COLUMN: Mask

Well, just look at that lovely photograph.

Go ahead, soak it up in all its glory. That's me, captured unknowingly by our marketing guru Todd Mizener upon my first day back in the office after two months of self-imposed house arrest. Please, bask in its unbridled majesty. The unholy, unkempt hair. The wrinkled attire. The look on my face that says "I'm super happy to be back in the general public." The fact that if you squint, it looks like I'm wearing an oversized turtleneck and a gold chain rappers would be jealous of.

"Shane: Portrait of a Disgruntled Columnist." Autographed copies available upon request.

I'm so torn on this whole grand re-opening. I can tell you one thing, I'm sick to death of staring at the walls of my house. When I moved in, I thought this place was spacious and homey. After two months of barely leaving the place, it's starting to look I belong on "Hoarders." My only contact with the outside world are boxes of junk from Amazon I keep ordering mostly out of boredom. There's a whole wide world out there I enjoy exploring. I just prefer my wide world a touch less toxic, thanks.

These past months have been an unspeakable nightmare for many. I'm friends with business owners, restauranteurs, bar owners, musicians, and actors, and their lives are coming apart. Either the government needs to step up their game and start supporting them or we need to allow these fine folk to make a living.

But I also don't want to do it if we're turning the world into "Survival of the Fittest." There's not ONE medical organization that I'm aware of that's given the ol' thumbs-up to going about our regular lives willy-nilly — at least not without mitigation, caution, and some new habits. You know where I'm going with this.

If we're going to shirk medical advice and re-open the country (and it's probably time,) the very least you can do is take a couple seconds and tie a mask around your virus-spewing faceholes before you venture out. You need to wear a mask. I need to wear a mask. We ALL need to wear a mask. There's not ONE valid reason not to wear a mask when you're out and about.

There ARE a lot of INVALID reasons. I've been watching them run amok on Facebook every day. This week, for one of the first times ever, I deleted people from my friends list. I snoozed and unfollowed others. It was either that or give myself even HIGHER blood pressure. There's a breaking point, and social media broke mine.

From what I can gather, the non-mask-wearers generally fall into two argumentative camps:

Camp One are the people who spout on about their liberties, the Bill of Rights, the government can't me do this or that, blah blah blah. Those people are 100% right. The government can't make you put a mask around your head when you go out in public. They shouldn't have to. It should be common sense and common decency. Our nation also has a long and proud history of not letting you run around killing people. And if you go out without a mask, there's a chance you could do just that. I don't want to get sick, sure — but I REALLY don't want to get OTHER people sick when I could have prevented it.

That brings us to Camp Two: the well-educated among us who have logged onto Facebook and read some article from some random person saying that masks are pointless. Viruses are tiny and you can breathe them right through a cloth mask. Masks are stupid.

Look, I'm no more a medical expert than your crazy uncle on Facebook. But I'm also lazy as all get out, and that means I've had two months to sit and read all these articles. I've also had two months to read actual news in this very publication. And most medical experts in the world are in agreement that masks help. They're not perfect, but nothing about this pandemic is.

Can the virus get through a mask? You bet, unless you have one of those fancy N95 suckers. If you think a mask makes you impervious, you're dead wrong (hopefully not literally.) But masks aren't recommended to stop you from getting coronavirus. It's to stop you from SPREADING coronavirus if you have it and don't realize it. One of the grossest things I've seen in all this was a news report where they used slo-mo and some kind of UV light to show a sneeze. A single sneeze can send your nasty ick droplets cruising some 26 feet away from your schnozz. But if you sneeze and you're wearing a mask, much of that ick gets stopped in its tracks.

It's like if you throw a bucket of water at a screen door. Sure, a lot of water will get through -- but not ALL of it. And maybe, just maybe, a mask is enough to keep your buddy from ingesting 1000 microns of your cooties, which is what they say it takes for COVID to take hold. In Austria, mask-wearing in public IS the law - and they've had a 90% drop in cases since it happened.

Yes, you can walk into a Wal-mart and find tons of maskless people and their clerks aren't all getting sick. But those box stores are HUGE with enough air circulation to dissipate our collective ick a bit. You might just be safer in a Wal-mart with 200 other people than in a small office with five co-workers and stagnant airflow. Did you hear about the call center in California? ONE guy got 26 of his co-workers sick, and he wasn't anywhere near them. The air circulation in their office sucked and the viral load just hung in the air contaminating people. Maybe if had had a mask on, the outcome might have been different. Maybe not. No one knows for sure. But what can it hurt?

When the virus first came out, there were people on your TV telling you not to bother with masks. But here's the thing. At the virus' onset, there was serious concern that everyone would freak out and buy up masks like toilet paper and there wouldn't be enough supply for our nation's healthcare workers, who need them more than we do. Ergo, medical experts were dissuading Joe Q. Public from wearing them so there'd be enough masks for Dr. Joe Q. Public, MD. But thanks to the hard work of many small businesses around the country, masks are now easily attainable.

In fact, hop online. There's some crazy stylish ones out there. Bands and sports teams are putting their logos on masks as we speak. You can get high fashion masks from elegant brands if you're some snooty haute couture type. You can get a mask that says "Prada" on it to impress your friends -- and if you think they're not selling accompanying satin travel mask pouches for the low price of $186.65, you don't know Prada. If you'd rather go the DIY route, there's an infinite number of tutorials out there to show you how to play Maskmaking: The Home Game.

The truth is, we JUST DON'T KNOW the science behind this 100% yet. That's a GOOD thing. We should count our blessings that crazy dangerous viruses don't roll thru town on the regular. We're inexperienced when it comes to pandemics, thank God. But what's the harm in being a little proactive? If there's even a chance that my wearing a mask could stop me from unknowingly passing the virus on to YOU, it's well worth it to me. It's well worth the knowledge of how bad my breath can be sometimes. Its well worth the elf ears I get from those straps tugging at them. It's well worth the horrible photos Todd Mizener might take of you.

I'm no medical expert, but I'm pretty good at being judgey. And when I see you out in public without a mask, I don't think you're a liberty-loving freedom fighter. I don't think you're taking a stand because someone on Facebook told you that the Illuminati is using masks to control us. I don't think you're an amateur medical expert who knows better. No offense, but I just think you're being a jerk.

COLUMN: Mystery Box

I had it on good authority that the postman always rings twice. As it turns out, most times he doesn't ring at all.

The other morning started the same as most of my 2020 mornings now: me on the couch, nose buried in a laptop, trying to get some work done while cats crawl all over me outraged at my lack of focus on their every feline need. That's when I heard the roar of a lawn mower.

Yes, I pay someone to cut my lawn. Yes, I realize I'm a lazy oaf perfectly capable of doing it myself. But here's the thing. I'm also fully aware of my own ineptitude. If there's a way to mow one's foot off, I'd be the one to figure out how. Plus mowing means dealing with my sworn enemy: nature. Lawn care requires one to care about one's lawn, and I don't care about my lawn in the slightest.

But I also have a couple of hydrangea bushes that need to be trimmed back lest they become an unbridled jungle that could eventually consume all of Rock Island. I needed to tell my lawn guy to attack those bushes, so I opened my front door... and stopped cold.

There, on my porch, was a box. A HUGE box, and its unexpected presence on my porch really DID make me exclaim, "Whuhhhh?"

The smiling arrow on its side immediately informed me it was from Amazon. Last week, I ordered some masks, but if they came in a box THIS size, either they accidentally sent a gross of the suckers or the mask company REALLY over-reached on their "one size fits all" claim.

How it arrived is a total mystery. Whoever delivered it had such stealth it didn't even set off my security camera, which is supposed to activate whenever anyone even LOOKS at my front door. Then again, perhaps it couldn't see anyone looking because of the GIANT BOX in the way.

I looked at the slip. That was my address, alrighty. But it definitely wasn't my name. Now what?

I tried calling Amazon, but their phones were closed due to the pandemic. I checked their website, but none of their Frequently Asked Questions were "what do you do when a human sized box arrives at your door that you didn't order?" I tried UPS and was greeted by the most annoying automated phone system of all time.

"What would you like to do? Press one to track a package, press two to schedule a delivery, press thr--"

"CUSTOMER SERVICE"

"I didn't understand that. Say 'track a package,' 'schedule delivery,' 'bill'--"

"OPERATOR"

"It sounds like you want to speak to an operator. Is that correct?"

"YES"

"I will happily connect you. In order for the operator to better assist you, say 'track a package,' 'schedule deliv --'"

"AAAAARGH!"

If I were to suffer a fatal stress-induced stroke while housebound, would that technically count as dying from COVID-19 complications? I didn't want to find out, so I hung up and instead asked the Facebook hivemind what to do.

Most of my friends told me to just keep the package, or at least open it. Tempting for sure, but in situations like this, I tend to be an annoying do-gooder. Opening someone else's package just felt wrong. Besides, if movies have taught us one thing, it's that mystery boxes usually contain (a) an alien portal, (b) a date with Pinhead, or (c) the head of Gwyneth Paltrow. Hard pass, thanks. The LAST time I stumbled upon a mystery box and dared open it, it was chock full of moldy, maggoty muffins (true story). Lesson learned.

My friends had many theories as to the contents. Many assumed it was my long-awaited life-size Katie Holmes doll. One thought it might actually BE Katie Holmes, a disturbing prospect given the lack of air holes. Some speculated it was full of murder hornets or perhaps a killer robot. I thought I'd never know.

I called UPS a second time and managed to press the right combination of buttons to get through to an ACTUAL human being, who dispatched a truck to pick it up. Meanwhile, all afternoon I was getting texts from friends: "WHAT'S IN THE BOX?!"

Five minutes after the driver retrieved the box, I found out. That's when a knock at the door revealed the sad face of my next-door neighbor. "Did you happen to get a package today?" OH NO. I'd debated asking around the neighborhood, but I didn't want to go door-to-door in a pandemic like Covid Claus. I told her she'd just missed the driver by five minutes and she raced home to call UPS.

"Wait!" I hollered. "I have to ask because I'm nozy and 34 of my friends are texting me. What was in the box?"

"Oh," she said, "it's a vanity."

Hmm. Sort of anti-climactic, yet still better than murder hornets or Gwyneth Paltrow's head. I think I did the right thing, even if it was five minutes too soon.

Truth be told, only one of my friends correctly guessed the box's contents.

"I know what it is," he said on Facebook. "To me, it looks like your next column."

COLUMN: Stimulating My Toilet

Welcome to my Quarantine Diary, Week Number Eleventy-Kajillion and One. In this week's episode: I may have forgotten how to speak English, and life has no purpose. My cats, on the other hand, insist that I still have a primary purpose, and that's to feed them. Their impatient meows are the only thing keeping reality in check, and I suppose I should be grateful.

In the meantime, I continue to find ways to occupy my time. I've begun talking to the characters on TV, to my cats, and the other morning, I carried on a lengthy one-sided political discussion with my toaster. I'm pretty sure I've watched ALL of Netflix, listened to ALL of the music on all of the Earth, and yesterday I played The Sims and got incredibly jealous every time my little Sim people stood within 6 feet of one another. Then I sealed them all in separate rooms and yelled "SEE HOW IT FEELS?!" to my computer screen. It was strangely cathartic.

The good news is that my stimulus check arrived. The bad news is that it's gone already. It literally went down the drain.

We're supposed to use our stimulus checks to keep our needs met while keeping the local economy somewhat afloat. Well, I can attest that mine went to the local economy, alrighto. In fact, it went directly into the hands of the City of Rock Island.

A few weeks ago, I received my quarterly utility bill. I was a couple weeks away from a paycheck, so I put it in my Safe Place to Keep Important Stuff, otherwise known as the dusty pile of papers atop my bookshelf. Then, as we all know, the world basically pressed the pause button. Suddenly I wasn't waiting for my paycheck so much as I was waiting for my stimulus check. On the day of its heralded arrival, I dusted off the paperwork and set about paying bills. But when I opened my utility bill, instead of being greeted with the usual affordable total, I found myself staring at a dollar amount almost four figures deep. Say whaaaaat?

Now, I'll admit to some intense hand-washing over the past few weeks, but nothing that would result in a utility bill over four times the normal amount. I put on my best voice of indignation and called the city to inform them of their obvious clerical error.

"Umm, no," the friendly woman at the clerk's office responded. "Your water usage has spiked. Something's wrong."

Immediately my mind flashed back to when I bought my house. I have an outdoor water spigot with easy access for all the gardening and lawn care that I never do. Upon seeing this, my father INSISTED on putting a shut-off valve to the spigot in the basement. "Otherwise, your neighbors will steal your water!" Now, my folks live out in the boonies where neighborhood water thievery isn't much of an issue. But I was also pretty sure neighborhood water thievery isn't much of an issue in the heart of Rock Island, so I admit to not being too guarded about that shut-off valve.

But here it was, staring me in the face. Clearly someone had been stealing my water. I threw on shoes, gloves, a mask, a full Hazmat suit, doused myself in Lysol and headed out indignantly to see who was stealing my water so I could yell "J'accuse!" from 6 feet away. I spun the outdoor spigot, but nothing. The valve was working. The water was off.

I came back inside, furious and frustrated. And then I heard it. Underneath the roar of the TV, underneath the friendly hum of the air purifier, underneath the sound of the refrigerator and the air conditioner and the impatient meows of assorted cats, I heard it. The very subtle, very quiet hum of my toilet running. And running. And running. Uh oh.

Another thing my dad insisted on upon his first visit to my house was replacing my run-of-the-mill pauper toilet with the royalty of low-flows: a deluxe ultra-quiet behemoth fit for a king — or at least a king's wallet when it develops a leak. A simple internet search revealed the ugly truth: the toilet I have loved, trusted and sat upon for years is notorious for failure. Numerous Youtube videos demonstrate the problem.

As an evolved and knowledgeable journalist of some reknown, you'll have to forgive my complicated tech speak here. When you lift up the back of the toilet, there's a little doohicky that plugs the tank. When you flush, it raises that doohicky to dump the tank water into the bowl. And around that doohicky is a little plastic whatzit that seals the plug. It probably costs about 7 cents to make. And on MY particular model of toilet, this plastic whatzit can develop bubbles. As the bubble grows, it loses its seal and hundreds of dollars of water goes down the drain.

One Youtube video recommended I feel around the plastic whatzit for a bubble. I didn't have to feel. The bubble was sticking out of it like a thousand-dollar zit.

So you're welcome, Rock Island, for my undue yet somehow overdue stimulus. I now know the downside of getting a super-quiet toilet. I also know the downside of quarterly billing, and maybe Rock Island would be wise to alert its valued customers before three months pass when their water usage spikes. For the past week, I've had to turn off the water to my bathroom after every flush.

Thanks to essential workers risking their lives, a replacement whatzit is on its way to me now. People are hoarding everything from Lysol to hand sanitizer to meat. I'm going to start hoarding little plastic whatzits. In the meantime, I think my new strategy is to simply stop going to the bathroom. After all, I'm getting low on toilet paper.