14th May 2020 - Schadenfreude

Thought for the day :"Police have responded to the invasion of murder hornets. They are using the SWAT team to set up a sting operation."

LINK JOHNS HOPKINS
Office of National Statistics

just leave this here 

I have been wondering why I am fascinated with the CNN coverage of the virus and why I am watching so much american news. I have decided this morning, that it is a form of Schaden Freude. It is a form of coping mechanism. Rather than worry about what our own government is doing/not doing, and what our populations is doing - and how people are beginning to return to work in their throngs on public transport, without masks, and how keeping a social distance seems to be so hard for people - it is easier to look at someone else doing it wrong. It is the old theory that when you are feeling really down - someone will say to you "hey, Man! You ain't got it so bad. Look at that Guy!, and you look and he has it worse than you and you feel sort of better" [Arlo Guthrie - the Pause of Mr Claus] So someone is doing it worse than you and you can hardly believe it is possible - but there it is in front of you. Every Tweet. Every Broadcast. Every public Appearance. Every statement. And you can't believe that people are actually listening to him and following his advice. And having your own politicians getting it wrong somehow feels a little less bad than it was.... 

In other news - I have done a few Zoom meetings now and am working towards seeing if I can set one up myself - Technology these days is sometimes beyond me. My extra screen for my laptop seems to have given up the ghost. Can't find how to change the source - the buttons are not working properly. On the other hand I found that Chrome has a spell checker. It used to have and I did not realise that it had been turned off in the settings - so the blog should be little more accurate now.

But I saw this today and realised what Zoom meetings remind me of ....

Managed to empty most of the trailer with Vic's furniture and clearance stuff yesterday - will go across and finish the job today.  Getting to the stage where it will be very useful for the Dump to be open again. Getting t have a large pile of disposables.

I suppose the shut down is having effect on many of us ...

And so a daily shut down serenade...

Come to my bedside my Darling. 

A song I have been singing since my early teens. Stolen off the radio one Thursday evening from one of the folk programs, with Wally Whyton if I recall - and recorded onto some form of tape so I could remember some. Didn't have the opportunity of looking up the words in those days and , nor checking the chords, so it was the simple ones that I tended to learn in those days. It was strange but I looked it up on the intertweb and there it was - with a verse I had never heard. But I decided to record it the way I have always sung it...

So - another day ...  

Cheers !