Chapter 264

Up fairly early, the girlfriend left at 8 to visit a friend and go on a shopping trip in another city. We went outside together to let the dog run around a bit, and I bought a few groceries. I felt like eating a tomato sandwich and we didn’t have bread.

I got home, made my tomato sandwich, and browsed the web. People were talking about the Canadian federal election, I didn’t know it was unfolding now, I thought the vote was in October. I got on YouTube and played the live election coverage on Radio-Canada. Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party won, followed by the Conservatives, and the other parties got a small handful of seats. All the leaders made speeches, Yves-François Blanchet from the Bloc spoke exclusively in French but all the others spoke in 80% English with a few sentences in robotic French thrown in, rather than, I don’t know, doing two speeches. I’m bilingual and used to code-switching, but for Anglos, it must be such a strange thing.

“We’re committed to serve this great country and its people, blablabla, political cliché phrases, blablabla, [incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo], for all Canadians of all races and creeds, blablabla, we will come back stronger, [more incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo], in these times of crisis, blablabla...”

I turned it off halfway through Trudeau’s speech, which was boring as shit. So apparently they’re back where they started, a few minor changes aside. The whole mascarade cost 600 million in taxpayer money, as reported. What a waste. Xi Jinping would have taken that money, which corresponds to roughly 3 billion yuan, and built a whole self-sustaining city in the desert, in the span of a week. Or maybe a whole park of windmills, or an artificial island in the South Sea. Democracy is grossly overrated.

Halfway through one of the speeches, I heard a loud crack coming from the kitchen. I went to investigate, and couldn’t find the source of the noise. I had a pot on the stove, slowly simmering with chicken carcass bits to make broth, and now I started noticing a smell of rotten eggs. Maybe it’s something about the gas then? That could be disastrous, so I turned it off, looked at the gas line, and couldn’t find anything. Then I found it, one of the eggs in the egg rack had fucking spontaneously exploded, splashing some disgusting brown slime everywhere. The smell was enough to gag a maggot. I threw the defective egg out of the window, it was mostly intact, just the top had blown off like a valve, and thank god most of the sickeningly disgusting rotten insides were still encased in the shell. Then I cleaned each individual egg, I’ll have to be vigilant and check to see if they’re not also rotten before I use them.

I chilled for the rest of the day, writing and listening to podcasts. I saw a link on YouTube to an interview with prolific French cartoonist Marsault and listened to the whole thing, it was very interesting. His drawings have made a bit of a splash on the internet, due to the violence and right-wing slant to them, and also how he caustically portrays the Clown World we live in now. I knew he was a hard-worker, but I raised my eyebrows when he said that at some point he was drawing up to 20 hours a day. Some people show insane commitment to their craft, and that’s how they excel.

I put on some music, I have a huge list of death metal releases but I didn’t feel like going through them, so I went on the YouTube channel My Analog Journal and clicked randomly on a compilation of Eastern European jazz and disco. I’m such a goddamn hipster. Some tracks were cool but many were strange as hell, including a Bee Gees cover in Polish. “Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Z Nami Się Baw! Z Nami Się Baw!” Then the next one was titled Latin Influenced South East Asia, I have no idea where those music collectors shop to find such obscure vinyls.

The girlfriend came back, loaded with boxes of shoes or clothes or whatever girls buy when they go on shopping sprees, reassuring me and saying none of it was expensive. Hey, it’s her money. I made a Thai soup with chicken broth, coconut milk, hot peppers, ginger, lemongrass stems, bean sprouts, shrimp, tofu and egg noodles. We ate it while watching a movie titled 99 Francs, I saw it when it came out in 2007 but thought about downloading it and watching it again, after reading some other works by Beigbeder. It’s the story of a hedonist who works for an advertising agency, told in the first person and constantly breaking the fourth wall, really trippy and caustic. Recommended.

While she did the dishes, I took the dog out, and then did 50 minutes of yoga. It felt wonderful. I was in bed before 10.