Fear And Loathing In Montréal

I've told you before of my friend Yan, a brilliant if at times insecure human being. Brilliant because every single one of his thoughts - be they about social issues or cute cats - seem like they were thought out for years, and are usually irrefutable.

But I don't mean 'insecure' in the 'afraid to speak his mind' way - heck no, he'll give complete strangers a piece of his mind if needed - but more in the 'I hope my friends remain friends after what I just said' way. Yet all of his friends are there precisely because we want to hear what he has to say.

That being said, he's changed the name of his blog to Une Haine Incommensurable, a French title, though he'll keep writing in English. Here's the explanation:

Even the title of my blog says a lot about my outlook on social interactions online - ''une haine incommensurable" translates to ''a hate so great it can't be measured." I changed my blog title to that recently because it’s a pretty accurate description of what I feel most of the time.

 Furthermore:

I think the problem is that I'm so overwhelmed by the shittiness of the world that I no longer believe it’s possible to reverse it. I've given up hope. All I see is willful ignorance and smug privilege and a complete refusal to even admit that there might be a problem or two with the way the world runs. And the same stupidity and cruelty demonstrated over and over and over again by countless anonymous dudebros and I just can’t take it anymore. I want all you people to burn. You're not worth saving. 

 And though I don't always see eye-to-eye with him, that is precisely how I feel about where I live (city, province, country, continent, even fucking planet) these days. And for the past year or two, as a matter of fact. The extent to which the world is a decaying, infected, all-kinds-of-wrong hellhole and the people are rotten, puss-filled, lying, twisted cancers makes me sick.

Fear And Loathing indeed.

Buying And Selling Fear: Capitalism 102

They're at a punk-rock show on a Saturday night at a bar that takes its name from a Mickey Rourke film of the '80s in the heart of downtown. They wear glasses and their hair is perfectly undone. The totally uncool of 20 years ago trying desperately to be the best fucking thing alive right now. Like being the underest underdog at the bottom of the shit pile will make them sympathetic enough to get the win by public vote.

Except this isn't American Idol, it's a prize fight, and the phone lines aren't open.

It's a sad state of affairs to see we've regressed as a species, in not even quite a generation, no less. The over-democratization of even the dumbest trash has led to a feeling that if you can get a hundred of the lowest low-lives to congregate at one spot and send a 'normal' human there by any happenstance, you could get the normal one crucified and it would all be excused.

And it's not about how you look; there's this aura that some people emit, one that tells you just how much of a douchebag, asshole or nitwit a person is. But the problem is even worse. We seem to have inverted the process of Natural Selection, survival of the fittest - which is fitting, in a way, since most of the modern Western world is in no physical shape to survive anything. But in doing so, we've let the idiots take charge and put the slow-witted in what are perceived as positions of control as well as even stupider cats as the model we show everyone when we need a crisis to happen.

If it seems a bit vague to you, think of the past couple of weeks, the Fear Of The Day: swine flu. A pandemic, they called it, comparable to the Spanish flu. Keep in mind the Spanish flu killed anywhere between 40 and 100 million people, with a world population of roughly 2 billion people at the time.

Nowadays, we're almost (or just about) 7 billion humans on the planet, which is way more than it can handle and/or feed. A pandemic that would rid us of half of the world's population would be devastating to our species, but practically a godsend to the planet and most other species. Instead, we have 26 confirmed deaths (only one outside of Mexico, in nearby Texas), and up to 101 potential deaths. A percentage of a percentage that cannot even be considered.

But the World Owners sold it, and the idiots bought it. And by buying into their fear, once more, 6 months after they swore they wouldn't give in to fear anymore by electing Barack Obama, they bought into the bullshit again, and they bought shit to go with the bullshit, so much that the economy seems to be heading past the recession (which was called the worst ever by the same people who own our souls only a couple of months ago).

The Dow Jones is up to levels of pre-Bush eras (or just as Bush got into power eras). That means the people bought into the bullshit and bought so much actual shit that the bullshit-sellers on Wall Street also regained their confidence, six months after admitting they had lost all of everyone's money and kept some as commission, and just three months after admitting they had spent billions in bailout money in, well, unverifyable data and pay raises.

Capitalism, in and of itself, is doomed to fail. When only 5 people will own all the manufacturing plants that make all our foods and all the workers will be at so low a wage that they won't be able to afford purchasing the food (and goods) they're making and selling, the system will fall apart. By itself. And we were so fucking close.

But the System, the Machine, used the oldest (and only) trick in its book to get the train back on its rails: fear. And the best fear, too: fear for our health, in a world where you can't trust doctors to operate on you correctly, where half of North Americans don't have insurance or the cash flow to guarantee decent medical aid, where most of the Third World can't even get to see a doctor - they went with a health scare. And the media, that they own and operate, advertised the bullshit they sold, and the people bought it.

Barack Obama represented Hope. He's been in charge for 6 months now. He wasn't expected to change everything in so little time, but the one thing he wasn't supposed to let happen was this big a campaign of disinformation.

Now, Hope that he can do any good is fading, and Trust in what he's saying is near Absolute Zero.

And Hope in the human race seems... hopeless. Futile.

Beer And Unloading In Varadero, Cuba (or How I Learned To Start Running And Drop A Liquid Bomb)

It was an awful hour of the morning in Varadero, say 6AM, with no sleep and sun sneaking through the lead-like blinds.

Nothing else to do but start a new day anyway. Two glasses of orange juice and bacon, then time for rum and coke and the ocean.

Your body does weird things when you don't sleep. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you haven't lived - and you might want to try it before you keep reading. The metabolism goes much faster. I'm already on a 2-shit-a-day diet here, but sleepless it can go up to 5, I'm sure.

And the beach is far enough from the room, 5 minutes sober, maybe 15 otherwise - it's gonna be a bitch trying to keep this pudding from pouring down my leg.

I grab a book for when I get there, a strawberry-vodka for the road - and start walking. For subtlety's sake, I smile at passers-by. The 25 stairs between the ground level and the rooms are like a dream, over in a half second. The yardage to the door is me at the Super Bowl, going for a touchdown with no one in front of me. The easiest 6 points of my career. The key's in the lock socket before my hand is even out of my pocket. The door opens and I'm but one jump from my destination. I get naked 'cause I know what's coming next. As soon as my knees bend, the shit hits the fan. Best two minutes of my life.

Wipe off, get up. I need another goddamn drink.