Rachel Kadel

This, for many of us, is a season of sacrifice. Whether we sacrifice terrible wine to the memory of slaughtered Egyptian infants and our regular bowel movements to the strange dictates of Bronze Age rabbis, or we honour the brief death and subsequent resurrection of a basically chill guy with a terrible fanbase, we swap temporary comfort for the greater good of the community. It is in this spirit that I bring to you the ultimate sacrifice, which is that I watched the Melania movie so that you don’t have to.

You’re welcome. Can atheist Jews be given sainthood? Because I would like some prayer candles with pictures of me in a blinged up goth outfit for what I have just endured.

A warning upfront: There is no way I can talk about this ahem-film without going into the sexual abuse of children, genocide, and the litany of grotesque crimes committed by the Trump regime and circle of ghouls around Jeffrey Epstein. It’s not funny but I’m going to make dark jokes about it because that’s how I cope with trauma. And dear readers, I have suffered trauma. I also cannot talk about this film without making some comments about people’s appearances, which I know is a sensitive point for many of us. If that kind of thing is triggering, might I suggest one of my reviews of slightly better movies like Left Behind or Atlas Shrugged?

( Here we go again. )

Next time, if you're real good, you get to see a Dracula cape.

 Listen it's a long weekend, what even is time? I was around, I just fully forgot. As a mea culpa here are two wildly different podcasts I listened to this week.

No Gods No Mayors' "Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov" is about a gay Romanov failson who sucked and eventually got blown up (spoilers), and it's very funny for everyone except maybe the thousands of peasants who got trampled to death at Tsar Nicholas II's coronation. It's worth listening in particular for the intro, which talks about mayoral candidate Shayne McKinney, who is running in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and is also a vampire. And a landlord. And look, he is not a good guy but a great deal of fun can be had. 

On a lighter note, a new-to-me podcast is Bill & Frank's Guilt-Free Pleasures, which is a music podcast that takes deep dives into earwormy songs that are actually great and you don't need to feel bad if you like them. Because of the ages of the hosts, their musical touchstones are more or less the same as mine, and they're also Canadian, so their radio and MuchMusic experience is roughly similar to what I listened to at the same age. I listened to a few of their episodes recently, starting with the one about "Fairy Tale of New York" to just make sure they had good opinions, but the one I just finished was "Crowded House: "Don't Dream It's Over" (with Dave Kitchen)" It's one of those songs that I don't often think about and yet the second I hear the opening notes, I'm like, oh, this is a banger. I really love the analysis of the little details of the music, which is not something that I really pick out on my own but the second they explain it, I realize why it works as well as it does. They have a bunch of episodes with overly emotional power ballads, which I am a sucker for, so I'm excited about working through the backlist.

I'll likely not have time to post tomorrow morning, so here it is a few hours in advance.

Just finished: Always On by Helena Trooperman. This was quite fun, and in particular I liked how much attention she gives to the social and economic repercussions of the invention of new technology. What starts with a phone ultimately becomes, potentially, an existential threat to fossil fuel interests, and to everyone they directly and indirectly employ, and there are complications like fewer and less well-paying jobs in a green energy future. It also ends on a cliffhanger so...there's that. 

Currently reading: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. It's Nebula season so watch me mainline as many books as possible in a month. This one's up first though because I was meaning to read it anyway. It begins with the journal of a Lutheran pastor being found inside a wall, and takes us back to 1912, when said pastor encountered a Blackfeet man named Good Stab who wants to do a confession. Also he's a vampire. This is slow, bloody dread of the sort Jones is famous for and it has quite a lot of Cormac McCarthy in it, with the Montana setting and the mass murders. Really good so far; it's going to be a tough one to top except I really did love Katabasis.

 There was a lot of great content this week but one particularly moved me, and that's Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff's "If Not Us Than Who: The Russian Partisans at War Against Putin." (Part 1, Part 2).

My biggest disagreement with people who I'm otherwise in political lockstep with is Ukraine. Most (North American) leftists are wrong about this. I know this because I have actually been to Ukraine (and Russia), not just in touristy areas, and they for the most part haven't and don't know what they're talking about and are generally basing their opinions on either Cold War nostalgia, residual anti-imperialist trauma, or the appalling behaviour of some diaspora Ukrainian communities. My shitlib position is that you shouldn't invade other people's countries and kill them because you want their land or resources. Even if—and this is critical when we're talking about Palestine or Iran too—you don't like them and some of them are bad people. If that makes me a NATO stooge or CIA asset so be it. 

Margaret and guest Charles McBryde share my opinion and also argue with other leftists about this, so you already know I'm going to agree with them. (Though not totally—we are all leftists here after all.) And you know who else does? A fuck of a lot of Russians. These two episodes focus on the frankly heroic actions of the Russian activists who resist Putin's authoritarianism, including Ruslan Siddiqui, who is genuinely cool not just for his political convictions but with the truly brass balls panache with which he acted. Margaret refers to him as the most cyberpunk guy she's ever heard of and this is true. I should write to him.

Anyway, it's a really wild ride about how to resist authoritarianism when regular political channels are cut off, which is of relevance in Russia and only in Russia, given that it's the only country that disappears people off the streets, murders its dissidents, and cracks down on freedom of expression.