In it, I am wearing a costume that is clearly racist and offensive.

This picture was taken from a Christmas Assembly at Lisgar Collegiate in Ottawa, Ontario, and I was performing a rap as an “urban Santa.” Although I was not in black face as some have asserted, my family and I had just returned from a vacation in Hawaii and I had a very uncharacteristic tan. I am deeply apologetic for that triggering tan, the privilege that implies, and for my blatant cultural appropriation.

It is also true that I wrote, “I HAVE ALWAYS HAD A CRAZY CRUSH ON YOU!! in Marie-Therese Vitzhum’s yearbook in 1983. I am deeply embarrassed by my insensitivity to my brothers and sisters who struggle with mental illness. After finishing in the bottom third of the standings in a fantasy hockey league two years ago, I, too, fell into a depression, so I need you to know you have an ally in Michael Murray, not an enemy.

I love you.
I hear you.
And I am listening.

These past behaviours of mine are not in keeping with who I am today or the values I have fought for throughout my career as Commissioner of the Dirty Pigeon Fantasy Hockey League. I want to offer my sincerest apology, and to state my absolute commitment to living up to the expectations the Dirty Pigeon Fantasy Hockey Community set for me when you elected me Commissioner. I understand why your faith in me has been shaken, and I recognize that it will take time and serious effort to heal the damage this conduct has caused.

I am ready to do that important work.

Humbled and grateful for this teachable moment.

Your fantasy hockey Commissioner,

Michael Murray

This is a newsletter posted to the Super Yacht Community message board after the demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia :

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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.

Two years or more, probably.

Stepping out of the car at the Port Stanley beach, I was hit by the smell of deep friers and sunscreen. Beachgoers played volleyball or tried to bronze themselves for the perfection that the cities they lived-in demanded, and children, like radiant beasts, played– their happiness a wildfire burning along the surf. Overhead the gulls flew, their shadows rippling along the sand, a kind of double life,

and then, looking forward, there was Lake Erie stretching out as far as you could see until it became sky.

Like the pilgrim I was, I walked down to the water. Standing up to my knees, an oxygen tank slung over my shoulder, I closed my eyes and held out my arms, waiting for something to wash through me and lift all the scars, bruises and fears of the last couple of years free from my body.

It seemed like a perfunctory, symbolic act rather than a felt one though, and I trudged back to our towels feeling a little disappointed. As I looked around I noticed a blind woman sitting nearby. Pale, thin and out of fashion, she looked like she had been confined to an indoor life of illness and uncertainty, and that this, this outing was a step outside of the protected, comfort zone she typically inhabited. But she did not look happy. She sat in a rigid, defensive posture, her face turned away from things, her fingers worrying some rosary beads she kept clutched in her hands.

I wondered if she was praying.

I wondered if I, too, had been praying when I stood in the water.

An older woman who must have been her mother sat next to her. She looked quietly off at the lake. And so the two of them stared off at separate horizons, the silence between them hanging there like a shared, unspoken disappointment.

After about fifteen minutes had passed they got up to leave. As delicate as a geisha, the blind girl slipped her feet into the sandals her mother had bought for her, and quietly taking her arm, began the journey toward the parking lot, never a word uttered between them.

As she moved from the hot sun and shifting sand of the beach to the level cement and cooling shade under a restaurant’s awning, she would not have seen the elderly and infirm arrayed there. Sitting silently in wheelchairs, each one with an attendant behind them, they all stared off toward the water. Bodies twisted and agonized, mouths hanging open and useless, it was as if they were waiting for a blessing or miracle. And the blind girl, so quietly it felt like she could have been floating, passed through them in her darkness like a saint through flame. It felt at that moment that a message was being delivered, and that everybody there that day, summoned by something just beyond the water, were gathered to receive it, but try as we might, it would elude our mortal grasp.