Saturday, March 14 2020
Libraries, the Woodland Park Zoo, community centers, pools and other government buildings close. Covid that punk ass is on the move and he’s scaring lots of people. King County executives believe they can contain the spread and pay four million dollars for an Econolodge in Kent, hoping to house patients and establish an effective quarantine. A lot of people think that this shit is serious and not at all to be made fun of. I don’t know how serious this is, but certainly take umbrage with the idea that it can’t be made fun of. Exactly what are we preserving here SIR?!
Then something truly funny happens at the Econolodge.
My brain goes click boom bust, a swing, a punch, I post this to facebook, and the fight is on:
A moment of pure comedy occurred yesterday in Seattle, the epicenter of the ebola, i mean coronavirus…wait…which one is it again?
No matter.
In case you missed it…the homeless person who had been tracked down and quarantined in an econolodge motel purchased by the county to house infected people escaped, stole a doughnut from a nearby convenience store, got on a bus, and disappeared.
Just stop and think about this for a moment.
I imagine, having seen a few homeless people in seattle, that this guy wasn’t a james bond type. Although that would be cool and kind of weird…Someone shows up to a homeless shelter with a tux on, hair slicked back, looking kind of like pierce brosnan…wants his soup “shaken not stirred” and makes eyes at the shelter worker who resembles Denise Richards and is a “nuclear physicist” named Christmas Jones. I guess it could happen.
But, more likely than not, this homeless person struggled to walk in a straight line, shouted at things that weren’t there, carried a bag filled with odds and ends that were important to him (hey that’s cool I do that too…) ie…he wasn’t winning any track competitions soon. But he escaped. He did it. They had security on hand, but somehow he found a way to slip through!
I first heard about this on the radio when I was driving to go to the store with an improvised space helmet I made so as not to get anything on anyone or get anything from anyone on me. What I did–and you can try it too!–was take a blue paint bucket, stick it on my head, and then I have a drone thing a ma jig, i glued that to the top of the blue bucket, and then what i do is I use my phone in the blue bucket to see where i’m going from the drone’s camera. It works pretty good, as long as I don’t move too fast and people don’t wig out around me. To calm them down i have a banner I carry that says relax, i’m just trying to go shopping without having any sort of contact with any of you. People, not yet anyway, haven’t adjusted to seeing someone with a blue bucket carrying a glued down drone on their head going to the store or driving but we’ll get there, i’m sure.
So it was as I was driving that I heard breathless reporting about how the homeless guy had escaped (escaped!) somehow got past the defenses there (really stop and think about the scene to play there!), walked across the street…went into a convenience store and stole a doughnut. The reporters were going over this detail when I turned on the radio and they seemed really pissed about this.
“And then the patient (inmate) walked into a convenience store and he stole…a doughnut.”
“that’s right pam, he not only escaped, but then he went into a store and stole a doughnut.”
“My sources tell me that the inmate i mean patient went into the store and stole…and i don’t think young viewers at home should hear this…he stole…a doughnut.”
Now, after you hear this three times you start to go…wow, what kind of doughnut was it? Giant apple fritter? Was it laced with gold? Or are these people just crazy about doughnuts? Cuz the breathlessness of it all, i was waiting for more…like he stole nuclear secrets, the antidote to coronavirus (wouldn’t that be exciting! A homeless person on the loose with the coronavirus antidote on them, all of the city looking for him…) or maybe the virginity of the shopkeeper’s daughter…which personally I think would be a really touching story. She’s kept under her father’s watchful eye all the time and not allowed to attend the jc until she makes enough money for the store slaving over the counter making those doughnuts but a man comes in, a man who looks somewhat like pierce brosnan, and he’s a little dirty around the edges and talks to people who aren’t there, but for christ sakes, he sees me, he knows me…and i want to know him. Here, take my doughnut, please, i want to live, live!, before I too go to the econolodge.
But no, it was just a doughnut.
And then, the reporters say the thief boarded a bus and disappeared. Bad ass.
“Like that, he’s gone! Gone!”
Kaiser Solze, right, from usual suspects…
“He becomes a spook, a specter, a legend, a story middling county executives tell their kids at night to get them to go to sleep — rat on your pop, and the econolodge homeless person’ll get ya.”
Now, here’s the kicker.
So…after corralling this homeless person, putting him in an econolodge, purchasing the econologdge (4m), testing him, looking for him, taking the bus out of service, cleaning it down, consoling the shopkeeper over the loss of his donut (and how did the homeless guy do this? Doughnuts are usually right near the register, who is this person??), agreeing to help find the shopkeeper’s daughter, who has cut her hair and bought a jeep and is driving it to mexico to raise her son to be like john connor, and shutting down all of seattle to save us from ebola, i mean, wait, no…after all of this…
The guy’s test results came back and he tested out negative.
Yep. Doesn’t have it.
Sad trombone insert here.
Which isn’t really that surprising. I was curious how they suspected this person had coronavirus in the first place. When I look at most homeless people, I suspect they are in the grips of a crushing, debilitating, soul-sucking and life draining addiction and are in need of all the help they can get…or they are totally crazy.
One guy walking down my street the other night had somehow got a head lamp…maybe the neighbors who went on a hike to snoqualmie falls earlier had left it out…I don’t know… Anyway, he had it on his head and every now and then he’d flip it on…the light would shine out across the neighborhood, he’d go “Wow I can see!” and move off in that direction. Then he’d turn the light off, amble for a bit, turn his head in another direction, flip the light on, go “wow I can see!” and move off in that direction for a bit.
Back and forth, back and forth…chasing the light, wherever it goes.
I can’t help but wonder if HE could escape from that econolodge.
Sequel!