However, it is now 2019 and many feel that these binary designations are insufficient, excluding those who don’t identify as either male or female. Further, the ethnic composition of the list of pre-selected names has been almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon, and so under pressure, the World Meteorological Organization has begun to diversify the pool from which they had been selecting Hurricane names.
Unfortunately, this has proven controversial, especially after Hurricane Abd al Qadir seriously damaged parts of the US east coast back in 2018. It quickly became apparent that diverse representation, at least when it came to destructive forces of nature, was not a great idea. Regardless of what was done, people were bound to feel insulted, either by inclusion or exclusion, and so naming rights are now being sold for all upcoming hurricanes. The funds used to purchase the rights to the hurricane will be used to reconstruct communities damaged by the storms, and for green initiatives. So far, the next dozen hurricanes have been purchased and branded, and here is the list:
1) Hurricane Trump!
2) Hurricane The Failing New York Times!
3) Hurricane The Fast and the Furious: Hobbs & Shaw, Opening Soon!
4) Hurricane Exxon, Security You Can Trust
5) Hurricane Vote For Joe Biden Despite the Gaffes
6) Hurricane of Apologies From the Canadian Government for our Many Failures
7) Hurricane Gaga
8) Hurricane The Super-Yacht Community Feels Your Pain
9) Hurricane Please Donate to Chron’s and Colitis: The pain is Real
10) Hurricane Pizza Hut Two for One Special!
11) Hurricane China National Petroleum Company Always A Good Neighbour
12) Hurricane China Loves to Help
If you cross the borders and enter into this swamp-nation, you will instantly be transformed into a pitiless ideological zombie. You will be shouting at everything. You will be angry, sunrise to sunset, and then into the night. Even under your blankets and the ominous, blue glow of your phone, you will still be furious, your brain in terrible flames. Twitter knows this and is now trying to encourage civil behaviour, both by cancelling offensive accounts, and nominating “well-behaved” people for “Sainthood.” Sainthood is nothing more than a halo emoji that appears beside your name, but Twitter is hopeful it might catch on and help put out the still burning swamp fire. Here are a few of the people who recently received a halo emoji:
Saint Bobby D of Oshawa
“Somebody had posted a photo of a guy sitting on the subway with his legs slightly apart under the heading, ‘THIS IS AGRESSIVE MANSPREADING!!! SO SICK OF TOXIC MASCULINE ENTITLEMENT!!!!” I was going to point out that the author had spelled aggressive wrong, but she already seemed pretty worked up so I decided not to contribute to the anger storm.”
Saint Heather of Trent
“ I came across a headline on Twitter that said, “Trump’s limo driver of 25 years confirms the President has always been an asshole.” I was just about to Retweeet it when it occurred to me that I should probably read the article before propelling it further into the world, and so I just let it go.
Saint Brad of Midland
“I had been hearing a lot about the Syrian Civil War and the truth is that I really didn’t know much about it. To be honest, I had never even heard of Aleppo, thinking it was the name of a Finnish hockey coach, not a besieged city, and so I read a Vox Explainer about the situation and consequently felt pretty confident of my understanding of the complex predicament. I was about to engage in a robust argument about what was best for Syria and Syrians in general, when it struck me that I had never been to Syria. I had never read any Syrian press. I didn’t speak Arabic. I didn’t even know any Syrians. And geez, I couldn’t even work the new remote we got with our subscription to Crave TV, so it dawned on me that maybe I wasn’t the guy to solve “the Syrian problem,” and I just kept my opinion to myself.
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.
]]>Public shaming of members of President Trump’s administration has become the latest act of resistance against the government. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant, Environmental Protection Agency Chief Scott Pruitt was lectured and videotaped while dining out, Kellyanne Conway, a consultant to Trump, was mocked in a grocery store, and most recently Stephen Miller, a particularly loathsome advisor to Trump, threw out $80 worth of sushi after the bartender followed him outside of the restaurant and told him to go fuck himself.
Here, in their own words, are other Trump officials relating their stories of being heckled in public:
************************************************************************
Mira Ricardel, Deputy National Security Advisor:
“ I was called a ‘Shit Donkey’ by some tall woman when I went to see Ocean’s 8 at the Cineplex. It completely ruined the movie for me. This is not the America I know.”
Kevin McAleenan, Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection:
“ I had just finished collecting the quarters from the washer and dryers at one of my rental properties and was walking back to my car when I felt a little sting on the back of my neck. When I turned around I saw that some old man sitting on a stoop had just spit a sunflower shell on my neck. He then fired another, and that one hit me in the leg, and as I reached for my taser he called me “a traitor to my nation and to humanity,” before twitching out.
Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce:
“ The woman working on my feet during my morning sports pedicure was extremely rough, almost violent while exfoliating my heels. And make no mistake, it was intentional. I can tell. And when I admonished her and told her how lucky she was to be living in America, she said something under her breath in a foreign language. I called the manager and had her fired, but it’s getting intolerable, this lack of civility.”
Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education:
“ I was at the Illuminati sex party in Novgorod and right after the sacrifice, a man wearing a goat’s head refused to have sex with me saying, “Children in cages aren’t my thing, you Trump skank.” I had my mask on so I don’t even know how he knew who I was. Jesus, I don’t even want to think about what they’re saying about me at Martha’s Vineyard!”
Peter O’Rourke, Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs:
“ I was at a Bryan Adams concert with a few of my paintball buddies and while I was out on the floor enjoying the show I saw that they put my picture on the giant screen with the words, EVIL TRUMP FLUNKY across it. Not cool, Bryan, not cool.”
]]>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.
*****************************************
Me: No, I haven’t heard back from Nancy.
Me: Well, I can’t think of any reason why she wouldn’t want to do it. It’s an awesome idea!
Me: She owns a cheese shop, so me setting up a grilled cheese booth in there is a no-brainer!
Me: It’s win/win, baby!
Me: Well, I thought I’d pick up one of those Instant Pot things and cook them in there.
Me: Oh.
Me: Really?
Me: The Instant Pot can’t make grilled cheese sandwiches?
Me: Why isn’t that on their advertising?
Me: Well, that sucks.
Me: Thought it could do practically everything.
Me: Yeah, I guess I did kind of imagine it like a robot.
Me: No, not like that.
Me: A benevolent robot, one that serves man, AND is capable of making a grilled cheese sandwich.
Me: Well, if it can’t make a damn sandwich, why the hell was it named Time Magazine’s Person of the year??
Me: Oh, I thought it was.
Me: The Silence Breakers were?
Me: I don’t know who they are.
Me: Oh.
Me: Yes, they are very brave women. #TimesUp
Me: I am an ally.
Me: Look, we’ve been through this before.
Me: Feminism is many things, many voices–and my collection of vintage Raquel Welch memorabilia doesn’t make me a “Bad Feminist.”
Me: It makes me an ally.
Me: No, not a creep, an ally.
Me: Well, let me tell you, I’d be delighted if she exploited me back.
Me: I really would.
Me: Oh, don’t act so innocent!
Me: You know you want to be exploited by Colin Farrell.
Me: I saw how many times you watched that Miami Vice movie, and I saw the way your eyes got all weird and intense whenever that greasy Crockett came on screen!
Me: I can’t believe you just wrote that!
Me: You’ve stopped going to your low carb support group, haven’t you?
Me: You were very high in agreeability when you were eating carbs.
Me: Now, not so much.
Me: The Rachelle Maynard I know (and love!) would never have said something like that to me if she was properly managing her carb withdrawal.
Me: Yes.
Me: Yes.
Me: I can see that now.
Me: I am sorry.
Me: I love you way more than I could ever love Raquel Welch.
Me: If I had a poster of you, I’d put it up over the fireplace. I’d wallpaper the entire apartment in you if I could!
Me: No, not like a serial killer.
Me: Like I’m your Crockett and you’re my Tubbs.
Me: We mustn’t let Trump divide us, my love.
Me: It’s what he wants.
]]>
Dear Santa:
I hope you enjoy your protein shake for your long journey.
I would like to know what it’s like to be Santa Claus.
- Is it fun to fly?
- Do you like being in charge of your elves?
- Do you like delivering presents to children?
- What’s your favourite hobby?
- What do you do over the weekend?
- Do you ever think of moving to a sunny place?
- Do you go on vacation?
- What’s your birthday?
- Do you deliver presents to pets?
- Do you have a pet?
Love,
Talullah from LA
Dear Talullah:
You should know that Santa is very grateful to you for leaving him a protein shake. You are a very sweet girl. Unfortunately, Santa is very lactose intolerant and suffers acute gastric distress whenever he has a protein shake, so he had to give it to Dasher, his lead reindeer, who is a bit of a hippy and really very experimental in his tastes. Last year Dasher tried Ayahuasca– saw serpents and had diarrhea for two days.
Santa isn’t sure how that “blessed” him with “spiritual advancement,” but whatever.
Santa will now try to answer all your questions!
- It is NOT fun to fly. It is VERY dangerous, especially with all the drones terrorizing the skies! Santa is only able to do it if he gets gassed up and takes his medication: 3mg of Ativan and a magic gummy.
- Santa is not in charge of the elves! Santa and the elves work as a team, functioning as a single unit without any hierarchy! Also, the elves are very well compensated for the work they do and the netting that surround Santa’s toy factory are NOT suicide nets like those at all the Apple factories in China! Also, any rumours you heard about elf slavery or elf sex slavery are not true! That’s fake news!
- Santa has had worse jobs. Working at a poultry farm, for instance.
- For hobbies Santa really enjoys Cosplay, voyeurism and experimenting with surveillance equipment.
- On the weekends Santa usually just chills and watches Netflix with the wife. Highly recommends Mindhunter.
- It is amazing to Santa how ill-informed people are! Little girls like you, Talullah, just live in little electronic silos, never learning anything you don’t already believe! Let Santa assure you, there is plenty of sun in the North Pole!
- We have been to Mar-a-Lago a number of times. Just the best. Saw Melania changing into her bikini once. Not bad at all.
- Santa will only tell you that he is a Leo with Pisces ascendent.
- No. Santa would throw-up if he ever even saw a chicken again.
- Several elves and a turtle.
Donald J Trump: I am honoured to announce that Jose Canseco will now be serving as the US ambassador to Pakistan.
Donald J Trump: Jose Canseco, great guy and helluva ballplayer. Got to know him well on Celebrity Apprentice. Made great pizza under pressure. Only used the highest quality ingredients. Shouted out the orders clearly.
Donald J Trump: Didn’t always like the way he looked at Ivanka, but what can you do? He’s a man. I’m her father, and I still look. What curves. She’s a 10.
Donald J Trump: Jose has slept with countless women. Quality, deluxe women.
Donald J Trump: But not Ivanka.
Donald J Trump: Pakistania, lock up your ladies!
Donald J Trump: Very proud to announce that still hot ex-supermodel Nicki Taylor is the new US Ambassador to Russia.
Donald J Trump: Way she handled Gary Busey on Celebrity Apprentice made it clear to me that she can handle whatever you throw at her.
Donald J Trump: You can thank me later, Russia.
Donald J Trump: I am honoured to announce that the great WWE superstar star Goldberg, will now be the US Ambassador to the Jews.
Donald J Trump: Pure winner. Went 173 matches without a single loss. Commanding presence on Celebrity Apprentice. Can lift a helicopter over his head.
Donald J Trump: Should really turn things around for the Jews– bring our people closer together after all Hillary did to tear us apart.
Donald J Trump: Palestinia, you better watch your step.
Donald J Trump: Proud to announce that the beautiful Kaitlyn Schoeffel, Miss New Jersey 2017, will be the new US Ambassador to casinos all around the world.
Donald J Trump: Real firecracker.
Donald J Trump: Kaitlyn isn’t just another hot lady in a bathing suit, but is also an incredible dancer with great, American values and manners.
Donald J Trump: Beauty Pageant questions are tough. No way to prepare. HUGE challenge for ordinary people.
Donald J Trump: But not Kaitlyn, knocked the question about confederate statues out of the park! Just wow.
Donald J Trump: Real team player. Never hear about a sexual harassment suit from her. Class act, class ass. Perfect for the casino community.
This is a newsletter posted to the Super Yacht Community message board after the demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia :
*****************************************
Recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia have shaken not just the USA, but the global community, too, including those of us who belong to The Super-Yacht Community.
Many of our members have been rattled by the proletariat uprisings in the US and across Europe, and have been wondering whether or not being a white supremacist is really grounds for termination.
First off, everybody should just stay calm and keep in mind that the vast majority of the people in the Super-Yacht Community are job creators, not job leaches (consumers), and so we really don’t have to worry about getting fired.
If you don’t have a job at let’s say, The Bulk Barn, then Black Lives Matters can’t take it away from you for wanting to protect history, can they?
Regardless, The Super-Yacht Community has never been an insensitive or selfish group, and we’re well aware that many of the people who help to sustain us ( Ferrari repairmen, avocado specialists, bikini makers, personal assistants, personal physicians, personal nutritionists, mindfulness coaches, topiarists, helicopter pilots, addiction specialists, nannies, hunting guides and taxidermists, high-end sex workers, off-shore bankers, professional sports teams, etc.), are still vulnerable to loss of employment and social standing due to unfashionable political beliefs.
For instance, supermodel and beloved Super-Yacht Community member Tanya Mityushina has a brother named Dimitri.
(Dimitri is the one on the far right holding the “Nog Ar Nog) shield.
He worked as a DJ at a nightclub in Miami called Waves of Fire. Here, Dimitri enjoyed multiple revenue streams and unprecedented sexual opportunities. This young man was going places, but unfortunately his image was caught on camera while he was exercising his freedom of speech at a demonstration in Virginia and this (as well as his spirited thoughts on eugenics) resulted in in his termination.
In order to combat this lynching, we at the Super-Yacht Community have decided to start a Go Fund Me for Dimitri so that he might buy his own nightclub. It is to be tentatively called Tsunami Inferno, and it will be twice as large as Waves of Fire. We are looking at a target of $25 million to help Tanya’s brother get back up on his feet, so if any of you have an spare properties lying around downtown Miami, please feel free to donate!
On a melancholy note, we within the Super-Yacht Community (no longer officially affiliated with the Illuminati) and are deeply saddened that we recently lost one of our own. Glen Campbell was a great member of our community and a transcendent talent who truly made the world a better place. He will be missed.
Pace et requiem est, Rhinestone Cowboy.
And finally, please remember, if America burns there will be plenty of economic opportunity for our community.
Nisi eliphaz,
The SYC
PS: Also, keep in mind that everybody is welcome aboard Bono’s Super-Yacht “Kingdom Come” for a barbecue next week in Fiji. And yes, Ivanka will be there, so be prepared for a little larger press and military presence than usual.
And so I did.
The place, stripped to a skeleton staff and now loosely populated by the permanent residents– most of whom were confined to wheelchairs of varying complication– was pretty empty. The days, now shapeless and free of plot, offered little and so I wandered hallway after hallway. Seeming more memory than music, the theme song to MASH drifted from one room I passed,
while another was antiseptic and empty but for Trump/Pence banners taped defiantly to the wall, and then through a doorway, I caught a glimpse of a nurse changing a patient’s tracheotomy tube– so intimate and tender as to be virtually erotic. Downstairs, scattered like islands, I came upon people who sat anchored and voiceless in wheelchairs, each one stationed near a window, watching.
There was a church service later in the morning that took place in the same space that hosted Bingo, Pub Night and all our other events. It was Catholic, which occasioned a few religious props being removed from a box and placed on a cafeteria table, and somehow this act was achingly beautiful.
A strong, elderly woman dressed all in black walked in, made the sign of the cross, and then nodded warmly to all who made eye contact. She went directly to a middle-aged woman who was frozen and strapped into a wheelchair, and touched her with a tenderness that exceeded language. Gently, she pulled a favourite sweater over her head, and then smiling, began to brush her hair—a mother’s imperishable, radiant love, holier than a saint.
An impossibly old woman was reclined, almost prone, in a wheelchair. Blankets and knitted things covered virtually every inch of her body, and her skin was so very thin, her body so frail, that it seemed as if a soft gust might be enough to push her through the veil. A couple of hospital staff tended to her, telling her that her brother would be there any moment now. Her eyes flickered open at his mention, and as if surfacing through water she said, “Oh, I hope so,” and then she fell back down and in to sleep.
Ten minutes later a tall, elderly man, clearly ill himself, entered and sat stoically beside her. With a bible open on his lap he mumble-prayed along with the priest. He never touched her, nor did he say anything to her while she slept through the service, but it was clear that he was her brother. He was her tie to this world, the one now disintegrating around her into a living mist. Drifting in and out, all of time swirling around her, what version of her brother might she have hoped to summon, what memory returning in dream, what ghost to see her home?
