Enjoy Your Shit Salad

I watched the American election here in Montreal, in the bar at Concordia University. It was packed. People were cheering. An unmistakable feeling of optimism was in the air. Friends in France emailed me about it too. It was like the entire world's team had won the Superbowl.

The question no one seemed to be asking was: "Since when has it been okay to trust politicians?" Most of the people I talked to seemed to know nothing about Obama or his platform. When I asked a friend what he liked about Obama, he said that "Obama is a visionary and he represents my views". I got similar answers from everyone I asked. What are these views?

He's pro-environment? Maybe. There are both hits and misses on his record. Time will tell on that one. If the environment truly is an important issue, why choose this option?

He's going to rescue the economy? Perhaps. Does that make me moist? No. Who's he going to rescue it for? You will note that there aren't any representatives of the labor movement, any labor economists, any representatives of progressive or economic watchdog groups, nor any representatives of consumers in general on Obama's economic team. I'm not very optimistic about the policies that these guys will generate. (And on a side note: apparently there are at least 15,000 professional economists in this country. You're telling me only a fraction of this group foresaw the credit crisis? I call bullshit.)

Obama is going to promote peace in the world? Wrong. Obama supports the occupation of Afghanistan and plans to increase the size of the military. These are the most fundamental reasons why I could not get excited about his campaign. In my opinion, it is always wrong to take human life. Thus, war is the greatest wrong there is. Fighting for peace doesn't work.

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I've noticed that asking most people these questions is like trying to get them to ackowledge the turd in their potato salad that they're trying desperately to ignore:

"Dude, this potato salad smells funny. I think someone shit in it."

"What's wrong with you? Are you telling me you'd rather eat macaroni salad? Obama made this potato salad just for us. It's a salad we can believe in."

"But I'm sick of eating potato salad. It's not really a change at all. We've been eating it all our lives. I know there are healthier alternatives out there. Why, look at this recipe right here..."

"What the hell is this? Only hippies and French people would eat that shit. You fag."

To me, the obvious win for all of us is that we now live in a country where a black man will have been president. This is a fundamental, radical change in a society where, less that 150 years ago, the next president could have been legally owned by another person. And yet, as Obama himself implied, racism has now been pushed far enough into the margins that the Boys Who Run The Show have finally realized that it doesn't matter what their public representative looks like. Or as Le Canard enchâiné put it, "America's not afraid of the black man anymore!"

Somewhere deep in my little, wizened black heart, I'll admit I did feel a tremor of hope, like a trapped pocket of gas escaping from a fat man's thigh folds. It's a really unfamiliar feeling. I think it's what the people at the Concordia bar were celebrating. But they also seemed to buy into the unspoken, yet universally-understood lie that, if we can just get the Republicans out of office, our lives will change for the better in very obvious, tangible ways.

The facts don't seem to indicate that this is likely to happen. But, it's enough for me, at least until Obama takes office, that every child born in America after January 20, 2009 will have never lived in a country where only rich white men have been president. I wouldn't have put money on it happening in my lifetime. Racism may have been pushed to the margins in some ways, but it's such a fundamental part of the human condition, and so firmly ensconsed in our country's history, that I didn't hold out much hope for things changing for at least another generation or two.

I know what life was like before the invention of the internet. We wrote letters instead of email and beat off to magazines and VHS porn instead of a succession of minute-long WMA clips. Big whoop. Imagine living in a time when women weren't allowed to vote. Man or woman, how would this have affected your sense of social justice, your respect for the system, even your entire worldview?

It's a curious gain: the president is a puppet, but the puppetmaster has shown himself to be less racist than he used to be. I think that our collective, apparently unconscious assimilation of the fact that race is no longer a barrier to attaining the presidency has very real, positive implications for our society. In my opinion, this assimilation is the only unquestionably positive outcome of the election, and I believe that if we focused on that, we might start thinking seriously about creating a world where someone other than rich men, black or white, are allowed to govern us.

The Coolest Blog Ever

I just noticed something interesting. These are the labels associated with The Drunken Pig Chronicle:

anal
creampies
disgusting
horrible
interracial
jameson
MC5
nietzsche

Basically, that means whoever searches for a blog using those terms will find the Chronicle! I'd say that's a job well done. This blog is everything I ever hoped it could be. In fact, I'm so giddy my genitals have sucked up into my body cavity.

The nastiest video ever

Ever hear of 2 girls, 1 cup?  I stumbled upon this by accident. Honestly. It is quite possibly the nastiest video I have ever seen.  I say possibly because I'm a realist and I know that right now there is someone else, maybe Frank, out there setting up a tripod and camera to film an even nastier video.  I don't know how a director could convince one woman, let alone two, to help realize such a demented vision.  But that director has done the impossible.

Literary theory hell in Montreal

I'm sitting in an atrociously upholstered easy chair (I mean the color, not the quality) here in The Fun Room (will explain later), typing away at an essay that compares and contrasts Jacques Blais's "L'unite organique de Bonheur d'occasion" and Gilles Marcotte's "Bonheur d'occasion et le grand realisme". I have a cat sleeping on my left leg, a laptop in front of me (obviously), and a Red Bull on the desk next to me. It snowed last night, and for the first time this season it stuck- everything outside is covered in a cotton-like white blanket of ice. I really don't want to write this essay, but if I have to do it, this is the way. I can only think of two (2) additional items which might contribute to my intellectual meanderings as I vomit them into a Word document: Kendra, siting naked on the chair next to me, and a big fat fucking bowl of tasty you-know-what. Mmm...

I hate christianity, and america, and apple pie, and saturday morning cartoons.

I just saw the trailer for "What would jesus buy?". God I hate god. Why do people need it so much? Well anyway, this movie is supposed to be some docu-comedy about the consumerisation of christmas, and our country. Look, here's the deal. The Christians stole a harmless seasonal festival and slapped their own meanings and implications all over it, so why shouldn't america do the same? We saw an opportunity and took it.

Now, if this is all about the troubles of debt and consumerism, that's fine. Those things are terrible. My debt should be erased, and i should receive everything I want for free, no payment of tender or labor. Especially weed. Send weed now. I have no problem with attacking one of Americas founding principles (I even helped write a jingle for it once....), but why dilute a wholesome message with religion? It just screws up what was a feeble argument to begin with. Basically, we're pissed off that we like buying things for each other.

For more evidence I hate America, go here!

The Gorrilaz suck live.

They do. I just watched it on TV. I like the way this font makes everything I write look important. But yeah, it sucked. Namely, they played everything too fast, which is pretty inexcusable when you make the kind of super-produced stuff they come up with. You know the BPM, just get it right, yeah? If I can stick it out at 87 BPM, why cant the guy getting paid millions do it?

Shit Yeah!

I Just got a new 250GB USB Hard drive! No more file shuffling so I can fit a measly 40GB of porn on my computer. Now I will have it all!!!!

Kendra, read this post.

Just wanted to put it out there that I'm still single and your sister is still attractive. At least the picture on your myspace portrayed her as such. San Diego is working for me music-wise, but my love life is suffering. I'm becoming bitter towards women who aren't immediately attracted to me. If you've even met my friend Aaron, you know what this is like.