150,000 corpses = a lot of mole hill

Mount Everest vs. stack of American COVID-19 dead

It looks like mandatory face masks are coming to this corner of eastern Nebraska.

At long last, and with the bodies starting to pile up.

The Douglas County Board of Health voted unanimously Monday to authorize the health director, Adi Pour, to require wearing face masks here. As usual, Trumpers and other assorted wingnuts lined up to champion their "freedom" to infect others amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Because 'Murika.

Others expressed concerns that masks prevent their children from developing healthy immune systems. And some said fears about the virus are overblown.

“Why are we making a mountain out of a mole hill?” Seth Paulson of Valley said.

Pour pushed back against those who questioned public health data.

She said she felt comfortable about local case trends around the Fourth of July. But week by week since the holiday, cases have risen, and Pour said the time is right for a mandate.

Douglas County last week saw its highest three-day run of new cases — 476 — since the end of May. Pour noted that the county recorded a total of 940 new cases of COVID-19 during the week that ended Saturday, a 50% increase from the week before and the highest weekly total since May 30.

In addition, the positivity rate for tests increased to 9.6% last week from 7% the week prior.

“This is not an easy decision,” she said. “If the data had been different the last two weeks, I probably would have said it’s not necessary. But the data tells a different story.”

AFTER THE Omaha World-Herald story posted online, former columnist Matthew Hansen highlighted anti-masker Paulson's objection on Twitter and wondered how many bodies would make a mountain. Hansen didn't do the math. 

I did.

We now have about 150,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19, and experts say that number surely is an undercount.

Now, let's assume the average depth of these bodies is 1.5 feet -- fat, skinny, adult, child . . . roughly average it out. Now stack the bodies one atop the other like a giant pillar of corpses.

Your stack of American corpses would be 225,000 feet high.

Now divide that by 5,280, the number of feet in a mile. That makes the stack of American COVID corpses 42.6 miles high -- 42.6136363 miles, to be exact. I think that qualifies as mountain high. Mount Everest, after all, is just under 5.5 miles high at 29,020 feet.

No, Seth. You have it backward. You're making a mole hill out of 7.7532736 Mount Everests.

Now shut the hell up.
https://twitter.com/redcloud_scribe/status/1287894430905782274?s=20

3 Chords & the Truth: Push back

“Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you."

-- Flannery O'Connor

That goes double in these times of fascists, cranks, the plague and a radically deviant conception of "freedom" and "liberty."

If 3 Chords & the Truth has to turn into some sort of Resistance podcast, so be it. This thing -- meaning America -- has gotten out of hand, and we'll be lucky to live through it.

We'll have to hope and pray that we get lucky. While we're waiting to see, the Big Show will have some great music to salve your soul just a bit.

Push back like hell, my friends.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Dear Pete Ricketts . . . .

Dear Pete,

I hate to ruin your day and all with a little perspective, but my basket of f***s to give has been empty for a while now.

Tuesday, there were 318 new COVID-19 cases reported in Nebraska. Italy reported 114. That puts us 204 ahead of -- or, more accurately, behind -- Italy.

Nebraska's population is 1.9 million. Italy's is 60.4 million. Just so you know.

Perspective is a stone-cold bitch. And you are a catastrophically bad governor. We'll be damned lucky to survive you.

3 Chords & the Truth: Same old song

It's the same old song. Second verse, same as the first.

And here we are in Coronavirusland -- right back where we started in March.

In March.

Apart from "We live in f***ed-up times in a f***ed-up country," I really don't know what to say. Rather, I don't know what to say that's any different from what other rational believers in science are saying right now.

We here at 3 Chords & the Truth got nothin' . . . except the music. And the music is exceptionally good.

One hopes it's so good that it'll make you feel a little bit better for a while. I would say "make you forget," but that's a bit of a stretch -- even for the Big Show.

But that's just the same old song, isn't it?

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Whatever works

How are you getting by this week in this time of disease and woe?

Me, I've found that the best method for coping is . . . whatever works.

A big part of "whatever works," we at the Big Show hope, is the Big Show itself. A weekly dose of good music helps a lot when you're afraid to turn on the news for fear of what fresh hell awaits.

But while you're listening to the program -- listening to the finest in recorded music from the vast 3 Chords & the Truth library -- might I suggest sitting in a comfy chair with a refreshing libation. It might just be the shot in the liver you need.

PERHAPS A Skyball would do the tri . . . tri . . . hic . . . trick.

This classic 1960s bit of alcoholic nostalgia is sort of like a spruced-up highball, only made with vodka, lemon juice and lemonade. And I'm sure it's healthier than sitting on the stoop with a Lieutenant Dan cigar and muttering the F-word a lot.

Like I said, whatever works.

Of course, if you happen to be under 21 -- or if you just don't like booze -- I'm sure a nice refreshing glass of no-octane lemonade would work just fine, too.

Listen to me, I was pre-med in college. Wait, I was a journalism major.

Hell, what's the difference?

Good music and good libations -- that will help you get through this time of pandemic and pan-idiots. And helping you get through it all is our special mission on 3 Chords & the Truth.

S'alright? S'alright.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Doing what we can

First, the pandemic. Then, the reckoning.

Hell of a spring you're having, America.

Amid a double-barreled storm -- a double-barreled world of hurt -- what then are we to do? The answer is both complicated and really simple. Being a simple sort, I'll stick to the latter with this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.

Now, the envelope, please. And the answer is . . . what we can.

We do what we can. That's certainly what we're doing here on the Big Show -- what we can. It involves (one hopes) not being dumb, not saying dumb things (at least not extraordinarily dumb, which seems the fashion for American society today) and playing the best music available here in the Apocalypse Bunker.

MANY MIGHT know that better as "the studio."

That pretty much sums up this week's show -- playing good music to soothe your soul and not saying or doing anything extraordinarily dumb. Don't worry, we'll still have plenty of the ordinarily dumb.

Just ask my wife.

I suppose that's all there is to be said -- he says as the smartphone and iPad keep dinging and lighting up with the latest Fresh Hell Alerts. (Would it be appropriate to change the alert tone to something more appropriate to these times . . . like an air-raid siren?)

Ponder that after you rebalance yourself by listening to the show.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: No. 1 in the heart of . . . something

When life has become a slog and the world around you is in turmoil, sometimes you just need to self-medicate . . . with music.

This may or may not preclude self-medicating with other things. It's that kind of year.

This week on the Big Show, we're self-medicating with a lot of hit records -- and records that, in your Mighty Favog's humble opinion, should have been hit records. Or bigger hit records.

It beats crawling into a dark corner with a bottle. Which, again, may or may not preclude also crawling into a dark corner with a bottle. Because 2020.

But for right now, you can try coping by listening to the hits and shoulda-been-hits on this here edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

I guess that covers it. So give it a listen and escape the suck for a while.

That is all.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Please do not adjust your set

Please do not adjust your set. 2020 is experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.

(Cue the peppy, yet soothing instrumental music to accompany the "technical difficulties" slide on your screen.)

Please stand by -- perhaps that ought to be the new motto of the United States as the country staggers between a pandemic, economic collapse, civil unrest and a president who manages to be deeply evil and barking mad, too.

God knows "E Pluribus Unum" just isn't cutting it anymore.

If you have any answers beyond "Just hold on, and do the best you can," the Big Show would like to hear them. Address your reply to 3 Chords & the Truth, Apocalypse Bunker, Omaha, by God, Nebraska, Oh-What-the-Hell-Is-the-Point-Anymore?

AT A TIME when the president sets federal agents and troops upon peaceful protesters just so he can walk unbothered by the hoi polloi to a boarded-up church to stage a phony photo op with a Bible he doesn't read, just holding on and doing the best we can seems to be about all we can do right now.

Just hold on. We'll do the best we can to play some good music to distract you from your aching fingers.

That's about all I can tell you right now. God help us.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Amerika, a pictorial study

Here's a scene from Saturday's protest in Salt Lake City.

If this is how Amerika's storm-trooper cops treat a 67-year-old leukemia patient who walks with a cane, how the hell do you think your average able-bodied black man gets treated by police in the 'hood?

The old guy's crime? He was taking pictures when the cops swooped in to "dominate the battlespace."

“I thought they were just coming down the street and all of a sudden they came charging at me,” he told KTVX television. “Ten minutes before the armored vehicles showed up that’s when I got there,” said Tobin. “When I went down there to take pictures there was no mob scene. It was just a bunch of people standing around taking pictures. I was at the end.”

Afterwards, Tobin says a group of people then came to his aid trying to call an ambulance, but one couldn’t get through.

“They stayed with me,” he said. “Bandaged up some of my cuts on my arms.”

Frustrated, Tobin went home. The next morning, he says he received a call from Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown.

“He said that’s not the way the police are supposed to act, and he was going to look into it with internal affairs and the review board, and take action,” said Tobin. “I told him whatever you’re going to do is fine with me.”

Tobin, who has Leukemia, has a visible scratch on his head from his fall.

“My shoulder still hurts a little bit,” he said. “My rib on the back is still sore, but the main problem is my knee.”

If given the chance, Tobin shares what he would tell the officer who knocked him down.

“I’d just say, I hope you don’t do it again.”

I DON'T KNOW exactly at what point your average cop in the United States became your average Nazi storm trooper, but here we are. In the last 10 days, we have heard -- and seen -- story after story after story after story of ordinary, peaceful folk being brutalized by "(fill in the blank's) finest" while "boogaloo bois," vandals, looters and arsonists run amok as America recoils in civil-disobedient horror at . . . well . . . the kind of crap you see here. And a lot worse.

Repeatedly, murderously worse.

But it's OK. The police chief is going to look into it. The trouble is, America's police chiefs have been "looking into it" for the last 55 goddamn years. Maybe the mayor will appoint a commission.

Or maybe not. President Caligula probably would fire off some mean tweets calling him a pussy.

IT SEEMS we live in a land where "pro-life" politicians -- like Donald Trump, "the most pro-life president ever" -- just can't satiate their blood lust, and now your average, unarmed African-American just doesn't hit the spot anymore. Now we have cops pointing weapons at the heads of toddlers.

In that case, the Long Beach, Calif., police have promised to launch a "review." Don't hold your breath.

Meantime, maybe some cops will take a knee or do a silly dance with the early shift of protesters. Hell of a great way of getting limbered up for the main event.


* * *
P.S.: Judging by his apparel, it seems that the Utah victim of wanton police brutality is a Nebraska fan. Haven't Nebraska fans suffered enough?

The crooked, white heart of a dying land

You need to watch this. You need to hear what CNN's Don Lemon has to say.

You do that -- I'll wait. Then I have something I need to say. In advance, I ask that you pardon my French.

Have you finished with that Don Lemon video? Good.

Now, you know what the problem is here, right? It's this: Way too many white folk are just like Donald Trump -- narcissists who lack empathy, only in their case that deficit only applies to those whom they've been raised to disdain.

Guess what, people. Those who raised you in such a manner were just as fucked up as you are. They taught you wrong, and you just aren't introspective enough to question your assumptions and conditioning.

LISTEN, the bad news is we're all fucked up. The good news is you're not alone. The better news is you have the power to fix your fucked-upitude. You have an imagination -- use it. Put yourself in the other guy's shoes for just a minute.

Until I got to Baton Rouge Magnet High, due to life in the public schools of Redneckistan and thanks to my own family dynamics . . . well, let's just say it's easy for me to understand the sort of rage we're seeing tonight. At age 59, I consider it, as Bobby Kennedy related in 1968 after Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, "the awful grace of God."

It's not terribly difficult for me to imagine just wanting to "burn the motherfucker down." It's not terribly difficult for me to understand internalized rage and humiliation.

Of course, it's not right to just "burn the motherfucker down," but it's certainly understandable as hell. At least if you get a hold of your self-absorbed self and imagine what it's like to have a cop with his knee on your neck . . . just because he can, figuring the consequences for that will be minimal.

WELL, we're seeing the consequences now, ain't we, Cap?

The problem here is that this sort of riotous anarchy has to be quelled, but the ones whose job that is have zero moral standing to do it. Not anymore. That doesn't make a violent mob any less a violent mob; it just makes us well and truly fucked right now.

Really, we're in an awful place when the tripolar dynamic in any society is, first, the lawless, enraged mob. Then, second, there are the jackbooted thugs, as embodied by Donald Trump and his cultists.

Finally, third, there is what appears to be the feckless liberal authorities -- in this case in Minneapolis -- who believe in relevance and self-abasement (self-abasement which isn't unmerited, I hasten to add), but are powerless to do much else but validate the feelings of the unthinking, enraged Id indiscriminately destroying everything in its path.

Welcome to the Revolution, folks. Chances are, it won't end well.

Minnesota copbots' algorithm needs tweaking

Let me get this straight: A mob burns down half a Minneapolis city block, including a police station, and . . . nothing. 

But a CNN crew, standing where the cops said it could do a live shot, gets arrested while on the air.

This after the reporter told the state police copbots they'd move wherever the cops wished. Handcuffs. No explanations for the arrests.

PERHAPS THE crew's mistake was that it didn't burn shit down. Then the CNN journalists would be golden.

Welcome to Amerika. Now, why are mobs smashing in storefronts and burning down police precincts again?

Obviously, there are many paths to mindless thugishness. Indiscriminately burning down your city as part of a mob is only one of them.

100,000 and counting

One. Hundred. Thousand.

Dead. In less than four months.

Our economy is in ruins. We're not near done.

God help us, because Donald Trump and his followers sure as hell won’t.

And wear a damned mask.

3 Chords & the Truth: The Blues Cafe

Damn right, I've got the blues.

Damn right, I bet you do, too.

It's a blue world here in Coronavirusland, so there's only one thing for us to do on 3 Chords & the Truth. It's time to play the blues.

Fortunately, if your playlist is as broad as American music, there's lots to pick from. It's hard to escape the blues in something that expansive.

Rock? Blues.

Jazz? Blues.

The American songbook? Look beneath the surface of so much of it. Blues.

Damn right, we got the blues -- right here on the Big Show. Which is perfect for when a whole country done got the blues.

Trust us; the blues will cure your blues. At least a little.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Ben Sasse explains it all

More than 90,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus. For more than three months, the president of the United States did nothing, despite repeated warnings.

He repeatedly said the virus would disappear -- like a miracle. He repeatedly said it was a Democrat hoax. He repeatedly has touted quack cures.

Americans can't get tested when they need to. Doctors, nurses, first responders and "essential workers" can't get proper protective equipment. The elderly are dying in nursing homes -- alone.

The gravely ill are dying in hospitals, about one every minute. Alone.

America's governors and mayors are trying to manage the gravest threat this country has faced since World War II -- alone, with scant aid from the federal government.

ALL ACROSS our land, high-school and college seniors are graduating -- online. And their future? Up in the air, where the virus spreads.

And spreads.

And spreads.

The president -- many governors, too -- pushes to "reopen the economy." We have no tools, no procedures to intelligently and safely do it. Yet we plow ahead into the unknown, hoping magical thinking will conquer biology.

Into the darkness of the pandemic steps a learned man, a United States senator from Nebraska. He beams into little Fremont from the big Internet to shine a digital light -- to offer wise words and sound guidance from afar to the new graduates of his alma mater.

Ben Sasse speaks. He is unshaven. Well, many of us are these days.

The graduates listen, and so do his state and his country. What shall we do? Why is this happening? Where lies hope?

The learned man answers all.

What shall we do? Not major in psychology.

Why is this happening? Blame China. Maybe Jeremy -- you can't trust a guy named Jeremy.

Where lies hope? Obviously, not in Ben Sasse.

He's such a Jeremy.

3 Chords & the Truth: Virally stylish

New for '20! Style goes viral!

And, perhaps, shaving and lipstick become superfluous?

No matter what, 3 Chords & the Truth is your dedicated follower of fashion . . . and breakout music on the hot spot of your Internet dial. And while you'd be smart -- and considerate -- to mask your face to stop the spread of the coronavirus, there's no masking the reality that good music makes hard times just a little bit better.

And the forecast for the next 90 minutes of the Big Show is a marked improvement in conditions wherever you are.

Now grab a drink, crank up the high-fidelity apparatus, and settle in for the musical journey. It'll be an adventure -- we guarantee it.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all.  Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: A tuneful light

You remember the old Merle Haggard song, "If We Make It Through December"?

Somehow, it has become not insane to wonder if we'll make it to November. That ain't good.

That can send a body into a serious funk. That can seriously harsh one's mellow. That ain't good.

Seriously, what the hell are we to do? Shine a light into the virus-loaded darkness, I guess. I mean, that's what we're trying to do here on 3 Chords & the Truth -- shine a tuneful light into this darkest night.

So, in that . . . light . . . this is gonna be one hell of a show. A Big Show. The price of admission? Wash your hands.

And keep your distance from your neighbor.

And wear a mask when you're out in public -- which you ought to be as little as possible. There's a virus goin' on.

F*** the darkness. Let's shine some musical light.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Uhhhhhh . . . OK, sure. (snort, giggle)

Omaha World-Herald, May 8, 1970

I wonder what the "truth in advertising" version of this would look like.

And where's the gutter and the . . . well, you know?

Then we get to the smart-ass takes on this bit of Midwestern naivete. What was the "junior's beat" (or was it several juniors' beat) on Bourbon Street? Furthermore, did their parents know?

Film at 11. Hopefully not at the Muse Theater at 24th and Farnam.

3 Chords & the Truth: Calming numbers

It's a fine mess we find ourselves in, this coronavirus thing, and the folks one usually looks to when extrication is called for . . . well. they're pretty much useless.

If not outright existentially threatening.

So. Well. Um . . . what are we supposed to do, then?

Well, there has to be a better answer than one I've taken to in recent months -- sitting on the front stoop with a drink and a Lieutenant Dan cigar, muttering the F-word a lot. Let's brainstorm this, shall we?

FIRST, keep calm and carry on intelligently. Do what your doctor would tell you to do. I'm reasonably sure that doesn't involve a Lieutenant Dan cigar. Hey . . . do as I say, etcetera and so on.

Second . . . chill.

3 Chords & the Truth can help you with that second thing, and we'll do it by the numbers -- 33⅓, 45 and 78. And at whatever speed a compact disc spins.

If music can soothe the savage breast . . . beast . . . both? . . . whatever, music can get us through this epidemiological cluster-you-know-what. Music can mellow us out and calm us the you-know-what down.

Lucky for you, the Big Show is just a click (two at the most) away.

So, let us all center ourselves for the long slog -- by the numbers.

33⅓. 45. 78.

And at whatever speed a compact disc spins.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Whadda you have to lose?

I give up. What the hell?

Got Lysol?

Truly, whadda we have to lose? I'm goin' for the cure!

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Déjà vu all over again

These are the times that try men's immune systems.

And their faith in mankind . . . political leaders . . . the "American way of life" (snort) . . . human intelligence, God and the universe.

Americans, most of us, are not in a good place right now. We're cooped up, the president's brain obviously is f***ed up, people are all head-up, and right-wing politicians and pundits look at the mounting coronavirus death toll, then agitate for the economy to "open up."

It's late 1918 and the Spanish flu all over again. That didn't end well.
 
ON TOP of it all, John Prine died on April 7. Of the coronavirus.

It's all enough to make you give up hope. That's exactly why you can't. And that's more or less what this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is all about -- that, paying tribute to the great John Prine, a Woodstock jam and other good stuff.

To be frank (because I'm sick of people calling me Shirley), I'm kind of at a loss for what else to say about this go 'round of the Big Show.

So I won't. Just listen; you'll figure it out.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.