A HELPER.
Surely by now you’ve seen this insane line of cars waiting to get food from the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank in Duquesne.
Hundreds of cars wait to receive food from the Greater Community Food Bank in Duquesne. Collection begins at noon. @PghFoodBank @PittsburghPGIt’s … horrifying. BUT, this IS Breathing Space and I want to share good news with you. When I saw this video, I was at first, honestly, open-mouthed shocked. Then I became … frantic? I was literally going to put bags of random food together and drive down there like some crazed Robin Hood and start shoving them in people’s cars all, “DO YOU NEED SOME FROZEN WAFFLES? LEAN CUISINE? HONEY BUNCHES OF OATS?!?!?”
Instead, I calmed down and shared this video on Twitter. I asked Burghers to donate that very moment to both 412 Food Rescue and the food bank. Pittsburgh, in Pittsburgh fashion, went full Pittsburgh and my mentions became Jumanji-like overrun with generous Burghers telling me they donated. Amounts from $10 all the way to $500. Just a breathtakingly Carnegie-like response. And it’s still rolling!
If you have a fridge full of food and a paycheck still coming, you too can donate. It takes two minutes.
Donate to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank (or your local food bank!)
Donate to 412 Food Rescue
The latest Civic Science poll in the Post-Gazette is quite interesting:
First, this is a trick question. You should not be attending parties or gatherings at all. If you are, I request you immediately get in the sea.
Second, the “yes, very upset” people may be early birds, but the “I wouldn’t be upset” people are climate-change-denying flat-earther anti-vaxxers.
OMG do not email me I am serious Karen.
Speaking of flat earth, my 17-year-old son became aware of this theory today and he was asking me about it because, as you know, I am his new teacher. I told him that yes, indeed, there are actual humans who think the earth is flat. And he said, “Wait.” He ran into the kitchen and returned with an index card, upon which he quickly scribbled something.
Then he showed me and said, “Are you telling me this is what they think the solar system looks like?”
I have not stopped laughing for twelve hundred hours (what is time?).
I’m giving him an A+ in science.
And a C- in art.
Speaking of homeschooling, today was only Day 1 and Governor Wolf just announced that all Pennsylvania schools are now closed INDEFINITELY.
I hope I get fired from this job soon so I can collect unemployment.
And exhale. We’ve made it through another day. Things are bad. They will get a bit worse. We are going to get through this holding each other up because quite frankly, there is no other option and that’s how Pittsburgh gets through bad times.
Virtual hugs and salad-margaritas.
Stay home, you cool cats and kittens. Or I’ll smother you in sardine oil and feed you to Carole’s tigers.