Heart of Bitterness

Acknowledging one of the Great Satan's unsung heroes

Even though he has a boring nom de plume, unlike, say, myself, Jon Swift should be honoured for his contribution towards regularly cheering me up. Through Bloglines, I can track 'Jon Swift' (that is how I think of him) as he wrestles with the troubles of the world.

He is as 'dry' as they come. So dry that there is a bonus: after reading a dryly amusing post, one is drawn irresistibly to the post's comments, a significant proportion of which show that the commenters didn't 'get' that he is kidding.

Take his Canadians: the Other Illegal Immigrants post. The post that started it all, at least for me.

In part:

No one knows how many illegal immigrants from Canada currently reside in the United States. And it is extremely difficult to find out since Canadians, unlike Mexicans, look and speak just like normal Americans. The fact that they are able to blend in so easily makes them, in my mind, even more threatening to our way of life than immigrants from other countries. Some of you might not even realize that Canada is an entirely separate country. Some of your neighbors and co-workers may be Canadian and you might have no idea. Aside from overuse of the word "eh?" and excessive drinking of Molson, many Canadians (at least the English-speaking ones) seem just like us on the outside.

(snip)

The effect of Canadians on our economy is devastating. Unlike Mexicans, Canadians take jobs from Americans that Americans actually want.

The comments range from acknowledging his wittiness to plaintive whinging about anti-Canadianism. A number of them make me embarrassed to be one!

As an unrepentant believer in Big Government, one of my fondest hopes has always been that Canada would start requiring exit permits for Canadians, rejecting the bigger idiots so they don't get out to embarrass us internationally.

However, with the advent of the internets, any drooling moron can disseminate his or her ravings to an international audience, rendering the concerns behind my proposed 'exit-visa' effectively obsolete.

Imagine my delight when I saw through bloglines that Jon Swift had 16 postings available. Usually, he does a post or two a week, mostly because he puts a lots of work into them, unlike the usual sort of 5-a-day bloggers who just quote another blogger, add a 'witty' remark, and post it.

It turns out Jon didn't have a mental breakdown (my first fear, given the tragic meltdown of Rev. Mykeru), he must have been polishing some of his old posts, which bloglines interprets as a new post, for some reason (blogger doesn't).

Anyhoo, some great old posts to read (alert: JS is very verbose, you have been warned):

The new old ones I hadn't read:
Guantanamo: Kafkaesque, in a Good Way
Ann Coulter Tackles the Menace of Widows and Grieving Mothers
50 More Conservative Rock Songs
My Battle With CFS
No Amnesty for Old People
Let's Not Nuke Iran-Yet
Jill Carroll vs. the Blogosphere
Everyone Hates the Christians

All of them are old, but they are all worth a read!


This brings up a point about blogger/blogspot: the archiving of content is very user unfriendly. Visitors should be able to browse archives by title, not just by date of publication.

I assume that is what they are aiming for with their recent addition of labels, but it is still far from being usable.