We’re in a trade war! …Kinda? Maybe? It’s on hold? Till such time as shit-for-brains can reasonably pretend that he courageously won it and easily defeated the Evil Canadian Fentanyl?
Regardless of the outcome, I spent of a lot of my time this week walking around the apartment, doing my (quite poor, if I’m honest) Captain Picard impression, saying over and over again: “Data: shit is fucked.”
When I was in grade 9, my Geography teacher gave us a guided tour of a map of Canada and then, at some point, mentioned that due to our almost obscene quantity of fresh water, our nation would eventually become the focal point of a resource extraction war that we are (militarily, anyway) in no way prepared to deal with.
I mention this not to offer my own expert opinion on the subject (although the fact that I am now older than Mr. McMurray was then, is kind of hilarious). Rather, I just want to note that his offhand, terrifying prognostication has been stuck in my head for thirty-five years.
As I’ve written previously, I don’t really mean this blog or any of my ancillary online presences to be the means by which I smear you with my own anxieties, of which there are (currently) many. Let’s just go forward with the assumption that we’re all aware of it, and that yes, it’s sort of nuts that we’re just watching all of this happen, even given that we have no functional means by which to stop it.
I’m afraid to even schedule this post — I always schedule my posts — because who knows how eerily tone-deaf it will seem by 9:09 on Friday morning, given what the autocratic regime may do by cover of darkness on Thursday night.
We’re living through one of those points in history, the kind of thing Mr. McMurray, or one of his History peers, will be be teaching the (ideally, still extant) grade 9 students in the 2090s. And those of us living now can never again hide behind the pleasurable thought of experiment of what we might do, were such a scenario ours to resist.
How do I get outta this chickenshit outfit
Easy: move to New Zealand. It’s always been move to New Zealand.
I was gonna do a whole second section here about some career lines I’m pursuing and am (at least, intellectually) excited about; but fuck it, instead I’m just going to throw the rest of my time today at my passion project: figuring out how I can move to New Zealand.
Take the rest of the day off, everyone, Pandemic Rules have been reinstated:
I feel like we need to re-institute Pandemic Rules. Like, we're in a trade war with fucking Canada, of course you can have a Snickers ice cream bar for breakfast and chug wine from a mug during zoom meetings. The rules are there are no more rules. Just pajama bottom it to the weekend. Anything goes.
— C. Robert Cargill (@crobertcargill.bsky.social) February 3, 2025 at 1:09 PM
The exquisite paradox of the best stuff on the internet vs. the internet actually killing us
- Friend of the pod Rebecca Wood’s latest poem is published, here! (League of Canadian Poets)
- I’ve been listening to the expanded, 35th anniversary release of Michael Kamen’s score for License to Kill (one of my better From A to Bond pieces, imho). That’s a score I’ve largely disregarded till now, and there’s still a bunch of it that doesn’t land for me; but I will say, the parts that do land, are a hell of a lot better than I gave them credit for. (La La Land Records)
- I promise not to go nuts with the “hey, get off the internet” stuff but also, get off the fuckin’ internet. (Kaleb Horton)
- Need more? Janus Rose on the illegitimacy of “convincing ourselves that posting is a form of political activism, when it is at best a coping mechanism.” Message acknowledged (404 Media)
- “Reality desperately needs a better PR department.” Boy howdy. (Dame)
- Fine, one more piece about the awfulness: USAID. (New Republic)
It’s never just “one more,” liar
And now my own page headers are talking to me. That’s new
- I’m finding a lot of things funny these days (quoth the Ripley), but Toys R’ Us making absolutely transparently clear that American Toys R’ Us is gone and we are not them?? Brilliant. (ToysRUs.ca)
- Meanwhile, in the Star Wars, which are must better wars overall, as far as I’m concerned:
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