Well I finally got my first shot of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine
yesterday. I think I mentioned that I booked in for the Astra* one
months ago, but with all the talk in the media about younger people
dying from blood clots caused by that* it seemed a bit silly to
take the risk given that I don't mix with people enough to catch so
much as a cold anyway. Plus it was eradicated again back then, but
has returned worse than ever now, only because the government
couldn't figure out a decent quarantine system in over a year. So I
waited it out until the Pfizer one was available to people in their
20s and booked in again at the doctor's the morning after it was
announced. As before the nearest booking was over a month away, and
as it turns out they're making it compulsory to get one in a few
weeks if you work in one of the essential occupations. So if I'd
booked just a little later after hearing about Pfizer opening up to
my age group, I'd probably miss the deadline. Seems like that would
make it tough for some people.
Of course the state government only thinks about Melbourne where
they've got their big vacccination "hubs" set up, but those seem to
be sparsely and almost randomly distributed between rural towns. So
people like me who avoid going into the cities have to wait for the
vaccines to trickle down to the country doctors who clearly were
the last in line to get them, yet we have the same deadline to get
the jab. Anyway the card they gave me says on the back "this is not
evidence of vaccination" or something like that, without explaining
where you're supposed to pull "evidence" from. Of course as I'm
self-employed I only have to confirm to myself that I got
vaccinated anyway, so I guess I won't need too much convincing.
As far as the vaccine itself goes, I seem to have survived alright.
Instead of blood clots, this one's nasty rare side effect in
younger people is apparantly swelling up the heart muscle. I didn't
bother looking into the stats for that one like I did before
cancelling the Astra jab, clearly you end up rolling the dice
whatever you do.
My arm felt alright a couple of hours after the injection and I
didn't feel ill at all, but I didn't have a great night's sleep,
and I did actually feel a slight bit of chest pain when my heart
rate raised in the morning (too much info: when I got an errection
- had to cancel my morning wank!). Today my arm's been feeling much
more sore when I strain it a little, but though it was a busy day
all my tasks were pretty physically light. I probably would have
been able to tough it out otherwise anyway, though I think my
evening push-ups routine will be skipped for the second night in a
row.
Well that's enough about all that, most other people have had it by
now anyway - everyone walking up to the desk at the doctors while I
was waiting seemed to be there for their second shot (they were
older). I'll finish with a quick remark about westerns (the title
of this post if supposed to sound like a dodgy western, by the way).
SBS World Movies (Australian TV channel) has been showing westerns
this week, though only two I hadn't seen an I missed one of them.
But I notice that the modern westerns fit this style where it's all
focused on deep family inter-relationships, personal struggles of
fragile people, emotional interactions, and ethical statements.
Tonight I watched my tape of Chisum, one of John Wayne's last
movies. Now I know it's each to their own, but jeeze the old
westerns with their strong leading figures and plots unfolding
through fight scenes are a lot more fun to watch. The modern ones
do always retain the big shoot-out at the end in one form or
another, but you wind your way through an hour and a half of
suppressed masculinity just to work up to 10 minutes at the end
when the enivitable finally happens. They just won't allow any fun
in the middle.
Mind you my favourite western is probably A Fistfull of Dollars,
which of course goes the other way and just turns the fights up to
eleven and almost ignores everything else. But I find you ideally
need to watch it after seeing way too many old John Wayne type
westerns, to the point where you're just about sick of them, then
wack on Sergio Leone and you see the joke that it's meant to make.
In fact perhaps the best way to go through westerns is to start
with the modern stuff they've been showing on TV: Slow West, Gone
Are the Days, Never Grow Old. Then back through the old Wayne and
like westerns: Chisum, The man who shot Liberty Valance, Tall in
the Saddle, (not to mention all the corny John Wayne ones from the
30s which had names with hardly anything to do with the actual
plot), then onto the spaghetti westerns with A Fistfull of Dollars
and finish up with the completely silly stuff like My Name is
Nobody (I need to find more Spaghetti Westerns actually). Oh and
when you reach the point where you just couldn't stand another
quick-draw hero, you can always ease your way back to more serious
viewing with a screening of Midnight Cowboy.
Thinking this much about movies makes me think I should be thinking
about something more productive. Mind you, I've then gone on to
think of my own movie plotlines and it's not like anything's going
to come out of that either. I have been considering sharing some
here though. No westerns mind you, in fact one's really got all the
emotional inter-relationship stuff that I was complaining about,
but I guess it's mainly just when they wrap that up as a western
that it annoys me.
- The Free Thinker.
* The media went all silent about this once cases started spreading
here again. I see that they don't want to discourage people from
getting vaccinated, but switching from "NEWSFLASH: Another Young
Man Dies From Astra Jab" to nothing at all surely has to fuel the
distrust a bit. I can only assume that as the vaccination rates
have increased many-fold, the deaths must be happening much more
often now as well, especially with the government encouraging
younger people to get Astra* rather than wait for Pfizer to be
available.
