Say Goodnight Gracie (Part One)

TODAY is our 5th Canadian Anniversary.

Missing from this anniversary missive is yet another list comparing Canada to The United States. I’ve done that too many times already. All I can say is that after five years I still have, at least once a day, an ILMSC moment.

I‘m

Lovin’

Me

Some

Canada

There are a couple of complaints I have about Canada. In Brooklyn, underneath the Brooklyn Bridge on Front Street, is Grimaldi’s, the best pizza joint in the world. The best deep dish pizza I’ve ever had came from Gino’s East in Chicago. If you want good thin crust or deep dish pizza in Vancouver, I haven’t found it … yet. I’ve had fantastic Mexican food from San Diego to Seattle but we haven’t found any up here … yet. On the other hand when it comes to Chinese food … no problem. The second largest Chinatown in North America is in Vancouver.

Our strangest culinary discovery I’ve heard pronounced two ways: poo-tin or poo-teen. Either way it’s great. Take some perfectly done french fries, sprinkle liberally with cheese curds (I don’t know what they are either), and pour a chicken, turkey, or beef gravy all over everything. You can get crazy and add pulled pork, sliced Montreal smoked meat, or shredded duck confit. Regardless of how gross it might sound … it’s phenomenal. We have it about twice a year. I’d have it more often but I’d fuck up my actuarial table and discover I died three years ago.

Regardless of what I’ve written, we’ve done other things up here besides eat. We’ve been able to live up here with an almost complete absence of crazy. After awhile we got used to that absence. Then we had to go down across the border into Washington State for some family related thing and it all came rushing instantly back. Yow … look at all The Crazy.

A friend of mine, an ex-pat now living in Ontario wrote, “These days, I live with the air of freedom that is, without fail, replaced by an air of repression — every time I have to go back into the States.”

Like that.

I always wondered how many crazy people live in The United States. It’s not the sort of demographic listed on a census form. Most people don’t volunteer the fact that they’re crazier than shit-house rats. But a lot of them do vote. And that’s where I got my starting number. There are at least 31,039,387 crazy fuckers in The United States. That’s how many people voted in the Republican primaries. Though many Republicans shouldn’t handle anything sharper than an orange, 14 million of them cast their votes for a Mussolini-esque, tiny fingered, Cheeto-faced, ferret wearing, shitgibbon.

By the way … I love using that phrase so much I’m putting it on my Christmas cards.

Oh sure there are obviously more than 31 million crazy-stupid people in The U.S. but there isn’t an accurate count of how many votes Hillary Clinton received during the Democratic primaries. Vote theft skewed the results too much to be useful in figuring out the U.S. Crazy Quotient so I’ll just stick to the Republican numbers.

To Sum Up: There are waaaaaay over 31 million crazy-stupid adults in The United States. There are approximately 28 million adults of voting age in Canada. We, I can say “we” now that we’ve received Permanent Residence Status, are obviously outnumbered. I have heard talk of assembling the beavers and moose to build and defend a wall (You do not want to piss off those guys) but I don’t think a wall is necessary. Single payer healthcare and rational gun control seem to terrify millions of Americans.

Tar Sands.

There. I said it. Tar sands. Instead of losing sleep (and my mind) over which corporatist/war-loving/democracy-shredding asshole is going to be the next president of The United States … I’m going to see how we (meaning every sane person) can figure out how to keep all that tar-sand shit in the ground. We either make sure the ocean’s temperature doesn’t rise a couple of more degrees … or we don’t. If we don’t … the Uncontrollable Global Climate Change roller coaster we are all riding on takes off for real at the end of 2017.

August 14, 2016

Listen to this segment from The Mike Malloy Show here Permalink: http://www.voicesinourheads.com/2016/08/24/say-goodnight-gracie-part-one/ ‎