Alas, no results from yesterday’s echocardiogram today, which means I get to wait until Monday. Still, I’m not worried. My regular diet is made up of a lot of heart-healthy dark chocolate and blood-cleansing bourbon. I limit myself to a fried chicken sandwich and/or smash cheeseburger a week. And most of my big meals are Japanese-inspired thanks to Akemi: fish, steamed rice, and matcha lattes. Thus I am confident because I’ve never heard of a Japanese person dying of a heart attack. Moreover, of their deaths can be prescribed to old age or kaiju attacks.
Today’s Yes/No…
Beef Stew Pie? Yes/No
McDonald’s Japan attempts to seduce us with its new Beef Stew Pie https://t.co/7HV0NV7hC6 via @RocketNews24En— Joseph Mallozzi (@BaronDestructo) December 10, 2021
A reminder that I’ll be joining David Read tomorrow for his monthly trip down Stargate memory lane. Tomorrow, we talk about (what I can remember about) Atlantis’s third season.
Join us live and/or send me some questions.
Speaking of Stargate, here are a few more goodies from the vault…
So, educate me, please This whole omicron variant. If its effects are as minor as they say, wouldn’t the wise thing to do be to let it run rather than lock everything down again, make it the dominant relatively mild strain and have done with the pandemic? What am I missing?
How should we send you questions? Can they be Dark Matter questions?
.
You can tune in at the appointed time and just write your questions into the chat.
Oh, I know that of course. The way you wrote “Join us live and/or send me some questions” made it sound like there was a second way to send in our questions to you before the live chat starts.
Can we ask some questions here that we didn’t have time to get to?
Sure! Ask away.
Oh, flip. When I wrote that comment, the questions were all numbered and separated by clear paragraph spaces for readability. As soon as I hit Submit, I saw the awaiting-moderation version lost the numbers and spaces for some reason.
Okay, I’m going to try again to post the Dark Matter questions we didn’t have time to get to in the interview. Hopefully this time it will stay in a format that doesn’t run together, so that you can actually read and respond to them. These blogs are tricky with their auto-formatting. Here goes nothing.
One – What became of Ryo’s biological mother? How old was he when it happened?
Two – The easiest way to tell the difference between One and Jace Corso is Corso’s preference for guyliner. Did you write that in your script, or was it a decision the costume department made?
Three – How does One’s company CoreLactic rate as a galactic player compared to Ferrous, Traugott and Mikkei? How are they affected by the Corporate War? Do they have a side?
Four – Did you come up with any backstory for Jace Corso? I assume his childhood wasn’t sunshine and roses, but it’s ironic we don’t know his backstory when he wasn’t mindwiped (but would presumably have been if not for the twist of fate of One impersonating him) and do basically know the backstories of all our mindwiped characters by now.
Five – I’ve heard that most or all of Season 2 had been written by the time the Season 1 finale aired; is that true, and does it mean that the scripts had to be rewritten to exclude One?
Six – In the pilot, it seems like although One, Two and Three woke up on their own, Four, Five and Six were woken up by them. Is that right, and if so, was there a reason for the difference?
Seven – Are the Dwarf Star aliens universally evil?
Eight – Why were pre-mindwipe Portia and Ryo going to wait until coming out of stasis, specifically, to kill Kal Varrick? Seems weirdly specific, and why use up one of the pods like that instead of killing him right away, like AU Portia did? And in the recording of them talking about killing Varrick that Das made, why did Ryo say to Portia, “You were right.”?
Nine – Why did all their memories end up in Five’s head, especially if it was Six who uploaded the code? Would her dreams ever have come back after Season Three?
Ten – You said that Corso doesn’t own a moon when another fan asked if he did, but what Wexler actually said was that Corso claimed to have a valuable stash on the moon, not own it. So do you mean that the stash story was totally made-up boasting (in which case, come to think of it, he’s less prepared than Marcus, who actually has a stash per Virtual Season Four)?
Eleven – Am I right in guessing that since Cyrus King is a military type and the Accelerated are a military project, and both were due to feature in Season Five, that there’s a connection between them? And are Electus Corp also connected to the Accelerated, and that’s why Electus featured in the Android’s flashforward in “All the Time in the World”? Is Cyrus King a straightup bad guy or someone the Raza crew could come to terms with?
Twelve – What is the culture on Pyr like? Is it Japanese-inspired like their Zairon rivals, or something else?
Thirteen – In the graphic novel, Five channeling Ryo while speaking to Two refers to the Empress as “my mother” (“and left them for my mother to find, the bitch”), whereas she refers to her as “my stepmother” in the equivalent scene on the show (“and left them for my stepmother to find, the bitch”). Was your original idea that Empress Katsumi would be Four’s actual mother (and have a serious case of parental favoritism towards Hiro), or was she always his stepmother but just being called “mother” in that scene?
Joe, would you mind deleting the un-paragraphed post of mine from 12 Dec at 1:22 AM since it takes up a lot of viewer space here and wasn’t intended to look like that?
I hope you will find the time and inclination to answer the corrected post of mine with interview followup questions from 13 Dec 9:17 PM since you said I could ask away; please let me know if there’s a form more convenient for you to answer, like asking one-to-three questions at a time; I want to make it whatever is easiest for you, it’s just that the show you created is so engaging it inspires a lot of interest and therefore a lot of questions.
.
Hey Joe and everyone
Just catching up on my tea break. Anomaly doesn’t sound great. Hoping for excellent news for you, but in the meantime I would swap the fried chicken for something else if it was me. I’ve been reading about heart healthy foods and they include spinach, kale and other leafy greens, whole grains, avocados and berries.
I’ll do the avocados and pass on the rest.
I think the U.S. is done worrying about Covid or any of it’s variations. I heard on the news that a local Apple retail store closed temporarily because all it’s employees tested Covid positive. Seems the store had a big Black Friday sale last week. They say the store was packed with people. Now the employees have Covid. Not to worry, the store plans to open back up on Monday.
I changed my un-made-up-mind on that Beef Stew Pie. I was on the fence, now I’m a definite “hell no!”. That thing looks like fried crap. I would never spend any money to try it. Gross!
The more people have the virus, the more likely another mutation comes along. Something that kills like Ebola, but spreads and incubates like Covid. That would be ugly.
But aren’t viral mutations increasingly less deadly?
And given that the majority of omicron cases are in the vaccinated and, in some cases boosted, what’s the answer here?
Mutations can be anything, less deadly or more.
I agree with “B” that they can be more or less deadly. People who have gotten their boosters seem to not be getting this as much as everyone else (vaccinated or not). The virus’ function is to live and thereby mutate. As long as it still has hosts to infect, it will continue to find a way to mutate, and when I say “still has hosts” I mean every country on the face of this earth. What’s great about the mRNA vaccines is that they can just plug the new genetic sequence in to produce a vaccine that would prevent a new one, and perhaps more deadly one, versus the old way of creating vaccines. Think of smallpox. There was a huge effort with old-world vaccines to get the entire world vaccinated in order to eradicate it. And it mostly was. I’m sure it may exist somewhere, but my sister had to get a vaccine for that and 6 years later I did not need to get one.
Fortunately, this version of Omicron doesn’t appear to be too bad; BUT all it needs to do is switch one or two things on its genetic sequence and it could turn into a bad actor. I am vaccinated (with my booster) and I still wear a mask. Why do you say? Because I can always become an asymptomatic carrier of any of these variants, even while vaccinated. We were all vaccinated Jan and early Feb 2021. Patrick came home one weekend with COVID–totally asymptomatic. He can’t wear a mask because of his disability. He got it from a person in his group who couldn’t wear a mask but was also unvaccinated. The person infected his entire group. And the day hab had another break-out with another unvaccinated person without a mask on in a different group. I understand if your person with a disability can’t wear a mask but unless they have a medical exemption (and mRNA vaccines don’t meet the criteria for a religious exemption because they aren’t created from a fetal stem-cell line that came from the same aborted fetus (and aborted doesn’t necessary mean “abortion”–for example, my miscarriage was called a “missed abortion.”). So back to Patrick — because he can’t wear a mask, we try to keep others safe that he will be exposed to at his group home and day hab. He came home. Exposed both of us. Jeff came home from work (where he is required to wear a mask) and said, “I think I have a fever.” And he did have one. I told him he needed to get tested. He insisted he wasn’t exposed to anyone. He decided to wait (stay home to work but wait). The next day we were informed that Patrick was exposed to someone who did test positive at the day hab (still talking delta here but Omicron is supposedly easier to catch). Delta was on fire here so it took us 2 days to get an appointment for Jeff to get tested. I insisted they test Patrick. They had planned to move him to a different house because they didn’t have staffing for his house (shortage on staff). I insisted that they not move him until he was tested. Then Hurricane Ida hit, and Jeff’s co-worker called and was talking to her about not being able to go help in the company into Louisiana (they are called for storm duty even if they are administrative staff). While he was on the phone with her, I popped my head in and told him, “Patrick tested positive.” Jeff was scared and he cried for a little bit. I told him it was going to be okay — he got vaccinated and that would give him some protection. Then Jeff’s test results returned the next day; it was positive. I scheduled my testing (I was still asymptomatic). Guess what? The immune suppressed person in the house DIDN’T get it. We speculate viral load had a part in it. Jeff and Patrick do the “car rides with no destinations” to get Patrick out of the house but keep others safe. Literally for 4 or more hours total for the entire weekend they were in the car. I wasn’t around them too much and if I was I was apart from Patrick. Jeff has to shower and shave Patrick, too.
Have you ever watched the series Hot Zone. It was a 4-episode event. First they did one on a real-life story about Ebola. This time they’ve come out with Hot Zone: Anthrax. I can’t remember which one that is on — maybe Netflix or Hulu. I’ll check and let you know.
If people would get vaccinated and continue to wear their mask and countries with money and resources pump a whole lot of money into vaccinated everyone else, I think this could get under control; but absent that possibility, we are going to have to learn to live with COVID and all its mutations coming.
Time?
The tornado went around us but I’m catching the news that a lot of people in several states were hit bad. I pray everyone reading this is safe! Drop a line if you are in the South and were in the path of it last night.
Covid is endemic and it’s going to stay around. You’re opening up a can of worms but I think you can handle it. There are so many people that are traumatized, and it’s going to be difficult for them to move forward. Post Covid Stress Disorder is a real thing. I don’t have it but after seeing people IN the pool wearing a mask…. It’s a very real thing.
I’d try the beef stew hot pocket.
I hope for good news about your tests Monday!
I’m waiting on an authorization for an epidural for my back. I’ve managed to make it without a shot for two years but it’s time now. If you need me today, I’ll be on the couch with an ice pack. 😉 Just kidding, running seems to help, so I’m heading to the treadmill!
I hope everyone has a good day.
Good to hear you avoided the tornado. It looks like it hit some areas bad.
Hope you get that authorization much sooner than later. The red tape people have to put up with is ridiculous.
👀
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/most-reported-us-omicron-cases-have-hit-fully-vaccinated-cdc-2021-12-10/
It’s interesting that the article starts with this…
“Most of the 43 COVID-19 cases caused by the Omicron variant identified in the United States so far were in people who were fully vaccinated, and a third of them had received a booster dose”
And then ends with this…
“Laboratory studies released this week suggest that the Omicron variant will blunt the protective power of two doses of Pfizer (PFE.N) and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine, although a third dose may restore that protection.”
Well, clearly if you’d read the first sentence of your own article.
Few things I have noticed:
The fearmongering appears to be neverending, even though now that the new variant’s symptomatology is either mild or asymptomatic. They are back to isolating vaccinated and asymptomatic people.
This covid vaccine appears to be the only vaccine in history (as far as I can remember) that requires the unvaccinated to be vaccinated to protect the already vaccinated. Go figure. 🤷
Since the triple dosers still can catch covid, good luck trying to convince the others to get vaccinated and/or boosters now.
The vaccine manufacturers are likely salivating over the prospect of profiting even more from the infinity amount of boosters. Maybe I should start to buy their stocks …
It’s not the pandemic of the unvaccinated anymore, so some are starting to label this darn Omigawd as another new pandemic.
In summary, I am just going to call this the pandemic of insanity. Welcome to the new world.
Now I need a drink … or two … or more …
Couldn’t agree more – especially regarding that drink.
It is a myth that new mutations are weaker. There is no data to support that. Also, it is way too early to predict the severity of the Omicron variant overall. There isn’t enough data on that, either.
The reason it is so contagious is that it shares partial DNA with the common cold, also a coronavirus variant.
Historically, people who have had COVID-19 more than once are more likely to experience serious complications, which makes letting it run wild a bad idea. With over 5 million deaths worldwide, every effort to contain the virus must be made. The vaccines will need to be updated perhaps every six months. (Vaccine makers are estimating 100 days to roll out revised vaccines.)
This is all still a grand experiment with too many unknowns. The virus isn’t going anywhere and this is the new normal. It might make sense to just let it go and see what happens if we weren’t dealing with a virus with so much potential to kill or cause real, lasting harm, unlike the common cold, which is relatively benign for most people without serious comorbidities (I.e., asthma or COPD).
My best friend died of COVID in August, so my views on the subject tend to run toward containment. She was 46 years old and had just gotten married. I can’t begin to describe the depth of my grief and that of her new family.
Oh…. And thanks for sharing the concept artwork.