Hey Guys!

Guess what?! It turns out I totally have a blog! Crazy, right? I know! It's like when someone tries to bum a cigarette and you're all like "I don't smoke", and then you get home and empty your pockets and suddenly remember that you've had a carton-a-week habit for decades as you pull out a pack of Camels, open it, lovingly caress your last one and light it. "Thank God I didn't give this one to that mooch," you think as you inhale deeply, adjusting the wig that hides the toll that months of radiation therapy have taken on your fragile frame. Just like that!
I mean, instead of ranting futilely into the void, I could have been ranting productively on the interwebs. Colour me embarrassed.
So much has happened:
I went back to Istanbul. Second time there. I love that city. Have you been? I don't know - you don't have a blog. It's a crazy exciting metropolis with millennia of history and culture and amazing food. Go.
Japan is up next. Woo hoo!
Closer to home, last week a corrupt Spanish politician was gunned down in the street by the mother of some girl she'd fucked over. Right now, the Spanish police could be kicking in my door to arrest me for suggesting that maybe some awful lady who scams over a hundred and fifty grand a year from the public coffers while faking eligibility for free trips to NYC and bullying the opposition and the press deserves to eat a lead sandwich with the works. (They're making it illegal, you know) If only I'd been paying attention to my bookmarks.
Eurovision! The fun I could have had with Eurovision. Buxom slavs and bearded ladies. Oh well. Next year.
In the meantime, I have a band too. That one is easier to remember. We recorded and played a couple of shows and I keep paying for rehearsal time, so it's harder to ignore. We've been accepted as semi-finalists in a radio contest. I'm not sure what we can win (apparently not too hard to ignore) but it's probably something cool like hats or beer, so I would really appreciate it if you would click on the link and vote for us. Just tick the box at the bottom of the page and click Enviar. Thanks.
My annual rock orgy takes place next week as I spend three days in the ugliest part of the city taking in the sweet noise of Primavera Sound. (With JB. Woo hoo!) I'll tell you all about it if it doesn't slip my mind.

VOTE FOR LES FAT JONES HERE!

The Manitoban Candidate

Thank you America! I live in a country where it is common knowledge that the president accepted under the table payments of embezzled party funds, but you guys have made this banana republic seem like a functioning first world democracy.
Watching a small band of lunatics hold the country hostage in a failed attempt to deny the poorest amongst you cheaper healthcare has been a surreal experience, and this from the vantage point of a place where the king's own daughter was a front for shady land deals.
Watching the laughable debacle known as the Tea Party squirm around like a senile old uncle with shit in his pants sitting at Thanksgiving dinner and complaining about the smell has led me to one conclusion: beware of Ted Cruz! Now, my liberal friends, I see you smugly shaking your heads and saying "yeah, thanks, we know" but actually I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to you conservative dupes: Ted Cruz is obviously a Canadian spy. Crazy like a fox Teddy boy has obviously been sent across the border to infiltrate and undermine the Republican party. How else do you explain the actions of a guy who acts like dragging the party's popularity into the sewer is some sort of grand victory, and who, on his first day back at work, continues to  act like a spoilt child by holding up a government nomination over a moot law. This is the work of a master agent provocateur. He will not stop until the Republican party has been decimated and communism rules the land. And you idiots want to run him for president. 

Perfecting Democracy

I'm taking a moment between all the rock and roll to discuss something a little more trivial: politics. (Hilarious! Nobody in 2012 has ever made light of politics. Where do I pick up my Nobel Prize for jokes?) I followed the American presidential elections with a mix of hope and disgust. Not all the disgust was levelled at Romney, btw. Obama has been a disappointment on so many levels, from financial reform to human rights, that he only deserved to lose less than the Republicans. But after the rape comments (really guys?) and the blatant soullessness of the GOP, I woke up relieved to find out he'd won a second term. Now I can go back to criticising him.
It's election time here in Catalunya, with people going to the polls on Sunday. At the heart of the campaign is a separatist movement that has long smouldered in the region and has burst into flames with the crisis and the conservative government running Spain. I'm mildly against Catalan independence, in that it seems many here view it as a panacea to cure all our ills. This disregards the fact that an independent Catalunya would not be the socialist utopia of these hippies' dreams, but another ineptly mismanaged free-market economy circling the drain of Europe. Take the current president, and leader of the separatist charge: Artur Mas. An opportunistic right-wing hack who only discovered his separatist passion in September when a million and a half people marched through Barcelona in support of the cause, his prior accomplishment was pushing for the creation of Eurovegas. This giant gambling complex helmed by Sheldon Addison (of Sarah Silverman fame) was to be a tourist trap that disregarded labour and environmental laws with the blessing of local government. It was such a terrible idea that I was sure it would happen. That Mas failed to secure the deal, losing out to Madrid, provided the minor relief of knowing that he is too incompetent to be sufficiently corrupt. And this man wants to lead Europe's newest nation.
He is not alone, nor even the worst. Spain has either completely misunderstood or brilliantly perfected democracy. One votes for a despot who then proceeds to act out at will while the populace grumble but take no action. Sure, that happens everywhere, but here they don't even bother to hide it. This month, the mayor of Madrid took off to a spa in Portugal the day after a tragedy at a stadium left several young people dead. Imagine Bloomberg, or even Giuliani, doing that. A politician in Valencia has won the lottery multiple times. Buying winning lottery tickets is a common money laundering trick, but he just claims to be improbably lucky, and nobody investigates. His daughter, a congresswoman for the ruling People's Party (a strange name for a right-wing group, but oh well) was filmed literally saying "Fuck them" about those most effected by recent budget cuts. (read: the poor.) These people put Blagojevich to shame. And let's talk about the plastic surgery. So much plastic surgery. The Mayor of Marbella was arrested at her home, with bags of money in her freezer, while recovering from plastic surgery. There are more duck lips and fake tits in parliament than at the AVN awards.

This is the PP (ie pro-Madrid) candidate vying to lead Catalunya. How many levels of artifice are there when you photoshop over the collagen lips to try to make her seem more human? (Two. There are two levels. Surgery and Photoshop. I should also get the Nobel Prize for counting.)
Anyway, it seems as if the ruling party will not achieve an absolute majority and thus nothing will change. At least it's provided a few weeks of distraction from skyrocketing unemployment and crumbling currency.
Well, I'm off to see Bat for Lashes tonight, so tomorrow I will bring you something of substance. (Zing, politics! Zing!)