Name That Vaccine

Our media's daily reporting of this vaccine brand-off is fueling vaccine hesitancy. Somebody needs to read an ethics in journalism guide. None of it informs the public and a lot of it is counter to the public interest.

The Disappearing Royals

I wonder if what's really going on, and has been for a long time with the royals and royals-affiliated, is that the girlfriends and wives inevitably eclipse the royal and royals-affiliated men they date, marry, and divorce, because they're just more interesting to both the rabble and the media.

(By the way, we know Meghan Markle experienced and continues to experience anti-Black racism, particularly in the media coverage of her, and the public commentary around that coverage, because we witnessed and are witnessing it. Class has nothing to do with it. Talk of her financial situation is a distraction to anti-Black racism just as talk of a woman's financial situation is a distraction to sexism.)

Speaking of sexism, the problem with these women being more interesting than their men is that it conflicts with their role, which is to be seen and not heard and produce heirs. They're supposed to be models of fashion, decorum, and motherhood. Diana could have had a career on the runway ffs. And remember Shy Di? Every young woman and her aunt learned to do that look up from under to the camera. I still think of it when on Zoom peering up everybody's nostrils as they peer up mine.

How soon we forget.

And although neither Kate nor Meghan had to be accepted by the public as virgins, and both are actually older than their princes, not to mention on the long end of motherhood, the fact is that Diana did have to be accepted by the public as a virgin. And so it was that we watched with squeamish bemusement while Charles, who came of age in the '60s, and who was in love with his best friend, Camilla, cast about the land in search of - tada! - Diana, who would come of age in the '80s - AFTER marriage to Charles.

But as to the Queen, the linchpin to it all, is there a more boring person on the planet? Well, no, there isn't. Being boring is her role, and as we can all agree, she embodies her role like nobody ever. It's why The Crown is such a hit. Finally a look behind the role to what it might have been like for the young woman who stepped into it. Seasons 1 and 2 and we're done here - and thrown for a loop by Season 3 - because it's the young woman we're interested in knowing about.

Anyway, the royals, including the girlfriends and wives, always fell outside my timeline, interest-wise. Also, the media here, particularly CBC, pretends our connection to England is more than it actually is for most of us. England may as well be India for me. Or Wales. Sure, I grew up singing God Save the Queen, but it was dropped at some point back there and my memories are all of Canada Day now, whether it was actually Dominion Day or not.

 

I guess that's why the forever enmity towards Trudeau, who made it official. Canada is Canada. And Canadians are global citizens, not British ones.

None of this is to upset Anglophiles, of course, because it's all good and I mean it when I say I don't care about or have an interest in England and the royals and so I don't care if you do. Fill your Wellies.

However, I don't include Meghan Markle in that whole scene anymore because she made what I think is a good decision to quit the role and go public as to why. Anti-Black racism is The Problem, it really is. And our media is complicit in perpetuating it. We need to stop making excuses for it, distracting from it, attacking the messengers, and instead hear what they're saying about their lived experiences of it.

Issue #7 of Galaxy Brain - Live!

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Issue #6

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WWW

Okay, back to what matters - me coming to terms with the inevitable - White Whisker Whacking.

Get It

Now that the Donald J. Trump as President of the United States show is over I find myself at loose ends.

Also, now that my specific anxiety re the survival or not of democracy south of the border is gone, my generalized anxiety has come back with a vengeance.

So many people have lost their minds, it seems, programmed by their own social media feeds to believe that a racist money laundering rapist for the Russian Mob is The Second Coming.

To stay sane, I relied on a theory I pulled out of my ass four years ago, that Obama was/is an American intelligence operative, and that the DJTasPOTUS show was allowed to stay online to teach Americans a lesson in democracy, that lesson being that only by voting in numbers sufficient to overcome decades of gerrymandering and Black vote suppression and virtue signalling by privileged white democratic socialists (social democrats?) could the show be canceled.

(It should have been all any reasonable person needed to hear when Obama said of Trayvon Martin after he was murdered by George Zimmerman, "that could have been me 35 years ago" to get it, that anti-black racism is THE problem needing solving. Just as it should have been all any reasonable person needed to see when well-documented racist Donald J. Trump made fun of a reporter's disability to wild cheering at one of his white nationalist rallies to get that responsibility #1 was to ensure that he not get elected POTUS.)

Anyway, no doubt like you, I'm tired of the politics we play online here in the West while a mutating virus that emerged from the most powerful country in the world, the one that can perpetrate infanticide to check population growth and murder tens of thousands of students to check democracy and imprison and torture millions to check freedom of thought, maims and kills people, unchecked, world over.

For four years one of my handful of Twitter reads (I'm not on Twitter myself) has ended his tweets at Donald J. Trump with "you're going to prison, traitor". Others have tweeted that Donald J. Trump is a money launderer for the Russian mob, that he is known to have raped 12 and 13 year old girls (at least one of whom went missing shortly thereafter), that he's a decades long drug addict, that he's a white supremacist, that he's a sadist, that he's a pathological liar, that he gets away with it all because he's an informant to the FBI, and on and on and on.

I limited myself to this handful who got it to stay sane (even though none of them subscribed to my aforementioned sanity saving theory). The gaslighting I experienced from so many fellow politicos online who didn't necessitated it. And none of my handful of reads were murdered by the state because here in the West we can still publish the truth and live to publish it again another day. But they and lots of other truth tellers were threatened with murder by people who've been programmed by their social media feeds to believe lies, lies aided and abetted by murderous states like China and Russia, and political parties here that run slates of candidates for public office in our still democratic elections.

AOC said she thought she was going to die, murdered by a crazed mob. Nancy Pelosi we know, had the crazed mob found her, would have been murdered. Mike Pence? I doubt it. Even though he's probably been wearing a wire for the four years he's been glued to Donald J. Trump's side while he incited violence on Twitter from his personal account but as President of the United States for four unimpeded years.

We know the Republican Party in the United States is treasonous. Republicans themselves proved it on January 6, 2021. Fortunately, enough Americans had already, finally, got it, and the US, us, democracy, was saved on November 3, 2020.

Anyway, I know what political party created by Stephen J. Harper I don't ever want elected to public office here in Canada again. Conservatives here showed their support for treason south of the border a hundred and one different ways and in full public view for four long anxious years and they're still at it. And they've been inciting violence against democratically elected politicians here for even longer, most notably, Justin Trudeau. Really, ever since the Conservative Party of Canada was created it's been inciting violence against other democratically elected politicians and their supporters.

So like our American cousins who just saved all our asses, we need to get it, too.

I Found It!

 The funniest thing in the history of the world.

My Heart Will Go On - the recorder version

You're welcome.