Category Archives: Medicine

The Covid Briefing Bingo: A Reconstruction

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Good morning, possums! We’re here, we’re caffeinated, and we’re doing this!

Basically the core elements of existentialism. Don’t ask too many questions (another core element). Existentialism is a Whole Mood, very 2021 indeed.

A wise friend of mine said that, in taking on and taking down Wall Street and Big Money, Reddit was at last fulfilling the dream of its founder, the late Aaron Swartz. Swartz killed himself when the government threatened him with decades in custody for attempting to put some academic papers online for free.

I don’t even know who I am anymore now that I’m not a cybersecurity journalist and I’m not the Governor-General of Canada.

Yet.

Our video is here, with 1700 tuned in live. Fridays are always busy at Rideau Cottage:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provides an update from outside his home in Ottawa on the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic.

I see CPAC Captioneer is feeling Existentialist himself. Without faith in history or the future, their captions are meaningless, and without the incentive of being paid by the word there is no reason to fill them out to 150 words, the way they did mere weeks ago. It’s okay, CPAC Captioneer. We’re all half-assing it these days except Justin Trudeau, who is coasting on the adrenaline that’s sustained him through the Trump years and the oxytocin glow of the Joe Biden inauguration.

Edited to add: I guess CPAC doesn’t get a copy of the speech in advance, because only after the fact do they fully-ass the captions:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provides an update from outside his home in Ottawa on the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. He announces tighter travel restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus. Air Canada, WestJet, Sunwing and Air Transat have agreed to suspend air services to all Caribbean destinations and Mexico starting January 31 until April 30. In addition, starting next week, international flights will only be allowed to land at Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary. The prime minister also announces that the federal government will soon introduce mandatory in-airport PCR testing for returning travellers, who must await their results at an approved hotel for up to three days at their own expense. Mandatory COVID-19 testing at U.S. land borders will also be coming for non-essential travellers.

Zoolander is feeling alive and existential

And our cards are here:

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Twofer Tuesday: Covid Briefing Bingo Double Bill

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Well, possums, we were bad. We neglected you last week AND this week; what is it about Tuesday that makes it so damn difficult to liveblog the Covid briefing?

I’ll tell you: my god damned alarm not going off. What, after all, is the point of technology if we cannot use it as a convenient excuse when we want. My phone has many thousands of times more computing power than was used to send the Apollo astronauts to the moon, but what do I need it to do? Provide plausible cover for when I sleep in.

Mission. Accomplished!

Moving right along, or left along, which is more to my anarchal communist taste. Tastes. But the less said about those, the better…

The Irish variety is rarer than you might think

We, meaning me, are calling you, meaning you, “possums” because

  • hopefully there is more than one reader of this blog these days
  • Armie Hammer has ruined “kittens” forever
  • wemeaningme aremeaningis big fansmeaningfan of Dame Edna, and Dame Edna loved her possums
See, wemeaningme wouldn’t lie about that

Anyhoodle, we missed both last week’s and this week’s Tuesday briefings, so we’re going to do a twofer today on Tuesday. Yes, you can mark your “Alliteration” square.

Here’s the video from today, since we’re doing these in reverse order because wemeaningme aremeaningis arbitrary that way. 33,000 views so far, one of the more popular ones.

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The Vice Regal Covid Briefing Bingo

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Here we go. No fancy framing theme today, because I used all my mojo up yesterday creating a platform for my run to be elected Governor-General. I had no idea standards were so low: I may actually have a real shot at this. Haven’t killed anyone with a car yet, nor beaten a spouse, but hey, day’s not over, amirite?

One notes with interest that they’ve already killed her GGJPayette Twitter account, and now it’s just Canadian_GG. Oh, snap!

I need to go back and amend that post about becoming Governor-General, to put Mike Holmes in charge of all the permaculture-related renovations at Rideau Hall, and give Scott McGillivray some sort of “facilities manager” title just to keep him around so I can look at him. God knows, I’m a sucker for a good head of hair.

Oh yes, and we will write it into the rules that in order to graduate from a Canadian university, you must spend at least six months working in either retail or food and beverage service, ie waiting tables, cashier, sales floor, or cooking and/or serving fast food. No exceptions, no fancy bougie compound sinecure your connected uncle gets for you (“Second Under Barback at Bohemian Grove” spare me; if your shoes don’t smell like beer at the end of a shift, you ain’t a barback), no management jobs. Yes, welcome to the life of a front line worker. Your proletarian brothers and sisters embrace you! Enjoy your Teachable Moment.

Quit Stalin!

Meanwhile, you can’t tell me Twitter isn’t comedy gold.

But where was I? Oh yes, explaining that there would be absolutely no elaborate introduction, nor framing device for today’s Covid Briefing Bingo. None. Zip. Because it’s 2021 and we’re over it, really, aren’t we?

Very well, here we go. Our video is here:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provides an update in Ottawa on the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. In his remarks, the prime minister also comments on the resignation of Julie Payette as governor general and on his upcoming telephone call with U.S. President Joe Biden, during which he is expected to discuss the president’s decision to cancel the permit for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
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Susan Sontag and Linus hang out a lot

To Forget or to Play Covid Briefing Bingo?

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Well, kittens, we’re going to have to come up with something else to call you, as it appears that skeevy Armie Hammer uses the term to describe the women in his bizarre sexual fantasies. Not that we’re against bizarre sexual fantasies. No, perish the thought! But his involve cannibalism. And, after having met Willy Pickton, there just isn’t enough brain bleach on the planet to scrub that image out of my head. We don’t want you messed up in that!

Susan Sontag and Linus hang out a lot
Susan Sontag and Linus hang out a lot

I got into an argument recently on the internet (imagine that! Me!) about whether or not Pickton’s pork ended up in grocery stores, and in doing the research I discovered…well, long story short: it’s worse. It is, in fact, very possible and even very likely that human remains ended up in a wide variety of consumer products, because he apparently took his victims’ bodies to the same rendering plant that he took his pork, and the uh, “outcome” of that plant ended up in mass-market products from lipstick to …. well, who cares what else, really? I’ll never look at my $35 Nars the same way again.

A friend of mine was paid a great deal of money back in the day by the pork marketing board, because after the details of the Pickton case came out the price of pork fell through the floor, for obvious reasons, and he managed to get it up again. No such issue at the Lipstick Marketing Board. But, ew. Let us bond with the concept of motivated forgetting, and put it behind us.

Indeed, let us forget that with extreme prejudice. We interrupt this dark interlude to remind you that, thanks to TikTok, sea shanties are trending on all platforms.

So, readers, let us try to put that behind us and move forward in the very Canadian spirit of “we shall never speak of this again.” Which brings us to the Philosophy of Forgetting, which I didn’t even know was A Thing, or if I did, I forgot it after my TBI.

Related: the very internet-native concept of the Eternal September, which is the state of always having so many new users unfamiliar with the basics and protocols that it always feels like the first day of school. Right now, we have an Eternal September for democracy itself, hell, for critical thinking in the first place.

Here’s how my yesterday went. My today is going so well I forgot I ran this Twitter poll.

But you’re no doubt going:

Well, the Covid Briefing Bingo, also, is going well. Trudeau hasn’t shown up yet even though it’s at his own house, and my blog’s inexplicably adding page breaks to the post in between every paragraph. So, mark your “Technical difficulties” square.

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Zen and the Art of the Covid Briefing Bingo

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Zoom, zoom, here we go, kittens, roaring into today’s Covid-19 Briefing Bingo like a 1966 Honda Superhawk hitting the highway, or a masterpiece of narrative philosophy (it’s called a parable) hitting the best-seller list. Whether you call it Quality, as Robert Pirsig did in his 1974 novel/parable/revolutionary work of technological philosophy, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (PDF)

Or Elegance, as in H.E. Huntley’s The Divine Proportion.

Or whatever they called it in Godel Escher Bach,(PDF) which I’m too rushed to look up or remember right now. There’s the whole text: YOU look it up.

You know it, The Thing. The Grand Unified Theory of Philosophy, the Thing which unites the principles of Aesthetics, Ethics, and Logic, the Thing which is also called anything from The Godhead to The Buddha to The Force to “buh muh rights!” because human beings can never agree on a goddamn thing, can we?

Anyhoodle, here we go with our video from CPAC. 12,000 views, kittens. It seems Canadians are taking this all a bit more seriously than in Ye Olden Dayes of like, a month ago, when they’d get 1,000 views on a good day. Perhaps the audience is attracted to that ineffable, ultimate characteristic of Quality which we were just discussing above? Or maybe they’re just big fans of the best hair in politics. Who knows?

Speaking outside his home in Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau provides an update on the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. In his remarks, the prime minister comments on his latest cabinet shuffle and announces that Canada has reached an agreement with Pfizer to purchase an additional 20 million doses of their COVID-19 vaccine. Responding to questions from reporters, he discusses the rollout of vaccines and addresses speculation about the timing of the next federal election. (January 12, 2021)
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