Our deepest sympathies to Ryan Estrada and his family; this isn’t a singular moment of loss, but rather the start of a long term period of coping and compromise and so very much pain, and none of it had to happen. I know that the howler monkeys who think that they are the only people in the world that matter will be screaming about how this isn’t COVID related; if it happens in your vicinity, you have my permission to punch them in the throat until they can’t spew their stupidity any longer.

You know people like that, too. Maybe they aren’t screaming about conspiracies and RFID and 5G, but they think that it’s overblown, it’s not that bad, that they don’t need to wear a mask and it’ll be okay.

As you know, I’m a volunteer EMT. More, I was recently elected Chief of my agency. I’m responsible for the lives and well-being of the approximately 15000 people in my town (and the quarter million in the surrounding area we serve by mutual aid), but especially the two dozen people I have staffing ambulances.

There’s a few old guys like me, one dude that joined us right out of high school and is still riding despite being four months into his internal medicine residency, and a bunch of relative newbies, people on for less than two years, who have STEPPED THE FUCK UP at a time when they could be doing anything else at less risk to themselves.

A couple of moms and dads, mostly college students. A quarter of them are literal kids — we have a half dozen high school students riding as cadets and we try to keep them off COVID calls, but they’re all presumed COVID calls at this point. It’s not enough that every aspect of their lives has been upended, they’re putting on N95s and going into enclosed spaces with sick people. Anybody that complains about COVID fatigue because they haven’t been able to do exactly as they please for up to a month at a time should try doing CPR for 20 minutes with full PPE on a hot summer’s day¹.

So those people that you know, the ones that think it’s not that big a deal? I need you to do something, fam. I need you to contact them — at a distance –and tell them that this is a crisis point in your relationship. Explain that they are actively trying to kill my two dozen crew members and everybody else in the world. People with COVID, and people without COVID who can’t get the care they need because there’s no room for them, and not enough staff to take care of them.

Tell them they need to

Wear

MASK

or they’re dead to you, because they are trying to harm you and everybody you love with their solipsistic bullshit. Want to be a person that can talk to me, ever? You can’t be such a narcissist that you’re willing to kill others without a care in the world when you could avoid it by doing almost nothing. This is murderously malignant behavior, and none of us are getting out of this pandemic untouched by tragedy. There should be no room in your life for people who are choosing to make it worse.

And when this is all done — and it will be, someday — remember who they were. Because if the greatest public health crisis in a century wasn’t enough to make them do the absolute bare minimum, they’ll do the same to you again, again, and again over matters great and small. I don’t get to choose the patients I serve, so if one of them calls me for help, I’ll provide it. But godsdamn if I don’t wish sometimes I could tell them No, you’re not worth the risk to my people and something about petards.

Stay safe, people. And keep everybody else safe, too.

No spammers today.

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¹ That patient was pronounced in the ED, but at least we had a bed to put him on and there was staff sufficient to work the code. That was August. If you have a heart attack this weekend when I’ve got my 24 hour shift, I can’t guarantee you’ll get a bed or a full staff because both of those are in short supply these days.

But this? This is fine. Get all your official KC Green This Is Fine merch at http://famous.dog.

Spam of the day¹:

Easily and safely clean your ears with Rotating ear cleaner

Oh hell no. I did my time in the power generation/rotating machines lab in college, and the first rule of rotating machines is you keep your body parts away from them².

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¹ Don’t think I didn’t try to get this up into the title. Oh, how I tried.

² The first rule of power generation is one of your hands is in a back pocket at all times. This is so if you bridge a high potential, the current will travel down your arm, along the side of your body, and out your feet. You’ll get gnarly burns along the path, maybe cook an organ or two, and have some nasty wounds at the entrance/exit points, possibly blowing some extremities off. Maybe just a finger/toe or two, but possibly an entire hand/foot.

But the alternative is if both hands are in play, that electrical current will almost certainly want to travel up one arm, through the chest, and down the other in search of its beloved Ground, and along the way it will play merry havoc with the electrically-controlled organ known as your heart.

Or, as Dr Acker shared by way of motivation back in the late 80s: If you allow a current of 100 mA to travel through your chest and heart, it will stop and you will lose consciousness and die almost immediately. If you allow a current of 400 mA to travel across through³ your chest and heart, it will put you into very nasty arrhythmias and you will die painfully in a full panic.

This was before automated external defibrillators, one of which would probably bring you back even from the 400 mA zap. I mean yeah, electrical burns and physical trauma to the heart, but you’d likely avoid the whole dead thing. Note to self: call up alma mater, make sure they require CPR/AED training as a requirement to enter the power gen lab. If not, yell at them.

³ This was edited after publication because I made a rookie mistake that shamed me when I noticed it was published to the wide world. Potential (or voltage, if you’re nasty) is across, current is through. Words have meanings.

It’s December! How in the crap-hell did that happen?

Anyways, you can celebrate the incipient end of this dumpster fire of a year¹ with any of the following sources of delight and joy.

• There have been magnetic comic sets before, but how many of them have involved little tiny magnets reading Balrog, Klingon or Fudgies? I submit: None.

  None, that is, until Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett decided to get into the game. Behold: the Sheldon magnetic make a comic set, which is up for preorder and if the stars align will make it to your US address in time for Yule. Everybody else, invent a holiday in January.

  I just have one question, LArDK: can I make a comic that refers to Fatty Chunklins? If not, I think you owe us an explanation.

• You must needs acquire every one! John Allison has launched the Advent season with a series of collectible stamps which may be redeemed for fabulous merchandise.

  I think perhaps kids these may not ever have experienced the thrill of getting S&H Green Stamps, and carefully counting how many were pasted on each page of your collection book, wondering where you could get just eleven more so you could could get that fabulous rolling typewriter table. Uh, not that I’m old enough to have done that².

  Anyway, now you can get in on the stamp-collection and redemption fun:

  You’ll be able to trade in your stamps at branches of Rumbelows, Woolworths and Woolco across the United Kingdom (excepting the Channel Islands).

  BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!

  • Green stamps have a multiplier of 1.1x when redeemed at weekends.
  • Collect ten red stamps to enjoy a secret multiplier bonus at participating shops. If in doubt, ask the manager.
  • Rumbelows Hi-Fi Club members get a 50 point bonus on production of your membership pennant.

• Last but not least, Happy Twentieth Strippaversary to Little Gamers. It’s an infinitely weirder world than when LG premiered in the far-flung past of THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND, and anybody that keeps a comic going for most of 15 years, gets sporadic, then comes back? Props.

Spam of the day:

Tact Machete Knife – Full Tang Blade 60% off

Is a tact machete what you use to cut through your prose and make it blunter and ruder? I think we could use with fewer of those, actually.

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¹ As I was typing that sentence, I heard Mary Louise Kelly on All Things Considered refer to, and I quote, a godawful year.

² I totally did and that typewriter got me through college. Word processors weren’t always a thing, kids these days.