Skip to main content

Canada cannot muster the cookie-monster

We're not sure what explains the sudden explosion of crazy. Is it deep, destabilizing economic insecurity? The looming 2012 apocalypse? Having a black president? No one knows for sure. All we know is that within the GOP's base, and on certain frontiers of the left, as well as the wacky-science crowd, crazy is hot this year. Crazy sells. It's the year of crazy liberation! Say it loud, I'm nuts and proud. (Joan Walsh, “2009: The year in crazy,” Salon, 14 Dec. 2009)
In my country, boring is what we do. In 1995 we let a huge province vote to succeed and they almost succeeded. No guns, no violence, just democracy. Very little drama.
But crazy is exciting. Extremes are dynamic and fun. Wars and economic collapse fill news holes and sell advertising. Polar opinions are riveting. Cataclysmic prophesies on the right and left help one feel important and unprecedented. In short, crazy works.
Until America grows up, settles down and takes its responsibilities to its people and the world a little more seriously, crazy will be the norm. (Mike Steers, response to post, “2009: The year in crazy,” Salon)

@mikesteers
Until America grows up, settles down and takes its responsibilities to its people and the world a little more seriously, crazy will be the norm.
But how grown-up is a nation that still talks as if it were the Edwardian? Can you imagine such a nation having its own 60s? If not, it's not serious, or boring -- more like moribond, or dead, with a gleam of rich sadism just lurking behind the peaceful facade.
Cdns like being boring because they thereby never quite feel like they're kids with hands caught in the cookie jar, which is what creates so much of the psychodrama in the American scene. So violence gets abrogated, at the cost of self-minimization -- of living. Poor trade. Still, Quebec got off, not because Canadians are so peaceful but because they weren't yet in the mood for war. If they try it again a few years from now, Canada will invade, punish, cripple, as many Canucks decide, rather than be known for silver, they'd too like to command respect through steel.

Link: 2009: The year in crazy (Salon)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Discussion over the fate of Jolenta, at the Gene Wolfe facebook appreciation site

Patrick McEvoy-Halston November 28 at 10:36 AM Why does Severian make almost no effort to develop sustained empathy for Jolenta -- no interest in her roots, what made her who she was -- even as she features so much in the first part of the narrative? Her fate at the end is one sustained gross happenstance after another... Severian has repeated sex with her while she lay half drugged, an act he argues later he imagines she wanted -- even as he admits it could appear to some, bald "rape" -- but which certainly followed his  discussion of her as someone whom he could hate so much it invited his desire to destroy her; Severian abandons her to Dr. Talus, who had threatened to kill her if she insisted on clinging to him; Baldanders robs her of her money; she's sucked at by blood bats, and, finally, left at death revealed discombobulated of all beauty... a hunk of junk, like that the Saltus citizens keep heaped away from their village for it ruining their preferred sense
Post a Comment
Read more

Salon discussion of "Almost Famous" gang-rape scene

Patrick McEvoy-Halston: The "Almost Famous'" gang-rape scene? Isn't this the film that features the deflowering of a virgin -- out of boredom -- by a pack of predator-vixons, who otherwise thought so little of him they were quite willing to pee in his near vicinity? Maybe we'll come to conclude that "[t]he scene only works because people were stupid about [boy by girl] [. . .] rape at the time" (Amy Benfer). Sawmonkey: Lucky boy Pull that stick a few more inches out of your chute, Patrick. This was one of the best flicks of the decade. (sawmonkey, response to post, “Films of the decade: ‘Amost Famous’, R.J. Culter, Salon, 13 Dec. 2009) Patrick McEvoy-Halston: @sawmonkey It made an impression on me too. Great charm. Great friends. But it is one of the things you (or at least I) notice on the review, there is the SUGGESTION, with him being so (rightly) upset with the girls feeling so free to pee right before him, that sex with him is just further presump
3 comments
Read more

Too late -- WE SAW your boobs

I think we're mostly familiar with ceremonies where we do anointing. Certainly, if we can imagine a context where humiliation would prove most devastating it'd probably be at a ceremony where someone thought themselves due an honor -- "Carrie," "Good Fellas." "We labored long to adore you, only so to prime your hope, your exposure … and then rather than a ladder up we descended the slops, and hoped, being smitten, you'd judged yourself worthless protoplasm -- a nothing, for letting yourselves hope you might actually be something -- due to be chuted into Hades or Hell." Ostensibly, nothing of the sort occurred during Oscars 2013, where the host, Seth Macfarlane, did a number featuring all the gorgeous Oscar-winning actresses in attendance who sometime in their careers went topless, and pointed this out to them. And it didn't -- not quite. Macarlane would claim that all obscenity would be directed back at him, for being the geek so pathe
Post a Comment
Read more