Let's turn your heroes into mummies
The podcast busted their way into my office because they were scared of the hard truths I was busting into the intersphere on a biweekly basis. They didn’t want someone so dangerous writing under their name. But I showed them, like Vic Mackey when he has some blackmail material, or like that time Randy Johnson pegged that bird. Still, their numbers overwhelmed and they got a syringe in me like Suge Knight. But I’m back, baby! Here’s what happened.
I knew I was in trouble when I left a Shroud of Turin-figure on my blue velvet couch. The sweat-fetus picture of me was so crisp, I thought, I should take a picture. My AliExpress finger-monitor was beeping at me again, insisting that my blood oxygen was low enough to head to the hospital, like some kind of $2 USD schoolmarm. What it didn’t know is that I am a white male, and that means we’re tough! Disease can’t make me go see a doctor! Heck and damn that idea! There was a whole other half of the couch and my pores wanted to Bob Ross it.
When you go to the hospital with probably-COVID you spend a lot of time alone and you run the risk of being forgotten. This was exacerbated by the fact that Rockyview Hospital has run at roughly 290% of capacity since it opened. The weekend had Alberta experiencing a COVID spike and, let me assure you, the hospital was packed. If indicative of the whole province, I’d say any new peak larger than that is Worrisome.
I had a lot of time alone with my thoughts between groups of frowning nurses shoving needles through my genetically wimpy veins and trying to find a comfortable position while trussed like a marionette. I watched the guy in the stall across from me roll over on our selfsame stretcher, hard as Cialis bricks, and counted the spins (78). I looked up the price of all the CT, ultrasound, and EKG work I had done, were I in the United States ($58,000, a la carte). I thought about my second kid and wondered what COVID would do to them, currently in utero.
No ‘rona for me, though! I am not a novel statistic used to coerce you into giving up liberty for a little safety. I do not tread on you, thanks very much and put the gun down. Just a passing virus kicking the shit out of my asthma lungs enough to make me a burden on the state. A few days on oxygen and $1.50 austerity meals from the commissary and I was right as rain.
The absolute vikings on staff were easy to wind up. All I had to do to cut any tension was mention noted bastard Tyler Shandro and everyone, from assistant staff to a grizzled emergency room doctor would spew invective. He’s a class unifying issue, that prick. One middle-aged nurse called him a sad little man, and said something horrible about his skills as a lover. She was my favourite.
Before they knew I was COVID clear, they had to shove me into a room in palliative care and do the same routine every time they saw me, be it for diagnostics or to hand me a cup of water - full gloves, full gown, hand cleansing, seal the door, face mask, face shield. Every time, dozens of people, for days. When I walked out of there, lungs like old helium balloons, torso bleeding from EKG patches ripped off hirsute abs (I assume they’re under there), I wondered how no-mask dipshits go to sleep each night knowing they’re such giant babies. I can’t even draw a proper breath and I make all of them look like Stephen Miller. Imagine me right now kissing my biceps.
🧖♂️Razor Energy got a loan from Alberta public funds and used it to pay dividends to shareholders. Over 30% of those shareholders were executives at the company…who negotiated the loan. It went into their pockets and now they say they can’t pay the loan back. You have to admire the bravery, or at least their understanding that their health and wellness isn’t at risk. You have to imagine that such a thing in other contexts would get a person thrown off a bridge.
🩰The irony about this dumb ad campaign is that you could probably get a huge number of beleaguered youth to say nice things about pipelines by just giving them $700 directly.
💂🏻♂️Usually when we build some suburbs the idea is to make developers put in some utilities and save the city some bucks. Well fuck you, Calgarian! We’re just going to buy some land out south for no reason! City staff says it’s stupid as fuck? Eat shit! I’m a fiscal conservative and/or a fake sociologist! An election is coming up and municipal elections are the fucking Hunger Games now so I need to give a financial handjob to some developers! Thanks for the taxes!
🤸🏻♀️An Alberta town council had to step in after Shandro alienated all their doctors and threatened to leave their hospital empty.
👨🏼💻The century-long project to sell your province to CNRL is almost complete. When they go bankrupt we’ll be stuck with their mess.
🧚🏾♀️Feds in the U.S. are enacting the bipartisan plan to let God sort out John Q. Public. Mass evictions are coming and it appears they won’t happen quietly.
♾While we praise this man for using the people’s weapon we are concerned that one class of person can shoot at cops and live while a guy who may have had a fake $20 is dead.
🔍Milita dorks get real jobs, invade swing states.
🧱Yes oil is in decline, and yes oil companies are going bankrupt, but lucky for us the U.S. government will make it so your retirement fund will follow them all into the toilet. If AIMCO can invest pensions in failing companies, anyone can do it!
🛶The semi-slaves imported to work American farms are brought in over the big, beautiful wall in higher numbers than ever. Of course those populations are hotspots for COVID.
🤹♀️I don’t want to ruin everyone’s perfect summer but we’re doing a nuclear arms race again. Sorry.
🧊Lil’ Vietnam being created in west China.
🦴Time machine used to bring 1700’s sheriff to the present to run America’s public lands.
🌸Turns out the Canadian-backed coup government in Bolivia is pretty fucking bad at keeping people alive. Whoopsie.
🐔The Deadspin morons are back to start a media co-op of sorts.
🧔🏿Fan-subbers are the tip of the LGBTQ spear in the Chinese cultural arena.
🤰🏾Food site says “work for free”, employees tell them to fuck right off.
👨🏽🌾EI is a tool to keep you down, not lift you up.
🖖🏼Chicago teachers CONSIDERED voting to strike ahead of the plague year of classes and they won online instruction. Something to ponder.
📉Big Shiny Takes talks about the boring-ass graft of Justin and WE and whatever, but makes it fun! AA people have been on this cast because it rules.
🎧Behind the Bastards has some detractors but NOBODY ELSE has done over 12 hours of podcast history on how racist and ineffective American police have been and continue to be. To my knowledge, anyway.
🔇John Brown trilogy. The Dollop. Get into it.
🎚️All of these incredible Alberta Advantage episodes and not ONE Clinton get-well tribute episode running down my greatest hits. I have been on literally dozens of minutes of show and NOTHING.
💪🏻Wall of Moms and Dads is organizing to prevent people from getting sick by, you know, shoving them into small rooms for eight hours per day next month. Help them out.
👨🏻⚕️Dying for Change is trying to improve right-to-die care in Canada. You can register to help them out on their website.
A Quick Note: if you want us to include an article, petition, link to an event, or just want to drop us a quick line, reply to this newsletter or reach us at albertaadvantagenewsletter [at] gmail [dot] com. We’d love to hear from you! If you want to send some old timey mail, grab those stamps and send tributes/cake/not anthrax to Alberta Advantage Podcast, PO Box 52167 Edmonton Trail, Calgary, AB, T2E 8K9.
Our editor is Clinton Hallahan.
