Well, we survived. We didn’t mention it earlier, but our recent trip took us deep into the heart of covid. It was too late to back out because we had committed to something important, so away we went even as omicron began peaking and virus cases in general rose. While there, someone we spent an evening with messaged two days later that he was positive and feeling quite sick. We tested and came up negative. We wrote in early December about the virus killing one of PI-1’s friends. Weeks later her entire close family caught it. Her elderly parents, her brother, her brother’s four-year-old, her brother’s girlfriend, and her two kids. All of them. All were physically ill. Even the four-year-old had symptoms, but everyone survived. Seven for seven, which is bucking the odds when two of the seven are over sixty-five.
For this reason, as well as the omicron spread, the virus was on our minds more than usual. We were lucky, but we can’t celebrate, because we found out that someone we know went through true hell. We have this acquaintance, who we’ll call Nikolai. Russian. Stereotypical. Big, broad, physically imposing, but a very nice, very jovial guy. He has a factory in Kazakhstan, lives here in Spain. His wife, who we’ll call Yara, went to Kazakhstan, where covid is a particular problem. While Yara was there she had severe stomach pains, went to a doctor, and learned that she had a large, possibly cancerous mass growing right in her core. Kazakhstan, while having skilled doctors, doesn’t have top notch facilities. The doctors told Yara they immediately needed to cut her stomach out. The whole thing.
Nikolai heard this and rushed to Kazakhstan to get Yara the hell out of there. Against doctors’ wishes he shipped her back to Spain, where Spanish medicos told her they needed to take only a small part of her stomach. Not bad by comparison. Relief. But Nikolai stayed in Kazakhstan to deal with some factory business and immediately caught covid. He was on a ventilator after a week, and dead a week after that. Yara was scheduled for surgery and couldn’t see her husband buried, though common sense prevented a return to covidy Kazakhstan anyway. Two kids lost their dad and Yara’s situation remains dire. That’s about as fast as things can go south.
The point of the story is simply to remind you that this virus ain’t no joke. But moving along, above we have for you an Italian poster for the Diana Dors movie Passport to Shame, which we wrote about a little while ago. In Italy it was called Passaporto per l’inferno—“passport to hell.” Films that played there were scrutinized by authorities for themes considered offensive to Catholic values, and prostitution pretty much topped the list, so it’s no surprise Dors received a punishment upgrade from mere shame to fiery hell. The movie is worth seeing, and you can read about it at this link. We have some amazing books, photos, and general pulp fun coming for you in 2022, but for the moment here’s wishing for the most amazing thing of all—a world that works better than it did this last year.
