Absolute state of this rapacious weasel.  

I would be remiss in my duties as a nobody blogger if I didn’t remind every last Canadian to submit a claim in a class-action bread lawsuit against Loblaws and every last stinking grocery store they own.  It’s too good to be true, and it sounds like a topic for some third-rate standup comedian, but it’s the real thing, and even if nothing comes of it–or you manage to get four bucks directly deposited into your bank account within, oh, six to twelve months–the very point of doing this is to tell the Galen Weston Jr. crew to please go and find the nearest nooses they can, preferably from Canadian Tire.  

It’s not going to do much damage, if any at all.  However, there is a purpose and a method to this lawsuit, which is a very slow, measured peasant revolt in a typically-Canadian passive style. Price-jacking on the part of this wealthy, avaricious, utterly loathsome family dynasty has become commonplace across the country, and if we can’t even afford bread, we’re actually reverting back to French Revolution-style burblings (laisse-les manger du gateau or something, even though that’s wrong because Marie actually mentioned “brioche,” a rather stylized sweet form of bread, which got her head sliced off because the proles were specifically complaining about having no bread. Just a touch of trivia I learned a long time ago).

I am unable to envision a world in which Canadians gather up their rage and wits in order to storm whatever our version of the Bastille is.  What we do best is complain, whine, bitch, and then somehow go back to being oppressed by one-dollar-and-twenty-nine-cent lemons.  And you can count me in on this collective apathy: would I actually take part in a social movement where I join other humans in a public gathering, and then wreak havoc upon some parliamentary building?  Not now.  Nothing would happen, and nothing will happen, apart from some arrests, some frustrated bystanders rolling their eyes at the futility, a few rounds of Raging Grannies singing rewritten lyrics to Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” and everyone being caught on CCTV.  Last time I participated in anything resembling a local cause, it was the annual Walk For Peace that I attended for many, many years, even as a little kid, until it got canned for some reason.  Now look where we’re at.

The problem with Galen Weston Jr. is threefold:

1. He’s a greedy, unapologetic, lying-through-his-hole, indisputably abhorrent one-percenter.  

2. He shares a birthday with me–December 19th–and so I can’t help but back down a bit on my loathing towards this guy, because I’ve harboured an irrational idea since I was a tyke that your birthday just might affect your personality, and I can’t handle the notion that I might share a single characteristic with this creep.  Surely he isn’t that bad.  I’m not that bad.  I’m really not.  But the worst problem is this:

3. I have felt a totally embarrassing, mild attraction to him for years.  I have never admitted this to a soul, never mind publicly.  I don’t have a “type”; I’ll happily unhook my bra for any guy who does it for me and with whom I feel chemistry (I will!), but there’s no way this guy is my type.  Or is he?  I don’t know many things about myself yet, and likely never will, but feeling attracted to Galen for so long is like being one of those women who salivate over Richard Ramirez or Bernie Madoff, and then do everything in their power to marry one of these pinheads and hope for white-hot conjugal visits.  

In other, unexciting news, I’ve found myself listening to a lot of stuff that this one online wit described as “sad old bastard” music.  I actually can’t stop laughing at this description. It’s sort of true, but what can I say?  If I have a type, it’s definitely that. I know them well, and have personally been with more than a few. They are weirdly lovable, unchangeably stubborn, happily horny, terribly magnetic, horribly self-involved, exhaustingly mercurial, just plain awful, almost offensively charismatic, and usually artistic in some way or another. I’m nothing if not a masochist.  

The latest one I’ve gotten back into, at least musically, is Leonard Cohen.

I don’t know too much about Len, but on this one reliable gossip website I’ve been reading for years, he was apparently “grumpy with a big dick.”  And that’ll always do it for this gal anytime.

So enjoy this tune, which came out when I was very young, and whose lyrics I have always loved. I never really understood too deeply what he was talking about, despite being very into the song and the melody; I just took it at face value, until I went through some serious emotional/relationship issues for many years, and I finally got his metaphor.

It’s a departure from his early stuff, and the man can’t sing worth a smidge, but I actually enjoy it more than what he released before.  He’s clearly reading from a teleprompter throughout the video, it’s just saturated with all of the early 90s aesthetics that started with “Losing My Religion”, and it’s so very dated, but ignore that, even though it is still quite lovely in its black-and-white austerity. The song is–at its core–starkly, beautifully sad. Lyrically, it’s right up there in my top 10. Okay, top 20. Maybe 50, actually, when I think about all the stuff I dig.

It’s so underrated. Please just listen, it gets better with every 30 seconds.

(Another item none of you will care much about: I bought the album this was on, “The Future,” and listened to it until the tape ribbon spiraled out of my car’s cassette player. Remember those?)

Love

Nadya