Canada's 2021 COVID-19 Special Edition Snap Election

It's the big day in Canada this September 20th, 2021, as voters decide who will govern the nation through whatever the next years have in store. Oh yeah, and there's a big pandemic. And literally everyone is going crazy. There's anger, bitterness, and increasingly unhinged people all over the streets, the internet comment sections, the sidewalks outside of hospitals and the sidewalks outside of restaurants. Trudeau got gravel thrown at him, and a lot of abuse, at several campaign stops. Libraries aren't even safe. People are getting run over on the side of the road, like animals. The stakes have never been higher, and yet nobody knows what the hell, and even the smart money's confused.

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called for an election mere weeks (was it weeks? really?) ago there was a collective late-summer sigh in the air, as Canadians of all political stripes wondered why the hell he couldn't wait until after the global pandemic had subsided a bit more. The last election was only two years ago, in October 2019, which feels like a million years ago, so there's strategies at play here that most won't be able to grasp until the dust settles. The reason Trudeau called the election? To cement a legacy that his backers hope will keep Canada on the path forward... to the future! For everyone! (We have our doubts, too.)

The Irreal Era Continues

Heartless, heartbreaking times with chaos as the watermark. Memes and viral underpinnings for charity projects. It's brilliant. Chug a hot coffee, cure cancer – post the vid, go to social media heaven. Drink a venti latte for social justice. Post passive-agressive political screeds on facebook, and again in twelve parts on twitter. Walk at least four dogs at once to solve depression once and for all. Wait, what's that I hear? Is it the ghost of hope? What is it pretending to be today?

The character of hope is changed by digital media into a great big throbbing lump of aspirations and counterpoints. Tell everyone about how you feel about it. It's a singularity of hope and everyone's invited to discuss it impotently on the internet. Your savior and redeemer bathed in LCD glow in a dark room past midnight, this time definitely getting the words right on a screed that will change people's minds forever. No discussion of powerlessness or the futility of washing oneself in concentrated ideology.

Confident consumers. Hollow outrage. Adamantine charity. Lonely people alone in rooms 'connecting' over social media. Right... right. No that makes sense to me, I am not an atavist, thank you. It goes beyond the fears any individual might have, nobody can see the big picture as it is now, and in ten years there will be hundreds of deep thinkers telling us exactly what happened, armed with statistics and the works of others. Until then even the most schizoid collective fears are just whispers in the dark, convoluted night. Truth of the matter is the supposed wise men of the era are either pissing their pants or filling their pockets, or looking greedily askance at something we can't see, but everybody has a pretty good guess what it might be. Most of them are probably the pedigreed descendants of snake oil salesmen.

The pessimists of yesteryear seem insane or quaint. The worryworts of today are just white noise, minor problems crudely blown up to serve as distractions from underlying issues and developing crises. The public announcements of this era are all ugly and sterile constructions meant to convey (mis)information as efficiently as possible (the diametric opposite of the low points of pretentious wankery from 1210 to 2014), which makes everyone a computer with predictable responses to calculated inputs. Of course thought will likewise degrade, but for the great majority of people that's not even something to worry about or consider. As long as the algorithms keep working, right? We don't need to know where they came from. We got everything we need, right now... it's perfectly nihilistic.

Existential Crisis Zone: I Used to be a Better Blogger

A couple of years ago I was in top form. Everything I wrote was going to get ignored by pretty much the whole internet and I still made it count. I look at myself recently and, dear reader, it is painfully apparent that I've lost the patience to craft outstanding prose and to keep a non-partisan balance. Yes, I've committed the cardinal sin of becoming political. I might've been the same a few years ago, but what is important is that I was doing it with grace, if at all. That's not everything I've been doing wrong, but it's a good portion.

So I apologize. I'm not going to put up another piece about Edward Snowden, how Bradley Manning is still ignored (and his connection to the repealing of Don't Ask/Don't Tell - a very interesting hypothesis), or how the two men are very similar even though Edward Snowden is a civilian. I won't post about the odds of Snowden getting nabbed, disappeared, or simply imprisoned for the rest of his life. I won't opine about what would be fair, or if what he did was right. Though I will say that it speaks volumes about society that even 'the good life' wasn't enough to silence him, and that he is being denounced as rotten traitor, and that a decade+ ago the things he recently brought to light would have be mocked as patently paranoid. And I will also say he is lucky that McCarthyism has worn off somewhat in the 'States, even though it lives on in spirit, as so many things do.

I really wanted to, of course. Why else have a blog if not to write about issues that one considers important? Well, the world doesn't seem to care very much what Snowden did. I haven't met a single person since the story broke out who gave a shit. I don't know if they're unsurprised at the totalitarian security state slowly caging them in, or if they are just anesthetized to it. Maybe the oversharing internet attention junkies have won, the concept of identity is permanently deformed and bureaucracized, and the privileged are smirking, and anyone who thinks differently is already a fool in the eyes of the world. Yes: the state looking inward is nothing new, but the implications have never been this clinical or far-reaching.

You can tell how tempted I am to write about it. I would continue to approach the topic as if it mystified me. I would slowly bring in the revelations that this, ironically, takes the modern world another step towards the supposedly obsolete and abandoned precepts of Stalinism. I would use the word totalitarian a bunch of times and I would put in a few choice burns at facebook's expense. I would not mention Orwell, because I'm not an idiot, but I could. I would point out that collusion between government and industry is never a good sign. Damn, it could've been a fine piece for the world to ignore. Another feather in my cap, but I don't want feathers in my cap and I don't want to say too much. Suffice it to say that the modern world has been making me more and more uncomfortable and uneasy.

[Oh, and I could go on...]

Words: Apparently Dumb, Stupid, and Easily Misused

Words are apparently stupid, because when you attempt to write many of them on the internet for any purpose you are missing the point. The internet is all about ADD, ADHD, and Twitter. Twitter's got it right and I've got it wrong. And I've had it wrong all this time. Paragraphs, sentences, and long-term writing are stuff of the 20th century and earlier.

I am not savvy enough. Don't believe me? My smartphone doesn't have apps or even a data plan (which makes it a part-time computer with built-in phone capabilities), my Twitter account has no followers (because I don't tweet and forget [my password constantly] to check Twitter unless some really hilarious hashtag is imploding),  and my blog is full of words and skimpy about pictures, videos, and excitement. What a fool I must be to keep at it: like it's some kind of book ebook that I'll never finish and that nobody cares about anyway. Like one of the stories Machine of Death rejected.

This blog is like an Angelfire crap page except not written by a child, no stupid .gifs or burning text, and no annoying MIDI covers of Limp Bizkit songs. So maybe it's not like an Angelfire/Geocities abomination... but why in the hell can't I figure out a way to capitalize on A) putting effort into making a way cooler blog [is this even possible] B) marketing this blog since I care so much. I can't have one without the other and, to be honest, I'd rather skip both.

Making a blog cool, even with idiot-proof software/front-ends [sorry Blogger], isn't as easy as I think it is. I'd have to scrap Publicato and try something new, losing probably everything that I struggled to build. But, honestly, if all I'm going to do is write stuff, link to stuff, and occasionally drop a screengrab, then I might as well go with a less tacky layout.

I will take a look, and feel the pain of what I imagine are actual human readers (unless even this is a delusion, and I've just attracted a lot of search-engine crawlers). Wood grain accent – like an 80's station wagon – black text on white background within it (ugly, amateur) in a non-offensive font at the very least. Flawless punctuation, occasional misspellings and typos despite a clear pro-professional writing bias. Nothing cool at all. High concept in words, not execution. Nothing hand-coded or done lovingly. Lodged in the belly of a content farm.

So that's why I don't always update. I always think that I am fooling my fool self with a fool blog on the internet. I play blues records and drink, and I hate that I ever started a blog at all. People make money off of facebook pages and twitter accounts, the odd blogger goes on to get published by an actual website, and almost everything I write is instantly drowned in the deep, still waters of the internet. It seems to me a hopeless case of building with sand on sand. Holding water. Fooling an eagle. Being angry at a dolphin.

That is to say: impossible. Writing is like smoking cigarettes: it stinks, it's bad for you, you end up making the wrong friends and distancing the right ones. Writing on the internet with more than 500 words at any one time is like being Henry James (or Theodore Drieser) at a post-modern microfiction literature convention. You can practically feel the cold shoulder given you by anything cool or contemporary. Who gives even the slightest shit?

To Any Entity Reading This:

Are you a google crawler? and, if so, why are you leaving posts? I'm mildly disturbed. Can you comment with how you stumbled upon this post? This sort of thing messes with me and now I am just now beginning at the dawn of wonder to try and figure this shit out. I really don't try to be anything but a sloppy blogger. How do I execute these timely, completely earnest, and cutting posts? Well. It's pretty simple actually. This is obviously my nonsensical response to a nonsensical contemporary situation.

And yet. And yet, it's sort of insulting to any real human reader for me to wonder about it. Aren't I supposed to have a naive faith in the internet? "Oh, yeah, it's not a total wrecked derelict piece of shit... well, by volume, only about 5% of it isn't." Sure, you can try to argue it isn't.

Not so insulting either that it could lead to terminal frustration. I mean I write this shit out sometimes, maintaining no real schedule or coherence. There is no focus of attention I never really write about anything except sometimes I'll do that bullshit thing where it's recent events or something. Recently Diablo 3 but who really gave a fuck? I maybe did for a few hours, but the whole world had a lead on me and the thing burned out as things do.

And so I'll do that bullshit thing where I write about or include likely terms but really, what happens but you search google hopelessly and this content farm yields a few matches. That's kind of the shit thing about the internet, it's so vast and organized in such (parallel) preferential hierarchies that finding anything is worse than ever. You'll find bullshit echoes of things you want to find, but everything's moved on or been killed or corrupted.

I'll try to do things for views but mostly you could pejoratively say I just do some self-satisfactory writing exercises, help nobody, basically just wring sentences out of whatever soup of words is in my head at the time. I think it has some worth, but not that much that it'd be a manuscript or something, and so on I post. It's a simple system and I think there are definitely things posted where either the writing or complete inanity has been worth the price of reading.

You'll find news articles much worse than this in execution and style. Go read some right now and come back, and tell honestly of their eloquence and, most of the time, fuck them.  When it comes to well written hack writing, I won't say I'm expert, but I do not lack for trying or panache. Which is why I try to blog it – albeit sloppily.

Does the Internet Make You Sick?

Well I think anybody who has thought about it already knows the answer, and there's no point in spoiling a surprise, so...

What Hasn't Made Us Sick?

Someone knowledgeable should write a book about that. I'm deeply allergic to knowing anything about health or myself, so I would probably not buy it, but I would pay someone to do the work. I would pay at utmost 5.00 in whatever currency 5.00 still means something. If there is some sort of hypervaluation crisis (and it would be one, don't even fool yourself) I would pay .5, .05, down to .000005 depending on circumstances. The project of discerning whether or not the internet can make you sick could be completed (or at least started definitively), with global co-operation and collaboration (via the internet), in a as little as 12 hours. For free, I'm sure.

If the internet has taught me anything it is to always rush noobs, pick the noobiest weapon/build, the following acronyms (too many; mainly 'afaik'), there is no such thing as too many clicks, don't ever get involved in anything, avoid chat in general unless to friends – and most importantly: to not be a total dick when you start beating the shit out of other players, in any game except online chess. Also doubt everything, and avoid anyone who has anything to say as they're most likely charlatans or shills.

So the prognosis isn't great.The suppression of it is variable. The internet is still more a force for freedom, except it, like any other media, can be just as detrimental to it. Oh and dangerous, possibly catastrophic. But that's just about anything, and the laws of mediocrity will hopefully minimize the odds of anything extraordinary happening.

Lolnet.heh/msuic

Recently I overheard people talking about an album by Bon Iver. And I was thinking, to be honest, "Hippy Bon Jovi Nonsense". So I did my due diligence, business people, and the rest of you should know I visited wikipedia, followed up on the name-drops, and laughed at something I found. It's a piece of music journalism. Two pieces, actually. I like to call them the dueling reviews. They inspired me to do some listening many weeks ago.

And all that time those two reviews have stuck in my mind. Sometimes I catch myself thinking about them on the way to work, or while getting groceries, sometimes even in the middle of a conversation some spare remark will prompt the two Bon Iver reviews that Tim Sendra wrote, presumably for Allmusic. These reviews and the three-and-something years between them are, I think, representative of how the human socio-cultural system has shifted. Or maybe I'm a tin-eared bastard with a dumb, sloppy blog.

The two Bon Iver albums strike me as being remarkably similar. I haven't played them constantly; I haven't listened to either of the albums particularly critically (huh?); I have, however, listened to both of the albums in full at least four times. As far as I'm concerned, I have more respect for Bon Iver than for Tim Sendra, but Bon Iver has to admit that Tim Sendra has somehow managed to make Bon Iver weirdly important to me. I wouldn't have known about this band or even written them off if not for two reviews that produced a mysterious reaction in my mind. Tim Sendra, however, has explained where the last three years of my life went, for which I am in his debt - figuratively, of course.

The two albums are titled For Emma and Bon Iver, chronologically. Note how the second album title is eponymous. The fact literally does not matter to me. I somehow always think it's the first album, which may have skewed my idea of things, except that I knew exactly what Tim Sendra was talking about when he reviewed either album. Let me be concise for a moment: I think the first album is sincere and conceited; I think the second is sincere and conceited. I found both of them pretty enjoyable except they have a sombre, cool vibe to them. Let me post an image of Tim Sendra's review of For Emma. I hope he doesn't mind this mild intrusion, but I am acknowledging him as the author and Allmusic as the owner, so there's nothing to apologize about since I'm not planning on calling him uncouth names.

It seems to me an honest review. It's probably how Tim Sendra felt about the album. It's a fair representation and he does not oversell. He notes: 'subdued', 'isolated', 'voice', 'harmonies', and you can read the rest. I find the album decent, etherized and ethereal and with a few stand-out songs. "Lump Sum" is alright. In the end the album is alright. Some of the vocals are autotuned, so there is obvious conceit and if you are not a sensitive soul you will find these touches laughable or out-of-place. They are used for emphasis, don't sound entirely stupid, but still: fucking autotune in another heartfelt, subdued, harmonic indie-rock folkish lament. I don't even know if it's original but it surprised me.

So, cool album. Not something I'd want to listen to very often, but for times of illness or heartbreak I imagine it is suitable if unhealthy. In themselves, For Emma and Sendra's review are harmless enough and inoffensive. Now, gentle reader, please allow me to bring Exhibit B into these calm, idealized waters. Exhibit B is Bon Iver, the album, and Sendra's review as accompaniment in B sharp.

Virus

Few things in the world are as bad as is the virus. Some complain about bacteria. Some moan about fungus. Some even hate molds. Some disagree with disease, but there is not a single person in the world who likes a virus, the smallest, most multitudinous, meanest unit of life. Oh, wait, that's right: Nobody can even say if a virus is a living thing. Something like 5000 years of dedicated medicine and at least twice as long of skillful health practice and the worst sicknesses are still products of 'evil spirits'.

There is no placating these spirits. They as old or older than life. And who could hate them, really? They are the agents of entropy and probably maintain life in as many senses as they destroy or pervert it. I find something admirable about something (less than?) a billionth my size that can cause me more problems than, say, the United States, legalism, or even the Universe. There is obviously much unstated wisdom in being small and unobtrusive. More admirable yet is that as many times as I have killed viruses (there are many slain) they come back, different, yet with the exact same effect. I'm talking to you, common cold infection.

I wouldn't be surprised if viruses spurred evolution and were the flame that caused life to soar and run. Oh of course viruses also rotted life and do so to this day. They can cause headaches, death, hemorrhage of various organs, disappointment, castration, etc... As much as I hate them, organic viruses are pretty got-damn badass. Viruses will outlive us all. I'd have a lot more to say about this but I am sick and too tired to watch the screen. My eyes hurt, my head hurts, and my pharynx is all uncomfortable. I am in combat with the oldest enemy of all, ironically enough an enemy that may be the foundation of life. Entropy, chill down my spine, etc...

Reviewing Fog

Fog is a musical group (it is I assure you) or project (look it up) or whatever highfalutin concatenation. If I was stubborn and vain enough to try and review the group I would be forced to review at least three albums. On a blog, and I don't profess to know much about those, three album reviews is virtual suicide. You might as well bake bread, or bet on Political Maverick Jack Layton.

Please take a moment and note how both alternatives are good ones.

Now to properly review an album, you have to state with methodical correctness who authored it, who published it, and the year it was published. If you are a particular rebel you will open with a quote from a review of another type of art. Then you move on to comparing it to other albums that it sounds like. Once you have completed that torturous step, you get personal.

Break out some adjectives and make a good time of it: after all, you've broken the album down into a series of ethical and musical and historical components to make it relatable. Plus you've already established your judgment by your tone, and most of your thinking audience has already agreed or disagreed with you. Then you write a paragraph about how the album sits in the context of the times as you see them, and when you attach it to a particularly noxious news story they come and sit on your legs and stuff hot peppers into your nostrils.

Since I'm reckless and generally a sloppy blogger I will raise the stakes and tell you I can review Fog's first two albums in only one image. The album names (so you can be conscious of the true extent of my wager) are the eponymous "Fog" and "Ether Teeth":
 

You're all welcome

The Postmodern Option

Every day I wake up, do some 'real life' things that I think are important (like texting people to ask them if they want to see me, and texting resumes to potential employers, breakfast related chores) and usually after a few hours I am forced to go to the internet to try and see if there's a soul in the entire world. Most of the time my doubt still exists after I close my browser and hide.

Using the internet to escape life has become a chore, because in a way you have to trade your life for an internet life, even if you only want to escape into the internet. There are people who never signed up for Facebook, and they have healthier social lives than anyone who ever did join that devilish network. The point of YouTube is to 'create, share, etc' or some other thing, but at least 50% of users are passive and only want to find decent videos to while away time. Then there are internet power users who do more than post racist shit in comment sections; these people form communities and post video responses and get sweaty about views per month and always badger everyone to subscribe or rate or leave a racist comment.

So it seems that the internet draws you into the nonsense labyrinth of pointless, infinitely recursive information.

Yes, I am clearly attempting to add to that luminous festering mess of so-called 'information' by blogging. I know that I must be doing something right, because I am not an internet millionaire by my blogging. It's hard for me to know if anyone even reads anything I post here that doesn't directly address them or their concern, so I am always asking myself "is it possible to circumvent public interest and still gain some mediocre type of fame?"

The answer is that, no, it is impossible. I do my best to write clear, amusing, somewhat advanced and mostly pointless blog posts, and I am proud of being a sloppy blogger. Most blogs I visit are quite professionally done. I don't even have gadgets or extra pages to hook people into checking my website regularly.

I am caught in the 21st century catch-22. I want to be anonymous in the era of internet disclosure, and I want to be a respected slacker in the era of the power user, and I want to maybe make a living writing. All of these I'm stupid to hope for, but I chase these dreams and attempt quality – and really, if one person benefits by it or smiles because of it, that is satisfying. Single-digit blog statistics are also depressing, but a satisfying depression is better than just sitting around and trying to create the ultimate manuscript.

Of course it's stupid to criticize the banality of the internet by using the internet, and that's why I don't do that so much. Media criticism is not going to get me anywhere, no matter how sharp an insight I provide on the late-night talk show scene, and there's really not much I can do that hasn't been done, and done better, by someone else. And. And. And. But. However. Furthermore. Good luck.

I am a Sloppy Blogger

Yep. I'm a sloppy blogger. You don't see my kind too often. Obviously, you don't see them because they don't post and don't offer explanations for silence. Sloppy bloggers are a bit like lovers - if you don't like them, you don't care about the infrequency because it doesn't bother you if they are really dead or onto some new thing. However, if you do like sloppy bloggers, absence will make your heart grow so fond that you will tell other people about this guru-style blogger who posts three times a month and writes about nothing. You will understand that the rigours of actually living are too much sometimes. Maybe you have some idea about the north American economy. Acronymed : the nAe. Mind capitalization or it could actually refer to a real thing.

So in my own grand tradition of coining words I hereby coin: sloppy blogger. That's my term and I invented it. Unlike other even better words and terms and phrases, I will allow this one to be public, because it needs to be given actual life that only the internet can provide.