Day: September 16, 2021

by Travis Mateer

I began the day with a question: to megaphone or NOT to megaphone. That was my question.

I checked in with a trusted ally who helps me NOT Bota Box my feelings. He confirmed the trend: family structures are being severely damaged, sometimes beyond repair.

I biked around noting the cool edge of autumn air burning off as the sun climbed higher in the sky. I parked the bike to continue on foot.

On the renamed Higgins bridge I sent a cryptic email to a fellow synchronistic that read, in part:

This will happen because will is my middle name and Kora is a bird and if you let me I can put my chapel of the dove into your Costner field of dreams.

I checked the time: 11:02am. I kept walking.

I stopped at a bookstore looking for Krakauer’s book about Missoula, but Garth didn’t have it in stock. He seemed a little perturbed at how I asked for “the rape book about the rape apologists who still run this town”.

Instead, wanting to support local business, I found a book by the filmmaker who likes to makes movies and tv shows about his incest rape fantasies. Here’s an excerpt:

I went to a psychiatrist once. I was doing something that had become a pattern in my life, and I thought, Well, I should go talk to a psychiatrist. When I got into the room, I asked him, “Do you think that this process could, in any way, damage my creativity?” And he said, “Well, David, I have to be honest: it could.” And I shook his hand and left.

After this purchase I stopped into the Peace Center where I discovered the director, Betsy, has retired. I was told the name of the new director, but quickly forgot, as the Peace Center is essentially useless beyond peddling “fair-trade” trinkets.

I did inquire of the young woman working the register if she was aware a black man had been shot and killed by Sheriff Deputies two and a half weeks ago. She was not.

I crossed the river and found the Rape book at Fact and Fiction, where the woman working the register ALSO had no clue a black man had been recently shot by Sheriff Deputies. How could she? His race hasn’t been reported, and the Sheriff’s Department continues to remain tight-lipped about any context to what happened on August 29th.

I returned to my studio with my purchases and found a book I ordered waiting for me. It’s the book I bought after listening to the synchromystic discuss his field of dreams.

And when I checked my email I saw his response. After much back and forth I will speaking with the synchromystic on Sunday. Which is my birthday. Which is perfect.

by Travis Mateer

It finally hit me yesterday, and this was the sign that did it:

I noticed this sign on a coffee shop window Earlier in the day, I had taken my car to get an oil change and the first place I stopped at was closed due to their staffing shortage.

Is the policy of quarantining people for a hundred weeks after a positive Covid test spiraling into a de facto lockdown?

The time period I just referenced is an exaggeration, but only slightly, or so it seems based on my own experience.

And here’s one of the problems: who wants to speak openly and honestly about their own experience?

My middle kid, who tested positive on September 1st, went back to school last Wednesday. His siblings were supposed to wait until 9-18 to return (a Saturday, so really 9-21).

My little one has been crushed, but luckily we just got word yesterday that her quarantine period ended early because no one else in the family was ever symptomatic of anything.

That last part is pretty interesting, considering our entire family is unvaxxed and will remain so.

If the fear porn was accurately depicting the real world, I’d be sick and taking up a precious hospital bed at our benevolent St. Pats, where they won’t even tell you their policies without a fucking court order.

But I’m not sick and I’m not sorry for not taking the jab.

Members of City Council don’t feel the same way I do about my health decisions, and Martin Kidston regurgitated their empty virtue-signaling the other day in a way that made me want to gag. Here’s how some members of council articulated their frustration:

“We’re at one of our highest points of hospitalization right now, and that really creates an issue with capacity,” said council member Amber Sherrill. “I don’t know how to appeal to people to get vaccinated and be safe more than we already have. It creates a real problem for our hospitals. I feel scared for my teenage daughter driving around and if something were to happen to her. I feel scared for people having a heart attack. I don’t know what else to say.”

Amber Sherrill should be more worried about all the drunks and people distracted by devices on the road than whether or not I get a jab. I have called 911 nearly a half dozen times this past year because of all the impaired driving I witness on Mullan road and other locations around town, but alcohol makes people money, and vaccines make people money.

Me NOT drinking and NOT getting a fucking jab is NOT making the beneficiaries of illness and misery any money and I am NOT fucking sorry about that.

To better understand why our illuminated braintrust is getting so frustrated, check out this attempt by Jim Elliot to psychoanalyze the emotional appeal of Republicans vs. the logical appeal of Democrats:

Republicans try to get results by using emotion and Democrats by using logic; very different approaches each with often successful results, but as far as technique is concerned the Republicans are ahead hands down. Why? Because it is easier to get people to respond to emotion than to logic.

Isn’t this adorable? No wonder Democrats are such tremendous losers in this state. The condescending self-appraisal coming from Elliot that Democrats are the political party that uses logic, while Republicans just exploit emotions, exposes the Democratic blindspot that keeps them from adapting and evolving.

And while they assume their policies are based on logic, the push to vaccinate the whole world is being driven by fear.

UPDATE: I took this screen shot; highlighted word, mine.