Independence Day

Not every people gets to experience their Independence Day. Not every country gets to tell its parents/owners/conquerors they want to try to make it on their own.

'Murrrrca, you're not perfect. You're probably still the most racist country on earth, and your insistence on owning weapons you will never know how to use will always exacerbate the difference of opinions your Founding Fathers cherished and thought would be the basis of your democracy.

The 2000s have divided you to extremes no one ever could imagine. Your once-promising culture resides no longer in the quality of your art and museums but to which dumb asshole you will put on a Reality TV show next.

But in the 1770s, you - with a shitload of help from the French and in particular Gilbert du Motier (a.k.a. Marquis de Lafayette) - told England to fuck off with their tea, and snobbery, and monarchy, and Old World colonial ways.

You were too selfish to help the French and Aboriginals fight back the English in Québec (New France/Lower Canada) in return, but at least you got your nice little country out of it. And you built it on the promise of Equality, which is nice.

It took a while to get there, sure, and the argument can be made that you still haven't (racial bias in the economic and legal systems, wage disparity, marriage equality), but the idea is there. If not for you, then perhaps for some future country/society with the will and openness to apply your theories.

So, Happy Independence Day, United States of America. 239 years in your experiment, you're either halfway there or on the brink of collapse. My thoughts are with you; let's hope for the best.

Obama In Selma

Here's an except of Barack Obama's speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bloodbath in Selma, Alabama. If you're going to follow the embedded video to its original YouTube page, please, don't read the comments. Or do, and realize just how much 47% of the country he clearly still believes in isn't ready to step into the 20th Century, let alone the 21st.



Had I been in his position, I would have uttered the word ''motherfucking'' more times in those two minutes than Samuel L. Jackson in an entire Quentin Tarantino movie.

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.

The Passing Of Time Through Winter

The future is inherently a good thing. And we move into it one winter at a time.

Things get better one winter at a time. So if you're going to celebrate, have a drink on this: the world is, generally and on balance, a better place to live this year than it was last year.

Those are the words of Spider Jerusalem, writer Warren Ellis' take on a Hunter S. Thompson-like journalist in the future; they are taken from the very last page of the fourth volume in the Transmetropolitan series, called The New Scum, in which a new President is elected to the U.S. Ironically, they were written and published in the year 2000.

Transmetropolitan currently sits atop my line of favourite books, along with other comics Preacher and The Walking Dead.

It's funny that I happened to read this volume again, for perhaps the tenth time, today, if only because tonight marked the final in a five-night series that I was outside putting up posters for a show happening on the 18th at La Sala Rossa, for supergroup Magic Christian, comprised of members of Flamin' Groovies and Blondie, among others.

Five nights during which I froze my balls in minus-30 weather, with a windchill I hadn't felt in years. And last night was the worst. I actually witnessed the temperature go down at least 5 degrees in mere seconds, with the swoop of one short blow of wind, at precisely 2:10AM. It was decently cold, with the wind providing extra chill to the fingertips, but without exaggeration, when out of the blue a tiny whirlwind of a weirdly milder wind came and took over Parc Avenue for a few seconds, just enough to make you realize something wasn't quite right, and as soon as it died off, it became colder than death in an instant.

It was yet another proof that Nature is a much stronger beast than we bipeds, but I know for one I didn't need any. It was also a reminder that February is coming at full speed and we Montrealers should just lock ourselves inside and hide/hibernate for 28 days and just order out, fuck, and play Playstation and let the whole world go right by past us for a month.

And if Jerusalem's/Ellis' words are to be true, it's so fucking cold out there right now that this particular winter should signify the death of the past decade completely - what with its 80s-revivals, shitty music, brand new and brand old wars, political tragedies and all-out fucking up of our way of Life - and bring about some actual, consistent, lasting change. For The Better (not sure why I need to add this in particular, but I've been unlucky with my wishes the past few years, in case you can't tell).

It's not in my genes, in my upbringing, in my habits. Perhaps it can be, although I'm quite happy being skeptical and realistic - but I'm actually hoping for Hope. It feels juvenile and stupid, but set against a backdrop of 100 km/h winds outside my window pushing a growing cemetary of white snow in minus-40 degree weather merely 5 inches from my face, a bottle of Jack Daniel's in my right hand, it's all I can muster up that feels right.

That, and putting this text to rest so I can go meet the Lady Of The House in bed.

Good night.

Germany's Top Goalie Plays Despite Incurable Cancer

If I had half this guy's will power, I'd sleep even less.

He has terminal brain cancer, yet still plays hockey at a top level in Europe.

He also has a wife and two kids, mind you, and maybe if I were in his situation, I'd try to see them a little more often than not, but you have to keep doing what you love to make it through the day, and if he can make time for both family and work/passion, all the better for him.

Hats off to you, Robert Müller of Kölner Haie (Cologne Sharks) in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga.

The Birth Of Hope

It's a wonder why I'm not already in bed.

Tomorrow should be a new day, full of hope. Maybe even a New World.

It's hard to imagine drastic changes in the Machine that makes the world turn, it is has more cogs and screws than you can throw a plumber at, be it Joe or any other. But there was one thing people needed more than change anyway, to keep this machine turning.

Hope.

Hope that everything's possible. That the strongest political machine can be defeated. That it isn't wrong to help others in need. That, albeit with a lot of effort, Right will triumph over Wrong in the end. That we will live to see another day. That reason can exist, coexist with and overcome unthought aggression and brash stupidity. That things can be better, and are going to.

Hope. Hope in the exact Machine we might have needed to stop believing in so we could be free. The Machine that crashed the markets so the already-rich could buy once-and-future cash cows at the lowest possible prices; the Machine that sent people to the poor house and seized their homes while people running for office can't even count the amount of property they own; the Machine that even French President Sarkozy said needed a complete overhaul.

Hope. The Rebirth Of Capitalism, Federalism, the American Dream (and the American Imperialism), hot dogs, baseball, 24-hour news networks with barely 5 hours of news on them; sounds a lot like the Clinton years, and we know what happened as soon as someone else took over.

And guess what? It's still a whole lot better than the alternative of more wars, more debt, less government intervention in the wrong (right?) places, more tax breaks for the rich, and possible setbacks in the areas of women's rights and civil liberties.

And here I hope: that Barack Obama really becomes what he says he will. He won't part the waters, won't even get nearly half the things done that need to be done; the Machine he's given us Hope in won't let him, it has mechanisms to keep him from changing too much of it, but here's Hoping the Machine doesn't rein him in and break him like it did John McCain in the past year.