Joe Biden, way ahead in the polls and the candidate that seems to have a clear path to victory over Trump in 2020, was once again attacked by his fellow Democrats. What must this man have be thinking? He has been in politics for what? Fifty years? He has held every policy position available, and for exceedingly complicated reasons none of us can understand, but his past is savaged by the other candidates. When a question comes to him he looks like he wants to pass. Exasperated, frustrated, mystified, each question, each accusation, a cold soup the old man keeps trying to send back.
Andrew Yang has been my favourite from the get-go. Smart and direct, with a manner as accessible as Obama, he drops sense bombs on the assembled gathering as if from a UFO. He actually tried to break through the 4th wall, calling attention to the surreal artificiality of the entire event, of the implicit and explicit deception going off like fireworks all over the place, yet the audience seemed cautious, like they were not quite willing to leave their cages and run on the grass.
Marriane Willamson is the person I want over for dinner.
Smart, charming and totally refreshing, she is the aunt we all need, possessed with a preternatural ability to raises the spirit of anybody who hears her speak. Hers is a kind of feminism that you don’t see in politics very much. Typically, it seems women were always coached to be more like men when entering the political sphere, more aggressive or something, but Williamson is her own person. She sinks even deeper into the truth of herself and is a joy to watch. She will heal you with her magic. She will call to you in your sleep. She should obey no rules and smoke on stage. I want her to read my tarot cards.
I knew virtually nothing about Tulsi Gabbard, and when I first saw her on stage I thought she was Wonder Woman. She is the type of beauty I hadn’t historically seen on a political stage, and was in danger of thinking she was just some game show glitter, but she was a lucid destroyer, taking Kamal Harris apart, exactly as Harris had hoped to take Biden apart. It was exciting to watch—Harris, like a short-circuiting robot running and rerunning the only malfunctioning program it had, smoke steaming out of her ears, limbs flailing. And Sweet Jesus, when Gabbard began to speak of what the tiny, vulnerable Hawaiian islands have to face with climate change, I saw them as if from space, and my heart broke.
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Rachelle: Really?!!
Rachelle: Wow!! Having Lyle Lovett like one of your Tweets is amazing! That must be a real feather in your cap!
Rachelle: I’m proud of you, Pickle!
Rachelle: Yes, of course I do.
Rachelle: He’s one of The Avengers, isn’t he?
Rachelle: The Jewish one.
Rachelle: The one who could turn himself into a plane that’s also a tiger.
Rachelle: Oh.
Rachelle: I thought one of The Avengers could do that.
Rachelle: And that they embraced all religions, that they fought for freedom of religious expression and each hero represented a great faith.
Rachelle: Oh.
Rachelle: Well, I guess I don’t know who Lyle Lovett is then.
Rachelle: Hmm, a musician.
Rachelle: No, none of those songs are familiar to me.
Rachelle: Just before my time, I guess.
Rachelle: Not a dig, Pickle. You’re just a lot older than me.
Rachelle: No, I’d say 12 years is a lot. Anything double digits.
Rachelle: What??
Rachelle: He was married to Julia Roberts?
Rachelle: You mean the guy who looks like a scarecrow/funeral director is Lyle Lovett?
Rachelle: Wow.
Rachelle: It’s true, personality does counts for a lot.
Rachelle: And yes, it is almost as if Julia Roberts liked your Tweet!
Rachelle: Aww, that’s sweet!
Rachelle: Well, if I’m your Pretty Woman, you’re my little Lyle Lovett!
Rachelle: Yes, my power skating class is over and I’ll be home soon.
Rachelle: With the wings.
Rachelle: Extra mild. Sauce on the side. Extra wet naps. No carrot stick taller than the others. As always.
Rachelle: It’s a little bit of a serial killer kind of order, you know.
Rachelle: That was auto correct.
Rachelle: I wrote “You’re a sweet kind of order.”
Rachelle: Well, auto correct works in mysterious ways.
Rachelle: Through a glass darkly and all of that.
Rachelle: Yes, you probably will start getting ads in you Facebook feed for serial killer things now.
Rachelle: Well, they say technology knows you better than you know yourself, Pickle!
Rachelle: Oh, I’m kidding, honey.
Rachelle: You’re no serial killer.
Rachelle: In fact, you would be the worst serial killer in history.
Rachelle: Well, your allergies to start. Always blowing your nose and sneezing. You’d be detected straight away!
Rachelle: And then there’s your general physical and mental weakness. Serial killers have to be on the ball! I bet serial killers get 10 hours of sleep a night!
Rachelle: Ha Ha!! I know, I would kill for 10 hours of sleep, too!
Rachelle: But look, the fact that you could never be a serial killer is a compliment, not an insult.
Rachelle: I know, these are confusing times.
Rachelle: The falcon cannot hear the falconer.
Rachelle: It’s from a poem.
Rachelle: I think the falconer is the person who dresses the falcon when they go hunting. Picks out the outfits. Not positive.
Rachelle: Anyway, see you in about half an hour! xo
The other day my wife Rachelle Maynard posted this on a Buy, Sell and Trade Facebook group she belongs to:
LIKE NEW BLUNDSTONES 7.5 Mens or 9.5 Womens
$150
Don’t spend $250 on a new pair of Blundstones your husband will never wear because they’re just a little bit hard to slip on. No. Don’t be angry he’s only worn them 3 times and doesn’t truly appreciate the kindness of your gift. So just buy these instead. They are in near perfect shape. They come with a box and everything. Pick up near Bloor and Spadina.
Comments:
Sahara: Forgive me, but your husband sounds like a bit of an asshole.
Anne: Nice colours!
Emily: I agree with Sahara, your husband sounds like a real piece of work. He better look like Daniel Craig is all I can say! LOL!!
Sahara: I once heard about a husband who took his wife to a Lord of the Rings movie marathon on their wedding anniversary! He thought if she saw them all at once, in order, then she would love them like he did. CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE?
Dina: I would cut a bastard if he did that to me on our anniversary.
Betty: My husband is also an asshole. #MeToo
Stephanie: Sounds like he has pretty small feet! LOL!!
Emily: Men are trash.
Jen: You know, I have absolutely no doubt of my innate superiority to my husband, and pretty much all men, in fact, yet I still end up feeling oppressed. How the hell does that end up happening?
Nicki: Smash the Patriarchy!
Robynne: Would it be possible to come by on Tuesday around 4:00 to have a look?
Elena: My husband is also a jerk. #MeToo
Misha: I started to notice that whenever I walked into the room my husband would slam his laptop shut. He said it was fantasy hockey. Turns out he meant porn. Dirty, disgusting porn #MeToo
Treena: I would dump his small-footed ass. You can do better Rachelle. You deserve better. We all do.
Lisa: I swear to God, my husband can’t even figure out how to work the remote. Why are they all so fucking incompetent??? Why do we have to do EVERYTHING??? #MeToo
Beth: The fucker doesn’t deserve boots.
Maria: Make him walk barefoot in the snow. #MeToo
]]>Twitter was not at all what I thought it would be.
I envisioned a virtual water cooler where all sorts of people–many who didn’t work in an office– might get together during the day to exchange witty banter about what was going on in the world. I imagined a kind of democratic paradise, too, maybe like the ancient Greeks, a place where there was equal opportunity for everybody to be heard, and the quality of an idea was not contingent upon the status of the person bearing it.
Of course, it turns out that Twitter is a tire fire, and I simply could not have been more wrong.
Twitter and it’s 140 character cage, ( now upped to 280 characters ) did not spark conversations, it destroyed them. Instead of attempting to actually investigate ideas that you didn’t already own, people went on search and destroy missions, each Tweet a drive-by shooting aimed at a rival gang. Twitter was a weapon, a device used to amplify and distribute propaganda, and whenever a person was handed this weapon they immediately, without even knowing it, became a soldier in somebody else’s army.
Twitter was not a place you went to freely express yourself, it was a battlefield.
Just under a quarter of Americans are on this battlefield, and from what I can tell the preponderance of people using the platform would be loosely defined as a kind intelligentsia, those with sufficient space and security in their life to spend X-amount of time each day looking to make corrections in the lives of others. These people are driving the culture wars that are currently dominating our cyclonic news cycle, and that, in turn, is driving the political discourse. This means that the vast majority of Americans, more than 75%, are being led down a road paved by this influential, minority group.
Yet oddly, we seem more concerned about conspiratorial fictions then this beast in which we live.
No matter, the people behind Twitter know how dangerous and influential the platform has become, and in an effort to make it less pernicious, they’re now considering taking away the Like function.
Twitter is an obviously hierarchal structure, a place where status is measured by Likes, followers and retweets. The more of these you have, the more influence you wield. It’s practically a board game. The goal is not to learn about other people and their ideas, it’s about acquiring and exercising power. ( Exhibit A: Donald Trump) But it’s not the real world, not even close. The vast majority of humans live outside the gates of Twitter, yet they are directed and depicted, by those within. A technology that was meant to be radically democratic has somehow ended up being kind of totalitarian.
For instance, China is creating a Social Credit System which is intended to measure citizens social and business reputation. It’s a Black Mirror episode, a world in which everything you do is judged and catalogued by others, and it is upon that which your ability to function in society is dependent. In fact, Twitter had something very much like that which they called Klout, a complex numerical measurement of your influence. This is the unfortunate principal on which much of our social media exists, and if Twitter liberates us from it, they will be striking a great blow in a war most of us don’t even know we’re fighting.
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As many of you will have heard, I have started a weekly Podcast with Heidi, our Miniature Dachshund.
This is an excerpt from our most recent episode:
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Me: Before we start today’s Podcast I have an announcement to make. On our last broadcast Heidi made some remarks that were very hurtful to some beloved members of our community.
The appalling statements she made might even be considered an act of violence in and of themselves, and let me say unequivocally that we here at The Breakfast Club have always, and will always be, great allies to all of our friends in the SCBDB community. Your struggle is our struggle, and we will not tolerate any sort of hate speech, calls to violence or prejudice against you and those that you love. You are our family. We love you and stand beside you. I want to take this time now to formally apologize to all Squirrels, Cats, Birds and Dumb Birds who were wounded by Heidi’s words. We are profoundly sorry.
Although Heidi has been a mostly loyal dog to my family for nearly a dozen years, I simply cannot excuse her behaviour, and so she has been removed from the Podcast, effective immediately, and sent to live up in the country with my wife’s parents where she will undergo prolonged sensitivity training.
Taking her place will be Margaret Atwood, one of the supporting actresses from the hit TV show The Hand Made Tale.
Atwood: The title of the show is the Handmaids Tale, and I was the author of the novel upon which the successful TV show was based, not a supporting actress in it.
Me: Please don’t interrupt.
Atwood: You have more important things to say, do you?
Me: Nuts! Now I’ve lost my place!
Atwood: Yes, of course you have. A straight, middle-aged white man with no discernible talents suddenly adrift in a changing world. One day you wake up to discover that you’re not one of the good guys at all, but are actually an enemy of the people, an enemy to all those you never heard, saw or even thought about in all the decades you stomped so blindly through this world. Now that the shell of your status has been cracked open to reveal your mediocrity and fear, it must be so very difficult for you! And how have you responded to this sea change, Michael, to being revealed so nakedly to all whom you ignored? With hostility and defensiveness, of course, with a desperate attempt to portray yourself as a victim rather than a victimizer. So yes, I can see how you might feel that you “lost your place.”
Me: I WAS PATROL OF THE WEEK IN GRADE SIX!! I WAS AT THE BARRICADES KEEPING THE WORLD SAFE FROM TYRANNY, GODDAMNIT!! NOBODY CAN TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME!!
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