celebratory dirge for Kim Jong Il

If I could take you up in my hand,
as though you were a grasshopper,
and slowly close my fist
feeling your legs twitching and scratching on my palm
as I gently crushed the life out of you
until the juice of your guts ran out down my wrist,
if I could drop your broken frame
down on the concrete floor
and flatten it under my boot heel,
would you love me then?

If I could take your last bowl of rice
and trade it in for a handful
of shiny buttons and bobbles,
and I could feed you on parades
and fearful colours,
would you love me?

Terrible Christmas Songs- Volume 1: Happy Christmas (War is Over) by John Lennon

It goes without saying that every Christmas song ever written is a piece of crap. If the song is about baby Jesus then the lyrics are bound to be both insufferably saccharin and, at the same time, so bloated with obnoxious Christian dogma that prolonged exposure (for example more than 15 seconds) is bound to lead to temporary brain damage. This brain damage usually take the form of an inexplicable urge to run to the nearest mall and buy bags full of crap that no one wants or needs and then give it to your friends with the delusional belief that this will make them love you more.

If the song is not about Jesus, but simply celebrates the joy of winter life and the magic of the season; and is therefore accompanied by a bouncing beat, a sappy melody, and a whole bunch of bells jingling and tingling in the background, then you should walk up to whoever put the music on and punch them in the face. What kind of sick individual would even write a song like Frosty the Snowman? Believe me, I feel for the employees of stores who have to endure nearly two months of continuous Christmas music playing in their workplace. I feel for them as they are forced to stack plastic wreaths and boxes of red candy and inflatable snowmen up onto shelves. I feel for them as they are forced to debase themselves by trudging into the office every bitterly cold dark morning dresses in green elf vests and Santa hats.

But I digress, as usual. One of the very worst of the Christmas songs is the one by John Lennon: "Happy Christmas (War is Over)". This song is bad, not just because it has the usual number of clanging bells and merrily singing children's choruses, but also because it is by John Lennon and therefore it appears to be targeted at people who might feel that Christmas songs are usually silly, but that this one must be ok because it was written by someone who is sort of cool.

It's hard to come out and say that this song sucks because then you have to contend with both the Christmas defenders (who are insidious enough on their own), but also the defenders of John Lennon. It makes attacking the song a mini-sacrilege. Also, because it is a John Lennon song and a Christmas song at the same time it means that it gets almost universal radio play—not only will the radio stations that have completely bowed down to broadcasting consumerist propaganda by blasting Christmas carols 24 hours a day play it, but also rock stations will play it …and basically everyone plays it.

I wish people would just stop and think about it for a second and say to themselves: "you know what? I hate this song. It's really bad. I know John Lennon wrote it and I'm supposed to worship every act of musical genius he ever committed but, in this case, I believe he has composed a genuine piece of shit. I'm going to stop singing along to it as though it's something special and just get on with my life".

We’re going to lose this election.

Sometimes I fool myself into thinking that the world is going to get better; that people will wise up about the damage being done by genetically modified foods, and mass consumerism, and fossil fuel dependency, and corporate excesses. I think I am delusional about these things because I have surrounded myself with people who share my outlandish opinion that the wave of conservative governance breaking out around the world is a turn for the worse. These people, when I have them around me, appear like a majority to me, but they are not.

I remember that I travelled from Quebec (which is, ironically, now the last bastion of the old vision of Canada yet untouched by Stephen Harper's Reform Party) to Ontario, during the last election, honestly believing that the NDP had a chance to win. I sat down outside Union Station in Toronto watching a crowd of people coming out of an afternoon baseball game; column after column of potbellied swaggering men with sunglasses balanced on the brims of their baseball caps, flanked by their mulleted wives and medicated children, digging around for the keys to their pick-ups and sport utility vehicles, satiated by their short trip to the exotic city core and primed and ready to drive back to suburbia to catch the game highlights on a giant screen TV down in the rec room, and I suddenly had a vision of Canada as it actually is:

I saw chain after chain of Tim Horton's restaurants, glowing on the map like urban areas viewed from outer space, I saw the lines drawn between glorious Canadian military service and donuts and I saw the insularity of it all—the blackening disinterest in anything other than a life of sequestered extra-urban comfort—the death of the arts, the death of compassion, the death the silent North under a blazing din of small lawn tractor engines—and I thought to myself, "we're going to lose this election, you know."

And, do you know what? We did lose.

****

haiku

 

he’s the type of guy

who never brings anything

to potluck dinners.