Where the Hell Have I Gotten To?

Archie of the Archive popped up to ask the question.

Of my long absence let me say this: Never take on the lawyer recommended by your cellmate.

Nah ... Actually it's just a work thing. I returned to my trucking roots, or routes, just this past week. I'm still doing some work for a guy who's publishing a book, and I'm applying for a job somewhere between grunt work and middle management, with just enough elements of each to keep me interested.

But there's more to it, you know. For one thing I'm honestly not feeling very Metro lately.

You've heard the saying "I used to be disgusted, now I'm just amused," no doubt?

The personality of Metro originated as a response to the lapping of the Conservative wave on the beach of North American politics. The wave became a tsunami in the Bush years, with similar effects on the political landscape. Now there's little left, so it seems to me, beside the lower life forms--Namely dust mites and religious fundamentalists.

Metro, as a voice in the babble, isn't helpful at a time when our own Prime Minister can come out with such outrageous falsehoods as this:

We look forward to both complying with the ruling and with the legal obligations that have been established by statutes, passed by this Parliament

That, sir, is a load of goddamned bullshit.

Had Harper and his merry band of censors, crooks, and lobbyists wanted to comply with their legal obligations, they'd have handed over the ₤µ©λing documents!

When stuff like this is happening on the floor of Parliament, it's time to back away from the keyboard and go the ₤µ©λ outside. It's time to try and put one's time and energy into restoring something approaching Parliamentary democracy in this beknighted land.

The US is slowly creeping from the mire it was left in by the Bush League--Slowly. Note, for example, that Obama STILL hasn't closed Gitmo, repudiated domestic spying, or brought Cheney and co. to justice for authorizing torture. And it took last week's undersea oil gusher (or as the oil companies would doubtless have it "natural resource relocation") to get him to reverse himself on new offshore drilling.

But progress has been made. Obama has, in fact, kept more than eighty percent of his promises. And they finally have a sort of universal health care, despite the preponderance of teabagging morons who'd prefer to stay sick and poor.

Canada, in typical fashion, is still plunging headfirst into the oilsands-toxic-waste pond of Conservative governance. We tend to follow the US by about five years, and I think we're just hitting the perigee of their performance now.

And my fulminating about it on a keyboard isn't helping. I need to find a way to make a direct contribution to sending the Conservative Party of Canada into the wilderness for another fifteen to twenty years. Ideally they'll be in prison for half that time for contempt of Parliament. And it's only too unfortunate that there's no such charge as "contempt of Canadians"--They'd get life without hope of parole unless they succeed in reviviing the death penalty before they come to trial.

So that's why I haven't been showing up here. I've been amused to the darkest depths of what I like to think of as my soul by the antics of my current placeholder government, but not sufficiently energized either by their perifidy or by the ideas coming from the Opposition to want to write about my feelings on the matter.

Now I just need to pry a few hours a week from my schedule to join whatever organization I can find that's working to make sure Harper et al. get exported to, say, Afghanistan, where their style of governance might be more at home. In fact, since we still occupy part of it, I think we should deport Harper now, before 2011. It'll save time.

I'll keep posting here, I guess. But between trucking, editing, rebuilding vehicles, and cleaning up a political cesspool, I'm not sure I'll have a lot of time to blog about it.

Since three common methods of government reform are guns, lawyers, and money (and let me state here that unlike the American teabagger movement I tend to prefer the second of those options if, as now, "human decency" is unavailable), et me leave you with a little Warren Zevon for the moment.



And hey, this may just turn out to be an existential reboot while I try to figure out wither Metroblog. But for now, honestly, I've got too much to do, and I don't feel sufficiently engaged to want to try and shovel shit against the tide at the moment.

Be nice while I'm away, I'll pop back from time to time.