The heat sat upon everything.

Oppressive and exhausting, it slowly disabled the day’s options. You couldn’t go outside. You couldn’t get comfortable. You couldn’t even think straight, and every time you moved it was as if this thing, this heavy, unseen entity, was wrapping itself just a little more tightly around you.

It was a long weekend and most of the people in Toronto seemed to have vacated the city for cottages. As Rachelle, Jones and I drove through the city to the Ontario Science Centre, we passed empty streetcars on empty roads, and on very rare occasion a person—always appearing slightly dazed, as if they’d just forgotten where they were going. There was a distinctly post-apocalyptic vibe in the still, dirty air, and it all felt as much a dream as not.

The Science Centre was very crowded, though, and it was filled with people just like us, people looking for a place that was open to the public, air-conditioned and entertaining for young children. We were all lucky, all of us there, lucky to have such a place available to us, lucky to be able to use it, and lucky beyond the known margins, too, lucky in ways none of us could even imagine.

But still, it wasn’t easy. It was crowded and loud, even chaotic, and Jones was so excited that he ran in crazed and unpredictable zigzags, and after a few hours we felt like cats chasing the red dot of a laser pointer. And as it approached noon, the children, all exhausted and hungry now, began to throw tantrums. It was like artillery going off, like fireworks.

One child would explode into tears, another one would kick a juice box out of a parent’s hand, and another would just flop face first on the floor and begin kicking his feet, screaming. And so it went, a spreading contagion that was simultaneously hilarious and crushing.

We managed to slither and bounce through it all to find a passage that led to descending escalators. There must have been two or three of them, each one travelling deeper and deeper down and through the wooded ravine the Science Centre was built into.

It was like being submerged in a forest, and the air became cooler and lighter as we descended, and when we stepped off into the refreshing, muted light of a wide open museum space, we were transformed.

About fifty feet in front of us rotating light projections were being cast onto the floor from the ceiling. Ladybugs. Stars. Race Cars. Mysterious fish. Geometric patters. All the children dancing beneath and within this light, and everything was beautiful and quiet and astonishing, like we had just been led to an illuminated cave full of dolphins at play in the purest waters.

***************************************************

Rachelle: Are you still on for the Textile Museum at 2:00?

Rachelle: Tetanus?

Rachelle: No

Rachelle: No, I am certain there’s no such thing as a “Tetanus Museum.”

Rachelle: Well, I’m sorry you misunderstood.

Rachelle: But we have passes for the Textile Museum and we agreed to meet there in 30 minutes.

Rachelle: But you were so keen on seeing the Kimono of Itchiku Kobuta! You said that’s what you were going to name your Fantasy baseball team! What happened?

Rachelle: Really, Pickle?

Rachelle: You think it’s cultural appropriation?

Rachelle: And you don’t want to exercise your white privilege by exploiting something that was not created for the white, male gaze?

Rachelle: And in order to achieve that goal you’ve gone to The Keg Mansion, the place where everything is specially made for you, is that right?

Rachelle: Yes, yes, I know you have a gift card.

Rachelle: And yes, I know The Keg is your safe space.

Rachelle: You’ve said it many times.

Rachelle: Will you do me a favour? Just have a look around.

Rachelle: Do you see a bunch of men who more or less look like you, all eating steak and drinking wine?

Rachelle: Yes, or drinking Caesars.

Rachelle: And are they all being served by hot, young women laughing at all the jokes they’re being told through gritted, shoot-me-now teeth?

Rachelle: In the exploitation Olympics, I think that beats going to a fabric museum, don’t you?

Rachelle: Look, do you even know what false equivalency means?.

Rachelle: I thought not.

Rachelle: Oh, I see.

Rachelle: I was all wrong about Madison the server.

Rachelle: She’s different, is she?

Rachelle: Well maybe when she said that she didn’t mean funny ha-ha?

Rachelle: Okay, let’s just never mind.

Rachelle: Are you going to meet me or not?

Rachelle: Oh, your wedge salad just arrived!

Rachelle: Well obviously your hands are tied.

Rachelle: Yes.

Rachelle: That was sarcasm.

Rachelle: Because you’re being a jerk.

Rachelle: Sweet Jesus.

Rachelle: In no way am I discriminating against you for eating meat.

Rachelle: I’m a Social Justice Warrior? I’m not even sure I know what one is.

Rachelle: You’re drunk.

Rachelle: You Keg-Sized your Caesar, didn’t you?

Rachelle: Yes, I am psychic.

Rachelle: I can also detect something slurry and aggressive in all your texts.

Rachelle: It’s like you’re campaigning for something.

Rachelle: Shouting from the podium!

Rachelle: Throwing emoticons everywhere!

Rachelle: Like angry confetti.

Rachelle: Whatever.

Rachelle: Just remember that the doctor said you could only have one drink a day, okay?

Rachelle: No, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.

Rachelle: I’m going to go to the museum then have a power skating session with Pierre.

Rachelle: No, he wasn’t deported.

Rachelle: He was in Costa Rica on a spiritual retreat.

Rachelle: Very tan. And he shaved off his moustache.

Rachelle: I know it’s a dream of yours to one day grow a full beard like Pierre does so effortlessly, but it’s just not your path, Pickle.

Rachelle: Yes, yours is the path of low testosterone and patchy facial hair.

Rachelle: We all have our crosses to bear, dear.

*************************************

Me: Hey, it’s great to see you all again! Thanks for coming! As you can see there’s a bunch of food and wine…

Doug Ford*: I don’t drink.

Me: Oh, hey Doug!

Doug Ford: No alcohol at all. Not even a drop.

Me: Well, as I was saying, we have a bunch of food, wine and soft drinks on the dinning room table, and you should all feel free to help yourselves to whatever you want– and to avoid whatever you don’t! Anyway, the book we’re going to be discussing is the Hunter S. Thompson classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Thompson, as you know, pioneered Gonzo journalism, and I thought it might be worth having a look back at this book so that we might consider how the media covered politics in 1970 with how they cover it now. Would anyone like to get us started?

Anne: I don’t know, I think the book feels a little forced, a little dated now, but I really like the way that he portrays the American Dream as a kind of nightmarish hallucination.

Cormac: And the illustrations by Ralph Steadman are brilliant and terrifying, a perfect accompaniment.

Doug Ford: (Snort.)

Me: You didn’t like the illustrations, Doug?

Doug Ford: They look like chicken scratchings. Real garbage. Does smudging your work make it “artistic” or something? Let me tell you, the Ford family printing business never would have survived and been as successful as it was– and it’s been VERY successful– if we’d sent out smudgy work all the time.

It’s just unprofessional. Lazy. Makes me sick.

Me: Interesting point, Doug.

Anne: Did anybody see the movie version of Fear and Loathing, the one starring Johnny Depp?

Doug Ford: Luke Wilson.

Anne: Sorry?

Doug Ford: It starred Luke Wilson not Johnny Depp.

Anne: I just Googled it. Here, ( holding up phone) it says Johnny Depp.

Doug Ford: Nope. It was Luke Wilson. ( crosses arms)

Me: Well, ha-ha-ha, one things for certain, they’ve both been in an awful lot of movies!

Anne: ( In hushed voice) Michael, we talked about this. No more normalizing him, okay?

Me: ( In hushed voice) For the love of God, Anne, just be quiet!

Doug Ford: And let me tell you, I go to Vegas all the time, and wherever the hell those dirty maggot journalists in the book were, it sure as hell wasn’t Vegas!

Cormac: I wonder how Hunter S. Thompson would have covered the mass shooting in Vegas? I would love to have read a Fear and Loathing where they were driving to Vegas in order to cover the shooting instead of the motor cycle race!

Anne: Yeah, that would have been a really interesting twist, I think.

Doug Ford: Last time I was in Vegas was just six weeks ago. For a Neil Diamond concert.

Wife is a bit of a Diamond Head, so we do a lot of road trips through the States attending his concerts. I tell you, that is a man with real talent. We should be talking about him. Sweet Caroline? You name me a better song. Go on! I dare you!

( Uncomfortable silence in the room)

Doug Ford: That’s what I thought.

• Doug Ford is a well-known Toronto politician who was brother to mayor Rob Ford, and who is currently running to become the leader of the Conservative party of Ontario.

When the girls first met Rachelle and I they declared us their “real” parents–probably due to our liberal rules regarding drugs and alcohol and my collection of hats. No matter, since then, they have relegated their actual mom to “birth mother.” They are currently off working as camp counsellors for the summer, and have requested that I write them a letter each week. Here is one:

************************************
My most cherished daughters:

It’s really hot in Toronto right now. So hot your birth mother might even consider putting on the AC. I, as you know, perish in the heat. Humidity is my enemy. I am TOTALLY racist against humidity. Not woke at all in that department.

Fuck the humidity!

I would vote for anybody who proposed building a huge wall between me and the humidity.

I really would.

Anyway, as you should, but probably don’t know, I work-out up to three hours a day.

Fact.

Not fake news!

Part of this routine includes walking ( pretty fast!) on a treadmill for 30 minutes a day. Today, on account of the heat, I took my shirt off to do this. Just as I was finishing and stepping off the treadmill, sweaty and a little bit dizzy, I spotted three young women passing by our front window.

I have to admit, I kind of froze.

Obviously, I wanted to dive out of the way and hide from sight, but startled, I guess, I made eye contact with one of them. Have you ever seen a face collapse? I don’t mean literally, like in a horror movie, but more an unmediated emotional response in the face of calamity.

This woman, the one whom I made eye contact with, had a normal, even confident resting face, but when she saw me standing there shirtless, all conscious control she had over her facial features simply vanished. It was like everything caved in and turned upside down at once—as if she had been seized by a kind of supernatural possession. She gasped and then leaned forward, resting her hands on her knees and stated to gag. One of her friends looked at me and started to desperately wave me away and out of their sight line, which of course, I dutifully did.

Really, really hate sorority girls.

Pretty sure they were from Alpha Gamma Delta.

Don’t you ever join Alpha Gamma Delta. They are the worst. Very stuck-up. And sororities are all about upholding cultural and social hierarchies. Sororities are not woke!

Thankfully, I am a middle-aged white man so the incident did nothing to diminish my mystifying confidence.

Anyhow, that is how my day started.

Soon I will clean the bathroom. Did you know that Rachelle made a chore list, laminated it and has now posted 8 copies of it throughout the apartment?

That’s more copies than there are rooms! It’s true, and you would not believe how unfair the list is!! Do you think I should be cleaning her hockey equipment and the Diaper Genie three times a week??? I swear, Rachelle thinks she’s such a big shot just because she has a job. Let me give you some fatherly advice, daughters, never, ever allow yourself to be defined by paid work. Or becoming a member of a fucking sorority.

We love you very much and ask that you please send photographs of Bigfoot and Mothman,

Your father

**********************************

The other day President-elect Donald Trump gathered his cabinet together for a round of golf and some frank talk about America.

A transcript of their conversation in the locker room of Trump National Golf Course in Westchester, NY was leaked to the press:

*******************************

Wilbur Ross, Commerce Secretary:

Hey, you bitches know Florida, right?

General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, Defense Secretary:

Total smoke show.

Jeff Sessions, Attorney General:

That baby got back!

Mike Pence, Vice President-elect:

Testify!

Donald Trump, President-elect:

I love her coasts. Superb coasts. The best coasties in all of America. I love to get right in there, stick my face in the them and just splash them all around.

Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff:

It is no Russian propaganda that you sir, are the the greatest man on the planet!

Jeff Sessions, Attorney General:

You da man! Big dog always huntin’!

Ben Carson, Housing and Urban Development Secretary:

She ever let you into her Everglades?

Donald Trump, President-elect:

Let me tell you, her Everglades are very exclusive, like so, so super exclusive that you wouldn’t even believe, and let me tell you, I have been to her Everglades many, many, many times. She can’t get enough. When I’m with her, I make it rain.

Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff:

You’re the RainMaker, sir!

General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, Defense Secretary:

I once had a layover in Delaware. Did some real drilling there, let me tell you, yeah, some real drilling.

Donald Trump, President-elect:

Delaware?! She’s a village bicycle. Disease infested. Strictly bottom-rung. Not even a 6 out of 10.

Jeff Sessions, Attorney General:

Yo, you better get yourself checked by your doctor, could have the crabs.

Donald Trump, President-elect:

“Brain Surgeon!” Give The General here an examination, tell us if Delaware gave him the clap.

Ben Carson, Housing and Urban Development Secretary:

I can tell from here he’s got SDD, Small Dick Disease, and that it’s terminal!

Mike Pence, Vice President-elect:

That sick burn pleases the Lord!!

( High-fives and laughter from all)

Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff:

Anyone playing Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare?

Wilbur Ross, Commerce Secretary:

Fucking rules. Took three Ativan and played it for eight straight hours last night.

Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff:

Zombie mode is the tits!

Donald Trump, President-elect:

Okay, okay, girls, let’s focus. Listen up. Okay. There’s a black guy and a Mexican in a car. Who is driving?

(The cabinet is silent)

Donald Trump, President-elect:

The cop!!

(The cabinet howls with laughter!)

Jeff Sessions, Attorney General:

You got to Tweet that one, President-elect!

Donald Trump, President-elect:

Okay, who lost that round of golf? Was it Ross the Loss? No? “Brain Surgeon”? Was it you? Bad Hombre Priebus? No, okay we’ll make it Sloppy Second Pence. Pence you’re today’s loser and have to buy us all dinner. Has to be an exceptional meal, super exceptional, the very best, and if it is, I’ll bring out those Sarah Palin hot tub pics I was telling you about.

returning to the hospital always feels like stepping into a church, into the holy. Everybody there, whether they know it or not, are in a state of pilgrimage, of prayer.

In the atrium a motley assembly of musicians formed. They were a group of people recovering from mental health and addiction issues, with a few ringers tossed in to add some structure to their compositions. The conductor, an energetic and wiry tangle of holistic cliches, worked hard to inspire her students but most of them remained tense, staring flatly at the floor rather than the crowd that had gathered across from them. Their voices were thin and straining, but still, the congregation rose with the music, an original composition called, “Coming Through Darkness.”

And how did they do that?

How did each one of them push trauma to the side to stand where they were that day?

Oh Lord, let their music, that glowing idea, comfort us all.

And then down the hallway there was a display of art created by patients as part of their therapy. Out of all the generic scenes of landscapes and flowers and pets, there was one work that stood out to me.

Mary of the Roses.

As if floating above the others, as if shining.

And I imagined the woman painting it, how with each brush stroke another layer of her anxiety fell away until this new, beatified horizon emerged.

As I left the hospital, a First Nation’s man beating a drum stood outside on the sidewalk, the flames painted on a food truck rising behind him.

We nodded at each other and I remained, watching and listening, as steams of indifferent people passed by.

A tall, homeless man shuffled down the sidewalk and when he walked into the music, without a word he started to dance. First with his fingers. Slow pointing. Cool pointing. And then his body began to move.

His shoulders, his legs, his fingers, his head, all in surprising and beautiful concert with this simple drumming. Suddenly, he was the revelation of hidden genius–he was a burning bush in our midst. He danced for perhaps a minute and then he stopped, and falling back into the broad, rigid silence from which he came, he continued silently through the day.

There was something that seemed miraculous about this, and the drummer and I– the only people who had seen it– grinned at one another.

“It’s part of the magic of the flow, “ the drummer said. “I like to do this in front of the hospital. People are scared and preoccupied, and then they hear the drum calling to their spirit and it lifts them. Spirit takes them places, it unhooks them from their mortal self and for a moment they are free.  We are signposts in this world, here to help people find their way.”

Miracles, right that moment, unfolding all across the city.

At first this incident was attributed to overheating and dehydration, but this was later revised, the cause falling on a mild case of pneumonia. Whether the initial concealment of this was a simple matter of obscurant political reflex, or if the pneumonia is actually a symptom of a more sinister, underlying condition as many are speculating, is unknown. What is known is that illness, be it mild or grave, is not at all uncommon amidst people around 70 who are subject to inconceivable stress and an insane work schedule. Legions of Presidents have suffered aliments, and this is a short list of some of them:

Lyndon B Johnson had the Dropsy.

Martin Van Buren, after being prescribed laudanum for the pain associated with his gout, became an opium addict. This is an excerpt from Van Buren’s diary:

“ …Men of genius move in orbits of their own; and seem deprived of that free will which permits the mere man of talent steadily to pursue the beaten path. Van Buren was made to soar and not to creep. I should much wish, like the Indian Vishna, to float about along an infinite ocean cradled in the flower of the Lotos, & wake once in a million years for a few minutes – just to know that I was going to sleep a million years more.”

George H W Bush suffered from Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome, which is characterized by episodes of severe vomiting that have no apparent cause. Episodes can last for hours or days and alternate with relatively symptom-free periods of time.

Whenever Bush visited Japan, he threw-up almost constantly.

Zachary Taylor suffered from Crop Sickness, a condition that made him unusually cruel to his slaves and eventually killed him.

FDR had Polio and was confined to a wheelchair. The press even colluded with him in attempts to portray him in ways that did not directly associate him with a wheelchair.

Josiah Bartlett suffered from Multiple Sclerosis, but in spite of that is still considered the greatest orator of all the American Presidents.

George W Bush, while on a bombing mission over Hanoi in October 1967, was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. Although Bush was able to charm his way to freedom, his injuries caused him lifelong physical limitations. Art therapy has been a large part of Bush’s continued recovery.

Jimmy Carter was abducted by an alien spacecraft in 1973, thoroughly examined, and then released. He has suffered Night Terrors ever since, and is now obsessed with creating crop circles.

]]> http://michaelmurray.ca/hillary-clinton/feed 0 http://michaelmurray.ca/bitter-writer http://michaelmurray.ca/bitter-writer#respond Fri, 17 Jun 2016 19:36:23 +0000
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http://michaelmurray.ca/?p=5838 Dear Bitter Writer:

Why are writers all so ugly?

Simon

Simon:

It’s true, most writers are pretty ugly.

They were just born that way, and no matter how their parents dressed them, they remained ugly.

A consequence of this ugliness is that they were almost always excluded as children, forced to watch from the sidelines as their more attractive peers lived their happy, little lives. It’s unlikely that any of their glittering peers were mocked, called “Grosslord” and then turned away from the Manor Park Mayfair Kissing Booth, amidst a cacophony of kids pretending to barf, even though the Grosslord in question, who yes, needed dental work at the time, had the money, just like everybody else, that it cost to get a peck from grade eight goddess Mary Appelton. Injustice makes a writer, and ugliness is a great injustice. So the writer, by circumstance rather than by instinct, becomes an observer, hovering darkly on the periphery, always plotting, plotting, plotting, always devising schemes of seduction, conquest and personal elevation, all of which, of course, are doomed to fail.

It’s why so many writers are alcoholic as well as being ugly.

Eventually, the writer will become destitute and bitter, unable to do much beyond engage in Twitter wars about Canadian poetry.

However, I would be remiss if I were to say that all writers are ugly, for this is not true. Tyra Banks, the author of Modelland, is world-renowned beauty.

And of course, Samuel Beckett: 

Dear Bitter Writer:

Like most people, I was disgusted and heartbroken when I heard about the mass murder in Orlando. I wrote down some of my feelings on the matter, and I was wondering if you could tell me where the best place might be to publish my Think Piece? I was considering Medium, any advice?

Brad

Brad:

The best advice I can give you is to never, ever publish anything that is referred to as a Think Piece. Think Pieces are the equivalent of drunken phone messages left for an Ex. Lost, wandering and self-absorbed, they exist only to make the author look enlightened rather than to actually share some sort of enlightenment. Truth be told, I can’t read the words Think Piece without wanting to punch whomever coined the phrase in the face. It sounds remdial, like something you’d do in kindergarten.

“And what’s this a drawing of, Bobby?”

“It Think Piece.”

“Well, it’s lovely, I like what you’ve done with the raging green!”

So no, Brad, just no.

Don’t do it.

And Brad, if you’re straight, that cry of no becomes even louder. I don’t care if you’d fuck Tom Hardy

and are a true ally of the LGBT community, the world still doesn’t need another straight voice added to the storm of voices attempting to deconstruct the shooting. Whether you think people from the LGBT community were specifically targeted or not doesn’t matter. The LGBT community is one that has always been subject to violence, hatred and bigotry, and this, the largest mass shooting in America’s rich history, conducted at a specifically gay venue, suggests that those directly within the community might have a deeper understanding of what the shooting “means,” so I suggest that all straight voices just park it for a little, and listen rather than tell. Just switch your profile pic to rainbow and call it a day, okay?

Last year there was a play-off game between the Texas Rangers and the Toronto Blue Jays that was perhaps, one of the weirdest, most entertaining, anarchic ball games in the history of the known universe.

Part ayahuasca trip, the game culminated when Blue Jay superstar Jose Bautista absolutely crushed a three-run homer that for all intents and purposes, ended the game, time and the universe.

It was that epic.

The Rangers were ruined.

You could see the post-traumatic stress disorder forming in their glassy eyes. You could see the days of boozing and aimless driving. You could see that recovery was going to be impossible.

And if that wasn’t enough, Bautista performed a now legendary bat flip that saw him standing motionless at home plate, like a statute of a Greek God, as he watched the ball sail to glory,

before dropping the mic by tossing the bat, as if it was now something repellent to him, about a mile away.

This got under the skin of the broken Rangers, and it stayed there.

Jose Bautista has big, rat-like ears, the physical rectitude of a matador and a self-confidence that radiates from him like some sort of X-Man power. He is arrogant, this man, and although he’s an intelligent and astounding baseball player, he’s still a prick. I mean, he thinks of himself as a corporation and acts accordingly. He knows how great he is, and if for some reason you forget it, his body language will surely remind you, and if that doesn’t, well, he’ll tell you. You get the sense with Bautista, that he really does see the rest of the world as, “The Little People.”

At any rate, this bat flip, this losing in the playoffs to the Jays has stuck in the collective craw of the Rangers for the better part of a year.

Sunday was the last meeting of the two teams this year (barring a playoff match-up) and the Rangers pitcher hit Bautista with a pitch. This was pay back, and although Bautista gave him the slow, threatening stink-eye, he didn’t do anything, until he did do something. This something was a hard, illegal take-out slide of Ranger second baseman Rougned Odor on an ensuing play.

Now this sort of thing has been happening in baseball for a hundred years, but only recently was this kind of slide (in which you try to knock over the second baseman rather than achieve possession of the bag) made illegal. Odor, the second baseman, shoved Bautista in the chest. Bautista, who could buy and sell the little man, moved toward him like a God toward a mortal, and as he was pulling his fingers together to make a fist,  Rougned clocked him in the face with a stunning punch that saw Bautista’s $13,000 glasses, helmet and ego go flying.

It was awesome.

Of course, there are all sorts of people who are upset about the savagery of the act, but not me. It was cathartic and shocking, a David and Goliath moment that saw the preening, entitled 30 million dollar a year athlete get what his behaviour actually warranted. It was, for a moment, a kind of justice, a blow for the little man, and it made me happy.