The 5-2 Blog Tour: “Kilmahog” by Nigel Bird

All this April, Gerald So, the man behind the 5-2 poetry site, is running a blog tour highlighting past poems. The tour stops here today as I talk about Nigel Bird’s poem “Kilmahog.”

You could have, should have, turned right at the lights
across the hills and over to Kilmahog.
Could have, should have turned into the ditch
when you saw him crossing, legs moving
like the Roadrunner, arms preparing for a fight
Or swerved into the other lane, braked hard and
hoped, let the man behind the headlamps take his chances.
Could have, should have stopped to check
for breathing or a pulse. Maybe called it in.
Could have been five minutes late—
nobody would have minded.

*****

It’s kind of ironic that I was watching the beginning of Children of the Corn when I started this post. The couple in the movie fall down the rabbit hole in a scene similar to the one described above. They’re having an argument when a boy staggers out into the road and right in front of their car. After that, things go horribly awry.

Nigel Bird is not starting a supernatural adventure with this poem. This dark event is the central point of it, rather than a jumping off point. The person in the poem could have, should have turned right and gone into Kilmahog, a hamlet in the Scottish mountains. Kilmahog could have been anywhere isolated – a West Virginia coal mining town, a forgotten rail depot in one of the prairie provinces, an ancient Black Forest village halfway between Munich and Frankfurt. Like the scene I described above, it’s in the middle of nowhere, away from the nearest gas station or police officer.

It’s a random event, driving down the road and having someone appear suddenly in front of you. You hit them. In this day of cell phones and GPS, we like to think we’d stop, we’d summon help, we’d do the right thing. Most people do. But the person in this poem doesn’t. They do what our first instinct, without fail, tells us to do: panic. Cars – our cars – don’t impact people everyday. Most people, in fact, get through their entire lives with nothing worse than a fender bender, if that. But hitting someone? That’s life-changing.

The rational mind says to stop, to check on the person, to get help, to tell the truth if the person dies. Accidents happen. Just ask Stephen King, who, in spite of incredible pain when he was hit by a minivan, seemed amused that he was hit by one of his own characters. He wasn’t happy, but he also accepted that shit happens, sometimes really bad shit.

But we panic. If panic gets the better of us, we drive off, hoping no one will ever know. And of course, we know. And our own selves are the most damning witnesses of all.

The Future of Winter

Let me ask you something as you all recover from Standard Time filching an hour on its way out the door. The third Kepler novel needs a couple of rewrites. So what would you prefer to see next out of me?

Choices are:

The Compleat Winter: All my non-Kepler short stories up through 2012 that are available for reprint.

Winter of Discontent: Sort of a best of the blog where you get to enjoy the real me in all my pompous, opinionated glory, including the favorite band posts.

Bad Religion: The third Kepler. If enough people pick this one, I’ll wait until it’s ready to issue another ebook, but so will you.

You make the call in the comments below.

Favorite Bands: Red Hot Chili Peppers

In 1992, about a year after I moved to Cincinnati, my brother came down and dropped off a tape. I listened to it during a trip to Gatlinburg, TN. It blew my mind. This band didn’t know what decade they were in. There was seventies funk, modern rap with punk overtones, and throwbacks to psychedelia. And of course, one song was already in heavy rotation on MTV, a gritty, monochrome video version of Salvador Dali on acid set to “Give It Away.”

Oh, my friends, it was the 1990′s for me. The eighties, with their hair metal and synthesizer pop, were dead. Rock had found its mojo again. And the Red Hot Chili Peppers were hosing down the airwaves with that mojo.

The Chilis had been around for a while. I remember hanging out at Medina’s Round Records (two of whose managers I dated. Sweet for an audiophile like me, especially when that netted me floor seats at the 87 Clapton show) and actually being exposed to them a few years earlier. A radically different version of the band had broken through with Mother’s Milk, one of the first albums I’d ever heard where rap was done over rock on purpose. And it sounded natural. I got to hear Mother’s Milk on my twice weekly visits to Round Records. Had I not been on a progressive rock kick at the time, I would have snatched it up then.

The band then consisted of core members Flea on bass and Anthony Keidis on vocal. As detailed in his autobiography Scar Tissue, Keidis came into the band with a history. Son of actor and dope dealer to the rock stars Blackie Dammett, godson of Sonny Bono, Keidis had, by age 15, seen more and done more than Mick and Keith had by 22. He and schoolmate Flea had, by 1988, they had reunited with another schoolmate, Hillel Slovak. Together with drummer Jack Irons (more recently of Pearl Jam), the Peppers broke out of LA with a certain “fuck you” attitude that would not be denied. It didn’t hurt that their early work was produced by George Clinton.

But Slovak wasted away from drug use, and Keidis nearly died by the time Mother’s Milk was recorded. They were in an ever-shifting line-up by then, but the band’s core sound was already in place. Eventually, they hired Chad Smith to take over on drums, and with him, they found a member grounded in reality. The Chili Peppers are not the Chili Peppers without him (and really, only Jack Irons could sit behind that kit if Smith ever leaves.) Chad Smith gets what Flea and Keidis are up to, but it’s also a job to him. He shows up, pours everything he has into his performance, but he leaves it on the stage.

But it was John Frusciante who helped solidify the sound. He came aboard with Blood Sugar Sex Magik, which catapulted the band to stardom. Frusciante’s guitar was reminiscent of Slovak’s. It’s that aggressive, high-pitched wail you hear in “Give It Away” and “Suck My Kiss.”

Frusciante left the band in the early nineties, unable to cope with fame. Unlike Keidis, who could manage his drug habits better with each subsequent trip to rehab, Frusciante found himself overwhelmed with no idea how to get clean. The band recruited Jane’s Addiction’s Dave Navarro. Keidis describes him as one of the warmest, most generous guys in rock. Like Keidis and Frusciante, he had some bad habits. Like Keidis, he was able to come back from it to regroup with Jane’s Addiction and form The Panic Channel.

But the Peppers wanted Frusciante back. They were able to guide him into rehab, which for Keidis was becoming less and less of a necessity (one trip was triggered by an ER doctor who neglected to tell Keidis a painkiller was opium-based.), and near the end of the nineties, he returned to the fold to do Californication. Meanwhile, Flea had become something of an elder statesman of rock, founding a music academy in LA and working with several charitable trusts.

Their later music is more thoughtful, with Keidis singing instead of rapping. Some of the songs are dark (“Other Side,” “Dani California”) while others recall the sense of fun and defiance of their early (“Around the World”). Frusciante left again in 2010, this time to go solo. In his place, the band recruited Frusciante’s protege and second guitarist Josh Klinghoffer. In 2012, they were inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, joined by Frusciante and Jack Irons, with a moving tribute by Flea to Hillel Slovak. They’d come a long way from the band who had to steal food to survive and got around LA in, among other things, a battered old Studebaker.

What’s Wrong With America: Americans

The title of this post is the best news you’ve had all day. Why?

Because when I say Americans are a problem, I mean you. All of you. Including the guy writing this post. Why’s that good news?

When you’re problems mostly stem from that jackass in mirror, you often find yourself yelling at the same person in the best position to solve them.

“Okay, Mr. Smart man, how do we solve our problems when the economy is so bad and politicians won’t listen to us?”

Glad you asked that.

First off, you need to give up your pet assumptions, namely that someone who does not share your political beliefs is somehow evil or misguided. In fact, if you use the term “politically challenged,” you are part of the problem. If you think it’s the government’s job to grow your 401k, you are part of the problem. If you believe everything Glenn Beck or Michael Moore tells you is the boogie man, you really are part of the problem. So what’s the solution?

• First off, stop worrying about the stock market. The stock market does not make anything. The stock market does not provide any services other than the buying and selling of stock. The stock market is a big savings account for investors and a means of raising cash for companies. The economy is driven by two things: Buying goods and services, selling goods and services. Stocks are just an investment vehicle. The only thing the government can do for you there is to make sure those tasked with buying and selling stock on your behalf follow the rules. Here’s a hint for you: Those regulations the SEC enforces? They’re not government regulations. They’re written by accountants. Deviate from them, and…  Well… We all saw what happened to Enron, didn’t we?
• Turn off talk radio, pundits, and the political blogs. Glenn Beck likes to compare Obama to Hitler not because it’s true. It scares people, and fear, like sex, sells. Likewise, Michael Moore, a man who is about as socialist as JP Morgan, likes to tell you who the big corporate boogie man is this week. Even when it’s not. Consider his movie Sicko. Brits and Canadians, who incidentally don’t want an American healthcare system, giggle uncontrollably when Moore talks about the utopia of their healthcare systems. In reality, they don’t want the American system anymore than they think we should switch to theirs for the very same reason: They only work in the places where they were designed and implemented.  If the man on TV, the radio, or the Internet is trying to scare you, ask him how much he makes per terrified senior citizen. Then go watch something with a little more substance. Like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
• The housing mess really is our fault. Think about this for a second. We buy cars, houses, and gadgets we can’t afford, working jobs we hate to pay for it all so we can impress people we don’t like. Every economic crash from 1837 onward can be tied back to two things: overextended credit and rampant speculation. That’s right. The need to keep up with the Joneses brings down again and again. Do you want to do your part to save the economy? Whenever Jones buys the latest big screen TV, takes out a mortgage he can’t afford, or buys a flashy car, instead of trying to one up him, just say to yourself, “Fuck Jones!”
• Learn to say no to your kids. Nita and I have spoiled AJ, but we’ve always told him no, we can’t do some things because we’re a little tight on money or we had an unexpected expense. He does not argue. If anything, he probably knows more about managing his money than you do about yours. And this is a kid without a job. If your kid pitches a tantrum because he can’t have the latest and greatest, it’s called time-out. It worked for my generation. They’ll get over it.
• Yes, a lot of things are out of our control. That should be a no-brainer. So ask yourself what isn’t beyond your control. What did you do today to make your life better? Or your family’s? Or your coworkers’? What did you do to look for a job today? Sure, unemployment’s still high, but the flip side of that is a lot of jobs are going unfilled. Why? I hate to tell you this, but while you shouldn’t have to settle for bag boy wages to do a skilled job, you also shouldn’t expect to make an outrageous salary for something that probably wasn’t worth that in the first place. You should be able to find a good job. That doesn’t mean you deserve enough to fund a McMansion. Quit chasing Jones. Jones is a moron.
• Quit complaining that no one wants your service, your skill, or your product anymore. I have no need of a buggy whip or a typewriter. If the world changes around you, change with it. Want to know why India is getting so many jobs that Americans used to do? Guess what. They saw they needed new skills, so they learned them. You should do the same. The world is changing. Look at that as an opportunity, not a problem. It’s not 1948 anymore. We’re not going to be making half the world’s stuff again for a long, long time to come.
• Fear of change: Yes, it’s natural. No, it’s not productive. Get over it. Embrace change. Move ahead.

Favorite Musicians: Pat Benatar

I remember one night in the ninth grade doing my algebra homework and listening to WMMS when these machine-gun drum beats came blaring through the speakers, followed by three angry chords. I expected The Ramones or maybe even The Kinks in one of their angrier moods. Nope. The voice that joined in was female, singing, “Your love is like a tidal wave spinning over my head!” A few lines later, she sang, “You’re the right kind of sinner to release my inner fantasy…”

I was in love. Her name was Pat Benatar, and she blew my mind. This chick was tough, a little scary, and maybe the first woman I wanted to have a drink with. (And I didn’t drink yet. That was about three years into the future.) In that voice, you could hear a woman who had already been through everything life had to throw at her. You heard a survivor.

The tough singer was nothing new in 1979. The tough female singer was still a novelty. Janis Joplin and Grace Slick were exceptions, not the rule. Or they were strictly in the realm of punk. Pat Benatar brought the tough chick singer front and center and permanently into the mainstream.

She had released a couple of singles before that never really stuck. Then came “Heartbreaker,” which fit in with ‘MMS’s edgier sound. Cleveland adopted her like a tough little cupie doll. Part of it had to do with her lead guitarist and future husband, Neil Giraldo, who hailed from nearby Parma. He had already made several connections locally, and the combination of the sound he and Benatar created and his reputation in the local music scene made sure that, while the rest of the country kind of knew who she was, Pat Benatar pretty much owned the city. She and local rockers The Michael Stanley Band.

The hits came fast and furious after that. Benatar had an album-a-year salvo that kept coming from 1979 through 1985, ending with Tropico. She kept throwing punches with “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” “Treat Me Right,” “Promises in the Dark,” and “Shadows of the Night.” During this time, she married Giraldo, and in 1985, they had their first daughter, Haley. Haley is herself a rocker like her parents.

1985 also marked a shift both in sound and in output. Tropico‘s first single, “We Belong,” was written for Haley. Subsequent albums, much to the chagrin of Chrysalis Records, became more experimental in sound. Benatar’s star faded. And that seems to be okay with her. She seems to prefer the lighter touring these days, has only occasionally drifted back into the studio, and relishes her role as a mother.

But those first six or so albums made high school something special for many of us.

The Year In Review

2012 was not the suckfest most of the past decade has been. The economy got a little better. There were no Category 5 storms sinking Gulf Coast cities. Nobody blew up an oil well. Nobody slammed jetliners into buildings. Most importantly, the world didn’t end. There were some dark moments. We’re still trying to understand what happened in Sandy Hook.

For the most part, though, we spent 2012 nursing the hangover we’ve had since the 2000′s. Maybe we’ll be feeling better by 2020. Maybe.

January

• The Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary kick off the presidential election season. It’s Mitt Romney vs. a cast of characters who make the Jersey Shore cast look like Rhodes Scholars.
• The Arab Parliament tells Syrian leader Bashar el-Assad he’s on his own. Seriously, how big a douchbag do you have to be when a group that includes several repressive regimes tells you, “Dude, that’s just not cool”?
• The captain of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia manages to beach his ship, tip it on its side, then says, “Screw this! I’m out of here.” Guess someone didn’t tell him the captain of the Titanic went down with his ship.

February

• Mitt Romney is down to three opponents: Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and, inexplicably, Rick Santorum.
• Whitney Houston dies.
• The gay marriage ban in California is struck down. When asked about it, Coolest Gay Man in America George Takei says, “Oh, myyyy…”
• Greeks riot when they realize their government spent all their money on strippers, blow, and M&M’s.
• The Giants win the Super Bowl! The Giants win the Super Bowl! The Giants win the Super Bowl!

March

• Vladimir Putin “wins” the Russian presidency.

April

• Several Secret Service agents are fired for hiring hookers while in Colombia. Never mind that hookers are legal in Colombia.
• North Korea threatens to launch a missile unless leader Kim Jong-Un is paid… One hundred billion dollars!
• Tornadoes rip through Dallas-Ft. Worth because God is angry about Rick Perry’s presidential bid.

May

• Barack Obama declares his support for gay marriage.
• Facebook goes public. Stock tanks.

June

• Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is sentenced to life in a pound-me-in-the-ass facility outside of Cairo.

July

• Scientists discover the so-called “God particle.” It was in Sheldon Cooper’s spot.
• Twelve people killed in a Colorado Theater by a guy who thought he was The Joker.

August

• Syria erupts into a full-blown civil war.
• Mitt Romney chooses Paul Ryan as his running mate. The choice makes Romney look so life-like.
• The rover Curiosity lands on Mars, accidentally crushing Marvin Martian’s illudium PU-32 explosive space modulator in the process.

September

• US consulate in Benghazi, Libya is attacked. Ambassador Christopher Stevens is killed, the first US ambassador in decades to be killed in decades.

October

• If you live in a swing state, it pretty much sucks to turn on the television all this month.
• Former Penn State assistant coach and serial teen rapist Jerry Sandusky is sentenced to pretty much die in prison.
• Hurricane Sandy becomes a mutant superstorm and wreaks havoc on the East Coast. Happy Halloween, New York.
• Felix Baumgartner jumps out of a perfectly good helium balloon. 24 miles up.

November

• Barack Obama wins reelection. Mitt Romney has a temper tantrum. Paul Ryan polishes his Ryan ’16 signs. You know, it’s a sad day when a rich white man just can’t win the presidency.
• The last Twilight movie is released. At last, our long national nightmare is over.
• Hamas fires rockets at Isreal from Gaza. Isreal fires a lot more back. Same ol’ story. Same ol’ song and dance.
• Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi declares himself Lord High Grand Poobah of Egypt in spite of no such office existing. This does not go over well, and Hosni Mubarak is told to prepare for a cell mate. Just sayin’, authorities tell him.
• No more Twinkies? Nooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

December

• A deranged man shoots up an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut before turning the gun on himself. 26 people, most of them small children, are dead.
• December 21: The world did not end.
• America is still not Greece. At least we can say that.

Thursday Reviews: One World edited by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jhumpa Lahiri; Dinner at Mr. Jefferson’s by

One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories

Edited by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jhumpa Lahiri

I had to buy this one for academic purposes, but I read the whole book anyway. None of these stories are traditional Western stories. All of them are unusual, most with a literary bent.

One that stood out to me on first reading was “Ishwari’s Children,” set in Bengladesh. Of all the stories, this one was pure noir, the tale of one boy’s kindly grandfather whom the reader sees as having more in common with Tony Soprano than Grandpa.

“The Albino,” set in Nigeria, was unsettling. An albino musician finds his guitar stolen and is thwarted at every turn to get rent one for an important gig. It’s odd to the American mind because we have Edgar Winter here, an albino, using his condition as a gimmick for his music. In “The Albino,” the musician is called every name in the book: demon, cursed, European. People hate him for his lack of melanin.

My favorite story, though, was “Fireweed,” about a Liberian immigrant, Joel, working as a carpenter in California. When he takes a job for a whiny, self-centered suburban wife named Tiffany, her mewling to her husband about a paint color called fireweed triggers horrific memories of civil war, the slaughter of his family, and the abuse of his sister at the hands of soldiers. By the end of the story, you just want to slap the bitch. Well, most people would want to slap her anyway, but she gives us added motivation when she proves oblivious to the turmoil her shrill complaints about paint color cause Joel.

This is not my normal cuppa joe, but I did enjoy reading most of these stories. One or two did not make any sense. Others had a meaning probably not intended by the author, but just as valid anyway.

Dinner at Mr. Jefferson’s

Charles A. Cerami

One of the reasons we’re so angsty over Obamacare and think the Tea Party adherents in Congress are a bunch of grandstanding morons is the same reason we don’t want to know what’s in our hot dogs: No one likes watching sausage making. And no one really likes watching legislation wind its way through the bowels of Congress. To make matters worse, this stuff now happens in an era of CSPAN and 24-hour news.

Not so back in the 1790′s, when America was still learning how to drive this new government it put together. On the one hand, we had Alexander Hamilton, the financial genius who figured out how to solidify the tottering American economy. On the other, we had Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who wanted very badly to put the nation’s capital on the Potomac. Both these things could happen if both sides signed off on the other’s plan. Trouble is Hamilton did not get along with Jefferson and Madison. In the middle of all this, George Washington, already walking a tightrope as the nation’s first chief executive, was aging prematurely having to listen to all three of them argue.

Leave it to Jefferson to find a solution. The francophile Secretary of State hosted what was probably the most influential dinner in American history. It had only two guests, Hamilton and Madison. And there they hatched a plan to allow the federal government to pay off the Revolutionary War debt still hanging over the states while placing the permanent capital of these United States in the shadow of Mt. Vernon.

Cerani only spends a chapter on the actual dinner, speculating from Jefferson’s notes on the event. Were Jefferson alive today, he would probably spend time with his personal chef, James Hemings (Yes, his former slave and brother of Jefferson’s mistress) on the Food Network while Hamilton would be a regular on CNN. Madison would probably be a college professor somewhere, being the most intellectual of the three. But Cerani’s account of the lead-up and aftermath of this historic dinner is marred by his over-reliance on Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton and constant suggestions that Washington was a bit foggy in the head by the time he took the oath of office. It’s an interesting book, but not a great one.

Thank You

 

Eleven Years Later

My God.

11 years already?

The new World Trade Center will open next year. Next time I’m in New York, I’m having a drink at Windows on the World.

I’ve told the story of where I was and how I reacted over and over again. I think we can safely call 2001-2011 America’s Lost Decade.

The first time I saw Ground Zero, I was shocked. There was this construction zone in the middle of Manhattan. My first thought was “My God, that must have been HUGE!” The reality hit home finally. This wasn’t an iconic image splashed across our TV screens. This was an open wound in the middle of a city where I happened to be. And we all felt it when it happened.

The Memorial is open now. As I said before, the new WTC will open next year. Something died in America on 9/11. I wonder if a completed and open Freedom Tower will bring back some of our mojo.

What’s Right With America: Why We’re Still So Friggin’ Cool

I post here a lot on what’s wrong with this country. After all, our nation needs to go into the shop for some long overdue maintenance. But if I didn’t love my country, I wouldn’t be calling out banks and the major parties and… Oh, I still got a list to get through.

However, today is the United States’ 236th birthday. This is a time to celebrate what’s right with America.

• We’re so tough, we kicked our own ass. And you better be happy the old school guys won. ‘Cuz then you’d have two of us to deal with, and tag team wrestling was popularized in the South. Just think what impact that would have had on the inevitable alliance.
• Forty-three years later, and we still are the only ones to have gone to the moon. Nine times, walking on it six times. We even brought home the crew of the one that blew up, and they still got to circle the moon. Sure, the Chinese will likely get there around 2020, over fifty years later.
• We invented the Les Paul and the Stratocaster. If you’re not playing Gibson or Fender, as our English cousins would say, you’re a wanker!
• Star Trek. Sure, Jean-Luc Picard is a French guy played by a British guy and sounds, well, British. You can only get away with that on an American television show. And Jean-Luc joins a pantheon of Americans who make James Bond look like a pansy (which, in fairness to our British cousins, is pretty hard to do.): James T. Kirk (Iowa), Hikaru Sulu (San Francisco), Benjamin Sisko (New Orleans), Kathryn Janeway (Indiana), and Jonathan Archer (Upstate New York).
• We have California. Europe has Greece. When California goes broke, people want to buy into California at bargain basement prices because even 164 years after the gold rush, everyone still wants to live in California (even people who hate it.) When Greece goes broke, the world goes into crisis.  And all Europe says, “Well, no wonder. All the buildings are falling apart.”
• Nathan’s hot dogs, Chicago style pizza, Ben & Jerry’s, Texas chili, Cincinnati-style chili, Parmanti Brothers sandwiches, Katz Deli in Manhattan, fried chicken, cajun food, Jack Daniels, Jim Beam. So what if the beer’s watery? You’re just washing down all the great food and chasing the whiskey.
• Sure, American cars leave a lot to be desired, but we still build these…

  
  

  
  Too bad we don’t build really great high-end sports cars. Oh, wait. We do.

  
  We even build one that’s electric.

  

• I not only can change the channel, but I don’t have to pay the government for the privilege. (Well, sales tax on the cable, but I’m awfully fond of paved roads and well-paid cops.)

• In America, someone like Charlie Sheen can make something of himself. Because it takes more than tiger blood. It takes getting a forty-third chance. America is the land of forty-third chances.

• New Orleans. Abandoned after Katrina destroyed it? Nope. Rebuilt it.

• We are beset by hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, drought, and political pundits. Do we fold? Nope. We just keep getting bigger.

• Despite what other countries have accused us of (and a few wingnuts shriek to the contrary), it’s not a theocracy. Not even close. Which is good. Because I’d rather my fellow countrymen not blow themselves up in Seth McFarlane’s front yard over a Family Guy episode.

• Speaking of which, Seth McFarlane. Deal with it.

In all seriousness, I love living here. For all our faults, it’s amazing what we’ve accomplished in 236 years. Like any large republic with pretensions of greatness, we have our share of douchebags. Most of the time we can’t even agree on which ones are the douchebags. But if you look at the long line of history, the people who who win the day are those who look at that founding document, The Declaration of Independence, see that phrase “all men are created equal,” and hold the nation’s collective feet to the fire until we come a little more in line with that phrase. I didn’t have to wait until I owned property to vote. My wife can vote. I have several friends who don’t have to worry about being auctioned off as chattel or be forced to drink from a different water fountain. Maybe someday soon, a cousin of mine can get married. In the meantime, no one’s going to kill me for going to the wrong church, nor will they kill an atheist friend of mine for not going at all. Life’s not perfect, but then perfect does not exist, not even in fairy tales. (“Happily ever after” means “Sorry. I don’t do sequels.”)

And in all seriousness, I know most people elsewhere think more highly of where they are than they do of us. But this is our day. So slice off a piece of Canadian bacon, raise a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee…  Oh, wait. That was Sunday.

Damn! And I didn’t even get Canada a card!

All right, America then! Grab thee some fireworks and blow off a finger or two in celebration!