(August: okay, add humidity to the gauntlet)
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Let’s play a thought experiment. Five or so years ago, if you’d been warned by some guy to prepare for a year whose high point was a baseball-killing communist plague, what would you have done? I mean, what would you have done after you finished slapping the guy to his knees?

Five or so years ago, who would have dreamed that a deadly water-droplet-carried virus, released from a walled country that still hasn’t figured out how to use forks, would introduce a world-wide pandemic and utterly shutter America.

But that was just Act One of 2020: A Really Stupid Year. Now, we’ve also got…

• A hurricane season that’s way ahead of schedule for named storms (at this rate, we’ll soon be talking about “That Other Irene” or “Hurricane Bob, Jr.).
• President Trump threatening to ban social media apps because apparently the Chinese communists are harvesting millions of teen photos of angry cats.
• Snow in Antarctica is turning green. Al Gore is conflicted.
• According the geologists, something known as the Hilina Slump “could go anytime.” Our research suggests that Hilina Slump is either an unstable mountainside in Hawaii, or a minor character from “Green Acres.”
• Hundreds of volcano-tectonic earthquakes are occurring, during which volcanologists measure something they call seismicity, and it’s about time someone did.
• The number of global coronavirus cases keeps rising, but was officially outpaced by the number of fundraising calls made by both Presidential campaigns.
• Joe Biden finally picked a running mate, then promptly forgot who.
• Professional baseball games being played in empty stadiums, with cardboard cutouts for spectators and piped-in crowd noises, including rude noises made by imaginary fans who ate too many virtual hot dogs.
• That “My Pillow” guys is now selling towels, and with all the elegant subtlety of a used car salesmen.
• Salmonella outbreaks are occurring in over thirty states. Joe Biden modified his campaign platform to outlaw salmon.
• After viewing mask-wearing members of Congress at several public hearings, the CDC is recommending lawmakers attend a seminar to learn that air can actually enter through the nose, too.

Speaking of named storms, we’re up to the I’s already. The one staring at Florida this week is named Isaias, which I’m told is a Hispanic way to spell Isaiah. Who knew the Jewish diaspora passed through Mexico?

And speaking of behavioral modifications, pandemicated Americans are apparently willing to drive to Walmart, but not willing to drive to the polls to vote for President. So get ready for one seriously huge fail.

Election Day: 3 November
Election Results: sometime around June 2024

One hobby I’ve picked up during the 2020 Mexo-Chinese Quarantine is playing online Scrabble with online Scrabble cheaters. These are lonely, shameless people who don’t even try to be sinister … they’ll lob anything at all on to the board. And since everybody’s stuck at home, there’s an exploding cottage industry of Scrabble cheater websites to choose from.

Here are a few of my cheater favorites (I had to look the definitions up):

• ESTRAGON: an aromatic perennial of southeastern Russia (as every American schoolchild remembers)
• LARDOON: a strip of fat using in larding meat (it would also be a great way to insult someone without them knowing it)
• BHUT: a Hindu ghost or spirit (why some lardoon allowed this word in an English dictionary eludes me)
• SWARF: small fragments of disintegrating spacecraft (aka, “your tax dollars at work”)
• ZOUAVES: a member of a French military unit, characterized by colorful uniforms and precision drilling (as they run away)
• GLEETED: somebody morbidly discharged a morbid discharge from a wound (I think I sat next to this guy once in a Marketing meeting)
• URIDINE: a nucleoside that is composed of uracil and ribose (well, duh)
• AGIOTAGE: a fee charged for exchanging currencies (“Hey, Bill. I’ll give you three agios for that bucket of swarf.”)
• ANGARIES: multiple examples of the right of a belligerent state to use the property of a neutral state or to destroy it if necessary (this is what French zouaves say instead of “angry”)
• STAGGIE: a little stag (I guess now I know what a “Scrabble cheatie” is)
• QANAT: an ancient irrigation system, but not around here
• PLIOTRON: a type of vacuum tube (also used by bespoke DC tailors to discuss the size of Hillary’s custom pantsuits)
• FLORIGEN: a hypothetical plant hormone that induces flowering (Hypothetical. Yes, these cheaters are that lonely.)
• ECLOSING: coming out of the egg, or pupa case (not to be confused with YCLOSING, which is when gym owners are forced to shut down their gyms because they’re not Walmarts)
• SEISMICITY: nobody’s used that yet, but I’m about to
• KATIONS: I’ve no idea. Neither does the Scrabble cheaters website. Nobody is lonely enough to know what this word means.