Congressional wisdom no. 1

 

You say you want an insurrection

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany before January 6, 2021 (left), and on "Insurrection Day," January 6, 2021

Apparently, insurrection will fuck you up.

We don't do squat

Author's note: I'm having a devil of a time with the new Blogger layout/platform, especially when trying to upload multiple images in order to tell a story. And because of that, I'm frustrated in trying to write this post. But let's try anyway.

These are scenes from the December 15, 2020, episode of 7de Laan, an Afrikaans-language "soapie" broadcast on SABC 2 in South Africa and available on delay via YouTube. (Currently, episodes posted to YouTube are two weeks behind those shown on South African TV screens. Episodes are generally only available for one week.)

I have watched 7de Laan off and on (but mostly on) since it first started appearing on YouTube, which I believe was aboout 5+ years ago, before I moved to Canada. While I love my soaps, sometimes I get annoyed with the storylines on 7de Laan and will stop watching for a period of time, in favor of a soap with more guts (the late, lamented South African soap Isidingo, which was canceled in March 2020) or with more pizazz and humor (Viudas e hijos de rock and roll on Telefe Internacional).  7de Laan can be "safe" and comfortable sometimes. It doesn't always challenge its audience, and when it does, it does so for only a short time and can wrap things up a little too neatly. 

Even though South Africa has a progressive constitutional government, 7de Laan (and likely other South African soaps) have had challenges integrating Black and White and same-sex relationships into its storylines. Controversies have erupted when it has done so. 

Then again, as I've noted before, it's hardly like the American soaps were quick to adopt similar storylines, and there were also controversies when they did. We may be a few years ahead in telling such stories, but we are likely behind others. And I still stand behind the idea that other countries and cultures do TV better--with more emotion, intelligence, passion, and compassion--than we do. (See Viudas e hijos above, an Argentine novela, which featured a very complex, forward-thinking gay love story through the course of its run in 2014 and 2015. I hope to write about that at a future date.)

Which is a very long intro to relating a recent storyline on 7de Laan about a squatter camp under attack by a property developer. Storylines involving the squatter camp have been told on 7de Laan for at least a couple of years now, which was a welcome, more realistic contrast to the idealized inner city suburban view of Johannesburg that the show often conveys. While at first we "dropped into" the squatter camp from time to time for special stories, more recently the camp and its residents have been featured more prominently, not just as part of a short-term or sensational storyline but with characters who live in the camps featured front and center as part of the full-time cast and front-burner stories.

The three images included here don't feature regular characters. (I hope to make a second post soon that show those.)  However, these do a good job of illustrating the storyline and its impact on the squatter community--the fear, the panic, the immediacy. I appreciate the images because they have a certain Depression-era quality, like a Dorothea Lange photograph.

Squatter camps are not necessarily something we have in the US and Canada, at least on a scale as large as those in many countries. Nevertheless, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I've witnessed a growth in homeless encampments--squatter camps with less permanence--in city parks here in Toronto. And I've seen those camps cleared out overnight. Perhaps not as dramatically as on 7de Laan but I imagine not without a negative, perhaps even traumatic, impact on the residents either.

During this storyline, some of the non-squatting characters, including the property developer, commented that the squatters "can always go to a shelter." True enough, but I'm fairly certain that the rise of park squatters in Toronto is directly related to people steering clear of shelters as a way to avoid exposure to the coronavirus. 

So you can always offer a "simple solution" to the problem, but usually the problem is far more complicated and requires a more nuanced solution. Even if that solution is just to leave everyone alone in place and monitor the community to make sure everyone is safe and healthy.

Anyway, my point in posting these images is perhaps more pedestrian and self-centered: This serves as a good reminder of how fortunate I've been in 2020, despite its challenges (not all of which were related to the pandemic). This also serves as a good reminder that I need to do what I can in 2021 to make sure others are taken care of, not abused, and have the opportunities that we all deserve and yet often take for granted.

Happy new year.

Come on baby, do that conga

New Year's Eve at Mar-a-Shithole with US Representative, Matt Gaetz (Right-Wing Douchebag - Florida) and two unnamed blow-up dolls. 

It's just like those recent Match.com commercials, "A Match Made in Hell," where Satan and the Year 2020 share their amazing year as a couple, then 2020 talks about meeting the Year 2021 and how boring, predictable, and "not into politics" she is.

(For those unable or unwilling to keep score: Matt Gaetz = Satan; Mannequin #1 = Year 2020; Mannequin #2 = 2021, although I'm sure she has a lovely personality.)

Happy New Year! Here's hoping this ilk joins a COVID conga line into prison or purgatory in 2021.

Kirk Cameron's (a) dick

 

Former child star Kirk Cameron--whose parents pimped him out to predatory Hollywood Elites at a tender age--shows off for the cameras a model of his weird, misshapened penis. It's a last-minute effort to boost Christmas sales of his line of Evangelical Celebrity Dildos.

#SorryNotSorry

Via Rail Nordique

#FakeMapFun

I saw this map posted earlier this week on Twitter by @apapenheim.

I immediately understood that this map was a joke (some on Twitter apparently missed this point), although I probably do not get all the jokes. I've lived in Canada for 5-1/2 years now, so I should get some, if not most of Ministry of Canadian Humo(ur) references. Or maybe I just have a jones for geography? Yes, that, too.

Here's what I've gleaned so far:

• High-speed rail all over the thinly settled North with Moose Factory, Ontario, being the Grand Central Station/transit center for all of Eastern Canada. It is funny, but it is also sarcastic, as the Canadian North and the Indigenous people who live there are probably the least well served by the Canadian government (boil water orders, no roads, poor housing, suicides) and the least acknowledged by the rest of Canada. But, you know, Canadians are so nice, all is forgiven!
  

• One lowly little high-speed rail line between Toronto and Sarnia--not Windsor, which one would expect over Sarnia, as Windsor is the "more important" city, the end/start of the McDonald-Cartier Freeway corridor, where most of Canada's population lives. Also, Toronto, Canada's most populated city, is completely disconnected from the rest of the high-speed network. And let me tell you, Toronto will not stand for this!

• No stops in Montréal (suburban Laval, instead) or Québec City (suburban Lévis, instead) and barely a stop in Ottawa, the federal capital. Again, the Québec City-Montréal-Ottawa-Toronto-Windsor corridor is the country's most populated. And, as Torontonians would say, it's most important.
  

• No connector between Calgary and Edmonton. The sibling rivalry is intense between these two, and never the twain shall meet.

• Barely a way out of Winnipeg. Likely more true than Winnipeg would care to admit.

• A stop located in "Marché aux Puces," Ontario. Which means "flea market" in French. I admit I had to consult my dictionary to get that joke.
  

• A stop located in the Narcisse Snake Pits, Manitoba. Is this even a thing? Yes, apparently, it is!
  

• A connector to Bismarck, North Dakota (why?), and another to Point Roberts, Washington, a city only accessible by land through British Columbia.

• The "under construction" line between Kegashka and Blanc-Sablon, Québec. In real life, there is no road between these towns along the Québec coast. I'm assuming they are all fishing ports that have limited ferry connections between one another. Part of the joke is likely that a road has long been proposed for this region or is something that seems desirable, yet impossible, and thus will never happen.
  

• "Thanks" to various entities and people, including the "SAQ"--la Société des alcools du Québec, AKA the liquor control board for the province of Québec. SAQ does not stand for la Société alcoolique du Québec--the Alcoholic Society of Québec--as I have been known to call it. By accident, I swear.

• The suggestion in the Twitter comments that this transportation map looks like it was crafted by the Toronto City Council, where eternal political gridlock for decades on end prevents even the simplest of transportation plans from moving forward.

I didn't get the reference to Hyder, a town in Alaska. Like Point Roberts, Hyder is separated from the rest of the U.S. and only accessible via Canada.

 

So I understand most of the jokes, but you know what? The jokes just aren't that funny. Or they're funny in a small-country, in-joke, Canada-is-so-special kind of way, which, like a robot, computer, or android, I understand but do not feel.

 

Perhaps, then, I've lived here long enough. Which gets me to part of why I've been so silent over the last few months: Yes, I've been busy with work and living my best pandemic lockdown self, but I've also been applying for jobs--and I finally got one in November. I say "finally," but it really only took two to three months once I made up my mind to move on.

And move on I will, next spring, back to the States, where I think I belong, at least for now. At least until Argentina is open for business again.

Oh Canada, I had such high hopes for us 5-1/2 years ago. My main reason for leaving, on paper, is to seek new professional challenges, but let's not be two-faced about it: Canada, you and I are not a good fit. I hate to admit it to you, but I've been faking my Canadian orgasm since at least 2017--the sight of the red and white maple leaf no longer stirs my heart, if it ever did, and I just don't give a rat's about David's story arc on Schitt's Creek. I care even less, if that's possible, about Dan "I don't like labels" Levy's opinion on anything or Drake's latest musical offering. 

 

Really, let's call the whole thing off. Faking it is just no way to live, no way to face and embrace your soon-to-be-sixth decade on the planet.

So, au revoir, Canada. Don't worry, though, there's plenty of time to talk it through. This will be a painfully long goodbye as I don't exit Stage American until May 2021.

 

Oh, and by the way, I still have permanent resident status and a citizenship application in the works. Because, Canada, the thing I may have learned most and best from you is insincerity.

Love my way

 

Because I need to post something for November 2020. 

Part 2 of my Elio and Oliver mixtape, made for a friend's birthday, although I secretly suspect he has not and will not listen to my lovingly crafted, slightly self-indulgent oeuvre.

Season of the Witch

 

Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger, and The Trinity performing Donovan's "Season of the Witch," 1968 or so. One of the trippiest things I've seen in ages and certainly a song to set the mood for Halloween.

Just chicken-fry everything already

More #PandemicPantryCooking: This is the main thing I made in the kitchen this week: The ultimate chicken-fried steak.

And it truly was.

 

I'm sorry, but maybe it's a Texas thing, and every now and again I need a serving of chicken-fried steak so that I am not completely bummed about by life, politics, work, work, and more work. Honestly, I think Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico may have America's best food. (Is it wrong to select a place to retire based on what you can get to eat?) 

 

OK, California, too, I'll give you that (for fish tacos and every Asian cuisine imaginable), but the other states are more affordable. And under certain circumstances I will give North and South Carolina credit, but you can get grits in Texas and good seafood in Louisiana, so those states can just serve as your occasional culinary sidepiece.

 

Pandemic pantry shortcuts: 

 

I didn't pat dry anything, as the recipe recommended, but probably should have as it might have made the batter and breading stick a little better. Although it did just fine.

I didn't have Tabasco sauce (because Canada) but did have Cholula hot sauce (because Canada?), which added a nice kick and really made the dish. 

 

I did not make my own gravy (although I can), instead using my last packet of San Antonio Pioneer Flour Mills cream gravy mix, which I bought when I visited a while back. (I will accept charity. Just so you know, the mail still works reasonably well between the U.S. and Canada.)

 

I splurged and used some very nice, thin Angus beef steaks, about 1/4- to 1/3-inch thick.

 

Heart healthy? Please see yourself out. But it was damn fine eatin' at Rancho Santo Montag this week, y'all. 

 

And some weeks, that's all that matters.

 

***

 

Image credit (oh, Blogger, why did you change your format?): The mothership for packaged cream gravy - San Antonio's Pioneer Flour Mills. By Leaflet. CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported. Source: Wikimedia Commons. 

Death has grown tired of chess

 

Republican Way Off Broadway

 

Not a Drape, not even a Scrape

 

Surrender Dorothy!

 

Dinner is served with a generous side of anxiety

Gỏi cuốn or summer rolls by Yuchinkay. CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Via Wikimedia Commons.

"You'll have to tell me how this works. I haven't eaten in a restaurant since March." 

 

Neither had I. 

Today Cairo and I went to a favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Hung on Spadina Avenue at St. Andrew Street in Chinatown, for a late lunch/early dinner. Come to think of it, this is the first place we dined together in Toronto when we started dating more than seven years ago this summer.

Since shelter-in-place became the norm here in mid-March, I've done takeout from a Japanese restaurant and a Persian restaurant near where I live, but that, Tim Horton's, and Mary Brown's Fried Chicken, is about as adventurous as I've gotten in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In defense of both of us, patio dining just reopened in Toronto in late June, but indoor dining only started up again in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) on July 31.

 

First things first: 

• We had to wear masks, except when eating. Even when I went to the washroom, even when we paid the bill, we wore masks.
• We also had to provide our names and telephone numbers in case contact tracing was needed. (We now also have an app in Ontario to help with this as well.)
• All the silverware (in this case, chopsticks, soup spoons, napkins, etc.) came in individual plastic bags, which we opened ourselves.
• Tables were far apart and some were marked with a bright red 'X' so that no one was seated too close to others.

 But that didn't really matter because we were maybe two out of four or five diners in the restaurant. We were easily outnumbered by the staff and the owners.

 

Heretofore, this has been a very busy Vietnamese resto, in the heart of Toronto's main Chinatown. (There are a couple of others.) Maybe we went at an unpopular time or maybe it was just a nice summer day and everybody was at the beach or the cottage, but overall, Chinatown was more lowkey than you would expect on a Saturday afternoon in August.

 

The food was great, as always, maybe even better in some ways than usual but that could in part be down to the fact that we hadn't eaten there in so long. We even peeked into some shops along Spadina, which seemed to be doing a fairly brisk business, despite the pandemic.

 

But I keep thinking about that restaurants, all the restaurants, and how any of them have survived this lockdown. You really have to wonder how most of them, any of them, have held on for this long.

 

So maybe this will make me get out and about a little more, at least once a week, at least for takeout, to put some money back in the economy, other than a steady stream of Amazon and iTunes purchases. I confess that even as a die-hard introvert, I feel somewhat stir crazy at this point, ready for company, some activity, new sights and sounds, and definitely something other than my own cooking when I can be bothered to cook at all.  I can only imagine how the extroverts among us are doing. 

 

Stage 3 of reopening, where we are currently in the GTA, still feels a little raw, a little chancy, a little brutal even. There seem to be more homeless people on the street, in my own neighborhood and in Chinatown. We're not even close to normal, but perhaps today was one small step toward normalcy. Hopefully so. 

 

And then this evening we watched the news and learned that the province is back up to having more than one hundred new COVID-19 cases reported per day, a number not seen since early summer. Our infection rate is small stuff compared to what's going on in the States and other parts of the world, but that and the fact that the U.S.-Canada border is closed to travel for the foreseeable future are signs that the pandemic isn't done messing with us just yet.

 

I, the profaner

 

I discovered this song earlier today, the whole album in fact, 11 episodios sinfónicos, by the late Gustavo Cerati, a famed Argentine musician, songwriter, and lead singer of rock en español legends, Soda Stereo.

Cerati died too young, just a few years ago, due to ongoing complications from a stroke. This album and concert were recorded in Buenos Aires in the early 2000s when he would seem to have been at a creative peak, at least if this song provides sufficient evidence. (However, the Great Gazoo called and he wants his coat back, Gustavo.) I once had a boyfriend from Mexico who waxed eloquent about Soda Stereo, but I never really got them or got into them, at least back then. But now, I'm sorry I didn't. Maybe hearing this record would have made me appreciate the band. Maybe this record would have prompted me to travel to Argentina much earlier in life than I did, only a mere two years ago.

But I've done so twice now, and I will do so again, espero que sí, once the COVID-19 pandemic ends. I've even toyed with the idea of working remotely from Buenos Aires, which now seems completely possible. I'm not quite convinced my employer would agree, but if this pandemic is really anticipated to last for two years, as recently predicted, then what the hell? Why not? I loathe this job, and if you've been reading so far, you know Canada and I have a marriage of convenience--or inconvenience, given its unsatisfying retail scene and its small screen view of everything. Back home, the U.S. seems crazier and deadlier than usual. So if Argentina would let me in, if I had access to good healthcare, if I had access to a strong, reliable internet connection, would it matter if I did my job from a place I would much rather be, improving my Spanish, a lifelong goal, and exploring spectacular landscapes, steak dinners, and Malbecs along the way?

De veras, after all this meshugas, it's hard to imagine going back to the office, let alone to whatever was passing for normal at the beginning of 2020. If I can work from home for six months in Toronto, I could do the same in Buenos Aires, or Salta, or Jujuy, or Mendoza, or Puerto Madryn, or Trelew, or Córdoba, or Ushuaia, or Rosario, or San Antonio de los Cobres ... well, maybe not San Antonio de los Cobres, a unique and beautiful place but one where the altitude is high, the air is thin, and the roasted llama is a little too free-flowing for a sensitive stomach like mine. (And yet I ate it, loved it, and would go back for more if given the opportunity.) 

But, otherwise, hell yeah, I could do this and still hit up the llama blue plate special in San Antonio every few months or so. So buen apetito and buen viaje, bitches! I'm outta here first chance and a ticket on Aerolíneas Argentinas I get.

Tears of a clown

 

Mornin' glory

 

 

"And glory to my hot young boyfriend, Brandon!"*

 

* Fez not included; some assembly required.

Suddenly last summer

This is a recent mixtape I completed as a birthday gift for a friend of mine, who previously in these pages I've dubbed The Italian American, although that label does an exceedingly poor job of conveying anything about his personality. In some ways, it's more of an ironic label, at least if I even remember what irony is at this point, thank you very fucking much Alanis Morissette! (Just kidding, girl. You know I love you. Like a friend.)

We both enjoyed the movie and the book, Call Me by Your Name, although I think IA may have enjoyed both more than me. Increasingly I find I have a somewhat problematic relationship with media portrayals of the G in LGBT+ lives. However, I don't think it's so much the media's take that bothers me; It's more the wishy-washy, fuzzy-wuzzy, hyper-fluid, contemporary take on sexuality and gender identity.

No one seems to want to be Gay with a capital G anymore. Every identity, every gender seems highly mutable. Perhaps that's as it should be: The era I came out in (1980-1983) feels like a thousand years ago (and, let's face it, it was 40 years ago, a couple of lifetimes if we were peasants in the Middle Ages) and represented a very different time in gay life. Pre-AIDS for one thing but also in the midst or even a little post-liberation, a time when gay men seemed to know who they were and what they wanted--and that was to be men who unapologetically loved men. Gay identity was a political statement as well as a personal identity. We had to be united to get across who we were--sure of ourselves and our sexuality (this is not a phase!); men who wanted to be men and not women (I'm not a transvestite!); men who knew how to have fun (sometimes discreetly, sometimes not) but who knew how to present themselves so as to gain respect and further the cause of our safety and equality.

Maybe that's all an illusion. Maybe sexuality and identity were more fluid then than we realized, but back then the bisexuality of men often seemed like an excuse not to commit to being gay and marriage to a woman felt like a betrayal to the cause. That was perhaps way too rigid a view, but the rigidity was there to push us and our rights forward. No waffling! No backsliding! No second-guessing! We're here, we're queer, get used to it!

The rigidity could be chafing and stifling, even to me. It's not that I was interested in women or, other than for a couple of weeks after acknowledging my sexuality and figuring out how to explain it to my parents and friends, that I considered myself bisexual. I am not. I am a solid Kinsey 6, or at most/least a Kinsey 5.75. I can be intellectually attracted to women from time to time, although I'm not sure about physically, and I have no intention of exploring any other possibilities at this late date in life. And I don't feel as though I've missed a thing. If anything, when I think about what I missed, I recall missed opportunities to meet men, get to know men, date men, and have sex with men (although admittedly not exclusively in that trajectory)--and I recall missed opportunities to travel more, where I would have likely met men, got to know men, dated men, and had sex with men.

The stifling part for me is that I often wanted to date and be in love more than I wanted to have sex with more men. I had my share of encounters, sure, but sex, even when I was at my peak {assuming I had one, that is) has never been a hobby or a mission for me. I also think that what rapidly became the gay identity of the 1980s and '90s--well-to-do white urban gay men and their hangers-on (the party boys, the muscle studs, the lovers, just add rainbow flags)--fell flat for me. I didn't have the money, I didn't have the body, I didn't have the ego and extroversion, and I didn't have the interest to be like everyone else, at least for more than a fleeting moment.  

The '70s and early '80s liberation and the '80s and '90s Reaganomics/Dynasty/Pet Shop Boys approach to gay life both seem très passé nowadays. Subsequent generations, post-AIDS crisis, appear to enjoy the freedom created, but the old man in me questions whether anyone coming out after 1992 or so feels any of the responsibility. I see stuff nowadays--the outrageous characters on RuPaul's Drag Race (the Canadian version in heavy rotation here at the moment), the predominance of trans identity in the media, the fluidity of gender ("some days I feel like a man, some days I feel like a woman"--so you understand what it's like to be paid less for the same or more work and fear being sexually assaulted wherever you are, including your own home?)--that makes me cringe. And it makes me feel very old. I always strove fro normalcy, respect, responsibility, permanence, and even a certain level of masculinity. None of that seems to matter anymore.

No, Gay with a capital G life hasn't been a bed of orchids or tulips for me. Sometimes it's felt more like a field of dandelions. While I've employed the beautiful ideal of men loving men as one of my guiding stars in my life, it can sometimes be a lonely journey. Some men can't love you. Some men only want to have sex--all friction and no feeling. Some men stay true to the rigid limitations of masculine power and dominance, even when given a opportunity to be free of these bonds and experience a transformative life. And some men just don't understand you--and you don't understand them.

Truth be told, there never was a choice, there was no fluidity, no in-between state of being: I am Gay with a capital G. It is who I am, and I am proud of that reality and that I've dealt with it reasonably well and lived the best life I could live under sometimes trying, sometimes dire, and sometimes happy circumstances.

So even Call Me by Your Name makes me somewhat uncomfortable as the movie perhaps more than the book implies a choice and a mutability of sexuality that I never felt were part of my reality. But, hey, maybe it's OK--it is the reality for some for sure. It's just that I find the idea of men loving men exclusively and determinedly greatly diminished and undervalued in the current milieu. Maybe we had it our way for too long--we set the standard, we set the course, and expected everyone to comply with our worldview. Maybe this represents a deep generational change, and I represent an old guard that can't get beyond its suddenly evaporating status and privilege. Maybe I'm in the wrong. Or maybe I'm not, but to quote our illustrious Fearless Leader, "It is what it is."

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the mixtape. I took a couple of songs from the soundtrack--French and Italian pop hits from the early 1980s--and expanded upon that, trying to represent the story and the scenes through song. Some of it likely works, some of it likely doesn't, but I hope you'll have fun listening nonetheless. I know I had a lot of fun exploring the pop charts, discovering new music, becoming reacquainted with old favorites, and putting this all together.

Thighs and whispers

Instabull not Constantonipple

 

Trump mispronounces Thailand as "Thighland" pic.twitter.com/PgTRnHpAA8

— The Recount (@therecount) August 6, 2020

Thighland
Nambia
Maracas
Salty Arabia
Phillypenis
Tzatzikistan

Little known fact: Toblerone, the capital of Nambia, and Vanilla, the capital of Thighland, are cistern cities.