Random Dent

Back when the Queen was still alive, Stephen Fry described her role as being “as if Uncle Sam was a real person.” Meaning, being a sort of personification of the country without actually holding any real power over it. I’m not a huge fan of the British monarchy, but if we have to have one I’m at least glad it’s limited to being essentially a powerless tourist attraction.

Same here, I bought Strawberries for 50% off at H-Mart, they didn’t even last the night lol.

My first thought was to set up a bunch of long-term investments, since you can reasonably assume that you’ll live a long life. But then also, being rich might increase the odds of you being kidnapped or killed, so it might just tank whatever you choose to invest in.

Maybe you could somehow get a job testing roller coasters. Once you’re in there you have no power to decide anything, so perhaps the universe will make the builders construct the safest possible roller coaster. OR, you could be a food taster for someone rich and powerful. The universe wouldn’t let you eat anything that’s poisoned, or it would just ensure that no food gets poisoned in the first place!

Here in Canada, the general sentiment among people I’ve talked to is definitely that the US has fucked up it’s relationship with us in a very long-term way, if not permanently. Even if the tariffs went away tomorrow, there’s still the issue that Trump threatened Canada’s sovereignty, which people here are not taking lightly at all.

I’ve heard people say that even if Trump went away, there’s no guarantee some other dickhead won’t take over and start the same nonsense, or we’ll just be back here again in 4 years. Even the new Prime Minister said that the relationship we used to have with the US is over now.

It sucks that we all have to live through it, but I feel like the current times in the US are a really interesting test of the sort of limits of democracy. By that I mean, what happens if the majority of the population just willingly elects the worst person they can find, and at the same time every check, balance, rule and tradition that everyone assumed would keep things on the rails just… turn out to be kind of bullshit because nobody is willing to enforce them?

It raises all sorts of weird questions, like at a certain point is it okay to overrule democracy in some way to protect the country and the people, even if the majority seem to want to just run the bus off a cliff? And what about the people who didn’t vote for this? Are they expected to just go down with ship or have to leave their home country altogether? An informed and engaged populace is vital to a healthy democracy, but what if enough people are uninformed/propagandized enough that they just willing take down the whole country? Does the rest of the world just let it implode?

I have no real answers to these questions, but I’d love to be studying this whole situation from like 100 years after it’s all over.

“Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people, but they’ll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad.”

• Frankie Boyle

Also even “Today” is not a happy song lol. From Wikipedia:

After the release and minor success of the band’s debut album, Gish, the Smashing Pumpkins were being hyped as “the next Nirvana”. However, the band was experiencing several difficulties at the time. Drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was undergoing an increasingly severe addiction to heroin; James Iha and D’arcy Wretzky had recently broken up their romantic relationship; and Billy Corgan had become depressed to the point of contemplating suicide and plagued by writer’s block. Corgan recalled that “after the first album, I became completely suicidal. It was an eight-month depression, give or take a month, and I was pretty suicidal for about two or three months.”

…

The dark, ironic lyrics of “Today”, describing a day when Corgan was feeling depressed and suicidal, contrast with the instrumentation. Michael Snyder of the San Francisco Chronicle said that the song is “downright pretty as rock ballads go” but that “Corgan manages to convey the exhilaration and tragic release he seeks.” Corgan told Rolling Stone that “I was really suicidal … I just thought it was funny to write a song that said today is the greatest day of your life because it can’t get any worse.” Corgan later compared writing the lyrics of “Today” and “Disarm” to “ripping [his] guts out”.