Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
Jeff played turn and turn about with Alex (Burnout Revenge – crash cars for points and lulz)
Now we learn that Alex is going to school with his dad and I pick him up at 3.
This works well for my day.
Ryker yelled my name (from behind his soother) at pick up that was adorable.
Anecdotal but blowout public diarrhea is a feature of the current COVID variant.
So… apparently, there’s a company called Prestige Biotech, and it, apparently, is owned by Xiuquin Yao, and sometime in March of this year it was discovered that this company is renting a ‘storage facility’ in Reedley, a town SE of Fresno CA, which was jam-packed with infectious agents, moribund mice (almost a thousand were euthanized).
From Beth Mole’s Arstechnica article from three days ago:
Local and federal authorities have shut down what seems to be an illegal medical lab hidden in a California warehouse that contained nearly 1,000 laboratory mice, hundreds of unknown chemicals, refrigerators and freezers, vials of biohazardous materials, including blood, incubators, and at least 20 infectious agents, including SARS-CoV-2, HIV, and a herpes virus.
A criminal investigation is ongoing. The tenant of the warehouse is listed as Prestige Biotech. Prado told KSEE that the company’s president, Xiuquin Yao, was not forthcoming with information. According to the court documents, Yao told officials that his company had moved assets belonging to a defunct company called Universal Meditech Inc. (UMI), to the Reedley warehouse from another Fresno location where UMI had operated before it was evicted. Prestige was identified as a creditor to UMI. But, Prestige allegedly failed to provide any licensing or permit that would explain the laboratory activity at the warehouse.
All biological materials were secured by July 7.
Happy St. Sitha (Zita) Day, patron saint of domestic work, domestic workers, and lost keys. Here she is from a church wall in Norfolk UK.
Laundry is done and I’ll go back to folding it when I’ve finished posting. No Lumosity yet, wordle in three (the word made me laugh out loud because it is NOT a word I personally am associated with, like, at all). Five kudos from one person on AO3 last night… I mean woman did you SLEEP that was like 50K words LOL…. Almonds are in the oven for toasting and the timer is set to explode (finally have a LOUD kitchen timer) in an hour. I have started selecting my clothes to be packed. I’ve been practicing my instruments every day, I keep starting on and then refusing to write down any of the gags for a standup routine (part of it involving a ‘tactical ukulele’ which describes the second uke Mike bought me), I wrote 899 words yesterday on the fic and about 40 on TB. Dejunking has slowed but not stopped. Played Original Green Tetris on the Tetris website yesterday and I have to say I prefer newer versions LOL. I’ve booked my next flu/covid shots with the pharmacy.
I send a special family hug to Leo and Linda this am (they are always sharing pictures of their family in the background with me and it helps me stay connected to their fam and I really appreciate it) and a big long rocking hug for Dave, who is mourning his kitty and will be for a while. He still has Pippin, but Mookie was a real character.
Here’s a list of free websites that are apparently useful from boing boing dot com this morning. I’ve only had a good look at witeboard and untools but intend to explore more:
Just in case anyone is thinking of me, please don’t get me anything for Mother’s Day that doesn’t involve tasty food I didn’t cook.
Still very much enjoying Medium and we’ve started The Diplomat and are LOVING it. But it’s (ratchet ratchet ratchet sound in the background) berloddy tense.
Someone ACTUALLY POSTED ‘It’s a fine spring day in Saskatchewan’ on one of the video social media sites; it shows a my kind of fine looking young white man trying to pour coffee, which emerges from the carafe at about a 30 degree angle in a fifty-knot gale. With snow. While he is inadequately dressed for the weather. While smiling charmingly. It would take me longer to figure out how to cross post it than describe it, so I described it.
Eye test today. I will be getting the dreaded ‘drops’.
Lovely indoor walk with Paul yesterday at Lougheed. He seems very beaten down and oppressed by his illness but cheered up for the walk. It always cheers folks up to eat, so we got some lo mai gai, which was particularly fine in comparison with previous outings, and there was a lone har gaw in there because they were out of enough lo mai gai to fulfil my order, and the hot and sour soup was as good as I ever remember it being there. We went to Cobb’s but I didn’t buy treats, just spongy crusty white bread which is my kryptonite for stuff I’m s’posed to lay off for my liver.
All I did yesterday was change my clothes, post to my blog, roast all the remaining almonds (fit for three batches of biscotti), do the Wordle, complete Lumosity training for the day, get Jeff some tea and a fried egg sammy (I just had the eggs with the bell peppers I roasted the other day), take my pills, throw out some compostables, empty the sink, train the cat with paw claps and running catches, police up my eyebrows, run the dishwasher, watch TV including the most recent TLoU and Vera, talk to Aunt Mary on the phone, work on Totally Boned, post shit on twitter and facebook, and order Japanese food (finally got the amount right, we had virtually no leftovers.)
I also read a lot of stuff on the internet about long COVID. Anyone reading this has survived a mass disabling event, and we’re either irritable or transfixed with our grief. When will we come to an understanding that we’ve globally:
Normalized people dropping dead from cardiovascular issues…. at any age.
increased the number of children who will never be able to pursue gainful employment in a fashion that is useful to end stage capitalism due to thymus collapse; as adults they will be immunocompromised for their entire lives. You know how in Victorian times there were ‘delicate children’, well, this kid over here will have had a stroke at age three and have a withered arm; this kid over there will die if she doesn’t get her allergy medication and her albuterol; that kid over there had a series of mini strokes in utero and will never take herself to the toilet unassisted; this kid over here will move to the city with his parents at the age of five and never be healthy again; these kids will catch fungal infections from playing in contaminated water after an earthquake and slowly die as their lungs turn black from the inside out; and all these kids here and there will die of childhood ailments because no group of people is consistently vaccinating against them any more and water treatment will get harder and harder as there’s less and less water.
reduced the fertility of the smallest upcoming generation in history and so we will thus be subjected, over and over, in family after family, to our own little version of the ‘children of men’. The current fertility data for younger people is horrifying. Many young men simply aren’t producing enough motile and healthy sperm to be able to count on fathering children if they get the opportunity. For young women, the problem will not so much be getting pregnant (although anecdotally this seems to be an issue) as maintaining a pregnancy for 8 months and then not dying of the consequences of gestational diabetes, like eclampsia, or losing the child late in the pregnancy. Eclampsia events during pregnancy have increased (according to the CDC (US)) by 30 PERCENT IN THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS. (If you don’t hear the original Star Trek klaxon at this point you’re not getting me, here.) Since the pando started. COVID hides in reproductive tissues as easily as anywhere else in the human body. Fertility gods and goddesses are planning a comeback.
and so ….in sum …. we’ve fixed it so that we’ll, as a species, have fewer kids and more of them will be born disabled, or sacrificed to disability after they’re born because of terrible public health policies.
The people who will bear the brunt of all this are women. Because we carry children. Because we birth them. Because we care for them. And because the patriarchy would rather that we women die and the children be born.
So my mood is bleak, on this day after ‘family day.’
Number 1: Thirty-odd COVID studies and links.
Number 2: Twenty-odd studies regarding COVID and the immune system.
Number 3: Immunity ‘debt’ is NOT a thing. 20+ links.
Number 4: more than twenty studies about HOOBOY masks.
Number 5: Mask purchase links.
Number 6: Air quality 20+ links.
Number 7: ze whole shebang.
/ the great Guilt Trip. more on that later.
He brought a bag of perfect mandarins and little oranges for new year.
We ordered from Fusioncore Japanese, the three of us, and watched some TV and hung out and talked. After Jeff went to bed Mike asked the my uke that he just restrung with very plangent strings and he played (in rapid succession) about ten tunes that I had no idea he knew on ukulele, all the way from Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out to Who’ll Stop the Rain. I mean, he only just BOUGHT a uke. He’s absolutely loving the instrument.
All in all a good day, even if I left a message for Paul and never followed up so I never got him out of the house. And slept more than I should. And didn’t pick up my inderal.
And after Mike handed the uke back I said, I have something unpleasant to say and I have to get it over with.
“I tried so hard to love the Blue Lava guitar you gave me. I tried playing it, playing with the cool electronics, compose on it. I couldn’t love it. I know usually when I get a new instrument the other instruments are mad and they are left alone while I have New Instrument Energy with My New Fave. But it never happened with this guitar. May I give it back to you?”
And he said thank you for telling me.
I knew where all the bits and bobbles were, and packed it up along with the Instant Pot insert and Bouillon he left her from New Years. I felt so relieved because Mike just didn’t take it the wrong way.
I am so fortunate in my friends.
everyone have a hellafine day. Wordle and Lumosity done, I’m in good shape today.
COVID data resource for Canadians.
14678 words
There are very few painkillers left on store shelves; children’s painkillers are virtually unavailable.
and it’s all going to get dramatically worse. Although the Chinese government is not reporting the death toll from COVID after releasing the lockdown, hearses queued in front of funeral homes tell no lies.
President Xi had a terrible choice; let millions of people die, or sit still for the largest wave of civil unrest in decades. So he let the pressure off the population, and now they’re too busy getting ready for CNY and, you know, dying, possibly of variants whose existence will be as a direct result of the end of the lockdown, to give him any grief domestically.
Overseas Chinese are mailing tylenol home. China makes 40% of the world’s medicine supply. I’m sure you can see where this is going; a complete collapse of the global medical supply chain. There will be one style of hospital care for the rich and another for everyone else. COVID outbreaks in China will also slow shipping globally for everything else.
Pray you don’t get sick. This will be a hard, harsh winter, and a dubious and inauspicious spring.
Apparently Ryker ended up in hospital last week with a breathing problem; he was nebulized and went home. This was when he was with his da. Apart from being maybe 5 percent crankier than normal Katie didn’t notice that he was doing poorly, afterward, which is why I didn’t report it earlier. Scared me though!
Link is here.
I should take a test to see if I’m one of them.
The US has declared a cold war on China with a recent move to cripple Chinese ability to make integrated circuits using the latest technology.
The timing
looks perfect unless you consider how many lives are at stake and that none of this is a freaking game.
I uphold the lives, worth and aspirations of the Chinese people and honour their revolutionary martyrs, cultural figures and great artists. The CPC including the army and its foreign agents currently active in Canada can go fuck it/themsself.
Walked in Deer Lake Park with Paul yesterday, came back for chicken barley soup and iced tea.
I got a fantastic night of sleep; practicing proper sleep hygiene made a sound difference.
6561 words on Part II
Lovely pile of kudos from AO3 in the inbox this morning.
Totally enjoying Sharpe’s Stories!
Hope to call some friends on the phone today and catch up.
I need a picture of the Camaro for Suzanne.
Jeff very kindly got me a copy of ‘Road Food’, Misha Collins’ show about regional US cuisine. Really enjoyed the first episode. Jeff is no fan of Vietnamese cuisine, but I am; watching the show start with Pho for breakfast (when I used to have it after I got off midnights all the time at the 24 hour place (name keeps changing) on Kingsway) was MOST enjoyable, I could practically smell it through the screen. His former castmates have started a new ‘Winchester property’, it airs for the first time this month.
We watched ‘Catherine called Birdy’ and enjoyed it mightily. The closing credits are absolutely delightful, and everything beforehand was very well done; a perfect star vehicle for the inimitable Bella Ramsey (previously from Game of Thrones and Worst Witch.) I find it amusing that if I’d known Lena Dunham was behind it I probably would have given it a miss, but many of the writing and interpersonal lapses of her past incarnations are not seen here. A woman’s allowed to get smarter. I won’t infest my site with it, but if you care, google Lena Dunham controversy and be prepared to wonder if she has any friends who don’t share their drugs with her. I mean, I could easily say a hundred controversial things before breakfast but she acted like she literally didn’t understand what she was being called on half the time, and dissolved into tears at charges of racism.
Please note that if you’re a settler accused of racism, it’s probably true! Screaming about it doesn’t help. Sit with it and stay off social media until you can represent yourself as a person capable of self-improvement. Not saying I am that person. I have moved my views somewhat but I’m in the post-wallow stage of antiracism (sample of wallow: ah me! hoW CoudL I haveKN OWN … my PAreNTS did their best – there were only two people of colour in my entire grade school, blah blah blah yes I’m 63 and white in Canada, of course I bathed in racism and ableism erryday) in which I feel a brisk disdain for white crybabies and prefer deeds to words on the subject.
There are 50K Beavis and Butthead fanfics on AO3. Jest reviewing my life choices over here.
5278 words on Part II.
For Trotsky Tuesday, please enjoy the famous combination of anarchist ideals like free love and nudity plus scientific excellence embodied in this wikipedia article about ´Élisée Reclus.
I’ve gotten to the stage in the pandemic where I’ve now imagined all my friends and relatives dying of COVID (except Onty Mary because she just WON’T, THAT’S WHY! I DON’T HAVE TO EXPLAIN THAT TO ANYONE) or sequelae and gone to their funerals in my mind. Somehow I get to arrange all those funerals too so I get things how I want them. As you know I enjoy funerals and memorial services and do like a good one. Anyway, if I sound like I’ve been randomly crying throughout the day, here’s what made me cry.
A newborn calf with really bad respiration after a tough birth, dying in its owner’s arms. A Ukrainian woman making a video for her boyfriend on the front and her apartment takes a direct hit while she’s making it. Dozens of Canadian disabled people on twitter begging for food because they have nothing in their house for Thanksgiving. Not being able to do Thanksgiving with the family. Being too lazy to cut olives for pizza. Wondering if this phone call to my mOm will be the last one. Being glad that my daughter trusts me enough to talk to me about important stuff. Being terrified to lose this housing situation. (This place is literally 50% cheaper than any even close to equivalent housing situation in all of the lower Mainland.) Being so tired that I forgot my evening meds. Every time I go to the grocery store now, I cry. I cry about the abundance of food that’s going to disappear into the maw of climate change. I cry every time I put something like coffee or almonds or chocolate in the cart. Not much, I’m not sobbing, but I’m leaking.
The pandemic is dragging us all through a slow motion mass casualty event. We’ve been abandoned by politicians but the wise expect that. What we never expected was neoliberalism is such an indelible feature in our world that it has made the people we thought we could trust – the public health authorities and epidemiologists – into villainous murderers.
During and after the Great Mortality (as the black death was known at the time) people became much more selfish, lonely, profligate, violent and distractable (by contemporary accounts, anyway, as I read in Tuchman’s ‘The Distant Mirror’.)
It’s all happening again now, and I’m in the middle of it with everyone else. These moments of sadness are because it’s easy for me to feel sad. Many beautiful things are dying, but we must rush on regardless and be adults and hide our grief.
the biggest annoyance, always and forever, is the failure of every level of government in Canada to protect its most vulnerable citizens from COVID
That is a slow-match, slow-burn, never-ending anger. The dead can’t speak and so I must. Forty-six thousand Canadians have died of COVID, (that number is likely under-reported by as much as 50%), hundreds of thousands have become disabled, hundreds of thousands are experiencing loss of breadwinners and grandparents, and all of the responsibility for what should be a collective effort has been pushed onto schoolchildren and people who don’t believe in science. It’s unconscionable, and it’s daily life.
Some ratbastard trudging to work without looking where they were going nearly trod on a baby raccoon in the Seabus Station. Mama raccoon was able to effect a rescue, but no thanks to that asshole. GRRRR whole thing was caught on video, which I’m not sharing.
Family Law is a new show that I should be watching because my friend Sue Sparlin is in it. Unfortunately the lead character, ably played by Jewel Staite, is a narcissistic, petty, bullying, parental and relationship incompetent with a drinking problem. The character is so unpleasant Jeff and I bailed after the first ep. I AM SO ANNOYED. Many good people behind and in front of the camera, but there is so much ‘humour of embarrassment’ that it’s about as much fun as getting sunstroke. Also watching children get repeatedly treated as props and dragged through their parents’ mental health issues is TRIGGERING AF. PLEASE NOTE full kudos for casting a trans woman as a trans woman as the office manager. AND SO GOOD TO SEE GENELLE WILLIAMS again.
Air quality is 50 – better but still not great. Good enough to go walking with Paul today if he has any interest.
Sent twenty dollars to a disabled Canadian via paypal this am. Sometimes people talk about their lives in such a way that you really feel your privilege. I AM SO FORTUNATE. AND I’M ANNOYED WITH TRUDEAU we were all supposed to get a double GST tax credit and now it won’t come until after Christmas and the people who need it most, the disabled, are filling up my twitter feed with tales of starvation and horror, people thinking of applying for medical assistance in dying since they aren’t given enough money on disability to live.
Katie is still too busy to see me – Friday she says.
Hoping to Darwin this fool isn’t my relative. His most recent stunt is to go on twitter and ask why the gummint isn’t doing something about
are you ready
CONTRAILS
jfc
JFC PEOPLE
This is what he posted, with pictures of contrails.
“You’ll notice, that not one single elected politician will say anything in regards to what we are all seeing in the sky these days. It’s absolutely disgusting. Nothing is normal about what’s happening up there yet not one politician will say a word. Right”
My responses: (and this is after I deboned it because I GOT VERY VERY SWEARY)
I was five years old the first time my pOp explained to me what contrails are. I’ve had six decades to watch people freak out about the natural consequence of applying the ass end of a 1500ºC jet to the cold dry air ten kilometres up. Fuck this wilful ignorance.
and as a comment to my twolleague ZenHeathen, My pOp was working for the National Research Council at the time…. let’s just say we don’t *worship* science in my family because science can be suborned to cruel and genocidal purposes. But neither do we pick and choose which established science to call real. eg vaccines.
PUTIN ANNEXES TERRITORY HE DOESN’T CONTROL AND BLAMES NATO. Good going dude.
A quart is called a quart because it’s a quarter of a gallon. It is annoying how many standards of measurement we have to live through. And die through, remember how close the ‘Gimli Glider’ came to being a mass casualty event and all because strangely enough gallons and litres aren’t the same.
just in case anyone asks