You know, I was just going to do one more post about COVID-19 and then move on. Something technical about its link to strokes.
Partly because, Do you want to read another hot take on the Coronavirus? Partly because I’m so angry about what’s going on, I figured if I did yet another one after a few more days had passed, I’d probably bust one of my brain aneurysms.
Then Boris Johnson did his thing on the telly.
[Usually I’d suggest that you check out the Apoplexy Tiny Letter for some light relief, but…]
Here’s a quick visual representation of the success that the immoral, lying scumbag of a Prime Minister imposed on us by a certain section of the populace of these islands describes –
What’s more, noted bastion of Marxist propaganda, The Morning Star Financial Times indicates that things are much worse that the figures released by the Westminster government suggest –
[T]he number of total deaths now is likely to be about 47,000
The Financial Times, 28/4/20
Now, this isn’t going to be some thinly-veiled boosting of the job the Scottish government is doing. I’m bloody furious with them, too.
See, the Scottish government’s approach to the outbreak has done little more than tinker at the edges of Johnson’s homicidal approach in England. Defenders of this approach might say that this is because they don’t have sufficient powers. But surely when the lives of the people who live here in Scotland are not just at risk, but being lost in their thousands because of a wilfully negligent and ideologically-driven public health strategy, a radical approach is required.
What’s the worst outcome? Having the residents of Scotland be expressly told that their lives are of no worth?
Citation? I’ll give ye a citation, sonny
Why so angry, Stroke Bloke? you might ask. Apart from the obvious? As I say, I was going to bow out of Coronavirus chat by noting its links to strokes. Then I read this article – Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with covid-19, are dying of strokes – and it’s absolutely horrifying. And I’ve read Derek Raymond’s I Was Dora Suarez.
Well, that’s fair enough. But seriously, don’t read or listen to Dora Suarez. Its author says writing it broke and changed him.
Here are a few lines from The Washington Post regarding one of the effects of what the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States have chosen to let run rampant among their populaces:
- As [the doctor] used a needlelike device to pull out the clot [from the brain], he saw new clots forming in real-time around it
- Coronavirus patients are experiencing strokes that can obliterate large parts of the brain responsible for movement, speech and decision-making in one blow.
- “We have never seen so many [stroke patients] in their 50s, 40s and late 30s.”
And there was me wanting to talk to you about the Village Voice’s 50 Most NYC Albums Ever. Hey! Gil Scott-Heron’s Pieces Of A Man was at #2!
Mate. You gotta stay home. The Man said.
But, but … we are going to get an entire longform blog with comments on that voice list of albums aren’t we? Because I have a lot to say.
For instance: “Like a Virgin is not a record about NYC in any way”. And “comparing Like a Virgin with Goo, and coming up with Like a Virgin being better is a choice, and I do mean that in a bitchy way”. And “That list should actually be named ‘aging uptight New York boomers at the voice argue with the young diverse staff they hired but whose opinion they didn’t want”. I mean, it’s either 1970s or hip hop right? Oh sorry and that LCD sound system record with the New York song on it. (I know, I know, Goo is core gen-x-ism and they did have yeah yeah yeahs and Interpol but really…)
But Paul’s Boutique being the third best record about NYC is a choice I can get behind. Might be off by one or two but I’m not gonna talk shit about Gil Scott Heron. And the list is great inasmuch as it causes us to all get angry about something which isn’t really angering. It reminds me of olden days, when we would meet in “bars” and “argue” about “music” without worrying about “spraying phlegm on each other which could result in a stroke”. Fuuuuuuuuck. Sorry see I got diverted. It’s almost like a cheery blog about music is gonna get pulled into a conversation about the times and … well … hey … see above.
Hope all is well…
If this ends up with me being able to listen to Paul’s NYC Boutique Listening Party, wherein Paul lays the smack down regarding how NYC albums work in a series of ten-minute podcasts incorporating fair use-friendly snippets of the applicable albums, then all this will have been worth it. Not least because I can respond to the rectification of Steve Reich’s omission by sending in a comment to set you right about the NYC-ness of Like A Virgin.
And since this is what we’re doing, because of course it is, that’s the wrong LCD Soundsystem record. I bow to no-one in my love for the glorious Rock’n’Roll Suicide cover that is NYI♥️UBURBMD, but the correct answer is clearly LCD Soundsystem.
Come at me, bros.
(All is well.)