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

Rachelle: No, it’s not.

Rachelle: I’m sorry Pickle, you’re wrong.

Rachelle: It’s not the Marie Keto diet.

Rachelle: There are two different things. The Keto diet where you eat steak, and Marie Kondo, a Japanese spirit who tidies apartments when you’re sleeping.

Rachelle: It’s an easy mistake to make.

Rachelle: I don’t know how you’re expected to keep up either!

Rachelle: The world moves quickly, it really does.

Rachelle: Did you drop Jones off at daycare?

Rachelle: “Only Jones and Hulk make the rules now?”

Rachelle: He said that to you when you asked him to put on his boots?

Rachelle: OMG, that is the funniest thing I have ever heard!

Rachelle: I’m not sure I’d want to live in a world like that, either.

Rachelle: Can you imagine?

Rachelle: There would just be SO MUCH SMASHING.

Rachelle: Marie Kondo should be part of the Hulk and Jones team, quietly tidying up after they raze city after city.

Rachelle: Really?

Rachelle: How is that sexist?

Rachelle: And disrespectful to Asian culture?

Rachelle: It just is? Is that all you’ve got???

Rachelle: Look, proclaiming that you’re tolerant of everything but intolerance is not an explanation for why you think I’m sexist and racist.

Rachelle: No it isn’t.

Rachelle: It doesn’t even really make sense.

Rachelle: Yes.

Rachelle: By extension you don’t really make sense either.

Rachelle: Yes, all your friends know that.

Rachelle: For a very long time now.

Rachelle: When you really get going we call it “Murrbling,” as in, “Man alive, was Michael ever Murrbling last night!”

Rachelle: I don’t have time right now, Pickle. My hockey game is about to start.

Rachelle: Okay, I’ll pick up some Jackson Triggs on the way back, and of course I’ll come home with my shield, or on it. They don’t call me the Blonde Volcano for nothing!

Rachelle: Love you, too, and don’t let Jones and the Hulk push you around. You make the rules!

Rachelle: Yes.

Rachelle: By that I did mean I make the rules. xo

An acquaintance of mine recently posted this on her wall:

“MFA thesis defended!”

These are the comments that followed:

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

Congratulations!

Way to go, Sloan!!

You did it, you’re the best!!xoxo

Awesome. Just awesome.

It must feel great to accomplish something so useful!

Congratudonlences!

That’s great, hopefully the debt won’t be too crippling!

You’re going to be a poet, I hope! A nation really can’t have too many of them!

That’s eight years spent in academia that you can be damn proud of!

So. Fucking. Brave.

Very sorry to hear this. WHAT NOW???? At least your mother died believing that you’d never finish that degree!

Thank God somebody is finally going to give some attention to Gender Dichotomies in the Kitchen: Feminine and Masculine Qualities of Spaces and Artifacts as exhibited in Queer literature of the 1990’s! It’s been a long time coming! You rawk, Sloan!

Idiot.

Hopefully after all those years you committed to that institution, you have a good relationship with them and they might offer you a job as a diversity officer or something!

Sloan, you have just taken your Blog to the next level!

So, so, so sorry to hear this. Big hugz!!

My ex works at the Starbucks on College and University, and I am sure he can get you a job there while you write your novel. Private message me.

Fantastic news! You must be super proud! See you at the Slam Poetry workshop on Sunday!

First of all, before I write my message, I want to thank Mother Earth for all the resources that she allows us to use, and honour all First Nation, Métis and Inuit people whose land we settlers now stand upon. We ask your forgiveness. YOU ARE THE BEST, SLOAN, YOU MUST BE SO PROUD!!

Have you told your psychiatrist yet?

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

In my imagination “The Internet” descended from the deep reaches of the universe and settled upon our planet like a mist. We began to interact with this powerful and mysterious entity without any real understanding of how it was going to effect us, or even if it was going to effect us. Most of us just assumed it was going to make things better, amplifying potential in a good, rather than harmful way.

However, it hasn’t exactly worked out that way. The astonishing gifts we’ve enjoyed have come with tremendous penalties, the primary of which might be a massive, unacknowledged mental health crisis.

I don’t know about you, but I have never seen as many declarations of anxiety and depression in my life as I now see on a regular basis online. It’s not at all uncommon for me to have multiple chat windows open at once, each one a conversation with a friend in crisis. This is highly subjective of course, and that people now have the means and social sanction to communicate their feelings might be something to celebrate, or, as my intuition suggests,  it could be something in the disembodied interactions we’ve been reducing ourselves to that’s causing this articulated spike in mental health problems.

It seems that the more we inhabit the abstracted realm of The Internet, the more certain we become of our beliefs. This is highly ironic to me, because we all know that amidst the spin and swirl of disinformation, fake news and uncanny algorithms, we should be as skeptical of claims to truth and certainty as we’ve ever been.

Take the White Power symbols that have been in the news.

As you may be aware, the symbol that you always thought meant “OK,” might now mean White Power.

This transition took place about a year ago on 4Chan, where it was conceived as a conscious lie. What I mean by that is that it wasn’t a White Power sign. The intent was to take an existing symbol and change it’s meaning, thus confusing the public and media and further eroding the idea of public trust.

Regardless, once this meme was in the blood stream there was no way to know what the use of the symbol meant. Did the person know it was a white power sign? Were they just saying “OK!?” Were they making a joke? Were they communicating racist ideology?

The first instance of this that I saw was of White House Advisor Zina Bash during a Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

Based on this image, people thought she was a White Supremacist.

Bash is of Mexican and Jewish heritage, and this photo that was widely circulated was a high resolution screen capture of a video, so she was in motion, not in a fixed, posed position. Claims that she was communicating a racist message seemed to me ambiguous at best. But people I know, like and respect saw this photograph, and others like it,

as crystal clear evidence of racist intent. Where I saw nothing but ambiguity, they saw none.

It felt like looking at the Neckar’s Cube, like some optical illusion was at play and the mechanics of our brains were prohibiting us from seeing the same thing.

There was simply no consensus on what was real. We were living two different stories when looking at the images. Where I was looking at what was directly in front of me, my friends were looking at circumstance, or perhaps subtext, seeing this single image as part of a much greater and evolving narrative.

Perhaps I am antique in my thinking, but when I see stories like these, I look for a kind of “courtroom proof.” If I have doubt, I am unwilling to prosecute the reputation and livelihood of the person being judged, even if they might still be suspicious to me. Maybe that makes me unwilling to act, and if so that is a sin I will one day have to answer for. Regardless, online a “thing” is true if it has momentum, if it supports the continuance of a passionately held belief, not if it meets some “clinical” standard of proof.

As our shared sense of truth and morality fall away– and disagreement leads to suspicion, if not flat-out contempt– we fearlessly share our certainties, but shamefully keep our uncertainties sheltered within, anxious that we’ll be attacked rather than supported by those whom we would love, and that, well that’s making us all feel a little jumpy and untethered.

1. Executive Order suspending Groupon purchases for medical procedures, including colonoscopies and all eye surgeries.
2. Executive Order creating a Task Force on toy reduction in the living room.
3. Executive Order restoring the “Rule of Law” at sleepy time. No lollipops. No ice cream. No more than 6 stories. No exceptions.
4. Executive Order protecting the household from foreign entry of sand, sticks, rocks of all kind, Play-Doh, cutlery and Spiderman lego into the bed.
5. Executive Order improving accountability and whistleblower protection at the Department of Picking Up Used Kleenex That Almost Landed In The Garbage But Did Not.
6. Executive Order prohibiting the use of Hate Speech such as “Daddy is stink face poo brain,” and, “ Daddy is stink face poo face!”
7. Executive Order consolidating withdrawal from The Chore List Accord, as it was a rotten deal for Mike who was always stuck with picking up all the toys AND doing all the dishes AND taking out the garbage, in spite of how tired his allergies make him. Hugely unfair!!
8. Executive Order creating a Comprehensive Plan for Reorganization of the front closet.
9. Executive Order establishing that I will no longer wear my “A-game shirt” with the basketball players on it beyond the house perimeter, as the un-ironic attention I receive from other women threatens my wife.
10. Executive Order imposing economic sanctions on The Red Lobster after that crappy “Admiral’s Feast,” dinner I ordered on Father’s Day.

    

Make Mike Great Again!

Each person sitting there was alone, each one with an empty seat on either side of them. They had arranged themselves in such a way as to suggest that human contact, or even just the proximity of another person, was a potential catastrophe, and that they might shatter into a million pieces if a stranger’s eyes, voice or touch happened to fall upon them. And so they all sat there– the respectful, fearful space between them somehow more visible than not– and across from them was a wall-mounted TV broadcasting the news of the day, but nobody was watching. Instead, people were looking down, focused on the phones in their hands and the transportive, less mortal moments it provided.

To what worlds, be they small or large or imaginary, were they journeying?

To whom were they returning?

And then I was called forth to have my test done. Stripped to the waist, I lay on a cot while the technician began an ultrasound of my heart. Music, as if from across a body of water, played faint and mysterious in the background. My eyes closed, I lay there just as still as a prayer. She spoke softly, when she spoke, and her touch was so very tender, so holy. The test proved a little bit challenging, and our ams and torsos were entangled like it was a game of Twister so that we could feel one another’s body rise and fall with each breath. It was so very intimate and so very lonely, and in that strange intersection I wanted her to put down her instruments and just hold me. I wanted her to tell me that Yes, everything was going to be okay, and to see the truth of this in her warm, unblinking eyes, and thus blessed, be released into the beautiful life from which I came. 

and he just won the race to become the Ontario leader of the Progressive Conservative party after a controversial election. This is his acceptance speech:

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

Thank you, thank you!

Thanks.

Hey, let’s give it up for The Dream Police, the best goddamn Cheap Trick tribute band in the entire GTA!!

Okay, okay, I know you’re all excited, but let’s bring it down a bit.

Now.

We can bring it down NOW.

I SAID BE QUIET DAMMIT

I MEAN IT

YOU DO NOT EVEN KNOW HOW MUCH I MEAN IT

Ok, that’s better.

Well my friends, thank you for coming this evening.

Tonight we took the first step in defeating our opposition. The people of Ontario want the crappy Ontario Liberals cleansed from government, and I am more than happy to be the man to deliver that enema!

JESUS H CHRIST YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME

ARE YOU CHEWING GUM

YES, YOU IN THE FRONT ROW

YOU KNOW DAMN WELL I’M TALKING TO YOU

DO YOU SEE ANYBODY ELSE CHEWING GUM

SWEET CAROLINE DONT MAKE ME COME DOWN THERE BECAUSE I WILL AND I WILL TEAR THAT GUM OUT OF YOUR MOUTH LIKE IT WAS A TONGUE FROM AN ALBANIAN PIG…

Okay.

As I was saying, I want to thank my beautiful wife Karla, my girls, my whole family, and my brother, Rob upstairs. He was incredible. He sacrificed so much for the little man.

Rob, my brother, you always stood by me, you were my rock. I wouldn’t be standing here without your support. And to my incredible team, you were absolutely amazing, your dedication to our cause made this possible. The hard-working people of Ontario, I am truly humbled, very humbled, by your support. You are the ones who kept me going, you are the reason I am here.

We have a lot of work to do before the next campaign. We have a lot to do in a very short amount of time. But I promise you this. I will get our party back on track. We will put a platform forward that speaks to every Ontarian. Together we will return our province to where it belongs. We will make Ontario the leader of jobs and growth in Canada. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: Ontario will be open for business.

Nine to five.

Every single day of the week except Sunday.

Just like our family business Deco Labels and Tags.

We were always ready to serve the public. Always.

Does that sound like white privilege to you?

I didn’t think so.

YOU BETTER BE FUCKING KIDDING ME

AGAIN WITH THE GUM

IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU

DO YOU HAVE A MEDICAL CONDITION WHERE YOU HAVE TO CHEW GUM LIKE A MORON WHENEVER A MAN OF THE PEOPLE IS MAKING A SPEECH

HAVE YOU BEEN ON OPRAH TO TALK ABOUT YOUR CONDITION YET

HOW ITS IMPACTED YOUR LIFE

BUDDY I AM ABOUT TO IMPACT YOUR LIFE LIKE A GODDAMN METEOR

Yeah, that’s better, you just put that gum away.

Snowflake.

Friends, it’s been an awfully long night and I will have more to say about how we’re going to punch the Liberals in the gut in coming days, but for now we have to clear the hall for an Ayahuasca For Seniors Ceremony that’s supposed to be coming in and starting up at 5:00, so if everybody could just make their way, in an orderly fashion, to the exits…

Let’s not keep our seniors waiting.

We’re not doing some social science study here, we’re getting things done.

MOTHER AYAHUASCA WAITS FOR NO MAN OR WOMAN!!!

EVERYBODY OUT, GODDAMIT!!!

What stunned my class most about the book was the casual attitude the characters had toward slavery. I mean, how could they not know that slavery was an evil? Nothing could have been more clear to us, nothing. Slavery was pretty much the most evil thing we could think of, and it was mind-blowing to imagine that this wasn’t vividly reflected in the experience of our ancestors.

And so we figured that people back then must have been hateful and stupid monsters, willfully acting in their own best interests at the cost of others. And so we judged everybody in the book, imagining ourselves morally superior to the louts, trolls and insane people who populated the past.

But this didn’t make any sense.

There was absolutely no reason for me to think I had a more finely developed sense of morality than anybody who came before me. There must have been some decent people who participated in slavery and had no idea that what they were doing was wrong, no? They were simply living in the world into which they were born, and to them slavery, like the weather or landscape, was an unexamined fact of life rather than a conscious act of moral will.

This seemed clear to me. I was not unique. I was like everybody else, and that, of course, is a very scary thing to admit to oneself.

Technology has accelerated and amplified our culture in ways that are inconceivable.  Every year it seems that the world has changed more than in all the previous millennia stacked before it. It’s dislocating, and I often think of technology, in particular our online lives, as an emergent dimension we don’t yet understand or know how to interact with. Whenever we’re uncomfortable or bored with our physical lives, however briefly, a smart phone serves as a magic wand we can wave to take us to this other realm, and put in that context, none of us should be surprised to find discontent, even anger there.

Our desire for social justice has far outstripped our ability to deliver it, and in many ways I see ideological conflicts as dimensional clashes rather than moral ones. By the standards of today, so much of what we as a society did just ten years ago seems appalling, but as we judge it’s worth remembering that ten years ago we had no idea what we were doing was wrong or unfair. We were just operating within the framework of time and place. So how then to police this if every generation, indeed, every person, is going to be witlessly complicit in ghastly acts ?

Of course, revolution is not about justice, it’s about change.

And as the future and the past battle for supremacy in a ruined present, it seems that the only way it can end, the only way it has always ended, is like in a Shakespearean tragedy—everybody on stage dies, and then, the world purified and laid bare, is seized by those, now done with watching, who had been waiting in the wings.

Well, the other day my mother actually received this letter from Margaret Atwood:

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

December, 6th, 2017

bärb/

noun

noun: barb; plural noun: barbs

1. 1. a sharp projection near the end of an arrow, fishhook, or similar item, angled away from themain point so as to make extraction difficult.

                  2. a cluster of spikes on barbed wire.

                  3. a deliberately hurtful remark.

Dear Barb:

Please forgive me for being so informal as to use your first name. I can see that you’re not just appropriately (refer to above prolegomenon) named, but that the Murray line carries very excitable genes, and I certainly don’t want to offend you or any of the other members in your easily inflamed tribe.

Let me first thank you for your apology concerning the alarming behaviour of your 50-something son, and the thoughtful inclusion of hand sanitizer with your letter. You are right, hand sanitizer does make for a nice, affordable stocking stuffer. Thank Heavens for Shoppers Optimum points, eh, Barb?

It’s interesting to note that the word “barb” is derived from Latin and Old French words for “beard.” The patriarchy has a deep reach, Mrs. Murray, a very deep reach. For instance, I wonder why your fully grown, almost elderly son, does not feel the need to apologize for himself to a respected woman he’s been publicly berating? Why would his mother have to do it?

Could it be that Michael, an archetypically mediocre white man,

was born into a world that was made for him, a world where women existed as bit players present only to serve his narrative? And then, with all competition smothered, with the entire force of a white, phallocentric history pushing him forward, Michael, armed with every conceivable advantage, became the author of one very unsuccessful vanity-published book.

That’s what he did.

He did not become an astronaut, he became a fantasy baseball enthusiast. And as he ascended to the status of fantasy baseball enthusiast and nothing else, he fully believed that all his “achievements” were due to his unique genius, and all failures a conspiracy of invisible, unknowable enemies.

Does that sound about right?

But it’s not your fault, Barb. It’s the world we were born into, and if you want to learn more about why your son is an asshole, you should tune in to Bravo on April 30th to watch the award-winning, crisply produced recreation of my uncannily predictive dystopian novel, A Handmaid’s Tale. It stars Elisabeth Moss, whom you might have seen on the cover of some of the magazines you buy at the mall.

Margaret Atwood

PS: Von all den Kreaturen, die auf der Erde atmen und sich bewegen, wird nichts gezüchtet, das schwächer ist als der Mensch.

All the same, family members told her that I had been writing about my feud with Atwood ( http://michaelmurray.ca/atwood-condo-tweet-fight#more-6562 ), and that some of the things I had been saying about her weren’t very kind. My mother was very, very disappointed in me and demanded that I write her an apology. We got in a huge fight about this, of course, and since I refused to do what she wanted, she went ahead and wrote Margaret Atwood a letter herself:

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

Dear Ms. Atwood,

Hi, how are you?

I am fine, although I have to say that the weather in Ottawa has been very unpredictable! One day it’s hot as the blazes and the next it’s so cold Frito won’t even go outside!

Just last week ( in late September) it was far too hot to shampoo the carpet, so I called up Bea and asked her if she wanted to go to the Second Cup for a coffee. She said Ok, but first she had to finish watching her show, and so I waited, and then once we got there Bea insisted on sitting out on the patio. I have no idea why she wanted to sit there. It was so humid it was like being in a sauna! It’s no wonder she felt faint, she’s lucky she didn’t have another heart attack!

Anyway, I hope that the weather is better in Toronto than it is here.

It has come to my attention that my son, Michael Murray, has been saying some mean things to you on the computer. That’s not nice at all. Just cheap. It’s elder abuse, is what it is, and he’ll find out exactly how that feels when he’s older. He’ll get his, he will, and then he’ll be sorry. Let me assure you he was definitely not raised to be so cheeky and disrespectful, and the ENTIRE Murray family is very sorry for the way he has behaved toward you. It’s shameful, and although no one likes to say it, the truth is that he’s never been the same since the bee sting. It changed him, even if the doctors said it didn’t. A mother knows.

By the way, congratulations on winning an Emma for The Handmaid’s Veil! Such a fancy event! It must have been nice to have all those lovely starts applauding the great work you’ve done! Did you see Hugh Jackman? Such a handsome, classy man!

Yours sincerely,

Barb Murray

PS: Just awful about Las Vegas! I don’t know what’s gotten into people!

PPS: I have inclosed some hand sanitizer (There is a special on at Shopper’s Drug Mart) as you can never be too careful during flu season!!