I've been leaving the Fortress of Solitude a bit. Thursday afternoon, I drove an elderly neighbor to her bank. She was masked and gloved and if she wasn't in her nineties, I would have wondered if maybe she planned to rob the place and I'd been tricked into driving the getaway car.
Friday, I walked to a CVS Pharmacy for a few necessities and while I was there, stopped into a nearby restaurant for some to-go food, which of course is all they offer these days. Signs outside the place stated clearly that no one would be admitted or served without a mask and I, of course, had mine on. But as some of us in there were waiting for our orders, a man walked in without one. If he wasn't homeless, he was certainly dressed to make people think he was.
The restaurant staff was too busy to notice his masklessness as he approached the counter to order so I called their attention to it. The cashier told him he had to leave and he began arguing with her: "That's a lot of hooey and I want a meatball sandwich!"
I happen to think the "no mask, no service" policy is totally wise. But even if it's silly, he was still in the wrong to not comply with it and to think arguing would change anything.
I've seen this at banks. I've seen this at the airport and in hospitals and doctors' offices and other places. There are plenty of pointless or dumb rules in this world but it's even more pointless and dumber to debate them with someone who has no power whatsoever to change or not enforce them. Go challenge the mayor or the governor or whoever made the rule and can fire or punish underlings who don't follow orders.
The probably-homeless guy argued a bit. The mask thing is stupid because as anyone with half-a-brain knows, there is no pandemic. This whole corona thing is a hoax. No one's dying because of it. The death tolls are wild exaggerations and the people who are actually dying are just…you know, well, people die every day.
You want proof? People die every day from traffic accidents and cancer and heart disease and that most certain of deadly killers…natural causes. You're not hearing one word about that, are you? If you had a half-a-brain, you would have noticed.
That's because they need to report those deaths as "COVID-19 deaths" to prop up The Big Lie that's being swallowed whole by people with half-a-brain. If fifty people die in one city one day from those real killers, They (the ever-present, ominous "They") say it's five hundred corona deaths.
I remember saying to myself, "It's thinking like that that got that man where he is today."
He yelled and berated employees who were just doing their jobs and I somehow became the spokesperson for all those around me who wished the guy would go away. At one point, I told him in the tone you'd use to lecture a toddler, "This is not going to get you a meatball sandwich!" He went away, then came back two minutes later holding a tissue over his mouth — not even his mouth and nose — to demand his meatball sandwich.
The gent taking orders told him to get out and he finally did. A few minutes later when I left with my order, he was standing in front of the restaurant talking to himself about those "half-a-brain" people. I walked right past him with my meatball sandwich…which, by the way, was real good.