Novac Djokovic is the latest in a long string of bad sports in the tennis world.  I must confess that the only real sport I follow, and indeed still play, is tennis.  It’s a great sport you can play well into…er…uh…maturity, and helps those of us who play stay in shape.  It’s also a brilliant sport to watch in person and even on television, though it is better in person.

All that said, like other professional sports, tennis has its bad guys.  Back in the 70s it was John McEnroe, who raised being an asshole on the court to a fine art form, but players like Jimmy Connors, who on occasion acted out; Ilie Nastase, nicknamed Nasty Nastase; Dennis Ralston in the 60s, and a few others were all close seconds.  There were fewer on the women’s side, but Serena Williams is famous for smashing racquets and screaming during the match to throw off her opponents when she’s behind.  Nick Kyrgios is also well known for being a jerk on the court.

Bad sportsmanship is one thing.  Being a shitty person is a whole other thing, and that’s the spot Djoker occupies.  He’s famous for smashing racquets, screaming at crowds who don’t worship him, and was booted from the US Open in 2020 after he hit a line judge in the throat with a ball he had slapped during one of his rages.  On top of all that, he’s a notorious anti-vaxxer.  At the height of the pandemic in 2020, Djoker held a private tournament in Serbia that turned into a super spreader event and where he himself contracted the virus.  It got so bad that the final match was cancelled.

Learning nothing from that disaster, Djoker has flouted public health rules in many countries; he did it again in Australia last week, but this time got caught by a functioning government not star struck by the world’s number one player.  First, he refused to get vaccinated, and then refused to disclose that fact to the public.  Then he lied on his immigration form saying that he had not traveled internationally in the last 2 weeks when, in fact, had traveled to Spain for an event the previous week.  Worse yet, he appeared in person for an interview the day after he had tested positive for COVID.  Appropriately, Australia cancelled his visa and ordered him to leave the country.  He refused, of course, and was then isolated in a quarantine hotel while his lawyers appealed the ruling.  The judge in the case restored his visa based on a narrow ruling that he was not given sufficient time to respond to the government’s decision.

What did Djoker do then?  He immediately started practicing for the tournament exposing who knows how many people to possible infection.  Wisely, the minister of immigration for Australia cancelled his visa again today, but rather than just getting on a plane and leaving, Djoker then immediately appealed the ruling again; another hearing is scheduled for Sunday.  It’s expected that he’ll lose this appeal.

Australia has some of the most strict COVID policies of any country in the world, and has had relatively low infections as a result.  Melbourne was especially strict, with almost 300 days of lockdown over the last 2 years.  Djoker’s flouting of Australia’s health policy and wanton self-interest has turned the Australian Open into a circus where everyone is talking about Djoker, and actual tennis has taken a back seat to his malignant narcissism.  In fact, he has become TFG of tennis with all the bad traits that label carries with it.  He couldn’t care less about other people; rules don’t apply to him; he ignores science and good public policy; he’s simply a shitty person.

Fingers crossed that he gets his on Sunday and is sent packing back to Serbia so he can fume and watch great players not him compete for the first Grand Slam win of the year.  I’ll be celebrating his deportation.

Amidst all of the shenanigans between Rand Paul and Dr. Fauci, more statistics seem to be bandied about. Some of them are actually thought provoking and deserve some exploration. Paul has taken it upon himself to be the fly in Fauci’s ointment. At every step of the way he has been there to question his findings and disagree with his conclusions. After all, he’s a doctor. Despite popular belief, he is still licensed to practice as an ophthalmologist. I guess he has that going for him.

This is where we get bogged down into the small details of pitting one expert against another. See, Rand Paul did go to medical school. I’m sure he did take classes in immunology. He probably knows more than the average bear. Yet, when compared with a medical doctor that has spent the past four plus decades studying immunology exclusively there can be no real comparison.

The numbers I saw last night would allow you to question all of this. In 2018, the world death rate was 0.76 percent. That was the same death rate as 2019 and the same as 2020. That nugget of information would lead one to believe that COVID hasn’t impacted the world population at all. I suppose if we looked at this through a vacuum we’d close the book and move on.

Sadly though, we don’t live in the world. We live in the United States. In the United States, death rates have not been level. When one looks at the world rates for just COVID we see something else entirely. Sure, there are disputes about how deaths should be counted, but these deaths are counted the same way around the world and they have yielded very clear results.

So, two things are clear based on the data we do see. First, the overall mortality rate IN THE UNITED STATES has gone up since COVID has been a thing. So, releasing world data is nice, but that demonstrates that most of the world has gotten this thing under control. That’s because when health experts in those countries have proposed ways to get the virus under control, the people in those countries actually listened.

There are nearly eight billion people in the world. The U.S. population represents around four percent of that total. Basic math tells us that the mortality rate would really need to spike in the U.S. for it to have a dent in the overall world mortality rate. This is especially true when we consider that things like masking and heightened hygiene have decreased the amount of flu deaths we normally have and probably improved health on the other end.

Fauci already has earned his keep and faith in his expertise. In addition to all of the potential disasters he has helped prevent in the intervening decades, he had to listen to Trump prattle on with his nonsense for over a year. One can forgive him if he loses his cool even this one time.

So, we can debate whether we should count people who die because of COVID or whether people die with COVID. We can argue as if those verbs, pronouns, and adjectives even matter. The point is that an expert that has been doing this for going on 50 years tells us it matters. Sure, he could be wrong I guess. Science continually improves itself throughout time. If you are prepared to take the word of an eye doctor over him then you take your life into your own hands. Good luck.

You couldn’t have set up the punchline any better. Our parish priest announced that the bishop was lifting the dispensation on attending mass virtually. So, no more live streaming of mass. No more simulcasts over the radio. Of course, that came with the usual caveats about health and what not. The punchline? Half of the choir was out with COVID and the high school confirmation night had been cancelled due to COVID. I guess irony isn’t lost on the church.

It was that moment that hit me like a ton of bricks. All of us desperately want to be back to normal. No one likes quarantine. No one likes masks. No one likes getting two rounds of shots and then a third. No one likes rapid tests or blood tests or antibody tests or any other kind of test. Some don’t like it and so they don’t do it. So, he we are.

A friend posted on Facebook about the unemployment rate and it created quite the stir. Unemployment rates are based on the number of people actively seeking employment. If I stop looking for whatever reason then I no longer count. That is a stark contrast with counting the number of people actually working. In 2019, 157.54 million people were working. In 2021, that number dropped to 152.72 million. If you click on the link you’ll notice that 2020 was even lower.

When you have competing numbers it becomes important to talk about context. Clearly, there is a gap between the number of people seeking jobs (which is historically low) and the number of people actually working. Understanding the gap is the key to understanding everything. I really can only speak intelligently about my industry. There is a huge teacher shortage throughout the state of Texas and nationwide. COVID plays a role in that, but it isn’t necessarily the only thing.

It would be more accurate to say there are a variety of factors that have come together to create this situation. COVID simply was a catalyst in bringing these factors all together. Suddenly, hundreds if not thousands of teachers realized they were being asked to do the impossible. Student to teacher ratios were increasing, more pressure was coming from on high about test scores, and support from the central office and from the average home was dwindling. Add that to a pandemic and the need to somehow socially distance 30 children while teaching an interactive lesson without people interacting and it was enough for thousands to throw in the towel.

This is just education. Those in other industries could tell their own tales. Working for a living involves trade offs. We all work for an income and that income allows us to afford certain things. Yet, we exchange some risk in return. That risk takes the form of stress, aggravation, and certainly our time. When those costs become too high then workers will decline the paycheck and live with the consequences of that decision.

Meanwhile, many on the employer side are waiting with bated breath like the bishop. They are waiting for that special day when everything will go back to the way it had always been. Like the bishop, they fail to see the irony of that belief system. We can certainly choose to believe what we want to believe about whether this change is a good or bad thing. If we want, we can call workers lazy and ungrateful for the opportunities they have. We can call employers greedy and unwilling to change with the changing times. Maybe it took COVID to create this new reality, but it doesn’t change what is. Somehow we will have to manage.

Much has been written about the “Let’s go Brandon” phenomenon. In the show “The Simpsons” there was an episode where Homer joined a barbershop quartet. They wanted to come up with a name that would be hilarious at first and then lose its edge with each passing mention. They came up with the B Sharps.

Let’s Go Brandon is the political equivalent. It’s absolutely juvenile on any number of levels and demonstrates a kind of lack of respect that we have come to expect from conservatives. Leave it our state’s leadership to join in on the fun.

Abbott is now playing the role of the prodigal son. Of course, that would only be true if Abbott, Dan Patrick, and the rest of the Texas leadership were a little more respectable. At least the prodigal son from the Bible didn’t punch his father in the face or knee him in the crotch on his way out the door the first time.

See, we didn’t need any of these mask mandates, quarantine rules, rapid testing supplies, or anything like that. We are big, rugged Texans that love being on our own figuratively and literally. We have our own electricity grid. We have our own science when it comes to the pandemic. Just stay the hell out Brandon and let us live our own lives.

Oh wait a minute. Not so fast Brandon. Did I say I wanted you to get the hell out of Texas? I meant that we needed you to come save us from ourselves. It seems Abbott has come back and asked Brandon to save us. Sadly this wasn’t the first time and if he is reelected in 2022 it likely won’t be the last. Hell, if we have another winter storm like we had last year we might be going back to the well again.

In fact, Texas leadership did little to nothing to prevent that from happening. Thus, we see the pattern with Abbott’s leadership style. Insult everyone around you, do nothing to avert disaster, and then come crawling back when times of desperate. Except Abbott is incapable of crawling whether we are being literal or metaphorical. He seems too obtuse to realize the predicament he has put himself in.

This time it is in regards to Omicron variant of the corona virus. We didn’t need to be careful with this stuff. It was always a hoax until it wasn’t. So thanks for your help Brandon. I’ll stop insulting you long enough to accept it and then we will go right back to insulting you. I think I’d rather hear the B Sharps in concert.

A funny thing happened before the Christmas holiday. Donald Trump admitted that he not only has had the vaccine, but he has also had the booster. The crowd’s reaction was interesting to say the least. Avid readers will recognize Mary Shelley as the creator of Frankenstein. The story is easy enough to remember.

As on the money as that analogy seems at first blush, I’m not certain this is a Frankenstein situation. Trump didn’t so much create this monster as much as he simply fed it and released it from it’s cage. He recognized it when he decided to run for president. Say what you want about him, but he recognized the anger that was there and plugged into it. People will make the obvious comparison with dictators and demagogues of the past. They’ll make the obvious and lazy connection to Adolf Hitler. Sure, there are parallels there, but one can always find parallels when they look hard enough for them.

The parallel I draw is not necessarily with Germany but with the French Revolution. He doesn’t fit any particular individual in that scenario. What he has done is take advantage of his place as an outsider. The country is not in as extreme a situation as France was, but there are similarities. People are smart enough to see how things are slipping away. They are largely incapable of pointing the finger where it belongs. They see education costs rising. They see wages stagnating. They see other costs going up like health care costs and housing costs. One party has been really good at pointing fingers away from them. It’s the immigrants’ fault. It’s women’s fault. It’s those LGTBQ+ people’s fault. It’s ACORN. It’s Black Lives Matter. It’s Antifa. It’s critical race theory. It’s the war on Christmas.

What Trump didn’t figure is that once you get people started on a lie, they will follow that lie to its illogical conclusion. They will keep latching onto alternative treatments that don’t work. They’ll keep resisting the obvious. They’ll keep looking for scapegoats and when they don’t find a new one they’ll start pointing the finger at you.

That was seemingly going on in France at the time. The people were dissatisfied and they wanted new leadership. New leadership came in and they didn’t like them either. So, they kept revolting and they kept replacing until they stumbled into Napoleon. The funny thing is that I don’t think that’s what they had in mind in the beginning, but they did so much damage that is who they ended up with.

In that sense, I’m sure there is a comfort in someone that hates the same people you do. There is a certain amount of comfort in that hate. I can offload my failures and my insecurities onto those who I hate. The problem is that same person who helps us to point the finger either has no ideas to fix anything or actively doesn’t want to fix it. They want to fund raise off of it. They want to rob you blind while they are getting you to look at the “other”.

There are moments when things seem to occur to me in bunches. They are relatively small moments. We were told as soon as we got this virus under control then things would return to a sense of normalcy. It’s been nearly two years now and things haven’t gone back to normal.

It’s when you add all these moments up and realize that the world might never go back to the way things were. It’s similar to the taking off of shoes at the airport. It’s just a small change that serves as a reminder that things will never fully be the way they used to be. That’s a relatively small thing that only comes up in isolated and focused events. COVID seems to be effecting more than that. Beyond the death, illness, and economic devastation, it is the little things that seem to be the not so gentle reminder that life will never be the same ever again.

When I was a kid, I loved to read choose your own adventure books. I used to read them about sports. There was one in particular where you got to coach a team in the Super Bowl. So, I pulled the quarterback to see what would happen and then went back and didn’t. I’m sure every kid that had that particular book did the same thing. Kids are fascinated with the idea of seeing where things will go if you make a different decision.

Life doesn’t work that way. We don’t get many second opportunities to make a different decision. It’s looking more and more that COVID is not a thing that happened to us, but something that is happening to us. The distinction might seem like a fine one, but it is simply a reflection that the decisions made in December, January, and February of 2019 and 2020 are still impacting us today. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the decisions that were not made.

I had lied to myself and told myself there was no way of knowing how bad this would become, but it is a lie. As a nation, we saw how bad it got during the Spanish flu. Moreover, we saw how much grief and loss we avoided during H1N1 and Ebola. We’ve seen pandemics handled badly and we’ve seen them handled well. We know exactly what happens when you idly sit by and do nothing. We knew exactly what to do and our leaders did what they do best. They fumbled the ball and tried to tell you none of it really happened.

This wasn’t a bad hurricane the government failed to clean up afterwards. This wasn’t a tax cut gone awry. This wasn’t a war that seemingly went on forever for no reason. Those are bad enough and those impact entire generations or regions of the country. This impacted every region. This impacted every generation. This will continue to impact all of us. We aren’t going “back to normal” and the sooner we realize that the better.

In the backdrop of all of this, the man that did all of this won’t go away. Not only does he not have the sense of shame to hide in his isolated greenside bunker, he continues to say he won. He says he will win again. The architect of the single biggest health catastrophe in our nation’s history won’t go away. Like the societal changes due to COVID, I guess he can’t. Maybe nature will do us a favor on both counts.