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.

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.

Waiting For Three Ghosts

The box of wine is open, the ribs are marinating, the television is playing one of the best Christmas movies ever (I refer, of course, to Eyes Wide Shut), and I am sitting in my chair swigging brandy in a leopard-print housecoat with a pair of reindeer antlers.

Holiday traditions are important, right?

New Axioms

Fuck me, that was a tough beat.

I've been in a daze since election night, finding myself wandering around aimlessly like it's The Day After and we're all victims of a catastrophic nuclear war. It's probably good practice for the real thing, I suppose, in case my streak of bad luck continues and I don't get vaporized instantly.

The news from the transition team holed up in Trump tower over the last two weeks is enough to convince even the most lighthearted and well adjusted optimist to drink himself to death in the corner of a dark room, all while Hillary Clinton's popular vote advantage continues to grow and it becomes increasingly evident that she will still never be President despite amassing more votes than any of the white men to ever run for that job.

Jesus, an incredibly tough beat.

That is not to say that I'm convinced Clinton will join the ranks of George McGovern or Al Gore as one of the Greatest Presidents America Never Had, but when you consider that their failures just left us to contend with Richard Nixon and George W Bush it feels like they got it easy. Dick and Dubya were crooks and fools, offensive in their own right, but the clouds lowering on us this inauguration day are some horrifying new thing indeed.

To be honest, the results were less depressing for me than they were disappointing. I've long been an American Enthusiast who held that there was a trust - a faith - that came from the stirring oratory of Lincoln or Kennedy or Sorkin, that our neighbors may be zany from time to time but they were, on the whole, a genuinely good and well-intentioned people. "If there is hope," a much younger and more foolish version of myself once wrote a million years ago, "it lies in the voters." Well so much for that, ho ho!

As it happens, this election has bereft me of that trust, and I fear it has left me for good. I've lost the faith, it seems, and that's been the most disturbing feeling of all to reconcile. True, as the white trash descendant of other working class white trash, I'm not unsympathetic to the voters who felt alienated by a triumphalist Democratic campaign seemingly tone deaf to their experience....but to hitch their wagon to the star of a compulsively lying abusive egomaniac? It's unconscionable, and I am completely unable to empathize with anyone willing to throw their lot in with the Reichsleitung of the American Nazi Party.

In fact, it's become impossible for me to shake off the feeling that this is the twilight of the age of liberal democracy itself. Eight years of progress - and so much more besides - are about to be wiped out by the DC Chapter of the Klan, backed and enabled by hopped up little weasels like Paul Ryan and Reince Priebus. In all likelihood, we are living in what will be remembered - at best - as the start of a lost decade that will be the subject of books written for the next century...assuming the written word survives that long.

At any rate, the repercussions of this election will be felt by everyone. The world turns its lonely eyes to Justin Trudeau and Angela Merkel as perhaps the last vestiges of sanity and good government left in this world, but already synagogues, mosques, and black churches across Canada have been vandalized. Marine LePen is re-energized in the Presidential polls in France. The unchecked racial aggression unleashed after Brexit continues unabated as Theresa May sits at Number Ten and unprecedented, wide scale harassment of anyone who looks vaguely brown has exploded across entire continents. It's all coming apart at the seams.

Enough.

Enough mourning. Enough uncertain confusion. Enough complacency. I should confess something perverse to you now, dear readers, before we go any further: in addition to the depression and disappointment and malaise, there's a small part of me that's excited, aroused even; spoiling for a fight. The Bush-43 era helped me discover and define my own liberalism, and now some deep part within me has been given new purpose.

Perhaps it's an opportune combination of time, experience, and not caring if an aggravated alt-right shithead from Twitter wants to try and blow up my car (joke's on him, I don't own a car), or perhaps it's the potential to feel useful again. Whatever it is, I am suddenly energized. When Clinton was going to be the next President of the United States we stood on the verge of a new golden age in liberalism, but now it turns out we're going to have to go back to fighting for it.

So let's fight, then. There's nothing I enjoy more than a good righteous shout in the dark, and frankly the more outnumbered I am the better I feel doing it. It's time for courage, grit, and new battle cries. These people are either monsters or in league with them and they deserve nothing less than for us to hound them to their graves, oh yes indeed.

If There Is Hope, he wrote, It Lies In The Voters

[Editor's Note: Unfortunately we are unable to definitely establish the authorship of this piece as we have not been able to establish contact with Mr. Mills for several weeks. Our intern Alfonso was able to barter under a locked door with a sobbing man we assume to be the author for this Public Service Announcement, trading it for a copy of the National Enquirer, stale pizza, and fresh lube]

We have finally arrived, it's finally happening: After two years and about seven billion (!!!) dollars the General Election of the United States is upon us.

For a political junkie this is four years worth of Christmases and Birthdays all rolled into one. Cable news outlets have been perfecting their insane graphics packages for weeks, bets have been made, bars rented, and cigars cut. The lights, the sounds, the magic walls and interactive maps...to the wretched souls like myself who are chemically dependent on it, election night coverage is as satisfying as an addict's first hit of heroin or an Obsessive-Compulsive stepping into a NASA Clean Room.

I still retain enough human DNA to feel the same way about this interminable election as anyone else, and to be ready for it to end so I can finally sleep. And yet the end of this campaign still feels like the end of my entire way of life, the whole year has been building to this point and now it's come; soon it will be gone. It's going to be hard to imagine life without a new daily campaign scandal or feverish poll update...like suddenly waking in a foreign country where you don't have a home or a job or speak the language.

So I suppose wherever you find yourself tonight while the returns are coming in, cherish it. Let all the high definition mayhem and excitement fondle your primate amygdala and be dazzled. Hell, you should probably do your best to enjoy it since it might be the last chance we ever get to see one of these.

Make no mistake, Friend, the winner of today's Presidential election will either be an incredibly and uniquely qualified political professional with decades of experience or a deflated sack consisting of the worst Twitter trolls brought to life; the kind that spew Infowars-style nonsense about Reptillian body snatchers and declare all opposition either cucks, cunts, or "the REAL racists!". Whatever success the Trump campaign sees tonight - win or lose - will be the inevitable byproduct of a country full of nominally normal and reasonably intelligent humans, who simply can not be trusted as a society to hold rational conversations about subjects like guns, healthcare, or immigration. It no longer seems possible to have a serious and important conversation about public policy without at least half of the country threatening to murder or rape the other half.

This would all be fine, funny even, if it was taking place in some tiny, far flung eastern European republic with zany ways and a quirky culture, but America is too deeply embedded in the very heart of the rest of us for the effects to be detached and separate...to just be a silly tragedy that's happening to other people. I'm not sure I can live in a world where Donald Trump can win the Presidency. Surely such a victory would render the West irrelevant, and mark final decline of liberal democracy.

To be honest I wasn't sure a universe where such a blowhard could even get the nomination of major party deserved to exist, but at least it looked like he was headed for a thorough thumping in the electoral college then. Until a week ago. Now it's a crap shoot, good God.

Ah, but I'm jaded and cynical. The media circus is at full volume, the pundits have been out in force, and a thug like Donald Trump is now what passes for a politician.

If there is hope it lies in the voters. If. If you can vote in this election then DO. If you can't, then hold your loved ones close and stock up on canned goods. I, having spent the weekend preparing my body with vegetables, quiet meditation and prayer, intend to debauch to excess until I collapse, spent and exhausted (if this is the end of Civilization than I intend for it to be an ending with some magnificence - like the fall of Rome, if only those poor saps had perfected chemical stimulants and extra large nachos).

I'm going to need to get it all completely out of my system before I can start to rebuild my life and find new meaning, assuming there is new meaning to be found and we don't just wake up in the hellish reality TV show that would be a Trump Presidency.

If there is hope it lies in the voters, yes. But only if they vote.

Final Terrors

Yes, I admit that it sometimes takes me a month to pound out a quick update on the state of global affairs, but I have a good excuse: I've been putting together my Halloween decorations.


Meet Ted.
Say what you will about the fact that I'm a neurotic and antisocial drug-addled alcoholic with few prospects and no hope of ever leading a normal life, but I still know how to scare the shit out of people.

Children are terrified by his triple chins and beady eyes, which are ghoulish enough to make your blood run cold; adults are mortified at the prospect that he'll marry off their younglings to his new pussy grabbing best friend, Donald Trump. The cat is terrified every time his balloon head explodes.

Unlike the real life version - which is full of misery, human excrement, and the pompous ambitions of a sophomore debating team captain - my Ted Cruz is made up mostly of towels and string. The ingredients have been stuffed into one of the fat-guy suits from my closet 50lbs ago, and the head is full of hot air. I suppose in that respect it isn't completely different from the original (ho ho!).

It has been clear for some time that this election is so bizarre and beyond the realm of normal that the usual coping mechanisms - gin, cigarettes, relentless masturbation - simply can't keep up with the increasing ferocity and continuous intensity of the campaign. It seems that self destructive physical violence is required to keep from going completely mad. So I've myself a stress relieving punching bag and placed in my desk chair so it can dutifully phone bank for the Fascist candidate for President.

My God - is it not astounding? As soon as Ted "the principled morally righteous conservative candidate" Cruz endorsed Trump, down came the other shoe. Recordings of Trump talking about groping women (and a squadron of women corroborating his bragging) were perhaps the single most damaging events of this election, having finally shown white men in swing states that Trump has, in fact, been this offensive the whole time.

But it's not just the "locker room" talk that's tanking the Republican campaign: confusing and disjointed debate performances, a serious shortfall in organization and fundraising, and the propensity for Trump to latch on to something - Paul Ryan, Miss Universe contenders, the Washington Post - like a mad dog and shake until Kellyanne Conway can get Chris Christie to sit on him and calm him down, all contribute to the most self-destructive political behavior in living memory.

So the crowds are starting to thin out, and the staff are starting to disappear. There are still 16 days left before the election, but it's hard to see how Trump pulls the show out of its tailspin before it hits the ground hard and bursts into spectacular flames. The debates are now finished, and he's handily lost all three of them. His organization is pulling out of states where a Republican should be competitive, while Clinton is putting new money (at the end of October!) into places like Indiana and Missouri...and is polling within the margins in Texas even as I write this.

New, lurid stories of sexual assaults now flood the news everyday and Trump seems to have finally slipped over the edge, existing now entirely in his own dimension that not even his running mate or campaign manager or children seem to be able to see. No wonder the RNC has decided to stop spending money on him - mounting a desperate attempt to salvage the Senate and House instead, and many GOP candidates in both of those races are desperately trying to saw off whatever limbs they still have handcuffed to the Presidential ticket they have spent years building.

At least there's only two weeks to go; the home stretch of a 3 year long marathon. Then we can pick up the pieces of our broken hearts and American dreams, and chuck them into the fire along with the rest of this year's disappointments.

Rotten To The Core

Imagine having to go through life as Ted Cruz.

I mean really: Waking up every morning into a world full of people who hate your rotten guts, where your allies think the world would be a better place if you were dead and your enemies revile you so much they made Donald Trump their nominee for President.

It must be just terrible for your twisted reptilian brain to constantly spend time thinking about how all decent people cross the street to avoid eye contact with you, but will stand and cheer when you're eventually horsewhipped naked on the floor of the United States Senate, and knowing - deep down in the place we keep just for our innermost thoughts - that they're completely right to do so, and that you'll come crawling back for more.

What a goddamned Human Turdbag; the man has no backbone - no skeleton or structure to speak of at all. He's just a sack full of shit and grease and shame.

It must be even harder to go through life being married to him. Jesus, somebody's married to him!

I'm almost sorry for Heidi (or at least the kids). Their family life became a subject of lewd conversation after Trump set his tabloid-owning ratfuckers on their marriage. When Trump threatened to "spill the beans" (whatever that meant) and tweeted unflattering pictures of her, we watched her husband fiercely call Trump out as though he really knew how to play the role of a Great Protector. It must have hurt to watch an elderly father and grandfather get dragged through Trump's tabloids himself in the bizarre, feverish JFK conspiracy theory the Republican nominee repeated with delight.

Indeed, it must have made it a proud moment in the Cruz household every time Ted used his well-practiced steely eye on the camera and threaten to whip it out on national television over the latest personal insult from Donald Trump.

And surely it felt more than a little vindicating for the Cruz family to watch a Republican Convention full of hopped-up fascists and brain-dead D-list internet trolls jeer and boo as he struggled to save the shattered remains of his party's soul by encouraging them to vote their conscience - as if any of them had a conscience to begin with. He almost managed to emerge from that catastrophrovention as a doomed hero, giving the last dire warning before complete electoral defeat.

Ah! But the horserace has a tendency to turn heroes into sniveling villains and the certain doom isn't quite as certain now, so yesterday Ted Cruz oozed out of his obscurity of the past few months to endorse Donald Trump before presumably being sent off to be fitted with a gimp suit. Maybe this at least means Chris Christie is no longer the lowest bitch in the harem and can finally move out from under the staircase.

For the last of the unplucked Republicans this is the sort of betrayal they surely must have expected from the Human Turdbag. But his wife? His father? His children? How do you spend a year being subjected to the vilest insults from the vilest Presidential candidate in living memory and then pretend it never happened and everything is fine when there isn't even any political advantage to gain by it?

All this from within the party of "family values" to boot. Hah! There's more honor and family loyalty among starving rats.

You burned the bridges both ways, you fucker, and this is going to hound you. It'll hound you until the day you die and there's a bipartisan petition to dump your body in the sewer.