Helter Shelter (in place) – Week Seven
When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes; when you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours.
Albert Einstein
Kudos to a wise fan of the MP for suggesting such a “timely” topic. I needed some new material.
Seven weeks…forty-two days…one-thousand eight hours. Not that I’m counting.
The Pretty Blonde and I go through approximately one roll of toilet paper a week. We have nine rolls left, which means we’ve got enough TP to last us until the Fourth of July. There’s a bug in the algorithm, however. Our go-to brand is usually two-ply Angel Soft, which may have a higher thread count than the bed sheets over at the Four Seasons. But instead of being able to traipse to the store to buy the 9-roll bundle of fluffiness that fills up most of my trunk, my last TP allotment was four individual rolls of Scott Brand, a single-ply version reminiscent of Brillo pads. Seriously, I can use it to clean my grill. Based on the fact we’re tearing off sheets of Scott Brand as though each parchment may be radioactive, we might just make to Labor Day.
Such are the choices we’re forced to make in these dire times.
In business, time is money. But when it comes to sheltering-in-place, money is time. In a desperate attempt to scrub the scum of Joe Exotic from my memory banks, I ponied up for a subscription to what I hope will be more cerebral subjects on PBS. Especially attractive are the series of documentary features that quench my thirst for history. I’ve discovered a simple formula for slogging my way thru a daily dose of antiquity as told by Ken Burns— budget at least three hours for every two-hour episode. That takes into account the requisite thirty-minutes of nap time, fifteen minutes for the scrounging of snacks, ten minutes to scroll thru my phone, and five minutes to debate the merits of subjecting myself to a punishing set of push-ups ( ‘”later” is currently undefeated). A pair of 10-part series on the history of baseball and the Civil War should last me to Memorial Day.
Speaking of time, the six-counties of the San Francisco Bay Area just decreed an extension of SIP orders until the end of May. Christ on a bike, when is this ordeal going to end?
Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced this week a four-stage process allowing for the state to “reopen,” and thankfully it doesn’t include hooking the citizenry up to IV drips filled with Drano. Don’t take me to court on this, but I believe the steps break down like this;
Stage One: Same stuff, different day. Continue binging Netflix until further notice.
Stage Two: Stores, offices, and schools reopen, but with heavy social-distancing restrictions and widespread contact tracing. You’re allowed to step outside of your home for extended periods of time. When I was a schoolboy, they called this “recess.”
Stage Three: Gyms, movie theaters, and churches reopen. So do hair and nail salons. Someone can actually touch you.
Stage Four: “We’re going to Disney World!”
And then there’s the stock market, climbing the charts like Abby Road. But is this rally fueled by a handful of one-hit wonders, or is the entire S&P 500 going platinum? Consider this…on April 30, 2019, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 26,592. Exactly one year later, on April 30, 2020, the Dow closed at 24,287, a decline of only 8.7%. Say, what? Absent Congress and the Federal Reserve unleashing a tsunami of liquidity on the financial and economic dumpster fire caused by the global shutdown, the stock market is suggesting that the difference between a 3.5% and 15% (or more) unemployment rate, an annual federal budget deficit quadrupling from $1.0 trillion to $4.0 trillion, and a GDP contraction worthy of a modern-day remake of the Grapes of Wrath, doesn’t even warrant a plain vanilla correction (a 10% decline). Buying stocks right now is like shopping at the Apple Store: you have to look really hard to find something you want to buy actually marked down. The stock market is telling anyone who will listen that during the second half of 2020 the economy is going to get off the mat faster than Rocky Balboa. Maybe so, and in which case I will have to eat a lot of fried crow. Assuming, of course, I can afford it. Look, I love a good fairytale as much as anybody, but experience tells me that in reality it takes time for the ugly duckling to turn into a swan.
Man, am I bored.