Howdy y’all!

Being a brooding ruminating type turns out to be a good match for blogging. Seriously, blogging is a thankless task but being an optimistic brooding ruminator or is it a brooding ruminating optimist? Anywho, keeps me toiling away in this mine of obscurity. Brooding and ruminating is a reward all on its own.

This week I’ve realized two things that’ve really helped me in all the blogging: (1) I got reading glasses. I can now actually see the screen — you wouldn’t believe how much this actually helps in writing posts. It’s like a marvel of technology or something. And (2) I’ve had much less time to devote to each post. The dirty little secret of procrastination is that when you have time to procrastinate, you do; when you don’t, you don’t. I now work on three articles at once instead of writing one in one or two days and then immediately posting it. I’ve been forced to plan. I’ve got Saturday morning to do the bulk of the writing for the two posts that I want to do in the week. Then I can finish them off in the brief moments of time that I have between Saturday and their scheduled publishing, usually on Wednesday and Friday. I work on the Whaz Up post throughout the week adding bits to it every day and the final edit on Sunday. Seriously, I’m a much better blogger… I think. Let me know what you think, in the comments, y’all!

That said, this has been an eventful week with little time for my usual extracurricular reading habits, so I’m not posting anything that I read in the news or mainstream media and only a few of the very few blogs I’ve managed to read. So, here’s the skinny:

• #COVID19 is blowing up in Cambodia. The delta variant is reaching critical mass. In August, we opened the school on the DL. In September be began hybriding our kids allowing no more than fifteen people in a classroom at a time, so about half of the kids could come to school. The other half Zoomed in. That was like taking the worst aspects of teaching in the classroom and the worst aspects of teaching online and combining them to produce one bloody awful experience for everyone involved. It was exponentially harder to do than either of them separately. I never thought I’d be thankful for DL.
• The government started vaccinating children as young as twelve and with their usual efficiency, they got 80% of them their first shot within weeks. Unfortunately, they started letting them get their second shot within just a couple of weeks of the first. That’s not good for developing immunity.
• Then, we started getting positive tests in our school! First a three year old, so the entire early years program shut down and went into hibernation.
• Then an indirect exposure to one of our teachers in the big kids’ school, so more people were sent to the gulag to teach from home over Zoom.
• And, the straw that broke the camel’s back was five TAs all testing positive earlier this week.
• We went back on the DL that night.
• Next week is the major Cambodian holiday of Pchum Ben in which all Cambodians are to honor seven generations of the their ancestors by making hefty donations to Buddhist pagodas, giving gifts to neighbors and children, holding feasts, and making offerings of food to their ancestors. It’s a big deal with lots of people crowding pagodas bribing monks to pray that the souls’ of their ancestors don’t get angry and haunt their asses. That’s basically it. With a cynical spin.
• The government shut down the pagodas, though. So, no bribery this year for you. I guess we’re all being haunted now. Maybe that’s what #COVID19 is some pissed off seven generations of Cambodian ancestral spirits.
• While the government is boasting of their vaccine miracle because they are approaching 80% of the entire population with two shots, daily infection rates have shot up from 500 a day in August to 900 a day now. Deaths are up to 10 to 15 per day. The number of active cases is growing again outpacing recoveries threatening to sink the fragile Cambodian medical system.
• The delta variant is hella contagious. It don’t matter if you’re vaccinated. You can be infected with it. You have a good chance of passing it even if you’re vaccinated and definitely will if you’re not. The vaccine will keep you out of the hospital and keep you from dying, so cognito ergo sum, the Sinovac ain’t worth a darn in fighting delta and probably #COVID19, too. Either that or the government is lying and they haven’t vaccinated as many people as they claim or some fucked up combination of it all because shit is suddenly hitting the fan like a helicoptering hippo during rutting season.
• So, that’s me. How are you? Let us know in the comments!

Next Week

Next week is holiday, so here’s what’s happening to Ye Olde Blogge:

Ye Olde Blogge Blogge Postes

• Ye Olde Blogge writer is going to the beach without Ye Olde Blogge computer, so no answers to no comments and no obsessive checking of stats or pimping of the blog on social media.
• Scheduled posts:
  • Wednesday 13 October: The Cognitive Tom Fuckery that Causes MAGA Nation to be so Stupid The truth is I’m proud of this one. It is about three of my favorite forms of cognitive Tom fuckery: everyday reasoning, collective intelligence, and the knowledge illusion. As it turns out, Hillary Clinton was right about EVERY FUCKING THING even being stronger together. This post is inspired by a trolling incident right here on your very own Ye Olde Blogge, too.
  • Wednesday 13 October: Extra! Extra! Read All About It! MAGA Troll Trolls Ye Olde Blogge This is the real life tale of the obsessive troll who thinks he’s drinking libtard tears from Ye Olde Blogge after all the mean things he’s said about us, but instead he’s left us just scratching our ass and wondering, What? What the actual fuck, man? This is how you spend your time? And, I thought I was fucked up for writing an obscure blog…
  • Saturday 17 October: I don’t know what it will be exactly yet. I’m thinking I’m going to be writing about helping people kick the MAGA habit. We’re on vacation after all and we’ll be back from our holidaze.
• While I have posts written and scheduled, I won’t be responding to comments, so all y’all commenters will just have to wait until I return.

Ye Olde Blogge’s Ye Olde Calendare

Man, not only is there a poverty of dates noted on the calendar for next week, there’s hardly anything at all for the rest of October. HELP! Give me something to put on the calendar besides All Hallow’s Eve!

• Sunday 3 October: German Unity Day, you know the fall of the Berlin Wall and all that.
• Monday 4 October: National Taco Day, so hop on over to your favorite taco stand and celebrate the humble taco. Tell us about it in the comments, too, why don’t you?
• Wednesday 5 October: World Teacher’s Day, so let a teacher know you appreciate the work they do. God knows there are few enough perks with the job, so you gotta find ’em where you can get ’em.
• Wednesday 5 – Thursday 7 October: Pchum Ben, so give a thought to your ancestors and wonder if that bump in the night might could be your great grandpa being pissed that you ain’t bribed no Buddhist monk to pray for his soul.
• Sunday 3 – Thursday 7 October: Ye Olde Blogge is gone fishing!

Ye Olde Blogge Blogge Rolee

• Scottie’s Toy Box: Our favoritest source of editorial cartoons and commentary seems to be on the fritz. The onliest thing I could find was his Tumblr. It promised links to the blog, but all I got was a could not be found message. I guess we’ll have to start visiting Tumblr now. I hope no one thinks we’re cool because we do. Anywho, this sounds about right for DeathSantis’ Florida:

• Homeless on the High Desert: Ten Bears offers us this editorial cartoon on the recent spat of activist conservative Catholic judicial decision that run contrary to legal tradition and Constitutional mandate.

Ye Olde Newse

Okay, so I lied about not including a news article. That’s what happens when you write a bit everyday and don’t want to make the time to go back and edit even though you know you ought to. I thought nothing I read this week would go beyond just the usual headlines everyone was reading, but I just found this article speculating that Rachel Maddow may be stepping down from her show in April! APRIL! Say, it isn’t so? I thought the tradition was that she would give like twenty years notice! How could this be happening upon the pandemic, Manenema, the GQP authoritarian power grab, voter suppression, Roe v. Wade being flushed. The universe as we know it is ENDING. Or, as my grandmother used to say, don’t believe everything you read in the paper.

Ye Olde Friendes

• OF CABBAGES AND KINGS is the generous re-blogger BobCabKing’s blog . Always worth checking out to see what he’s promoting — if you don’t have good taste in blogging, just borrow his,that’s what I always say. For example, where else are you going to find a gem like, I’m just a fucked up girl who’s looking for her own peace of mind. Don’t assign me yours, from Postmodern Prometheus – Colorful_Anomoly. If I were a younger man, I’d want to date her.
• FAIR AND UNBALANCED publishes a weekly list of the things Burr Deming’s been reading with his snarky, witty insights introducing and expounding on each. It’s right there on the landing page of the blog, so by the time you’re reading this, this week’s readings will be up.
• MOCK, PAPER, SCISSORS is the BEST snarky rundown of today’s top headlines interwoven with delightful palette clearers like you’re at some kind of common wine tasting. It is a heady brew that Ten Grain cooks up over there, so be warned. Here’s a good for instance, his take on Boof-K getting #COVID19 in which he says the quiet part out loud.
• MIKE’S BLOG ROUND UP has been good to us over the years, and we are appreciative. Have a look for some of the best in blogging. It goes up daily, so be sure to visit often. Remember, it is on Crooks and Liars, where you’ll find all the headlines and then some summarized.
• INFIDEL 753  is a great place to find some insightful and informed commentary on the issues of the day… some of them even issues that you didn’t know were important until you read Infidel. Also, he has a great Sunday roundup of news, blogs, and other interesting stuff he’s been curating in the week.

Huzzah!
Jack

If you liked this summary of Ye Olde Blogge’s week and a peak at the week ahead, then do one or more of the following:

• comment: Let us know the dates you’re looking forward to in October and November, or what you think about Rachel Maddow leaving her show! I may never recover even if she stays forever.
• like: I don’t know how you could possibly like anything ever again after hearing that Rachel Maddow may be leaving, but liking this post is a good start.
• rate: Even though it will be difficult to do knowing that Rachel Maddow may be leaving, you might could give us a five-star rating.
• share: If you share the news about Rachel Maddow, you’ll definitely be vilified but in a cool way on your social media, so share away.
• follow: Why anything would be worth following after hearing the news about Rachel Maddow, I don’t know, but life will go on, so we may as well do it together, right?
• join: Even better, get an email notification with every posted post to help fill-in the hole that Rachel Maddow leaving will leave in your soul.

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Image Attribution

“Rachel Maddow at a speaking engagement for the ACLU of Wisconsin” by The Rachel Maddow Show is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0