Thursday, November 10, 2005

Someone, somewhere is tired of his shit...!

A bitch is working on a post about the troubles in France. A certain Livejournal fan has been helping my ass find alternative perspectives to balance out the fucked up coverage provided by our mainstream media. Many thanks!

A bitch may need to put my Swedish lessons on hold and pick up some French…my ass has no idea what some of the French language bloggers are saying, but it looks like they have a lot to say…in French. Shit, that’s what my ass gets for taking 5 years of Latin.

Anyhoo...

Someone, somewhere is tired of his shit...!
A bitch has always looked at other countries like the grass is beyond green over there. One of the benefits to this recent violence in France has been that idiots like me get a sharp dose of reality regarding foreign countries. It reminds me of a birthday card someone sent me. It had a really cute half naked dude on the cover and inside it read…’someone, somewhere is tired of his shit’. Cracked my ass up. It’s true…ain’t no one perfect…and the same thing applies to countries too.

As Miz Maven pointed out in her comment to yesterday’s post, we Americans are pretty ignorant when it comes to our neighbor to the north. Oh, my ass has visited and munched on Smarties while inhaling Tim Horton coffee like it was going out of bitness…it’s not the same as really keeping up with a country’s goings on.

Shit, a bitch visited France and thought they were pretty down with brown people, but just because a country embraces Josephine Baker doesn’t mean they have their shit together.

But, my ass digresses.

Canada!

A bitch always thinks of countries in terms of their brown factor...do they have people of color and if so how do they treat them. It’s not that they have to have a significant brown population, but a bitch likes to know how a country’s citizens feel towards brown people in general. It helps my ass avoid getting killed or ending up a Dateline Survival Story.

Don’t get offended…my ass does it here in America too. Shit, a bitch still has an ABB Boycott against the rural South that holds its origins in an era my ass didn’t even live through! Just when my ass is about to revise my opinion some dumb ass racist torches a black church or drags a black man to death and this bitch reverts to avoidance. Natalee Halloway’s mom is boycotting Aruba…a bitch is boycotting rural Alabama. For the same fucking reason…innocent people disappear and/or get killed there and no one seems to want to find out why.

Oh, but my ass digresses again.

Canada!

A bitch’s favorite Canadian brown person is Grant Furh. This bitch grew up addicted to hockey (go Blues! Seriously…fucking get going, chil’ren and stop shaming a bitch!). There are not a lot of brown hockey players, but there was Grant Furh…who fucking rocked! And he’s Canadian. But that doesn’t tell me much about race relations in Canada…nor does a bitch know much about Grant Furh’s personal experience as a person of color in Canada. All it tells me is that his ass played hockey, was good at it, is brown and is Canadian.

This bitch is pretty sure Canada has its problems and its high points too. My ass could move there, indulge in massive Smartie consumption and get healthcare. A bitch could work at a Canadian newspaper, bitch about Canadian television, blog about the government and so forth and so on. This bitch could move a bitch’s sister and brother to Canada too. My ass would miss soul food, gooey butter cake, familiar accents and all things American.

But the grass is never as green once you hop over that fence. Which is what Americans are seeing as we view France through new lenses…and see poverty, immigration problems, police intimidation, segregation and cultural conflict. We see it in Aruba, where an Alabama mother reverts to an ugly American stereotype because Aruba has the audacity to have a different legal system and isn’t kissing her ass because her child is an American missing child.

And we see it in our treatment of our neighbors to the north…our amused indifference and ethnocentric superiority.

It would seem that the greatest insult we Americans pay to our neighbors to the north is that we assume they are the 51st state. We act like the only difference is the accents, the geography and network programming. We assume that Canadians are just stubborn…once they submit they will embrace America and become one of us. What we fail to see is that Canada is diverse and independent. Canada has problems, conflicts, holidays and their own favorite beverages.

It’s been a long time since America stepped to Canada in war and that’s probably the problem. We tend to only learn about a nation’s culture when we try to dominate, exploit or destroy it.

Someone, somewhere is most likely tired of Canada’s shit. But a bitch will probably always have a crush on Canada…the grass will always seems greener and the people will always seem more happy.

The next time my ass visits a bitch promises not to mouth off about Quebec or polar bears...

6 comments:

shannon said...

I'm an American living in Canada, and I can't wait to come home. I can see Washington State from my house, and I absolutely long for it. I have made many wonderful friends here, but the overwhelming sense I get is that most Canadians define themselves as "not American." I find this uninteresting, to say the least.

And, don't believe any of what you hear about Canadian health care and free access. It might be free, but there is no access. Case in point: my dh was told this week that the wait to see a GI doc for his ulcer is one year. He's driving down to WA soon to be treated there.

Shawn said...

God I fall prey to believing the grass is greener everywhere or most everywhere than here in the US. After I visited Canada I thought "this place is great." I wonder how different my opinion would be if I lived there for an extended period time.

brother said...

Thanks for making this Canadian feel proud - sure, we have our problems, but I love this place.

We know an election is going to happen soon - hopefully the country doesn't swing too far right...

geogrrl said...

I'm a Canadian temporarily living in the US. I'm in the deep south, and I was shocked myself at cultural differences. The differences are small, which is why they're surprising. People here have been nothing but kind, and where I'm living is fine, but I'm looking forward to going back to Canada when I finish here.

I don't know if other people are tired of our shit... maybe. Such as the former Yugoslavia, where many think Canada should have used its influence and pushed harder to get the UN to step in sooner than it did.

We also have our internal problems, primarily based on the east/west schism and the 200 year old French/English quarrel. But then again, I think a lot of countries would like to have Canada's problems.

So yeah, it's not a perfect society or system, but I miss it. As Dorothy says, "There's no place like home."

DPL said...

I'm a Canadian living in Massachusetts. I constantly think of home. A lot of people, like leap_b4_ulook the poster above, complain about our healthcare. Truth is, it's far from perfect, but it's nice that it's at least *existent*. I'm finishing graduate school this December (woo hoo!) and I have three jobs. None of which give me healthcare. I wouldn't mind waiting a year, as opposed to not being able to get it *ever*.
Plus, it's not really all treatments that have a one year waiting list. But I guess when it's *your* treatment, that's all the difference that we need.
As a Black Canadian, I have to say that our issues are a bit different from African-Americans. My culture is different, I'm a native francophone from Montreal.
Down here, I'm often told (by African-Americans) that I'm not "Black" (?!?) or I don't get it... As if having a different Black culture somehow erases my roots.
Well, this is a very complex and large issue. A simple post could not begin to touch the surface.
I really enjoy your blog, and now that I know that you love hockey... I'll come back for more!
There are so few people of colour in Canada that it's not on purpose that we have less minorities in sports. My home town (Laval) has produced a slew of hockey players (Mike Bossy for one), and a couple of them Blacks. I remember going to school with Savage's brother or cousin. Don't know if he got very far though after he was drafted to some Western Canadian team 15 years ago.
I'll come back with some details and more stats when you start a thread on it.
In the mean time, please keep up the good work!
Au revoir, moi

Anonymous said...

ABB, gotta say it again, I just fucking love you. Come on up to Canada for a visit and I'll ply you with all kinds of Canadian goodness. However, it seems to me that the people who are somewhere tired of Canada's shit are our Aboriginal people. Aside from all the historical reasons--we stole their land, gave them diseases, exploited their labour--the way the Canadian state continues to shit all over Aboriginal people is, to me, Canada's deepest shame. Two most recent examples receiving public attention: the deplorable living conditions on some reserves, including a lack of safe drinking water; and the allegations regarding members of the Saskatoon police force picking up Aboriginal men and dumping them out on the highway outside of the city in the middle of winter. BTW, I'm saying all this as a white Canadian gal. I love my country (and I do find the fact that the US has no universal healthcare to be truly appalling) but we've built this country at the horrifying expense of the folks who were here first.

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