Good morning, possums, and welcome to the latest in our Completely Arbitrarily Named Briefing Bingos. There is a unifying concept, if a completely arbitrary one because everything is meaningless and nothing matters anymore, and also because the post needs a title in order to go live, but the title has to be chosen before the briefing happens because time is linear, but nobody has guessed it so far. The concept, not the nature of Time.
Your guesses can go in the comment section for a chance to win fabulous, completely imaginary prizes. Nobody has even attempted this yet, but we’re getting to the point where there’s no excuse. Gonna get pretty obvious soon. Much like whether or not we’re getting an election this year.
It’s not easy being green
We’ll plant 2 billion trees over the next ten years. That’s it. That’s the tweet.
Here’s our video, starting fifteen minutes late today so you get to mark your “Starts more than ten minutes late” square right off the bat. 557 people watching right now. By 2pm that’s gotten up to 1500, but Fridays are always lower than Tuesdays for some reason. It’s not like people are off to the cottage on Fridays these days.
Spring, possums. Sprung, it hath. Yesterday Buddy the Dog and I saw no fewer than a dozen robins on our perambulations, which are somewhat abbreviated now that Buddy’s an elderdog and has got The Rheumatiz bad in the hippal region. I, you understand, am ageless and impervious and my Tylenol consumption is purely for recreational purposes, of course.
Anyway, here we are with yet another in our popular series of Mystery Nomenclature Theme briefings. To date we’ve had: Robin, Snooky, Muddy (how did we luck into a featured image like that? Luck was with us that day), Grumpy, Sparky, Heavy Metal, and Happy. A Happy Covid Briefing Bingo. Yes, possums, I almost didn’t believe it myself. That was a big vaccine news day. As is today, ah, but that would be telling! You must read on to get to the good stuff, including my favourite tie. And lots and lots of red and white.
American Robin by Christina Rollo
Here is the Trudeau And Co Power Hour broadcast from CPAC. Youtube suggested I watch the CBC version, but as you know, possums, I’m working on my French and CBC has those sweet federal dollars to hire someone to talk over the French bits and tell you basically exactly what was just said in English, but again and run through the translationifier for extra word salad goodness, so anyway, here’s our video:
On Parliament Hill, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discusses the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. He also comments on the death of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. The prime minister is joined virtually by federal ministers Patty Hajdu (health), Anita Anand (public services and procurement), and Dominic LeBlanc (intergovernmental affairs), as well as Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, and Dr. Howard Njoo, deputy chief public health officer.
And our cards, and I guess if we’re gonna be doing these until September I can go ahead and create a new card after all. Thought we’d seen the last of these, but apparently not.
Yes, yet another in our mysterious, riddle-iffic series of oddly-named Covid-19 Briefings. So far we’ve had
Muddy (today)
Grumpy
Sparky
Heavy Metal
Happy
Guessed the connection yet?
Mud season is definitely here, as Buddy the dog and all the carpets in the house can confirm. Buddy is, of course, our Ottawa office manager, and he is supervising today’s briefing bingo from the luxurious confines of his corner office.
Buddy is VERY concerned about the thrombosis issue with the AstraZenica vaccine.
Mark your first square: Technical Difficulties, as my internet crapped out right off the get-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. He is joined virtually by federal ministers Patty Hajdu (health) and Anita Anand (public services and procurement), 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 that Pfizer will move up its delivery of 5 million vaccine doses originally scheduled to arrive in late summer to June. Canada is now on track to receive 9.6 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine that month. Trudeau and the ministers also face questions on the new guidelines for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) has modified its advice concerning the vaccine, recommending that it only be used on people over the age of 55. The recommendation comes following reports from Europe of rare but serious blood clots that have occurred after administration of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
And we’re off. Squares: facial hair, mask, vaccines, Somebody’s In A Good Mood Today (not a square, but should be). And Begins In English and Vocal Malfunction or whatever I called that square too. And AstraZenica. Blue Suit square too. We never do find out what colour the shoes are, because the camera operator cuts off the exiting shot at the knees. Very clever. VERY CLEVER. I see what you did there.
“Got your backs” as we knew would be here. And now we have Pfizer and Moderna as well. Speaking of which, someone’s put what they claim is the full mRNA sequence of the Moderna vaccine up on Github. Could be poodle sperg for all I know, don’t even have time to look, but here’s your link. Enjoy? Don’t say I never did nuthin’ for ya!
it was sequenced by stanford university students, afaik they got the green light from moderna.https://t.co/nPtQZ7rOtW
Oh shoot me, a Facebook Live event. SOME OF US ARE PERMABANNED YOU KNOW, a brand new kind of marginalization. Cut off from Federal government Covid info sessions because they’re done on a privately-owned platform instead of done on a government website first and ALSO streamed to the privately-owned platform. Fine. Whatever. Nobody listens to me.
Welcome back, Possums, to the Zoolander and Friends hour. As you can see we’re continuing our unspecified, guess-if-you-can arbitrary narrative framing device series. First we were Happy, then we were Heavy Metal. Now, Sparky. Possibly even electric! Like that one annoying light switch that hums angrily and occasionally snaps at you when you turn it on.
And you, Dear Readers, turn me on.
This is Sparky D’s world, and you’re living in it
Oh, oops. Sorry, wrong video. This is the one with our ensemble cast, even if they’re not here yet, fifteen minutes into the scheduled briefing. Lyrics SOMEWHAT different from the above, and, honestly, could really use a good backbeat to give it a bit more energy. Although it turns out that today’s briefing DOES have a lot of zip.
Neoliberalism: PoweredByOptimism™
On Parliament Hill, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discusses the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. He is joined by federal ministers Patty Hajdu (health), Anita Anand (public services and procurement), and Dominic LeBlanc (intergovernmental affairs), as well as Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, and Dr. Howard Njoo, deputy chief public health officer. They discuss Health Canada’s authorization of the use of the Johnson & Johnson Janssen COVID-19 vaccine. This is the first single-dose COVID-19 vaccine to be approved for use in Canada, and the fifth COVID-19 vaccine that Health Canada has approved.
And our briefing cards are here and NO I didn’t get you a new one because I didn’t expect another briefing this week, silly me.
This is in part how policy gets made during the normal times, so it's not surprising to see it here. It's just shocking to have it put in such a plain, direct way.
I’m beginning to think that, as 2020 was like being in the boat in Life of Pi, 2021 is just liminal space.
What a transgressive tweet 😂 *sobbing through tears* is a fundamentally disruptive way to problematize the identity of space, and implicitavely to challenge the boundary between the liminal and the non-liminal. Right, off to cook dinner 😝
