These People Do Not Speak For Me Or My Beliefs
The vast right-wing conspiracy has arrived at my house in the persons of my Aunt Meg, the Goldbricker's little sister, and Uncle Fred. Meg is an oddity, a neo-conservative hippie and an old-school feminist; so, after decades of marriage her name and title are still Ms. Wilson. I have no patience for Meg, Fred, and Dad's certainty about the inevitable defeat of Western civilization at the hands of radical Islam. For Bog's sake people, did liberal democracy not defeat monarchist despotism? Fascism? Communism? Just as Hitler and his ilk believed that the "weak" Western democracies could never defeat Marxism-Leninism, my aunt, uncle, father, and their peculiar strain of conservatism believe that America and the West have been fatally undermined by "liberalism," leaving us defenseless in the face of the Wahhabi perversion of Islam. They are spineless cowards, appeasers even as they denounce "modern-day Chamberlains," defeatists even as they insist that we are fighting for nothing less than the fate of human civilzation.

I'll be spending most of the next several days in my room as this seems the best way to avoid the whole lot of them. I pity my mother, who as a dutiful hostess will feel compelled to spend time with her guests no matter how much she might despise their conversational topics. Be strong, Mom.

O Canada
Happy Dominion Day to our friends in the Great White North! Sure, sure, the Canucks like to pretend that they're an independent country, even calling July 1 "Canada Day," but last time I checked Elizabeth II was still featured on the Monopoly money used as legal tender north of the border, she was still Queen of Canada, and of paramount importance to our purpose Elizabeth II was still British. How sovereign can a nation claim to be when it still owes fealty to the British monarch? We fought the Revolutionary War specifically so we could tell the British Crown where to shove it. No matter what legal mumbo jumbo is enshrined in the Statute of Westminster, our Maple Leaf-ed friends are still reigned over by the hoity-toity Queen. But I like them all the same. 'Tis true, I tease as a sign of affection.

Thank you, Canada, for William Shatner, Bob and Doug McKenzie, Barenaked Ladies, Steve Yzerman, and so much more! Happy Canada Day, you hosers!