"Inappropriate and disturbing."

You have, in this quarantine week three, been forced onto a Zoom call. The video communication remote conferencing service freely downloaded and easily used. Were you impressed by the technology? Wowed at how the person speaking would automatically have their image pushed to the front whilst everyone else, nodding and chin rubbing, were made smaller?

A snapshot of the future, certainly but danger lurks just below the fancy exterior danger lurks.

Danger and discomfort.

Shall we turn to National Public Radio for more?

Dennis Johnson fell victim last week to a new form of harassment known as “Zoombombing,” in which intruders hijack video calls and post hate speech and offensive images such as pornography. It’s a phenomenon so alarming that the FBI has issued a warning about using Zoom.

Like many people these days, Johnson is doing a lot of things over the Internet that he would normally do in person. Last week, he defended his doctoral dissertation in a Zoom videoconference.

He had a big audience — he estimated it was about 40 people, including “my closest friends, family and my classmates and my dissertation committee” at California State University, Long Beach, he said.

It was in the middle of presenting when someone started drawing male genitalia on the screen. At first, Johnson said, he was not sure what was happening.

“I’m like, ‘Whoa!’ And then I freeze, and everyone who’s watching the screen freezes,” he said.

Zoombombers have disrupted an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in New York, Sunday school in Texas, online classes at the University of Southern California and a city meeting in Kalamazoo, Mich.

With schools closed and millions of people working from home, Zoom has become wildly popular. The company said 200 million people used the app on a daily basis in March, up from just 10 million in December. But that newfound popularity is bringing new scrutiny.

The FBI is warning schools, in particular, to be careful.

“The FBI has received multiple reports of conferences being disrupted by pornographic and/or hate images and threatening language,” the bureau’s Boston office said this week.

But we all know who finds male genitalia the most funny. We also know who suddenly has the most time on their hands.

Surf locals.

Banned and bored in New Zealand, much of California, parts of Australia, South Africa and France.

When the FBI gets involved, though, it is no longer a laughing matter lest we allow Bodhi to have died in vain.

#NeverForget

#MoreAsTheStoryDevelops

Surfing is not a crime.

Since the day of its creation, the outside world has distrusted skaters and entirely loathed the act of skateboarding itself, deeming it illegal on most streets and sidewalks.

As if that wasn’t enough, with time came evolved means to stopping skaters dead in their tracks; be it fines, arrests, skate stoppers, security guards, iconic spots destroyed daily, occasional hero-syndromed citizens, just to name a few.

All the while surfers got to pursue their board sport entirely uninterrupted or at least until now.

If there’s one good side to this, worldwide draconian lockdown on our favorite pastime it’s that surfers and skaters may now have a tighter bond and something to drain a few tins over. Namely, a blatant disrespect for any law officer/overly concerned citizen or sign telling us we can’t ride our chosen crafts freely.

Who knows, maybe this signals the beginning of a decline in surfings wall of positive noise, as one by one surfers around the world start taking a page out of skaters book.

Saying fuck you to who ever wants to stop us and going for broke anyways.

For the GOAT Jr. in your life.

Let’s face it, at the rate this is all going, we are going to be locked indoors for the foreseeable future. And when we are finally allowed to congregate again it will be for a very short time as Coronavirus 2.0 will lock us back indoors once again. Coronavirus 3.0 after that and so on.

Oh, if we’re grim and dour about it all then the Coronavirus wins and we can’t let that happen so what are our options? What shall we then to do?

Redecorate our indoors, of course, and as if prescient, the world’s greatest surfer Kelly Slater just released a new bedroom collection for teenaged boys and girls with slightly upper-middle class retailer Pottery Barn.

Shall we feast our eyes?

Mmmmm. Sea foam green, no? And a very humongous faux wood mid-length. Very Surf Ranch. Very Lemoore with a chair reminiscent of 1970s era swinger parties but do you think that’s an appropriate look for teenagers? Something they should be encouraged to partake in?

Hmmmm.

Also, as a writer, I am slightly concerned by the placement of the books very high on a reclaimed wooden rafter. How are the teenagers supposed to read them?

Otherwise, I give this quarantine look an 8.2, well into the excellent range, and am extremely impressed by Kelly Slater’s understanding of the teenaged mind.

But what about you? How do you feel?