Back when I was ranting about Boomers, I came across this ludicrous blog maintained by a preening, moralistic Canadian female Boomer. I stay subscribed because it keeps me acquainted with how out-of-touch and hysterical professional women of a certain age are. Add to that the fact that she’s Canadian, and it’s like a window into instant lunacy.
Yours portly has finally had some time to watch some movies again, and it really went from famine to feast. I’ve watched several solid flicks lately, including this week’s selection, the French-Canadian psychological thriller Red Rooms (2023).
The Age of The Virus may be a distant memory now, one we’ve all done our best to forget collectively, but it revealed a great deal about the compliance of Westerners to technocratic authoritarianism in their respective nations. Yes, there were pockets of ornery resistance—thank God I live in South Carolina!—but the full might of the weaponized media, elite toadies, and cat moms came out to scold us all for wanting to breathe free and enjoy public gatherings (the latter protected, albeit seemingly only on paper, in the First Amendment).
It’s little wonder that we try to suppress the memory of that benighted time, but like all such attempts to forget the past, it only serves as an unhealthy way to deal with deep trauma. By pushing all of those bad memories down, we avoid thinking about the unpleasant consequences that our society-wide foolishness wrought.
Of course, part of that response is that everyone got super bored talking about The Virus because, after awhile, it did get boring. Like all diseases, it reached its critical mass and then ebbed away, each new wave being less virulent, less lethal, and less widespread. The Left seemed eager to memory-hole the entire thing, and the Right was just glad we didn’t have to read another boring article with a lot medical lingo that we all pretended to understand. The Age of The Virus really did reveal how shallow and gutless we all are.
One realm in which the trauma has endured is film. Whether intentionally or otherwise, it’s hard to suppress those memories in works of art; after all, art is, at least in part, an expression of our innermost feelings and struggles. In vino veritas, yes, but also In arte veritas est.
The Age of The Virus crystallized a number of unpleasant Truths: the cowardice of our populous; the brazen indifference and hypocrisy of our elites; and the paradoxical grasping to stay alive at all costs while viewing millions of other, “lesser” lives as expendable. No film more aptly captures these wretched qualities of the twenty-first century developed world better than 2024’s Humane.
Whenever the weight of the world—work, politics, etc.—gets to be too much, I’m tempted to retreat to a remote woodland cabin and live off the fat of the land, drinking chicory on cold mornings in a flannel shirt while stroking my rugged beard contemplatively.
That fantasy scenario ignores the fact that I know nothing about living “off the fat of the land,” and would likely die in two weeks without running water and a nearby grocery store. But there is something appealing about unplugging from society and becoming self-sufficient.
Indeed, it’s little wonder that the modern homesteading movement has grown so large. People are tired of unresponsive governments, woke corporations, tyrannical HR departments, and public scolds. Why not buy a few acres in a red State and raise some chickens?
This throwback post, “Island Living,” details a couple in British Columbia who built their own island out of discarded lumber and such. Talk about living the dream!
Here’s 21 July 2020’s “Island Living“:
Hippies are annoying and filthy creatures, but you’ve got to hand it to them: behind all the patchouli and Grateful Dead bootlegs, they’re a resourceful lot.
A Canadian couple in British Columbia, Catherine King and Wayne Adams, have been living for nearly three decades on a floating, man-made island off the western coast of Vancouver. Like good hippies, they built the island—which weighs over one million pounds—from recycled materials, mostly lumber. In a particularly Boomer hippie detail, Adams would trade artwork to fishermen for scraps of lumber and other cast-offs.
The Portly Politico 