RANTS: DEAR DIARY

"If I just turn off the TV, it will all go away!"

March 3/20—By the time I finished reading Jack London’s, “To Build A Fire” the other night, I thought I was getting frost-bite! We had a late season winter storm up here in Ontari-ari-ari-o, and were up to our eyeballs in snow!  So London’s story was a good read under the covers the other night. Dear Reader, if you ever want to know what it might be like to freeze to death, read this story! It’s about an idiot trekking through the Yukon during a particularly bitter winter’s day when the temperature drops to near “space cold” levels. 

It details how things can quickly spiral out of control, especially when you’re a stupid, cocky a-hole. And you really can’t like the guy—he wanted to kill his dog and cut it open, so he could warm his hands in the steaming guts! Nice guy! It’s too bad his little trick didn’t work. (But I must remember it the next time I go skiing. Just in case.) Our feckless hero becomes a human popsicle by the story’s end, and his dog trundles off to find a new master. You go, doggie!

Plague in Athens

March 17/20—Now other things in the world have the potential for spiraling out of control. The Covid-19 virus (it sounds like the name of a Russian* attack submarine!) seems to be catching a lot of countries unawares. I checked some stats: SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) lasted for the better part of a year, from the fall of 2002 to October 2003, and that disease spread to 29 countries, killing almost 800 people world-wide. This new coronavirus, Covid-19, has spread to 152+ countries and has already taken approximately 7,000 lives, mostly those who are elderly or with compromised immune systems. And it’s only been about four months or so since this nasty bug hit our radar! And we’re nowhere near being out of the woods. There are months to go until it burns itself out, and scientists say a vaccine is a year or more away.  So, I think it’s time to turtle, time to find a good shell and crawl under for the duration.

"Can I come out now? Hello?"

If I could, I’d take a long nap until September, except I’m worried that I might be broke by then, what with the stock market crashing and economies large and small around the world trembling as the great anaconda of global trade and finance finally choked up, following the Great Disruption of Chinese manufacturing when that country closed up shop as the outbreak worsened. Instead of a dramatic black swan event, like a comet or an erupting super-volcano, we get a planet-full of runny noses! No super-nova, just a lot coughing. Still, things are grinding to a halt, and  all thanks to a viral cousin of the common cold!  Those pesky microbes! What will they think of next?

"Let's not lose my head over this!"

However, the coronavirus does point out how rickety and slap-dash our globalized financial and just-in-time industrial supply-daisy-chain really is: China goes tits-up, and since so much of the world depends on it to make all our stuff, we’re out of luck! (Ain't globalization grand!) No more plastic salad-shooters stamped “Made in China” at the Walmart.** (Though China appears to be nipping the spread of the bug. Good for them!) And to add insult to injury, Russia and Saudi Arabia are squabbling over oil production levels. Both want to screw American shale oil production (an industry already running on fumes), as it cuts into their profit margin, and they would be most happy to see it tank. But in a pique, SA instead flooded the market with oil. As a result, prices crash, shale oil becomes waaay too expensive to produce at $30/barrel, and markets drop through the basement, as one industrial sector after another flounders and credit tightens.

Funny thing: even at $30 to $35/barrel,  world demand for oil is low. There’s nothing to make, buy or sell with the Chinese industrial engine temporarily out of commission, and there’s nowhere to go. (Who wants to fly onboard those air-borne petri-dishes? Or be served a Corona beer at some Bahamian poolside bar? Not me!) The markets and financial sector are scared, as they should be, filled with shysters, thieves and con artists as they are, and their decades-long shenanigans are being exposed as the global health crisis unfolds. Disease and decadence. Have you ever seen a cat shiver? That's what the world seems like just now.   

Modern Tricks

We’re like deer trapped in the headlights of one big mother of a tractor-trailer roaring down on us. On a lighter note, we'll still have pogo-sticks!

Cheers, Jake.

*Speaking of Russian—this is a complete aside--but does anyone have trouble with the cable news station RT/America (Russia Today/America)? From time to time, the station ‘blacks-out’ for a few seconds, or else the sound is distorted and you can’t make out what’s being said. There’s not too many conspiracy theories that I subscribe to (except the one about Neil Armstrong standing on the moon, July 20, 1969. Yeah, right! In fact, he was filmed on vacation in Arizona at the time), so am I being conspiracy-disposed to wonder whether my cable provider or CSIS or the CIA is periodically jamming their signal? It’s the only station on my TV that has this problem and I’m starting to wonder what Big Brother finds so threatening about the channel?

**A relevant blog post by James Howard Kunstler, as well as an interesting podcast interview he’s recently posted might be of interest.   

"N-no, I'm not worried!"