Unconscionable

Today Alberta's UCP government announced most Albertans will have to pay for COVID-19 vaccinations starting this fall.

The government claims this is because over half of Alberta's supply wasn't used over the last couple of years. This isn't surprising, since premier Smith's government has consistently downplayed the severity of COVID-19 and refuses to properly publicize the availability of COVID-19 vaccines and booster shots.

Currently, Alberta has the highest rate of measles cases (per capita) in Canada. This is what happens when a government abdicates its responsibility to debunk anti-vaxxers and instead implicitly supports anti-vax messages through its policies. 

Anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-vax thinking has brought measles back from the brink of extinction--a disease that can cause death and permanent disability. 

Just like COVID-19. 

Sylvia and I can and will pay for our booster shots. We have that privilege. But what about the majority of Albertans, living paycheque to paycheque, who can't afford a shot expected to cost over $100? I guess they'll just have to take their chances. 

And of course this makes life even more difficult and hazardous for the small minority of people who legitimately cannot be vaccinated for health reasons. These people are usually protected by herd immunity, but Alberta's COVID-19 vaccination rate has dropped down to around 13 percent. Herd immunity requires over 90% of any given population to be vaccinated to protect those who cannot be vaccinated. 

The UCP's decision to charge people for a life-saving vaccine could very well sicken and even kill scores of people. It will likely place immense strain on our already overworked health care providers.

Unconscionable. 

Red Rocket Garage

A few days ago I finally assembled my Fallout: Wasteland Warfare Red Rocket garage. Most the set is made of cardboard, but the rocket on the roof and the two red cooling pumps seen behind the coolant cost sign on the left are resin, and I painted them. I also painted the other resin bits you see here: a Dogmeat on the road, the Protectron, the leaking barrels, the turrets, the Nuka-Cola machine, and so on. 

It's quite an immersive set, and with this I now have all enough pieces to actually play a game of Fallout: Wasteland Warfare. Once I'm comfortable enough to have people over, of course . . . 
 

Freedom Convoy (with apologies to C.W. McCall)

(Ah, breaker one-nine this here’s the Freedom Truck
You gotta copy on me, Flu Trux Klan, c’mon?
Ah yeah 10-40, Flu Trux Klan, fer sure, fer shure
By golly it’s clean clear to Lib Town, c’mon

Yeah, that’s a big 10-4 there, Flu Klan
Yeah, we’ll definitely get the snowflakes, good buddy
Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a Freedom Convoy)

Was the height of the ‘cron in February
In a Kenworth haulin’ flags
We’ll fly ‘em upside-down in Ottawa town
Our faces free of rags
We represent all the diff’rent races
Yeah, every shade of white
We’re gonna prove that COVID’s fake
By offending everyone in sight

‘Cause we got a Freedom Convoy
Whether or not it makes sense
Yeah we got a Freedom Convoy
And don’t you dare call us dense
We got a Freedom Convoy
Ain’t logic gonna get in our way
Yeah, we’re gonna roll this convoy
Until the Judgement Day
Convoyyyyy 

(Ah, breaker, Flu Trux Klan, this here’s the Truck)
(Hey, you wanna hide those swastikas?)
(Yeah, 10-4, the Fake News is makin’ us look bad)
(Better dance on some war memorials to distract ‘em)

Before long the locals were gettin’ riled
With us hollerin’ and honkin’ all night
But with the police on our side we had nothin’ to hide
We could park anywhere without a care
And piss on everything and everyone in sight

We’ll vandalize that Terry Fox
Ignore the statue’s silence
‘Cause we all know cancer patients don’t rely on science

Oh, we got a Freedom Convoy
Honkin’ through the night
Yeah, we got a Freedom Convoy
But nobody gets our plight
Support the Freedom Convoy
Ain’t nothin’ gonna get in our way
We got money from GoFundMe
And big donors from the USA

Convoy! (Ah, what’s that, Flu Klan? GoFundMe dropped us?)

Convoy! (One of our leaders wants to shoot anyone wearing masks?)

(Mercy Sakes, this is getting a little out of hand)

(Can I go home now?)

Convoy….

Something Lurking Down the Hall

 A couple of weeks ago I dreamed that I was working at Stantec Tower again. I was back on the seventh floor with several of my colleagues, but we were all wearing pajamas and bathrobes, cups of coffee or hot chocolate in hand, and our beds and clothes closets were right next to our desks. It was like one giant sleepover. And while I was genuinely glad to see everyone, I could hear people coughing and hacking down each hallway, like harbingers of plagues even worse than COVID-19. My heart started to race, and I woke up in a sweat. 

This followed a similar, earlier dream in which I went back to work at the Alberta Legislature Annex, even though I was my current age and I left my job with the Official Opposition years ago. In this dream, I had decided to just dash in to see if it was yet safe to return to the office. To my dismay, none of my colleagues of that era were wearing masks, and one even laughed at me, saying I was a fool to come back and that half our team was in hospital. 

So I guess I have some unresolved anxiety about societies around the world striving to get back to business as usual way too soon. 

Call me a worrier, but I'm just not ready. It's the prospect of so-called "long COVID" and cognitive impairment that scares me most. Plus, the idea of strictly isolating for two years only to stop too soon and get really sick, or die. . .or worse, to infect someone else . . . that haunts me. 

But people are "over it," I guess, so damn the torpedoes. 

Hopes and Dreams for 2022

Number one, I hope we can arrange a really nice birthday celebration for Mom's 80th this summer. Number two, which, of course, has a large impact on number one, I hope we bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control. Number three, I'd love to hear some more good news in general, some hope that civilization can still save itself. 

Go big or go home, right? 

Books I Read in 2021

In 2021 I read 58 books, a personal all-time low. As you'll see from the list below, I didn't attempt to tackle anything particularly challenging. The stress of 21st-century existence leaves me with diminished capacity; escaping into film taxes me far less than slipping into a book these days, a truth that profoundly saddens me, but one I can no longer deny. Silver lining: for the first time, I read as many books by women as by men. 

In 2021 I sought out escapist fare, often re-reading old favourites that took me back to comfortable alternate realities and in some sense to a more vital past self. Somewhere between a quarter and a third of the books I read are non-fiction, mainly covering topics in popular culture. 

A couple of novels stand out. Severance, by Ling Ma, uncannily anticipates the COVID-19 catastrophe and, like the real disaster, reveals the silliness and futility of the ways we live and work in the modern world, how the systems we've built serve only a select few. Come Closer, by Sara Gran, is one of the scariest novels I've ever read, and one of the most heartbreaking. It's the internal monologue of a woman who is either going insane or is genuinely being slowly and methodically possessed by a demon, and Gran's touch is so deft and sure that the moments of terror come out of nowhere, seeming to slip between the sentences so that by the time you realize what's happening to you and the protagonist, it's too late to brace yourself for the abyss. 

Martha Wells continues to impress with her Murderbot diaries, and I'm still enjoying my journeys through the works of Jo Walton. I indulged in a couple of near-legendary works of dreadful fan fiction: Jim Theis' The Eye of Argon and Tara Gilesbie's My Immortal. Anyone who enjoys art gone wrong will love these. 

Thanks to Leslie, I learned that I'd fallen behind on Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric series. Catching up was like going on a short trip with an old friend, carefree and pleasant. Bujold remains a favourite, and I hope she keeps writing for a long time. 

Finally, I was delighted to discover that Ulrich Haarburste released his cycle of Roy Orbison in clingfilm stories, expanded to novel length. If you don't feel like buying the book, sample some of the stories. 

Here's the list of what I read this year: 

January: 10
Or What You Will (Jo Walton, 2020) 
Star Trek Adventures Quickstart Guide (Modiphius, 2017) 
Axiom’s End (Lindsay Ellis, 2020) 
The Vanished Seas (Catherine Asaro, 2020)
Lightning Strike, Book One (Catherine Asaro, 2014) 
Lightning Strike, Book Two (Catherine Asaro, 2020) 
Carrie (Stephen King, 1974) 
Way Station (Clifford D. Simak, 1963) 
The Wounded Sky (Diane Duane, 1983) 
My Enemy, My Ally (Diane Duane, 1984) 

February: 7
The Lightest Object in the Universe (Kimi Eisele, 2019) 
DC Comics Covers (Nick Jones, 2020) 
DC Comics Supervillains: The Complete Visual History (Daniel Wallace, 2014) 
Art of Star Wars: The Mandalorian (Phil Szostak, 2020) 
The Big Lie (Julie Mayhew, 2015) 
Passage (Connie Willis, 2001) 
The Romulan Way (Diane Duane and Peter Morwood, 1987) 

March: 6
The Eye of Argon (Jim Theis, 1970) 
My Immortal (Tara Gilesbie, 2006) 
Later (Stephen King, 2021) 
Star Wars Complete Vehicles New Edition (Kerrie Dougherty, 2020) 
To Lose the Earth (Kristen Beyer, 2020) 
Severance (Ling Ma, 2018) 

April: 3
The World of Cyberpunk 2077 (Marcin Batylda, 2020) 
Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, with Illustrations (William B. Jones Jr., 2001) 
Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today’s Youth (Fredric Wertham, 1954)
 
May: 3
The Ten Thousand Doors of January (Alix E. Harrow, 2019)
Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory (Martha Wells, 2020) 
Fugitive Telemetry (Martha Wells, 2021) 

June: 2
Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orbison in Clingfilm: Plus additional stories (Ulrich Haarburste, 2019) 
Forbidden Knowledge: 101 Things No One Should Know How to Do (Owen Brooks, 2019) 

July: 3
Critical Failures (Robert Bevan, 2012) 
Living Memory (Christopher L. Bennett, 2021) 
Come Closer (Sara Gran, 2003) 

August: 5
The Physicians of Vilnoc (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2020) 
Masquerade in Lodi (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2020)
The Assassins of Thasalon (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2021)
Billy Summers (Stephen King, 2021) 
The Princess Saves Herself in This One (Amanda Lovelace, 2016)

September: 2
Then Everything Changed (Jeff Greenfield, 2011) 
The Stand (Stephen King, 1980) 

October: 2
Available Light (Dayton Ward, 2019) 
Knot of Shadows (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2021) 

November: 7
The Apollo Murders (Chris Hadfield, 2021)
Visiting Friends: Or, What I Did on My Summer Vacation (Jo Walton, 2021) 
Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir, 2021)
2034 (Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis, 2021) 
Untold Horror (Dave Alexander, 2021) 
The History of Science Fiction: A Graphic Novel Adventure (Xavier Dollo, 2021) 
Forever and a Day (Anthony Horowitz, 2018) 

December: 7
The Steranko History of Comics, Volume One (Jim Steranko, 1970) 
The Steranko History of Comics, Volume Two (Jim Steranko, 1972)
All in Color for a Dime (Richard A. Lupoff and Don Thompson, 1970) 
Comix: A History of Comic Books in America ( Les Daniels, 1971) 
The Psychology of Time Travel (Kate Mascarenhas, 2018) 
The Grownup (Gillian Flynn, 2014) 
Hench (Natalie Zina Walschots, 2020) 

Fiction: 42
Nonfiction: 15
Poetry: 1

Genre
Fantasy: 8
Horror: 3
Mainstream: 11
Science Fiction: 14
Star Trek: 6

Top Authors
Lois McMaster Bujold: 4
Stephen King: 4
Catherine Asaro: 3
Diane Duane: 3
Jim Steranko: 2
Jo Walton: 2
Martha Wells: 2

Books by Women: 29
Books by Men: 29

Books by Decade
1950s: 1
1960s: 1
1970s: 6
1980s: 4
2000s: 4
2010s: 16
2020s: 25 

The Plague Doctor

It seems almost too on-the-nose to paint a miniature with a plague theme during this long COVID-19 era, but here we are, complete with some vomit and bile puddled at the gentleman's feet. 
 

The Swab

On Wednesday, I was so exhausted that I called in sick. On Thursday, I worked half the day and felt myself passing out again, so I called in sick for the rest of the day. On Friday I was even more exhausted, so I called in sick again, much to my aggravation and embarrassment. 

I bowed to pressure and went for a COVID-19 test today. I waited in line for one excruciating hour--normally not a big deal, but I was so tired that the short wait became a true test of my drastically reduced endurance. 

Eventually, I was escorted to a nurse. She asked about my symptoms, told me to tilt my head back, and gently rammed a Q-Tip to the hilt of my right nostril, tickling my brain. "EAUUUGGAHHHH!" I wailed, breaking my own promise not to scream. I apologized profusely as blood oozed from my nose (or at least I was certain blood must be oozing from my nose), but the nurse was unperturbed. "You'll get your results in two or three days," she called as I staggered toward the exit. 

So that was today. 

A Pink Panther

Jeff generously 3D printed this Panther mech for a tabletop game we might play at Gaming & Guinness--if indeed G&G moves forward this year, which is slightly up in the air thanks to the spread of the new Delta variant of COVID-19. 

I tried to make this mech look like it's seen some action over a long period of service. So I added some rust and metallic silver paint to take some of the shine off the original neon pink paint job. (Pink Panther...get it?) 

As for the base, I painted it to look like stretch of road to give some idea of the scale of these mechs. 

Unhappy Canada Day

The Great Western Canadian Heat Wave of 2021 hit me hard last night, and the effects have lasted all Canada Day. Normally this would not be a big deal, except that I was really looking forward to today because it would have been the first social gathering Sylvia and I have attended since before the COVID-19 pandemic hit; and for that matter, the first time in years that we had decent plans for Canada Day. 

So I guess I'm feeling a bit out of sorts. And now I feel guilty, because hundreds of people in British Columbia are dead thanks to the heat wave, and there are probably more casualties around the world that I haven't heard of yet. 

And it scares me that this could be the new normal.

I'm glad that my friends were able to get together, though, and there will be other gatherings. 

Ugh, my privilege is leaking. 

JULY 4 UPDATE

Turns out my privilege really was leaking because in my heat-addled haze, I hadn't realized that there were calls around the country to cancel or at least tone down Canada Day celebrations to recognize the old wounds of Indigenous peoples in Canada freshly torn open by the discovery of mass graves at several locations across the country. To complain about a missed gathering obviously feels pretty tone deaf in retrospect, and if any Indigenous people ever read this blog, please accept my apologies for my insensitivity. For some great reflections on this topic, please see my friend Steve's blog: Oh . . . Canada. 

The Second Dose

It is not the end of COVID-19, nor even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Earlier this afternoon, Sylvia and I received our second doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. While caution remains necessary, it's still an exciting step. To anyone who's ever visited the blog, I hope you and yours are staying safe and that your own vaccinations are coming soon. 

My Mother's Mother

Our Mother's Day plans for this year were partially foiled by weather, COVID-19, and family illness, but Sylvia and I managed brief visits with her mother and mine to check in and wish them well. This Mother's Day I'm particularly grateful that Mom remains healthy and sharp-minded, and that she's now fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Fingers crossed this also means she's protected against the new variants bubbling up around the world, but luckily Mom is smart and cautious so I'm confident she's going to be okay. 

Earlier today Mom sent over this photo of her mother, my maternal grandmother. It was taken on the Leask farm sometime in the 19-teens. She looks quite vibrant here! It's an image I've never seen before, and I'm grateful to have it - not as grateful as I am to have Mom, of course. 

A Pandemic Thought

 I do believe my hair hasn't been this long since, perhaps, junior high school. Sylvia seems to like this new unplanned hairstyle, but only when it accidentally falls perfectly into place. She suggests gel. I am leery. 

Vaccinated, Part 1

Today Sylvia and I received our first of two doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. We were told that it's a sixteen-week wait until the second dose, which seems like forever. But we already feel a bit safer. Not that we'll drop our guard! 
 

The Lesser of Two Evils

Because at least Director Krennic (left) wears a mask. 

A Plan for Pinawa

If it's ever safe to go outside again, I'd love to take a few days for a summer road trip to Pinawa Dam Provincial Heritage Park, the site of one of the first hydroelectric dams on the Prairies; it operated from 1906 to 1951, and judging by the photos on Google Maps, it's an impressive sight. The park itself looks quite bucolic. 

 

Autoduel Manual

Here is all that remains of Sean's copy of Autoduel for the Atari 8-bit computers. It's a thick manual rich in complexity and lore, back in the days when computer games often included not only really well-produced manuals, but also maps, keyboard or joystick inserts and attachments, reference cards, and, best of all, little tokens and toys that represented something you might encounter in the game. 

Autoduel itself was a fantastic game, based on Steve Jackson's popular Car Wars strategy game. The premise is simple; you start out with $2000 and need to buy a car to start "auto duelling" in the arena or on the highways of the northeastern USA. Sean and I played that game for years, until at last the disc stopped working. 

The road to fun with this game got off to a rocky start, however. Sean bought the game with birthday and Christmas and allowance money he'd saved for quite some time, and the first copy we bought was defective. Sean and I returned to the computer store in Heritage Mall where he'd purchased Autoduel, and the proprietor refused to help, claiming we were returning it under false pretenses and had pirated a copy of our own before returning it. 

This is one of the few times I've gotten really, really angry in public. All I remember saying is "He's ten years old," in quiet fury. The man behind the counter grumbled and muttered a little more, but in the end he exchanged the defective copy of the game for a fresh one. Thankfully, the new copy worked. 

Incidentally, Sean and I recently Kickstarted the latest edition of Car Wars, so at some point in the future, when COVID-19 is no longer a threat, we'll get together to reignite the spirit of a game we really loved back in the 80s. 

My Birthday Angel

Happy Birthday in this strangest of eras, Sylvia! There's no one I'd rather be quarantined with. 

The Plot Thickens

This is probably my most ambitious painting project yet. It's a small graveyard with three fresh graves and one established resting place. 

I started by priming the plot and headstones, then painted the ground brown. I then added a layer of dark green, then painted the flagstones and finished grave grey. I added some black paint to the dirt piles to make them look like rich, loamy soil. Then I painted the newest coffin light brown and HAND PAINTED a cross onto it. Sure, it's only two straight lines, but my hand was steady and I think it looks pretty darn good. Next, I painted the headstones grey and glued them in place. Somewhere along the way I painted the rocks a sort of dull silver, but I'm not sure if that really works. After that, I spread glue on the green areas and laid down some grass and moss basing material. Oh, and I filled in the cross on the finished grave (which came premade, as part of the model) with copper paint. Finally, I applied a dark wash to the headstones, dirt piles, and gravesites. 

If I had more room, I'd be shooting these properly with my SLR in my little mini-studio. That'll have to wait until I finish my major COVID-19 project, rearranging my HQ. 

 

Celebrating Mom

The older I get, the more I appreciate life's simple pleasures, like visiting Mom the day after her birthday to BBQ some steaks and garlic bread with a side of cheesy asparagus in her beautiful, fastidiously-maintained back yard. This is the first time Sean, Sylvia, and I have visited Mom in person for more than a couple of minutes since quarantining ourselves due to COVID-19. Even then, we all maintained a distance of at least two metres apart and wore masks whenever we were in close proximity to the food or each other. Safety first!