Fake Forecast

As everyone who knows me knows, I’m a stoic kind of guy. I never complain about anything. It’s not my style. I’m just too manly. So I know people will realize it’s a big deal when I announce that my property is currently being pummeled by Hurricane Isaias, which I mistakenly called “Isaac” the other day.

It’s pretty bad. I would say we are getting gusts of up to 3 mph, if you get on the roof and run as fast as you can, and the skies are full of rain-laden clouds which could, conceivably, release some precipitation, some of which might possibly reach the ground before evaporating.

It’s exactly the kind of disaster you would expect if you had just read a story I saw this morning. Business Insider, also known as Trump Derangement Insider, says Governor DeSantis has declared a state of EMERGENCY EMERGENCY EMERGENCY in Florida, and HURRICANE Isaias is BARRELING toward the coast.

In typical alt-right fashion, the hurricane DENIERS at NOAA are calling Isaias a tropical storm, and their politicized maps show it prancing onshore in South Carolina as what I would call a Category .75.

The willful blindness is staggering. Can’t people see we need sensible gun control and a federal sensitivity commission that oversees the design of microaggressive pancake syrup bottles? How many times does this have to happen before we finally elect Vladimir Lenin’s pickled corpse president for life and declare the Salvation Army a terrorist organization?

I know what you’re thinking. Lenin was a white male. Not a problem. There is no reason why gender reassignment…I mean “confirmation”…surgery can’t take place post-mortem, and afterward, we can touch him up with a coat of brown Krylon.

I’m starting to wonder why I ever look at the news. I can’t help thinking about the old joke regarding the Soviet news agencies Tass and Pravda. “Tass” means “news,” and “Pravda” means “truth.” The Russians used to say, “The news is not truth, and the truth is not news.”

Hurricane news has been nearly worthless for a very long time. It was probably okay when we had three channels and Neil Frank used to go on the news and comfort us with his flattop, but now it’s an endless contest to see who can become most unhinged.

Every time the cone of certain death appears on NOAA’s website, a friend of mine sends me texts telling me we may have to endure the spectacle of Jim Cantore and his Land’s End jacket. I have been spared this time. I think he ought to go ahead and rig himself up with wires so he can appear to have his feet lifted off the ground. Better yet, CGI. He could lounge at home comfortably in boxers while his avatar Jim Headroom held onto a post and let his L.L. Bean duck shoes flap in a virtual breeze.

Isaias is the Smart Car of hurricanes. It qualifies for the title, but only in a way that waters down its meaning.

One of Donald Trump’s greatest achievements was coining and popularizing the term “fake news.” It condensed a pervasive understanding into a solid verbal bullet that could be fired at will from innumerable locations. It was as though America were a crime scene and Trump handed every one of us a can of luminol.

I learned something very interesting yesterday. The people who make up…I mean “compile”…our coronavirus statistics are including old cases in the total. If you get a test that says you USED to be infected, they say you’re a new case. It’s not a conspiracy theory. Bigwigs are apologizing publicly. I know coronavirus exists, and I think a big percentage of the upswing data we’re seeing is real, but I completely understand people who think the epidemic is nearly over. For all I know, they could be right.

I still don’t know a single person who has been diagnosed. We still have only two real celebrities who have died from coronavirus, and they’re not what you would call headliners. Roy Horn and that other guy. Now I have to look it up. Oh, right. Herman Cain. Of course, he was 74, he was already dying from cancer, and he was on chemotherapy. Where are the dead stars? There are none. And it’s not because they have money to protect themselves. Many very famous people are broke.

I keep having the feeling that if Obama were still in office, the MSM would be calling the epidemic itself an alt-right fantasy. I guess they wouldn’t go that far, but the coverage would be very, very different.

If you want to see coronavirus go away, just vote for Biden. A week after he’s elected, if he hasn’t already been forced to withdraw due to his suddenly obvious dementia, coronavirus will go away. It will be just like our war casualties. When Bush II was in office, the press published daily tallies of our military deaths. When Obama wafted into the White House, the stories ceased. I guess our enemies stopped shooting, out of reverence for the left’s messiah.

You have to wonder what the news will look like the day of the rapture. In many liberal cities, it won’t even be noticed, because so few people will be missing. It may take days for our city-bound journalists to realize something is wrong. Maybe they’ll accuse us of hiding. Which wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

“BREAKING NEWS: doctors add new item to coronavirus symptom list as millions of annoying people vanish. Fauci rages: ‘Masks could have prevented this!’ Scientists race to find new rationales for blaming Trump.”

It will be a looter’s jubilee. They’ll take all our liquor and jewelry and throw out the Bibles.

We finally have to wear masks here. I can’t go to Home Depot without one. Finally, I understand what other people have been going through. Masks are fine when you exhale, but when you inhale, they suck up against your nostrils and prevent air from entering. I always wondered why I saw so many people with masks slung under their chins. Now I get it. I do it, too. Expose mouth and nose. Walk down empty aisle. See someone approaching. Raise shields.

My post-upswing guess, based on the New York data, was that my county would top out at about 9,000 confirmed cases. Now I’m not so sure. We have prisons here, and the high rate of prison infections inflates the figures. If the old folks homes get hit, this county will have a major problem, because there seems to be one on every block. We might end up with an astronomical figure that has nearly no relationship to a typical person’s risk of infection. Applying data obtained from atypical people to the rest of us would be sort of like saying an average resident is likely to play shuffleboard and only wear orange.

It would be neat to find news I could trust. It would be neat if Santa and the Easter Bunny landed a Harrier sleigh in my yard and threw me 10 duffel bags full of rubies. Not sure which is less likely to happen.

As for me, I’m back to fasting. I went 9 days and then skipped a day. I was not happy with the way I acted and felt yesterday, so I’m fasting again. For a long time, I’ve asked God to help me fear him, and I have to say that my prayer has been answered. I think the rapture is imminent, I think I need God’s help in the turbulent, disaster-heavy end times regardless of whether the rapture comes soon, and I do not want to be here during the tribulation.

I have been thinking maybe I should fast until 3:00 every day from now on. Maybe I should throw in some all-day fasts. I invested a lot of time in messing myself up, so I should not be surprised if getting clean is not a quick process.

I still think I had coronavirus in February. I’m probably immune. If not, I probably won’t be infected, because coronavirus isn’t very contagious. If I’m infected, I probably won’t get very sick. If I die, I’m ready to go, and I don’t care. Nonetheless, I am trying to be somewhat responsible. I don’t like being sick, and a tiny percentage of coronavirus victims survive and have problems afterward. It’s not like mild sickness and death are the only options. There is an unpleasant middle path. And there is also the possibility that I could infect others.

I should be preparing for the flu. The infection rate is something like 10%–far higher than coronavirus–and the flu is awful. Through insurance, I’ve already paid for a vaccination. I ought to get that taken care of. They say it will halve my chances of getting sick. I haven’t had a shot since 2017, unless I had one and forgot. I made sure my dad got them while he was alive.

Tomorrow is August 4, and a fringe group says it’s the real Shavuot. They say the rapture will happen on that day. I think they’re completely wrong, but wouldn’t it be nice if they were right? Nothing could make me happier. I don’t care when it happens. Tomorrow. December. Next year. Whenever it happens, take me take me take me take me. A lot of leftists brag that they were at Woodstock. The rapture is the Christian Woodstock. You don’t want to have to say you weren’t there.

Every rapture prediction sparks a flame of hope in my heart, even when the predictions are clearly crazy.

I’m glad I had a chance to let everyone know how I was doing during the hurricane. I’m sure my tale of bravery and determination will inspire millions. It’s a good thing I’m so humble, because this is the kind of thing that makes people conceited.