​​I’m so lonely with the self-isolation and self-quarantine stuff, that it’s gotten to the point where I now welcome all robocalls.  Even though I fully realize that these calls are computer generated and most of them are recorded, I’m still so grateful and heartened by any and all of these efforts to contact me.  And, so, I no longer want the FTC to stop them, since these telephone conversations sustain and support me during these shelter in place and keep your distance days.  Without the PPP Group, they at least provide me with a healthy substitute of social nourishment. And they fill my heart with such comfort that I could … kvell.

​​Now that the Club has closed down for the  Corona virus,  I feel a great wave of relief.  It’s not just that I don’t have to ask the guy across the table if he’s been to Wuhan or Milan … or New Rochelle, and not because I no longer have to worry about whether the guy has a fever, a cough or a runny  nose – no, it has nothing to do with a contaminated opponent.   No, my relief stems from the fact that I’m not losing anymore!  That’s right.  And without those growing, humiliating debacles I have been recently experiencing at the hands of people I used to beat, I’m sleeping a lot better.  Catching good Z’s, as the sleep experts would say (not).

​So far, the biggest sacrifice from the self-quarantine has been toilet paper – I don’t have any.  I called the police about the apparent universal shortage, but they insisted it wasn’t what a 911-type call should be.  I begged to differ.  I begged strenuously. Where can I get some?, I insistently asked. The sergeant hung up on me.  He called it frivolous.  How would he know it’s frivolous?  I’ll bet you those cops have plenty of that soft Charmin up the kazoo.

So then I called this so-called money manager I got, who’s supposed to take care of all of my money.  I told him a year ago that I don’t want any big risk stuff.  Just make me around 20 percent a year – I don’t want to be too greedy.  So the hotshot invests my hard earned dough in a new money called Bitcoin, and in a car pick-up service called Lyft.  Bitcoin is now worth 50 percent of what I got it for, and Lyft should rightly  be called Descend, ‘cause it’s on it’s way to insolvency – coincidentally, same as me! My big time money manager told me I shouldn’t sell anything at this time, that things would soon be better.  I told him I didn’t have any toilet paper, and that I couldn’t wait for things to get better.  He hung up on me, but not before he told me not to be a crybaby.  Yeah, sure.  I’ll bet he’s got loads of Cottonelle stored under his sink, the SOB.

So then I went over to the table tennis club in Pleasantville.  But when I got there, the place was closed.  How could that be?  The place is never closed.  But it was. I knocked a few times, but there was nothin’ going on inside.  Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse! Jeez!  I was gonna take a roll of toilet paper outta the mens’ room – just to borrow, mind ya – but the joint was boarded up.

Hey, what kinda world we livin’ in?  No money, no ping pong, no toilet paper.  What the hell is happening?

​We’ve broached the subject of unreliable source information for medically-related issues, but we have yet to discuss the means by which we can determine that a particular substance or instrument has been assessed with the application of stringent guidelines and, thus, can be ascertained to be trustworthy and legitimate.