Saturday night. What if the government paid people to stay indoors on weekends, the same way it pays farmers not to grow crops?

My landlords’ daughter has a cute Corgi named Royce. She brings him over every now and then. Today was Royce’s second birthday: he got a cute squeaky toy and some steamed hot potato. (His favourite delicacy, since dogs don’t get a birthday cake.) Royce hates my smoothie blender with remarkable passion: he turns from a good-natured pup into a prehistoric direwolf the moment he sees the blender. The highlight of the weekend so far was both of my landlords chasing the Corgi around the first floor to catch him while I hid the blender behind my back to keep from annoying the pupper even more. (In the end, we corralled him into the backyard for a few minutes.) Even adjusting for the low entertainment levels of this lockdown, that was mighty funny: in another world, that would’ve been a great silent movie with a jaunty piano soundtrack.

…I was going to write about the variety of culinary options (aside from the usual protein smoothie and chicken) I have available to me after last night’s grocery run, but that’d be too sad even for me. Heh. There’s just not a lot of variety when you’re under self-imposed house arrest and everything is closed. Aside from playing “hide the blender” with Royce, the highlight of my weekend will be not exercising on Sunday and treating myself to the Tim Hortons drivethrough for my weekly fast food indulgence. But hey, no news is good news, right?

In the US, early voting began not too long ago, and the turnout is already breaking records. In California, Republicans started installing their own unofficial ballot boxes, and promised not to tamper with them and turn in the ballots within 72 hours. If one assumes they’re doing this out of the goodness of their hearts and will not do anything funny, one is a moron. The big election day is just 17 days away. I hope it won’t get too ugly. It’s strange to think that just three weeks from now, we’ll know the final score at long, long last.

In covid news, Slovakia decided to test every resident over the age of 9 for covid over the course of the next few weeks. If they can pull that off, it’ll be remarkable. They’ve got only 5.4 million people and 82 deaths so far, which means this should be somewhat simple, logistically speaking, and they’re doing okay per capita – not perfect, but still not as much of a dumpster-fire as the US. It’s pretty funny that they have their own anti-maskers: a crowd of ~500 gathered to display their displeasure against what will probably be mandatory testing. It’s oddly comforting to know that human nature is the same no matter where you go.

And in the US, a mad musician was arrested for trying to kidnap and kill Wichita’s mayor. The guy seemed to be very passionate about “masks and tyranny.” This is coming shortly after the Michigan plot to kidnap and kill their governor. Someday, somehow, some crazy person is going to succeed at one of their insane plots – and not a single outrage-profiteering pundit or politician will suffer any consequences… Ye gods, I’m so glad I’m in Canada now.

Keep enjoying your weekend, folks – and if you haven’t enjoyed it thus far, then try to enjoy the rest of it twice as hard.