COVID-19 Journal: Day 43

On Friday night, I declared The World's Smallest Disaster Movie Film Festival. It opened at 10pm with Outbreak, that virus-y thrill ride starring Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman, and Cuba Gooding Jr and a rhesus monkey. Lots of plastic-y suits and biohazards, and Dustin saves Rene in the end who got it by mistake with a bunch of fuck-the-man antics that ultimately work. The most disturbing scene for me was set in Cedar Creek, California, which was quarantined plus military. Two local families said NO WAY WE WANT OUR FREEDOM and tried to escape the town in their cars. One carload was shot by soldiers with rail guns in a helicopter who looked quizzically at each other before shooting the civilians to death. The other family acquiesced.

Dr Kate Winslet
Saturday night was a double-header: Contagion at 9pm, and 2012 after that. I could listen to Kate Winslet teach me Virology 101 all day, and actually, I was ultimately quite glad that COVID-19 isn't as bad as what they were up against (millions dead). I wonder what it's like for them to watch that now. A pandemic will always be great entertainment?

Now, 2012. Where do I start? Thanks to a too-many-fucking-neutrinos-fuelled disaster even predicted by the Mayans, the citizens of earth find themselves up shit creek because the science, and boy howdy, John Cusack the plucky divorcee limo driver has a whale of a time getting out of every possible scrape you've ever seen before on any kind of disaster movie, mostly geological, except a killer virus. It's well over two hours of unrelenting action and CGI people who have discovered the earthquake button. So, that was a relief.

There was a Zoom party, but I could only manage a quick fly by.

Today has been quite domestic.
The vacuum
  • "Fixed" an oak kitchen chair with glue so we'll see how that goes. I hope it works. I picked that chair up off the sidewalk in San Francisco.
  • Cleaned the fridge. No, not the inside. I will have crossed to the other side once I do that. I cleaned the outside of the fridge. It was one of those mortifying cleaning moments when you realise you're a filthy beast, but now it's gleaming. 
  • I dusted the leaves of my fiddlehead ficus plants. They had definitely been staring at me since Day 1 and if I'm honest all the time since before then since my Mum came last time and did that job almost as soon as she arrived.
  • I vacuumed. I haven't vacuumed very much on Stay Home, so the carpets were basically feline. It always feels much better to de-fluff, so that's fine. It's also always amusing because the cats think the vacuum is Kali.
  • I caught myself watching Chris Hemsworth talk about his new movie on Graham Norton as I was doing the dishes wearing rubber gloves. I've now stopped doing domestic things.
  • I also made two magic bamboo staffs for two smalls who visited with Katy, who grabbed some bamboo for her allotment. And when I say I made I mean I sawed a 20 footer into a 4.5 footer and a 4 footer. Am hoping for Wizard Club updates from one of said smalls, who is learning spells.
Now I'm catching up on the Great British Sewing Bee and wondering who I am becoming.

The best thing I saw on the internet today was that dambusting speech by Julia Gillard, who ripped Tony "The Sexist BoyMan" Abbott a new arsehole for 15 minutes, improvising from a few handwritten notes from her research team.