Cats Mostly

Right now I'm on my two week Summer Shutdown. This is an annual vacation that all members of my staff team partake in. There was a discussion on whether or not the pandemic would impact how we approach this time, and we decided that it would not.

Usually we have a staff barbecue to kickstart the vacation. This year, we still had a gathering, but it was in honour of a staff member's birthday, and we didn't invite our significant others. We all sat two metres apart from each other, and hand sanitizer was available.

The gathering took the form of a late lunch, and we ordered in from a place called Vincenzo's, which is a grocery store that has a made-to-order sandwich bar. It's a traditional location for WALES staff when celebrating.

Not that you care, but I feel like I finally perfected my Vincenzo's order.  Roast beef, on a pretzel bun, with provolone, lettuce, green olives, banana peppers, chipotle mayo and dijon mustard. Delicious.

Today, my roommate was finally able to get his operation done. If you haven't been following, he suffered from kidney failure, and because of the pandemic his operation was postponed for four months.

Recently, I've been helping a few people to adopt cats. One is work-centric and happened at the place that I adopted Kieran from. The other is being adopted by my mother and brother from a place called My Kitty Cafe in Guelph.

My Kitty Cafe, in normal times, is a place to drink coffee and hang out with cats, with the option to adopt being present. Nowadays, you have to pay an admission fee and have a limited time to meet with the cats. Last weekend, I arranged a meeting time.

Both of my family's remaining cats are elderly, and it is our belief that it is healthy to have a diversity in age between cats. The younger ones bring out some kittenishness in the older ones, although I've heard others argue that younger cats "annoy" older ones. Luna was intended to be the younger cat that provided companionship to her older brothers, and then she would be an elder that would be assisted by adopting a younger cat. Unfortunately, Luna passed much earlier than we anticipated.

So we need a younger cat to be a companion for the two remaining elders. Mom and Duncan managed to burn the full 50 minute meet-and-greet with the cats without forming a decision. They wanted further consultation with an expert. The person working there that day had opinions but suggested they wait for the head of the rescue organization.

So they booked a time with her, discussed there reasons for wanting to adopt and what they were hoping for. They had to fill out some weirdly-intense documentation, but were ultimately approved.

Between meeting the cats and consulting at least two cat experts, they have been approved to adopt Cassidy:

On their website she is described as "Adult female, loves head scratch, pretty relaxed, loves catnip, little shy".

Because the cat rescue organization leader needs to be present at moment of adoption, and because my brother is the official adopter, they needed to have their schedules align. This means she's not oficially coming home until August 8th. Something to look forward to.

Since this post is coming in on the heels of my last update, I will mention that if you glance below, I started a food blog. All it's got is a bread recipe so far, but I will be expanding.

Recipe Blog

I spent a lot of time last night writing an update, and somehow, it didn't publish or save as a draft. No idea where it went. I notice that a lot of things on Blogger look slightly different today, so maybe my draft disappeared with the old format.

One thing I did start last night, however, was my food blog. Awhile back, I asked for advice on what I should name it. I didn't get any suggestions, and I almost went with the achingly boring "Gryphon's Recipes", but at the last second, I called it Gryphood.

Get it? Gryph-food. Oh well, if it works it works and if it doesn't it doesn't.

I've got one post on there right now, my Katimabread recipe. I think that, even if the blog doesn't pick up a lot of traction, it will be personally useful because I won't have to dig up old recipes I found online, I can just check Gryphood. Eventually it will be like a recipe book.

It's my intention not to do that annoying thing that most recipe blogs do, where they write an essay on why the dish is intimately important to them, and they add a ton of pictures so you have to scroll a mile to get to the actual recipe. I'll have one picture of the finished product up top, I'll provide a source for where I got the recipe, then I'll have an ingredients list, then instructions, and at the bottom I'll have my essay on personal importance. No pressure to read it if you just wanna cook.

The format's really rough. Blogger doesn't work quite how I remember, but here it is:

Gryphood: https://gryphood.blogspot.com/

Anniversary

July eighth was mine and Lee-Anne's first year anniversary, and we celebrated on the fourth. At the beginning of Phase 2, restaurant patios were reopened, so we decided to try that out. This was the first time I'd been to a sit-down restaurant since the beginning of the pandemic. It might still seem a little bold of us, but it was a special occasion, and we helped bolster our local economy, darn it!

We went to Moxie's. I don't know a ton about restaurants, especially ones in the category of "a little nicer than usual, but not fancy". Lee-Anne suggested it, saying it was a slightly classier version of another nearby restaurant that we'd been to. The only thing I'd heard about it beforehand was, way back during my time in Ways2Work, when I was 19 and a half, the guys said to never bring your girl to Moxie's, because the waitresses are too attractive.

But I figured the advice of my current girlfriend outweighed some commentary from my former teenaged peers from over ten years ago. This appears to have been wise, as I did not notice anything immodest in the waitstaff, although both of our servers were male, so I guess you'd have to ask my girlfriend if they were distractingly attractive.

Making a reservation was easier than we thought. Because only patios are open there is limited seating, and since we've been deprived of the luxury of sit-down dining, it seemed like people might be jumping at the opportunity to experience it again. But we managed to get a spot on the day and at the time we wanted.

We were assured that weather would not be an issue, as the patio was covered and heated. This made me laugh. Like, how much more can you build up a patio before it gets considered to be "inside".

For the purposes of seeming "pandemic safe" it did the trick. The open walls allowed for airflow, which is what makes viruses less easily spread outside. Despite how easy it was to get reservations, the place was fairly full. Each table was seated at least two metres apart, although I think restaurants usually already do this, so that people can speak privately with each other. All the waitstaff were wearing masks. It was a little awkward when they'd ask how our meal was going, and we weren't wearing masks (obviously, because we were eating) because the person wearing the mask is protecting you from their airflow, while they are not nearly as protected from you if you are not wearing one.

They asked us if this was a special occasion, and when we said it was our first anniversary, they gave us free champagne, which was real nice.

I ordered the beef dip sandwich, but I didn't know I was supposed to dip it. I also called the au jus "gravy" and dipped my fries in it. I was into the second half of my sandwich before I asked Lee-Anne if I was doing something wrong. She told me about the au jus, and how that was the "dip" in "beef dip". Honestly, I'd read it as "beef drip" and thought it meant that the beef was so tender, it "dripped" and that the au jus was gravy to dip your fries in.

Once I did it right, I regretted having eaten more than half the meal undipped. To be fair, the sandwich exceded expectations even without the au jus. I gave Lee-Anne a bite of it, and now we've both decided we need to go back at some point, so she can order the beef dip, and I can eat it now that I know what to do.

We had a sourdough with feta and roasted tomato for an appetizer, she got the pokebowl for an entree. I've never seen a pokebowl before. It's cool. Like deconstructed sushi.

The weekend after our patio experience (which is now this past weekend), I went over to Lee-Anne's family's house. They have an outdoor pool, which I got to experience. I got to pick raspberries from their garden, and it was the weekend of the NOAH Conference.

NOAH stands for the National Association of Albinism and Hypopigmentation. I've shown several pictures of me and Lee-Anne, but if you didn't put it together, she actually has albinism! And if you don't know what that means, it means that her body is void of pigment due to a lack of melanin, which makes her skin, hair and eyes lighter. Normally, NOAH hosts a bi-annual conference in which people with albinism gather. This year, of course, social gatherings of that size have been cancelled, so they shifted to an online alternative. But I did get to watch a couple presentations and meet some of her albino friends over video conference.

As of last Monday, Waterloo Region has been issued a mask rule. Everyone is obligated to wear a mask if they are going somewhere indoors that isn't their home. Honestly, the Greater Toronto Area, and Wellington-Dufferin (which includes Guelph) had already implemented this rule, so we were a little bit behind. They have also released a heat map for neighbourhoods impacted by COVID-19. I am sort of retroactively vindicated in my paranoia and resentment toward the behaviour of my local community, because the area I live in ranks highest for community spread. Another area ranks highest for total infected because it contains a long-term care facility that got hit hard, but so far as infection caught within the public, my neighbourhood holds the title. So when I complained about the people twisting the "Court Closed" sign backward and playing basketball, when people were letting their children grapple and drool all over each other in the parking lot, when people were playing soccer in the community backyard (hitting me with a soccer ball three times while I was gardening) they were actually spreading the disease! So frustrating.

Regardless, the entire region is moving into Phase 3 tomorrow. This should actually allow for me to pick up some of my Direct Support Work, although it will have to be done outside. If everyone is wearing a mask, we are allowed to be within two metres of each other, and if the person I serve cannot wear a mask, we can still work together, although we will have to stand two metres apart.

Phase 2

First of all, happy Canada Day. This is my annual reminder that my first day of Canada World Youth started on Canada Day, so on this day when I'm supposed to be thinking of Canada, I think of Mali. The first week of Extend-a-Family's Summer Program's Day Program, of which I helped lead for four years, also happened during the week of Canada Day. So I think of our first themed week, All Around The World, as well. Kind of weird both those associations are international.

Here in Ontario, we have a 4 phase reopening strategy. In my post, Garden 2020, I mentioned that Home Depot, Canadian Tire, garden centres, and clothing stores that have an external entrance and exit were allowed to reopen. This is because we had entered our first phase of reopening. A few weeks ago, we entered Phase 2, which has allowed shopping malls to reopen with strict physical distancing guidelines, as well as barbers, single-person sports, patio dining, and we are allowed to gather in social groups of ten instead of five. Weddings and funerals can be attended in social groups of fifty.

Not everywhere in Ontario is opening up at the same rate. Initially, there was some concern that if we allowed ourselves to reopen in regions that were less at risk, they might get stormed by long-haired Torontonians craving barbers. But eventually, we did take a region-focused reopening strategy that left the Greater Toronto Area behind most of the rest of Ontario. For the most part, the Torontonians have demonstrated a level of self-discipline that has allowed us to progress at a fairly consistent rate. Durham, Halton, and York were next allowed to enter Phase 2, with Toronto Proper and Peel Region (where my girlfriend lives, and the worst-hit region by percentage) being left behind. As of last Wednesday, Toronto and Peel Region were allowed to reopen, but it turns out that Windsor-Essex has been having its own issues, and was disallowed to enter Phase 2.

My understanding is that the Windsor-Essex area has been hit mostly due to the presence of migrant workers. When we closed our border, there was some concern about whether or not we would be able to have migrant workers assist us as "essential workers". With a significant percentage of our agricultural workforce being dismantled, as well as the potentially invasive species that are the murder hornets impacting our crops, this created worry about how our local food production would be impacted.

It was decided that migrant workers count as being "essential", but because employers do not provide pandemic-safe lodging, the virus ran rampant throughout their population. Eventually, Windsor-Essex was deemed safe to enter Phase 2, with the exception of Lemington and Kingsville.

The past four days, I've been in Guelph. This is the first time I've seen my family since everything began. It's funny how everything is a little bit different city-by-city. In Kitchener-Waterloo, the hours of every open business has been reduced. In Guelph, all hours are the same, but if you go inside anywhere that isn't your home, you are required to wear a mask.

I've talked a lot about Charles Street Terminal. For the longest time, it was the heart of Kitchener. It was the place where most public transit gathered, and so did out-of-city services such as Go and Greyhound. There was an information desk, as well as a cafe and a bar. It wasn't the cleanest space, and a lot of homeless people took shelter there. After the introduction of the Ion Light Rail system, Charles Street Terminal began to be phased out. Public transit continued to run throughout the first two weeks of the Ion's opening. After public transit closed, the building was still open, but only for the information desk, the cafe and the bar. At this time, the bar was packed, I assume because everyone knew it would be closing. Then the bar and cafe closed, and the information desk was relocated, but Go and Greyhound still ran and the building was open. At this point, all the homeless people I had grown to know, as well as security and maintenance were the only people still occupying the building. Charles Street Terminal had become a de facto homeless shelter.

Eventually it was fully closed, with only a small shelter open for people waiting for the Greyhound, and as kind of a meeting space for security personelle. But even since then, Greyhound has closed its services during the pandemic. However, during the pandemic, they have reopened as a homeless support space. I find this absolutely beautiful. Until the very end, they were doing their best to cast out the homeless, and now they are trying to bring them back.

It's not a shelter though, and isn't meant to house them. Many of our pandemic responses have impacted our homeless population. Many of them relied on public bathrooms, and since all food establishments went curb-side pickup only, and since our libraries and community centres closed, those became unavailable to them. Many relied on coffee shops or libraries to charge their phones and connect to WiFi, which was their access to information. Without that, many people have been watching the world shut down and transform without a reliable source of information. Those that relied on panhandling are having a more difficult time because the streets are much more empty, and among those that are still outside, they are less likely to be carrying cash because it has become frowned upon due to the chance it might carry the virus.

So in response to this, a number of new homeless support centres have been developed, where homeless people can use the washrooms, wash their hands, charge their phones etc. The fact that they're using Charles St Terminal's washrooms as a resource is kind of pathetic though. I distinctly remember the men's washroom has three urinals and one stall, and the taps don't function unless you hold down the lever that turns it on. So if you want to wash your hands, you have to do this really awkward thing where you hold down the tap with one hand, and use the other to wash itself. Not too sanitary. City Hall across the street is also a support centre though, and that place has nice washrooms!

I've spent enough time in downtown Kitchener to know all the best public washrooms.

The YMCA near where I live is a homeless support centre, and the local community centre also offers some services. It's funny, this area never had homeless people before. Do you remember those pictures I showed of some deer I found nearby? If you look in that patch of woods now, you'll see tents scattered around.

There have been some efforts to revamp homeless shelters so that they adhere to physical distancing guidelines. "Tent cities" have opened up, which allows for better physical distancing than the current open-concept shelters. There's an area that has introduced cabins as an alternative to camps

https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-region/2020/06/14/residents-move-into-one-room-cabins-at-a-better-tent-city.html

In Toronto and in many other places, hotels, which were seeing lower traffic are being used to house homeless people. I called that in an early post regarding the pandemic.

Last month was my weekest for monthly updates in 2020. Before that, my lowest count by month had four updates, and last month only had two. I'm still on my way to reaching my goal of a minimum of 40, as this is my 26th update, and we are precisely halfway through the year as of today.

Murder Hornets, Aliens, and Bushfire

Two blog posts ago, I said I would cover the murder hornets, aliens, and race wars. Last post, I covered the resurgence of Black Lives Matter (originally regrettably phrased as a "race war"), so now it's time for the murder hornets and aliens.

I'm going to straight-up say that I lost a rough draft with details of the spread of the murder hornets. Seems like there used to be better information available, but I'll still share what I can find right now.

They were first spotted in British Colombia in August, 2019. They were later found in Washington State in December. Since then, there have been three sightings in 2020 between these two regions. Experts say that they have about two years to eliminate the spread, otherwise they will become a persistent invasive species. I'm taking the lack of recent news as a positive sign.

Murder hornets, otherwise named Asian Giant Hornets, originate in Japan. They have a body length of 45 milimetres, a wingspan of 75 milimetres, and a stinger of 6 milimetres. They are the largest form of hornet in the world.

Despite their nickname, a sting from one of these guys will not likely kill you. They are stigmatized in a similar way that orca's are referred to as "killer whales" despite not being a threat to humans and not particularly more violent than most predators. A human can only die by murder hornet if they are swarmed, which is true of regular hornets as well. Still, their enlarged size is quite a put-off for many people who are intimidated by stinging insects. At least they help encourage people to stay inside during quarantine.

More concerning is that, if they don't murder humans, they do murder bees. You see, murder hornets have a habit of approaching, infiltrating, and beheading honey bees en masse. If you don't know, we are already in the middle of a global bee crisis. Bees are, outside of their role of producing honey, responsible for polinating many of our crops. Without them, we face major food shortages. We have been struggling to respond to a declining bee population for some time, and the introduction of bee-hating murder hornets only hastens that concern.

Now, they do have honey bees in Japan, despite being the original home of murder hornets. The reason for this is that bees over there learned a trick. They will swarm an invading hornet and shake their bodies, increasing the temperature until their intruder is cooked. Honey bees, despite being physically weaker, have a higher resistence to heat than the murder hornets do. Unfortunately, the bees in Canada and the US don't know this, and are thus easy targets.

So if the spread continues, my hope is that, since nature figured out this issue in Japan, it will figure itself out in North America. My mother suggests introducing Japanese bees to local apiaries (bee farms).

As far as the aliens go, there have been a few videos leaked from the US Navy circulating over the past few years. These videos contain footage of flying aircraft moving in erratic patterns that excede the capacity of known technology and our understanding of physics. The Pentagon chose not to disclose whether or not these videos were legitimate, but did acknowledge their "veracity".

Strangely, this year they decided to confirm that the videos are real, and that they contain images of technology that do not exist within the US or to their knowledge, outside of it. They confirmed that our concerns are the same as theirs, and that there is a very real chance that we are not alone.

Here's an annoying CNN clip of the phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60ZJQ4I7_3M

I've heard a theory that the US government chose to release this information now in an attempt to distract from their mismanaged response to COVID-19 (This is before the resurgence of Black Lives Matter)

"Why has widespread testing not yet been made available?"
"What's being done about the situation in New York?"
"How will the economy recover from lock down?"
"Is it true that China is already recovering from the virus?"

US: "Uh... aliens are real"

If that was the intention, it didn't really work. It just made people panic more.

Regardless, this is the only time during my life where I can say "Hide in your bunkers!" and "Aliens are real!" and the government is like, "Listen to that guy".

This concludes the three topics I promised three posts ago. However, 2020 has offered more significant natural phenomenon. I don't believe I covered the wildfires in Australia as they were ocurring.

They usually have a "bushfire season" starting in August, which is something to be mindful of but not generally unmanageable. However, in June 2019, the Queensland Fire and Emergency Service warned of a potentially early onset due to unsually dry conditions and early flare ups. Unfortunately, the fires would start early, and would rage through the nation until March, 2020, reaching their peak between December and January. These fires resulted in 186,000 square kilometres of land being burned, destroying over 5,900 buildings, killing at least 34 people and an estimated rough billion animals, driving some species to extinction. Costs to recover from this tragedy are estimated to exceed 4.4 billion dollars.

And right as they were recovering from the bushfires, a global pandemic occurs. Would suck to get a stay at home order right after your home got burned down.

This probably does it for scary world events in 2020. I heard an asteroid came uncomfortably near Earth, but wasn't a realistic threat other than reminding us that space junk is flying around randomly and we can't do much to stop it. There was an unusually large swarm of locusts in Africa, and they've got a dust storm right now that's floating toward us, but should if anything make approaching hurricanes less dangerous. People talk about how World War Three was trending in January, but it didn't happen and it's not trending now. Natural phenomenon is happening all the time, and because some significant stuff is happening this year, it seems like everyone is paying more attention, and expecting everything to blow up.

The next post will either focus on Phase 2 of Canada's pandemic response, cultural development as a result of COVID 19, or how the homeless have been impacted. I also still need to start that recipe blog.

Black Lives Matter

A lot of things have happened recently, both worldwide and in my personal life.

On a personal level, one of my grandparents and my roommate were recently hospitalized for non-COVID related reasons, and have been in treatment over a series of weeks. They actually both just got back. My mother is staying with my granddad in his retirement community for two weeks to help him settle. She had to get tested for COVID ahead of time to be accepted as a guest, and my granddad had to be tested before leaving the hospital. They both tested negative, but I guess because there is a gap in time between testing and receiving results, during which one could hypothetically be infected, both of them are required to do a 14-day quarantine in his apartment, along with my step-grandmother. Since they live in a non-smoking building, my mother has had to quit during this time. I'm a little worried that this will interfere with her being the calming presence that she intended to be for her father.

I've talked about my roommate's condition a little. Originally, he had an enflamed prostate which he didn't get checked and let it get bad. Eventually he suffered from kidney failure (or kidney almost-failure, he had kind of a kidney-attack). It was a close call, but after attaching him to a catheter, he quickly began to heal. All it would take to get him back to 100% operational would be a fairly simple surgery after his kidney-numbers got normal (I'm not a doctor, okay, this is how it was described to me). So, after some time, his numbers got normal and he was ready to have his surgery. He went so far as getting it scheduled.... but then a global pandemic happened and his appointment was postponed until further notice.

A little over two weeks ago, I had just finished teaching Safe Management crisis intervention training over video chat. In this training, I taught people how to compose themselves when confronted with a crisis scenario, and not to be shy to call 911. Right after I finished, my roommate limped out of his room and told me that he hadn't wanted to interupt, but that his catheter had stopped working overnight.

I offered to link him with a medical consultant over the phone, and to get him a ride to the hospital, but he said he didn't want either of those things, as he was too weak to walk or talk. I offered to call him an ambulence, which he refused. He said he would get a friend to drive him to the emergency room in four and a half hours.

I decided to do what I said I would do during the training session I had just taught, and I called 911 against his consent. Turns out his catheter had stopped working about 48 hours earlier, not just overnight.

He spent several weeks in the emergency room. He came out of it with a second tube, he has to visit the hospital three times a week, and he might die at any moment. As far as neglecting to act when presented with medical issues, I'd say he's in a three-strikes-you're-out situation.

So, while I've only known two people to contract COVID-19, one being hospitalized but recovering and the other being asymptomatic, the measures taken surrounding the pandemic have stopped me from being with my granddad to support him in a time of crisis, and it has stopped my roommate from getting a surgery that would have prevented him from a second attack on his kidneys.

That's that concerning my personal life. In my previous post, I said that, having covered the more recent pandemic news, I would next be concentrating on the murder hornets, aliens, and race wars. This post will be focusing on the "race wars". I really regret using that phrasing, as I recently saw a protester sign saying that the current situation isn't the begining of a race war, it's a call to end one.

I've often said that my intention is for this blog to not be political, but I'm throwing that out the window. It's impossible not to be political anymore.

Because world events have become so much more important than my current living status, I have been reporting things that my readers likely already know. This makes the blog a little repetitive, but concerning the fact that recent events are calling for white media to draw attention to systemic racism, I feel morally obligated to make sure that my voice is heard, and that it is supportive to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Yes, I guess I'm considering this as a source of media.

The most recent resugence of the Black Lives Matters movement has been inspired by the murder of George Floyd. On May 25th, Floyd was reported by a convenience store clerk to police for using a countefeit $20 bill. On arrival, police handcuffed him and after restraining him on the ground, officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee to Floyd's neck for over eight minutes. He did this, despite Floyd stating sixteen times that he couldn't breathe while begging for his life, and even crying for support from his deceased mother. When onlookers begged Chauvin to stop, he raised a bottle of pepper spray to intimidate them. He ordered two officers to help him detain Floyd, and one to control the crowd. He even refused to remove his knee after medical staff arrived and asked him to back off, long after Floyd had lost consciousness. After arriving in the hospital, Floyd was announced dead due to medical complications.

I just want to note that, while race relations are vastly different in Canada, I have knowingly used a counterfeit $20 bill. My mother accidentally used one that was in circulation, and the person who discovered it denied her purchase but gave it back to her. She told me and my brother, and I said that I would spend it at a place where I knew they wouldn't check. It was a local convenience store, and I most certainly never feared for my life.

I also want to say that, I am trained in three forms of crisis intervention training, and if I ever put my knee to the back of someone's neck, I'm sure that not only would I lose my job, I would also lose my career, even if the person I was detaining was fine. No one teaches you to put your knee to someone's neck. You can begin to lose consciousness from asphyxiation after eight seconds. The rule of three is: never go three weeks without eating, three days without drinking, three minutes without breathing. Eight minutes is clearly deadly.

It's been brought up that Floyd has been depicted positively by media, while he was actually a career criminal. While I've seen maybe an unfair bias toward his virtue through media, I really don't think it matters what kind of life he lived. Those police didn't know him, and he was murdered over $20. He never asked to be a martyr. As a human, he had both good and bad qualities, and he didn't deserve to be murdered, especially not in such a brutal manner.

This event sparked widespread outrage throughout the United States and internationally. It created a resurgance of the Black Lives Matter movement, and has resulted in massive protests, both in and out of the US. We even had one in Kitchener.

I'm in favor of the protests. Obviously it creates risk of a second wave of COVID-19, but we really can't afford to relinquish all of our freedom to the government, even during times like these, if atrocities like this are allowed to occur.

Other stories that have emerged recently are those of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Christian Cooper.

Ahmaud Arbery was out on a jog in Glynn County, Georgia on February 23rd this year. During this time, he stopped to look at a construction site before continuing his run. Several men, namely Gregory and Travis McMichael, accompanied by William "Roddie" Bryan, felt his behaviour suspicious, as he'd been caught on tape admiring the construction site before. They felt that this constituted trespassing, so they pursued him in vehicles, blocked the road he was running on, confronted him while armed with shotguns, and when Ahmaud tried to direct the gun away from himself, he was shot and subsequently died.

Now, Ahmaud was known to go on daily runs for exercise purposes, and he was known to be fond of architecture. Also, cameras show that a number of other people also visited the construction site. It wasn't a rare thing to do.

By the letter of the law, he wasn't trespassing. There was no signage present to prohibit him from entering, and the site supervisor confirms that he never directly connected with Ahmaud. But the McMichaels wanted the video footage to be shown, to clear their names. To show that Ahmaud had attacked them before they shot.

Some people say that if Ahmaud was innocent, he would have run away instead of attacking. These people forget that running is what he was initially doing. When he saw he was being pursued, he ran harder. Literally, he only "attacked" after his exit routes had been cut off by pursuers and he was confronted by a man with a shotgun. Even then, he only tried to position it away from himself.

The sick thing here is that, even if you assume he did everything bad that he is accused of, if he was guilty of "casing the joint", tresspassing with intent to steal, what happened to him is wildly unethical. The police had been contacted and were on their way, meaning a citizen's arrest was impossible. Use of deadly force as a form of self-defense was completely unwarranted, as the McMichaels were the ones to put themselves in harms way.

Breonna Taylor was a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, living in Louisville, Kentucky. Her home was entered by police on March 13 this year, as they suspected her of housing two people who were already in custody. They claim they announced their presence, which has been denied by survivors. Her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, attempted to defend their home upon entry with gunfire. Police responded with counterfire, and Taylor was killed during the shootout.

Nothing about this is just. Imagine a team of people being allowed to enter your home and murder you, claiming they were doing so in pursuit of two people that were already in custody.

And finally, let's leave this on... I don't want to say a high note, but at least a story where nobody dies. Christian Cooper was out watching birds on the same day that George Floyd was killed. Amy Cooper (no relation) was walking her dog off-leash in an area that requires them. Christian asked her to either leash her dog or walk in a different area, as they were disturbing the birds. As Amy became enraged, Christian began filming her. She demanded he stop filming and threatened to call 911, phrasing it as "An African American man is threatening me". You get the implication. While on the phone with the police, she spoke in a frantic and panicked manner, as if she were being assaulted. At this time, she was holding her tiny dog by the collar and absentmindedly strangling it. Dog was fine afterward.

When police arrived, neither person was still on the scene. Christian later released his video recording.

These four incidents are by no means isolated. I'm just going to rip a post I saw on Facebook and put it onto here. It's a list of crimes of violence against African Americans. I hadn't heard of most of them, to be honest, which I guess is part of the problem. Outside the four stories I mentioned, I had only heard of the case of Trayvon Martin and the Charleston 9. I looked up each one though, and they are all real:

I have privilege as a White person because I can do all of these things without thinking twice about it...

I can go jogging (#AmaudArbery).

I can relax in the comfort of my own home (#BothemSean, #AtatianaJefferson, #BreonnaTaylor).

I can ask for help after being in a car crash (#JonathanFerrell and #RenishaMcBride).

I can have a cellphone (#StephonClark).

I can leave a party to get to safety (#JordanEdwards).

I can play loud music (#JordanDavis).

I can sell CD's (#AltonSterling).

I can sleep (#AiyanaJones)

I can walk from the corner store (#MikeBrown).

I can play cops and robbers (#TamirRice).

I can go to church (#Charleston9).

I can walk home with Skittles (#TrayvonMartin).

I can hold a hair brush while leaving my own bachelor party (#SeanBell).

I can party on New Years (#OscarGrant).

I can get a traffic ticket (#SandraBland).

I can lawfully carry a weapon (#PhilandoCastile).

I can break down on a public road with car problems (#CoreyJones).

I can shop at Walmart (#JohnCrawford) .

I can have a disabled vehicle (#TerrenceCrutcher).

I can read a book in my own car (#KeithScott).

I can be a 10yr old walking with our grandfather (#CliffordGlover).

I can decorate for a party (#ClaudeReese).

I can ask a cop a question (#RandyEvans).

I can cash a check in peace (#YvonneSmallwood).

I can take out my wallet (#AmadouDiallo).

I can run (#WalterScott).

I can breathe ( #EricGarner).

I can live ( #FreddieGray )

I can ask someone to put a leash on their dog when it is required in the public park we are in #ChristianCooper).

I CAN BE ARRESTED WITHOUT THE FEAR OF BEING MURDERED. #GeorgeFloyd

#BlackLivesMatter

You should look them up too, because they matter.

Now, because this blog has become political, let's look at President Donald Trump's response to the protests.

I think everyone is as burned out of talking about Trump as they are with the Coronavirus, which is partly why I don't cover him. In an effort to keep things factual and not political, in my previous post I actually edited out his and Obama's names after publishing it.

On June 1st this year, a peaceful protest was taking place outside the whitehouse on Lafayette Square. Without provocation or warning, rubber bullets were fired, and pepper balls and flash bombs were thrown into the crowd. Law enforcement, clad in riot gear advanced on the crowd to force it back.

Now, peaceful protest is a civil right within the United States, and Lafayette Square is the hot spot to do it. There have been incidents of looting alongside some of the BLM protests, but that wasn't happening in this instance.

So, why were such violent measures taken on American citizens who were only exercising their legal right to protest? Well, so this could happen:

So Trump could have his photo taken, holding a bible upside down in front of St John's Episcopal church. I'm not Christian, but that upside down bible gives me inverted cross vibes.

If that's not Satanic enough for you, a reverend at the church who was tending to the wounded was pushed out of her own church so that Trump could get that photo op. Just the symbolism of ousting a religious leader from a House of God so that it can be presented with an inverted symbol of the faith...

Another symbolic occurence was when the lights in the White House were shut off as Trump hid in his bunker from protesters. Now, that's less harmful, but apparently shutting off the lights is supposed to represent the death of a president. Could represent the death of the sacred role of the presidency here. I've also heard that turning the lights off at night is a routine process, so I don't know what to believe. Still, the light of America being extinguished is certainly eery.

An extra fence has been built around the White House to keep protesters out. In reference to Trump's iconic promise to build a wall across the Mexico-US border, I've heard Trump's new fence phrased as "He wanted to build a wall to protect America, but he built a wall to protect himself from Americans." I just felt that was very nicely put.

Honestly, those three things, the inverted Bible, the darkened White House, the new fence dividing the presidency from its citizens are just such strong images of the times. If this were a work of fiction it would be darkly beautiful. But it's reality, so it is only frightening.

Anyway, I hope that all the information in this post is accurate. Just a reminder that I am not a proper news outlet, so don't go citing me in any of your essays.

For posts going forward, I want to write on Phase 2 of our reopening strategy, I want to talk on how the virus has effected the homeless community, I want to do an update on my remote work situation, I still want to cover the Murder Hornets and aliens, and I got enough for another Apocalypse Dining and maybe another Pandemic Phrase Guide.

So let's hope we don't have another global disaster until I'm done with those.

COVID-19 Update

I think we're all a little burned out from news about the virus, but since this is potentially a real-time take on an historic development, I guess I should at least give a bit of a play-by-play for future readers. Some other weird, unrelated stuff has been happening as well, which I'll make sure to mention.

Where I left things off, the United States had the highest number of confirmed cases, Italy was in second but had the highest number per million, and China was in third, although they carry the weight of creating and failing to contain the initial spread and there is a lot of questions surrounding how they report their numbers. Canada had the 15th highest number of cases, and I was skeptical of India, which has the second largest population with some extremely high population-dense areas, ranking in at #41. Russia also seemed suspect at #33.

Nowadays, the United States still has the highest number of confirmed cases, followed by Brazil, followed by Russia. Brazil has made it clear that it intends to take no countermeasures in response to the virus. This is reflected by the fact that, despite having the second highest number of cases, they have reported performing nine hundred and thirty thousand tests compared to Russia's ten million and the States' seventeen milllion. Meaning they have done less than a tenth of the testing Russia has, and less then a seventeenth that of the States. So they likely have many, many more infected than what they are reporting.

It's been reported that drug cartels in Brazil are enforcing stay-at-home orders. I don't think this is as widely seen as media has portrayed, but it sure invokes a feeling of irony that these criminals are taking the advice of scientific and medical professionals while the government resists.

At least the nation will provide interesting data when the question is asked, "What would happen to a country that didn't react to the COVID-19 pandemic?"

On the opposite side of things, Sweden has taken very few countermeasures, and the world wants to know why they are doing relatively okay.

Russia's been throwing doctors out of windows every once in a while when they complain they don't want to work due to being tested positive for COVID-19 and being reluctant to spread it to their patients. The situation must be more complex than that, but it does kind of indicate what puts them at #3.

India's still doing well, all things considered, but when I last reported, they were at #41, and they are now at #7. Very different placement from before. The amount of testing they've done per million is almost half that of Brazil... which is something to keep in mind.

Before I move on, I do realize that I just put Brazil, Russia, China, India, and kind-of-not-really Italy on blast without touching the United States, the place with the third highest popuation and current highest number of reported cases. I usually try not to get too political on this blog, but since I provided a quick-and-easy low-light reel of five other nations, it would just be unfair to not mention how the States have handled things.

I guess it started when they disbanded their pandemic response unit. When the presidency became aware of the virus, they downplayed it and insisted things were under control. They continued to resist taking preventative measures until things got out of hand, at which point, the president suggested hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial immuno-suppresant which would make the virus far more deadly.

New York City has been the heaviest hit region of the US.

Despite Italy being iconic as the nation that was inexplicably hit hard, the UK and Spain have a harsher cases per, and deaths per million, with similar numbers regarding testing at this time.

As far as good news goes, you should be happy if you live in...

Saint Pierre Miquelon, Anguilla, St. Barth, the Caribbean Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, Seychelles, Falkland Islands, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Timor Leste, Eritrea, Macao, French Polynesia, or the Faero Islands.

They have all been exposed to, but have fully recovered from, COVID-19.

Within Canada, Quebec has been our hardest-hit province, with Ontario coming in second. Who had the least? Well, the territory of Nunavut never encountered someone with the virus. So, how much of it did they have? They had none of it! (get it?)

Nowadays, reports are showing that Ontario's outbreak is pretty centred in the Greater Toronto Area at this time. This doesn't give me too much comfort, as I have grandparent, aunts, a girlfriend, cousins, and a niece that live in the Greater Toronto Area.

However, within Guelph, where my mother and brother live, there are no active cases of COVID-19. In Waterloo Region, I understand the general community is relatively safe, with the exception of those in the medical field, long term care residencies, and retirement homes. We're still relaxing too fast, though.

This virus has really exposed the abusive nature of many of our long term care residencies and retirement homes.

I'm feeling tired, so I'll get back to you guys with the Murder Hornets, aliens, and race wars next time