Friday, Good. [DOT 10/4/20]

10/4/20 MegMegMcGee 30
[whispers: that's the joke]

I googled for “Good Friday” images and the above popped up. It made me laugh (sorry, avowed atheist). Who did that?
“Happy Good Friday” is decidedly not a thing.
Happy Passover is, though. So whatever today is to you, I hope it goes well.
Here’s some stuff that is not going well…

How a surge of coronavirus patients could stretch hospital resources in your area
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/investigations/coronavirus-hospitals-data/?itid=hp_hp-banner-main-8-12_virussystems-1050am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

Ah, yes, bastion of liberalism and “fake news”, the [checks notes] Wall Street Journal:

The market is closed today so perhaps we (I) can get a little break from the insanity.

S&P 500 jumps more than 1%, capping off its best week since 1974
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/08/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html

I’d like a break from this as well:

US unemployment rises 6.6m in a week as coronavirus takes its toll
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/09/us-unemployment-filings-coronavirus

Boris Johnson moved from intensive care but stays in hospital
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2020/apr/09/boris-johnson-moved-from-intensive-care-but-stays-in-hospital

File under “Why tho?”

File this one under “Rhymes With”:

What W.H. Auden taught me about Easter, God and surviving a season of Covid-19
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/opinions/easter-coronavirus-wh-auden-parini/index.html

File this one under “some good news at least”:

I spent six days on a ventilator with covid-19. It saved me, but my life is not the same.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/09/my-near-death-experience-ventilator/

My queen. Think I could pull off those pants?

Dolly Parton shares quotes about finding inner strength during the coronavirus pandemic on this episode of “Quoted By” with TODAY’s Hoda Kotb.
https://www.today.com/video/dolly-parton-finds-strength-you-cannot-let-fear-be-the-ruler-81851461960

On this special edition of All Songs Considered, we look back at the life and legacy of the late John Prine through ten of the defining songs from his nearly 50-year career.
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/06/828225080/john-prines-life-in-10-songs

It’s a Mad world:

The news can’t be all bad can it?

Have a ‘good’ Friday. We’re all buying our own drinks!

Editing to add this tweet, posted on Friday from Donald Trump:

I CAN’T EVEN RN
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30 Comments

  2. Sad to hear that one of the usual gang of idiots died. Seems unfair that a talented man like Mort is well le mort and a talentless (outside of being a narcissistic fuck up) scumwad fuckwit like Trump is well and good. Being an atheist too, I would like to believe the Karmic wheel has something incredibly awful for Trump but I know the universe is unfair and does not give a shit.

    I’m enjoying a day of rest as the entire province outside of actual essential services is shut down including grocery stores. I spent yesterday morning in line getting groceries (Sat is going to be a bloody madhouse.)

    Stay safe.

  3. Happy Good Friday? I’m also a non subscriber but was raised Roman Catholic. And you were gonna be solemn all damn day or get your butt whooped. When I was a kid my grandmother and I would spend Holy Thursday making Hot Cross Buns, then my father would drive us around to friends and family to deliver them. I pretended not to enjoy it but it’s a nice childhood memory. This year I made face masks, around 20. Fanny and I are going to deliver them after her walk.

    • Right? I saw that and guffawed. Probably the lapsed Catholic in me as well.
      So naturally I had to use it; I did run it by the guys first to see if I was being too offensive but it appears everyone took it in stride.

    • It’s funny. The more I hear of people’s recollections of being raised Catholic, the more I realize that my experience was not typical. My mother’s side of the family is Catholic (I’m obviously not anymore), but we were never jammed with the whole ‘you must be solemn Goddammit’ bit. We went to church and CCD and all that stuff, but I think my mother took her queues from my grandparents who were very good natured people so we never had to be forced to suffer.

      My grandparents were the best.

      • My grandmother made us go to confession every Saturday! She went too, and was in the confessional forever. She was a little old lady who barely left the house, spent the whole day cleaning and cooking, mostly raised my siblings and I, not an easy task, we were hellions. I have no idea what she could have had to confess, except maybe wishing us all dead, lol. She, my mother, and my even my father, who was a convert- they’re always the worst, were what my daughter calls Shiite Catholic. My friends had the same sort of religious background. We did not care, and were wild asses in spite of their constant threats of hellfire and worse going to see the priest.

        • My Irish Catholic grandmother sat in her room in our house and chain smoked…The WASPy side of the family was much more fun, if you can imagine. My mom bribed us to go to church with promises of trips to McDonald’s or K-Mart afterwards. When I got confirmed, the priest asked me why I was getting confirmed, surely expecting me to say ‘oh because of my faith’ or something. I said “because my mom is making me”. He checked off his box and confirmed me.

        • I think I went to confession once, when I was five or six and prepping for my first communion. It was an exercise during CCD if I recall correctly. So, yeah, my Catholic upbringing was pretty relaxed.

          Agreed that Catholic converts are the worst. My ex was a religious fanatic, which was weird considering she was raised as an Episcopalian. She eventually converted to Catholicism, which I only discovered when I got papers from the Catholic diocese in her area informing me that she was pursuing an annulment of our marriage. Honestly, I think that even the Catholic church isn’t crazy enough for her liking.

      • Was also raised Catholic. It didn’t take…

        anyways, from what I remember, things were fairly reasonable while I was a kid/teen. It wasn’t until I went off to school and decided I was no longer Catholic that my family went off the rails. It probably had more to do with them starting to listen to talk radio about the same time…

  4. I, too am a lifelong member of Club Atheist and this is my favorite story of Easter.

    Also, thanks for these day of the week posts – other wise I would not know what day it is – I thought today was Saturday.

  6. The bit about WH Auden reminded me of his poem “Spain 1937” which is very fitting for our current time as well.

    https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2011/09/09/spain-w-h-auden

    Later in life, by the time of the profile in the link above, Auden decided he hated the poem. He had become much more conservative, and was continuing his lifelong difficulties in coming up with coherent thoughts on politics, having been sympathetic with the Soviets before WW2.

    But he also couldn’t go full reactionary, and seemed to miss the enveloping certainty of his earlier view of the world. He was a mess but an interesting one.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-wh-auden-hated-his-most-famous-political-poems

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