I don't care about spots on my apples
I don't care about spots on my apples
My friends had their dog neutered today and it still has more balls than Justin Trudeau. Imagine being the leader of a country and just watching sub-leaders turn their provincial citizens into a fine paste by the dozens and you just keep cheerleading for things the way they are. Even embarrassing them from the pulpit would be better. What a dope. Here’s a newsletter that is doing more to help Canadians survive their provincial governments than Justin Trudeau.
When you sit back and watch, I don’t know, a coyote running at you from across a field, you would probably move to avoid it. Some sort of animal with a look of ill intent, if it runs at you, and there are people around saying “hey, that thing wants to bite your thigh right off, you should run or move or something”, you would probably run or move or something. If a person didn’t do that you would probably think they were stupid!
Okay so now the coyote is gnawing on the person. The person didn’t run or move so the coyote has taken liberties with their limbs, making chops and roasts of our dullard friend, Realman McMetaphor, while we watch. We’re pretty close and the coyote is doing that dog thing where they chew on something, head down, but their eyes are looking and wary and, you think, for just a second, looking at the next course. “Oh,” you might say to nobody in particular, “I should be careful of this fucking coyote.”
But then the coyote is finished or put his leftovers in a doggie bag (heh) and he runs toward you because you haven’t moved or run or anything so now the coyote is eating you and others are around and they’re, I don’t know, they’re concerned and making moves as if to do something or run but maybe they’re a little interested? Who can blame them, you rarely get to see bad things happen in some parts of Canada if you’re upper class and educated and maybe these people want to see some carnage. They would probably text their spouses if they saw even a little bit of a car accident because, woah, you so rarely see it happen, just the aftermath or you hear about it from friends. A non-lethal car accident would be interesting to watch, just once, if nobody got hurt.
Okay but now the coyote looks confused like, why is nobody running from me. I’m a predator. I’m scary! I think I’m scary. Now the coyote is wondering if all this human meat is a trick. The coyote is supposed to be COVID and the dumb shit people who are now dinner, lunch, and dinner tomorrow, are supposed to be the Alberta government, the voting public, and the public at large somewhat respectively. I have to be honest this one kind of got away from me. I think I was making a point about how responsibility is diffuse in representative democracies and Canada is too big for violent riots to have much impact because the people in power are too few and far away to feel threatened.
Anyway, things are very bad in Alberta and I am here, you better believe, to tell you that maybe they should improve, especially when you see the threat coming to chew on your kidneys from a couple rods/leagues away. Some preventative steps should be the low bar? How do you state the obvious when obvious arrived and started killing your friends and still get into it? That’s what this is, I guess. Christ.
🪁The quality of scholarship coming out of the University of Calgary has already dropped precipitously ahead of murderous funding cuts. (Though their sociologists are already of suspect quality, except my wife who is world class and very hot).
🦖Lots of union jobs going in the shredder for rounding-error savings. Those savings will evaporate with overages and billing increases in about a year. But hey, at least dollars can go to shareholders instead of union members. That’s all that matters.
🎬Federal finance minister declares that oil is the Blood in our Soil and the industry is very, very important!
🕊Local idiots don’t realize that housing is plentiful and cheap in Calgary. Idiots.
🍨Truck-sized boil spews money-pus into the Forgiveness Chest, will face no further investigation or irritation of his sac.
🛴Canadian industry isn’t even world-class at ruining the planet.
🕸Tyler Shandro lied about parentage, new research shows.
⛲️People working at COVID-bathed abattoirs (literally) got jerked around for months but are now getting vaccines delivered to them, a symbolic gesture that lets Cargill off the hook for killing employees with apathy.
🌝Alberta’s answer to Tim & Eric is the funniest show on the internet and they actually have the balls to commit and get COVID.
🏉School boards are begging to go online so they can stop dying of plague and the province is just ushering them back into Death Clouds.
🦔Defunding police is good, but a great short-term goal should be uncoupling local police assets from military and intelligence mass surveillance.
⛅️Families separated by COVID, a couple kilometers, and one bridge.
🌬They made fun of your pottery major but who will be laughing when people need containers to store home-pickled nettles and pinecones for winter?
🐹Keeping vaccine doses to yourself (looking at you, all the Americans in the timeline getting vaccinated at rates that boggle the Canadian mind) will probably get you killed in the end.
🍯Buy guns, get in your car, kill people, it’s fine, just do it, this is America, killing rules, have fun.
🎸Jair Bolsonaro fully just pointing a gun to the lungs of the planet and demanding random now.
🥨Don’t go on boats with Canadian men.
🐀Soccer is boring as hell, despite certain podcast colleagues insistence to the contrary, but the meta-game is hilarious.
🥐David Cameron still gets mocked online every day of his life, as he should.
🍻Protected speech or no, it’s imperative you fart on cops at every opportunity.
🍩Solidarity with the army of psychotherapists forced to respond to climate change anxiety with shrugs and “yeah we’re probably fucked at this rate”.
🎭It’s an honour and privilege to get owned and embarrassed with compassion by the Blackfeet Tribe out of Montana.
🪐Thailand did a pretty good job with COVID and has better soup overall than Western nations. Why?
🏹It’s official - Bill Gates is a huge fuckface.
📉I was on The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist some weeks ago for a great conversation with Cory Johnston. Check it out and listen to my dulcet tones.
🎧Alberta Advantage had some banner episodes this month talking about the origins of the CCF and why corporate feminism is bad feminism.
🔇Big Shiny Takes subjected the Wolf Parade/Handsome Furs guy to some Canadian op-eds, which seems cruel. The man wrote “Radio Kaliningrad”, he deserves better than this shabby treatment.
🎚️Tech Won’t Save Us talks about the Amazon union drive(s). Can’t hear it over my crying.
🦾Just because our governments have ruined our lives and turned them into an endless hamster wheel of anxiety and GDP-juicing drudgery doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ring in May Day with local leftists. Speakers, solidarity, mutual aid, and revelry online on May 1.
🐍VTAG in Victoria is calling on the city and province to get off their west coast liberal/NDP asses and do something to support the unhoused.
A Quick Note: if you want us to include an article, petition, link to an event, or just want to drop us a quick line, reply to this newsletter or reach us at albertaadvantagenewsletter [at] gmail [dot] com. We’d love to hear from you! If you want to send some old timey mail, grab those stamps and send tributes/cake/not anthrax to Alberta Advantage Podcast, PO Box 52167 Edmonton Trail, Calgary, AB, T2E 8K9.
Our editor is Clinton Hallahan. Newsletter subject lines are stolen from these songs.
