Well, The Roommate has returned from his brief sojourn away at his mother’s house, and suddenly, for no reason I can think of, the completely arbitrarily-chosen title of today’s covid briefing bingo simply came to me.
Now I remember why it's so hard to write when The Roommate is here: the torture porn tv until he passes out. Fortunately that's only a couple of hours away.
Yesterday the first thing he did was ask me if I had a bag of dog poo in the freezer. Given I have no dog, what the hell? pic.twitter.com/oyzazCDyTw
And if I had a dog, why would I enshrine its poo thusly? a sentence I never thought I would have to type
Have I told you the story of the time I nearly hacked his Google Home to tweet every time he burped or farted? He averages four an hour after dinner. I had to stop using the scented candles I love, for fear of blowing the place sky-high.
There’s an episode where Peggy and Bobby try charcoal while Hank is out of town. It’s…perfection.
Guesses in the comments section. The winner receives an all-expenses-paid and completely virtual vacation to a hidden beach resort in the South Pacific or maybe just the Equatorial Pacific if we’re pressed for time and GIPHY doesn’t have what we’re looking for, prize-wise. Plus an equally-virtual Maserati, because why the fuck not?
Are Slate readers really in the market for Maserati SUVs? The things I learn on the internet. pic.twitter.com/BS3ZmqlEQU
— Eva Lewarne #IStandwithTrudeau #LiberalMajority (@ELewarne) May 9, 2021
Our video is here:
On Parliament Hill, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discusses the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. He is joined virtually by Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc, as well as by Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, and Dr. Howard Njoo, deputy chief public health officer. The prime minister announces a federal investment of $12 billion for transit projects in the Greater Toronto Area and Hamilton.
And our bingo cards are here, including the very newish Tenth Generation Card:
Good rainy morning, Possums. We are coming to you live from Ottawa, although today CPAC is apparently not covering Trudeau’s briefing so we are going with the CBC video instead, as the actual PMO team doesn’t get the video up for eight or ten hours and never includes other people’s speeches or the questions from the media. This should be jarring, and bad for my French, but here goes.
If you want to take a guess at our arbitrary nomenclature convention, we’re still going. One theme unifies all our briefing titles lately and we have had:
Guesses in the comments section to win fabulous, completely imaginary prizes. Our choice today is not completely arbitrary, however, as toadstools and politics could well be more interconnected than most people think. Forget mind control chips in vaccines and fluoride in the water supply: how about dosing the entire population with shrooms to fight fascism? Or at least the Alberta and Ontario legislatures?
Researchers found unlikely heroes in keeping the world from authoritarianism – magic mushrooms. Scientists from the Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial College London showed that psilocybin, the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms, makes people less likely to embrace authoritarian views like fascism and more connected with nature.
The study, authored by Taylor Lyons and Robin L. Carhart-Harris, a leading researcher in this field, shows that psilocybin treatment can lead to lasting changes in such mindsets.
that’s no mushroom
Here’s our CBC video, and I’m wondering about the backstory here. Did he piss off CPAC? Is Their Person sick today? I see they’re covering Question Period but not this. Come, let us overthink it together! [later: CPAC did in fact cover the briefing, although they didn’t have their placeholder in place on YouTube in advance like usual, and it wasn’t there five minutes into the briefing either].
The CBC does not go in for descriptive captions, they only promote their other channels.
And our Bingo cards are here. Play one or play the whole set or play a completely random and arbitrarily chosen subset, because it’s 2021 and arbitrary absurdism is where we are at now in Canadian politics.
We are now two days out from the AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab, which I got on Thursday at 8:30am. Last night, I noticed that tap water was tasting different for me, and wondered what that meant. Happy to report it does, in fact and in actuality, mean something.
Something meaningful.
I mean…
I mean…
It means that this:
Shrimp and orange pepper tacos with white peach balsamic dressing
Tasted like this:
Happy breakfast
You know, once I had breakfast sitting one table over from Oprah Winfrey. I was in Santa Barbara for the film festival with some friends, and while I can never afford extravagant dinners when I travel I’ve long since realized it’s much easier to afford extravagant brunches pretty much anywhere, so my friends and I went for one.
Brunch was at the Bacara Resort which is now the Ritz-Carleton Santa Barbara, which is no doubt just as lovely now as it was back in the early 2000’s. Egrets in the herb garden, surfers on the beach, sea air and ocean views and peace and quiet and celebrities in neutral cashmere at the next table hoping to god you don’t bug them. I had, if memory serves (which for once it does because I’m back on the ginko biloba) the shrimp and mango salad and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice. It cost $45 with tip, and it was absolutely worth every penny. It was both the most expensive and the tastiest brunch I’ve ever had.
Until today.
These perfectly ordinary tacos I made for breakfast today tasted better. Frozen shrimp, leftover cut orange peppers, week-old hearts of romaine, WASP-made tortillas, and store brand peach and white balsamic salad dressing, and honestly one of the most intensely pleasurable things I’ve ever put inside me. Why is that?
From what GAVI says about the way the virus interferes with the way salts interact with scent sensors, it seems natural that the metallic/mineral flavours in the water were the first thing I noticed once the vaccine got a good foothold and started kicking viral ass. It took till today for me to notice a difference with the flavour of food, but I really do, and my sense of scent is keener than it’s been in more than a year for certain. Yesterday I put on a sweater I hadn’t worn in a couple of weeks, and I noticed the scent of perfume on it, loved the perfume, and was able to pick it out from my (maybe 18 or 20 bottles) collection.
And man, if I thought breakfast was good, lunch, Possums, lunch was fucking orgasmic.
Behold the most pleasurable single physical experience I have had since March, 2020.
Hey, it’s been A Year, okay?
That is leftover cold chicken on a toasted poppyseed bagel with mustard (the basic bitch kind), mayonnaise, and salt and pepper. And it was orgasmic. And about eight hours later I can still smell the chicken on my fingers, and I’ve washed my hands four times.
That, if I recall, was a bagel too
Before you ask, no, the chicken leftovers weren’t so old they were smelly. And I didn’t put them anywhere interesting with my hands. I’m just an extraordinarily great smeller right now.
Now.
As I mentioned yesterday, it’s possible this is psychosomatic (which is different from Not Real). And I know that the plural of anecdote is not data (even if nobody seems to know who said it first). But anecdotal evidence from medical and scientific professionals I’m in touch with has begun to show a pattern: if you had the virus, and you get the jab, your symptoms are very mild compared to the norm, and you may notice a return of smell and taste. And I’m pretty sure I had Covid-19 back in March of 2020, and possibly again in the fall, when I was sick for four straight months.
And I’m noticing that yes, there are flavours in my mouth even when I’m not eating, which is consistent with a return of long-lost senses.
Basically those flavours are always there; any lover will tell you that you have a particular taste. And the reason we don’t notice these flavours most of the time is, after a certain duration of a particular sensation, our brain goes, “okay, that’s enough,” and shuts down the receptors that are getting that message. It’s like if your ex constantly texts you with unproductive statements, you block the number. If the messages don’t come in for a year, you might unblock the number, and the ex can get through again and because you’ve been free of it for a year it seems THAT MUCH MORE intense.
So that’s what’s going on in my mouth right now.
As for other symptoms/side effects, I feel just fine today. The persistent post-nasal drip that I’ve been complaining about for literally more than a year is gone. GONE, possums. GONE.
My resting heart rate, which is normally between 59-62 beats per minute, spiked to 70 yesterday, but it’s at 69 today and on its way back down, and that might have been a response to the Tylenol and one beer I had. Had a slight headache when I woke up which dissipated over the day, and my jab arm feels a little bit bruised and stiff, but I have quite a burst of energy today. The Sister, who has a biology obviously very similar to my own, is a day farther out from her AZ jab and it hit her very hard. Today her injection site is a large red welt, whereas when I went to photograph mine and share it with her…
I couldn’t find it.
I also have a kind of mental clarity that is new to me, at least recently. Remember, I’m still recovering from a traumatic brain injury four and a half years ago, but I do feel particularly bright today. That’s the exact word, “bright.” Everything is a little lighter, everything is a little less effort, everything sparkles a little bit in comparison to three days ago. If that’s psychosomatic or not, I’ll take it. There’s writing to be done, Possums!
Quick drive-by blog post to say that two and a half days after getting the AZ jab, all of a sudden I noticed that the tap water didn’t taste very good.
It tasted, in fact, like licking rocks. Not that one has ever done that, you understand. But you know what I’m talking about.
Ottawa tap water used to smell like hard boiled eggs because of all the sulfur in it, but these days they’ve figured out how to get rid of that while leaving in a lot of the native minerals (this land is all dolomite and limestone and bits of granite imported on long-melted glaciers during the last Ice Age).
For roughly a year The Roommate has had a Brita water filter, which he regards as a Covid safety measure; this doesn’t remove bacteria, let alone viruses, but it does remove minerals including calcium and fluoride. Once he started using it, he was hooked on the taste, and frankly even the dog preferred the Brita water. If you give him tap water now he just looks at you and sighs, like you’re particularly stupid and he pities you.
I couldn’t tell the difference. Literally. Could. Not. Tell.
Today I got myself a glass of water from the tap, and almost spat it out. It tasted like licking rocks. So did the Sodastream water in the fridge I’d made from tap water (I’m actively trying to get more fluoride). The Brita water? Tasted like nothing, so no change there.
I haven’t had anything to eat since noticing the change, but if breakfast is particularly savoury tomorrow I will be sure to let you know.
As I said elsewhere, we are hyper-aware of our bodies right now, looking for symptoms and so on, so it’s quite possible this is all psychosomatic, but either something is going on in my water supply, or something is going on in my brain, or something is going on in my body.
Morning, Possums! I wasn’t sure we were going to cover this particular briefing, because we did get poked yesterday and we weren’t sure how we’d be feeling (this is the Vice-Regelian “we” you understand) today. But we are good, other than feeling like we’ve been sleeping in a pair of too-tight goggles and somewhat creaky in the joints but then, it’s a glimpse of the inevitable gimpy future for which we should be grateful, I suppose.
In related news, I am also feeling relatively invulnerable from an invisible and ubiquitous deadly enemy, but then if you know anything about the fights I get into online you’ll know this is basically just standard operating procedure.
Let’s get right into it, shall we? We are still doing our Completely Arbitrary Mystery Nomenclature Theme, and so far we’ve featured:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provides an update in Ottawa on the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. He is joined by Procurement Minister Anita Anand.
raincoaster 