How are we doing, guys? Let’s check in. You feeling okay? How’s your anxiety level? Rising like all of ours? That’s okay. Perfectly normal. Are you doing the thing where you will your lungs and throat and head to hurt with the sheer power of your anxiety? We all are. I mean, there’s no way to read the news without a big dose of DOUBLE YOU TEE EFF hitting you in the gut.
The headlines are CRAZY. This many people have it. This many people died from it. This many people are going to get it according to this one human. This many people are going to get it according to this other human. I’m just waiting for the, “Practice yoga, get super stretchy, because you’re going to need to bend over quite far when it’s time to kiss your own ass goodbye” news article.
Let’s get into it.
My parents’ quarantine is going … eh, it’s going. Mom has begun sending us text updates each morning in the “Captain’s Log. Stardate:” fashion. Dad has reportedly been working on something called his “Death Packet.” It’s either important documents or cyanide pills. I’m not sure. Out of desperation, he has also taken to using Facetime. He’s real real good at it.
I’m going to project movies onto his forehead.
Now, out of vanity, I had to X out my face. We have enough anxiety without me scaring you with what I look like in the mornings when my grooming routine has taken a hit. It ain’t pretty, folks.
I look like a walking proof-of-life photo and my comfort-snacking is bringing out my jowls. Let’s not even talk about my haunches.
This is so cool. Maggie’s Farm Rum is going to distill its own hand sanitizer to give to the Pittsburgh Department of Public Safety.
Did you guys see the super cringe-y celebrity sing-along of Imagine that’s out there? I guess it is supposed to … comfort us poor little people? Like, they thought we would see it as a WE ARE THE WORLD CELEBRITIES ENSCONCED IN THEIR GILDED MANSIONS HERE TO GIVE YOU EMOTIONAL COMFORT IN THIS THE HOUR OF OUR GLOBAL CATASTROPHE kind of thing?
I think I speak for all of us regular non-celebrity self-isolating economically fragile humans when I say … ahem …
The only celebrity I want to see singing to me on Instagram right now is zombie Whitney Houston or treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin rapping the dollar amount of the government check we can all expect.
The Post-Gazette out here asking the really important questions:
If you select fruits and veggies as a comfort food or indicate you don’t even eat comfort snacks, I already know how insufferable you are on Instagram and I hate you the end.
As for me? Lemon Oreos and black jelly beans. I’m eating so many, I’m worried I’ll become diabetic and launch myself right into the higher-risk category.
Speaking of playing myself, out of boredom and a sense of civic duty, I filled out my online census form today, and boy, does it make you think a bit during this weird time.
“Will you still be living at this house on April 6, 2020?” it asks. Well, I don’t know, Census. I hope so! Will I be living? Will I be able to pay the mortgage? Will I be on the run from roving groups of D-list celebrities going door-to-door serenading people with Michael Jackson’s Heal the World?
Who can know? I will tell you this — if I get COVID and die I’m going to be so mad I filled out that damn census indicating I was present. Irony is a cruel bitch.
As if you needed a reason, DRINK UP, YINZ!
If you missed the last edition (read it here), the new drinking game is taking a shot any time one of your social media follows shares the Mister Rogers “look for the helpers” quote.
We are going to get through this and we are going to get through it drunk as Jeff Reed in a Sheetz bathroom.
The always-brilliant PA Turnpike Commission did what you would expect them to do during a time when truck-hauling is important for restocking stores and when good hygiene is important for limiting the spread of the virus. They shut down all the service plaza restrooms and replaced them with rows of port-a-potties.
As of midnight, the commission locked the restrooms at all service plazas in response to the coronavirus pandemic, in an effort to safeguard employees and travelers, and installed portable toilets, according to turnpike spokeswoman Roseanne Placey.
This is smart because, as you know, port-a-potties are always clean, well-stocked with sanitizer, and hygienic. They’re an olfactory delight and not at all cesspools LITERALLY filled with gallons of fresh human waste.
Combatting a virus by replacing restrooms with port-a-potties is like combatting gun violence with the distribution of more guns (BOOM! POLITICS!).
In the spirit of this amazing, real Twitter poll …
I’d like you to take my poll, and please, be brutally honest. I can take it.
How beautiful do you find me?
Extremely
Incredibly
Devastatingly
And finally. Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Dr. Matt Lamanna in A FULL DINOSAUR SUIT I AM SCREAMING
Take a deep breath. You are safe this night. We’ll talk again soon, hopefully with more non-coronavirus writing so this really can be a breathing space.
Stay home, jags!