Good morning, kittens! We’re ready, coffee by our sides (well, my side. I’m always on my side. I dunno about you) for today’s Covid Briefing Bingo. I could have pre-blogged all of this pre-amble last night, but I had a Zoom meeting at 9am and said fuckit. So, here we are.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, First Series 1841 via LinusQuotes.Tumblr.Com
And our briefing bingo today is brought to you by the 1920 German silent film The Devil Worshippers, starring Bela Lugosi. I thought “The Covid Briefing Bingo Worshippers” was better than “The Devil Covid Briefing Bingo”, for marketing purposes. Which, I may be wrong about that. And Die Covid Briefing Bingo Teufelsanbeter was a no-go from the very beginning. That dog just would not hunt.
Fun fact: I did some A/B testing, and thumbnails which feature a pic from a Bela Lugosi movie outpull thumbnails which feature a picture of Justin Trudeau. I’d have lost a bet, but then as I’m always saying, Bela Could Get It.
Now, here are your bingo cards. I’ll try and get the next one done soon. I just bought a pound of Starbucks beans, I might have the energy to get this out before the next briefing!
Here we are again, at the quite civilized hour of slightly after 4:30pm, and while I feel the Covidian ennui which shall forever scar this year in memory, I also feel seen. They finally moved the briefing to a time I won’t sleep through it. Although it doesn’t mean I feel less than zombie-like. It is 2020, after all. Vitality would be positively inappropriate!
I am but a child of my time, as was the Prince of Denmark. He was VERY 2020, was Hamlet.
Today’s briefing bingo is brought to you by the Bela Lugosi movie White Zombie, and it’s a cracking good ‘un! The very first Zombie movie ever, and still one of the best. The sound effects of the scene in the sugar mill alone will chill you to the core. The heroine is a complete dip, it must be admitted, and so is the hero for the first third of the film, But so were most people back then. The acting is very good indeed, with multiple memorable characters and the direction and script top notch.
From the YouTube notes: The first zombie film… ever! Bela Lugosi stars, in arguably his best performance next to Dracula, as Murder Legendre, voodoo master and keeper of the undead. Madge Bellamy, Robert Frazer, John Harron and Joseph Cawthorn co-star. Directed by Victor Halperin. Followed by the Lugosi-less “Revolt Of The Zombies” (1936). The film “White Zombie” and related promotional materials are public domain.
And for those who are still playing, rather than merely reading these commentaries, here are your game cards:
and all of our other Covid Briefing Bingos are on the category page.
And our zombie-less (unless you count jaded civil servants in the background) CPAC video, which YouTube tells me currently has 107 viewers staring haplessly at a desk, an empty chair, and a row of carefully arranged Canadian flags.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks with reporters on Parliament Hill following his virtual meeting with Canada’s first ministers. Health transfers and vaccine distribution were on top of the agenda. The prime minister also provides an update on the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. He is joined by Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc, as well as Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, and Major-General Dany Fortin, vice-president of logistics and operations at the Public Health Agency of Canada and head of the country’s vaccine distribution efforts. Health Canada announced the previous day that it had approved Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine and Canada’s first shipment of doses is expected to arrive the week of December 14. An initial batch of up to 249,000 doses will arrive before the end of 2020.
Shout-out to the reporter reading an actual, physical newspaper while waiting for the briefing. Way to fly the flag!
Good evening, kittens. We would have been here for you in the morning if only the government website had shown today’s briefing on Trudeau’s schedule at 4am, which it did not. We checked. We checked at 4am, we mean, not that the briefing was at 4am, although they all look like morning people to me. We wouldn’t put it past them.
We are trying, my friends, trying hard not to take it personally, and we’d like to thank the person in Hamilton who called a wrong number and woke us up in time to do the briefing, but as we did not know it was happening, we simply cursed Hamiltonians generally and went back to sleep.
Old and Dull: what we perceive is reality. New and Shiny: what we perceive is hyperreality. Woke and Broke: I can't even tell what level of reality I'm doubting right now.
But we are here, now, adequately caffeinated and with a cup of tea by our side (second person plural, singular side; we are all on the same side now, aren’t we?). Mango green tea, to be specific, because we have to be specific, because we have a word count to hit,
We are Professionals.
Yeah Bela could get it.
Today’s briefing is named after the 1918 Bela Lugosi film The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Hungarian adaptation of the original English. Oscar Wilde had only been dead 18 years at that point, which is rather mind-boggling if you think about it. That would put him at 2002 relative to right now. History is freaky, kittens. History, my friends, is a total mindfuck.
Bela played Arisztid Olt, who was Lord Henry Wotton in the original version, and a perfect character for a character actor like Bela.
Lord Henry is a man possessed of “wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories.” He is a charming talker, a famous wit, and a brilliant intellect. Given the seductive way in which he leads conversation, it is little wonder that Dorian falls under his spell so completely. Lord Henry’s theories are radical; they aim to shock and purposefully attempt to topple established, untested, or conventional notions of truth. In the end, however, they prove naïve, and Lord Henry himself fails to realize the implications of most of what he says.
We ARE in a mood lately, aren’t we? We shall cease abusing the faint remnants of our blog readership and get to the actual briefing. Yes, I’m stalling.
Well kittens, in case any of you are playing #BriefingBingo you can mark your “Technical difficulties” square because my computer is NOT cooperating today. Stand by.
Here are your cards, including the shiny new 7th Gen card from last Friday:
and all of our other Covid Briefing Bingos are on the category page.
And here is our video, again from CPAC:
At a news conference on Parliament Hill, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provides an update on the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. The prime minister is joined by Anita Anand, the federal minister of public services and procurement, Dr. Howard Njoo, Canada’s deputy chief public health officer, and Major-General Dany Fortin, the new vice president of logistics and operations at the Public Health Agency of Canada and head of the country’s vaccine distribution efforts. In his remarks, the prime minister announces that Canada has signed an agreement to receive early delivery of up to 249,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine. The first shipment could be delivered as early as next week, contingent on Health Canada approval of the vaccine. Vaccination could begin within one or two days after delivery. These first doses will be distributed to 14 sites across the country. Canada’s agreement with Pfizer calls for up to 76 million total doses of its mRNA vaccine candidate.
And here is your Full Text of the Remarks (not including the questions from the press). Every now and then I think I could just transcribe it but A) then I wouldn’t be able to livetweet it B) the PMO staff eventually get it online within a calendar day or so C) I’m lazy af.
Welcome back, kittens. Welcome to another episode of 2020. We’re here to cover Justin Trudeau’s Covid-19 briefing today, and to respond to the demand of literally none of your requests for a Seventh Generation Bingo Card. Play one or play them all; it’s 2020 and nothing matters anymore.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; The centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world; the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere.
To date, labs across 🇨🇦 have tested 11,739,689 people for #COVID19, w an average ~3.3% positive overall. Over the past week, on average 74,596 people have been tested daily (w 7.4% +ve), as #publichealth#TestandTrace.https://t.co/ZArmpJMAM3
Holy crap, Alberta has an almost 10% Positive rate! Alberta is fucked. Tent field hospitals and trench graves lie in their future.
Here’s our video for today:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses Canadians from outside his home in Ottawa on the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic.
Fewer than 650 views. Canada is clearly not in ANY MOOD for another Covid-19 briefing. But here we are, kittens. We happy few are one in our esoteric taste in edutainment in 2020.
We are later-calling the COVID briefing bingo for today, for lo, we were still asleep when the briefing itself happened. If someone wants to pay us The Big Bucks (like, any. Any bucks. We’re not proud) we’ll be happy to not sleep through two different alarms. One is using the royal “we” of course. We have no idea why. One has no idea why. One and we blame the multiple alarms.
Whatever.
We or I am of the mind or minds that we or I or all of us have run out of Paul Naschy werewolf movies and rather than re-use the titles of the many ones which have been re-titled, we are moving on to Bela Lugosi movies, several of which ALSO boast multiple titles. Movie laundering: it’s just like money laundering only you only make 4%, not 30%. Bela was hot.
Bela could Get It.
So today’s briefing bingo is named after the officially Worst Movie of All Time, Plan 9 from Outer Space. That’s NUMERAL nine. Because we fancy like that.
Here are our cards. Mark one or mark them all. Nothing matters anymore.
and all of our other Covid Briefing Bingos are on the category page.
And our CPAC video. Do we think they’ll ever reply to our message? No, kittens. No, we do not. But it’s okay. We’ve still got our poetry.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses Canadians from outside his home in Ottawa on the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic.
Man, even the CPAC captioning team is half-assing it these days.
raincoaster 