All through the weekend, we were getting emails from the administration about these extra special masks that the university purchased for the faculty. Then there was a big deal about packaging these ultra-special masks in separate Ziploc bags. Only one per person! Everybody had to submit lists of who is deserving of the extra special masks. Then you go to a special place and there’s a whole routine to check the extra special masks out.

The whole thing was hyped up to such an extent that I beelined it to the special place to take a look at the extra special masks at 7:30 in the morning.

Of course, I then discovered that the extra special massively hyped up masks are identical to all the other single use masks we’ve been using. Identical. As in, the same.

So now I’m doing this bit where colleagues come to my office one by one to get outfitted with the extra special masks. In complete silence, I show them the masks and we all heave with laughter for 10 minutes.

I’m starting to think this was all planned on purpose to raise morale and get people into an excellent mood on the first day back to in-person teaching. I haven’t laughed so hard at work since forever.

P.S. Folks, while I was writing this post we received an email that additional packages of these extra special masks were received and there’s going to be an even more byzantine process in place to get access to them. I’m laughing so hard, my whole body hurts. I swear I’m not inventing this. I strongly believe that somebody in the administration has a healthy sense of humor and is taking the piss out of the terrified academics. At least, that’s what I want to believe because it makes the world a better place.

The Kamloops “discovery” of 2021 created a major sensation in Canada and abroad. Based on the preliminary assessment and before any remains were found or any credible report made, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau immediately referred to “a dark and shameful chapter” in Canadian history.[3] British Columbia Premier John Horgan said he was “horrified and heartbroken” to learn of a burial site with 215 children that highlights the violence and consequences of the residential school system.[4] Several other Aboriginal communities and media outlets then followed up with references to unmarked graves. On May 30, the federal government lowered the flags on all its buildings to half-staff. Later, it instituted a new holiday to honour “missing” children and survivors of residential schools. Spontaneously, clusters of shoes and orange shirts and other paraphernalia were placed on church steps in many cities or on the steps of legislatures in memory of the little victims. Around the country, churches were burned or vandalized. Statues were spray-painted and pulled down in apparent retaliation for the fate of the children. The statue of Queen Victoria in front of the Manitoba Legislature was defaced and pulled down. 

Even China was horrified by these horrifying abuses in horrifying ways of the horrifyingly abused indigenous children. Of course, nobody actually found any mass graves. It’s all speculation. But mass graves fit the narrative, and that makes them more than real in fact, reality is completely unimportant.

That the story of the mass graves was abjectly ludicrous was clear from the start. But bemoaning imaginary human rights violations of the past is useful to distract from the currently existing ones. In Canada, you will now have to present a vaccine passport and a photo ID to enter Costco. But that’s a lot less interesting than fantasizing about dead indigenous children from the 19th century.

I always look at all of the new book releases to see what’s happening and find new, interesting authors. Yesterday, I came across this blurb:

To what lengths will a woman go for a little more help from her husband?
Nora Spangler is a successful attorney but when it comes to domestic life, she packs the lunches, schedules the doctor appointments, knows where the extra paper towel rolls are, and designs and orders the holiday cards. Her husband works hard, too… but why does it seem like she is always working so much harder?

This got me thinking. Either Nora Spangler’s job isn’t that demanding or she’s just weird. I’m also the paper-roll-tracking lunch-packing person in my family but that’s not because my husband doesn’t want to ‘help’ but because it would take an army to wrench my paper rolls out of my cold dead hands. I love doing this shit. I experienced life without toilet paper, so now stacking toilet paper holders (which I couldn’t imagine even existed when I was growing up) is a sublime experience.

Honestly, doing household stuff in a developed country when you have a successful attorney salary is so easy and enjoyable that feeling put upon by it is just bizarre.