A song about Jeffrey Epstein

I ain’t no songwriter, me. However this idea popped up in my head to make a song about the Jeffrey Epstein story, and even without using the word Trump at any point! Because, well, Epstein hosted pretty much everyone in the Who’s Who of high society. I purposely composed this to be sung to the tune of The Village People’s YMCA, a song hilariously co-opted by Trump. I’ve only done one stanza and the refrain so far so feel free to contribute in the comments!

JEFF (to the tune of YMCA)

[Stanza]

RICH MAN, there’s no need to feel down, I say
RICH MAN, you want to screw around, I say
RICH MAN, don’t you fear getting found
While you’re raping tons of young girls

RICH MAN, there’s a guy you should know, I said
RICH MAN, you can even bring blow, you can
Stay there in the lap of luxury
But smile for a pic with Jeffrey!

[Chorus]

It’s time to go and see J-E-F-F
It’s time to go and see J-E-F-F
You don’t need no flowers,
You don’t need no pearls
You can hang out with all the girls…

 

On the passing of Scott Adams

Scott Adams passed away earlier this week. He was the author of the Dilbert cartoon strip which used to run in newspapers everywhere who, once the heyday of his creation started to fade, let his life spiral into a cesspit of bigotry and hate so awful that it completely ruined his reputation and, to some extent, his existing work.

Sometimes success goes right to someone’s head and causes an interesting feedback loop — “if I am successful then it must be that I am much more intelligent than everyone else”. I mean, we pretty much get told all our lives that the reverse is true, so it’s not necessarily outrageous to believe that. The problem comes when that person then uses that logic to validate beliefs they have for whatever reason, but which are extreme and socially unacceptable in nature.

Most successful people would take a cue from the social reaction and see that there’s a problem with the beliefs. But some of them do not. Some of them think that no, they’re right and society at large is wrong. Not only that, but because they’re clearly so intelligent — society has already validated this by making them successful! — they see it as their duty to reform the world, to set them on the right path by being as open and offensive as they can be.

And boy did Scott Adams take that duty seriously. His descent into racist, sexist, transphobic madness is well documented here if you’re not already familiar with it:

That I think is what happened to Scott Adams.

And it basically caused his death as well — he was too smart to go to an ordinary person doctor. Those people treat losers! No, he was the vanguard, the illuminati! He was too intelligent to get chemo and radiation or maybe have a tumectomy or whatever else was possible medically. No siree. He went straight to the old panacea, ivermectin, a veterinary dewormer. It was just as effective for prostate cancer as it is for anything but getting rid of worms.

Scott Adams lived by his own rules, and he died by his own rules. Truly he was the architect of his own downfall.

Rosemont Montreal Whisky

I’m no stranger to doing things “for a bit of a lark”, especially when alcohol is concerned. I don’t drink much anymore but I do cook, and it so happened that for about a week now I’ve wanted to make Poulet Vallée d’Auge but needed some Calvados as the recipe calls for it. Of course my local spirits store didn’t have it, so I thought I’d check out the web site, and it turns out that calvados is pretty expensive. Cheapest I found was something like $84 a bottle, and I didn’t feel like spending that much, so I looked for an alternative. I could have settled for a mickey of Cheminaud brandy but that didn’t tickle my fancy. I started to look at whiskys and this one caught my eye.

Rosemont Whisky bottle

Of course as someone who tends to like all things Montreal, this had my curiosity.

Surprisingly for a Canadian whisky, this is not a rye. It is made from 80% corn, 10% wheat and 10% barley from St-Constant, on Montreal’s South Shore. It’s not a single malt, it’s a blend, and it’s a bit pricey for a blend ($48.25 for a 750ml bottle). However, at this point I felt it was worth a try for the curiosity if nothing else. Frankly I was only picking up booze for cooking, and if this is sold at the SAQ it can’t be so bad that I couldn’t use it for cooking. The 3 years barrel aging had me a little skeptical, but again I felt it would probably do the job for the dish, and, well, a native Montreal whisky was worth trying. If only for a bit of a lark.

Buying this kinda reminded me of April 2013. On March 31st I had begun to walk the West Highland Way with my great friend Jay. I had spent months preparing for this, as much as I could do after my fire-related accident and skin graft. In fact I had prepared for this walk so well that I had greatly weakened my right heel, to the point where at some time during the hike it fractured. We weren’t able to do the whole walk and used a combination of a train and a lift from a very helpful man we met at the bothys near Ardlui who took us to Crianlarich to remove 30km from the route and, to be honest, compensate for my bad planning. The estimations I had made to determine where we were going to stay along the way were horribly, horribly off for the first two days of the hike. We took a train from Crianlarich to Tyndrum to shorten the trip and the 3 remaining days of walking went as scheduled… but the whole time my right foot kept getting more painful. I had picked up some diclofenac in Switzerland on the way in and I was taking triple doses just to deal. By the time we reached Fort William I could barely walk, but we were done with the hiking and heading to Ireland for a car tour so I just dealt with it.

Anyway, one thing we hadn’t done while we were in Scotland was visit a distillery (!), but there is one in Fort William at the end of the Way, the Ben Nevis distillery. At the time for some reason they weren’t doing tours but we went to the shop and I saw bottles of Loch Lomond Scotch Whisky. I knew I had to get a bottle of that. I taught myself to read at 5 with Tintin comics, and if you’re also a fan you’ll remember that Loch Lomond whisky is Captain Haddock’s drink. He’s always drinking the stuff. I wasn’t impressed by the “8 years aged” marking but it was quite cheap. And it was a bit of a lark. Well it was pretty awful and just tasted unfinished, but that didn’t stop Jay and I from drinking the whole bottle a week later in Belfast the night before we flew back to our homes.

What’s the point of this whole story? To be honest I kinda lost track of that early in the anecdote. This whisky (Rosemont) has me “feeling ways about stuff” and I feel that’s an important quality in a decent whisky.

And, well, Rosemont is a decent whisky. It’s quite smooth even when drunk neat. In fact, if I’m quite honest, it tastes a little light. However it does not have that “unfinished” taste that I detected in the Loch Lomond. It is not peated and reminds me of a highland kind of whisky. Strong hint of vanilla with a caramel finish, no unpleasant aftertaste. It has a relatively dark robe.

A glass of Rosemont Whisky, next to the bottle

This one has my seal of approval. This is not a mind-blowing whisky, but it’s also not priced like one, and if you’re looking for something Canadian that tastes pretty good and won’t break the bank, I encourage you to give it a try.

Further thoughts on the trade war

A few additional thoughts on the trade war.

First, we should simply send the US Ambassador back home and not approve any replacement.

For some reason people don’t seem to be keen on the idea of placing export duties on goods. It is a good idea because Donald Trump will just give exemptions from tariffs to companies linked to himself and his friends. By using export duties we make sure that there are no exemptions, and that we get the money. It sends the message that if Trump is going to hold tariffs over everyone’s heads, we’ll make sure that they hurt Americans first.

The money from export duties can be used to fund economic support measures that may be necessary to prevent economic harm for us Canadians.

One other measure I didn’t mention is that the federal and provincial governments should be forbidden from doing any business with American companies associated with Elon Musk — Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, Starlink, etc. as Musk appears to be looting and pillaging the US Treasury at this time, so any exposure to the entities linked to him may open us up for eventual ICC liabilities.

The pause in energy exports should be implemented soon, or subject to large export duties. This would ensure that we can still profit from trade with the USA without conceding anything, because that’s how you need to deal with a two-bit wannabe mob boss like Trump.

While we’re at it, we should also add Elon Musk to the list of “persona non grata” in Canada. We already have to deal with our own billionaire assholes, we definitely don’t need to import more.

How Canada can win the trade war

So Donald “frontotemporal dementia” Trump has decided to launch a trade war on Canada.

He is using fentanyl as a pretext in order to avoid having to involve Congress in this action, even though for the past 3 years US seizures of fentanyl coming in from Canada have added up to a few kilograms of the stuff. There is far, far greater cause for Canada to take action against the United States for the thousands of firearms that cross the border into Canada yearly. But that is neither here nor there.

There’s a trade war and Trump is imposing 25% tariffs on Canadian goods coming into the USA, except for oil which for some reason is only subject to 10% tariffs. This essentially cancels the previous North American free trade agreement which was negotiated by… Donald Trump.

Trump is a chaos agent who’s good at two things: breaking stuff, and running businesses into the ground. In other words, we’re not dealing with a rational force here. The doddering old fool has already said various times that he wants Canada as the 51st state. But of course that won’t be happening, and certainly not under Trump. I will personally pick up a rifle in anger to defend my country against Americans if it comes to that. And this country will fight until the last bullet has been fired. We would expect Americans to do the same if we invaded them.

Anyway, the point is that Donald’s goal is completely insane, and therefore we cannot rely on the tools with which people usually “fight” trade wars. You cannot negotiate with terrorists like Donald Trump, period. They are neither honest nor sane.

Therefore we, as Canadians, need to approach this with the idea that we need to squeeze the American economy until the Yanks do something about their crazy old fool. I don’t know, “regime change” or something.

Prime Minister Trudeau has already declared targeted retaliatory tariffs concentrating on goods manufactured in red states, which is smart, but is nothing near enough.

We need to go on the offensive and use our knowledge of current events in the USA to better target those industries that most need Canadian goods. And we need to pull the rug from under Donald’s feet.

As such I would suggest a multi-pronged approach to strike America where it would hurt the most, and make money doing it.

1- fight the US import tariffs with Canadian export duties. Trump figured that politically he can instantly kick inflation up 25% and survive. However if we impose 25% export duty on things going to the United States they will effectively rise in price by 50%, which is not tenable for the US economy. Also we get the first 25% of tax revenue, not the USA.

2- stop all energy exports to the USA. That includes electricity and oil.

3- implement 100% excise duty on any and all goods and services from companies where Elon Musk is CEO. That means Tesla vehicles, Starlink service, anything spent on X in terms of ad campaigns, etc. There are plenty of other EV manufacturers out there, and unlike Tesla they can build cars properly.

It’s only by fighting aggressively and proactively that we can defeat Donald and the Oligarchs. Let’s not waste this opportunity.

Elon Musk has always been a Neo Nazi.

Elon Musk “is aligned with the German neo-nazi party, opened the faucet of anti-semitism on the platform he purchased, follows neo-nazis, collaborates with neo-nazis openly, highlights neo-nazis, agrees with neo-nazi sentiment”. This has been made clear BY ELON in the posts that he’s made in Xitter, by his the moderation “policies” he’s brought to Xitter, and by his constant messing with the accounts of anyone who dares disagree with his fourth-reich ideas on the platform.
So why is anyone surprised by Elon literally doing a Hitler salute at the end of his speech on inauguration night? I’d like to say the signs were always there, but they’re not just signs, they’re fucking billboards.

Well, fuck.

Not sure what else to say really. Unless someone comes up with an explanation involving the very clever disappearance of literally millions of ballots from several states, “it is what it is”.

At least in 2016 you could argue that the people didn’t know what they were getting with Trump. That’s just bullshit in 2024.

Funny that I have a very American anecdote to illustrate what this feels like, but it’s 100% true. When I moved to the USA in 1999 (Fairview NJ) a buddy of mine came along to help out and visit New York. The day after we unloaded we get out early to go to the city, and my neighbor introduced himself. Now we both had beards at the time, and the guy opened by asking us if we were “from the House of David”, which I didn’t get right away… not wanting to antagonize the guy who lived above me I mentioned we were heading to the city, he said “what do you want to go to the city for, it’s full of [n-word]s and [sp-word]s!” I froze a little bit and realized that I really, really wasn’t in Montreal anymore and that this was the kind of new reality. I don’t remember much of what went on after, besides my handling it in my socially-anxious way of being very polite and then just kind of leaving.  I vaguely remember the k-word popping up at some point in the advice he gave us. It felt almost unreal TBH. The guy was very friendly to me — he saw me as a fellow white guy — but clearly our world views were divergent, to say the least.

Today I feel largely the same way about this election as I did about that introduction to my upstairs neighbor. I really wanted to think that Eddie (not his real name) was of another generation (IIRC he was in his mid-60s) and that this kind of shocking social attitudes would change over time, But judging from the campaign that we’ve seen from Trump, the vote tells us that no, there hasn’t been any progression. There has in fact been a huge regression. And it’s not “just” a racial thing either. It’s also a victory for misogyny, transphobia and hate in general.

It’s like if you visited a friend of the family you think you’ve known all your life, but then you find out that he was secretly a klan member the whole time.

Is there a silver lining to all this? There is for me, and it’s that I’m not an American. I know that the culture will cross borders like a metastasizing tumor, but at least I know that as of January 20th my life is not likely to change in a very direct way.  If nothing else, I don’t have to look on my neighbors with suspicion, although that may well come here as well along with the culture.

It’s a pessimistic view, but a realistic view. But, what do I know? My take on things as expressed previously was so wrong it’s practically embarrassing (but I’m leaving it up).

i want to believe poster, seen in "X-Files".
Me too, Mulder. Me too.

I really wanted to believe that America was better than this.