Stephen Harper Got Mom Drunk (Again) Kids
I didn’t blog yesterday and no it wasn’t because I was working on my book. And when I say my book, you should know I’m referring to a series of titles for stories I’ve yet to write and one pusillanimous pile of putrescence that I’ve almost completed.
Stop holding your breath! I will not be responsible for blue faces!
I didn’t blog yesterday because Stephen Harper got me drunk on Thursday and I was feeling the shame and guilt that my Irish Catholic friend who comments here says is the worst part of a hangover and stop it!
Easy for her, the cornerstone of her religion is forgiveness. I don’t have a religion but I have the ghost of John Knox living in my head for some reason my mother can’t figure out.
“I don’t worry about anything. When my head hits the pillow at night I go straight to sleep. What’s wrong with you?!”
Gee, I dunno, my father got cancer and died when I was too young to understand where he went?
Eureka! Breakthrough!
It all started because my Beau had forms to deliver downtown and I had money matters to deal with. I’d say I had banking to do but that would imply something grander than what was involved. Still, I have a guy, he seems a little confused as to why, but that’s his problem, innit.
He tried a little harder than he usually does to upsell me on product (I hate the English language now, don’t you?) and I demurred. I didn’t want to put him in a compromising situation because, of course, when I got a mortgage I had a job, and now I don’t, so my “banking” is a little more “street” these days.
So I left him… confuzzled.
Then I went to the futon store to order new covers, but after looking at the selection I had a total change of heart because, of course, capitalism means lots of choice in the same crap, but no choice if you want something that’s like what you have now because you bought it several years ago, you just want it in a new and more vibrant colour.
So we went to my favourite pub, Sir John A’s, to calm down about capitalism, and I had the holiday special, which is four different types of beer in six ounce glasses (but two of them are 8% which began my slide into drunken slattery). Then I had a pint of the Belgian sample.
Sigh. Then I had another pint because, by then, we were full flight into our Stephen Harper conversation. Oh, and my Venezuela conversation, but that’s going to be in my book so don’t ask me to blog it here.
The title of that story is going to be, “Finding Ramon”, and if you ever go to Puerta La Cruz, please look up Ramon Nunez for me and say, “Hey”. I should say more than that and I really did mean to go back and get married but then I went to Mexico and the same thing happened again, and in the meantime I had my ex to worry about, so, you know, disco.
And no, it had nothing to do with cocaine. I did cocaine once (total lie – twice) and have no idea why anyone would get addicted to it unless they like feeling like a jittery asshole.
Also, of course, IdleNoMore, of which my Beau, being a severely underemployed columnist, but a columnist, is less… convinced. I think that’s the word anyway. I have the tendency to want something to be… more than it is, because I’m partisan. He has… professional detachment in all matters political, even though he’s really quite… Irish.
For instance, I’m desperately hoping the report about Laureen Harper selling off her stock portfolio isn’t just because she wants the cash when she dumps the old ball & chain. I want it to be more than that, I want it to expose Stephen Harper as the guy obsessed with making money that I know he is. I know it, dammit. Tom Flanagan saying Stephen Harper doesn’t care about money is all the proof I need that he does.
But back to IdleNoMore and what I think a lot of journalists, many of them severely overemployed, are overlooking in terms of the ability of people to, yes, shut down the economy.
Because we can. We are. Not everybody cares about money, and increasingly, those of us who do care about money are feeling… let down, denied, betrayed. As I’ve blogged over and over and over, I’m a good girl, I’ve followed the rules, I trusted our banks. More importantly, I trusted our governments to be there. But they’ve… disappointed me in that regard and I’ve had to admit that my trust was… misplaced.
I’m not even talking about this government. In fact, I’m not talking about politicians. I’m talking about a Demarais offspring, years ago, lecturing Canadians, Canadians like me, about “our” need to increase “our” productivity.
I’m not sure how old he was at the time, and he’s not the one married to The Old Monster’s daughter, but he’s middle-aged. And he better be older than me, at least, or my head just might explode right now.
Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. I believe his name is Andre, if that helps.
My mother, as I’ve blogged over and over and over, is the poster girl for her prosperous generation and she can no longer afford her rent. My children have student loans for which the harassment process has already begun (it’s sort of a negative billing situation whereby if you don’t apply one year for a loan, they assume you’re no longer a student, and they commence calling in previous loans). I’m getting ready to live off retirement savings, which is fine, because I have no plans to retire.
I can’t retire, actually, which (and this is the cool part about not being able to retire) is fine because now that I don’t plan to retire, I don’t have to save for retirement. And that is one big worry gone, let me tell you.
Oh, and the whales, I forgot about the whales. I can’t totally blame Stephen Harper for getting me drunk because at the time those damned orcas were trapped in the ice, too, and it reminded me a bit of the time we were all driven mad by the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico that cause an ecocide no one who’s anyone has the guts to admit happened, is happening, will happen.
I have nowhere to go, no money-making to do, that shutting down the economy will cause me any trauma whatsoever. The same is true of all my nearest and dearest. And the fact is, shutting down the economy won’t affect Andrew Coyne, either. He’ll just have more to write about. And absolutely shutting down the economy won’t have any effect at all on the good people threatening to shut it down because they already don’t benefit from the economy.
Lots of us, not just Aboriginals living on reserves, are no longer… stakeholders. I’m just going to drain my bank account and own a house so I don’t have to worry about finding a place to live. I’m happy to actively deprive the bank of my money, it’s my focus now, and I’ll do odd jobs until I die.
I don’t want to make money because I don’t want to support the people running this country anymore.
Aboriginals living on reserve? Why would they care about Andre Demarais and his need for us to increase our productivity if I don’t.
So back to Stephen Harper and his grand quest for whatever it is he thinks he wants (and government is the best – the best I tells ya – at co-opting even the most fundamentalist of private sector champions, so good luck with all that) – timing. Sometimes, timing can be everything, and right now, the timing for Stephen Harper is all wrong.
When I heard that he would negotiate with IdleNoMore, but not about the omnibus legislation which is his deliverance to certain Canadians at the expense of the rest of us, I said to myself, “Ah, so this is it, then”.
And I touched my fingertips together because I get excited when I think Stephen Harper has met his Waterloo, which I think he has.
Look, those damned orcas freed themselves from the ice. They didn’t need our government to help them, they did it themselves. But Stephen Harper has to gut environmental protection because he’s beholden to certain Canadian who, in turn, need his government.
I don’t need his government. I don’t depend on it to make this economy work for me. So, bring it on, sisters and brothers. Let’s shut this sucker down!
Or not, the threat alone, the dawning realization that governing for certain Canadians at the expense of everybody else, was not such a good idea after all in these economically insecure and jobless times, may be all it takes.
I am so going to enjoy 2013, the year of watching Stephen Harper flip flop and thrash about in his hole in the ice.
I love reading your stories. This one is truly exceptional. It informed me of my own experience in a way that I hadn’t even begun to conceptionalize.
I gave up trying to navigate this economy several years back and have resorted to the occasional gasp of air, bracing for the sewage laden waters of the Juan de Fuca, just off Victoria, that most colonial of cities that host the parasites who “lead”.
I have nothing to lose. Bring it on.
Brava!
Enjoyed this post – as I do all of your writings here.
This one reminds me of the words in the song Me and Bobby McGee “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose“, not sure who wrote it but in my head I can hear Janis Joplin singing it.
Was Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster.. re Bobby McGee – sassy ..
Good on you ms Sooey.. the image of a political thug thrashing for air..
and the delectable hint served by a woman dumping hers n his stock portfolio ..
But.. in the mean time.. and we mean ‘MEAN’ .. get ready for Omnibus # 3 .. with more absolute strong arm malignant conspiracy against Canadian environment, law, people, treaties, culture, democracy, justice, honor, freedom.
If Canada is a large roast of beef to be carved up as it is by Stephen Harper.. then served to us .. we need to be realistic and see what is real versus pretend. Just flip it upside down with a pitchfork and prepare to hold your breath.. You’ll see its just a piece of putrid meat infested with maggots, gangrenous.. and squirming with hatching blowflies.
The tar sands will pale before the onslaught of fracking. And all this Omnibus ‘budget’ poison injected as streamlining, good for jobs, the economy by so called ‘good government’ is just the advance legislative bomb attack to prep and weaken the environment for the killing harvest.
There won’t be any orca in the western waters or the arctic when Steve’s Chinese tankers arrive. Does anyone think a brand new Chinese skipper won’t be blasting sonar as he approaches the western archipelagos off Kitimaat ? Or up in the balmy waters of The Northwest Harper to China Passage ?
Every single fracking site (hundreds of thousands) must be linked to incoming fresh water pipes, then the outgoing oil or natural gas.. by pipeline as well. (we can review the frack flowback ponds later) Then the petro ‘product’ flows onward to compressor stations by pipeline. Then on to collection pipelines to the coasts to humungous tank farms connected by pipe to a never ending stream of incoming then outgoing VLCC tankers. All this just from fracking and does not include the incoming diluent being pipelined to the tar sands and the diluted bitumen headed to the fleets of dilbit tankers.
No whale, no seal, no salmon, no dolphin, no crab can withstand the sonar bombardment that will pulse from the hellboats. So there’s a dark, dead chunk of the natural marine food chain just fucked over, killed or driven away in the ocean.
We already see how public servants Harper, Oliver and Peter Kent are doing as ‘stewards’ of the caribou, the elk, the wolf, the beaver, the deer.. Its like anything found on the coin of the realm.. Canadian currency .. needs to be overwhelmed to suit Stephen Harper and the dark assholes he services.
I’m revising my first novel to reflect this expanding ad onrushing crime against Canada ..
What fun it will be to find a publisher.. !
Love this one, Sooey! Your flow of consciousness is wonderful – & so much like mine that it felt like sisterhood of the synapses. No deep thoughts, just to say Thanks! for writing & sharing this! And “You nailed it!: – big pic in one!
You guys are the greatest. I do have to say, there’s something very therapeutic about putting it down, but I’m glad there are people out there who can better articulate the science behind the argument. I emote. Interesting, how out-of-date and old-fashioned politics and politicians seem juxtaposed to a grassroots movement like IdleNoMore. While it’s fair to say (I think) that our political system is democratically compromised, it seems old-fashioned and out-of-date compared to how people are actually living. It’s as if the least government can do, protect the environment and therefore human health, it isn’t doing. Instead, it’s doing business. ???