This morning, I have a number of comments to make about the state of my universe, and they include a review of last evening’s Women of Comedy show at Inferno, two comments about Air Canada, several comments about the US election, and a description of a dream.
I’ll start with the American Election. This bitterly contested and divisive election is going to be a lot worse than anybody except the goddamned drunken posse comitatus types could have predicted.
It gives me no pleasure to predict this, but there will be between 20 and 30 dead in post election riots in the US.
How could an election contest between two rich white men result in a ‘win’ for the working poor in the US? They are demonstrably worse off than they were 4 years ago… it won’t matter who wins, they’ll be worse off yet. I don’t even think that Bush has to steal the election although he certainly has the mechanisms in place for an able theft… on the ground, chopping off the right to vote, in the proces, voting machines that do the right thing for Republicans and in the judiciary, with a packed Supreme Court.
I just wrote an apocalyptic jeremiad but I deleted it because I bored myself. I will predict a couple of things else. The Canadian dollar will be higher than the American dollar for most of next year. We’ll never see 40$ oil again.
Comedy show. With Watermelon, Ardell Fitzpatrick & Kristina Agosti. Featuring Dana Alexander & Laurie Elliot.. Headliner: Erica Sigurdson. They were all good. Watermelon did a bit on ‘vaginal rejuvenation’ that had Paul and I flopping around like landed trout. Dana Alexander is black, and apparently from Edmonton. When she said she plays small towns and people say things like We Really Like Black People in Slave Lake I just about died. Brought me back to the Racism 101 I lived through when I was living with and married to a Canadian born black guy. Then she talked about buying a vibrator. Service person says, no problem, I’ll help you get it onto the roof rack. That is the kind of humour I like. Ardell, god bless her, repeated every word of the routine she did the night she shared a stage with Tanyalee Davis lo these many years ago. If you ever get a chance to see Tanyalee Davis, DO IT. She is brilliant and subversive and 42 inches tall. Check out her website and her description of being hit by a really bad driver. I think Ardell is funny, but I was disappointed. Lee Ann Keple did a good job of Mcing. I booed the headliner because she dissed public breastfeeding. She said I don’t sh*t in the store and I nearly yelled, but it’s okay for YOU to eat in public, ya fat pig! She said Yikes and I yelled This is Vancouver, like some things ya leave alone. I will get booed someday, and that moment will come back to haunt me. Her set was otherwise quite good, very consistently funny and good with hecklers, although the stuff she did about relating to children… all of it… was quite creepy, full of repressed violence and that laughing through the tears feel you get from people who are still dealing with childhood trauma. Childless women really have a disadvantage; they don’t have somebody to dump the trauma on. There wasn’t a person on stage last night who has children, or was willing to talk about them.
I am writing tons of stuff, my current favourite is about overhearing Jesus talking to his mother on a cell phone on the bus. And why WOULDN’T Jesus come to Vancouver? Everybody else does, and it’s a good f*cking thing they leave again, too.
I said to Paul on the way home, you know, I think this is my favourite on ramp (Grandview Highway eastbound onto Highway one) and he sighed and said his favourite on ramp is still the Jarvis on ramp onto the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto, because it frames the CN tower so perfectly. Then I said to him, it’s great that we never run out of things to talk about, but sometimes it’s really bizarre. And the thing about being happily married is not the times you talk to each other about weird sh*t, it’s the times you LOOK at each other. You know and he knows; you may not be feeling or thinking the exact same thing, but you really know what the other person is thinking and you feel seen in that moment. It can be good, or bad, but you know that you’re visible to somebody else, and that he NEEDS to look at you so that you can be together in knowing something. I’m going to do a bit on verbal abuse. Paul just shakes his head. He’s almost used to it by now.
Two things about Air Canada. They are painting the aircraft misty blue. Brother James in Ottawa do you read me? THEY ARE PAINTING THE AIRCRAFT THE SAME COLOUR AS THE SKY!!! Can’t we just report this as a safety issue and have all the managers arrested for endangering the public???? Camo coloured airplanes!!! ain’t it groovulous!? I’m NOT okay with that. Second thing. Celine Dion is not a professional. They gave her an OXCART full of money to bang on her chest and wear a new trolley dolly outfit and she wouldn’t get off the f*cking airplane in Vancouver because the right kind of bottled water wasn’t available and there WAS NO RED CARPET! It’s at moments like this that I wish the Virgin Mary would appear to her and say things like, “My child, you need no red carpet beneath your feet, for all of God’s creation is holy! Now get off the f*cking airplane and get to work! You couldn’t even lift a meal tray without your forearm snapping, you no account stick insect!” I’m sure she’s very nice in person, but the report back from the troops was that she’d just had a hell of a fight with Ren� and hairs were occupying tender portions of her mucosa, thus the hissy, missy. Of COURSE I’m saying all this because I’m jealous. But I’d stop being jealous of Celine Dion in two seconds if she sang material equal to her talent.
Anyway, I got lots of new material from going out last night. Then sometime this morning I had a dream. I dreamed I put peeled raw potatoes in the toilet. And the toilet got blocked, obviously. And I had to pull the potatoes out, in the dark. Because the power went off. So there I am pulling potatoes out of the toilet in the dark. I can feel their cold little surfaces as I pull each one out. Then I pulled up something squishy. And I woke up, and started thinking about the American election. I’m not sure there’s a connection, and I’m okay with not knowing.
One last thing. A lot of Americans have said they’ll flee to Canada if Bush wins the next election. Don’t be too surprised if some of them actually come! If you do dishes, you can come crash at my house.
2019 says none of my dire predictions happened. Cassandra you suck.
