Dudes In the Time of COVID (The 2020 Year In Rear View)

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I get up now? Is it safe?”

“No.”

“WaaaAAAAaah!!”

“Suck it up, buttercup.”

“Dude! If’n I suck ennythin’ else up, I’m a-gonna blow! Mad cops, mad Presidents, mad bombers, volcanoes goin’ nuts, businesses goin’ broke, and ever’body havin’ ta stay put an’ take it, six feet apart an’ under three layers a masks an’ a gallon a hand sanitizer, on ‘count a tha virus! Ya ‘member how peeps used to say ‘hindsight is 2020?'”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, nope. Ain’t nobody gonna be sayin’ that no more, dude. Ennybody who ain’t gotta ain’t gonna be lookin’ back at 2020 fer nuthin’. Peeps had enny foresight, they wouldn’t a let tha year get started. They’d a skipped it.”

“That ain’t whut leap year means, dude.”

“Why not?!?”

“Well, dude, ya got two more days ta put up wit’ it. Then mebbe ya c’n crawl outa yer hole.”

“Maybe?!? What tha flip’s this maybe, dude??”

“Just tellin’ ya whut I’m most afraid a, dude.”

“Wuzzat?”

“That 2021’s gonna take one look at 2020 an’ say hold my beer, yeah?”

“[…] Ya really know howta make a dude feel good, dude.”

31 December 2019: “WHO’s Country Office in the People’s Republic of China picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission from their website on cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China.” COVID-19 missed being labeled the far more appropriate COVID-20 by exactly one day.

12 January: Andrew prepares to prosper through a pandemic worthy of the name. And fails.

21 January: First case of COVID-19 reported from the USA.

5 February: Screwtape III lounges in his sports bar and celebrates Wormsap’s his efforts at recruiting for properties in the Hadean Estates, disparagingly comparing plague strategies with traffic schemes.

11 March: The starship Boobyprize hosts a delegation from a horse-and-buggy planet. The crewmembers confront the improbability of their existence while thwarting Captain Richard Kirkland’s lechery (aided and abetted by certain facts of horse-and-buggy hygiene).

14 March: O Ceallaigh returns from a business trip and goes into 14-day voluntary quarantine. It will be his last venture off Hawaiʻi Island in 2020. The island quickly follows suit – involuntarily. Quilly’s physician fights the bureaucracy and the lockdown panic to get her a mammogram.

21 March: Darren discovers that the dream of working from home is more like a nightmare.

23 March: If Charles Ives had been alive in the time of COVID.

2 April: The news is full of projections that COVID-19 will quickly be brought under control, the lockdowns will end, economic devastation will be short-lived, and the recovery will be V-shaped. The Amoeba had a different (and, to date, more realistic) projection.

30 April: As if the consequences of double mastectomy weren’t enough, He and She have to face the prospect of vampire hummingbirds.

23 May: We’re living here in Kona (ghost) town …

25 May: George Floyd dies.

7 June: Charles learns that sentient machines are no more likely to remember a history of chattel slavery with fondness, or have much concern for the lives of slaveowners and their descendants, than are humans.

28 June: The Dudes find out about the new ‘pronouns’ column in personal-information forms.

5 July: A sing-along. “And all they want to do’s unmask.” And, a few days later, another on the same theme.

6 July: Lord Bidentime discovers that getting the nation’s groove back, like it had under deposed Emperor Yeswecan, is going to be a little harder than he imagined.

15 July: Hawaiʻi Island kamaʻaina issue a cautionary note against COVID-beleaguered mainlanders too eager to escape their confinement and infect visit the state.

23 August: Kris an’ Murphy ‘celebrate’ Earth Overshoot Day.

27 August: A state governor asks community groups for advice in the hopes of achieving consensus, and gets her just deserts.

20 September: She tells Him that it’s his turn to write a book.

11 October: From an ancient Judean and his god: “You think COVID-19 is the worst? Hold my beer wine.” 

1 November: The Dudes get as close to a date as they’re ever going to get.

3 November: For the first time since at least 1932, the winner of the US Presidential election was a living person. The greatly enhanced voter turnout did not have the expected impact on the result, and it is unclear whether it changed anything at all.

28 November: IPPISSISSIM: Deep South variant of “wicked pissah”.

6 December: Liberal tech geek Jason discovers that he’s no more willing to sacrifice the freedoms that he thinks are due to him than are those whom he despises as idiots.

14 December: Celebration of the little blessings of life helps conceal one’s participation in the greater crimes.

27 December: “Whatever the exact details of its origin, within weeks the ‘cash only’ movement had swept the nation, and evolved to insist on coin with antiseptic properties.”

Happy New Year, and may 2021 be everything that you hope for it.

“And way more ‘n enny a us have any right ta expect, yeah OC?”

Shut up, dude.