Essays in Idleness

“Gawd I hate white people.”

This did not come from the mouth of a BLM, or an SJW, or other DMI (my abbreviation for, “drooling malicious idjit”); rather, from that of an ageing white male.

I knew exactly what he meant. We had been discussing the SFs among the overmonied and underbrained in one of this city’s more prosperous neighbourhoods. Virtue signallers, the lot of them: unctuous and asinine to a fault. It’s true, we’re both prejudiced against these constipated caucasoids. And better yet, it costs us nothing. For we aren’t invited to their parties, anyway.

On the other hand, one is in a poor opening position when one must argue that one is not a neo-Nazi or a white supremacist. I dislike poor opening positions, so am inclined to omit them. Having been called everything in my time, even “a gentleman and a scholar” (exceptionally low blow), I happily admit to being a fascist, a leper, a racist, and a rightwing troll. I take particular pride in “Jew-lover,” for in that case the description fits. (Twice I’ve been called that over a ’phone; and once, in the course of a single “debate,” both an anti-Semite and a Jew-lover.) I am also every kind of phobe, and hater, including self-hater; a misogynist and misandrist, and a misandronist, to be perfectly inclusive (it’s like the difference between a racist and a racialist); people with slant eyes and people with round ones. And beyond the more pressing individual cases, I like to cultivate a general misanthropy in my spare time.

“Sticks and stones,” my mommy told me: dodge ’em when you can. But let the verbiage pass off your back like a duck’s. Or should the mood bloom, go diving for more.

An editor somewhere has changed my word “nigglers” to “sticklers.” I wonder what he’s got against sticklebacks?

I have consulted a pochard in the High Park Pond, on this important matter. I wished to know what he was diving for. (Fish? Salad? Dimes and nickels perhaps?) But like someone instructed by my mother, he just ignored me.