Tuesday, St. Paddy’s Day: second day of Shelter In Place. Still not sick that I know of. Wife hates me, because she still has to go to work, but school district has told me they’ll pay me to stay home for two weeks, so here I sit.
Starting to feel stircrazy already. Went to store Saturday to get coffee. No toilet paper, and no sugar. Upon realizing it was St. Paddy’s Day, I am disappointed; no Irish pub and green beer for me today. And for some reason, cable on demand wants me to pay twelve bucks to see “The Quiet Man.” Hell with cable on demand.
Poking around on internet, found video tutorial on how to make a Plague Doctor mask, that weird steampunky thing that makes you look like a cyborg crow in a top hat. Seemed interesting. Googled “Plague Doctor.”
Plague Doctors were real. They did what they could to help people out during the Black Plague, which, in all honesty, wasn’t a whole lot; Western medicine was still in the stone age at the time. And yes, they wore goggles and leather cones on their faces.
The outfit was due to the “miasma” theory of disease, because germ theory hadn’t been invented yet. They thought disease spread through “bad air.” So the beak on the mask was actually full of dried flower petals, mint, herbs, and other stuff that smelled good, so if you couldn’t smell anything stanky, then theoretically, you would not be infected with a disease. And, theoretically, the bigger your beak was, the better protected you were.
Pondered making a plague doctor mask, putting on a Grim Reaper robe and top hat, and going and standing in the in the King Soopers parking lot shaking a tambourine and calling, “BRING OUT YOUR DEAD! BRIIIIING OUUUT YOUR DEEEAAAAD!” just to see how long it takes for someone to call the cops.
And precisely what the cops would do when they got there?
And what the news would have to say this evening?
Decided against it. Not sure wife would bail me out.
Among the things you’d find in a Plague Doctor’s beak was a pomander made by taking whole cloves and poking the sharp parts through the skin of an orange. It does seem like this would smell good. But it also occurs to me that this means’ I’d be walking around with a leather cone on my face with a pound or more of assorted potpourri jammed in it.
Seems like that would be sort of hard on your neck.
The more I think about it, the more it occurs to me that London during the Black Plague must have been a really awful experience, and that seeing a guy dressed like a BDSM robot crow must have been quite the trip if you were already half delirious with fever and hallucinations… even if he WAS just trying to HELP you.
I envision it as being a bit like being sick AND being on the worst acid trip ever, and suddenly, from out of the smoke and smog, a guy dressed up like an Alien Xenomorph shows up, offers me a beer, and tries to talk me down…
D) Mebbe I’ll wear that for my next trip to the store.
I also changed the filters while I was in there and only cut my hands once, which I consider a win. (There’s a lot of sharp edges inside there.)
She actually looks like she could be a littermate to my dog.
