The way things are.

How are things? The general consensus is: "Not great."

A quarter of the nation is unemployed, thanks to a novel virus causing international lockdowns for social distancing.

Large cities are powderkegs of "protesters" and police clashing.

Cultural wars are in full swing. We have strong evidence (hell, let's just say "confirmation") of outside influence by international online arsonists who are fomenting hate and discontent on social media.

The President says that he does not trust:
The news media.
Scientists and doctors.
Our nation's intelligence services.
Our nation's criminal justice system.

The Left is cast as being full-bore socialists who want to tear down free enterprise, and get rid of the police.
The Right is being portrayed as racist, war-mongering, radical conservative, gun-obsessed zealots who care nothing for the nation's environment.

Police are being portrayed as focused on killing or at least hurting people of color whenever they can get away with it, who totally would get away with it, if The Left let down their guard.

Every use of force by police is now suspect to the public eye, if there is not a long history of the actor being a dangerous criminal, and there is not beautiful video of the event, depicting the recipient of police force committing indisputably heinous crimes (i.e., not just against police) when the police step in and expertly execute maneuver which stops the crime.

Police are assumed to be part of an inherently racially unjust system.

Because of this, people have taken to the streets in demonstrations which have repeatedly become riots. People will en masse block highways, blocking other people, to "raise awareness" of their issue. (This, to me, is akin to punching out a random old woman to raise awareness about breast cancer.)

People are stressed.

Listen to me: 

WE WILL GET THROUGH THIS.  

We as police will adjust some of the things we can, and the public will have to understand what we cannot adjust.

A vaccine is coming, and the greatest nation on the planet will get back to work again.

The current dumbass President will leave office, and another dumbass President will assume the role.

Do not get worked up over what someone says over the Internet-- chances are, they're just some Russian 'bot trying to goad you into a position of rage, to contribute to our chaos.

I and my brothers and sisters in blue will continue to try. And dammit, we'll try to do better. We have to.

I am sorry for our collective Troubles, and I will take a drink when they are past. For now, the liquor cabinet remains shut, because we have work to do.

If you can, try to be understanding of that idiot neighbor of yours, and do something kind.
If you can, let that comment box with the flashing cursor in it go unfilled with furious text.
If you can, send a little olive branch to that person that you used to think well of, before finding that they were just a little over on the Other Side on some divisive issue or another.

Without fear.

Because I have a lot of nerdy friends and wanted in on the social references that they made, I bought a graphic novel that came highly recommended. But this post isn't about that.


The adult comic book was originally published by installment in 1986, and was written in 1985, which was set as the present, with a lot of reflection on the previous half century, at which point it had diverged from our real timeline.


What was fascinating, though, was how scared we were of pending war. In this book, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan seemed clearly to indicate that, without some kind of major interference, an invasion of Pakistan would occur. And from the man on the street to the POTUS, World War III seemed inevitable.


But it was just another timeline, in an imagined universe, by a good writer and his illustrator.


Friends, I remember being afraid, as a little kid, of nuclear war. I remember being afraid of something that our nation couldn't control, coming in and taking our lives away from us.


As the 1990's came, and the USSR fell, the nuclear threat (or the fear of it) diminished. I grew into adulthood. I had the opportunity to decide my future.


At no time in my adult life have I felt afraid that our nation would be attacked on a wide scale. Sure, individual attacks can and have happened, but think about how indignant we were to have even those occur.  When you attack our country, there are major consequences. It's not a good idea. We send guys like John Shirley and his mates over to kick your butt.


We don't think a whole lot about our military, because of how effective they are at letting us lead our quiet normal lives. I'm not saying that it's right, but I'm pointing out how well they do their job: we as a nation get to continue to be self-absorbed and silly, without paying attention to what our military really does, because they're just that good.


For about 364 days of the year, it's actually okay to be self-absorbed, and not think of who guards our freedoms.


Today, we think of our soldiers, our marines, our sailors, our airmen, and our guardsmen who gave everything. Because we really don't have to. You can bet that their families think about them a lot.

Thanks.

With frickin' laser beams.

Due to a change in my insurance on June 1st, I had some money in my Flex Spend account that was "Use-It-Or-Lose-It." I decided to get LASIK. Sadly, the way the money falls, I can only get one eye done this week, and in two weeks can get the other one.

Yesterday, my dad drove me to Dallas, where, after a cuppa  and an omelet at Café Brazil, we went to the Cattle Call Eye Center, and they prepped me for eye surgery.

Actually, the prepping involved getting a name tag on the chest (kinda smart, given their volume), paying their marketing person from a Health Savings Account card and from a Flex Spend Account card, and then going into the "Relaxation Room."

In the Relaxation Room, they had a fan for some white noise, and the lights were turned low. There was a decent stereo playing music. An attendant who was not a nurse had me lie down in a leather couch, and put a blanket over me (it was cool in there.). She then gave me two pills and a cup of water. The first pill, I was to swallow. The second pill, I was to let dissolve under my tongue. I knew that they were for anxiety, but because I'm not Anthony Michael Hall, I asked what it was before I took it.

"Oh, it's just Vicodin," she said. I asked her if she was sure about that. (My stomach doesn't much care for Vicodin, and I hadn't read anything about getting scheduled narcotics with the surgery.)  She checked up. "Oh, I mean Valium. To calm you. I knew it was one of those V drugs." Noting that the stereo was now playing Enigma's Chant music with the Gregorian Monks and the heavy thump-thump that makes it a favorite for booty music, I remarked that if she said "Viagra," I was going to have to point out that I am a married man.

They put a silly mesh shower cap thing on me, with gauze over my ears, and walked me into the eye surgery room, where they lay me down, and wedged my head in, and swung a machine over my face. The doctor, an officious guy who had patients to hustle through, was talking to his intern as he struggled to push that machine as close as possible to my eye, cramming it down against my nose and brow: "Note the pronounced brow ridge. It and the significant bridge on the patient's nose cause some difficulty in getting the machine down to the sunken orbital," he said. I informed him that I preferred the term Cro-magnon and that he could commence with the "occulectomy"*.  He laughed, and cranked that mutha down onto my face, asking if I was okay. I admitted that it was uncomfortable, but bade him continue, please.

They used one laser to cut a flap into the cornea, and another to then shape the lens of my right eye so that it was the correct shape to focus light between the lens and the cornea onto the retina, so that I can see without glasses. He then taped a plastic shield onto my face, and sent me on my way.

They had an in-house glasses shop there, where a dude swapped the prescription right lenses in my glasses and sunglasses for zero-correction lenses, for $20, while I waited. Great work at a great price, actually. I gave him cash, and no paperwork was done, so that might have been a side job. Hey, it never hurts to ask. :)

The doc pushed for me to get plugs to hold in extra tears to prevent dry-eye. I just didn't have the cash. I'll probably do it when I go in again in two weeks.

So today, my right eye is good with no correction. I have to put drops of some kind in, every waking hour.

This was what I found, first thing in the morning. My wife assures me that it looks better, now.


____________________________________
*Forgive me for not having heretofore been conversant with the correct terminology for such a procedure, which I was facetiously suggesting he perform.