Chapter 233

There was a funeral just outside my window, with the old-timers marching band playing dissonant music while a woman cried her heart out on the microphone. Then at around 9 AM they blew up a bunch of bombs. As long as they don’t do it at 6, better than a kick in the nuts.

I browsed Facebook for a bit. There are a few people I know who get mad when there are instances of Quebec-bashing in the squarehead Canadian media, and one guy pointed to some dumbass housewives daytime show in Toronto. They had a panel discussing the future of the French language in Canada, and unlike most roundtable discussions that (quite sensibly) include black people for black issues, gays for gay issues, etc., only four anglo women were present, and they just spouted some shitty ignorant takes. I was surprised that the vermin called Jan fucken Wong was present, I thought she had been canceled to oblivion before getting canceled was cool. She penned an editorial many years ago in which she blamed school shootings in Montreal on laws put in place to protect the use of the French language, and even her racist anti-peasoup overlords thought it was too much.

It’s weird to hear or read what foreigners think of Quebec. On one hand I understand that we’re just 8 million rednecks in a lost frostbitten corner of North America, but aside from squareheads (anglo-Canadians) and Murkins who live in the northeast and maybe a handful of French people, most seem to think we’re a relic of the past, like those small towns in Texas where some German dialects are kept on life support. My coworker was astonished when I told him Quebec City is a metro area of one million where 100% is done in French, he thought people did everything in English and French was far in the background, like in Louisiana. But I also meet people who think every Canadian is bilingual.

On a semi-related note, I started watching a TV series called Bad Blood, on a friend’s recommendation. It’s set in Montreal and is based on a true story about the mafia and biker gangs fighting, something that runs deep in the cultural psyche of that city and is the premise for a lot of good movies and series. I’m two episodes deep and it’s pretty good, but I can’t help but being annoyed at how they shit on the immersion factor by having everything done in English. We’ve already seen Mexican gangsters speaking to one another in Spanish-accented English, Russian mobsters speaking English with Russian accents, and now it’s the turn of Quebec bikers. It’s so fucking dumb. But then again don’t they have black actors portraying medieval European characters nowadays? Suspension of disbelief be fucken damned.

I also played a fair bit of Mount & Blade: Warband, and at night I trained BJJ. A good time was had by all, I was truly drained afterwards. Then I went home, ate the dinner the girlfriend prepared, and watched the Oakland episode of Hip-Hop Evolution.