Les Histoires D'Henri Ennui

I think I will seriously make up a character named Henri Ennui, to be my French Existentialist asshole guy. Go me. He would sit outside cafés and smoke cigarettes and say stupid French things like

"Paris, q'est-ce que c'est? Cette un ville....des images....et des rèves....et du mort."

Which are usually the words that are used by English-speaking people who want to sound fancy, so they always title, like, their Myspaces with something relatively francophone, like "Elizabeth De La Belle Epoque", which doesn't exactly make sense next to a picture of her forehead and some eyeliner, to the tune of Fall Out Boy.

I stopped using Myspace. So glad.

Anyway, the reason that I have been thinking upon ennui, is because I am experiencing a certain brand of it:

Birthday Ennui: noun. The experience of disinterest, dissatisfaction, or relative boredom in regard to the observation or celebration of one's birthday. See also: Anniversary Apathy, Christmas Carelessness, Fuck The Fourth Of July.

So that's where I am, right now. Apathetic and self-effacing.

So I'm sitting in American Poetry class the other day, and the prof sticks me as the "leader" of the "group" that's supposed to discuss how William Carlos Williams uses American history in this one part of Paterson. Okay, fine. She always lands me with that crap, because she thinks that I'm, like, the ambassador for the United States at UBC. Anyway, this girl joins the group, claiming to be an American Studies major, and she starts railing on how crappy the U.S. is. Now, usually I can take that sort of talk from the Canucks, seeing as they always rag on the States (to which the American response has always been a bored "whatever."), but this was only, literally, TWO days after the election. So she could have cut some slack for the Capitalist Behemoth Of The World or whatever they call it up here, but no; it's all materialism, how we hate paying taxes and detest socialized medecine, how we're impolite and gross and smoke too much and cause problems for everyone else and don't ever listen to good solid advice and enjoy bombing like the world is out piñata blah blah blah. So I mention that FDR made some of the best advancements in Western socialism but was still an American president, and that Teddy was cool too, to which she replied

"Teddy Roosevelt? Oh, I didn't like him. I mean, we just see him as rude."

To which I replied:

"Yeah, we call that badass."

Apparently there's no distinction, apparently no matter what you do, being a Rough Rider who started the Bull Moose Party, held meetings on hunting and safari trips, inspired the Teddy bear and gave everyone the visual that, while you are whispering sweet nothings in their ear you are grasping a two by four behind your back is just plain rude behavior. No. That is badass.

There's something too soft about Canada. True, they have fought bravely in both the World Wars and helped to win them both (my great grandfather was in the Somme, my grandfather on Omaha beach, both were from Ontario), but the general idealism of the country is to speak softly and not make eye contact so as to not seem indimidating. Come on, guys! Pick it up! I mean, there's no point in being an arrogant warmonger who would rather buy some uranium than buy some, like, food for poor people; but still, a land with no spine is not a land. It's like a sponge land. You just absorb all the other cultures and they mesh together, but you're one of those sponges that doesn't have the steel wool on the back so you just have to wait until the scum is really soggy to wipe it off. I took some pain killers, this doesn't make sense.

But Canada! Grow a pair! A big pair!

I need sleep or drink. Or drink and sleep. What?