31

Today I enter my thirties in my own right. I know it's my birthday because in the last 24 hours Stephen Harper has resigned his seat in Parliament (after waiting MONTHS, I might add), Donald Trump continues to tank in the electoral college, and Anthony Weiner has been caught in yet another sext scandal.

There's no way those events just get randomly thrown together, all willy-nilly. This is the Universe's way of telling me that it may be cold and indifferent, but every now and then - every now and then - it's still good for a laugh. Of course, on the same day it gave us all of this it also took away Gene Wilder. So perhaps it's good for a laugh so long as it's a suitably nervous one.

It's been a rotten year, since the very beginning. I'm not saying David Bowie held the universe together but every day since his death has been at least a little shittier than the day before, and it's hard not to think the whole of existence just flailing out of control without his presence to steady it. There's no need to deny this, we all know it to be true.

Whether it's failing health, finished relationships, the passing of countless icons, the interminable rise of Donald Trump through the primary and the nonsense chaos of the general election campaign, or the growing malaise that comes from realizing that the new Star Trek movies are here to stay and that both MacGuyver and Lethal Weapon are slated for television remakes, it's hard to believe we are living anywhere other than the End Times.

So we have to take comfort in the little things that make each moment special, like hitting a patient friend at 100 yards with a water balloon by surprise in the middle of a summer's day, or a cheap but tasty bottle of Bordeaux. Personally, I'm getting through this tough period with deep prayer and introspective abstinence cheap drugs and the thought that after all these years and all of these essentially identical scandals, someone still lets Anthony Weiner have his own phone.

Fuck me, you might as well let a toddler run around with a stun gun.

I mean, honestly, how hard is it to NOT send pictures of your genitals to people? Especially when you're a has-been public figure married to a still-is public figure? Especially when you have an embarrassing and career-ending history of doing this exact thing? Especially when your very name is Weiner?

Jesus, maybe he's just trolling us. You know, building up hype for his new TLC reality show called Weiner's Schtick or some other dumb bullshit. The man needs to be put out to pasture.

At any rate, watching the former-future-Mayor-of-New-York-City casually fuck up yet again is exactly the kind of thing that's going to get us through 2016 (that, or more pictures of Bill Clinton kicking over-sized balloons on a convention stage), and God willing it'll either be better next year or Trump will win the election and none of us will be alive to make the comparison.

At any rate I suppose I will have a Happy Birthday.

Baited and Agitated

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I've got to beware

So there I was: sitting in a kayak on a lake as smooth as glass with the ashes of a cigarillo slowly burning my swim trunks, spraying terrified seagulls with my high-powered watergun and laughing like a madman. Sometimes you have to get back in touch with nature to restore your vital energies, you know?

After the seagulls had all fled I found myself face-to-face with a great blue heron, the king of the lake, who did not look the least bit intimidated. I nodded at him, hoping to assure him that I sought nothing more than the merciless torment of the gulls, and he returned a look that said I probably didn't belong here. I was surrounded: to my right the screeching chaos of the birdbrain gulls smashing into each other as they fled, to the left the cool and calm hunter, waiting patiently for exactly the right moment to strike with total effectiveness.

Almost immediately the heron snapped up a massive fish not twenty feet from my paddle, and bit it clean in half before sauntering off. It was a damned majestic sight and it stuck with me as I drifted back to shore for fresh beer and a dip.

Don't worry, my lovely little devils - I haven't forgotten about you.

I've just needed a few days to recover. The first week of the General Election campaign left me jabbering like an imbecile and exhausting my supply of Emergency Bordeaux, the bottles I usually hide from myself and save for times of occasion. I needed to get out of the city and in some fresh air.

For most of the last four years I've been preparing spiritually, emotionally, and mentally for this campaign. I have predictions and charts and graphs covering every possible election-related topic from the history of the electoral college by state to estimating one's own blood alcohol level by the offensiveness of obscenities hurled at cable news.

I thought I was ready for it. I thought it was possible for someone - anyone - to be ready for it. Still I was left completely unable to finish basic sentences without shouting "Fuck!", at random intervals and at an uncontrollable volume while falling down in a fit. What fools we've been!

No more. Getting stoned in the sun and watching gorgeous women tan in white bikinis was exactly what the doctor ordered: This is going to be a disjointed mess but I am BACK, by God, and boy have we got some things to talk about.

The Democratic National Convention was relatively straightforward. It was never going to be as exciting as the Republicans', we all knew that, in the same way that a kitchen supply store simply isn't as exciting as a fireworks factory exploding underneath a kennel of puppies. Suffice it to say the Democrats managed to draw the kind of comparisons they needed: it was about Us, We, and The Team, not a gaudy cult of personality. There was enough hope and optimism to keeps jaded saps like me in love with the idea of America, rather than the doom and gloom weltschmertz and isolationist paranoia that makes the rest of us very nervous.

Clinton put in exactly the kind of safe, predictable performance we've come to expect from her and the convention laid out exactly why she's eminently qualified to be President. Not two days after the convention ended, like some time-delayed mind bomb, I found myself acknowledging the stunning revelation that I've actually come to like Hillary Clinton over the course of the two conventions in her own right, and not just in contrast to a man who only qualifies as a featherweight because the bloated, distended pig's anus he uses for a mouth is full of dense shit weighing him down. This woman is going to be President; she has to be.

And that is really all I have to say about the DNC, apart from how much we're going to miss Diamond Joe Biden when he's no longer the free world's coolest Uncle, telling us how things can be a Big Fucking Deal while slipping us a first beer and teaching us how to roll a joint. Tim Kaine seems too responsible for something like that but at least his aw-shucks personality is just as genuine.

So as the DNC wrapped up I thought about writing a piece about The Pivot - the changes to expect that now that the primary season is officially over and the campaigning starts in earnest. I thought I would be writing about changes in tone or the start of what will surely be the most intense air war in the history of paid advertising, or perhaps the hum-drum mechanics of horse-race politics.

When the first day of the general election began with the revelation that the wife of the candidate from the right wing values party of Genitally Obsessed Prudes had done nude photo-shoots during her modeling career which, in a twist of irony so delicious as to be sickening, may have been a violation of her immigration visa at the time (ho ho!), I was ready. Maybe I'd write a cheeky piece about my coming to terms with the near certainty that I either have or shortly will stare at nude photos of a potential future First Lady, or an ode to pornography for all of the gifts it gives us, or just a snide comment that he'd have to put a wall up around the East Wing of the White House if he won.

But before I could even set off, disaster: America's pungent corpse flowers are all blooming at once, the headlines say. Jesus, tell me about it.

It's a struggle just to keep up with the rapid pace at which Donald Trump fires new volleys into his own foot and reloads before firing again. Every time I start to write about the latest outrage some new thing pops up and knocks it straight back into obscurity.

There was the week long feud with the family of a dead soldier, during which a doped-up Ben Carson (which is to say, Ben Carson) demanded that the Khans be the ones to apologize, while Rat Fucker Roger Stone claimed that the family where members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Trump said that he, like the Khans, had made a lot of sacrifices for this country - which is true, I suppose...when you've got that much hot air in your head being a billionaire draft dodger probably feels just like losing your son to war. "I always wanted a Purple Heart!" the candidate exclaimed like a hyperactive toddler, as someone handed him the medal given to soldiers wounded in combat, "This was much easier."

Then he kicked a mother out of a rally and proclaimed that he hated babies, which I had to rewatch four times to make sure it wasn't the drugs or a stroke putting those words in my mouth. I know I try to be creative, but everything in that paragraph actually happened and I had to go for a walk to keep from choking on my own spittle.

Then there was the time he and his son said women allow themselves to be sexually harassed, and that strong personalities (like Ivanka's) simply don't submit to it. I'm not sure where that child fu-[The remainder of this paragraph has been withheld due to offensive language and legal considerations pending the outcome of Donald Trump's multiple sexual assault allegations, but can be summarized as: The author finds Mr. Trump's position on the subject incredulous and makes several speculative remarks about the nature of his relationship with his daughter. -The Editor]

After that it was no surprise he's pivoted to dangerous nonsense like claiming the election will be rigged against him and threatening to skip the debates. Dark shit like this is what fuels the wilderness survivalist types who want to wage a terrorist war against the federal government, and even as I write this I'm watching him pretend he didn't suggest America's collection of gun nuts take a shot at his opponent. You can run your company like a banana republic all you want, Donald, but you keep that shit out of it. Now he's saying that CNN's story on the scandal, which featured the spokesperson from the United States Secret Service saying they were looking into his comments, was just made up drivel to boost ratings. Mother of God.

At least Paul Ryan is standing by him, because the part of Paul Ryan's brain capable of independent thought has been removed and turned into a Trump Steak. Even after the Republican candidate for President spent a few days adamantly refusing to endorse the Republican Speaker in his Primary campaign - an egregious sin in the team-sport of partisan politics - Ryan's still meekly going along with everything he says and does. I find his comments ludicrous, offensive, and unworthy of America, he seems to be screaming with his eyes. But of course I support our party's nominee. Chris Christie and Paul Ryan must be fast friends by now, sharing the same closet under Trump's stairs, and one testicle between them.

Through it all, the polls - (rigged when they show Trump losing, of course) have the Republican ticket more or less collapsing. It looks like the Democrats have a real chance at winning Georgia, South Carolina, and Arizona. It's a five-point race in Utah and Texas (Texas! Pretty much the only state where Republicans can get any Electoral College votes!) and with any luck, a good Democratic campaign may unleash a truly devastating defeat and puts an end to the Sixth Party System.

This certainly seems to be what we're getting, at least for now: Clinton, Kaine, the other-Clinton and other high profile Democratic surrogates are everywhere, campaigning in places they'd probably fear to tread if this were any other election. A new entrant is getting in the game as independent but with the backing of some old GOP figures. Republican Senators and Congressmen are abandoning ship, and meanwhile Donald Trump goes to Michigan to fatuously sneer at the need for government regulations in a place where the air is almost as poisonous as the water before exploding in a fit of uncontrollable squawking that ends up threatening to destroy the Republic itself while his Vice Presidential nominee apologizes quietly for him.

This was the first week, and as I write there are some 88 days left in the campaign. Buckle up, folks.

RNC Part II - Jesus Make It Stop

[The Editor wishes to acknowledge that several references to “Human Turdbag Ted Cruz” have been truncated for the sake of brevity before publication. When asked about this adjustment the author grimaced, and then calmly laid down face first on the floor. This was interpreted as agreement.]

I’ll give the Human Turdbag this much, that speech was a goddamned spectacle to behold. It’d have been a real barnburner if it wasn’t apparent that the whole barn has already been on fire for three days before he got up there, and if I hadn't watched it live I'm not sure I'd be able to tell the ashes of Cruz's burned bridges from those of the GOP...but I'll be damned if it didn't make for the best episode of Death of a Political Party yet.

It started out with the usual trappings of a Cruz speech, how the slaying of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge are somehow proof that the country needs more Conservative values (read: even more unchecked assault weapons flooding into the streets, enough divisive rhetoric to justify anything, and an even blinder eye to oppression in America).

There was a twist to this though, and at first it seemed strange to me until I remembered who I was listening to and what kind of a person he is and why I call him a living sack of shit. He warned against the kind of reckless hate that leads to incidents like the Orlando shooting and it took me a second to remember that Orlando was the one at the gay nightclub, whose victims he has tirelessly fought to deny rights to, and who hid in the bathrooms he had made a particular focus of his absurd primary campaign.

“The Bill of Rights lets us live according to our conscience” he had the audacity to say, having previously described same sex marriage as a threat to Liberty, and transgender citizens as child raping perverts. “Cast aside hate for love” was a particularly great line for a man who called for the creation of ghettos for American Muslims just a few months earlier.

But then the whole thing became something else, a real Cruz missile aimed squarely at the Trump campaign. Not so much in what he said, but what he didn't. Anyone with a working brain who was even remotely familiar with the primary campaign could not have expected a particularly strong Trump endorsement during that speech, as anything over the top would have been obviously disingenuous after the months of sniping between the two of them. But his complete aversion to using the Trump name and telling Republicans to vote their conscience was magnificent, and the boos that rose from the crowd were shocking and glorious.

It was like a viking suicide. There he was, stabbing himself in the gut and slowly pulling out whatever he could find inside for all to see, with that smug shit-eating grin on his face. Newt Gingrich had to be immediately pushed on stage to retcon Cruz's statement, suggesting he'd actually endorsed Trump even if no one had actually heard one and Cruz had never actually given one. Newt is an experienced and eager liar when the situation calls for it, so I guess we should just be lucky nobody had to be diagnosed with cancer before he started fucking us around.

The convention was incredulous at the whole affair. "If you get invited to a dinner party you don't show up just to piss on the rug" the Republican commentariat suggested afterwards. Fair enough I suppose, but if you call a man's wife ugly, convince your tabloid publishing friend to accuse him of philandering, and then imply that his father killed John F. Kennedy, how goddamned stupid do you have to be to invite him to dinner in the first place?

Still, the Cruz ordeal was better to my mind - or at least, tickled me far better - than Little Marco, who gave a reasonably decent endorsement of Donald Trump via pre-recorded video so he could say he didn't attend the convention but still weasel his way into the Trump camp. For a few minutes I thought he was trying to call for a coalition government with the Bloc Quebecois and needed a fresh splash of gin to get past it.

Jesus, at least Kasich had the good sense to just keep his head down and stay out of Cleveland altogether this week, with his balls intact.

I swear, inviting Cruz to speak and then not being prepared for the aftermath is just the latest in a long long list of catastrophic blunders this convention has committed, ruining their best prime-time exposure for the third night in a row. If we can't trust them to adequately organize their own circle jerk we're all going to be screwed if they manage to win some real power.

It probably shouldn't be that big of a surprise, but still I'm struck by it. With no real policy ideas to run and a candidate who seems to be deathly allergic to positivity, the whole convention has been a Clinton-bashing event from start to finish. The daily themes, "Make America Work Again", "Make America First Again" have really all been variations of the first night, "Make America Safe Again BENGHAZI! EMAILS!" with no attempt to stick to a plan.

Everything is so completely bizarre. I can't recall another party convention where so many speakers have been on stage and yet gone to such lengths to completely avoiding using the nominee's name. Nobody seems to want to actually endorse Trump, the whole show is about how awful the Obama administration has been, how Hillary Clinton is a traitor, and how Conservatives are worth voting for even if they lead to a Donald Trump Presidency and an early end to Western Civilization. "Please!" Paul Ryan is screaming with his teary eyes any time he's on stage, "Please keep my congressional majority!".

I had actually been looking forward to Make America Work Again on Tuesday night and - anticipating a slew of anti-Mexican, anti-Chinese economic fear mongering - had spent the evening eating Tex-Mex and drinking cheap asian beer. Alas, Make America Work Again turned out to just be more of the same. The hits were constant and baffling: from Chris Christie's mob witch trial (it turns out if you fill an arena full of jabbering neurotics you can make call-and-answer work really well), to Ben Carson claiming that Clinton consorts with Satan worshipers.

Literally, Hillary Clinton is in league with Lucifer and his minions. This was delivered as a major presentation at a political convention in the United States of America, to rancorous applause, and yet they will wonder why nobody takes them seriously anymore.

I've disliked the Clintons in general for some time and I could still be convinced that Hillary Clinton's candidacy is secretly a PR stunt by Robin wright to promote Clair Underwood and House of Cards. Yet after three days of this mess not only is it clear that she's staggeringly more qualified to be President but I'm actually starting to look forward to the prospect.

Oh well, if I don't wrap this up I'll just end up foaming at the mouth until I choke to death: The Republicans have an official nominee, after a tedious but relatively drama-free state-by-state roll call. Thousands of delegates cast their votes loudly and enthusiastically. They talked up the things they love about their state and their pride in how firmly the GOP control their legislatures and state offices, even if data will bear out that these rank among the most garbage places on the continent.

At any rate, the serious business of the convention finished on Tuesday afternoon and freed us to relax and enjoy the decline into dementia. It was the closest thing to "an exercise in democracy" we're likely to see in the convention, and it felt exactly like having all of the blood drained slowly from your body.

I've been husked before, but never as part of a group. We now live in a reality where a racist misogynist like Donald Trump can bloviate and hate his way into being the Presidential nominee for an American political party. We will never again know a universe where that isn’t true. Such an existence hardly seems worth sustaining: after President Trump triggers World War Three and the nuclear warheads come, I don’t think I have the heart left in me to try and escape into the forest anymore; I’d rather just be vaporized.

RNC Part I - Send Tinfoil Hats And Extra Beer

My God we're finally here, the Republican National Convention: a week long debacle that promises to bring us gloriously color-corrected HD images of complete bedlam and catastrophe. And unlike most other Reality TV series, Death of a Political Party is being beamed directly into my amygdala live.

If I'm honest I'm not sure if I'm fully prepared for the ordeal. Closely following a US political convention with an eye towards blogging it is serious business, and if it's worth doing at all, it's worth doing right. Like an expedition climb, it's taken weeks of preparation - quiet meditation with Tibetan monks, stocking up on vitamins, and multiple supply runs to build up a base camp of liquor and cigarettes - to get ready, and by the end I'll be just as exhausted and high on oxygen deprivation as any conqueror of Everest. On Sunday night I took a 15km run and then resolved to drink a bottle of wine; this week is going to be one with few luxuries, and it's wise to start these things with a base alcohol level to thin the blood and train the body.

The whole thing has been surreal right from the start, when Reince Priebus opened the convention with a moment of silence to honor the police officers recently shot and killed in Baton Rouge, while a few blocks away Trump-endorser and Infowars lunatic Alex Jones (whose nonsense views on the New World Order and the 2nd amendment are pretty compatible with cop-killings) hosted a massive rally for delegates to throw of the shackles of the 'globalists' and their chemtrails with a Donald Trump Presidency. Then word came that the Trump motorcade had been involved in a car accident, because there's no such thing as too much symbolism for a week dedicated to binging on American jingoism.

After that was a good old fashioned floor fight over the convention rules, between the Trump team and supporters of Human Turdbag Ted Cruz, though supporters of the failed coup have quickly distanced themselves from the Texas Senator for his own protection (he is, as far as we know, still scheduled to speak on Wednesday and totally isn't being kept in a burlap sack in the cargo hold of the Trump plane).

Last night was cleverly titled Make America Safe Again and featured a number of frantic speakers screaming "Benghazi!" into the microphone, interspersed with guest appearances from other Reality shows like Duck Dynasty and Confessions of a Teen Idol.

True to type, quite a few speakers seemed convinced that it was cowardly weakness of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that's responsible for Americas allies feeling abandoned. Nevermind the war mongering of Bush-43, Freedom Fries, and "Old Europe". Nevermind the unprecedented increase in drone strikes conducted by the Obama administration (which is still operating the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, for those of you keeping score at home), or the fact that it was Clinton who had to convince Joe Biden that the US government should shoot Osama bin Laden and dump his body in the ocean. Mewling kittens, all of them.

Somewhat to my surprise, Rudy Giuliani's remarks were remarkably inoffensive. It's great to see that even a man of his age can enjoy a good trip on speed without being thrown off message, I'd have been a jabbering mess after that much Benzedrine. I've never been Mayor of New York, though, so I defer to his obvious experience at trying to maintain.

More than a few speakers talked about how Hillary Clinton had abandoned her duty, how the Democrats had failed to honor the service of veterans, and how much better Donald Trump and the Republicans would be at both of those. I predict this should all work fine as long as nobody tells them that Donald Trump was a draft dodger who only likes veterans that aren't captured or tortured, and they don't see McConnell wrestle a crippled firefighter backstage to recoup 9/11 responder cash. Every second I watch I regret not camping out in Cleveland more and more, this must be an amazing party scene.

Melania Trump was the star attraction for the first night (how she beat Antonio Sabato Jr. for top billing, I'll never know) and delivered her speech with considerable poise, although I couldn't help but notice that the loudest applause seemed to come when she sounded most like a Democrat. Republicans are weird like that - give them a speech about getting everyone to school and protecting the elderly and preventing murderous violence and they'll go nuts over it, foaming at the mouth and howling for more. Actually try to do any of those things and they'll tear your throat out like rabid animals.

As it turns out she lifted the thing from Michelle Obama anyway, an embarrassing bungle the Trump campaign will no doubt try to blame on President Obama's refusal to say "Radical Islamic Terrorism", so I guess that's a wash. So much for her weeks of writing and preparation, next time she should just call Peggy Wente at the Globe and Mail, who I'm sure could turn it around on a tighter deadline.

The show business largely dispensed with, tonight's speakers promise to be even more entertaining for a sauced-up politico like me: Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell will be up to offer the final surrender of the elected Republican Establishment, Ben Carson will put everyone to sleep, and Chris Christie will offer proof that no matter how eagerly you whore yourself out some people are still just going to stuff you under the basement stairs instead of putting you on the ticket. At this rate he'll be lucky if Manafort doesn't harness him up to a gold plated ricksaw and horsewhip him as he pulls Trump and Pence on stage. We all have to lie in the dungpile we've made for ourselves, Chris, at least it's good exercise.

I suspect, however, that the peak for me personally may yet come when Human Turdbag Ted Cruz takes the stage on Wednesday, though, and we finally see just what it looks like to nail shit to a wall. Who knows though? The way this thing is playing out is a fun exercise in chaos. Horrifying, nerve wracking, abuse inducing, and utterly entertaining.

Torn Asunder

[The Publisher wishes to commend the actions of our office intern Alfonso, who secured this column after a two-day chase through the woods. Despite the author having stripped naked and smeared himself in mud in an attempt to hide from contact with human life, Alfonso was commendably able to track him down, pry it from his hands, and transcribe the following handwritten pages, though they are incomplete. We wish him a full and speedy recovery.]

I am writing to you from a secret, undisclosed location somewhere in South-Central Ontario. I'm at a lake retreat, surrounded by forest. It's the sort of place a militia survivalist would seek out to await the ending of the world with a massive supply of beer and cigarettes, and so suits my purposes perfectly after the events of the last few days and my burning need to channel some dark energy.

Still, the situation here is admittedly precarious. The door to my cabin has no lock and can be blown open with little more force than a heavy cough, so the only thing that seems to be keeping the bears out is their own lack of opposable thumbs. It's folly to rely on that of course, but at least I'm armed to the teeth.

Perhaps more accurately, I'm as armed as I dare trust myself to be in these ghastly new circumstances: a Super Soaker Barrage 9800 is my primary line of defense. It may sound like a children's toy but anyone who says that hasn't taken a blast full force in the genitals - it packs enough pressure to shatter a human femur and is complimented by the 200 rounds of water balloons I have at my disposal which, with a little luck, will distract a large predator large enough for it to accidentally choke on the latex.

But I'm not here for the hunting or all of the convenient ways to be gruesomely killed. I'm here to escape - escape my work, escape the news, escape the internet, escape the city and people. If I am to have any hope of surviving the upcoming Republican National Convention I was always going to need some downtime to lower the blood pressure and detox the liver, but it's been a wretched and destructive week and now I want just the opposite; with any luck I can drink and smoke and sun my way to a massive stroke before I am forced to return to what we may now only generously call "civilization" and that infernal convention.

It's hard to describe the phenomenon that seems to be casting a shadow across the United States these days. For a few hours the other night I thought the country was literally going to rip itself apart and we were all going to watch it happen live on Twitter. That place as it exists now bears little resemblance to their great national mythos; it's hard to say Home of the Free and Land of the Brave about a society where an entire race of people effectively remain second class citizens, peaceful protests become ambushes and bloodbaths, and it's all still basically business as usual.

I would like to write about Black Lives Matters, and admit that every time I'm out late for a run in my hoodie, or whenever been pulled over for gratuitous speeding, I've always secretly been thankful that I'm not Black (or Trans, Muslim, or Camp, for that matter). There's a stark contrast between the reality I get to live in and the one African Americans are forced into every day, increasingly captured in horrifying videos of unarmed and innocent men being shot to death by police officers so irrationally terrified as to be rabid.

I would also like to write about the Dallas police force, and lament that it was members one of the most progressive and positively reformed police organization in the country who became victims, while they were standing amicably side-by-side with peaceful BLM protesters, tweeting pictures together until the shots began.

All of those thoughts are valid and worthy of their own piece but somehow I feel like this is the chill of something even bleaker than the systemic racism that haunts us. This Thing seems to go beyond Black Lives Matters or the Police, beyond Democrats or the GOP, beyond religious extremism. Beyond all of that. This is like entropy made manifest; it is a force of nature. As if the Republic has reached some critical mass and is now flying apart into chaos at the atomic level. What bonds of fellowship that have held it together so far are fraying, and whatever is left of the American Dream is distorted into something twisted, like the kind of American Dream you imagine springs from the imagination of the National Rifle Association.

Jesus, how big of a hard on do you think Wayne Lapierre was sporting, watching Dallas explode as if it was a new and particularly aggressive form of pornography? It was like his own personal fuck dungeon - Texas' open carry law meant many bystanders were carrying rifles out in public when the ambush started, which just added to the confusion and put even more lives at risk. So much for the "what if everyone just had a gun?" line of thinking, no? In fact the potential for a situation like this to become a complete mess is exactly why Texas police forces have always had problems with the open carry laws pushed by the NRA and their subby-gimps in the legislature.

Buy when you're bankrolled by the companies that make these things, suddenly every problem looks like something to be fired with a hair-trigger. Guns become your solution to every problem, even the ones caused by too many guns. Throw another SMG on the grill, dear. There's plenty more where that came from. So let's be honest with each other Wayne, Dallas was your little paradise isn't it? Guns (especially the insidiously vicious assault variety) for everyone! Except maybe blacks, of course - your silence after "he was openly carrying a gun" was the justification for the execution of Alton Sterling was just fucking deafening all the way out here in the forest.

There was a time not all that long ago when, like most men of a certain age, I loved guns. The noise, the action, the power, the precision. No more. It is now impossible for me to separate my personal affinity for the things from the gun lobby, which profits directly from sales and thinks the next justice on the Supreme Court should have "maximize proliferation of death and fear" added right into the oath of office.

The blood of the dead in Dallas and Baton Rouge and dozens of other places are on your hands, Wayne, and your hypocrisy over Alton Sterling makes your racist undertone plain. A massacre every now and then is just what the NRA wants: it stokes white fear and black suppression, furthers the discord on all fronts to drive everyone to the local hunting supply store to save them from having to confront the reality that is the United States today, and convinces cops that it's always better to shoot first and get acquitted later.

We are truly becoming a post-fact world where Boris Johnson can destroy Europe, Donald Trump can destroy the Presidency, and the combination of cheaply acquired weapons of mass destruction with a refusal to reconcile the American myth with the American reality can destroy countless lives on all sides, all because of feelings, and the prioritization of fear over information and compassion for fellow human beings.

Forget evidence and body cameras which show an overwhelming problem with the relationship between police and their communities, forget experts and studies which show non-violent and inclusive community policing and gun control make everyone safer, forget the golden rule and the fundamental tenet that we all deserve the same dignities...pass the ammunition and let's stomp someone who looks different than us or makes us feel strange or bad - we're scared, Goddammit.

[At this point the pages Alfonso was able to recover become illegible and smeared in mud, we apologize for the abrupt ending and promise normal service will resume shortly.]

Adrift

Walk away me boys, walk away me boys,
and by morning we'll be free
Wipe that golden tear from your mother dear,
and raise what's left of the flag for me

The shock of it all still has many of us in a stupor, like the Blitzkrieg has rolled through and we're all wandering around in the ruins of Europe. One minute I was drinking a bottle of cheap French Merlot with the BBC on; the next I was staggering through the middle of the night, passing drunks talking about how Donald Trump is just misunderstood. Fuck me we're in some vile times, but one global catastrophe per column, I suppose.

The casualty reports of the BREXIT vote are still coming in and it will be years before the full extent of this calamity is known, if it can ever be so understood: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn faces a revolt from within his own party after yet another - and most appalling - example of his lame and dismal leadership, and the Pound Sterling was being beaten unconscious in back alley while the results were still coming in. Over the course of just a few hours the British economy tanked at a rate not seen since before the Great Depression. Billions, perhaps trillions, have been wiped out.

The damned thing even had a real body count: MP Jo Cox, a champion of diversity who pushed hard to help refugees, was murdered by a reactionary nutjob trying to Make Britain Great Again, and on the big night Nigel Farage still had the audacity to squeeze the words "without having to fire a bullet" through his gopping fish-faced mouth while announcing British independence. The whole European Experiment which has provided for the most peaceful and prosperous decades that continent has ever known, has been put at risk and fascist upstarts in France and the Netherlands are hungrily eyeing the bleeding and vulnerable EU. Christ, I can't wait to see the Charlie Hebdo issue about this.

At least I can take some comfort knowing that one of the casualties of the night was David Cameron, that Pigfucker. After appeasing the lunatic fringe of his party and fending off an encroaching UKIP in the previous election by recklessly tossing off a promise to hold the referendum, his hog is thoroughly skewered and roasted. Well deserved. Next time, David, remember that voters who can be convinced to vote for Nigel "doesn't everyone call them Chinkys?" Farage is probably best left alone and not worth chasing.

This is different than an election defeat, there's a sharper sting to it. With elections there's always the prospect of getting them back the next time around. The next two or three years may be rotten but at least we can think the next cycle is a fresh start. It's much harder after a referendum, which may never occur again and can't be taken back nearly so easily. Even if it could be, in time, so much of the damage is already done. It's unsettling to watch a country vote itself into near complete irrelevance.

Boris Johnson is my bet to be the next Prime Minister. He's one of the best educated dopes on the face of the Earth and his buffoonish persona is as worrying as it is hilarious, but if the ship is going down we might as well have a song and a laugh while we're at it.

And make no mistake mate, the ship does indeed appear to be going down. In Northern Ireland Sinn Fein is back to whispering about a vote to unite with the Republic and that may gain serious traction. Scottish nationalists, only recently defeated in no small part by the argument that only staying in the United Kingdom could guarantee their place in the EU, are already planning the next vote on independence and it's becoming harder to argue that they're better off where they are now...stuck sharing a country with a Middle England full of small minded bigots who really don't seem to like brown people unless they can cook a good curry, and don't understand why they (and of course, nobody else) bothered to win the war just to be ruled by Belgians and Germans anyway.

At least we can look forward to watching whoever leads the Conservative party struggle and twist through the politically dire consequences that await them no matter what they do. It's possible they or Cameron will go down in history as the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and it will be almost entirely by accident - a reckless promise tossed off without much consideration to bring the whole temple down on your own head in order to placate a few malcontents on the right. Empowering racists, and dodging facts and evidence to further divide an already divided country. Swinefuckery: it's a new entry in my political lexicon and that is going to be the definition. Jesus, remember when these people owned 1/4 of the Earth's surface? Only mad dogs and Englishmen went out in the noonday sun back then, and the rest of us used to be able to tell one from the other.

The world is getting smaller and more integrated whether these people like it or not, and theirs virtually nothing they can actually do to stop it. Leave campaigners seemed to play on a portion of the British psyche that acts like the kid in high school who won a gold medal in track and field in Grade 11 and that's been their whole life ever since. So glorious was that victory that it has outshone anything else since, it's how they define themselves.

No progress is possible, no modernity enacted if it might challenge that mythos. Remember the good old days? They ask, repeating the mantra of the Jeremy Clarkson school of Political Theory, Why did it all have to change? Who needs a comprehensive and coherent set of trade, travel, and safety regulations dictated by some faceless paper pushing nerd in Brussels? Nevermind peace and prosperity, I bet he can't even finish a 500m dash!

Or is a 546 yard dash for those still operating in backwards nonsense? For the foreseeable future, I suppose it might be.

So Long, Stephen

If today was your last day and tomorrow was too late
Could you say goodbye to yesterday? Would you live each moment like your last?
Leave old pictures in the past, donate every dime you have?
If today was your last day?

Stephen Harper is leaving politics. I've waited a decade to type that sentence, and I bet most of you have waited nearly as long to read it.

I can't say it comes as much of a surprise: Former Prime Ministers (especially defeated ones) carry a rank smell with them wherever they go. They are suddenly a specter, haunting Parties who are eager to move on after an election.

The clock has been ticking on Mr. Harper's departure since shortly before 11pm on October 19th but due deference must be paid to the riding and the few thousand voters who actually elected him, and Stephen Harper has been present (if silent) in the Commons for the last six months. Finally, however, the jig is up: He will sit there no more. Nobody wants another Diefenbaker, some wizened old imp wandering the halls of the Centre Block terrifying young MPs like a Mad King stalking the ruins of his old palace. No, it's much better to leave now...especially now that the trial of Mike Duffy is finished and he no longer needs Parliamentary Privilege to protect him from involvement in that court case. It's funny how timing works out, no?

I will always remember him as the man who could drive his opponents into a mad animal frenzy, barking and frothing at the mouth, just by affecting that attempted half-smile of his and calmly saying one of his pre-loaded phrases like "My friends, that's simply not true." Oh, how they hated him; they still do: even now, months after his defeat, you can easily find a pack of rabid Harper haters on Twitter at any time of the day or night.

He is moving on to become a "public intellectual". I'm not sure what that means but I can only imagine the kind of ad he'd run against anyone else who deigned to style themselves like that. It apparently involves setting up a Foreign Policy institute. Hah! From the man who threw a temper tantrum by locking himself in the closet of the Brazilian foreign minister; the man who blew off the UN to deliver a partisan attack speech at a Tim Horton's, and then blamed the opposition for Canada losing a Security Council seat.

Foreign Policy Institute? Jesus, best of luck with that, my friend. I hope somebody's told him it's going to involve more than just driving four-wheelers up north.

Abacus has him as the least popular former Prime Minister of our times: I won't begrudge anyone their feelings for the man. After all, his premiership was marked by more than his fair share of fell deeds, and his bastardly attitude ensured he would have no bridges left to cross at the end. For all of our howling and rending of garments at mere mention of his name, his mark on this country is hard to find.

I promised myself that some part of this column would be more than just the simple shitstorm of a long-blocked colon suddenly released. So I will muster some nice things to say about the 22nd Prime Minister of this country. Stephen Harper is a master politician who played the game well, it can not be denied. I have said many things about him these past ten years, but I'd be damned fool to argue his skill as a political actor: He forged a new political party, held it together through sheer force of will, led it to big electoral successes, and nearly succeeded in killing and supplanting the Liberal Party.

But the price of his power was to lose any semblance of a national vision. Once, in beta-testing, it's possible he had Big Ideas for this country. By the time he arrived at the Langevin Block, however, they were watered down to pablum. Stephen Harper's great plan for Canada seemed to be a slightly more dysfunctional version of the country as it is today but with him at the centre of it forever, and for me that lack of imagination is the truly unforgivable part. He was content to remain a tinkerer, fiddling with little knobs here and there in the relentless pursuit of electoral wedge issues he could exploit to remain tinkerer-in-chief for a few more years.

All governments in power long enough become obsessed with nothing other than remaining in office, but the Harper Conservatives arrived in Ottawa in 2006 with the attitude and contempt of old hacks. The only thing he seemed to delight in, the only vision he truly tried to enact, was the conversion of our political landscape into a nuclear wasteland. Carpet bombing opponents years ahead of elections with nasty negative ads questioning their intelligence, patriotism, and masculinity.

Eliminating the per-vote subsidy to exacerbate the power of wealthy donors in political campaigns, gaming the contribution rules to screw with their opponent's leadership races, gutting the power of Elections Canada to promote the very act of voting...none of his most egregious crimes were about reshaping the country, they were always just about keeping him afloat and In Command for another election cycle.

When even they weren't going to be enough to stop Justin Trudeau, the Conservatives finally took a hard right turn and began shoveling the years of goodwill they'd built up in immigrant and minority communities into the boiler. Running back to their bigoted, small minded base with xenophobic nonsense like a national dress code, 'Barbaric Cultural Practices' hotline, and their contemptuous response to the international refugee crisis.

For all his skills in the Dark Arts, for all of his willpower and personal strength, the speed with which the current Liberal majority has been able to begin rolling back the Harper legacy is a testament to just how shallow and ineffectual it was to begin with.

Indeed, years from now Stephen Harper will be remembered most as a caretaker Prime Minister whose chief accomplishments, aside from a remarkable record of fraud and skulduggery by his administration, will be the elevation of a new generation of unprincipled cutthroat politicos in the Conservative party like Byrne, Soudas, and Novak. It will be the legitimization of asinine fuckwits like Rebel Media. It will be the fracturing of the Conservative party which now runs frantically, arms flailing, from the policies and record they were so quick to defend just a few months ago and into the political doldrums for the foreseeable future.

That is the legacy he has left us with. We've been stuck in an isolation chamber for ten years and have reemerged with nothing to show for it but complete exhaustion and the unshakable feeling that the whole experience has just been a complete waste of our time and energy.

The man was so uninspired it's taken me two weeks to finish writing this column. We lost a decade to his mediocrity and I continue to be drained of my Chi just trying to recount it here, so I will leave you simply. It was time for you to go away a long time ago, Stephen, but I suppose better late than never.