So there I was, sitting on Westboro beach constructing a sand castle, listening to Latin Jazz, admiring the many beautiful women of Ottawa, and desperate for a cigar.
I’ve stopped cigarettes altogether now. Not through any deliberate choice or with any serious commitment or effort on my part mind you, but more by accident: I had a few too many on election night 2016 and by the time I had recovered later that week the desire was gone. Spooked straight or something. Besides, I have never been a regular cigarette smoker anyway and the way things are going these days it won’t be long before a drag will land you in prison, unless you can convince the cop it’s actually just a harmless joint. “I swear it’s weak pot, officer! What kind of responsible citizen do you think I’d be if I touched a menthol?!”
Whatever. Cigarettes are gone now and I don’t want to dwell on it because I hate sounding like one of those prats who can just up and quit on a whim and then brags to everyone about it. I still smoke cigars from time to time and the more Tito Puente I hear on the beach under the sun the more comfortable I am with the possibility that Health Canada will one day try banish me exile in Cuba.
I'd had two margaritas at the beach club café despite promising to cut back on booze, but I felt they'd make an adequate substitute for lunch and I’d been a good boy about eating my vegetables and going to the gym. At any rate, the whole scene was nearly perfect except that the beach is still technically located in Ontario so the booze costs forty dollars and must be consumed in a locked room far away from other humans, and where a paid staff member shouts at you to feel bad for diminishing the purity of your bodily fluids with the devil’s tequila. It’s all very aggravating and pedantic but at last it stops you from nursing a drink for too long.
But if the sun is shining - and warm - on the weekend, then nothing should be allowed to get in the way of a good mood. We have so few days of light left before the winter returns that just about any agitation can be endured. There's only so much Vitamin D left this season so grab all you can, friend, and admit that that there are far worse places someone could be.
Imagine what poor Reince Priebus is going through right now all alone in the west wing, huddled under his desk in his office with the lights off and the door locked. Sheltered in place, they call it, as the dwindling survivors of his staff scramble for cover or claw madly at the bulletproof windows, desperately trying to scamper to the safety of their DC attorney's office. With Spicer out they are all that remains of the once mighty GOP establishment inside the White House, and now Bannon is able to roam the halls with nothing to keep his blood lust in check, free to rip the head off of any passing intern and slather himself with the goo inside.
Some ambitious new idiot-maniac will be named as the new communications director, the soulless Huckabee Sanders will be the new permanent Press Secretary, Tillerson and Sessions will be gone soon - either by choice or after being pushed off a cliff - and the putsch will be more or less complete. Who knows, though? Franz von Papen was acquitted and OJ Simpson can get parole so maybe there's hope yet for a chump like Priebus, if he can stay out of the meat grinder a little while longer or at least feed it Chris Christie. Then he can flee the building to go help run some SuperPAC until until it's time to write a book without worrying about a surprise visit from Kushner in the middle of the night with his burlap sack.
Anyway, all of this was running through my head while I was lying on the beach and I couldn't help but think that to the White House regulars - the military and the security personnel, the cooks, the cleaners - the building must look like the paranormal center of a nightmare horror show these days. The world of Upside Down. A Presidential palace but with no bikinis or steel drums there, I bet. At least, not for the likes of them.
It seems like it's getting harder to get away from anything anymore. I know I certainly can't escape it, even out in the sun listening to the surf, kind of buzzed and slightly baked, and with no meaningful connection to these events or people save that we both seem to be stuck in the same alternative reality. My thoughts swirl around from a history of coup attempts to Senate rules of procedure back to the poor fucker in the situation room whose job is to connect the President's calls, and how the topsy turvy remains unrelenting.
Maybe there is an upside to it all though, consider: we're all rapt. We're all addicted. We're all becoming news hounds doped up on skepticism and constantly on edge, and perhaps that is ultimately for the best. People who have never talked about politics before are following every detail all the time, months after the inauguration and years before the next election. Perhaps a constant stream of outrages and abuses is exactly what it takes to shake off a few hundred years of growing complacency and atrophied political consciousness and start flexing some muscles again.
Or I could be wrong and we're all about to die of skin cancer or nuclear fallout. ¡Lo que sea!
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
Thursday, July 6, 2017
Dispatches from Canada Day in the Wilderness
[Editor's Note: The Publisher wishes to apologize for the delay in posting this piece. Immediately after being assigned to it, the writer fled the city and refused to ever speak to us again. Our office intern Alfonso was able to trek into the remote lake country to recover the column from the writer, sustaining some serious water-balloon related injuries in the process. We miss you, Alfonso, and wish you a speedy recovery!]
Today is apparently Canada Day. I had almost forgotten, you see, but then Facebook helpfully woke me up at 4 o’clock in the morning with a loud, urgent, buzzing notification of animated maple leaves and fireworks, and after the initial panic had abated I was set straight and decided the subject needed to be addressed.
So here I am, writing this from the main room of a remote cabin high in the Gatineau hills, far from the traffic and noise and people and absurdity of the nation’s capital, and where it’s easy to forget about the basic elements of space and time. That probably has something to do with the way the light reflects off the lake or the sound of the lightly drizzling rain I can hear outside or that beer is served with breakfast, but it’s more likely that we’ll never know exactly why. Whatever it is, it’s exactly why I am here in my own Eagle’s Nest - my brain has been too susceptible to distraction lately and even in it’s usual modestly-boring way, Ottawa is still able to keep me from doing anything productive. At times like these I need to step into a quiet void to regroup, otherwise I'd likely just go completely mad altogether.
Even in quiet years the city becomes a chaotic mess every July 1st, when a few hundred thousand people descend on Parliament Hill to watch a mediocre concert, wave at whichever minor Royal is in town, get buzzed by some Air Force jets before getting hammered completely on overpriced liquor. This year is a whole different beast altogether though: everything has been ramped up to Peak Nonsense for the country’s 150th birthday. Advertisements have been implanted in my brain for months. U2 will be in town for five minutes [Editor’s note: It was NOT U2, but simply Bono and The Edge performing a single song on the main stage]. Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall will be in attendance, no doubt before he goes off to speak at some quack-science homeopathy seminar later this week. The streets have been closed for days and tourists have been flooding even the quiet neighborhoods, begging locals for directions or help on how to use our woefully incapable transit system, or how to kill time. My answer to both is pretty simple, bub: it’s every man for himself; get the hell out of town and save yourself.
Canada 150™ is exactly the kind of program I have come to expect from the Government of Canada: a feel-good branding exercise like Own The Podium or Have It Your Way that we convince ourselves is in the spirit of a Norman Rockwell painting but is more the style of a cheap beer company or Tim Hortons for which I have no time or patience, though I can almost never quite put my finger on precisely why.
For instance, the Canada 150 logo seems perfectly fine to me and not – as some reactionary bigots on Facebook seem to think – a secret attempt by the Trudeau government to turn wholesome children queer with a desecrated Canadian flag. Perhaps I don’t mind it because I am (barely) clever enough to remember that it was in fact the Harper government that chose the design, or because even if it was such a secret plot it could only do our collective conscious some good. We could all stand to have our minds (among other things) blown more often. Nor am I particularly opposed to the idea that this anniversary is somehow more special because it is the sesquicentennial…if only because it affords me the opportunity to try and spell “sesquicentennial” while sipping a beer and making obsessive observations about the weather (and thus fulfilling two vital Canadian stereotypes).
Anyway, I must acknowledge that the whole phenomenon does provide a reasonable excuse to sit here, now on a deck (the rain has ceased, it turns out) in the middle of the wilderness, getting baked while Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and The Hip’s critically underappreciated Last of the Unplucked Gems play on the radio, and think about Canada, even though I find the older I get the more I find myself completely perplexed by the very idea of nation-states. Ugh, whatever.
This country, as surely you must have figured out by now, is 150 years old. Maybe. Depending on your generation, background, and political philosophy we either became a country in 1867 when a bunch of quasi-genocidal anglophiles lobbied the British for self-government, 1930-something when the Westminster Statute expanded the ability of that government, the 1980s when the Constitution was finally repatriated with its much-vaunted Charter of Rights and Freedoms, or some 20,000 years ago when the first humans settled in the area that would come be Canada. At least, until the Eurotrash arrived and - using a combination of biological warfare and the regular kind - killed most of them, scattered the rest, and built a new place out of their bones.
To be fair there has been some progress since then: the highest officials of the white man’s government will work in a building that’s no longer named for a major proponent of a system of cultural destruction and child rape. Additionally, the pub-sized Victorian-era beaux-arts building across the street from Parliament Hill which has been vacant for decades will become a new cultural appreciation center, uh, somehow. Still, I’m sure they would have preferred some money to make their water drinkable or homes livable so it should hardly come as a surprise to anyone that as we approached the annual orgy of red and white, there would be some choice words about the whole proceedings - and righteously so.
So I’ll be forgiven – surely - that I can’t help but grin a bit that while I sit out here in the emerging sun, on my second cup of gritty cottage coffee the downpour continues on Parliament Hill, keeping the crowds away or at lest damp. It shouldn’t improve my mood but it does...Canada Day should never go quite as smoothly as the government wants it to.
At any rate, either the fresh coffee or the next beer or the brightening day has perked me up somewhat and I’m able to get past the full force of my negativity and think about some of the upsides. In the past six months, for instance, this country has emerged as one of the stalwart pillars of the liberal international order and, along with France and Germany, stand as the last line of defense for the whole of Western Civilization. The rise of an independent and assertive foreign policy in the face of the American retreat from global leadership is something to be proud of.
Plus, you know, all of the hokey stuff you see in the commercials. I’m taking advantage of a beautiful landscapes right now, and the image of the easy-going multiculturalist scoiety is a great idea as long as we’re willing to fight for it. It is nice – and serves a greater good - that you can get bitten by a poisonous snake (which will become a real thing as climate change brings more of them here) or get hit by a car or get drunk on powerful beer at your cottage while writing your Canada Day blog post and accidentally fall down some rickety wooden stairs onto sharp rocks, and still have your hospital bill covered without having to worry about going bankrupt or being shit on by Human Turdbag Ted Cruz.
There’s an argument to be made, I’m convinced, that a critical, distinguishing trait separating civilized nations from the uncivilized is the ability to recognize and acknowledge the bad parts of one’s history and problems of the present while celebrating the good. We should do that more often, especially as Canada 150® tries valiantly to simplify everything into vague, sugar-laden Tim Horton’s style jingoism. But the hard part is doing it: if the mantra of the post-Harper years is to be that “better is always possible” then we have to be willing to put the work into making the possible real.
Jesus! An honest-to-fuck deer has just walked up to the shoreline a few dozen feet from me, hopped into the water, and has begun to swim across the lake. I have no idea if he’s ever done that before or does it often, or if he even knows where the hell he’s going, but off he goes anyway. Maybe he’s taking a morning constitutional, or swimming out to die. Either way I take it as a sign that the lake has become too tempting to resist; an omen form nature that I’m starting to ramble and this whole thing is going to fly apart if I keep it up.
[Editor's Note: This is the end of the recovered transcript. Have a safe long weekend, everyone.]
Today is apparently Canada Day. I had almost forgotten, you see, but then Facebook helpfully woke me up at 4 o’clock in the morning with a loud, urgent, buzzing notification of animated maple leaves and fireworks, and after the initial panic had abated I was set straight and decided the subject needed to be addressed.
So here I am, writing this from the main room of a remote cabin high in the Gatineau hills, far from the traffic and noise and people and absurdity of the nation’s capital, and where it’s easy to forget about the basic elements of space and time. That probably has something to do with the way the light reflects off the lake or the sound of the lightly drizzling rain I can hear outside or that beer is served with breakfast, but it’s more likely that we’ll never know exactly why. Whatever it is, it’s exactly why I am here in my own Eagle’s Nest - my brain has been too susceptible to distraction lately and even in it’s usual modestly-boring way, Ottawa is still able to keep me from doing anything productive. At times like these I need to step into a quiet void to regroup, otherwise I'd likely just go completely mad altogether.
Even in quiet years the city becomes a chaotic mess every July 1st, when a few hundred thousand people descend on Parliament Hill to watch a mediocre concert, wave at whichever minor Royal is in town, get buzzed by some Air Force jets before getting hammered completely on overpriced liquor. This year is a whole different beast altogether though: everything has been ramped up to Peak Nonsense for the country’s 150th birthday. Advertisements have been implanted in my brain for months. U2 will be in town for five minutes [Editor’s note: It was NOT U2, but simply Bono and The Edge performing a single song on the main stage]. Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall will be in attendance, no doubt before he goes off to speak at some quack-science homeopathy seminar later this week. The streets have been closed for days and tourists have been flooding even the quiet neighborhoods, begging locals for directions or help on how to use our woefully incapable transit system, or how to kill time. My answer to both is pretty simple, bub: it’s every man for himself; get the hell out of town and save yourself.
Canada 150™ is exactly the kind of program I have come to expect from the Government of Canada: a feel-good branding exercise like Own The Podium or Have It Your Way that we convince ourselves is in the spirit of a Norman Rockwell painting but is more the style of a cheap beer company or Tim Hortons for which I have no time or patience, though I can almost never quite put my finger on precisely why.
For instance, the Canada 150 logo seems perfectly fine to me and not – as some reactionary bigots on Facebook seem to think – a secret attempt by the Trudeau government to turn wholesome children queer with a desecrated Canadian flag. Perhaps I don’t mind it because I am (barely) clever enough to remember that it was in fact the Harper government that chose the design, or because even if it was such a secret plot it could only do our collective conscious some good. We could all stand to have our minds (among other things) blown more often. Nor am I particularly opposed to the idea that this anniversary is somehow more special because it is the sesquicentennial…if only because it affords me the opportunity to try and spell “sesquicentennial” while sipping a beer and making obsessive observations about the weather (and thus fulfilling two vital Canadian stereotypes).
Anyway, I must acknowledge that the whole phenomenon does provide a reasonable excuse to sit here, now on a deck (the rain has ceased, it turns out) in the middle of the wilderness, getting baked while Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and The Hip’s critically underappreciated Last of the Unplucked Gems play on the radio, and think about Canada, even though I find the older I get the more I find myself completely perplexed by the very idea of nation-states. Ugh, whatever.
This country, as surely you must have figured out by now, is 150 years old. Maybe. Depending on your generation, background, and political philosophy we either became a country in 1867 when a bunch of quasi-genocidal anglophiles lobbied the British for self-government, 1930-something when the Westminster Statute expanded the ability of that government, the 1980s when the Constitution was finally repatriated with its much-vaunted Charter of Rights and Freedoms, or some 20,000 years ago when the first humans settled in the area that would come be Canada. At least, until the Eurotrash arrived and - using a combination of biological warfare and the regular kind - killed most of them, scattered the rest, and built a new place out of their bones.
To be fair there has been some progress since then: the highest officials of the white man’s government will work in a building that’s no longer named for a major proponent of a system of cultural destruction and child rape. Additionally, the pub-sized Victorian-era beaux-arts building across the street from Parliament Hill which has been vacant for decades will become a new cultural appreciation center, uh, somehow. Still, I’m sure they would have preferred some money to make their water drinkable or homes livable so it should hardly come as a surprise to anyone that as we approached the annual orgy of red and white, there would be some choice words about the whole proceedings - and righteously so.
So I’ll be forgiven – surely - that I can’t help but grin a bit that while I sit out here in the emerging sun, on my second cup of gritty cottage coffee the downpour continues on Parliament Hill, keeping the crowds away or at lest damp. It shouldn’t improve my mood but it does...Canada Day should never go quite as smoothly as the government wants it to.
At any rate, either the fresh coffee or the next beer or the brightening day has perked me up somewhat and I’m able to get past the full force of my negativity and think about some of the upsides. In the past six months, for instance, this country has emerged as one of the stalwart pillars of the liberal international order and, along with France and Germany, stand as the last line of defense for the whole of Western Civilization. The rise of an independent and assertive foreign policy in the face of the American retreat from global leadership is something to be proud of.
Plus, you know, all of the hokey stuff you see in the commercials. I’m taking advantage of a beautiful landscapes right now, and the image of the easy-going multiculturalist scoiety is a great idea as long as we’re willing to fight for it. It is nice – and serves a greater good - that you can get bitten by a poisonous snake (which will become a real thing as climate change brings more of them here) or get hit by a car or get drunk on powerful beer at your cottage while writing your Canada Day blog post and accidentally fall down some rickety wooden stairs onto sharp rocks, and still have your hospital bill covered without having to worry about going bankrupt or being shit on by Human Turdbag Ted Cruz.
There’s an argument to be made, I’m convinced, that a critical, distinguishing trait separating civilized nations from the uncivilized is the ability to recognize and acknowledge the bad parts of one’s history and problems of the present while celebrating the good. We should do that more often, especially as Canada 150® tries valiantly to simplify everything into vague, sugar-laden Tim Horton’s style jingoism. But the hard part is doing it: if the mantra of the post-Harper years is to be that “better is always possible” then we have to be willing to put the work into making the possible real.
Jesus! An honest-to-fuck deer has just walked up to the shoreline a few dozen feet from me, hopped into the water, and has begun to swim across the lake. I have no idea if he’s ever done that before or does it often, or if he even knows where the hell he’s going, but off he goes anyway. Maybe he’s taking a morning constitutional, or swimming out to die. Either way I take it as a sign that the lake has become too tempting to resist; an omen form nature that I’m starting to ramble and this whole thing is going to fly apart if I keep it up.
[Editor's Note: This is the end of the recovered transcript. Have a safe long weekend, everyone.]
Thursday, June 1, 2017
Vitamin D
This weekend was exactly what the doctor ordered: warm, bright, and sunny...the perfect time to relax at the Westboro Beach Club, sip margaritas, do some serious thinking, and brutalize Kevin O'Leary with crude insults over Twitter for fun; it was like a spiritual colonic.
The city was largely emptied of assholes - the Conservative leadership convention had drawn most of them to Toronto where after two and a half million rounds of voting Andrew "wait, him?" Scheer became the new leader of their party with a resounding 50-point-something percent of the vote. That he beat front-runner Maxime Bernier at the end was a bit of a surprise, though not as big a shock as the first ballot results. Brad Trost in fourth, ahead of Michael Chong? Boy golly are these people stupid. Trost insists his supporters were instructed to only rank he and fellow Leviticus-shill Pierre Lemieux on their ballot and then drop off, but I doubt that was the case and it sure looks like the body fascists and gay bashers are going to have a friend in the new leader.
All of which suits me just fine, to be honest. If they're going to keep picking these medieval throwbacks to run their party we're just going to have to keep kicking the shit out of them for it, and there are few things I enjoy more than a good Conservative stomping. Scheer's bizarre, debased interpretation of Sunny WaysTM leaves a lot to be desired and if the poor fool keeps smiling while talking about his mother's death he and his Bible-thumping supporters aren't going to be on the stage for very long.
The weather was even nice south of the border too, with the Trump family off of the continent on a whirlwind trip to the two or three countries that either don't hate him or can't say no. Melania even smiled once - while posing with the other G7 spouses for a photo in a room where surely her odious husband wasn't present.
Nothing good lasts forever though and just like a flash thunderstorm - Kaboom! The weekend was over and the disastrous trip was finished. The pictures coming out of the Vatican are like something out of Roman Polanski film, a real goddamned horror show. His Holiness seemed sick to his stomach the entire time but managed to avoid projectile vomiting (no doubt saving it for Callista Gingrich to arrive as Ambassador while her husband Newt sniffs out some Italian ass). The First Lady-turned-Hostage tapped out Morse-code messages to the outside world on her husband's probing hand while First Daughter Piper Perri tried to offload $10M in Ivanka handbags to the Roman Curia. The President himself was grinning like an idiot for the whole visit, no doubt daydreaming about what reward would await him at his future dacha when Moscow Center saw his performance at NATO and the G7.
Frankly, I'm surprised we're all still alive. I mean, we are probably well and truly fucked but I do take some comfort in watching a new Western order develop around Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, and even our own Justin from Canada. Even so, we probably have to look to ourselves for solace, which is why I've been trying to spend so much time behind the drums, in the midnight gym, or on the beach.
I hear that NASA is planning to shoot a satellite at the Sun, which strikes me as a waste of precious engineering resources - surely it'd be more effective to send a manned mission, and I will volunteer in a heartbeat. Until then, I guess, we just have to stick it out.
The city was largely emptied of assholes - the Conservative leadership convention had drawn most of them to Toronto where after two and a half million rounds of voting Andrew "wait, him?" Scheer became the new leader of their party with a resounding 50-point-something percent of the vote. That he beat front-runner Maxime Bernier at the end was a bit of a surprise, though not as big a shock as the first ballot results. Brad Trost in fourth, ahead of Michael Chong? Boy golly are these people stupid. Trost insists his supporters were instructed to only rank he and fellow Leviticus-shill Pierre Lemieux on their ballot and then drop off, but I doubt that was the case and it sure looks like the body fascists and gay bashers are going to have a friend in the new leader.
All of which suits me just fine, to be honest. If they're going to keep picking these medieval throwbacks to run their party we're just going to have to keep kicking the shit out of them for it, and there are few things I enjoy more than a good Conservative stomping. Scheer's bizarre, debased interpretation of Sunny WaysTM leaves a lot to be desired and if the poor fool keeps smiling while talking about his mother's death he and his Bible-thumping supporters aren't going to be on the stage for very long.
The weather was even nice south of the border too, with the Trump family off of the continent on a whirlwind trip to the two or three countries that either don't hate him or can't say no. Melania even smiled once - while posing with the other G7 spouses for a photo in a room where surely her odious husband wasn't present.
Nothing good lasts forever though and just like a flash thunderstorm - Kaboom! The weekend was over and the disastrous trip was finished. The pictures coming out of the Vatican are like something out of Roman Polanski film, a real goddamned horror show. His Holiness seemed sick to his stomach the entire time but managed to avoid projectile vomiting (no doubt saving it for Callista Gingrich to arrive as Ambassador while her husband Newt sniffs out some Italian ass). The First Lady-turned-Hostage tapped out Morse-code messages to the outside world on her husband's probing hand while First Daughter Piper Perri tried to offload $10M in Ivanka handbags to the Roman Curia. The President himself was grinning like an idiot for the whole visit, no doubt daydreaming about what reward would await him at his future dacha when Moscow Center saw his performance at NATO and the G7.
Frankly, I'm surprised we're all still alive. I mean, we are probably well and truly fucked but I do take some comfort in watching a new Western order develop around Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, and even our own Justin from Canada. Even so, we probably have to look to ourselves for solace, which is why I've been trying to spend so much time behind the drums, in the midnight gym, or on the beach.
I hear that NASA is planning to shoot a satellite at the Sun, which strikes me as a waste of precious engineering resources - surely it'd be more effective to send a manned mission, and I will volunteer in a heartbeat. Until then, I guess, we just have to stick it out.
Friday, April 28, 2017
And Then There Were Fifty-Six, or Some Stupid Thing (An Update on the Conservative Leadership Race)
The geese are back and are already hissing at me; it's not even youngling seasons yet but there they are, nevertheless. I suppose it's inevitable: if you're going to rip a few of their heads off with your bare hands and then chase the others away in the middle of the night, flailing the corpses wildly, they're bound to give you some kind of a reputation and a pissy attitude. I intend on at least earning the shit they give me.
Nowadays I'm spending my midnights in the gym, by and large. It's the perfect way to balance a deep rooted hatred of human beings with the need to use modern and up to date equipment. Some of my fondest fitness memories come from all-night gyms too, like the time I watched the entire Israel-Lebanon war on CNN International at two o'clock every morning from a treadmill in a darkened retail basement. The treadmills weren't connected to YouTube back then, so it turns out I have a lot of catching up to do.
This week however, there's been one way to spend a late night that's just as good for the heart and soul as a bout in the gym. Anyone can do it and everyone should, at least once: pour yourself a nice glass of wine, sit out somewhere where there's a nice warm breeze, and read the comments on Kevin O'Leary's Facebook posts.
"Coward!" they cry, as he announced he was dropping out of the Conservative leadership race and endorsing Maxime Bernier. "Traitor!" Apparently a good number of people - suffering from some kind of reasoning defect - joined the Conservative party to vote for him and want him on the ballot. As if the possibility that the guy who skipped out on debates to shill for shitty wine on the Shopping Channel might not make it all the way across the finish line. Surprise!
O'Leary is citing his lack of French as the deciding factor for him to drop out (as of this posting there was no explanation as to why that wasn't considered before he got into the race to begin with), while almost everyone agrees that he's probably dropping out to avoid the embarrassment of losing to someone like Bernier or Scheer or whichever clown is ultimately successful in taking over that clown car.
Personally, I think it's more the opposite - I think he was scared he might win. Polls suggested it was a real possibility and if you can't even be bothered to show up for your own campaign events then why would you want to actually do even more? Especially for less money and after relocating from Sun Beach, FL (where you're surrounded by gropeable girls in skanty bikinis who probably let you do whatever you want if you're a star) to a drab boring dump like Ottawa. The whole thing was like a reality TV stunt and we are well rid of it.
By my reckoning this leaves Racist-in-Denial Kellie Leitch and her former partner-in-crime Chris 'I ought to know better' Alexander, a gestalt entity of Tory MPs of which Scheer or O'Toole are the best bets (don't bother Googling their first names, they won't be around long), self-styled "Mad Max" Bernier, Michael Chong, and a squadron of C-listers vying for the leadership.
Of the bunch, Chong is the only faintly interesting one because in addition to playing a surprise cameo in the best Globe and Mail disaster of the year, he was evidently unaware that he was supposed to do a gong-show act as part of the contest.
He's also caught my attention because he seems to have been able to trick some people into thinking he isn't really a Conservative. Supporting carbon pricing has thrown some lefties for a loop, a feat made even easier when they gloss over the fact that he wants to eliminate dozens of programs which work to curb carbon emissions, as well as cut three income tax brackets and corporate to benefit the rich. His proposal on Parliamentary reform was genuinely interesting but even if he were somehow able to win a leadership election for a party whose members probably think he's from "Red China" and then a general election against Justin Trudeau it seems unlikely much of it would be able to come to fruition anyway.
Ugh, whatever. I oscillate wildly between wanting this race to finally be over, and wanting it to go on forever. With O'Leary out and no longer making videos about how the country he hasn't lived in for years is run by female CBC executives, or struggling to answer basic questions about how government works, there really doesn't seem to be much point in going on any longer. Conveniently, advanced balloting started yesterday so let's get this show on the road.
Nowadays I'm spending my midnights in the gym, by and large. It's the perfect way to balance a deep rooted hatred of human beings with the need to use modern and up to date equipment. Some of my fondest fitness memories come from all-night gyms too, like the time I watched the entire Israel-Lebanon war on CNN International at two o'clock every morning from a treadmill in a darkened retail basement. The treadmills weren't connected to YouTube back then, so it turns out I have a lot of catching up to do.
This week however, there's been one way to spend a late night that's just as good for the heart and soul as a bout in the gym. Anyone can do it and everyone should, at least once: pour yourself a nice glass of wine, sit out somewhere where there's a nice warm breeze, and read the comments on Kevin O'Leary's Facebook posts.
"Coward!" they cry, as he announced he was dropping out of the Conservative leadership race and endorsing Maxime Bernier. "Traitor!" Apparently a good number of people - suffering from some kind of reasoning defect - joined the Conservative party to vote for him and want him on the ballot. As if the possibility that the guy who skipped out on debates to shill for shitty wine on the Shopping Channel might not make it all the way across the finish line. Surprise!
O'Leary is citing his lack of French as the deciding factor for him to drop out (as of this posting there was no explanation as to why that wasn't considered before he got into the race to begin with), while almost everyone agrees that he's probably dropping out to avoid the embarrassment of losing to someone like Bernier or Scheer or whichever clown is ultimately successful in taking over that clown car.
Personally, I think it's more the opposite - I think he was scared he might win. Polls suggested it was a real possibility and if you can't even be bothered to show up for your own campaign events then why would you want to actually do even more? Especially for less money and after relocating from Sun Beach, FL (where you're surrounded by gropeable girls in skanty bikinis who probably let you do whatever you want if you're a star) to a drab boring dump like Ottawa. The whole thing was like a reality TV stunt and we are well rid of it.
By my reckoning this leaves Racist-in-Denial Kellie Leitch and her former partner-in-crime Chris 'I ought to know better' Alexander, a gestalt entity of Tory MPs of which Scheer or O'Toole are the best bets (don't bother Googling their first names, they won't be around long), self-styled "Mad Max" Bernier, Michael Chong, and a squadron of C-listers vying for the leadership.
Of the bunch, Chong is the only faintly interesting one because in addition to playing a surprise cameo in the best Globe and Mail disaster of the year, he was evidently unaware that he was supposed to do a gong-show act as part of the contest.
He's also caught my attention because he seems to have been able to trick some people into thinking he isn't really a Conservative. Supporting carbon pricing has thrown some lefties for a loop, a feat made even easier when they gloss over the fact that he wants to eliminate dozens of programs which work to curb carbon emissions, as well as cut three income tax brackets and corporate to benefit the rich. His proposal on Parliamentary reform was genuinely interesting but even if he were somehow able to win a leadership election for a party whose members probably think he's from "Red China" and then a general election against Justin Trudeau it seems unlikely much of it would be able to come to fruition anyway.
Ugh, whatever. I oscillate wildly between wanting this race to finally be over, and wanting it to go on forever. With O'Leary out and no longer making videos about how the country he hasn't lived in for years is run by female CBC executives, or struggling to answer basic questions about how government works, there really doesn't seem to be much point in going on any longer. Conveniently, advanced balloting started yesterday so let's get this show on the road.
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Man's Search For Clarity
I don't know how crazy-ass stupid you have to be to be appointed as the White House Press Secretary but I'm starting to believe even I could do it, and I used to jam forks into toasters to rotate bagels. I suppose it probably helps when the boss is a petulant man-child who can be sidetracked by a slice of chocolate cake.
Alas, by the time you read this Sean Spicer will be on his sixth or seventh clarification in a desperate attempt to make us all understand exactly why he tried to compare Bashar al-Assad to Adolf Hitler by arguing that Hitler hadn't used chemical weapons on his own people - which is baffling because for more than sixty years "using chemical weapons on his own people" has been the textbook definition of Adolf Hitler; it's how he built his personal brand.
Spicer's previous attempts (plural!) to refine his remarks included watching him struggle lamely to find the words "Concentration camp", before giving up that spectacular mental wrestling match and calling them "Holocaust Centers" right there on live TV. Then there was some gibberish about how technically Hitler never dropped chemical weapons from airplanes and that's all he really meant to say; rhetorical Adonis that he is. It's probably correct, I guess, since you don't have to use an airplane when you just drop the pellets through a hatch in the roof. Which for the record the Nazis did a lot, the White House later had to point out in a statement in this the year of our Lord, 2017.
Really, Holocaust Centers? Holocaust Centers? Look, Sean, heaven knows I've forgotten my train of thought my fair share of times before, but if you can use the word Holocaust without remembering fucking "Concentration Camp" you need to get out of the White House Press Briefing Room and lie down until the ketamine wears off.
I suppose it could also be that you're deliberately trying to undermine the severity of the Nazis' crimes by avoiding a particular phrase that comes with a lot of unpleasant baggage and imagery in favor of a term that, frankly, I'm surprised Richard Spencer hasn't already trademarked for a future business name. But in all honesty I doubt the Press Secretary is clever enough for that - he's more banal than he is Bannon - and if there is one thing that may save us all these next (Jesus!) three years and ten-months, it'll be that the Trump administration keeps shooting itself in the foot and then trying to cover it up by shooting itself in the stomach.
Surely it won't be long now before Spicer ends up out on his ass and off on his next adventure, forming the world's shittiest crisis communications firm with the soon-to-be-former-CEO of United Airlines and whichever maniac wrote the Kardashian Pepsi ad.
Surely.
Fuck me, it's been a banner week for morons. For a brief moment in time it looked like I was going to be writing a post about how some good things have actually happened: the Republicans got spanked but good on health care and Paul Ryan got to look like a massive turd, Nikki Haley's gone rogue at the UN, Kevin O'Leary continues to lead in a race that promises to keep our own Conservatives in the political doldrums for another four years, and winter finally seems to be lifting. As I write this diatribe there's no shortage of "Ben Carson gets stuck in elevator" headlines to laugh at, and that is very welcome change from a detailed analysis of Mike Pence's filthy and bizarre perversions.
I've even started to lose weight, having decided to drastically reduce the number of calories I eat to practice for my frail dotage, when there won't be any Meals on Wheels at all.
The good always comes at a cost, though. It's unavoidable. The President's dementia continues to flare up, finally acting on Syria may end up triggering World War III, and cutting most of the alcohol out of my diet has ruined my ability to sleep. I just keep wandering around in a daze, unable to balance the catastrophically high levels of caffeine and rage-spittle in my blood.
I guess what I'm saying is that beach and cigar season can't come soon enough.
Alas, by the time you read this Sean Spicer will be on his sixth or seventh clarification in a desperate attempt to make us all understand exactly why he tried to compare Bashar al-Assad to Adolf Hitler by arguing that Hitler hadn't used chemical weapons on his own people - which is baffling because for more than sixty years "using chemical weapons on his own people" has been the textbook definition of Adolf Hitler; it's how he built his personal brand.
Spicer's previous attempts (plural!) to refine his remarks included watching him struggle lamely to find the words "Concentration camp", before giving up that spectacular mental wrestling match and calling them "Holocaust Centers" right there on live TV. Then there was some gibberish about how technically Hitler never dropped chemical weapons from airplanes and that's all he really meant to say; rhetorical Adonis that he is. It's probably correct, I guess, since you don't have to use an airplane when you just drop the pellets through a hatch in the roof. Which for the record the Nazis did a lot, the White House later had to point out in a statement in this the year of our Lord, 2017.
Really, Holocaust Centers? Holocaust Centers? Look, Sean, heaven knows I've forgotten my train of thought my fair share of times before, but if you can use the word Holocaust without remembering fucking "Concentration Camp" you need to get out of the White House Press Briefing Room and lie down until the ketamine wears off.
I suppose it could also be that you're deliberately trying to undermine the severity of the Nazis' crimes by avoiding a particular phrase that comes with a lot of unpleasant baggage and imagery in favor of a term that, frankly, I'm surprised Richard Spencer hasn't already trademarked for a future business name. But in all honesty I doubt the Press Secretary is clever enough for that - he's more banal than he is Bannon - and if there is one thing that may save us all these next (Jesus!) three years and ten-months, it'll be that the Trump administration keeps shooting itself in the foot and then trying to cover it up by shooting itself in the stomach.
Surely it won't be long now before Spicer ends up out on his ass and off on his next adventure, forming the world's shittiest crisis communications firm with the soon-to-be-former-CEO of United Airlines and whichever maniac wrote the Kardashian Pepsi ad.
Surely.
Fuck me, it's been a banner week for morons. For a brief moment in time it looked like I was going to be writing a post about how some good things have actually happened: the Republicans got spanked but good on health care and Paul Ryan got to look like a massive turd, Nikki Haley's gone rogue at the UN, Kevin O'Leary continues to lead in a race that promises to keep our own Conservatives in the political doldrums for another four years, and winter finally seems to be lifting. As I write this diatribe there's no shortage of "Ben Carson gets stuck in elevator" headlines to laugh at, and that is very welcome change from a detailed analysis of Mike Pence's filthy and bizarre perversions.
I've even started to lose weight, having decided to drastically reduce the number of calories I eat to practice for my frail dotage, when there won't be any Meals on Wheels at all.
The good always comes at a cost, though. It's unavoidable. The President's dementia continues to flare up, finally acting on Syria may end up triggering World War III, and cutting most of the alcohol out of my diet has ruined my ability to sleep. I just keep wandering around in a daze, unable to balance the catastrophically high levels of caffeine and rage-spittle in my blood.
I guess what I'm saying is that beach and cigar season can't come soon enough.
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Spring Cleaning
This weekend, after much cajoling and nagging I finally gave in to the demands of several people and watched the critically acclaimed series Stranger Things. The show is all very well and good if - like me - you don't mind spending six hours perched on the couch like a coiled spring, but the real horror comes after it ends; that's when you have to go back to living in a reality where Rick Perry is the Secretary of Energy and you are forced to wonder if Eleven and the gang really just went through all that trouble for nothing.
He's probably the least objectionable member of the administration too, God help us.
Vacation was good for me, oddly. By an order of magnitude Iceland is the most beautiful place I have ever been and so despite the whirlwind trip only lasting 5 days I came back with a weird sense of ease and contentment. Time away is reputedly good for relaxing the mind and rebuilding the muscle that helps you stay focused and concentrate, but I suppose for that to be any help you still have to actually use that muscle from time to time. Is this how people who meditate feel? Should I start meditating? It doesn't matter, I wouldn't stick to it anyway.
I returned from the top of the planet determined to write a comprehensive review of my experience, but the hits started coming about five minutes after the plane touched down and haven't stopped since. Boom, Muslim Travel Ban. Bam, a failed raid in Yemen. Boom, Betsy DeVos confirmed. Bam, everything Sean Spicer has ever said. The President is issuing Executive Orders like he has a fax machine with a direct connection from Hell, and each is worth an expletive-filled screed of its own. Alas, you can't even start typing about something before before the next one hits you like a never ending storm surge of shit.
To top it off my new Alesis Crimson Mesh electronic drum kit arrived just before I left, so the days I would normally spend writing have been devoted to tinkering with the Latin percussion settings, and at any given time at least 20% of my brainpower is tied up in a meaningless argument over whether I would prefer to have a spent a previous life as Buddy Rich, or Gene Krupa. I mean sure - Buddy Rich was the more technically skilled player...but at least Gene Krupa looked happy sometimes, you know?
Simply put, there are so many things that deserve to have an essay-long post written about them but you don't have that kind of time and it would be nearly impossible for a real person to write them all...never mind a gin addled part time hack like me. So without further adieu I'll get to unloading a month's worth of thoughts now, in no particular order:
It's amazing how many of the people who say we can't provide shelter, healthcare, or education to refugees running from war and violence because we have to take care of our own first turn out to be the same people who don't want to take care of our own with shelter, healthcare, or education either. Funny, that.
Does Iceland count as Europe, or North America, or something else? On one hand the showers are all weird and the gas is expensive; on the other there's tons of parking and no cigarette machines anywhere, which is simply not the Europe I know.
I am increasingly convinced that there is a parallel universe not far from our own with the perfect Cable News Network. Jake Tapper, Rachel Maddow, and Shep Smith are in the studio. Anderson Cooper reports live from location. Wolf Blitzer is locked in a disused sound stage surrounded by cameras he doesn't know are disconnected, so he can to live out his days some place where he can't hurt anyone.
If you can make a modern suspension bridge that's very tall and impressive then you can make it two lanes wide, Iceland.
Kevin O'Leary didn't come back to Canada for you.
The Washington Post's new slogan is "Democracy Dies In Darkness" and Jesus, what a fantastic album title that would be. I can see it now, The WaPos: Democracy Dies in Darkness. I wonder if they need a percussionist.
Yes - you're absolutely right. These are serious times and these people have contributed to the total devastation being wreaked on innocent people across the United States and around the world, but between Julian Assange's Wikileaks, Milo Yiannopoulos and Breitbart, and the falling out between the Left and Bill Maher it's hard not to smile at least a little at the downfall of people I've hated for fucking years.
What is Jeremy Corbyn actually for? Like, really, what is his purpose?
If your country is overstocked with lobster meat and a pizza is going to cost $50 either way, why waste the precious space on pineapple anyway?
SNL has somehow managed to strike a second golden age and needs our help to make it last. To that end, I have some additional casting ideas to support Melissa McCarthy's Spicer and Alex Baldwin's Trump: Jessica Walters as Betsy DeVos, porn performer Piper Perri as Ivanka Trump, Betty White as Jeff Sessions, Lady Gaga as Melania Trump, and Chris Christie as himself because you know that sad sack of shit has no goddamned dignity left.
Whew.
Thank you for indulging me, dear readers. It feels good to let this stuff out, and it with any luck it will be easier to function without all those bats flying around in my belfry. Vacation over.
He's probably the least objectionable member of the administration too, God help us.
Vacation was good for me, oddly. By an order of magnitude Iceland is the most beautiful place I have ever been and so despite the whirlwind trip only lasting 5 days I came back with a weird sense of ease and contentment. Time away is reputedly good for relaxing the mind and rebuilding the muscle that helps you stay focused and concentrate, but I suppose for that to be any help you still have to actually use that muscle from time to time. Is this how people who meditate feel? Should I start meditating? It doesn't matter, I wouldn't stick to it anyway.
I returned from the top of the planet determined to write a comprehensive review of my experience, but the hits started coming about five minutes after the plane touched down and haven't stopped since. Boom, Muslim Travel Ban. Bam, a failed raid in Yemen. Boom, Betsy DeVos confirmed. Bam, everything Sean Spicer has ever said. The President is issuing Executive Orders like he has a fax machine with a direct connection from Hell, and each is worth an expletive-filled screed of its own. Alas, you can't even start typing about something before before the next one hits you like a never ending storm surge of shit.
To top it off my new Alesis Crimson Mesh electronic drum kit arrived just before I left, so the days I would normally spend writing have been devoted to tinkering with the Latin percussion settings, and at any given time at least 20% of my brainpower is tied up in a meaningless argument over whether I would prefer to have a spent a previous life as Buddy Rich, or Gene Krupa. I mean sure - Buddy Rich was the more technically skilled player...but at least Gene Krupa looked happy sometimes, you know?
Simply put, there are so many things that deserve to have an essay-long post written about them but you don't have that kind of time and it would be nearly impossible for a real person to write them all...never mind a gin addled part time hack like me. So without further adieu I'll get to unloading a month's worth of thoughts now, in no particular order:
Whew.
Thank you for indulging me, dear readers. It feels good to let this stuff out, and it with any luck it will be easier to function without all those bats flying around in my belfry. Vacation over.
Friday, January 20, 2017
Here We Are, There We Go
I suppose I should start by congratulating you. If you are reading this then you have at least survived long enough to watch the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States and will accordingly be recognized as one of the last to bear witness to Western civilization.
You have won at history, and that's a pretty impressive feat when you think about it. This month marked the anniversary of the day David Bowie, presumably tormented by the ghastly images of what awaited us for the rest of last year, was called back to his home dimension and left this world for good. If the Gregorian calendar - of which I am reluctant participant - starts the start of the year year as January 1st, then January 10th was the start of it all going to hell. From that point on it was a bloodbath; 2016 seemed determined to kill every last one of us, never letting up for a second - not even in the wee hours of New Year's eve for the unfortunate soul died outside of my apartment.
So I'm beginning to think this whole era is one of those nightmares you're just never going to wake up from. We're living in Trump's world now, at the mercy of his tiny hands and weirdo fetishes until he gets us all killed or John Roberts ends up swearing in Mike Pence after a constitutional debacle, whichever comes first. Either way we should probably get used to calling this Year Zero, breeding more donkeys to carry our pots and pans, dying in childbirth, and debunking the Beaverton articles Kellie Leitch's campaign manager insists on posting as fact.
It's all so hard to bear that I've decided to slip into a fugue state and fuck off for a week to go adventuring. If we are the universe attempting to look at itself, then I better start looking at things before Chinese ICBMs or hysterical problem drinking whisk me away. Iceland in January may seem foolhardy, but I'm made from rugged Canadian stock and $20 pints may be precisely what I need to slow myself down and adopt the marathon pace that will be required to endure the lunacy of the years ahead. Besides, it's much better than my original plan of going to DC for the inauguration and it's as good a place as any to watch a nuclear war on CNN. Afterwards I can send myself off to sea on an ice floe to slip peacefully beneath the waves, if it comes to that.
But perhaps not. Adventure may be the key to escaping the general malaise that is our dim and fading present, and to kick off a new chapter in learning to live after thirty. We're all on the other side now, I'll see you there.
You have won at history, and that's a pretty impressive feat when you think about it. This month marked the anniversary of the day David Bowie, presumably tormented by the ghastly images of what awaited us for the rest of last year, was called back to his home dimension and left this world for good. If the Gregorian calendar - of which I am reluctant participant - starts the start of the year year as January 1st, then January 10th was the start of it all going to hell. From that point on it was a bloodbath; 2016 seemed determined to kill every last one of us, never letting up for a second - not even in the wee hours of New Year's eve for the unfortunate soul died outside of my apartment.
So I'm beginning to think this whole era is one of those nightmares you're just never going to wake up from. We're living in Trump's world now, at the mercy of his tiny hands and weirdo fetishes until he gets us all killed or John Roberts ends up swearing in Mike Pence after a constitutional debacle, whichever comes first. Either way we should probably get used to calling this Year Zero, breeding more donkeys to carry our pots and pans, dying in childbirth, and debunking the Beaverton articles Kellie Leitch's campaign manager insists on posting as fact.
It's all so hard to bear that I've decided to slip into a fugue state and fuck off for a week to go adventuring. If we are the universe attempting to look at itself, then I better start looking at things before Chinese ICBMs or hysterical problem drinking whisk me away. Iceland in January may seem foolhardy, but I'm made from rugged Canadian stock and $20 pints may be precisely what I need to slow myself down and adopt the marathon pace that will be required to endure the lunacy of the years ahead. Besides, it's much better than my original plan of going to DC for the inauguration and it's as good a place as any to watch a nuclear war on CNN. Afterwards I can send myself off to sea on an ice floe to slip peacefully beneath the waves, if it comes to that.
But perhaps not. Adventure may be the key to escaping the general malaise that is our dim and fading present, and to kick off a new chapter in learning to live after thirty. We're all on the other side now, I'll see you there.
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