I am traveling currently and lodging for a couple of nights at a hotel where I have stayed many times before. They usually have a decent breakfast buffet, and I was looking forward to the offerings this morning.
Alas, the regular fare was replaced by pre-packaged muffins, plastic-wrapped fruit, and packets of instant oatmeal. I had to wait in line to dispense myself a cup of coffee from an urn. All around were my co-lodgers, masked and ultra-cautious, their every motion slowed somehow by their facewear. I felt like I was attending a bandito convention. All I wanted was my morning jolt, and it seemed to take forever.
It occurred to me that the handle for the spigot of the coffee urn was getting touched over and over by unsanitized hands, which same hands would soon peel bananas, uncup muffins, remove masks, and stuff cakeholes. An exercise in hygienic futility. We sat down in turn, properly distanced at our tables in the dining area. Off came the masks, and with them whatever minuscule health benefit they could have conferred towards one another.
As I watched masks being peeled away and actual faces emerge, I could not help but remember this scene from a B-movie of my youth …
(Apologies for the ad.)
Substitute “bug” for “bomb” and the rest practically re-writes itself! Happy nightmares!
MR
PS—For those who might appreciate the full cut of this scene, a low-quality version can be found here.
Piece of Mindful 
I appreciate you opening up here. I have noticed much of the same on my daily outings. It truly is like living in a B-movie. People are moving much more slowly and quietly, and they are terrified of one another. The whole experience is beyond creepy and sinister. While this is not about me, I just wanted to share a personal experience I had yesterday while food shopping. Apparently, not only do I stick out like a sore thumb, I am perceived as a deviant and a potential threat. I was “reported” by a “Stasi” shopper to the assistant manager of a large natural food store while I was shopping. The assistant manager approached me from behind as I was halfway through the store. He said another shopper noticed I was wearing a mask when I came in the store (I did so for the second time in the past week at this store, so as to get by the “guard” at the door), but was navigating throughout the store without a mask (which is a velcro bandana that I wear around my neck like a dog). Hmmmm. This was very disconcerting to that shopper apparently, and to the manager. He was kind, and I explained I can only wear a mask for 30 seconds at a time before feeling asthmatic and that I could pass out. He let me go, and thanked me for explaining my situation. I am actually not lying about this. I have stress-induced asthma (and had asthma during both of my pregnancies) and I have very severe claustrophobia which induces panic. I find that I cannot even wear a face covering over my mouth (without covering my nose) without feeling out of breath and getting anxious. I know this sounds a bit extreme, and I imagine it is very “mental” given the current situation. In any case, this is a 90 second clip to portray how I felt yesterday during this uncomfortable encounter.
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Oh man, it’d be hilarious to make and sell these Twilight Zone “pig face” as covid masks.
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I’d rather have something more explanatory on my mask. Perhaps something like..
“fauci
[ˈfautʃi]
PLURAL FEMININE NOUN
(di leone) jaws
(di vulcano) mouth singular
cadere nelle fauci di qn (figurative) to fall prey to sb”
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Or… COVID 19:84
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https://teespring.com/search?q=covid%201984 – to order COVID 1984 items . . .
I’ll be ordering a tee shirt . . . no more mask purchasing for me (as they were only purchased for comic relief). BTW, just to clarify – I “pretended” to wear a mask yesterday to “get in the door” to get past the prison guard at one store (as I felt it necessary to shop there in order to purchase some specific items so my family could travel for the weekend). I wasn’t even actually wearing it – I literally pretended to, by pulling a bandana up near my face – not even fully covering. I imagine it was probably all caught on camera (which may have been the catalyst to begin with). It was enough to get by – that is, until being confronted by management that has been captured by this psyop. I hold my own when out and about, and I choose to dissent when confronted. I go out daily into all local stores without wearing a mask, and while I get looks (lots of dirty looks more recently), I do not typically get confronted directly. I hold my head up high, and I walk with much confidence and pep in my step – despite being only 4’10” and 100 pounds. I don’t feel invincible, and my family does worry that I am inciting and inviting trouble. That is not my intent.
That said, I do not fault anyone for wearing a mask if “required” in certain places. Personally, I do distinguish between complying in order to play along to get along (or if one has to in order to provide for one’s family – particularly if going to a job that requires it), and complying due to a desire to conform and/or believing in fake science and authority.
As a family, these new prison rules have drastically changed our lives, as we have had to decide to keep our daughter home from college this coming year, so as not to subject her to 24/7 masking, 24/7 distancing, weekly testing, daily symptom checking, scheduled times to use the bathroom (for real!), meals “to go”, and “quarantining when necessary”. Frankly, it is all completely abusive and soul-sucking – even virtual schooling is, without obeying in-person prison rules. Either way, the kids are losing big time, and for the long-term. It is devastating to my daughter who was absolutely thriving in college before this. As she said, “college was great while it lasted”. To clarify, my daughter made the decision on her own not to be subjected to this. All of her friends have decided otherwise, and will be prison inmates. It can be lonely being a dissenter, and she is now having to experience this feeling. So, I don’t judge anyone for making the decisions they do, whether they comply or not. I can only lead by my own example, and I feel proud of how I conduct myself – so far, that is.
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Good for you, thanks for the info, I have a homemade mask made from a single layer of cheese cloth, it’s transparent. However I haven’t work any mask yet.
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When you’re in Walmart or the grocery store and you’re the only one not wearing a mask, most people won’t look you in the eye, and the ones that do most look furtive or hostile towards you for not wearing one, some actually have the grace to look sheepish.
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Stephers: You are not alone; I start hyperventilating when I can’t breathe so I severely limit mask wearing and choose the lightest of handkerchiefs or gaiters. Otherwise, I live mask free as much as possible but it’s the mask nazis out there who are making our lives miserable. I feel as I’m living in a nightmare, not a B movie. It truly feels like a zombie apocalypse to me. I tell my grown children that never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever live to see a time where healthy people were locked down, an economy crashed and small businesses subject to closure after closure, and churches closed to worship but BLM and Antifa allowed to run roughshod over this country. It’s insane.
Cheers to you.
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I hope most you know the ones who don’t my mother in-law is a pulmonologist say the mask 😷 is doing more harm then good A) Breathing carbon monoxide 2) lowers 02 saturation use a finger pulse ox 02 meter to measure while wearing It drops un safe. Levels 3) them mask are not designed to be taken on an off 1 mask for 3-4 hrs max. Be safe. My mom in law gave me a note
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A bug with 99.8% survival rate is exactly the kind of bug that your immune system is supposed to be using to get practice and strength. I’m just flabbergasted that they’re still struggling to do things like open up schools. We accept certain risks, like auto accidents, and it doesn’t mean that driving a car is some evil act. People die. This bug is, at worst, a common cold.
It is just so sad to watch society collectively lose its mind, and feel so helpless to stop it. They have effectively stifled dissent here to the point that there really is no realistic way to do it. They will paint you as a radical no matter how you dissent.
I read an article yesterday that claimed that mask refusers were LITERALLY psychopaths. They used the “Dark Triad” traits and mixed that topic with traits like being an introvert, and the point was that mask refusers are essentially psychopaths. The campaign against mask dissent is outrageous.
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I agree with you that this is a weak flu bug. But it still seems to me that there is more going on out there around us than just straight out fabrication of scare stories and disturbing data.
Follow me down the path of imagination…
Suppose I host a dinner party, and 50 guests are invited. Suppose I have a secret vendetta against some of my guests. I want to off them, but I want the murder to fade into the wallpaper, as it were.
Suppose that we are clever enough to lace my guests’ meals with salmonella. In and of itself, salmonella is serious but usually not fatal. It will kill a person with a weakened immune system or a child, but most people will just have some vomiting and diarrhea and recover.
Suppose, though, that for the guests I really want to get rid of, I make a point of sprinkling some arsenic in their food. When all my guests end up in the emergency room, and it looks like salmonella poisoning for the lot of them, do you suppose anyone would dig further to find the arsenic in a tox screen?
Now suppose instead of arsenic, I had something just as deadly but less traceable. It would be a pretty nifty crime. The deaths would be chalked up to a fairly innocuous bug, but I got to pick and choose who buys the farm.
Who knows what they have been cooking up over there in the kitchen at Fort Detrick?
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The Agenda is de population and control.
In the vaccine are nano particles. Thiis plandemie was planned years ago. Bill Gates had “predicted” this virus in Tedx talkshow.
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If we can be made to believe we are property/citizen (of the state) we can be made to believe just about anything. The “creator” controls. All property is made of words only. Deception by words, ignorance of words, is the source of our false (flattering title) existence — the ultimate fiction. This false identity, created by the state at birth, is the “mask” we all wear voluntarily our entire lives. Living a false identity makes our (man-made) legal status: “alien resident” in each state of the US of A.
The Covid mask phenomenon is redundant; it is, in fact, a mask placed over another mask. Both conceal our original, true identity as simply man (man and woman).
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Heard anyone wearing a mask say, “I CAN’T BREATH” yet? Seems to be the motto for the year.
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Ironically, a few weeks before the George Floyd psyop, I ordered an “I Can’t Breathe” mask – just as a joke, and it arrived just a few days before the incident. Immediately after the GF incident, I saw photos online of many people wearing masks that said “I can’t breathe”.
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Yesterday, for the first time, I had to go to a store than requires and enforces the wearing of face masks. There was a nice-enough kid at the door, standing guard and handing masks to anyone who didn’t have one. I cheerfully lied and told him I had a medical exemption. “Oh… well, then, unfortunately, you’re required to wear this…” He pulled out a little contraption that looked like a welder’s mask, except with a flimsy clear plastic faceguard instead of plastic. I laughed and said, “Oh, yeah, that’ll keep the Covid out!” and strapped it on and went about my business, much happier to wear the mask of a welder than of a baby’s butt. My breath flowed freely, unimpeded, around the plastic hovering three or four inches in front of my face.
Given the utter thoughtlessness of other people regarding this hoax, I’m wondering if I’ve made too big a deal about this mask thing. Maybe I can just carry around a folding fan and hold it in front of my mouth like a coy geisha when I talk to people. Just put any ol’ flat object in front of my face and say it’s for medical reasons and everyone’ll be like, oh, okay.
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SCOTTRC – Ah, you’ve got the wheels turning in my head now. I am going to search around the house for various face barriers that I could carry around. I do like the folding fan idea! You’re an actor, so I bet you could have tons of fun with that! 🙂 Who says it needs to be hands-free, right? I’m thinking maybe a small Tupperware container? That would surely catch all my snotty debris!
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Stephers, my reply got kicked to moderation or lost in the ether. At any rate, you’re right and I think I’ll treat this like an acting exercise for as long as I can. I’m ordering a fake beard and mustache (https://amzn.to/3fIeiB1) which I will don if asked to wear a mask, claiming medical exemption. I’ll say, with complete earnestness, that the hairs are specially designed to filter out disease particles. The trick will be to adopt the right subtext and not try to sell it too hard. I have many possibilities to play with, including but not limited to:
Blasé. Oh, you don’t know about the mustache-and-beard alternative? It was on CNN. I thought everyone knew.
Defensive. I’ve already had so many ignorant people tell me this must be fake. They either think my doctor is a quack or that I’m making some kind of joke. As if I would joke about this! Unlike some people, I believe in science.
Embarrassed. I know this looks silly, I feel so demoralized wearing this, I would so prefer to wear a regular face mask like everyone else, but hey, doctor’s orders, what can I do?
Or some combination thereof.
Other face mask alternatives I’m considering:
Short pieces of plastic straw. I’ll stick one in the corner of my mouth and say it filters disease particles coming through or going out of my mouth. If they ask about my nose, I’ll pull out two more pieces and stick them up my nostrils.
A generic marking pen. I’ll draw a thick black line between my upper lip and nose and say the ink filters out disease particles. It’s the same principle as Vick’s Vapo-Rub, but for Covid.
The possibilities are endless. I welcome more.
The game these despots are playing appears to be one of seeing just how much absurdity they can foist on the general population. I like the idea of flipping that game around so that I’m playing it on my own terms. I think the despots have softened people’s minds enough that I can get away with a lot of bullshit.
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Laughing out loud – big time! Love this response and attitude.
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They just implemented statewide diapers for CO. I’ve been to two stores today, no mask, no one challenged me. I doubt it will last. This is meant to be permanent. I think I will make it a practice to get in the store and take it off. At the very least, I will pull it down below my nose so I can breathe. Since there is no eye contact among strangers, that should work.
They use shock collars to train dogs. The masks are a prop, a way of brainwashing people into believing in the virus. Maybe they ought to put shock collars on us too –
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That wouldn’t work for me, either. Shock away — you will be torturing me, yes, but not fooling me.
PS thanks for the reminder of that great scene. I remember the first time I saw it as a kid I felt seriously weirded out but also impressed by its creativity. I did feel they were mocking God and religion — little did I know then. (Fifty-odd years later, that scene seems as tame as a masked shopper, after all the “reality” I’ve witnessed in the interim.) Subsequent viewings of that particular flick were much enjoyed as a teen — at least we got a break from all those stupid fake monkeys for a moment or two during this scene.
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What sells that scene for me is the music. Brilliantly other-worldly. Like someone said to the composer, “Make it church music, but creepier than hell.”
Hadn’t heard anything like that in film again until the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut, which uses the sound of a Romanian liturgy played backwards.
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Are you kidding?
But wait, I would have noticed that, of course, but was distracted by the nudity. I am all over Romanian liturgy.
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While refreshing my memory of the full plot at wikipedia, I was charmed to read this passage
“claiming to be a peaceful society despite using mind-control and illusion on their enemies”
Hmm…. just, hmm…
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