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!!
]]>As many of you likely remember, Rob Ford, the late Mayor of Toronto, and I were enrolled at Carleton University in Ottawa at the same time back in the 1980’s.
We became drinking buddies then, and I got to know his family a little bit and have found myself in the entirely surprising position as being in a Book Club with Doug Ford, his older, angrier, more politically conservative brother, who was just elected Premier of Ontario.
Here is a partial transcript of the meeting of our last Book Club:
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Doug Ford: Okay, okay, quieten down.
Lucy: Oh, I just watched the movie and it was SO scary.
Me: Was it the original or the remake?
Doug Ford: Jesus and goddamn, put a sock in it!
Me: Sorry.
Doug Ford: I’ll make you sorry Murray. You and I, shot put field after this. No excuses, and for Christ’s sake, use a coaster! This isn’t some chicken shack, here!
Lucy: I would love it if this was a chicken shack.
Doug Ford: Goddamn Lucy, you are on warning!
And if there is one more interruption from either of you, Sweet Jesus, you don’t even want to know. Just try me. ( Several seconds pass) Yeah, you just try me. Okay, that’s what I thought.
Okay then. The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson.
Story of a businessman who saw a really, really sweet real estate deal. He takes advantage and moves his family into this great house and it turns out it’s haunted and everybody gets scared and they run away from the best investment they ever made. But why the haunting, what does that symbolize?
Lucy: It’s the story of Colonialsm. The house was built on an ancient Indian burial ground, and some white settlers arrived and did not honour this, so the haunting is symbolic of the suffering and fury and pain of our first peoples whom we’ve commodified and marginalized.
Doug Ford: I think I’m going puke.
I’ve never heard something so stupid in my entire life.
The ghosts are big government regulations that drove the businessman crazy. He made a good investment. Was doing some renos. Providing jobs for his community. But every time he goes to do something, say make a panic room or dungeon chamber, there’s some inspector pecking, pecking, pecking at him. Everywhere he turns: regulations, taxation, bureaucracy, protests, special interests. Even when he’s trying to have relations with his lady, regulations show up in the form of some spirit!
It’s exhausting. And you think it’s the ghosts who are the victims?? You got a screw loose, Lucy, a goddamn screw loose. The businessman is the victim here, harassed by the state to the point of madness, it’s a miracle that he was strong enough not to go on a mass killing spree!
Me: So you’re saying this book is a cautionary tale against big government?
Doug Ford: Slow clap for Einstein here. Yes, dammit, of course the book is a cautionary tale against government interference, and it’s as plain as this expensive gold chain around my neck.
And if you can’t see that, well, there’s nothing that can be done, you might as well move to Russia, comrade.
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Atwood: You must know how much it pains me to do this, but after the most recent injuries to both Elvis Andrus AND Corey Seager ( si non fortuna velim fortuna omnino! ) I have found that my team, The Bad Feminists, is in need of some help at shortstop. Thusly compromised, I have no alternative but to attempt to discuss the possibility of a trade with you.
Me: You know, I really don’t have a clue how much it pains you to open a chat window with me. Please describe.
Atwood: It feels as if am a lone tree burning on the desert.
Me: A really ancient, worn out and desiccated tree? One that’s been completely abandoned by all the other trees that used to respect her but now subtweet her because they think her work is over-rated and old fashioned? A tree that just decided to go ahead and set herself on fire because let’s be honest, nobody was even going to notice?
Atwood: No, not that tree.
Me: Sounds like that tree.
Atwood: Your ability to evaluate the world around you is very poor. It’s why your team always finishes at the bottom of the league and you’re in a constant, emasculating state of rebuilding. It’s your cycle of pointlessness, part of what feeds your rage.
Me: I can’t remember– maybe because you look so much alike– but was it you who won the Nobel prize for literature or that singer Bob Dylan?
He might have come along after your time, so here’s a little video of him to ensure you have a clear, very clear picture, of the great literary talent who bested you for the Nobel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJymBJ_5iUg
Atwood: I am interested in acquiring New York Mets infielder Asdrubel Cabrera from you, and as you obviously have no chance of winning this year, I’ll give you a couple of promising, young players who you can use next year in exchange for him.
Me: No.
Atwood: Without even hearing who those players are?
Me: I’m not out of contention yet.
Atwood: Yes you are. You’ve never been in contention.
Me: I WON’T BE BULLIED!!!
Atwood: Is that what’s been happening to you? You’ve been bullied into failure again and again and again? That daily video chat with your mother each morning, it’s not really helping you organize your life and establish your own goals, is it? No? Well ask yourself, is it your mother refusing to trade me Cabrera, or is it you, Michael?
Me: Look, I’ll give you Joe Panik for Jake Baurers and Nick Williams.
Atwood: NO! As the great Aeschylus said, “ I have learned to hate all traitors, and there is no disease that I spit on more than treachery!” You are a cheat, a blackguard! Panik just had thumb surgery and is out for the next two months! He’s worthless to me! Cabrera for Bauers and Williams, that’s it. Take it or leave it!!
Me: Can you arrange for me to meet Elisabeth Moss?
Atwood: I refuse to pimp out the wonderful actress from the award winning TV show, based on my award winning book, The Handmaid’s Tale, to you!
Me: You will if you want Asdrubel Cabrera in your lineup.
Atwood: You wouldn’t be allowed to make eye contact with her or touch her, you know.
Me: Jesus, of course I know that!
Atwood: I will think on the matter. You are dismissed.
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