Chernobyl USA

1/7/2021

"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.”

Take notice that so many now are talking about "taking personal responsibility" and "this is not America". Yes it is, and no one is. This administration. Past administrations. Congress. Media. Republicans. Democrats. Me. You. Everyone is to blame except, apparently, the mouths attached to accusations. 

Let me be VERY CLEAR. I'm a progressive who moved to Canada in February of 2017 and I think those involved in the Capitol Riots should all be charged with sedition. With that said....

I'm afraid we'll learn nothing from this disgusting insurrection. Although they are, as a group & individuals, embarrassing traitors. This event was the over boiled display of our collective attitudes/actions from the last 19 years, at least. 

Fuck all these congressmen/women, governors and civil leaders now preaching unity. Since 2001, these masquerades have been spewing their partisan hackery to abuse pain for power. And only now in the face of violence are they giving speeches about "our strength together". 

They have all been participating in the segregation of my country through donation drives. Partitioning citizens into two colors with media amplifiers. A toxic duopoly melting down in front of an entire audience of screaming lips and pointing fingers. Many are saying now after they stormed the Capitol "we are the UNITED States of America". Fuck your "unity now".  Fuck your piety in the face of violence. This whole country is rotten and refuses to face the truth of its putrid source called out by our 1st & 2nd Presidents: 

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.” 
- George Washington 

“...a division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the great political evil.”- John Adams, 

This insurrection was built upon a faulty foundation and these two Parties were the foreman. So when we got a parasitic demi God like Trump who shows an on edge, desperate populous an easy avenue to stream their bile, we took it. We all took it. Both sides, supporters and detractors.

On the right, he vocalized the frustrations of a forgotten working class left out to dry from neo liberal corporate bargains, endless military pursuits & a government poisoned into paralysis. On the left, he symbolized the systems of hatred and oppression that have vilified "the other". The multinational corporations that have abused workers. And the officials who distorted, gerrymandered and corrupted an entire political system to benefit a tiny percentage of citizens. The arguments where varied but the opportunity to steer into this melt down was all the same.

I watched a program on the Chernobyl melt down 1 day before the Capitol riots and it was very eerie how perfect an analogy that event is to my home country. I saw Trump as the "operatorial error". He was the crew chief at the button of this reactor melt down, most responsible as the 'senor official on duty'. However, the two party system (who care more about their own power than the good of the country) has always been the factory itself with its faulty coolant systems. The system itself, just sitting there. With this built in flaw waiting for someone to either recognize the issue and remedy the catastrophe. Or, as we did, trigger the meltdown that had no ability to cool down the reactions.  And then there is us. EVERY U.S.CITIZEN! WE are the dumbass crew who, manning the reactor in ignorance, were either squabbling with one another or following blind incompetence into the abyss. We continued to pressurize the containment unit way past capacity then when it needed to be cooled down the broken system did what it was built to do, fail.  Everyone involved in Chernobyl becoming an untouchable wasteland, was to blame for Chernobyl. We need to recognize the same.

Its chaos from neglect. When problems are constructed through a timeline of vanity on a bedrock of greed, WE are to blame. Not them. Not they. Us. All of us. Top to bottom. Bottom to top. The architects, foremen & craftsmen of our own Armageddon. Every uncompromising sentiment or false statement and purposeful lie. All in the name of partisanship. They were all a hammer to a nail. Partisan hate, fertilized by the most toxic of American traits, "victory". Victory at all costs! The prevailing noxious cloud of winners vs loosers dictating our every move. All of us more concerned with being right than we were about looking for the right answer. Never allowing ourselves to listen because the only way to get ahead is by being heard. So we do whatever necessary to be heard. To win. 

Trump is/was a dictator without the leveled paved road he wanted towards the totality he sought (thank God), but don't be mistaken. The road may not be there but all the trees are felled. All the rocks are cleared and the grass was cut for him. We allowed the worst of our characters to destroy our empathy for one another. We watched as those greedy for power/ratings/money sowed suspicion towards the moral traits of compromise and collaboration. We've been divided not by ideals but on our emotions. We let people we've never met tell us how to feel about those we call neighbors. All in the pursuit of winning.

"We the People", are a nation of hypocrites unable to self examine in order to diagnose our own illness. Our decrepit inability to simply say "Fuck! I'm wrong and should listen more" has withered our nation into what we just saw. 

Our 1st amendment gives us the RIGHT to free speech but our nationality obligates us the DUTY to freely listen. 

Yet here I am... the largest hypocritic of all. King of this retaliatory Republic. Sitting here self righteously typing as a dyslexic elocutionist (who used a thesaurus twice), in a foreign land, preaching online about 'the corrosive evils" of the very thing I'm here participating in.

We proud people. Disintegrating in this Chernobyl we've constructed. Im just as irradiated as all of you.....

So fuck it! Cheers! Here is too my homeland. My fellow Chernobyl-men & women. Witness our brightly, burning, deadly, destructive mess. We all, now blinded by our own glowing brilliance, allowed our hubris to shine so we could now blame the entire world around us as WE melt down into it.

Defining My Own Reality

    I have been a stand-up comedian for 12 years. Night after night my skills and material have been forged by going out and performing for live audiences. It has been a journey of self-sacrifice, questionable living situations, remarkable relationships and blind dumb Irish luck. I am fortunate in this business to be able to do this for a living and pay my bills with goofs and giggles. In my most humble appreciation, I have managed to build a career that allows me to travel across North America and perform confidently in front of a plethora of diverse audiences on a weekly basis. I have met the best of friends and been even more fortunate to find the love of my life through stand-up comedy. She has supported me in the most complete of ways, taking the burdens of this industry upon her shoulders like Atlas holding the sky. With all of this she has admittedly managed to unwittingly write some of my best material. We have traveled the world together and last year we even moved to her native land of Canada. At the time I am writing this my beautiful wife and I are in midst of buying our first house to be able to comfortably raise our first child. Along with the anxiety of wanting to support a loving and safe household for my future baby girl I am also more than a little terrified as to how she will grow to view her daddy. I not only want her to know I love her, but I would be lying if I said I didn't want her to be proud of me and what I have accomplished. So, like the fuse on a cartoon bomb of uncertainty and immense amounts of responsibility, my wife's belly grows with every passing week nurturing our new baby girl. I hope that's what it is - otherwise, my wife has secretly become a raging alcoholic, drinking barrels of beer in the shadows of our relationship. It is at this transitional chapter of my life that I decided to take on the immeasurable task of producing/directing/distributing the first album of my now decade-spanning career.
   There are three main points to my personality. First off, while I try to live comfortably in the present - I'm meditative, fun-loving, and downright Buddhist in my appreciation for the here and now - I overthink the future. This motivates me to get into projects that seem manageable at the time, but in practice are unexpectedly complex. In a simple cliché, I never "look before I leap". In fact, I typically sprint off the side of the cliff never looking down, like Wile E. Coyote chasing his own starved hunger. Second, I have an overly competitive nature to me, birthed from being the youngest of five kids. That need to prove myself has sprouted into the idea that I need to completely finance and produce this endeavor in order to prove to the world that the willpower that pumps through these veins can supply a quality contribution to the comedic art form I adore. Lastly, the third and final aspect of my personality: Cynicism. Right when I decided to take on this project the cynic in me sprinted into the room screaming, "Sam, you are a 31-year-old, white, American, male comedian, married to a woman who is about to have your kid. How are you going to push the art of comedy forward with such a well trampled perspective, you tunnel-vision dolt?!" And with that thought, the seed I planted had sprouted legs, ran off the cliff and immediately realized "Oh no! I'm not a bird, I'm just a white trash plant from Kansas".

   It was during this storm of competitive, cynical anxiety that I happened upon the idea to not only seek a way to push the art form forward but to pull it into a new reality. A virtual one. I landed on the idea of filming the first ever full-length 4K, 360-degree, Virtual Reality comedy special. A completely immersive hour-long experience of the best entertainment and "night out" I could supply the world from the comfort of their own home. Stand-up comedy is a rare animal in the entertainment business. Where most other forms of entertainment (music/movies/plays) are enhanced by a live audience, stand-up requires pure unadulterated intimacy to simply exist. Scripts can be written in an office. Music can be composed in a studio. Stand-up comedy, however, is bred between the union of comedian and a crowd. For too long comedy has been limited by the technology of our time to a second-hand experience compared to its true potential. Too many times have I watched or listened to my favorite stand up comedians over an old medium and only managed a grin or slight chuckle at their greatest bits. I've often thought to myself "Why am I not keeling over with laughter like I did when I saw this live?" It's because laughter is contagious, and now with VR, you can put on a headset and be in the showroom surround by a 1,000 individual laughs. The way the comedy gods intended.

   The belief that my most beloved art form and virtual reality technology are posed to marry in my own hands is an exhilarating prospect. If I can be poetic and slightly hyperbolic it's as wonderful to me as the union between my wife and myself. That gut feeling and belief in my heart is the reason I am willing to risk so much time, energy, and money to showcase it to the world. I love stand-up comedy, and if I can start a trend that truly shares that live, unadulterated experience with countless people around the world in the comfort of their own homes, that would be an accomplishment. I think that would be a reason my baby girl could be proud of me.

Positive Pretentious Vibes: Sincerely, A Fellow Human

   The following is my Spiritual philosophy written into a quasi poetic, mostly pretentious, but 100% heart felt block of metaphors. If your are in need of some positive vibes I hope this brings some light into your life. If you are already in a good place then by all means judge away and crack a smile at my corniness. Either way, much love to you.

   Humans: our deepest fear is not that we are mortal but that we have the potential to be as ever lasting and infinite as the universe we inhabit. Who are we to be so brilliant? Who are we not to be?! A star gave its life so we special few could have ours right here, right now. Forged in the crucible of pure power, we, the offsprings of the cosmos, have the same power to create and destroy as our fiery forefathers. 

   So, I say be brilliant! Be bold! I say shine as bright as the Sun. Be as loud as a Super Nova. Move through life with the force of our celestial siblings. And when you feel like an insignificant bit of star dust in an endless dark void remember, you are truly unique beyond measure. For you, a little insignificant bit of dust, are giving the infinite cosmic ocean the gift of consciousness. Giving it a mind. A voice. A heart. 

    Do not snuff your flame out in the smoke of fear but ignite your potential like a beacon to give others permission to do the same. As we liberate ourselves from fear, we unconsciously liberate others, and slowly give the power of the stars back to its children.

Sincerely,

A Fellow Human

White Racism: What The World Needs

(Sarcasm. That is the first word read in this article so it is crystal clear what will follow. Racism is a topic I admittedly have relatively little exsperience with, outside of being a third party observer. My personal feelings however are simply this; Black? White? Red? Brown? I don't care what color your asshole is, just don't be one. Now lets begin.)

Racism is a big topic these days. Its in the news, on the TV, in basketball and politics. It seems to be everywhere but ironically it seems to be vacant from the people perpetrating it the most, us white folks. Where are our racial slurs and bigoted protests? Why has nobody stepped forward and tried redefining racism towards white people for the new millennium? Honky. Cracker. Pecker Wood. All archaic racism from our fore-fathers. I want to step out of the stone age and into the space age with racism. So like everything else in life if you want something done white you have to do it yourself. So let's just dive into unjust labels by starting with me, the author. 

Hello. My name is Sam Norton. I am a straight white Irish American male who is the youngest child of my family. My demographic stereotype would say I am a self obsessed, needy, rage filled little attention seeker and that would be offensively correct. However the "white" in my labeling seems to only have two main stream stereotypes; 1 we're all racist and 2 we smell when we sweat. And that lazy bigotry is my biggest problem with society. White people are way more collectively simple for us to only have TWO prevailing stereotypes. So here is a definitive top #15 list of stereotypes and racial slurs for white people in the new millennium. 

Stereotype #1: RACIST. Oldy but a goody. 

Stereotype #2: ROVER. When we sweat we smell like wet dogs. Lassie for the ladies if you must. 

Stereotype #3: KING JOFFRE (Game of Thrones) and VAROOCA SALT (Charlie and The Chocolate Factory). Those two character are white peoples spirit animals. For white people its never enough, if its not the price, its the employees. If its not the employees, its the wait or the air or the god damn lighting. In the words of Culture Beat white people are like "I know what I want and I want it now. I want you cause I'm Mr Vain".

Stereotype #4: PISTACHIOS. White people are full of greed. Your money we want it. Your house we want it. Your country, we take it. White on the inside green in the middle. We are the pistachios of humanity. 

Stereotype #4: CLASSY TRASH.  Love pairing Boxed Wine and Crocs. Just can't stop wanting to feel like its happy hour at brunch even though it's 6pm in a Walmart parking lot. 

Stereotype #5: TRASHY CLASS. Love pairing Renaissance Fairs and PBR. Just can't stop wearing ornate period costumes while drinking a 40 in the hot August sun. 

Stereotype #6: TRASHY STACHE. Love pairing Jean Shorts and uniquely distinguished facial hair. Just can't stop stylizing beards and mustaches that say "I'm a 1880's dandy" with jorts that say "Yes I am from Bumfuck Alabama".

Stereotype #7: MEATLOAF. Meatloaf we just love it (food and singer).

Stereotype #8: WEEZERS: From our music and entertainment to our humor and conversations the people of the white, hate themselves the most. White people's catch phrase should be "I wish people understood me". We are moody, emotional tweens constant looking for understanding. The truth is everyone understands us, EXCEPT US!

Stereotype #9: T.N.W's: The 'N-word' not the actual word, but literally "The 'N' Word" is white peoples greatest invention. It was our clever way of getting back the only thing someone has ever taken from us. "The 'N' Word; because white people deserve to have it all". 

Stereotype #10: LOKI: God of mischief, white people are magical in that pursuit. We managed to turn beads into New York City, that's a magic trick Merlin would have given a standing ovation towards. White people shake your hand and smile while our other hand pulls everything you thought you owned out from under you. Case in point, stereotype #9. We have managed to say the word "nigger" by simply breaking it down into two words and one capital letter. Or we just write it in a blog. Don't worry we aren't SAYING it, *WINK* 

Stereotype #11: MOONS: As pale as the man on the moon our natural environment is in the shadows. You may call it the Sun but white folks know it as Beelzebub. The midday demon that only lets us go outside for an hour and a half at a time.

Stereotype #12: BOOTS: These are some mutated white people who love the sun. They bathe beds of it until they look like the Doc Marten boots the Moons are still fashionably wearing.

Stereotype #13: EGG WALKERS: Everyone is a hypocrite for sure. But only white people are the only ones who will ask "Where you from?" Unless you're Black. Asian, Latino, accent, no accent doesn't matter unless you've got that chocolate skin. These type of white folks only step on egg shells when they know they're orbiting around slavery. I believe its because we don't mind being racist until they have to realize the true history of it.
Egg Walker: "Hey Black Dave, where are you from?"
Black Dave: "Tennessee". 
Egg Walker: "Nah man, Where are you from, from?" 
Black Dave: "I don't know man, You're family never gave my family a copy of the sales receipt."

Stereotype #14: COLONIZERS. We say immigrants you should say Colonizers. Not only were we welcomed into someones else country then killed them, but we never stopped coming. I am 3rd generation American. My grandfather grew up on a farm, fought in WW2, put himself through college, then immigrated to the US to play hockey. My dad was the man of the house, when his father died, at 16. He put himself through college, then worked two jobs to support a family of 7. I dropped out of college, started wearing nail polish and vests, and say things like "I wish people understood me better". Nothing belongs to us yet we own it all.

Stereotype #15: SHITHEADS. Whites are filthy. I took a hard look at us and realized we are the only people on the planet who can be oily and flaky at the exact same time. We are like a buttered snow globes. Diseases like Measles, cholera, smallpox all come from cows and pigs being our roommates for 2000 years. We create microscopic death because we are too intimate with our pets. That's why old white men open mouth kisses their dogs, and old white women share ice cream cones with their cats. Do you know what 'expressing the anal gland' means? I guarantee if you do you learned it from a white person. 

These are just some suggestion for the community to pick up and run with. I hope however it gets your racism percolating so that we can bring something new to racism. Remember united we stand but divided we grow. Without blanket judgement of entire swabs of people this wouldn't be a world slavery built. 

In all honesty no matter your race, gender, orientation, or religion I have a place for you in my heart and hope this made you smile. Times at the moment seem so insurmountably difficult.  Not only in the States, but the entire world. However, I believe we can enlightening ourselves towards a brighter tomorrow. We just need to stop letting the past generations of malice define the future that is ours to own. We make our own path and it can be a narrow one like the cobblestone of prejudice we've walked on in the past. Or a wide expansive road of equality that's directed to a bright and glorious horizon. Lets us encompass anyone and everyone with acceptance and love and try at least, just a little bit to unite under one label, "humanity". And remember, White power. Thank you.