Meat and Politics

Thursday, October 16th, 2008

Days go by and no news from thehandoftamm. They’re braying in the streets that I’ve given up after the typical 3-4 months of more regular entries before a blogger loses interest. This is not the case at tbothot, I assure you. What can I tell you of my life?

Let us begin with Thanksgiving weekend. Plan A was to go to the rural retreat and spend a day lakeside. This got switched minutes before packing the car and Plan B became sending my familyoftamm away and me staying in town for working on the house. Working on the house, in my version, means going to the lumber yard and then having the lads over for ale, meat, and ale. And gin. And then going to play music. Playing music while half in the bag sounds terrible. That’s why all the hard-partying rock bands are total phonies. Party during or after the show, not before. There will be no posted audio from the weekend, like I did that other time. Sorry.

The rest of the weekend was unremarkable but I did get my reno work done amidst a lot of sweating out toxins and using the saltiest language possible. I also killed a mouse and that was satisfying in one sense, as I had been tracking that littlepieceofshitmotherfucker for weeks already but my camera was out of town so there’s no blood-soaked evidence with accompanying poetry here. Sorry.

The weekend ended harmoniously and then our civic obligations kicked in. Once everyone was over their turkey hangovers, they were asked to go out and cast ballots for politicians. I guess those turkeys were really weighing people down because more than 40% of the eligible electorate couldn’t be bothered to vote. While I can’t blame them for apathy when our menu of choice was so poor on all fronts, there is still a duty to at least go out and spoil your ballot if everyone is too horrible to contemplate voting for. Only losers don’t bother going to the polls. And, it would seem, other losers actually go to the polls as well. My idiotic countrymen voted in Adolf Harper and his Unprogressive Conservatives again, albeit for another minority mandate. These are the same kind of right wing pigeons that handed the keys over to George W twice. The more people I meet, I become only increasingly convinced that most people are imbeciles. I’m little better, admittedly, so shouldn’t be pointing fingers but come on! The alternatives weren’t very good but THE CONSERVATIVES? I guess there’s some solace to be taken in the knowledge that Little Stephen will throw temper tantrums again and again until he calls another useless, nothing changes election in another 18 months or so. Let’s hope any other party can get their asses together between now and then.

While I’m at it, how about we eliminate parties altogether? You vote in your local representative and then, when they’re all gathered in Ottawa, they elect a PM from amongst themselves. And if that PM is crap (coz the chances are very, very good) then they all vote that person out and try another, because everything has to be done with some kind of non-partisan consensus. Yeah! That’s the way it’s going to work. I take back what I said about me being little better than an imbecile. I’m a certified genius, based on this idea.

Also, the Olympic Games need to work like jury selection: you get notice in the mail that you have four years to train because, baby, unless you can prove why you can’t be available, you’re doing the 100m hurdles at the 2012 games. Start doing laps, tubby.

Speaking of tubby, I joined a gym today. Mrs. Thehandoftamm said if I didn’t lose 20 pounds by Christmas, I was going to be served papers by the lawyer. I offered to lose the weight by cutting off my nuts and giving them to her. She could then make change for my 50 off her ample buttocks. I’m sleeping in the car again for the rest of this week. Nobody can take a joke anymore. Sorry.

Society of the Spectacle

Monday, August 11th, 2008

Forged Papers Allowed the Two-Year-Old to Compete
You may have noticed there are circuses being held in China right now. I shan’t cloud my opinion in elaborate verbiage, reader; the Olympics can piss off today and come back never. We’ve outgrown them.

Maybe you’ve heard enough about the Olympics already and don’t need an opinion from me. Perhaps you love the Olympics and the bi-annual meetings of nations in the pursuit of sporting excellence inspires your passion. Maybe you’ve already become an armchair expert on China in the past months, as so many surely have, and don’t need my Sinositis. Maybe I should make good on the promise I made to myself weeks ago that I wouldn’t discuss the Olympic games here because there’s already such a wealth of informed commentary out there. I should really stick to illuminating the subtleties within versions of WordPress and their comparative merits when not photographing dead rodents. As a reader remarked to me over the weekend, he hopes that former thread has at last been cut and I have no photo of a fresh kill to offer today so I guess Olympics it must be.

(more…)