Fallen Idol

Well, I got to watch a Christmas movie early last evening, correctly supposing that my younger brother would be getting home late.

The movie was 2016's Looks Like Christmas. It was only now while working on this post that I was reminded that lead actress Anne Heche died last year ─ I had utterly forgotten! Had I remembered, possibly I would have appreciated this movie more than I did.

Despite the two cans of strong (8% alcohol) malt that I drank before eating anything at all that day, I was little moved by the movie. Certainly I found it interesting enough, and never once felt like breaking from it, but it did not have that element that I seek in a Christmas movie.

I was somewhat curious about teen supporting actress Farryn VanHumbeck, but her personal history is almost completely hidden for some reason.

Anyway, I do not disparage the Christmas movie ─ like I said, it was both interesting and enjoyable. But it was not what I require to get me emotionally involved ─ even while doing some drinking. So if you would like to try watching the movie and have a decent ad blocker, three sources are M4uHD, or Cineb, or 123MOVIES.

Since I was not intending to be getting up overnight until 4 a.m., I did get to bed rather late ─ possibly even after 11 p.m. (those two malts really sneaked up on me).

I was to sleep rather poorly, actually. I rose once to use the toilet, and saw downstairs that my brother was passed out in front of the T.V. in the living room. And my wife's bedroom door was shut tight, so she had come home following work at the Thai restaurant where she has part-time employment.

I checked the time once I returned to my bedroom, and saw that it was 1:44 a.m. Nevertheless, my sleep continued to be poor ─ I blame the alcohol withdrawal combined with my late meal yesterday.

As I recall, my 4 a.m. alarm's chime gave me a bit of a start.

Had I managed to get away on my five-mile+ walk and grocery shopping excursion sufficiently early ─ say, ahead of 5:45 a.m. ─ I would have engaged some exercise. Unfortunately, it was something like 5:53 a.m. by the time I got out of here.

An online check had claimed that it was 12° Celsius (53.6° F.) hereabouts, and that seemed plausible once I was outside. It was still barely daybreak, but the sky was mostly clear. Eventually, though, I noticed that there seemed extensive cloud stretching across both the eastern and western horizons.

I did the grocery shopping at Save-On-Foods as I was returning home, for it is perhaps a mile from here. I ended up with quite a load in both hands, and had spent $96 and change, if I am recalling correctly. I had withdrawn $200 earlier, so I was a little unhappy to have already effectively exhausted half of that amount.

Once I was home and had put away the groceries and then come here to my bedroom to dress down ─ no one was yet up ─ I dallied a while, and then returned to bed for a short nap. I rose from it thinking that my brother would by then be downstairs, but he had yet to emerge from his bedroom.

My wife was to present herself first. She confessed to me that she had withdrawn $400 last night from my chequing account (I had discovered that irksome fact before I left on my walk), but she stated that she would replace it today.

And she did.

The reason she was up so relatively early was because there was an event ─ a "Picnic Day" ─ that she was going to attend at Burnaby's Thai Buddhist temple: Wat Budhapanyanantarama (วัดพุทธปัญญานันทาราม). They have no website that I am aware of, but they do have a Facebook account.

She would not be returning today ─ possibly not until Tuesday. Such is our marriage.

Once my brother was up, and he turned on the T.V., he tuned in some non-news programme of a reality nature, so I was in no hurry to join him. And then when it ended, at 11 a.m. he tuned in an episode of The Nature of Things.

I can no longer bear to even hear David Suzuki's voice ever since reading a Facebook post made late in 2020 in which he gave his full support of the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA 'vaccine'. He even declared that those of us who denied the toxic experimental injection in the name of freedom and personal autonomy did not deserve to be breathing the same air as do those who comply ─ we do not even deserve medical attention.

Hell, I will prove my words ─ here is the post from December 12, 2020; it was at the account of Facebook's Suzuki Elders:

Recently the Suzuki Elders received an email asking if we knew what Dr David Suzuki thought about the Covid 19 vaccine(s).  The  person asked “My husband and I are debating whether or not to have the corona virus vaccine administered to our family. We wondered “What would David Suzuki do?”  Here, written in his usual fulsome manner, is David Suzuki’s response.  We then asked for permission to post this letter to the larger public through our Elder Facebook page and Dr Suzuki agreed.

December 10 2020

I have a couple of responses to your query about the COVID vaccine.  Vaccination, like antibiotics, is one of the great innovations of medicine and the story of how it came to be is a wonderful one.  You may know it, but basically smallpox has been a terrible disease that practically wiped-out Indigenous people who had not encountered it before.  In the 1700s it had been reported that milkmaids contracted cowpox from milking cows.  They would get lesions on their hands and arms but would recover but never contracted smallpox that was a deadly disease, killing between 20 - 60% of its victims while 1/3 of the survivors went blind and almost all had disfiguring scars from the pox.  Edward Jenner deliberately infected a boy with cowpox and when he recovered, Jenner injected smallpox (something that would never be done today) and the boy was immune.

That began vaccination that has saved millions of lives and in 1980 smallpox was eradicated worldwide. It's now extinct. Now a big push is on to do the same with polio.

So, I am a big admirer of vaccination.  It involves using the body's own mechanism of immunity by injecting an antigen, usually a coat protein of a virus or sometimes a heat killed virus itself.  The body recognizes a foreign material and creates antibodies to eliminate it.  So, we have inbuilt defenses that vaccination accelerates.  There have been contaminants in the past resulting from the way antigens are processed chemically.  After widespread use, the Salk vaccine was found to carry a live virus that was ultimately found to be harmless.  And there have been trace amounts of chemicals like mercury.  But the whole basis of the anti-vax movement was a report that has been proved to be bogus, yet it is repeated over and over.

The speed with which the new vaccines have been developed is astounding.  After more than 40 years, there is still no vaccine for HIV. The reason it has taken so long to get approval for the new ones is that there is a very elaborate assessment process to ensure safety.

Now the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are radically different from the traditional antigen injection.  It involves injecting the gene (mRNA) specifying the coat protein (spike) and the gene gets into our cells where they produce the spike antigen and that, it turns out, is a very powerful way of getting our immune system to respond.  The efficacy of this method is amazingly high.  There might be some consequences that we can't find until the treatment has gone on for years (esoteric issues like what happens to the mRNA, can it get into the nucleus of a cell and integrate into its DNA).  What excites me is that this new approach could allow us to create vaccines very rapidly for any new viruses that emerge in future.

I'm sorry I've gone on so long.  Most of medicine is about relieving symptoms when we are sick and depending on the healing capacity of the body, but vaccination is really a medical intervention that works.  Would I take the new vaccine of Pfizer or Moderna?  In a flash.  I'm in a high-risk category and while I know I'm in the last part of my life, I don't want to risk hurrying the end.  Would I have any concerns about unexpected deleterious effect?  Nothing is absolutely sure in medicine but I have no worries at all.  Get it to me quick.
There is an aspect of anti-vaxxers (I know you're not coming at it from conspiracy) that I have to rant about.  A lot of folks are saying it's their right to decide whether or not to get a shot.  It's all about freedom.  The thing that bugs me is that freedom comes with responsibility otherwise it's just license to do anything.  If people resist mandated vaccination as a constitutional right, what about the right of everyone else who is sharing the same air?  I hope they have a complete airtight case around them so they only breathe their own air.  And they should not be allowed to use public medical facilities if they do get sick because they've opted out of the system by abrogating their responsibilities.
Thank you for your query.  Please know I am not a medical doctor.
 - - - David Suzuki

The obvious shill for the Pharmaceutical Industry lost every shred of credibility in my eyes. That my dense brother can watch and listen to that misinforming fraud rankles me.

Consequently, my brother and I never watched T.V. together this morning. When deep into the noon hour he sought some bed rest prior to leaving for the day to socialize, I was to find that the meal I had just enjoyed was dictating that I seek another nap to help facilitate its management.

While I was abed, my brother apparently left for the day.

There was to be no opportunity for any sunning today. The sky clouded right over; and shortly before 3 p.m. we experienced a pretty decent rain shower that carried on for maybe a half hour. I am sure that there will be more rain to follow.

I believe that I will be having one of my usual nighttime walks overnight that will require me to be rising at 1:30 a.m. in order to begin readying, so I will not be sitting up late, nor will I be daring any of that alcoholic malt.