Five years and counting

Heinitz coal mine, Europe, before 1930. Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

I finally figured out what I want my next big accomplishment at work to be before I retire.

To not die.

Third time's a charm

Quid pro quo. Via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

Il Douchey is so pathetic that he's not even the 1st president to be impeached. He's a lowly *3rd*.

Mofo can't even fuck up with distinction.

You bet your life

Source unknown

The not-so-secret word is "plague."

The generational divide

Headline, News24.com, 12 December 2019

I have a strange sense of humor, a strong sense of the absurd, and I am not always appropriate in public or private. But these days I try to embrace it.

This image is a pretty solid example of all of the above, a headline from the South African news site, News24.com. It's a horrible thing to happen, a family is murdered in their own home. And it happens all too often, in the U.S. as well as in other countries.

But the thing I just can't wrap my head around is why the headline notes that the family was watching Generations, a very popular South African soap opera, when they were murdered.

I'm just having trouble understanding why this point is germane. Would it have been more or less horrible if they were watching 7de Laan, Isidingo, or The Bold and the Beautiful instead?

I'll see myself out now.

Jaundice is the new black

Melania: I need new dress to meet Queen on big London trip. I am bored of these clothes.

Stylist: Mrs. Trump, perhaps your dresses could reflect a theme, such as the success of American industry and brands across the globe.

Melania: Yes, that is good idea.

Some time later ...

News anchor: First Lady Melania Trump appeared today in London wearing what was described by her stylist as her tribute to French's yellow mustard.

Music Togo

I don't understand any of this, but I love it just the same.

Impeachy keen

Fat, dumb hicks

1967 Elcona Mobile Home by M. Thivierge. CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported.
Via Wikimedia Commons.

Word to the wise and not so wise: You should avoid pissing me off online.

[Not me]

"In both states [Alabama and Mississippi], the primary product is fat, dumb hicks, with substance abuse problems, who live in rusty single wides, and who hate everything and everyone."

[Me]

"Why is it bad to be fat? Why is it bad to live in a trailer? Why do you think people in these states have substance abuse problem[s]? And even if they [do], shouldn't we as a society be more compassionate toward those with addictions, especially since those addictions are often facilitated by poor or nonexistent medical care?

"Statistics might lend credence to your general observations about weight and substance abuse, but they can't explain away the need to insult people who may not have had your advantages (I'm assuming) in education, income, and technology.

"I also wonder, is it helpful to disparage great swaths of the population whom you might like to agree with you on social issues or political matters at some point? Or is there room for collaboration--or even just coexistence?

"I feel rage and spew vitriol toward the willfully ignorant as much as any liberal, but I don't think 'fat, dumb hicks' are the problem. I think it's more down to the willfully ignorant upper classes either not caring about the challenges faced by those 'fat, dumb hicks' or eagerly manipulating those 'fat, dumb hicks' into doing what keeps the upper classes happy.

"While 'fat, dumb hicks' have agency, let's not pretend the deck isn't [heavily] stacked against them [as it is, all poor people]. Let's not pretend that sitting back in our liberal cocoons and insulting people does either them or us any good."

***

Lordy.

The thing is, I get the sentiment, I feel the frustration, and I'm sure I've been as uncharitable as this poster to an article in The Washington Post that I read earlier today. Seeing people repeatedly vote against their own interests, watching people react to cheap patriotism, witnessing people toast and adore a treasonous Soviet asset, a mean-spirited jerk, a willfully ignorant, screw-the-little-guy president is maddening and enraging.

But it's not just the "fat, dumb hicks" who do these things, even though they're trotted out at every rally President Slimeball conducts (and then quickly leaves town without paying his bills, much as he's done his entire trash-strewn life). There are plenty of middle and upper class people who have done the same--and they influence or control the flow of money in my home country more than the "fat, dumb hicks."

How are we ever gonna fight the good fight if we turn against one another? How are we going to lift every one up by pushing down further the people we think are already beneath us, lower than the low, and deserve it for being born economically or culturally poor or poorly connected? How are we going to get people on our side--or, more appropriately, how are we going to get on their side--by constantly signaling through word and deed that they are not worthy or worthwhile? Why would anyone want to side with a liberal if you can only be a liberal on someone else's terms, not your own? I think we have to ask ourselves, is the point of all this to give the "fat, dumb hicks" agency--or is it just to make them bend to our will, just as conservatives have tried to do to the rest of us?

I think I know the answer to this last question, and it's not good. Maybe we should study hard and take the test again.

Tickle your fancy

Are we not men? No! We are Jermaine Jackson and DEVO! performing together in a Halloween special in 1982!

Honestly, back in the day, I never understood why this song was not a number 1 in the U.S. Instead it had to "settle" for top 20 pop/top 5 R&B. Nothing to be ashamed of but a chart ranking middling enough to guarantee obscurity within just a few years.

Get this: You had a member of the Jackson mafia family, which was everywhere in the early 1980s. You had the ultra hip new wave band DEVO, which was probably at the peak of its alternative popularity. (At least if memory serves from my college days.) You had an incredibly catchy hook ("Let me tickle your fancy/let me excite your soul") and a highly danceable beat. And you had a very adorable and sexy Jermaine doing his best work, a few years before he'd crash and burn his credibility with a duet with Pia Zadora.

In essence, you had 1982 in a 3-minute pop nutshell.

Maybe it was racism--"black people don't play rock 'n' roll" and all that bullshit. Maybe it was a less popular Jackson in the spotlight (neither feast nor fowl, neither Michael nor Janet). Maybe it was a song stuck between worlds, not R&B, not rock, attempting to appeal to too many audiences through the talents of two slightly less than high profile performers. (How is this that different to "State of Shock," the Michael Jackson-Rollling Stones hit from 1984?) Maybe it was danceable but not in the right way - too alternative, not Hi NRG, disco's cheap, tacky, easy little sister. Maybe it was too perfect of a song and sounded like a lot of other stuff on the charts at the time. Which maybe it did, maybe it didn't.

Regardless, I thought this was a perfect pop gem at the time and still do nearly 40 (!!!) years later. Frankly, as old as it is, it still seems more exciting, entertaining, and authentic than every piece of pop pablum on the scene at this time.

Yeah, I'm *that* old.

March of the Faucettos

I ain't tappin' that: "My Faucet" by Marcus Quigmire.
CC BY 2.0 Generic. Via Wikimedia Commons.

I have a dripping faucet in my bathroom. Maybe it only needs a washer, maybe it's something more. I do not know. I'm not a plumber. It's been like this for a week. The whole week, in fact, has been like this for a week.

So I called maintenance for my building, but they can't--or won't--do anything about the problem. I do not know why.

They tell me to call a plumber. Which is complicated by the fact that I don't own but rent a condo, so I have to get my landlord's permission to call a plumber.

And why do I rent a condo and not own one or rent an apartment instead, you ask? Because I live in a city that dreams of being socialist but is actually quite the capitalist--or perhaps is just shitty at and indifferent to both, like it is at pretty much everything service-oriented, transportation-based, or creative and inspiring. (Worst public art ever.) And thus there's no money in apartments, and only the wealthy can afford to own the condos. And while I do ok, I'm not at the "I just spent a million maple leaves on a 300 square foot condo" level of income. Maybe in another year. Or fifty.

Anyway, the landlord is cool, go ahead call the plumber, and I'll reimburse you, no problem. She's like that, and I believe her.

So I call the plumber and am asked what kind of faucet is it? As in what brand.

And I'm like, I don't know, it's in the bathroom, it's a bathroom sink faucet and there's no brand name on it. (I double-checked.)

"We only service Moën faucets." You know, the expensive, stylish ones, that emit a stream of lukewarm water onto a flat rock. The water glides from the flat rock into a tray, then dribbles into a minuscule drain, and eventually plunges into Lake Ontario or some such. And somehow you're supposed to shave in this sink, the Rube Goldberg machine of modern plumbing.

Well, hunh, I'm pretty sure there are other types of faucets out there, not just Moën, but never say never. You live in Canada, you get used to fewer retail options. (Really, are Grape Nuts that hard to import?) I'm guessing because it's a small country that, as mentioned, has a peculiar, middling, I dunno what do you wanna do? I don't know what do you wanna do? relationship with socialism, capitalism, and pretty much everything animate or inanimate.

"Do you have the parts?"

Well, no, because I don't know what the problem is, so why would I have the parts? It's probably a washer, and if it is, I'm sure you could spare one, but, honestly, I'M NOT A FUCKING PLUMBER SO HOW THE FUCK SHOULD I KNOW?!

Interior monologue only, I promise.

"Well, we'll replace it with Moën and charge you for it if you don't have the parts."

Seriously, is Moën the Faucet Mafia and if you don't use them, you end up with a dead horse in your bed?

"Send us a picture of the faucet, try to identify it, and we'll get back to you next week."

Oh, I'll get right on that.

I suspect that if I were to do business with them--which I won't--they'd replace the entire sink, maybe even the cabinetry and the mirror, even though the faucet only needed a washer, because they feel impelled to make everything Moën.

(Or as one of my friends said when I related this story to him: "Sorry, you're going to have to move.")

I know Greta Thunberg won't be pleased with me, but I'm thinking of letting the faucet drip until it becomes a water feature or a fountain. (It's dripping hot water, so let's call it a hot spring or a thermal bath. Les Bains au Harbourfront peut-être ....) Then maybe I can build condos and retail around it, make lots of maple leaves, and retire early.

Screw librarianship. I think I should have become a plumber. I would have made a lot more money and get away with baring my teeth and my ass to the world for fun and profit.

¿Qué será mi vida?

Like I said, always choose disco.

Choose disco

This is probably way too much yellow fabric and blue eyeshadow for a rainy October morning, but some of us choose to jumpstart the day with drugs while others, like me, choose disco.

The Gibson Brothers (who, despite the Anglo sounding name, were actually Francophones from Martinique) represent a phase of late 1970s French/Belgian pop hitmaking that no one other than me would possibly be interested in. Long live the production team of Daniel Vangarde and Jean Kluger!

From this era and from this production team, I am particularly fond of "Cuba" but also of another Gibson Brothers' hit, "Qué Será Mi Vida (If You Should Go)," which was popular the year I made my debut at the cotillion of publicly acknowledged homosexuality. That is to say, bounded out of the closet and into the hearts and minds of a small but highly valued group of family and friends.

Cuuuuubaaaaaa, quiero bailar la salsa ....

The party's over (or at least in the minority)

Justin Trudeau in 2019. Public Domain.
Via Wikimedia Commons.

I have a lot to learn about the Canadian political mindset. Despite having to form a minority government, the Liberals and Justin Trudeau really didn't take that much of a hit, losing fewer than 20 seats since the 2015 election. Every Toronto riding was won by the Liberals.

And yet, especially over the last two years, the bloom has definitely been off the Justin Trudeau rose, at least if you were to believe comments made in public news forums and by opinion makers, ethics review boards, and non-Liberal politicians. 

I'm not sure what my lessons learned are. The Doug Ford Conservative government in Ontario hurt Conservatives overall? The opposition choices were unappealing (Conservative Andrew Scheer), untested (NDP Jagmeet Singh - or "too ethnic"? Something few Canadians would confess to, at least in public), or region-specific (Bloc Québécois Yves-François Blanchet) to make much of a difference? Canadians aren't as progressive as they virtue signal? (Poor showing by the Greens, lacklustre showing by the NDP.) Or people voted strategically for the Liberals to block the Conservatives?

I know Justin Trudeau plays very well outside Canada, but I've had an increasingly hard time taking him seriously over the last year, after some broken promises, fake virtue signaling, and fratboy douche privilege displaying. (Blackface, brownface, and a certain smugness papered over by nice hair and a good complexion.) When your alternatives are Doug Ford, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and Mauricio Macri (Argentina's current failed-state leader), I guess you can't help but look good to the world. Nevertheless, the world deserves better.

Surprisingly, I've sort of overlooked his ethics violations in the SNC-Lavalin affair: I thought that was more a tempest in a teapot, perhaps a disappointment to some but seeming more like an example of honest/dishonest politicking than anything else. At least it was real if not necessarily ethical.

One thing I hear a lot about here is about the "failure" of the U.S. political system to have more than two parties. Well, in this election, we had six vying for a majority in Canada, and I can't say that the results were all that different than with just two. It's a parliamentary system, so it's different from the outset--technically, you're voting for the party representative for your riding, not for the prime minister. And yet there are still some of the same challenges - uninspiring leaders, tepid voter turnout (about 66%, still much better than in the U.S.), middling results, and the reality that the Conservatives won the national popular vote, yet still are in the minority parliament-wise.

So maybe the lesson learned is that politics and governance suck everywhere, even in the most "enlightened" of spaces?

Oh, sooorry you had to read all the way through for me to reach that conclusion ....

* * *

The outcome of the Canadian election tells me that I am actually not a Supposed Former Drama Junkie after all. (Alanis Morissette reference, y'all. #CanCon)

Seriously, I find myself somewhat disappointed, even aggravated by the rather drab outcome--even though I should be pleased with the outcome, at least in theory.

"Rob Ford at the 2013 Beaches Easter parade" by
Bruce Reeve. CC BY-SA 2.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Mulling it over today, I kept thinking where is the drama? Where is the marching in the streets, setting couches on fire, and breaking storefront plate glass windows? Where is the plan to start campaigning beginning one minute after midnight on the day after election results are announced? Where is the name-calling, whining, and stamping of feet? Where is the endless dissection of results, the ad nauseum ruminations the election's Deeper Meanings, and overwrought analyses of the thoughts and feelings of white working-class voters?

My goodness, last week there was a 24-hour period in which President Shitstorm (aka Mussoleaky aka Il Douchey aka Donald Trump) and his mobster cabinet messed up more than all six Canadian political parties have done in the last four years. Hell, probably in the last four decades, given how the national ethose appears to be "safety first."

Maybe I need to detox for a while from the clusterfudge that is U.S., U.K., and Argentine politics. Or maybe Canadian politics need to be crazier. we hardly knew ye!
Rob Ford,

Maybe I need to sit down, shut up, and be careful of what I wish for?

Yeah, that, too.

Two can play

Governor Goodhair goes down

Fantasmas en la casa

As we move from summer to fall in the Northern Hemisphere, it's time to think about tea, fuzzy sweaters, crisp air, and warm fires--or not, depending on your preferences.

Fun Argentine pop group Miranda! will share the moment with us--in beautiful San Carlos de Bariloche no less.

"Pero no, no, no, no, no, no ...."

Dancing with the Soon-to-Be-Behind-Bars

Disgraced former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer
salsas with tears in his eyes

That moment when you realize, nope, I'm indeed completely devoid of shame ...

That moment when you realize it might have been better not to have responded to that email from a Nigerian prince ...

That moment when you hear Mephistopheles laugh and you realize the joke's on you for eternity ...

That moment when you hear an announcer with a British accent intone, "Performing the salsa, Sean Spicer and his partner Lindsay Arnold!" and you finally realize you've died and gone to hell ... and you totally deserve it.

Poultry in motion

"Portrait of Argentine Actress Eva Duarte" (later Eva Perón)
by Annemarie Heinrich. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

So my all-things-Argentina sojourn continues. And--you're forewarned--likely will for some time.

Currently I'm reading this biography of Eva Perón, Evita: The Life of Eva Perón by Jill Hedges, which is really very good, painting a more more nuanced portrait of Evita than you might get from other sources (such as musicals), but not shirking from her stridency, score-settling, and authoritarian tendencies either.

There is lots to recommend the book--it is thoughtful, sympathetic but clear-eyed, well written and well researched. But for now I want to focus on my favorite anecdote so far, one that brings into glorious flower (or do I mean feather?) the Peróns' mid-20th-century pro-level trolling. This anecdote has both a literary connection (Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges) and a library connection (Borges worked as a librarian for a time during the Perón era and then immediately afterwards, too).

Apparently, during the Perón era, Borges made many ugly public and private statements about Eva's origins--as did many Argentinians on the right, left, and center. If you were shocked how mean people, pundits, and politicos were to Hillary Clinton as a woman in power, really, you will fall to the floor in a faint when you read stories about the vitriol directed at Eva.

Eva Perón's origins were indeed poor, murky, and humble--one of five children born out of wedlock, her mother, Juana Ibarguren, was the paramour of Juan Duarte, an Argentine landowner and rancher who had another, legal family. By all accounts, he kept Eva's family to the side and never really provided for them in a significant way, especially not after his death.

Imagine growing up like that--fatherless, shunned, hungry, treated like trash, your mother working constantly to provide for five young children. Imagine how hungry for justice, sincere kindness, and social acceptance that you would feel as an adult. 

Then imagine having to hear famed author Jorge Luis Borges, a man in the 1940s with an international literary reputation, a man of the oligarchy, claim--based on no evidence then or now--that your mother at one point ran a brothel and that you and her sisters were prostitutes in said brothel for a time.

Hedges argues that it was likely quite the opposite, that Eva's mother worked hard, overcompensated, and raised her children to be as good, clean, and proper as possible so that they would not be tarnished for life by their illegitimacy and poverty.

Borges kept telling these tales throughout his life, including (and especially) when Eva and Juan were in power in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Coincidentally, in those days Borges had a government or quasi-government job as a librarian in Buenos Aires. Of the good, the bad, and the indifferent that the Peróns did during their reign, they tended to practice "clientelism," awarding the spoils of war--i.e., government jobs--to their supporters, poor, middle class, and wealthy.

Borges was not one of those supporters, obviously. So they offered him a "promotion": A plum position as an inspector for poultry and rabbits at the Buenos Aires municipal market.

I don't know if he took the job, but he likely wasn't happy about the offer. I imagine that he thought his privilege would excuse his being a jerk but surprise! No.

I do know that there are a number of librarians I've worked with that, if I were in charge, I would promote to poultry inspector in a heartbeat. Who knows? They might be good at it, better than they were as librarians, colleagues, and human beings, but I fear incidents of salmonella and bird flu would skyrocket during their tenure, nonetheless.

All's well that ends well, I guess: When Perón was ousted, Borges became head of la Biblioteca Nacional de la Argentina, the Argentine national library. Years later, he still repeated those stories and continued to display his right-wing, oligarchic street cred as a big supporter of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Maybe a little more time in the chicken coop, stepping around and through all that chicken shit, would have adjusted Borges' attitude some. But probably not.

Poor you, poor me, poor us

Street scene, Purmamarca, Argentina

Is Argentina a poor country?

Well, as far as poverty is concerned, it may all depend on how you define it. Using the World Bank's World Development Indicators from 2018, approximately 7% of Argentina's population lives on less than $5.50 USD per day. That's compared to 1% for Canada, 2% for the US (still shockingly something like 6 to 7 million people), 21% for Brazil, 35% for Mexico, and a whopping 57% for South Africa.

However, viewed another way, according to the the CIA World Factbook (2016, 2017, et al.), 32% of the Argentine population lives below the national poverty line--compared with 9.4% for Canada, 12.3% for the US, 4.2% for Brazil, 46% for Mexico, and 16.6% for South Africa.

Say what? The numbers are all over the map (literally) and don't necessarily translate well when comparing one country to another.

***

Viewed more subjectively, Buenos Aires looks great, like a stunning, slightly funky, "exotic" capital city, every so slightly lived in. At least that's the case if you stay in Palermo, Retiro, Recoleta, downtown, and most of the city proper. (In comparison, tidy Toronto is so un-crumpled, so unlived-in, so anodyne, and quite tedious, so much so that I almost cried upon landing back home.) I'm not sure what Buenos Aires is like in the poorer, more industrial suburbs, although a ride in from the international airport in Ezeiza reveals its share of tenements--but no corrugated shacks or squatter camps, at least as far as I could tell.

If you watch the Argentine news or current affairs programs there, you see your share of people of different income levels and social classes. And inevitably, like much of the rest of the Western world, the lighter the skin, the higher the social class/economic level tends to be (although not exclusively).

Despite the prevalence of Turkish soap operas, there is at least one Argentine soap, El Marginal (which was available on Netflix at one point--but not in Canada), shown on Argentina's public TV broadcaster, that takes a very gritty look at life among the poor, prisoners, ex-cons, petty criminals, and other "marginal" people.

Farther afield, the city of Salta in northwestern Argentina feels like a rather pristine Spanish colonial city with modern conveniences. "Salta la linda" doesn't have the glamor and cash that Buenos Aires does, however. Smaller Altiplano indigenous communities like Purmamarca and Humahuaca look more "developing" with unpaved streets and adobe buildings--but the restaurants at least have wifi.

Suffice it to say that Argentina is poorer than the US and Canada but does not feel desperately poor. Nonetheless, how do you maneuver this as a tourist without looking clueless or insensitive?

I still stayed in nice hotels and ate good food, but I tried not to overdo it or be ostentatious, much as I live in North America. I shopped some, both from stores and street merchants, including those trying to get by selling dishcloths, tissues, candies, and other small items, all part of the more informal economy. Did I need dishcloths while in Argentina? Not necessarily but they did come in handy. And as allergy-prone as I am, tissues are always in season.

I generally gave some money to those on the street, when asked, same as here. The "need" in Canada is sometimes questionable--with young guys on Queen West requesting money "for their band" or street people near my building asking me if I have something "better" than the $1 or $2 coin that I offered. While in Argentina, I didn't constantly pass out cash, only if I was prepared to, able to, and felt comfortable doing so.

***

What was more challenging was knowing how to handle a situation like the one I'm about to describe.

One night for dinner in Salta, I passed by the more elegant option recommended to me by a fellow tourist, instead opting for the old and familiar--McDonald's. Hey, what can I say? I was just feeling a little homesick that night and not very adventurous, especially after my lunch of "cazuela de llama" (llama stew) earlier that day in San Antonio de los Cobres. So I kept it simple: A grilled chicken sandwich and fries, a Diet Coke, all a prelude to some vanilla soft-serve, which I'd been craving all week for some reason.

While seated at a communal table, I vaguely noticed that a young boy sat down near me. But I didn't really focus on him, as I was no doubt scrolling through my Facebook or Twitter feed or reading the news from home, with home still being the US, despite my life in Canada. The boy eventually got up and went to another table where he asked a young couple if they were going to finish their fries and if not, could he have them.

At that point, I paid attention. I hadn't seen that happen before--or at least not in a very long time, and certainly not in glamorous Palermo.

The couple generously gave their fries to him without even a second's hesitation. So I decided to do the same. It wasn't much--there weren't many left, as I'd been eating them absent-mindedly while engrossed in the access to the wider world provided by my phone. But, literally, it was the least I could do.

An image of Eva Perón, downtown Buenos Aires,
exhorting the wealthy to do more for the people of Argentina

I started to leave, making my way toward the ice cream, served at a separate counter. But then I paused. I have more resources at my disposal, I thought; I can and should do more.

But what exactly? If I give too much money, will I look ostentatious? As Americans, we have a reputation for overtipping, and sometimes this can be viewed as showing off, rather than being understood as carrying out an American habit of leaving an inflationary amount for service because we know wait staff in the US have to get by on tips rather than salary.

The boy was young, maybe 12 or 13 at most--and this made me hesitate doing more as well. Being an older man seen giving a young boy cash, would there be the perception that I was expecting something for my money, either by the others around me or the boy himself? I recalled urban legends from visiting Puerto Vallarta years ago, a city with a big gay vacation scene, that young men of unknown age might entice you as part of a sting, with the police nearby, ready to swoop in for a bribe to "help" you avoid jail time and embarrassment. This was not the same situation at all. Nevertheless, on the trip down, I'd also seen posters all over the Atlanta airport about human trafficking and the sex trade. Suddenly the topic felt very real, very present. 

I debated what to do: Give him a generous amount of cash, buy him a meal, offer him a smaller amount along with my fries, or something else entirely (up to and including walking away). I ended up making what I perceived to be the least ostentatious gesture: I gave him about $30 pesos, not even one whole Canadian dollar, my fries, and wished him well.

I'm glad I respected the boy's pride, his "space," and I'm glad I didn't do anything that would appear compromising to him, to me, or to others. But was playing it safe the best I could do? Did respecting someone's pride outweigh momentarily alleviating their very real need--hunger? Should avoiding confusion, embarrassment, and, yes, the appearance of criminality, take precedence over helping combat someone's hunger or destitution?

***

I didn't know then, and I don't know now, and I will likely never know.

I do know, though, that I skipped having any ice cream that evening. Suddenly I was no longer hungry. Instead, I felt ever so slightly more melancholy for the comforts of home.

Argentina, te quiero

Oh, don't mind me. I'm just stuck at home with an apres-trip head cold, feeling melancholy, with too much music on my hands ....