It took me five minutes to find my glasses, which it turned out I had on, and another five minutes of searching after that before I remembered where I had found them.

I lost my dinner one night because I didn’t put the frog into the water until after it had started boiling.

I wasn’t able to finish a jigsaw puzzle when I couldn’t figure out where the last piece should go.

I signed up for an online class on The Odyssey, taught in Esperanto.

I watched a Texas Guinan film festival.

I dreamt about rearranging my bathroom cabinet, again.

I couldn’t remember the name of the star of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show.

I ordered a Star Trek: Picard Borg Washable Face Mask from the Official CBS Store.

In attempting to break the world record of eight hours, 15 minutes and 15 seconds for holding a plank, I lost count at five seconds, as I started thinking about where the frog might be hiding.

Las Vegas, upon reopening soon, is rumored to be considering rolling out a slightly modified slogan meant to assuage any fears of bringing the coronavirus back home after a visit – “What you contract in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

The Vegas strip will add the flagship location for a new chain called The Shelter Inn, which is conceived as a luxury hotel-hospital, and which will be opening around the country with the promotion “Checking in is better than checking out.”

Free transportation will be provided to the inns via a dedicated rail system – The Quarantine Express – for which Graham Nash purportedly has repurposed one of his big hits, as follows:

Looking at the world
Through the tear drops in your eyes
Trying to make the train
Where you’ll be sanitized
Masks and gloves and alcohol
We’re disinfecting wall to wall
And off’ring discounts from the mall for you

Sweeping cobwebs from the edges of my mind
Had to get away to help save humankind
Hope to start our lives anew
After what we’ve all been through
It’s time to board this train two by two

Don’t you know we’re riding
On the Quarantine Express
Don’t you know we’re riding
On the Quarantine Express
All on board the train.

I installed a PPE vending machine, just like the Las Vegas airport, in the entry to my apartment. Unlike the airport, and I can’t believe they didn’t think of this, mine will double as a slot machine, so that when you pull the lever to get your supplies (hand sanitizer, alcohol wipes, disposable mask), you will have the opportunity of winning a certificate for a free roll of toilet paper. I understand that Cracker Jack also is considering putting such certificates in their boxes.

I obtained an internal document from the Wisconsin Supreme Court that suggests that, in making their decision regarding opening the state, they analogized fighting the coronavirus to boxing against an opponent with longer arms. To offset that disadvantage, you get in close and work the body, so that your opponent can’t extend his arms. Apparently, if you’re in a bar, sitting really close to someone with the virus, the spray from their mouth or nose can’t build up enough steam in the short distance to deliver an effective dose of the virus.

Major League Baseball submitted a 67-page document to the players’ union outlining player-safety protocols for a proposed return to play, which includes a prohibition against spitting in restricted areas (like other people’s faces) and a recommendation that players wash their hands after every half-inning, which reminds me of the dictator’s rule in the movie Bananas that underwear be worn on the outside because it will make it easier to enforce the decree that “all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half hour.”

The New York City Travel and Tourism Bureau has announced that it will be instituting, in conjunction with the city’s hotels, and the creators of escape rooms, online bed bug infestation events for those who would otherwise miss this Big Apple experience because of virus-interrupted plans. For a limited time only, tickets to cancelled Broadway shows may be exchanged for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

In an effort to protect its employees, all major airlines have announced that future flights will be auto-pilot only. Flight attendants also will be eliminated, and given vouchers for middle seats with a value equal to one year’s pay, with volunteer passengers assigned the attendants’ duties via lottery, which is the same way that use of airplane bathrooms will be awarded.

After Florida’s governor invited all professional sports leagues to bring their teams to Florida to play their 2020 seasons, that state’s legislature also quickly passed a new law increasing the state’s sales tax from 6% to 50%, which will take effect June 1 and be accompanied by the slogan “Half a Loaf is Better Than None.”

Despite Florida’s offer, the possibility of a baseball season looked bleaker as the CDC’s website recommended that gloves not be worn except when cleaning or caring for someone who is sick, ignoring how hard gloveless baseball would be on catchers.

Gambling, and losing, on online marble racing, before I learned that it was prerecorded.

Watching the first event of the inaugural Memphis Zoo Zoolympics – California Sea Lions in the free style dance competition – and wondering whether the USOC will sue them for trademark infringement.

Wondering whether the real reason that Leonardo da Vinci implemented a backward writing style was as a first step in trying to create a system by which he could cut his own hair in the mirror during the scourge of the bubonic plague in Milan.

Learning the meaning of proprioception, my apparent lack of which explains why I have trouble playing the piano without looking at my hands, which aren’t that great to look at after washing them seven thousand times in the past two months.

Watching a game of Roundnet in the park, and immediately picking up on the rules, unlike cricket, which is still totally incomprehensible to me.

Making a citizen’s arrest of someone going the wrong way in a one-way grocery store aisle.

Talking and reading to, punishing when necessary, and, before even naming it, throwing a two-month birthday party for my plant (to which I invited other plants in the building, though none came as I had insisted on masks and sap testing before entry).

Using my oven, not just for storage, but also for cooking what I had hoped would be food.

Like everyone else, I go through periods with a somewhat congested nose, which is more noticeable when you’re monitoring every potential virus symptom in your body 24/7, but this morning, suddenly, like a flash in my eye from a torn retina, my left nostril started blowing air through it like a brand new wind tunnel at NASA. We may yet colonize Mars.

In an effort to avoid constant trips to the refrigerator while sheltering-in-place, I have initiated a protocol, and concomitant scale, whereby I measure the amount of growling in my stomach to determine whether, and how much, I should eat.   I have adopted the acronym GPS (growls per second), as it is no longer required for location services, since not even the most directionally-challenged of us needs a map to find the bathroom from the living room.

My dermatologist is reopening on June 1 for Botox injections. Botox works by blocking signals from the nerves to the muscles, so that the muscles can’t contract and cause wrinkles, sort of like how RCN blocks signals from the Internet to your computer, so that your computer can’t connect, thereby eliminating the possibility of an infection from a virus, other than the one you brought in with your groceries.

In an attempt to do something different, I started working my crossword puzzles with my left hand, as It has been suggested by some that use of the non-dominant hand is correlated with improved levels of creativity, intuition, ability to feel, and downright smartness. Excited by these prospects, I expanded my area of research into use of the remote control with that hand, with mixed results, as it unintentionally caused me to spend 24 hours watching Spanish-speaking television, without improving my language skills.

WARNING: The following possible methods of treating COVID-19 have not YET been recommended by unlicensed health officials.

Eating a lot of hot, spicy food, while also shoving it up your nose, and rubbing it in your eyes.

With people wearing the same clothes day after day during shelter-in-place, dry cleaning factories are now available for picnics, complete with perchloroethylene cocktails.  Face masks should not be worn as they may inhibit the work of the chemicals.

Hoodoo spells cast by an experienced, well-intentioned practitioner.

Training a rabid dog to bite you all over your body and suck the evil spirits out of your system. This method offers multiple possibilities of eliminating the virus.

Sticking your head in the oven for 2 hours at 350 degrees, basting optional.

Locking yourself in your bathroom with a bucket of sand, a pitcher of salt water, and a sun lamp to simulate the conditions of going to the beach in California or Florida, where thousands are attempting a similar treatment. If you add a bottle of wine, you also can have a Seder.

Leeching. Unfortunately, however, PETA has filed a lawsuit asking that this method of using the Hirudo medicinalis (European medicinal leech) be blocked for the protection of the worm with bloodsucking capabilities, an action with congressional precedent.

 

 

States are relaxing their rules, in ways that may or may not make sense, but people are still warned not to:

Drink Lysol on an empty stomach.
Listen to the news on an empty stomach.
Go for a walk with a close talker.
Worry about what their hair looks like.
Drive to Georgia to get a tattoo, go to the gym, or do anything else.
Pretend that their screen is frozen while attending a Zoom meeting for work.
Wear a mask into a bank while holding a gun, except in Texas.
Use big words like “sarcasm” when they don’t know what they mean.