I have climbed out of the muck in my swamp long enough to write a non-political essay which hopefully will shed light on the current social-isolation = self-quarantine many of us are experiencing. Now being rather new at this business, the unfolding of forced solitude is a new experience. What's that old saying? Something like you can't teach an alligator new tricks--or sum thin' like that.

Well, here's one trick I learn anew with each passing day and another millimeter on my now flourishing facial hair. Shaving. Who needs it? I won't scrape my face--at least until I once again leave my swamp to venture into the public.

Although "prepping is regarded by some, or at least was regarded by some as dumb, I began stocking up little-by-little, day-by-day with vittles (and vities) since mid-January until self-isolation in early March. Thus, with plenty of coffee, beer, eggs, and stuff, I can hold out until at least mid-April. This is when I calculate my beer supply will be exhausted. From then on, no beer but still enough other stuff to fill the gastric cavity for another month.

Thus, enough time is now available to me, inveterate (but not invertebrate) procrastinator that I am, to actually somethings considered routine by those more accustomed to doing what needs to be done, when it needs to done. So, after putting another load of used towels in the washing machine, I am tidying up. Mending clothes--no, not yet. I am not that bored--yet.

This My Carona Crisis is having multitude of initially unanticipated benefits.

For one, besides tidying and a bit of cleaning, my conversations with family have increased several fold. All to the good. Two sons, missing in action for 10 months and 5 years respectively, still do not communicate. I truly don't know whether son number one is alive or dead. He doesn't respond to emails or texts--and never, ever, will he vocally communicate. Since he lives in the heart of Gotham, I can't even ask police to do a welfare check. Mayor de Blah Blah has put an end to those types of policing.

Both daughters are doing well, as is the first Mrs. Gator. So, I send my girls and brother Alphonse Gator essays, which perhaps they delete before reading. It is hard to burn before reading, since emails consist of electrons. Maybe our resident particle physicist can tell us how electrons are born and die. For myself, this cosmology is of no import. But that's just me.

YouTube, my substitute for BoobTube, is helpful. My enormous DVD collection is ready and waiting. My equally enormous rock and roll CD collection awaits my audiophillic touch, waiting to delight my auditory cortex, hippocampus, amygdala, and yes, reptile brain. Don't smirk over there--y'all have one too. It's just a matter of balance. Consider proportionality here: what is the ratio of pre-frontal activity to amygdalar-diencephalic activity. Well, if you crawl on your belly like a reptile, as I have been accused of doing (with some justification), the latter anatomic areas see much more activation than the former. But really I am trying to improve myself. Many of you would flatly deny that assertion, especially JtC, and not without reason.

Books. Yes, books. I have some. In fact I have more books that I can ever read. Some of our fellow denizens of c99 are avid readers. I salute all of you. My library is a pastiche (I haver been able to use that word heretofore) of subjects. I include for your delectation, a snapshot of one small portion of the read, partially-read, and virgin tomes lining my shelves. These serve to ground my abode, lest it float away on the high tides. Ballast, I think is what they call this extra weight.

So, in desperation, after watching the same YouTube offerings or searching for more British murder mysteries, I have opened a few books and nibbled a bit from several. My prize book however is Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary Uabridged, second edition. A classic. More than 2100 pages. Somehow, I never get past A (A is for Alligator--but you knew that).

My partner carries on what little business we currently have, whilst I stay at home nurturing facial hair and conserving beer, carefully rationing it until the sun shines on my back door again.

Notice my almost perfect abstention from issues political, and their hypocritical, metaphysical, or inscrutable connotations.

It would delight me to know what occupies the time of those self-isolating, and even those who still have outside employment or avocations.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR2-JfPaYi4]