Canada’s federal Minister of Health has just slapped Saskatchewan’s hands for offering pay-to-use MRIs, prompting the Saskatchewan Minister of Health to thumb his nose at the Feds, in an act that surprises absolutely nobody. While the Conservative Libertarians among us crow that it’s nobody’s business how we spend our after-tax dollars, in a less-than-surprising yet uplifting exercise of once again missing the entire point, everyone on the left is getting sanctimonious as all get out, in an epic round of “told you so”.
People all over the political spectrum are losing their collective minds because this is basically ExMass dinner and Mom and Dad are giving our big brother shit for running a side business out of the garage. It doesn’t even matter that the side business is slightly shady, like making fake IDs for underage party-goers, because we’re all sitting around the table with our hands in our laps, watching the butter congeal on the potatoes. Except for cousin Aaron who’s from Alberta, where his folks don’t really care that he runs a shady side business out of the basement; he’s on seconds and has parked his new truck half on the lawn.
Aunt Martine is mortified, and keeps filling her wine glass and shooting worried glances at Grandma, who’s perfectly happy to let the dogs eat food off her plate and she’s also happy to just go on about football. It’s just deeply uncomfortable, and it doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong because this is ExMass dinner for pete’s sake and we just want to eat in peace, but at this point nobody’s listening to anybody; they’re all just quoting statistics at each other. Before we know it, this is just going to be a repeat of Thanksgiving 2007, when our big brother threatened to sue Mom and Dad for paying each of us different allowances (never mind that some of us have to clean out the cat box while others just sit around on their big fat butts and play Roblox all day). We’re just sitting at our end of the table, wishing we could turn invisible or at least leave the table without Grandma giving us the lecture about manners.
To top it all off, it’s only a matter of time before someone starts a fight between us and our big brother anyway, since he keeps taking part of our allowance and buying really stupid shit like Zoomers and Snuggies, but he’s not buying these as seen on TV products from the as seen on TV shop. He’s buying them from Tony up the street, and he’s not asking questions about where Tony gets this stuff. We all suspect he’s spending way too much on stupid shit but Tony doesn’t talk to anybody he doesn’t already have business dealings with and our brother is just kind of smug about the whole thing.
Then when Mom and Dad say they’re going to start charging our big brother for parking his shitty Toronado in front of the house, he loses his shit for like weeks and stomps around the house bitching about fascism. His friends come over and leave their shoes on, and a lot of them are just kind of dicks who make fun of us. That’s not to say we can’t hold our own in a snakebite or tittie twister fight, but when our brother starts giving his dickbag friends the change he got from spending our allowance on his stupid shit, it’s just a bad situation.
All I’m saying is that things at home are really uncomfortable right now, and it’s all starting to come to a head. Something’s got to give. I suspect our brother’s going to be moving out because he’s seriously not happy, but we’re all just hoping he doesn’t tear the whole family apart on his way. Some of us are thinking of moving out too, but where the hell would we go?
i make squee noises when you tell me stuff.