Yeah.... This is going to really suck.

I confess I hope COVID-19 results in the crash of the Vancouver real estate market. So long, investors.

what she considered the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fish hooks or clay pots or grinding stones. But no, Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken then healed. Mead explained, that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You can not run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is proof that someone has taken time to stay with the person who has fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. ‘Helping someone through difficulty is where civilization starts’ said Mead. We are at our best when we serve others. Be civilized.” - by Dr. Ira Byock, in his book on palliative medicine The Best Care Possible: A Physician’s Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life (Avery, 2012).

I think because I'm asking, I clearly am! I watched an "investigative" reporter on TV report on airlines not refunding travellers who cancelled flights due to COVID 19 -- in eyelash extensions that made her look like a cow. All that fakery seems so yesterday!

Same as the depression and the 2008 financial crisis. The rich will get richer at the end of this and the poor and middle class will take 10 years to get to where they were a few months ago. The world is unfair.

My home life from 12 - 18 was chaotic and often violent. By the time I was 18, I was a ward of the province - something I sought for myself. What that early life experience did was create a sense of not knowing from one day to the next when *it* would happen or what would set *it* off. So... why plan much beyond a little ways ahead? On the one hand, this made me bemused and curious at the people whose life story was seemingly engineered at every step - that was not something I knew. Yeah, it made me a little jealous of those who had the privilege of time and deliberation, and a family or resources to call upon, but it also made me skeptical of narratives founded on the 'self made' trope. Chaos and happenstance was (and remains) the world I know. I'm pretty confident this made me psychologically resilient and fluid; you either conjured up meaning and reason day to day, or you dissolved into nihilism and despair. You can cure those with drink, drugs and of course, buying stuff - but that ain't gonna fill the hole for long. The key to me was understanding that I always and only had the thoughts in my head - those were my sole belongings til the day I left this earth. All I ever had and all I could ever really own was how I thought. So... this 'thing' is just more of the same. An indifferent universe meets the imagination. And whatever will be, will be.

I'm not sure how ya'll are spending your quarantine. But I'm gonna pump iron, eat like a horse, and get ripped as all heck! Booyah! But the truth is I feel unworthy of love and just want women to like me.

In the days before online dating hookups there was this thing called “phone sex”. For the millennials, that’s where you rub one out while on the phone with someone also rubbing one out. Dialogue is encouraged, as are instructions, descriptions and general exclamations of animalistic lust. Done right, it’s incredible. We also now live in the age where everyone has a video camera on their phones. Just sayin ;-)

I am subscribed to a FB group for a regional community a couple hours outside of Vancouver. Half of the posts right now are bashing "city people" for coming to the region. They suggest putting up barriers on the road and only letting locals in. However, I know most of those people still leave the community to go shopping. They think it's ok for them to go to other communities. Hypocrisy is one thing but I don't like the othering attitude. Now I know that, when this is still over, I will still be seen as an outsider. I had wanted to retire to this community (not that retirement is now something me or anyone else can ever consider in our lifetimes) but no more. I had bought real estate in this community and I am a landlord. I guess I will now just treat this community as an ATM - extracting money out of it and spending that money in a community that doesn't make the locals / others distinction.

I’ll never admit it to my boss, friends, kid, spouse... but I’m scared shitless of COVID-19. Mass joblessness, wrecked economy, mass deaths... we are years away from returning to where we were. When I’m sleeping, I’m in peace, and then in the transition to wakefulness, dread takes over and I realize again, it’s not a normal day. I’m crushed, depressed, scared but I pretend I’m ok because I don’t want ppl to know the toll this has had on me. The only thing that helps is if I go running and forget this shit for 30 mins at a time.