JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Although I have enough unread books to withstand a siege, I find that I cannot read contemporary fiction these days and must escape to the distant past. Way distant, like 1,000 years ago. I’ve been reading books and listening to online lectures and podcasts on ancient and medieval history. Maybe seeking comfort in the knowledge that if humans could survive their ignorance a millennium ago, we can survive our arrogant ignorance (arrgnorance?) now.

In Quezon City, 21 people from Barangay Bagong Pag-asa (A New Hope, Star Wars fans) were arrested for staging a rally without a permit. They were demanding food relief from the QC government, leading to a violent dispersal by the police. The QC government denies that the barangay had been allowed to go hungry, and said the rally had been instigated by troublemakers. Reminder to local governments: starvation trumps fear of coronavirus. Can’t do social distancing on an empty stomach.

Meanwhile, the popular mayor of Pasig has been summoned by the National Bureau of Investigation to explain why he violated the law granting the executive special powers to address this emergency. Apparently the violation was in allowing limited tricycle service so medical frontliners could go to the hospital. As this predated the signing of the law, he is presumably being investigated for not being psychic.

Is this a good time or a bad time to be a cynic? On one hand your low opinion of human nature is confirmed, on the other hand your opinions are now common. It’s enough to turn you into an altruist.

On our chat group someone suggested a way to get out of lockdown legally: Astral projection! It would be great to Dr Strange ourselves somewhere else, except that this is a pandemic. I already spent much of high school attempting to leave my corporeal form, which was miserable and nearly comatose in Chemistry class (The teacher once called us “the dregs of humanity”.) Later I even attended a couple of seminars on regression and reincarnation that required one to travel to another place and time without leaving the room. I immediately fell asleep. All my teleportation and out-of-body requirements are met by books and movies, thank you very much.

My old (in his 70s) friend who now has all the time to read his five shelves of apocalypse-themed French comics reminded me that the perfect quarantine movie was made in 1962. Gravity by Alfonso Cuaron, Castaway by Robert Zemeckis, and The Martian by Ridley Scott are excellent movies about isolation, but for full-on rich people panicking in quarantine (and unable to hoard groceries and send each other photos of their stockpiles) madness, watch The Exterminating Angel by the great Luis Buñuel.

So I got out my Quiapo Cinematheque DVD, fired up the player (no streaming hassles) and watched it. It’s even better than I remember. Later!