I'm sitting here eating my traditional February 14th meal of tacos and wine and watching a cell-phone video of a SWAT team clearing a classroom in Florida where terrified teenagers shake with fear holding their hands in the air. I find it jarring but I suppose that it's actually a pretty typical scene in a country that seems to have more guns and thoughts and prayers, than they do political brains or balls.
Before you get that wide-eyed look of panic: don't. I'm not going to write yet another thing about guns. If you're reading this you either already agree with me or you're planning on shooting me and either way I'm not really in a position to argue. Sure, I could point out for the umpteenth time that the United States is - by several orders of magnitude - the only country in the world in which this regularly happens, and I could demonstrate that that every jurisdiction in the Western world that makes it harder to buy guns and doesn't let you buy assault rifles experiences fewer gun deaths and almost no mass shootings.
Perhaps I could even point out that as I write this the number of fatalities is 17...10 more than were killed by Al Capone's gang during the 1929 St Valentine's Day Massacre that led to the National Firearms Act and the banning of machine guns, or that the same Republicans who insist the problem isn't guns but insanity are in fact the very same Republicans who gut mental health program spending and pass gun laws making it easier for people with mental health issues to buy assault rifles.
At any rate, the large-scale slaughter of their own children combined with a complete lack of political will to take even the most modest steps to prevent it seems to be the definitive property of the United States; the modern manifestation of American Exceptionalism.
Happy Valentine's Day or whatever, I guess.
[The Publisher has been informed that the author insists on making this an ongoing series and will return shortly to "call out that goddamned negligent father who murdered his kids with snake-oil quackery and then got a keynote sales pitched at a Wellness convention run by the shitheads who deserve to be drowned in a bathtub alongside the NRA national leadership"]
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Harder Better Faster Stronger
I decided (partially by accident and partially by design) to leave 2017 in pretty much the same state I entered it: cold, drunk, exhausted with the previous year and terrified of the chaos that awaits us all in the next. To that end I stayed in, polished off my holiday box of wine, ate too much Chinese food, smoked my new year’s cigar at my desk because if I go outside in this cold my toes and genitals are going to fall off. I do love fireworks and it's a shame to miss them but I suppose it's better to not be found in a hypothermia-induced daze face down in the snow and slush. Besides, this way it was easier to maintain my months-long blockade of all but the bare minimum human contact.
2016 was a bonkers year, there really is no other word for it. Just fucking Bonkers.
There was plenty of obvious wretched stuff of course: the inauguration, the looming doom of nuclear conflagration, terrorism, poverty, and the continuing slaughter of beloved celebrities. Nazis marched openly in the streets of the United States, hurricanes ransacked the Caribbean, and Brexit rolled on. The planet continued to die at an alarming rate. It was truly an awful year.
But I suppose if I try very hard even I - cynical, jaded, bitter soul that I am - can admit that there was also some pretty great stuff in there too, like watching Sean Spicer stagger through explaining the size of the inauguration crowd, and the two weeks that Scaramucci was White House Press Secretary (Jesus! I forgot that even happened until just now - note to self: use the "Mooch" as a unit of time more often). For every celebrity death of 2016 and 2017 there's at least two jackass awful ones getting their comeuppance for years of ludicrous sexual barbarism, CNN seems to have finally grown a pair of balls, and Theresa May nearly lost her job to a wet dog in a humiliating and self-inflicted General Election.
At the start of 2017 Steve Bannon looked like an unstoppable monster rumbling through the dark and underpopulated corridors of the West Wing, cracking open the sculls of hapless RNC staffers and feasting on the goo inside while Reince Priebus hid under a desk and prayed the odor of his soiled pants wouldn't alert The Beast to his presence. Now both men seem like distant memories, like Flynn or Gorka or Manafort; their downfalls swift, sudden, and ruthless...as if they - like all forces of darkness - simply lose their power whenever someone turns on the lights.
Even better, the year wasn't just limited to the Scheißbrigade tripping over themselves to fall on their faces. The good guys started to organize, and effectively: Obamacare beat back about 400 repeal attempts by a GOP Congress that can't tell its ass from its elbow, Doug Jones mapped the floor with Roy Moore for the Senate seat of the gay bashing, bible-thumping, black shooting, pregnant-teen backwater state of Alabama, a Trans woman will sit in the Virginia legislature, and the first act of Hamilton was uploaded to PornHub.
You're starting to get the picture: the year wasn't all bad.
Heck, when I think about it I had a pretty good year myself, which is rare. I swam in crystal clear 4-degree glacial water over a continental divide. I picked up art, bought a new drum kit and got my groove back. I even managed to get into a Twitter spat with Piers Morgan. Those are all pretty special memories.
Taking the last four or five months off from pretty much everything and everyone has turned out to be exactly what the doctor ordered. It's rejuvenating, almost meditative. My focus is coming back, at least a bit. I'm a regular in the gym again, and I even tweet about Canadian politics from time to time. The repeated shocks of 2016 and the long grind of 2017 is starting to wear off. I must be adapting, my blood is starting to work with bad news in lieu of hemoglobin or something.
Resolutions are cliche and trying to set serious goals for myself to accomplish by the end of this year might as well include landing on Mars for all the good they'll do me. I will almost certainly and unrepentantly break any promise I make to myself to eat better, drink less, write more, or adopt a better attitude. But knowing that doesn't mean you don't try anyway. All I can say is that I'm done letting my brain dry up, and I'm going to do my best to make sure 2018 is full of rants, half marathons, weights, and travels.
Am I back? Maybe. I'm not certain yet, but I sure hope so.
2016 was a bonkers year, there really is no other word for it. Just fucking Bonkers.
There was plenty of obvious wretched stuff of course: the inauguration, the looming doom of nuclear conflagration, terrorism, poverty, and the continuing slaughter of beloved celebrities. Nazis marched openly in the streets of the United States, hurricanes ransacked the Caribbean, and Brexit rolled on. The planet continued to die at an alarming rate. It was truly an awful year.
But I suppose if I try very hard even I - cynical, jaded, bitter soul that I am - can admit that there was also some pretty great stuff in there too, like watching Sean Spicer stagger through explaining the size of the inauguration crowd, and the two weeks that Scaramucci was White House Press Secretary (Jesus! I forgot that even happened until just now - note to self: use the "Mooch" as a unit of time more often). For every celebrity death of 2016 and 2017 there's at least two jackass awful ones getting their comeuppance for years of ludicrous sexual barbarism, CNN seems to have finally grown a pair of balls, and Theresa May nearly lost her job to a wet dog in a humiliating and self-inflicted General Election.
At the start of 2017 Steve Bannon looked like an unstoppable monster rumbling through the dark and underpopulated corridors of the West Wing, cracking open the sculls of hapless RNC staffers and feasting on the goo inside while Reince Priebus hid under a desk and prayed the odor of his soiled pants wouldn't alert The Beast to his presence. Now both men seem like distant memories, like Flynn or Gorka or Manafort; their downfalls swift, sudden, and ruthless...as if they - like all forces of darkness - simply lose their power whenever someone turns on the lights.
Even better, the year wasn't just limited to the Scheißbrigade tripping over themselves to fall on their faces. The good guys started to organize, and effectively: Obamacare beat back about 400 repeal attempts by a GOP Congress that can't tell its ass from its elbow, Doug Jones mapped the floor with Roy Moore for the Senate seat of the gay bashing, bible-thumping, black shooting, pregnant-teen backwater state of Alabama, a Trans woman will sit in the Virginia legislature, and the first act of Hamilton was uploaded to PornHub.
You're starting to get the picture: the year wasn't all bad.
Heck, when I think about it I had a pretty good year myself, which is rare. I swam in crystal clear 4-degree glacial water over a continental divide. I picked up art, bought a new drum kit and got my groove back. I even managed to get into a Twitter spat with Piers Morgan. Those are all pretty special memories.
Taking the last four or five months off from pretty much everything and everyone has turned out to be exactly what the doctor ordered. It's rejuvenating, almost meditative. My focus is coming back, at least a bit. I'm a regular in the gym again, and I even tweet about Canadian politics from time to time. The repeated shocks of 2016 and the long grind of 2017 is starting to wear off. I must be adapting, my blood is starting to work with bad news in lieu of hemoglobin or something.
Resolutions are cliche and trying to set serious goals for myself to accomplish by the end of this year might as well include landing on Mars for all the good they'll do me. I will almost certainly and unrepentantly break any promise I make to myself to eat better, drink less, write more, or adopt a better attitude. But knowing that doesn't mean you don't try anyway. All I can say is that I'm done letting my brain dry up, and I'm going to do my best to make sure 2018 is full of rants, half marathons, weights, and travels.
Am I back? Maybe. I'm not certain yet, but I sure hope so.
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