The Eagle's Scream Quarantine: Week 6

COVID cuts and looming fear. Enjoy the fifth round of journal entries from our very own staff, giving a closer look into the life of a self-isolated teenager.

Pearl

Girlfriend in a coma, I know, I know, it’s serious.

I’ve been listening to the Smiths pretty much all quarantine. There’s a Smiths song for every mood, and honestly, a global pandemic fits into Morrissey’s miserablism quite well. Who better to sing my thoughts when I, too, am casually and almost cheerfully miserable.

Well, it’s not that bad, most of the time. I have a house, I have a cat, I have a massive music library at my disposal. I don’t have corona. I’m a fan of not having the disease, just in general. I hope to remain that way.

I tried chili mac n (vegan) cheese last night, and I ate it again for breakfast this morning, I cannot lie to you, the idea is genius and whoever came up with it is genius. It’s like two of my favorite foods, but their captchalogue cards were combined and stuck in an alchemiter. Sooooooooooo good.

I wish I had more time for the hobbies and TV watching that everyone seems to be partaking in. I spent about a week obsessively rereading Homestuck, and I’ve enjoyed the occasional TV show with my dad, but I wanted to bake more and write more and that just has not happened, I’ve been working almost nonstop on getting my grades up from their pre-quarantine state. I watched the first two episodes of RUN with my dad, and it’s kind of entertaining. I’ve been watching drag race too, and obviously I’m rooting for Gigi Goode to win. <3

I’ve also been watching Mrs. America, the show about Phyllis Schlafly, which is simultaneously very frustrating to witness but also really good. I decided to write my history IA about her. I wonder all the time whether she realized the irony of a woman being the leading member and campaigner for an anti-women's rights movement.

The most recent movie I’ve seen was Out of Africa (1985, starring Meryl Streep), which is a two and a half-hour long movie about a woman who (spoiler alert) goes to Africa and then leaves Africa and then comes back to Africa and then… leaves Africa.

I’ve been sharing a Spotify account with my boyfriend, which means whenever he catches me listening to music he puts on a Minecraft parody, and whenever I catch him listening to I put on Bloodhound Gang (the best band). I’m probably messing up his suggestions, but that’s what love is all about. Compromise.

Oh yeah, my dad also gave me a pretty solid COVID cut. That’s good because if he didn’t do a good job I would have just shaved my head, and I’m not really sure how I would feel about that?

Well.

Whatever.

See you next week.

Jacob

I’m at a loss for words here. No school, nothing to compare and make fun of. No innuendoes of any kind. This is blasphemous, inside jokes are what make the Eagle’s Scream so painful towards the five senses. This is part of the reason why I’m so reluctant to even do one of these. Another is my fear of being repetitive, I don’t want to write an entry that feels familiar if you know what I mean. The last of my fears is that the quality will be significantly lower than expected. Then again, I write for the same paper that did the Cawntest, anything is acceptable at this point so here we go.

I like to think of this whole situation as a sort of personal Hero’s Journey for all of us. If you read Jei’s article (Entertainment’s Effect On Us) or is just well educated in movies and literature, you’d know that the Hero’s Journey is a story element used in several films, novels, and shows on the tele. It goes like this, the Hero is comfortable in their natural environment, until they aren’t. A quest/challenge of some sort appears and they need to overcome it. They cross their comfort zone and begin working towards their newly found goal, usually with a mentor by their side. They grow on the way, have their successes and failures until eventually experiencing a crisis of some sort. The hero now sheds his skin and embraces the skills he’s found on his journey to step up to the final challenge and restoring order. The hero now returns to their normal world, but as a new person. Then the screen goes black and the credits roll, or you’ll flip to an epilogue or a colophon or something like that. We’re all experiencing an ongoing Hero’s Quest right now in some way, shape or form and, get ready hipster girls, our lives are actually like a movie right now! To find the beginning of this film of ours, we need to go back to ancient times.

It all begins on the week of March 9th. The week continued as normally planned, we were all in our normal environment, until we weren’t. Big Boy Beutner messaged the group chat and said that school was officially moving to online exclusively. This leads us to a Friday the 13th that actually lived up to its name. I say this cause personally, it was one of the worst days I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing at ERHS. It’s hard to explain but it’s as if people were subconsciously aware that we were entering an everlasting hell. We knew that two weeks would turn to months as everything in our lives got canceled for better or worse. This is where we encountered the first challenge, as we entered an uncertain world with our mentors; a flimsy plastic Chromebook and the ERHS quarantine Bible packet. Seriously though, is anyone doing that weekly recap packet?

Our first week of Quarantine begins and we slowly begin to grow as we learn the ropes of Zoom and finally utilize Schoology to its fullest potential. We achieve some success as teachers continue educating and students continue learning to the fullest of their ability. However, a lot of failures pop up as well, such as the first iteration of the schedule being a bust and the Schoology servers crashing. As days came and went, and the two weeks kept getting extended even further, the next phase of our quest comes into view.

People are vulnerable, even if they seem like the tough type that can withstand a mortar strike if they wanted to. The truth is, Quarantine is beginning to affect all of us in more ways than one. Besides being locked in our homes, the lack of face-to-face contact is beginning to take its toll. Endless hours of Zoom conversations wouldn’t even make up for half the satisfaction brought to us by real-life contact. Presumably normal and easy daily tasks are becoming harder to do. Guilty pleasures become the new reality, and important tasks begin to slip your mind. You stand there unable to do anything as you witness your life mutating into a new being in front of your eyes. Think of it like this, our life is Play-Doh™, and COVID-19 is the little brat that’s trying to sculpt it into something cool, only to end up with a mashed-up ball. That, my fellow heroes, is our crisis.

As our past lives fade into obscurity and our COVID lives take over, we shed our skins, becoming a new person. A person that’s in a way infected with the virus, while not being actually sick. We’re prepared to take on this challenge head-on like our essential workers who are the real heroes in the world. We utilize our new Netflix binging skills to step up to the final challenge, defeating this horrible virus. Sure we could do that by shooting a laser into the poorly designed Death Star or finding a stone and fighting a professor with a blood wizard on the back of his head. And just like that, COVID-19 is defeated. We return to society, our normal world, as a different person, one with new ideals and a better view of life. Our movie is now over, we see credits floating in the sky and realize another crisis is heading our way.

I wish I could jump to conclusions like that, but the truth is we’re still on the crisis phase of our journey. Many of us are beginning to realize the true horrors of this virus as we continue to yearn for our normal lives to resume. It’ll be a while before we reach the next stage, but believe me when I say it’ll come eventually. Our journeys will conclude and the credits will roll someday, and we will remember those journeys that ended early. A staggering amount, only growing each day due to the poor handling of things currently. It’s a grim yet inevitable fate, but we as humans are lucky enough to have the power of protecting everyone’s stories as if they were rolls of film or a fragile novel by just leaving it alone and stepping away as nature takes its course.

The reason for me writing an entry like this is simple enough. Despite criticizing it earlier, my life is nothing short of bland and stereotypical. But what did you expect me to be doing? Flying to the moon or something? I wish, but sadly I’m stuck on a sick planet collapsing in front of my eyes as I speak. At night, I dream of a world without COVID, a world I took for granted. What I used to consider my normal boring life has become a highly sought after commodity. My own trash is my own treasure ironically. I’ve failed to accept that the treasure I seek however is long gone, this is my indefinite and uncertain life now. All I can do is sit and watch the world burn as I pray that the pen writing my journey isn’t seized by this horrible, horrible virus. Before I end this, I want to say that I miss my friends dearly and look forward to the day I see you again in our new future. My appreciation for you is infinite, and I apologize for ignoring you all prior to this. And to everyone reading this, I wish all of you good luck and look forward to the day when we can all share our completed journeys with one another.

Cheers

Jacob (Staff Writer/Comic Artist: Eagle’s Scream)