Know Thy Enemy

Things are really bad when, in order to take your mind off of the terrible news, you decide to take a break by reading about COVID-19. I found an interesting essay about the nature of the ailment- pathologists at NYC's Mount Sinai hospital have conducted autopsies on deceased COVID-19 patients and have release a report on the results of the first sixty-seven procedures. It turns out that the 'Rona is not primarily a respiratory affliction, at least not per se:


COVID-19 was initially conceptualized as a primarily respiratory illness, but the Mount Sinai analysis laid out in detail that it also causes damage to the thin layer of cells that line blood vessels (endothelium), which underlies the clotting abnormalities and hypoxia observed in severely ill patients who develop multi-organ failure that leads to death in some patients.


The lung damage inflicted on the COVID-19 patients is a result of blood clots in the alveoli resulting from this endothelial damage:


The lungs in nearly all cases showed diffuse damage to the alveoli, the small sacs where oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged with the blood. This damage is the typical microscopic evidence of clinical acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), with most cases showing fibrin (a fibrous, non-globular protein involved in the clotting of blood) and/or platelet thrombi, or clots, to varying extents. This same pathology is found in most cases of ARDS, including those related to other coronoaviruses. However, the totality of findings in the autopsy series as a whole, with blood clots in multiple other organ systems—most notably the brain, kidney, and liver—reflects endothelial damage as an underlying process, which would also correlate with the activation of the coagulation cascade and persistent elevation of blood markers of inflammation.


This would also explain the Kawasaki Disease-esque symptoms and elevated stroke risk that have been observed in younger COVID-19 patients.

If the clotting is the main peril posed by the 'Rona, maybe anticoagulants can be used to reduce the dangers the virus poses to humans. I think I might have to get in touch with the Leech Guy about this...

Vicious Dogs, Ominous Weapons

It looks like Trump has gone full Kim Jong Un on us in his fear of demonstrators rallying outside the White House, ranting about the Secret Service being able to deploy 'the most vicious dogs' and 'the most ominous weapons' against anyone getting too close to his executive throne, by which I mean his Twitter shitter:

....have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen. That’s when people would have been really badly hurt, at least. Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action. “We put the young ones on the front line, sir, they love it, and....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020

Thia short bit of pulp fiction, complete with the telltale 'sir' bit, has a bit of a Bond villain air to it, as if Trump were Kim Jong Un or C. Montgomery Burns. There was a rumor, plausible bu probably untrue, that he fed his uncle to a pack of wild dogs, and as for Monty Burns:





Now we come to the 'ominous weapons' part... there were reports that Kim Jong Un has executed disloyal or incompetent officials with anti-aircraft guns. Mr Burns has also deployed ominous weapons:





Trump has always been a villain, but now he's engaging in cartoonish supervillainy. He's long been an admirer of Kim Jong Un, and now his admiration has turned aspirational. He's even become a Little Rocket Man himself:

Hopefully a great, successful and safe ROCKET LAUNCH. Lifting off soon!?!? @FoxNews @OANN

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020

It's just his job five days a week.

This Should Make Right-Wingers Happy!

There's a quotation falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson that right-wingers love to spout: "When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."

In light of this comment, the American Right should love the fact that a protest in DC's Lafayette Park placed the White House under lockdown.

A lot of right-wingers are freaking out about the current situation, but they have no coherent arguments against civil unrest, because they have no intellectual consistency.

It's going to be a long summer, and not a good one.

Watching the Country Fall Apart

It's been a week of horrors. Perhaps the worst was the video of the murder of Floyd George (kneeling on a person's carotid artery is sure to cut off the flow of oxygenated blood to the brain). This callous murder of a man who had been subdued (for no good reason) by four officers of the law was bad enough, but it also put into sinister light the Central Park confrontation between an irate white woman and the African-American birder who told her that she should leash her dog... she knew she was potentially 'calling in a hit'. Predictably, the cop who bears the most responsibility for the murder of Floyd George has a history of prior misconduct allegations. It's appalling how the good cops out there don't police their own, and allow the bad cops to besmirch the reputation of all cops.

Now, Minneapolis is the scene of a major, multi-day riot, complete with looting and arson... though, in a very twisted turn of events, the most publicized looting may very well have been kicked off by an undercover cop... that's a $250 respirator he's wearing, not the sort of thing that some rando would sport. There are also far-right Civil War 2.0 accelerationists infiltrating the crowds of protestors. It seems that Minneapolis, a city I remember fondly from a visit two decades ago, won't see peace for the foreseeable future.

In New York's Union Square, a protest was met with an aggressive police response, while on the other coast, a massive protest blocked roadways. This is going to be a summer of rage, most of it righteous rage, and I really don't see any coherent response to it, at least judging by what's going down in Minnesota. Cooler heads are needed to sort out the systemic problems of racist police procedures, but I don't think that there are any cooler heads in positions of authority.

Six Digits of Death

Well, it's finally happened, over one hundred thousand Americans have died from COVID-19. This is the official death toll, though I believe that it is a low-ball figure, and that to get a truer number, researchers will have to piece together a narrative by looking at abnormally high pneumonia deaths. If the United States ever returns to a normal state of governance, a Truth and Reconciliation Committee will be needed to figure out just how deep the rot goes in our society.

I don't have anything more substantial to say on the topic at this time... this is a quick post, hastily written after a long phone conversation with Mom, who just returned from a visit to my brother Gomez' family. The title, of course, is a play on the Shaw Brothers wuxia classic.

2020 International Talk Like a Jack Vance Character Day

Troubadours, ply ukulele and kazoo to herald this momentous occasion, for the International Talk Like a Jack Vance Character Day is, once again, upon us:





On this anniversary of the loss of our most estimable sage, we sing panegyrics and intone encomia. To supplement our nuncupatory eulogies, we inscribe our elegies. Those of a terpsichorean disposition, let them praise with corybantic measures!

For those unfamiliar with the oeuvre of Jack Vance, the man was a master of the English vocabulary, taking up the linguistic mantle of Clark Ashton Smith and passing on the baton to a legion of acolytes, among them the speakers of High Gygaxian. The works of Jack Vance are a feast for the ear, a banquet for the mind, an armory for the castigating tongue.

To celebrate Talk Like a Jack Vance character properly, one should haggle with a mountebank:


Wandering the crumbled streets, he put the languid inhabitants such a spate of questions that one in wry jocularity commended him to a professional augur. This one dwelled in a booth painted with the Signs of the Aumoklopelastianic Cabal. He was a lank brown man with red-rimmed eyes and a stained white beard.

"What are your fees?" inquired Guyal cautiously.

"I respond to three questions," stated the augur. "For twenty terces I phrase the answer in clear and actionable language; for ten I use the language of cant, which occasionally admits of ambiguity; for five, I speak a parable which you must interpret as you will; and for one terce, I babble in an unknown tongue."

"First I must inquire, how profound is your knowledge?"

"I know all," responded the augur. "The secrets of red and the secrets of black, the lost spells of Grand Motholam, the way of the fish and the voice of the bird."

"And where have you learned all these things?"

"By pure induction," explained the augur. "I retire into my booth, I closet myself with never a glint of light, and, so sequestered, I resolve the profundities of the world."

"With all this precious knowledge at hand," ventured Guyal, "why do you live so meagerly, with not an ounce of fat to your frame and these miserable rags to your back?"

The augur stood back in fury. "Go along, go along! Already I have wasted fifty terces of wisdom on you, who have never a copper to your pouch. If you desire free enlightenment," and he cackled in mirth, "seek out the Curator." And he sheltered himself in his booth.


For a celebratory feast, one should consume a meal of alien, even dubious, culinary origin, perhaps some fine Darsh provender:


Gersen read from the sign "'Chatowsies Pourrian Ahagaree' Do you have your appetite with you?"

"Not really. I am a fastidious eater I may taste a bit of this and that."

Gersen, who often had gulped down food he dared not think about, only laughed. "A keen journalist doesn't know the word 'fastidious'."

"Somewhere we must draw the line," said Rackrose. "It may be here, at Tintle's Shade."

They pushed through the door into a hall. Ahead stairs led up to the upper floors, to the side an arch opened upon a white-tiled chamber heavy with a musty stench. A dozen men drank beer at a counter tended by an old woman in a black gown, with straight black hair, dark orange skin, and a black mustache. Posters announced exhibitions and novelty dances, at Rath Eileann and elsewhere.

.........................................................................

The woman behind the bar called out: "Why do you stand like hypnotized fish? Did you come to drink beer or to eat food?"

"Be patient," said Gersen. "We are making our decision."

The remark annoyed the woman. Her voice took on a coarse edge. " 'Be patient,' you say? All night I pour beer for crapulous men; isn't that patience enough? Come over here, backwards; I'll put this spigot somewhere amazing, at full gush, and then we'll discover who calls for patience!"

"We have decided to take a meal," said Gersen. "How are the chatowsies tonight?"

"The same as always, no worse than any other. Be off with you; don't waste my time unless you're taking beer.. . . What's this? Smirk at me, will you?"

She seized a mug of beer to hurl at Maxel Rackrose, who alertly jumped back into the anteroom, with Gersen close behind. The woman gave her black mane a scornful toss, twisted her mustache between thumb and forefinger, then turned away.

"She lacks charm," grumbled Rackrose. "She will never know me as a habitue."

"The dining room may surprise us," said Gersen.

"Pleasantly, so I hope."

They started up the steps, which, like the beer-chamber, exhaled an unpleasant vapor: a compound of strange cooking oils, offworld condiments, and a stale ammoniacal waft. At the first landing Rackrose halted. "Candidly, I find this all a bit unsettling. Are you sure that we actually intend to dine here?"

"If you have qualms, go no farther. I myself have known places both better and worse."

Rackrose muttered under his breath, and trudged on up the steps. A pair of heavy wooden doors opened into the restaurant. At widely separated tables small groups of men huddled like conspiators, drinking beer or eating from platters immediately below their faces.

A massive woman stepped forward. Gersen judged her no less formidable than the woman who tended the beer spigot, though perhaps a few years younger. Like the woman below, she wore a shapeless black gown and her hair hung in a rank tangle; her mustache was not quite so full. With glittering eyes she looked from one to the other. "Well then, do you wish to eat?"

"Yes; that is why we are here," said Gersen.

"Sit yonder."

The woman followed them across the room. When thev were seated she leaned forward portentously with hands on the table. "What is to your taste?"

"We know Darsh food by reputation only," said Gersen. "What are your special dishes?"

"A ha! Those we reserve for our own eating. Out here we serve chichala and you must make the best of it."

"Whiat of the fine Darsh provender you advertise? The chatowsies, the pourrian, the ahagaree?"

"Look about you. Men are eating."

"True."

"Then that is what you must eat."

"Bring us portions of all these dishes; we will give them a try."

"As you like." The woman departed.

Rackrose sat in glum silence while Gersen looked around the room. "Our man is not among those present," said Gersen at last.

Rackrose glanced skeptically from table to table. "Did you seriously expect to find him here?"

"Not with any confidence. Still, coincidences occur. If he were passing through Rath Eileann, this is where we would hope to find him."

Maxel Rackrose surveyed Gersen dubiously. "You are not telling me all you know."

"Should that surprise you?"

"Not at all. But I'd like a hint as to what I'm getting into."

"Tonight you need fear only the chatowsies and perhaps the pourrian."

.........................................................................

From the kitchen came the black-gowned woman, with bowls and platters. She thumped them down upon the table- "Here is the food, Chatowsies. Pourrian. Ahagaree. Eat your fill. What you leave returns to the pot."

"Thank you," said Gersen. "By the way, who is 'Tintle'?"

The woman gave a derisive snort. "Tintle's name is on the sign. We do the work; we chink the coin. Tintle keeps his distance."

"If possible, I'd like a few words with Tintle."
The woman gave a derisive snort. "You'd like nothing whatever from Tintle; he's stupid and dull. Still, for what it's worth, you'll
find him in the backyard counting- his fingers or scratching himself with a stick."

The woman moved away. Gersen and Rackrose gingerly addressed themselves to the food. After a few moments Rackrose said:
"I can't decide what tastes worst. The chatowsies are fetid, but the ahagaree is ferocious. The pourrian is merely vile. And the lady seems to have washed her dog in the beer. . . . What? Are you eating more?"

"You must do the same. We want to establish a pretext for returning. Here; try some of these remarkable condiments."

Rackrose held up his hand. "I have taken quite enough, at least on the basis of my present salary."

"As you wish." Gersen gulped down a few more mouthfuls, then thoughtfully put down his spoon. "We have seen enough for this evening." He signaled to the woman. "Madame, our account, if you please."

The woman looked over the platters. "You have eaten ravenously. I will need two or, better, three Standard Value Units from each of you."

Rackrose cried out in protest. "Three SVU for a few mouthfuls of food? That would be exorbitant at the Domus!"

"The Domus serves insipid gutch. Pay your account or I will sit on your head."

"Come now," said Gersen. "That is no way to attract a steady clientele. I might add that we are waiting to meet a certain member of the Bugold Clan."

"Bah!" sneered the woman. "What is that to me? A Bugold outcast robbed the Kotzash warehouse, and so now I live here in this place of dank winds and curdled rheum."

"I've heard a somewhat different story," said Gersen with an air of careless omniscience.

"Then you heard nonsense! The Bugold rachepol and that scorpion Panshaw connived together. They should have been broken and not poor Tintle. Now pay me my coin and so your way. This talk of Kotzash has put me out of sorts."

Gersen resignedly put down six SVU. The woman, with a triumphant leer toward Maxel Rackrose, swept up the coins. "As for the gratuity, another two SVl' will be considered adequate."

Gersen handed over the coins and Madame Tintle departed.

Rackrose gave a snort of disgust. "You are far too obliging. The woman's avarice is matched only by the vileness of her cuisine."


Most importantly, one must remonstrate with a mooncalf, preferably in minatory fashion:


Cugel grasped the pommel of his sword. "It seems that I must speak without ambiguity. I command you: depart, and never return! I understand your purpose and I warn that you will find me a less indulgent enemy than was Iuconou! So now, be off! Or I inflict upon you the Spell of the Macroid Toe, whereupon the signalized member swells to the proportions of a house."


So, now, be off! Venture forth, my picaroons, and belabor the crass and addlepated in the fashion of our beloved Grand Master.

Memorial Day for a Society with no Memory

I've always been weirded out by Memorial Day, it's a day on which Americans are supposed to memorialize the Heroic Dead, but ours is a society in which memory is not at a premium. This year, as we approach a stateside civilian death toll of one hundred thousand, our lack of memory is taking on a particularly macabre significance. Seeing the photos of people congregating in public across the country, I was struck by a lack of awareness of the seriousness of this pandemic, and a callousness towards service workers and medical personnel. We're supposed to be the descendants of the people who sacrificed to beat fascism in the mid 20th century, but we can't even forgo a weekend of drinking shitty beer in crowded swimming pools. My mom grew up during WW2, and while I don't think she'd say she grew up in conditions of privation, but she certainly grew up in conditions of austerity, and she impressed upon myself and my siblings the need for frugality and social responsibility that seem quaint in this profligate age. I am also astounded by the sudden resurgence of once-forgotten information about the century old influenza outbreak, and our responses to it... and our failure to learn from such mistakes.

I wouldn't say that I am in any way depressed, but I do seem to be feeling a low-grade anger much of the time. I remember telling a coworker that it will be a miracle if I don't put someone through a wall before this national crisis is over, and I have to confess that I was only half joking.