sympathy 4 the grinch - 100 gecs (mp3)

I recognize that hyperpop glitch ska will not be everyone’s microgenre, but this materialistic grievance/mischief bop about robbing Santa’s sleigh captures an anti holiday spirit that I have sympathy for, even if I’m not sure I like it:

Done being jolly, time to be naughty
Think it's time we settle up the score
…
I’ve been good for way too long
Gonna get the shit I want

This hook reminds me of Lockpick Pornography, a foundational text of my adolescence. Even then, I suspected I wouldn’t like the protagonists if I met them, but there was an appeal to the gonzo genderpunk freedom they represented. Very much “not gay as in happy, but queer as in fuck you”. One of the opening paragraphs:

I used to steal from heterosexuals for political reasons. Anything owned by a straight white yuppie is bought with oppression. The hetero-normative ownership paradigm is a tyrant belief system that deserves to be undermined on every front, from political protest to petty thievery. Now I'm a little more honest about it. I can admit that I steal from straight people because I just don't like them.

This is cruel, but I think its honest cynicism holds an appeal for me in the same horseshoe-theory way that people trust politicians like Ford and Trump who “say it like it is”, even though they honestly say, I am a selfish and corrupt person. I often think of the now-deleted halvorz tweet: people desperately want to find people it is socially acceptable to be cruel to. Is the cruelty socially acceptable because the narrator was betrayed by society(/Santa) first? 

Never gave me a goddamn thing that I want
I was good everyday but he didn’t give a fuck

I hate the part of the Santa mythology that claims that children are rewarded with material gifts in proportion to their goodness. My mum, who grew up quite rich, remembers believing that she must have been so much better than the other kids in her elementary school class, because Santa brought her way more toys. I would be happy to go along with some of the Santa mythology (you can play make-believe while answering questions honestly) but miss me with that. It’s important to me that children know the truth: the world is not just.

My sympathy is not for the theft, but for expecting more justice in the world; of course you deserve more! But I think it’s wrong to respond to the inadequacy of the world by opting to get your own, and screw everyone else. It’s a worthy and worthwhile work to try to make the world gradually more just, though such an earnest attitude probably doesn’t produce joyfully chaotic glitch ska, and I’m glad this song exists.

Happy solstice,
Tessa