News you can use
News you can use
I am very pleased to announce that despite, and sometimes even because of, the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is still generating odd news.
This fact alone made getting up and putting clean clothes on this morning worthwhile.
My intent today, then is simply to cram as much of the latest pandemic-related news as possible in to my column and see how far it takes us.
People around the world have been sharing photos of how wildlife has moved back into their mostly abandoned city streets – wild goats in Scotland, dolphins and ducks in Italy, a puma strolling down a street in Mexico, bold as brass. Then the wildlife in India said, hold my beer.
As if hospitals in India didn’t have enough to worry about with a pandemic and all, UPI reported Thursday that a leopard – a real life wild leopard – wandered into a hospital and took up temporary residence in a women’s bathroom. A female employee found the cat inside the facility. Staff locked the big cat in the bathroom until wildlife authorities could remove the large feline.
No word on whether the woman spontaneously took care of her bathroom duties upon viewing the cat in the loo. But really, I just hope the cat wasn’t drinking out of the “one-flush-refresh water bowl.”
——
AFP reported Tuesday that a recycling company in Ontario, Canada, was forced by a recent incident to remind city residents not to put their discarded swords in the household recyclables bins.
Bluewater Recycling Association had a social media post that said the sword “was found before going through our machinery or it could have caused expensive damage to our machines and serious health and safety issues for our employees.”
In other words, their machinery could be felled by a sword – that seems so 1700s-duel-to-the-death-ish, right? But to be fair, they also told all the bored people, who are using their pandemic time off to clean out excess in their homes, that the machine can’t handle pots and pans, bake ware, electrical extension cords, nuts and bolts, or chains, either.
So I think it’s safe to say that the sword person should not turn in the sword’s matching armor. Neither weapon, I’m guessing, protect from COVID-19 anyway, so good riddance, but save it for the secondhand store.
——
And finally, Dr. Anthony Fauci, lead medical advisor to the president in all things pandemic and a National Institutes of Health director and health advisor to five other presidents, is being awarded one of the highest honors in the land, or the world for that matter.
The Associated Press reported that Fauci is getting his likeness made into, and mass produced as, a bobblehead doll.
I know. I’m totally jealous, too.
When told last Friday during an interview on “Fox and Friends” that the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee was making the bobblehead doll he said, “That’s nice if people want to do it, but I have other things to worry about.”
See, it’s that focused dedication to his job that has earned him this honor and why the doll with depict him with one hand outstretched to depict the gesture he uses when talking about flattening the curve on the COVID-19 spread.
When told that $5 of each purchase would be donated to the American Hospital Association, he said, “Great.”
Don’t take his brevity as a lack of appreciation for the honor. I imagine that sometime in the future, when all of this is behind us, he will sit back in his office chair, sigh and rub his whole face with his hands just because he can. Then he’ll spend a mindless half-hour poking that doll in the face with fingers that just touched his face and laughing at that over-sized bobbley head doing its bobblehead bobble.
Ah, such carefree abandon awaits us all.
——
Sorry I didn’t have space to write about the Florida judge having to admonish lawyers to get out of bed, put clothes on and even cover up bathing suits for teleconference meetings with his honor. But just so you know, I’m pretty excited that my sweatpants and flannel shirt are now courtroom appropriate at [email protected].
Reader Comments(0)