canada

READ THIS its worth while

this was not writen by me, but this guy is quite possibly the greatest writer ever

Canada Goes To Hell/Legal pot? Legal gay marriage? Universal health care? What's next, free porn and candy?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Did you hear the screams? Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the
black and ominous clouds, moving north?

   Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he
laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and
little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his
Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and
sodomitic celebrations?

   Because it's happened. Canada's high court just ruled that the government
can, if it so desires, redefine marriage to include gay couples, which it
has declared it will do almost immediately, thus solidifying Canada's
place as the chilly yet mellow and gay friendly and hockey-riffic
epicenter of all known hell.

   It's true. It's rather amazing. Gay marriage will be completely legal in
Canada very soon. It's been oddly ignored in much of the U.S. media and
hasn't really been much discussed among those in the terrified red states
except when, deep in the night, from their respective lumpy twin beds,
they whisper to each other across the room as they pop their Ambien and
stroke their portfolios and curse their very genitals: oh my God what's
wrong with those freakin' Canadians?

   I mean (they continue), I thought they loved red meat and brutish sports
and manly hunting. Are they all just freaks and perverts now? Have they
been sniffing too many elk pelts? Is it something in the clean and
plentiful water up there? Something to do with those weird French-esque
people in Quebec, maybe?

   I knew we should've been paying more attention to that border! Didn't I
say so, honey? Didn't I say we should keep an eye on those northern
weirdos after they dissed the Iraq war and legalized medical pot and sort
of went about their happy and calm Canadian business whilst we here in
panicky red-blooded America chewed our own karmic legs off in a paranoid
and jingoistic rage? Hippies and perverts, I said! Save a few bombs for
Ontario, George, I say!

   Let us now do the naughty math: Canada has roughly 32 million inhabitants,
of whom about 75 percent are over 18, of whom it can be loosely estimated
that anywhere from 2 to 8 percent are gay (depends, of course, on who you
ask).

   All of which translates into a ballpark figure of anywhere from 1 million
to 2 million gay Canadians of legal marrying age who will now eagerly
laugh and kiss in the streets and confound poor reactionary born-again
George W. Bush, and they will flash their wedding rings at parties and
annoy all the single people, all while proving for the umpteenth time that
love knows no gender limitations or legal restrictions and will trump your
whiny sanctimonious religious puling any given Sunday. Heathens!

   It's getting more confusing by the minute, isn't it? I mean, Canada now
has legal medical pot and legal gay marriage and universal health care and
no known terrorist enemies and a relatively successful multiparty
political system. They also have, according to U.N.'s Human Development
Index, one of the highest qualities of life in the world. All coupled with
a dramatically reduced rate of gun violence and far better gun-control
legislation than the U.S., despite having the exact same per capita rate
of gun ownership and gun-sport enthusiasm.

   What the hell? How is this possible? Why aren't they scared to death like
whiny red-state Americans? Why don't they want to kill each other along
with anything that might threaten their access to televised hockey and
cheap beer and yummy poutine?

   Aren't they aware of what's happening in the world? Don't they know they
are openly hated for their freedoms and their cafés and their
vinegared french fries? Aren't they human, fer Chrissakes? Oh, red states.
How confused and irritated you must be.

   After all, unlike the U.S., Canada backed the Kyoto Treaty (along with 165
other heathen nations). They also spend more per capita on education and
less on health-care overhead than the U.S. They have a $10 billion federal
surplus, a new record. They are not, as of yet, abusing the hell out of
their vast natural resources (freshwater, huge forests, oil and natural
gas, mineral deposits, etc.) and embarrassing themselves on a global scale
every single day and making a mockery of their constitution or their
citizens' civil liberties. What the hell is wrong with them?

   Yes yes, I know, Canada's universal health care is flawed and not always
of the best quality, and a great many Canadians think their prime minister
is a bit of a schmuck and they hate paying taxes and of course they can be
all profitable and progressive when they don't have a massive bogus
unwinnable war to pay for, one run by a ravenous and fiscally idiotic
federal government, and they only have one-tenth of our population and
one-fiftieth of our desperate consumeristic gluttony. They have it easy,
right?

   Remember, Canada is boring. Canada is rarely in the news. Canada has no
massive belching socioeconomic engine like America does, what with our
NASCAR and Hollywood and Fox News and bad porn and the absolute best
medical care on the planet despite how only a tiny fraction of us have
access to it while the rest languish in bloated abusive HMOs and poverty
and disease and 40 percent of us have no access to health care whatsoever.
Take that, Canada! Oh wait.

   We hate gays and love guns and think pot is evil but hand out Prozac and
Zoloft like Chiclets. Meanwhile (as 'Bowling for Columbine' so beautifully
illuminated), Canadians leave their doors unlocked and don't feature
violence and death on every newscast and still value community and
diversity and discussion over solipsism and protectionism and a general
hatred of foreigners and the French. See? We rule! Oh wait.

   All of which makes you wonder: how many more countries will it take? How
many more nations will have to, for example, prove that gun licensing
works, or that gay-marriage legislation is a moral imperative, or that
health care for all is mandatory for a nation's well being, before America
finally looks at itself and says, whoa, damn, we are so silly and small
and wrong? Is there any number large enough? After the announcement that
gay Chinese and gay Russians may legally marry and grow lovely gardens of
marijuana as they all get free dental care, will America remain terrified
of nipples and queers?

   Canadians. So mellow. So laid back. So gay. So not producing any truly
superlative modern-rock music or ultraviolent buddy-cop movies and not
actively siccing Wal-Mart or Starbucks or Paris Hilton on the rest of the
world like a goddamn cancer. They're just so ... nice. And boring. And
calm. And solid. And friendly.

   And they simply beat us senseless on the whole open-minded, progressive
thing. Kicked our flag-wavin' butts. Trounced our egomaniacal
self-righteous selves and made the red states look even more foolish and
backward than the whole world already knows them to be.

   They did it. Canada made the whole gay marriage issue look effortless and
obvious and healthy, and a massive black rain of hellfire did not pour
down upon them and the very idea of hetero marriage did not immediately
explode and their economy did not unravel like all the sneering cardinals
and right-wing nutballs screamed it would. We must ask, one last time:
what the hell is wrong with them?

   Oh wait. Maybe we should rephrase. What the hell, we should be asking, is
wrong with us?




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