A true family leader.
As such, I often find it necessary to call family meetings so that my wife Rachelle, and our nearly three year-old son, Jones, can discuss important issues as they arise. These are the minutes from a recent meeting:
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Michael: Okay, Meeting #36 is now in order. On Friday we’ve been invited to Claire’s for dinner. However, it’s not a simple matter. There are options, so please listen carefully. We can go in the afternoon, with Jones, and have a swim then an early dinner, getting back in time for Jones’ bedtime, or we can go over later, without Jones, and have an adult meal. Concerns? Preferences? Please speak freely, this is a safe space.
Rachelle: Do you know where the corkscrew is?
Michael: Since when did we start buying wine that needed a corkscrew?
Jones: I WANT TO WATCH THE SCARY SKULLS!!
Michael: Jones, we are having a family meeting right now. You can watch a video later.
Jones: NO!!!
Rachelle: Found it! It was in your desk drawer. Amidst several corks.
Michael: Well, that’s odd.
Rachelle: Not if you’re a secret drinker, it’s not.
Michael: That’s a pretty big glass you’re pouring yourself.
Jones: SCARY SKULLS!! SCARY SKULLS! SCARY SKULLS!!
Michael: No Jones! We’re having a meeting here, and there will be no videos until we’ve come to a decision about dinner on Friday! Also, you get stigmata from watching too many videos. It’s very bad for your eyes, and you want to be able to see everything, just like the Falcon that soars in the sky above, right?
Jones: WANT TO SEE SCARY SKULLS!!
Michael: Sweet Jesus child, okay, okay, okay.
Rachelle: The optometrist said that by feeding him an excessive diet of videos in order to avoid responsible parenting and gain his approval you were putting him at risk for astigmatism, not stigmata. Stigmata is the spontaneous manifestation of marks on the body that correspond to Jesus’ crucifixion wounds,
while astigmatism is an eye problem.
Michael: Are you sure?
Rachelle: Yes.
Michael: Patricia Arquette. She was in a movie called Stigmata, wasn’t she? Now I remember! She was a hot hair dresser in that one.
Rachelle: Yes.
Michael: Remember the bath scene? She was having a bath and then some invisible demon seizes her and she’s trashing about like mad, kicking and flailing her arms, yet somehow, somehow you still don’t see anything? So unrealistic.
Rachelle: Yes, I thought the exact same thing. Stigmata, a movie about a sex bomb with demonic possession, was unrealistic because you never got to see the lead actress entirely naked.
Michael: Okay, let’s get back on track here. We have to figure out how we’re going to approach Friday.
Jones: Can I have strawberries, mommy? I want strawberries.
Rachelle: After dinner, sweetie.
Michael: What is for dinner anyway?
Rachelle: It was your turn to get it.
Michael: Oh. Right. Yeah, I was going to make a special rice and carrot thing in the Instant Pot.
Rachelle: We will all look forward to it, and by the way, I spoke with Claire and we’re going to go over around three, have a swim and a light snack, and then return home in time for Jones’ bedtime at 7:30.
Michael: Oh.
Michael: All in favour?
Michael: Okay, motion passes.
Michael: I think I read somewhere that the Instant Pot was dangerous, like a bomb, so maybe we can have Swiss Chalet instead. They’re offering crispy chicken as a featured item now. The Family Pak comes with pickles and dinner rolls. It’s a pretty solid deal.
]]>It was one of those beautiful summer days, one of the days you wait for, and Jones, like all the children there, was having the time of his life. Running from one attraction to the next, he would fling himself into each discovery with greedy amazement. His joy in his body, and the interaction between it and this emerging world around him, was a visible, glowing thing.
Not far from us was a young boy in a wheelchair. He seemed conspicuously alone as he sat there looking through a mesh screen at all the other children playing inside the Bouncy Castle/Obstacle Course. He was probably around 10, and although he could move his head a little bit, he couldn’t move his arms or legs at all and speech seemed difficult. Sheltered from the sun by the shade cast from the nylon castle, he sat motionless and quiet while all the other children tumbled and spun and screamed.
The Bruno Mars song “Marry You” was playing, and even if you don’t know this song you probably know this song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xdyRsGOl6U
It was a hit about ten years ago, and is the sort of infectious, optimistic pop that’s nearly impossible to resist– a welcome trigger for your body and mood, an instinct to movement, really. It’s happy music and it would have been on every party mix made at the time– the song kids would hear in their heads whenever they thought about the person they had a crush on, the song that would surge through them into adventure and love.
And then there was this boy– a spectator, and it was unbearably sad. I went over and stood beside him, and there I saw his two companions, maybe brothers or friends, both lanky boys of 13 or so. They were rolling and leaping through the castle, and when they spilled-out the exit, all hair, shouts and over-sized feet, they immediately ran over and hugged the boy. Excitedly, they shared every detail.
He was so loved, and it seemed right then that there was no boundary between the three of them.
And then the they pushed him off to the next attraction, speeding him over the bumpy, uneven ground like it was some wild game they played, all of them smiling, all of them beautiful and happy beneath the day.
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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.
]]>As of this writing, I am on day 7 of a 6 week stint at a pulmonary rehabilitation facility.
Last night was an event known as “Coffee House.” It took place in a generic, over-lit cafeteria style room that was made all the more depressing by the tiny gestures of decorative cheer added by the well-intentioned staff.
An inspirational message taped to the wall.
A balloon tied to a folding chair.
Somewhere a Dollar Store streamer that wouldn’t stay in place, hanging limp as if injured.
All of us gathered there were quiet, standing around as awkward and vulnerable as children at a school dance. Those who were most profoundly ill, those for whom recovery was out of reach and who lived permanently in the residence, had been pushed up near a three-piece band that was getting ready to perform. These people sat in complicated, tongue-controlled wheelchairs, and at a casual glance appeared fused into the metal of their containers– their mouths open, faces rigid and untranslatable. The rest of us, those attached to oxygen tanks and those not, just looked lost and a little sad, like we’d long given up hope of being asked to dance. You felt what was missing rather than what was there—and it seemed as if in each breath we exhaled a shallow puff of loss, all then gathering together like a weather system to form a heavy, oppressive cloud that enveloped us.
It was heartbreaking.
The band, a kind of folk outfit that was comprised of a woman who looked like a community organizer on tambourine, a bongo player in a Toronto Blue Jays cap, and an electric keyboardist who tried to project energy by wearing a Hawaiian shirt, began to play. At first the music seemed like it was designed to be little more than sound, just a “something” to help fill the emptiness of the situation, but then the woman began to sing I’ll Fly Away. Her voice was beautiful and true, and everybody in the coffee house fell into it.
When the shadows of this life have gone
I’ll fly away
Like a bird from these prison walls I’ll fly
I’ll fly away
And that voice, that song, it seemed to come out of us, too. And for a few moments we were all living beyond our mortal cages, we were all soaring– everything effortless, everything weightless, everything beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MNM0OO_iVI
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I’ve been lucky and my hard work has paid off, as in addition to my assembly line work I have been put in charge of all social media for The Box Factory. Up until now the Twitter account (@TheBoxFactory) has been used primarily as a way to establish and communicate factory culture to the employees, and while this will still be a part of our social media strategy, I hope to add an edge to our branding that will help take us to the next level.
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TheBoxFactory: BREAKING!!!! MASS SHOOTING AT THE BOX BARN!!!
TheBoxFactory: Witnesses say that boxes are covered in blood!!
TheBoxFactory: Although there are MANY disgruntled employees working at the Box Barn, Terrorism is most likely responsible!
TheBoxFactory: Authorities report that all boxes from the Box Barn are now considered potentially lethal!
TheBoxFactory: BOXES FROM THE BOX BARN CAN KILL YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES!!
TheBoxFactory: As The Box Factory stands against terror, we are now offering a 15% savings on all of our boxes!!
TheBoxFactory: Remember, after the horrors of 9/11 boxes played a vital role in fighting against terrorism!
TheBoxFactory: Boxes, North America’s unsung hero!
TheBoxFactory: Noble Box Factorians, remember to always wash your hands! A clean Box Factory is a happy Box Factory!
TheBoxFactory: To take your mind off the horrors taking place over at the BOX BARN, here’s a vintage Gift Box classic: https://vimeo.com/148932620
TheBoxBarn: @TheBoxFactory There has been no shooting at the Box Barn!! Everything is fine and our boxes are still the best in town!
TheBoxFactory: There goes the “Lyin’ Box Barn” again! Sad.
TheBoxFactory: Blocked.
TheBoxFactory: HACKED EMAIL FROM THE BOX BARN REVEALS IT IS A FRONT FOR A SEX SLAVERY RING!!
TheBoxFactory: 13 YEAR-OLD GIRL SAYS THE BOX BARN FORCED HER TO LIVE IN A SHODDILY MADE BOX AND HAVE SEX WITH OOZY MANAGEMENT!!
TheBoxFactory: Take our fun quiz and answer five easy questions to determine what kind of box you would be!!
TheBoxFactory: MASS SHOOTING NOW REPORTED AT BOX BONANZA! AUTHORITIES BELIEVE IT’S A COORDINATED TERRORIST ATTACK!!!
TheBoxFactory: Remember, The Box Factory is offering up to 15% off selected boxes for all customers effected by terror!!
TheBoxBonanza: @TheBoxFactory There has been no shooting here! You are lying!! You can’t do this!!
TheBoxFactory: Ha! There goes “Crooked Box Bonanza” again! So dishonest!
TheBoxFactory: The “Crooked Box Bonanza” is the real dick in a box!
TheBoxFactory: Love blocking trolls like “Crooked Box Bonanza” and “Lying Box Barn!” Such losers!
TheBoxFactory: The Box Factory condemns terror in all forms! NEVER will one of our boxes be involved in a terror attack!!
TheBoxFactory: The “Freedom Box Factory” only employs “real” North Americans like Billy, and can terminate any of them at a moment’s notice! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKmcs7ygJbs
TheBoxFactory: The “Freedom Box Factory,” making Boxes Great Again!
]]>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aki6xZCo0Fw
At first this incident was attributed to overheating and dehydration, but this was later revised, the cause falling on a mild case of pneumonia. Whether the initial concealment of this was a simple matter of obscurant political reflex, or if the pneumonia is actually a symptom of a more sinister, underlying condition as many are speculating, is unknown. What is known is that illness, be it mild or grave, is not at all uncommon amidst people around 70 who are subject to inconceivable stress and an insane work schedule. Legions of Presidents have suffered aliments, and this is a short list of some of them:
Lyndon B Johnson had the Dropsy.
Martin Van Buren, after being prescribed laudanum for the pain associated with his gout, became an opium addict. This is an excerpt from Van Buren’s diary:
“ …Men of genius move in orbits of their own; and seem deprived of that free will which permits the mere man of talent steadily to pursue the beaten path. Van Buren was made to soar and not to creep. I should much wish, like the Indian Vishna, to float about along an infinite ocean cradled in the flower of the Lotos, & wake once in a million years for a few minutes – just to know that I was going to sleep a million years more.”
George H W Bush suffered from Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome, which is characterized by episodes of severe vomiting that have no apparent cause. Episodes can last for hours or days and alternate with relatively symptom-free periods of time.
Whenever Bush visited Japan, he threw-up almost constantly.
Zachary Taylor suffered from Crop Sickness, a condition that made him unusually cruel to his slaves and eventually killed him.
FDR had Polio and was confined to a wheelchair. The press even colluded with him in attempts to portray him in ways that did not directly associate him with a wheelchair.
Josiah Bartlett suffered from Multiple Sclerosis, but in spite of that is still considered the greatest orator of all the American Presidents.
George W Bush, while on a bombing mission over Hanoi in October 1967, was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. Although Bush was able to charm his way to freedom, his injuries caused him lifelong physical limitations. Art therapy has been a large part of Bush’s continued recovery.
Jimmy Carter was abducted by an alien spacecraft in 1973, thoroughly examined, and then released. He has suffered Night Terrors ever since, and is now obsessed with creating crop circles.
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He made this comment a couple of weeks ago after Kanye had said something Kanyesque about books. This was the quote:
“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed. I am not a fan of books. I am a proud non-reader of books.”
People, primarily white, middle-class people, as far as I could tell, rushed to their social media channels to denounce and mock Kanye yet again, portraying him as an illiterate, entitled child who lacked the intellectual capacity for long-form reading. However, in so doing they completely over-looked the fact that what he said wasn’t stupid at all, and could easily apply to the vast majority of the population.
Novels were once the castles in which everybody wanted to live. To write one was considered the highest artistic and intellectual aspiration, and all that was profound in culture and human experience was transferred– as if by holy passage– through them. Well, that’s simply not the case any more. The world has changed and we consume our culture and entertainment in very different ways than we did 50 years ago.
The experience I used to get reading a novel, I now typically get following specific TV shows. For me, the scope, intellect and cultural penetration offered in shows like Breaking Bad or Transparent (you could name dozens more), and the continued richness of experience and evolution of circumstance they present, simply outstrips what is available in novels. Other people will make similar arguments using graphic novels, Blogs, gaming communities, sports or more traditional forms like cinema, dance or music as examples. (I would also argue that we are much more participatory, almost partnered, in what we consume now and much less the passive receptacles we were in the past.)
Novels, particularly literary novels, have traditionally been written by a very specific group of people, and it’s never been a diverse group. The expression “Dead White Males” might pop to mind here, and although there’s much greater diversity in writing than there ever has been before, it still speaks loudest in the privileged, virtually aristocratic fields of MFA’s.
Naturally then, the experience of reading novels is an alienating one for the vast majority, and with so many other, and superior options available, why on earth would somebody like Kanye spend his time reading books that don’t speak to him, instead of creating art and pursuing his passions?
Earlier in the week a video purportedly made by bored hacktivist group Anonymous was released targeting Kanye. It was ridiculous– like a Prog Rock video from the 80’s. In it, a Guy Fawkes masked figure, in a condescending British accent, chided Kanye for all manner of untoward behaviour. It really sounded like the gripes of a 15 year-old who was angry with the cool kid in school who got all the attention.
What people want with Kanye, I think, is to keep him in line.
They want him to remember his place in the hierarchy, and every time they raise their voices to ridicule something he says or cry foul at a taboo he’s broken, they remind us not of his boundless ego, but of their inability to live in a world– now so different from the one they grew up in– where a man like Kanye might confidently assert himself and speak for an unheard majority that they’re no longer a part of.
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It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen a video of this kind, and each time that I do have the same visceral, almost emotional response. Instinctively, like my primal core has suddenly been activated, I know that something’s wrong. I know it in my bones.
The stripped and ruined landscape, stretching endlessly around you, is awesome in the worst sense of the word. It’s a sincere horror, and looking down at it you feel like you’re viewing a crime scene where acts of unspeakable cruelty and evil have taken place. It’s like that lofty view, which grants such scope and perspective, completely alters one’s view, orienting it toward the eternal. I know that I’m coming in at a pretty high pitch here, but it’s truly how it makes me feel.
The oil being extracted from the tar sands, as I’m sure you know, is very costly to process, with the emissions created from developing it being 12% greater than conventional oil. It couldn’t be dirtier, and each barrel of oil requires three barrels of water to produce it. The question of whether oil is more valuable than water is a fundamentally ridiculous one, and that this question was even open to rational inquiry will be seen as a tragedy in 50 years.
The Athabasca Tar Sands are utterly massive. Covering about 140,000 square kilometres of boreal forest, it’s larger than countries like England, Greece and North Korea. The land will be obliterated, as if from a nuclear apocalypse, and the equipment and structures that are used to mine the oil are so large that they command their own weather systems. It’s a dystopian vision, as if a predatory alien culture had descended upon the planet and began to ruthlessly drain it of all resources while maintaining absolute indifference to whether the host organism lived or died. (There are two smaller Tar Sands, Peace River and Cold Lake, each about a fifth of the size of Athabasca.)
The Prime Minister of this country has said that he won’t do anything to address climate change that would cost Canadians any jobs. The Tar Sands, ruinous and retrograde in so many ways, is a job creator, and so in the face of all other reason it goes forward. However, one glance at the razed, apocalyptic world it inhabits, this kind of Mordor, and even a child can cut through all the rhetoric, economics and complex global politics to see that what’s taking place is plainly wrong.
When one of them reached up to the overhead compartment she modestly held her top down so as not to expose any flesh above her waist. She looked so very young, almost like a doll. She passed the time by watching videos, her face a shifting map of unfiltered responses, each one blossoming and becoming a kind of sunlight that illuminated her face.
The other one had short hair and the fleshy round face of a Buddha. She asked her friend to put some drops in her eyes, and one of them missed the mark, forming a tear just below her eye where it stayed unattended, as if a moment of sorrow now suspended in time. She was perfectly impassive, and as she sat there staring out the window her eyes grew heavier and heavier. Dazed and almost given to sleep, she seemed in a dimensional fog, just flickering in the limbo of this world, and capable at any moment of becoming more spirit than person and simply floating away.
I was listening to Sigur Ros on my headphones and it all felt like a movie, everything holy and beautiful, as if present only for my attention. Outside, as snow fell, farmlands, retreating forests and tiny homes sped past, more like memories than the architecture of the world. It felt profound, somehow, and then out of the camouflage and dull wash of scrub, a deer stepped from invisibility, so suddenly and magnificently manifest that it could only have been an angel.
White people don’t like to believe that they practice identity politics. The defining part of being white in America is the assumption that, as a white person, you are a regular, individual human being. Other demographic groups set themselves apart, to pursue their distinctive identities and interests and agendas. Whiteness, to white people, is the American default.
-Tom Scocca
The police can go to downtown Harlem and pick up a kid with a joint in the streets. But they can’t go into the elegant apartments and get a stockbroker who’s sniffing cocaine.
-Noam Chomsky
Richard exhaled. It was like somebody sprinkling pepper on his wound: Thousands of Biafrans were dead, and this man wanted to know if there was anything new about one dead white man. Richard would write about this, the rule of Western journalism: One hundred dead black people equal to one dead white person.
-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.
-Audre Lorde
The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on. So while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe. It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price you pay for owning everything.
-Scott Woods
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