making Twitter pull its birdly weight
Welcome to the first edition of Tuesday Time Crush, in which I cravenly avoid the soul-destroying boondoggle of forcing myself to get creative by regaling you with a selection of the witty, cerebral two-hundred and eighty-character bon mots which I have posted to Twitter, the bidet that’s convinced it’s a ready-made by Marcel Duchamp and says so.
Another fob-off. That’s right. You got it, Mister Sir Isaac Newton Faraday-Einstein. Here’s your Nobel Prize in Cracking the Code of Obvious. Excuse the coffee stain on the certificate—I was up late.
This exercise in proving how razor sharp I am, which would be unseemly in a youngster, is considered fair game for someone of an age to remember anything that happened before Beyoncé. And I get to laugh at my own jokes without slipping into my egg-yolk stained bathrobe and wandering around the collector lanes of the Gardiner Expressway.
But, as ever, there’s tragedy behind the smile of this velvet-painted clown: namely, my lifelong struggle to become Quentin Crisp and ending up as Oscar Wilde.
Oscar Wilde! What a disgrace to us, his people, what a shanda fur die heteros!
You know what I say:
You fall from grace, don’t hide your face!
and, if it ain’t bad enough they shamed you, to spend your sentence crying in your jail cell while surrounded by hunky, tattooed low-lifes—? Holy cock-sucking mother of god, Oscar! That’s not what a proud outlaw fag does, that’s not the rock hard shit for breakfast you cut your teeth on! You’re just not maximising your potential, seeking out the hidden-in-plain-sight opportunities!
Do like Quentin did: turn the trouble into tinsel, and you’d be the talk of Tinsel Town in no time!
Quentin Crisp was my kinda queer. Dignified, not pompous; brilliant yet appropriately humble; witty not vicious; camp as a row of tents yet exuding a kind of gravitas, silly but wise; a butterfly with cast-iron wings. Quentin lived his early life in 1920’s London as a flamboyant, effeminate gay man at a time when to even mention the word “homosexual” was unthinkable. He was beaten (often by cops), arrested, reviled, even spat at on the street.
(Of London, he later wrote: “The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time that I lived there, that they do not want to be happy; they want to be right.”)
Finally, in his seventies, he moved to New York City and fell in love with it.
The feeling was mutual: Quentin became the toast of the town, living next to Hell’s Angels in his two-room flat on the Lower East Side, dining out on peanuts and Champagne, and to the end of his days in constant demand for talk shows, swanky parties, avant-garde films, interviews, opinion pieces and reviews.
Though his books demonstrate his acid (but never truly unkind) wit; what I remember most is what he said about living his life as a gay man, and a flaming one, in an authentic way, on his own terms, not compromising, no matter the trouble and suffering it had caused him:
“It’s been agony,” he said, simply, “but I couldn’t have done it any other way.”
Hear that, whiny whinging self-pitying Oscar? “De Profundis” my saggy ass! Never complain, never explain, girlfriend!
Well. Apparently I needed to get that out of my system. But that’s the great thing about being a narcissist: On the rare occasions I take note of someone else’s existence, it’s actually still me. I don’t even have to leave the house!
But getting back to my Tweetfest: This, as it were, Bovril cube of low-sodium camp reduction is a typical old-guy strategy for making you think I’m the venerable life of the party.
Which I invariably am, in the sense that all the interesting, sexy people at the party spend forty-five seconds standing next to me as I drone on about my dirty dishes or explain how to make drop scones with raisins, go astigmatic with boredom, murmur, “That’s funny, he always speaks very highly of you!” and make a dash upstairs to the nearest bedroom.
Yeppir. Would you like to hear about how to deter cockroaches using finely chopped onions and sodium bicarbonate?
Oh, yes. Yes. Trust me. You definitely would.
Nothing but Tweets
I’ve procrastinated and avoided so much out of fear that now I have a to-do list that’s nothing but the scary things. Currently weighing the option of getting plastic surgery then moving to Orkney under an assumed name.
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A post invited me to share my favorite sexual position, but I wasn’t ready to be that vulnerable. Several cups of coffee later, I’m brave enough to share that my favorite sexual position is that it’s generally a good thing, as long as you leave me out of it. Thanks.
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Only in Canada does deletion of a memo equate to a scandal. This brings to our political landscape all the sleazy goings-on and breathless excitement of an actuaries’ convention.
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I always thought “having an addictive personality” meant that people liked me WAY too much for their own good.
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I’ve just been ambushed by a guerrilla posse of equanimity and serenity that was lying in wait just beyond my inability to enjoy anything.
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Excuse my hollow laughter as the male lunk-heads of the right, blissfully free of irony or shame, appropriate the feminist meme “My body, my choice” to excuse not getting vaccinated, and exercise their god-given right to not give a flying fuck about anyone but themselves.
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So, then. Sir Richard Branson completed his sub-orbital flight on Virgin Galactic. Currently orbiting my satellite moon, “WhoGivesAFuck-opoeia.”
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What do you call 70,000 crazy, angry right-wingers at the bottom of a pool? Priceless.
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SO excited that 3 of the richest men in the world continue to distract themselves with living out and selling their boyhood astronaut fantasies to the 10 people who can afford them, while the rest of us applaud during coffee break at one of our part-time jobs.
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I overslept today, which was disastrous, as I’d planned to get a head start procrastinating on everything.
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Emily Brontë visits her psychiatrist. “The test results are in,” he tells her, “and I’m afraid the bad news is—you’re crazy.” “I demand a second opinion!” says Emily, outraged. “OK,” says the shrink. “Your novels are excessively bleak.”
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Strange but true: Anti-maskers are always complaining that masks make it hard for them to breathe, when clearly breathing is the root of all their problems to begin with.
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This Facebook oversight thing… I tried slapping my own wrist once, but I still misbehave. So I would say I find it less than optimal as a deterrent.
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Deep breath in … and out… I don’t have to have an opinion on everything…. deep breath in … and out…I don’t have to have an opinion on everything…. Just doing my Twittercises.
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Genuinely sorry to hear HRH The Duke of Edinburgh has died.
OMG – I hope Meghan is OK!?
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Ah. I see the “Bonnie Henry misogyny anti-science cheeto-mouthed entitled white male spluttering with indignation” pile-on has started. Happy Monday!
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U.S.—Armed insurrection at the Capitol, threats to the security of the inauguration. Canada—A few non-recusals and a couple of hypocritical hols. That’s the sad reality of being Canadian: always the bridesmaid, never the hangman at the mass execution of our political enemies.
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Why do men still exist when we have turkey basters?
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I don’t think I can cope with normal any more. I’m ruined. I’m just a husk. Check out my dead eyes. Close those curtains, dammit. Hand me the next litre of Kawartha Lakes French Vanilla. No spoon, thanks. I’ll just cry on it until it melts, then use a straw.
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I hate to be shallow, but — what in god’s name does Boris Johnson DO to his hair? Does it owe him money? Actually, I don’t hate to be shallow. It’s what I live for.
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My first book blurb from a celebrity! OK, a gay, Canadian celebrity. But you take your celebrities as you find them.
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The founder of Shopify thinks that Trudeau is too slow in opening the border with the US. I’ll make you a deal, Shopify founder: When the day comes I that vote for you, I’ll give weight to your opinion. Now everyone’s a scientist AND a politician, God help us.
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Some impressionable incels think Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life” is clever and original. That’s likely because they never heard my Dad say, “Pull up your socks, make your own lunch, and don’t expect a handout from me, young hooligan!”
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If Trump is faking COVID-19 infection, it’s like the world’s most enabling mom-note to the school office. “Dear Mrs Jones, Donnie can’t run the country today, he has weltschmerz.”
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Vladimir Putin being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize is like Hannibal Lecter being awarded three Michelin stars.
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I hate to be negative about Kamala Harris, but the fact that she chose the wrong parents, then being a woman, THEN forgot to be Black enough does not fill me with confidence. Clearly, she makes dubious choices under pressure.
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Conservatives in Canada used to proudly call themselves “Progressive.” Believe it or not. You could actually vote for a conservative without laughing apologetically and explaining that you’d recently been thrown from a horse at Woodbine racetrack.
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Shame about Steve Bannon, eh? Another victim of the Oval-Office-to-Prison pipeline.
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Scariest childhood movie? Hands down, “101 Dalmations.” I was six and my parents took me to a matinée which I spent cowering under the seat. I still scream whenever I see a tall, stick-thin villainess in a wrap dress brandishing a long cigarette holder, unless I’m dressed that way myself.
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While happy as I can muster for the rich and famous celebrating their first child, I’ve always been mystified by heterosexuals commanding front-page headlines because they successfully fucked once.
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So, then. Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race. You can’t deny he changed the political discourse in the US. From “I will never vote for a socialist” to “I will never vote for a socialist, especially Bernie Sanders.”
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So Michelle Rempel blocked me—that Alberta Con. MP whose office is, counter-intuitively, occasionally located in Oklahoma. So, 1. an MP who is too delicate to face criticism might be in the wrong job; 2. Also, why are you even reading Tweets? Get back to work, cupcake!
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Re: Kanye West—
Happy: Black presidential candidate! – Sad: Religious presidential candidate – Depressed: Spoiler presidential candidate ensuring Trump wins. + Hopeful: He’s too late to be on the ballot this year = applying to any Buddhist monastery or Berlin man-brothel that will have me.
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Have a great day, everyone! Or, as the mainstream media now phrase it, “…yet another 24 hours of the way all the rest of your allotted time will be from now on, until you die of sorrow.”
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