#rcmp fuck off Always

[hearty-an0n]

now why are they here with their stupid ass hats……

[spiderh0rse]

shephard's mind notes part 5, e21-25 + e0

e21

wonders why the lights are off. Don't maintenance workers need light

turns on his goggles to BIG MONSTER

mixes up the syllables with shit and fuck

starts killing voltigore children

doesn't respect PETA

aware of. Idk what to call it milking kink

imagines Black Mesa throws it's bad employees down here

thinks the voices he's hearing are GHOSTS

starts talking to the ghosts trying to console them

starts crying for a minute

realizes wait huh not Ghosts just Echoes

ewwww he hugged a DEAD guy

starts assigning his brand new team some manner of. Multiplayer raid boss positions

his critical hits are fucked up rn

yells at his teammates for blowing up

thinks he should spend more time on rooftops

"that's right. The aliens are cold and they want our sweaters"

doesn't know how to knit

talks to the HEV charging station

not too sure what to call the Gargantua

agent Candy-Ass!! (Grinch's ultimatum voice) it's Gman!

wants to shoot the phone out of gmans hand

thinks his cold emotionless mask makes him cool

not happy to have organs in his face. He's leaving!

falls into the wet side of the dam

needs to start thinking of names for the barnacle,,

a bit surprised at how perfectly the bridge explosives worked. Irritated that the marines didn't explode em

realizes the dam is gonna BREAK and tasks himself with fixing it

e22

OH NO A WATERSLIDE

Way out! And he missed it. Hopes there's another one! Okay yeah he's out. No infinite loop

he's hungry :(

will squeeze his lightning bug at the black ops until they die

wants to slick the black ops .50 cal on a jeep

thinks he can't really trust anyone right now, including his squad

thinks everyone else will be tired tonight but he slept on the way over so he's got the advantage

delighted to see a tank. less delighted to see a mortar gun

aghast at the mortar gun guarding absolutely nothing. Was also like this about the .50 cal

seems aware that the spore launcher is a shock trooper child

voice crack,,

HATES being shot it's like stubbing your toe repeatedly. With bullets.

he's got SAND in his boot

disgusted at how easily people die after he talks to them. Vows to hide and never talk to anyone again

knows what the Canadian version of black ops are called. (RCMP!)

He's cooking with GAS. i love that expression

"guns are for wusses! I only need aliens."

rip and tear!

has shrapnel in his ass. Man.

just wants to bomb things in peace.

playing with the mortar gun

watches both Animaniacs and Freakazoid! Finds Freakazoid better.

sniper tf2s himself

he's from Arizona! New Mexico heat still sucks more

e23

finds the aliens more friendly than the black ops. Wants to strike a truce with them

he knows the universal greeting! unfortunately he has no snacks to share and as such it fails

momentarily excited to see a helicopter. Even MORE excited to see it shooting an alien.

shoots out the helicopter's gas tank

the helicopter exploding sends shrapnel into him :(

hates climbing chain link fences. The tops always scratch his hands up

anticipates being sent to military prison if he gets caught

remembers the last time he touched mold...

aghast at the ongoing uranium-in-dumpster issue

climbing a cliff! almost out! freedom! nope there's snipers

watches or is familiar with Adam West's Batman!

still confused about how many corpses keep showing up near medkits

sings "to the vent" to the tune of. Not actually sure what it's called but it's. Horse race music

keeps singin the tune

shocked to see a car without a steering wheel

cannot hotwire this car.

GAUSS GUN? FUCK YES

no it's just a horn.

slur count: six.

does NOT want to die in a parking lot

feels like such a trendsetter with all these vent lovers other than him

a BOMB.

tries in vain to convince a Barney to open the door and FLEE with him

would like to blow Black Mesa up but will turn the bomb off for the sake of progress

he is the world's crappiest assassin

has never seen a nuclear warhead before in his life! it's terrifying! he doesn't know how to turn it off!

asks the dead black ops if they're alive and could possibly tell him how to turn it off

e24

needs to stop killing people! just because they can be useful to him!

names his barnacle Barney while busy with the bomb

decides since there are two wires to cut he's got a 50/50 chance of blowing up or shutting the bomb off. Either way the beeping stops!

survives! Phew!

he prioritizes the beeping being gone though

skitters away from the bomb

GMANS AT THE BOMB WAUGH

Adrian can't find a way out to stop him

slur count: seven.

thinks gmans haircut is stupid

Adrian is pretty sure any companions he takes will die horribly

considers knocking out the lights and making a run for it. It's what Batman would've done.

"nobody expects the Shephard Inquisition!"

some random black ops surrenders to him at the end of his rampage

Shephard is unconcerned with coercing someone into cheating on her spouse

black ops name is Lydia!

Lydia considers Xen hell

Adrian brings Gman up to Lydia. She doesn't know anything about him either he's just WAYYY high up

Adrian's dialogue is a lot more awkward sounding when said in front of another person- oh it's on purpose! Sort of!

slur count: eight. Lydia :(

familiar with the Circ De Soleil

Adrian can't imagine where a crossbow would be useful

Adrian can't knock people out very well

he,, may have killed Lydia actually.

WOAGH suddenly louder

frag off...

not sure why he's yelling when he's just thinking

he's a CHAMPIONSHIP BOXER (self-reported) (pun)

ends a confrontation in bad shape and is moderately uncomfortable for a good while

addresses himself by name again!

takes a break to fix himself up. Picks bullets out of himself with his forceps

e25

may have a bruised lung

surprised at how well his equipment is holding up

voltigores? nah. Lightning-pigs

"no pain, no. Post traumatic stress disorder."

at least passingly familiar with both military and dnd terminology

wonders if he went crazy from going to another planet. concludes yeah possibly

LEAPS onto the back of a lightning-pig. Shoots it from its back!

wants to LEAVE not FIGHT MONSTER

considers attacking Lydia for telling him the vents were clear. realizes he already has sort of so they're probably in the clear

wants to make his aliens do tricks onstage!

Operation Condor? Not too sure what this is but I vaguely gather that it's a movie from how Adrian talks about it?

adrian i don't think a bomb shelter will stop a nuke

BAD SMELL BAD SMELL

Gene Worm smells worse than anything else Adrian has smelled.

recounts tear gas experience

tries to walk through the big pink portal. doesn't work. faces away.

gives up! Decides BLACK MESA WINS, he just isn't MEANT to escape

turns around. Gene Worm.

thinks it isn't real. Checks. Still there. Only then acts shocked

going back to the wind tunnel to relax he isn't going to fight this thing even if it lets him leave

Sparky! and Gill! They seem to either be talking to him or Adrian thinks they are.

Barney isn't talking though

"I was never a good marine. I couldn't protect the people under my command. I never caught Freeman. I couldn't go fifteen meters without running into some insurmountable delay. I didn't earn my advanced training, or even my rank as Corporal. Some guys just dropped it on me! I'm not even fighting for a cause, I just don't want to die. All the good things I did today were just because I was backed into a corner, and could only keep charging forward. If I die today, nobody's going to remember. Adrian Shephard might as well have never existed. And you know what? I refuse to believe that this overconvoluted, clusterfuck of a disaster happened just so that I could get eaten by a giant squid in a dusty ventilation shaft! So screw it. I'm gonna go in there, I'm gonna fight, and I'm gonna fucking win!"

runs in! leg cramp! runs back. okay now he's fighting.

OH GOD IT SPITS MOUNTAIN DEW

Adrian dislikes Mountain Dew!

considers staring impolite

"fuck you! you hit like a pool noodle!" someone I know received a bruise from a pool noodle today

wishes he'd thought of shooting smaller aliens at people. Could've if he'd had SNARKS.

glad the Gene Worm's goop isn't electrified

he's going to be the first human to learn how to cook and eat giant alien squid!

insults Black Mesa's construction quality

the GIFT SHOP only sells SHOTGUNS

insults some shockroach and apologizes for the specist remark to Sparky

but he doesn't WANT to do the dew!

one shot is all he needs! twelve shots is all he needs!

his goggles do great at blocking the mountain dew

wants Sparky and Gill to tell everyone what he did if he dies. And to get his hard drive wiped/destroyed to be safe

drops his shotgun D:

"WAS IT A LOAD-BEARING SQUID?"

Stasis. Then...

Adrian does NOT understand what Gman is going on about but is pretty quiet about it

"and nothing of value was lost :)" "quite so."

"can I go home now?" Zaps to Xen. "this isn't my house!"

Adrian tries to convince Gman that he won't tell anyone about all this. He just wants to go HOME

stuck in his seat! cant move! in the helicopter!

he won, he guesses. upset at being stuck wherever he is. doesn't know much of what's going on.

knows Gman isnt human. Mocks his speech impediment though >:(

slur count: nine

they took all equipment. He implies he'd consider shooting himself if they hadn't.

post credits! chocolate bar!!!!!

Adrian struggles with the wrapper. greatly. curses Hershey's name.

sounds SO happy to have chocolate. Says it tastes awful though. Blames the assorted fluids it's been near and soaked in

e0

REVELRY

half of what Shephard is saying here is literally spoken half is thought

drill instructor balls...

finds the training facility he's getting military training in confusing and easy to get lost in

does GREAT pushups. apparently.

compares how he looks to Popeye, the sailor.

finds automatic doors and security cameras futuristic

slams his nose into the door :(

jazzed to get his hands on GUNS

wants his PCV to have a jetpack

anticipates forgetting everything about this tomorrow

isn't terribly sure what year it is. 200X.

dumbfounded at being ordered to stand literally in front of a target. Not happy to be shot

NEXT they're not going to be serving FOOD HE LIKES

Compares the dangers of military training to haunted house

SMELLS LIKE FRENCH FRIES

mildly slippery liquid on the floor...

yes, he CAN walk through steam without his visor getting fogged up :)

oh god the early appearance of electrified toxic waste

familiar with the Predator series

compares himself to Batman for having night vision goggles

assumes a runner's crouch

insults his drill instructor's mother

thinks embarrassing his instructors would be fine if it were funny

sprains his ankle in the course

pretty sure he just sucks at rope climbing

NOT happy to see mines in this simulation

well this sure is live fire with what sounds like a .50 cal

seems actually pretty impressed with surviving the live fire course easily

only his WEAPON- is his friend. Ahem.

he's good at point and click adventure games

does seem familiar with many of the enlisted men's names

SO happy to have a sniper rifle. I am also happy to see him have one

VERY snarky to his CO

finds the ease of this sniping exercise irritating

mixes up clips and magazines on purpose to piss people off. Does this with some models of gun too

slur count: ten

INSULTS Audrey's hat. Some random guy on-base

knows the engineer he's presented with. It's Jackson! We like Jackson!

Jackson,,, cannot see right now his goggles are FILTHY

use key... Shephard has no idea what that means.

chooses codenames.... Goes for the goofiest nicknames he can come up with on the spot

feels a bit expendable

[certaincoffeegardener]

Can RCMP Constable Barney W. Brucker get Steve Baird to cut off the alter abuse for one hour a day? I have no respite ever. Not even when sleeping. They do the sleep rapes. The abuse and manipulation and gaslighting and arguing over everything and put downs never stop.

I have complained ad nauseum about the Lyle abuse. I just had an alter say now, "You want to fuck your father." I just complained this morning about the Lyle abuse as much as I could. They won't stop. I am afraid of my deceased father.

So many criminals have Lyle points. The sexual assaults and coercion never stops. They didn't let me sleep last night. I got very little sleep today. I'm forced to think about people I don't like, that I am afraid of, to avoid thinking of even WORSE people.

They never stop pushing me and verbally abusing me and harassing me and telling me that I like frightening people that I can't stand.

Why won't they leave me alone about my father. My father's alter is HORRIFYING. HE'S HORRIFYING. A BRUTAL INHUMAN INSANE PERSON. HE'S NOT HUMAN.

MY FATHER IS NOT HUMAN. WHY WON'T THEY STOP HARASSING ME?

The tone is cranked. They won't stop playing the tone or let me sleep. I got a tiny bit of daytime sleep.

I am ALWAYS sleep deprived. The tone never stops for a very long time. They won't stop playing the tone.

Can't Steve Baird cut them off? Will that make the tone worse?

[realthoughtsrawemotions]

If I want to see the world change I have to see it within myself to change first. My lense shapes my reality and my energy impacts my environment. As within so without. It all starts with my own attitude and beliefs about life.

During the Pandemic I kept waiting for someone to save me. To make the world a better place or for it to all burn down to ashes. I felt powerless. Once the vaccine passports came out, it got even worse. I really waited for the government to go back to normal or for angry protesters to over throw the government. In the meantime I stayed hidden from the world. I was scared and apathetic at the same time. Scared to voice my real opinion to others and too apathetic to care about anything. I heard clients of mine talk about how they were happy the RCMP were trampling the unvaccinated with horses and that they don’t deserve to live. I had family members cancel Christmas dinners with me because they were worried I would be an infection to them. I had close clients decide to stop working with me despite the relationship we had built. Even my dad and I stopped seeing eye to eye for a while.

I had a victim mind set. I was just waiting for the pandemic to enforce how I should live my life and how I should engage in my relationships. I held so much resentment towards everyone for being weak minded. People who didn’t want the vaccine but got it anyways because they wanted to go to the fucking movies and get a drink with their friends. I didn’t know integrity cost 9.99$ on a Tuesday. I lost so much respect for everyone around me. I hated the world. I hated everyone in it. I saw people sell their souls for a lot less than I thought they ever would. I was willing to die for this and people wanted to do it because they had to travel that year.

This mentality didn’t help me. On top of waiting for the world to change I began hating all of its inhabitants. So now I was powerless and hateful. Angry and bitter. But I still couldn’t do anything about it and I pushed away any support I could have had. I started to turn the mirror back in on myself. I wasn’t perfect and I didn’t always act out of integrity. Not the level or standard that I had for myself anyways. Instead of following QAnon threads or pay attention to the global elite I started to pay deep attention to myself. What could I change within. I mean if there really was some ploy to destroy the world would I be any help in this current state. I had to at the very least prepare. Worst case scenario I’m ready for the bullshit and best case the world is fine and I’m a better version of myself. I had to at least try. I wasn’t helping anyone or myself by finding fault in the world.

I began to read self help books. Go to counselling. Do breath work. Really work on myself. What I found is that when I started to change the world did too. This vaccine passports dropped and I was able to connect to people who I thought I would never be able to again. I also realized that despite making me a stubborn hateful person, not getting vaccinated also showed me my strength. That I could keep the gifts of compassion and love that I learned through counselling and inner work while at the same time keep the strength and the passion I gained through my decision to stand up for what I believed in. I could have both. I spent the whole time during the pandemic thinking I was weak, not realizing that my decision to stand up for what I believed in made me un-buyable. Knowing this now it gives me so much strength moving forward. No amount of money or power can corrupt me. I was ready to die for what I believed in so when things in my life come in that seem tempting but don’t align with my values. I can simply say “fuck off and thank you very much”. My strength resides in my being not in what I accumulate. My inner state reflects my outer state. I am strong, I am integral, and I am powerful beyond measure. I can’t be bought and I can’t be tempted. Paradoxically I am still human and will always have my struggles that are hard to see. Greed and lust may rear there ugly head but when they do I can remind myself of the time I stood up against the entire world and had my own back when nobody else did.

[dbunicorn]

Go fuck yourself loser. You're incompetent. You're always going to be incompetent asshole.

Wow brown men and small dicks. Rape on a mattress.

This is what you dumb fucks do in mattress right you little fucking pathetic pedophile. Kill yourself asshole. 💋

Indian men have been failing women most of our lives. Go figure buddy.

I wonder if she'll end up in the middle east?

🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦

Too useless to be a productive member of society.

Money laundering through real estate to inflate home prices. Fucking genius. There is very little else here.

You can be like worlds persona shiny yellow whore. 💋

Please don't pretend to have a fucking spine.

This is still what you cowards do around old women while shooting your fucking mouth off.

[ill-will-editions]

QUARANTINE LETTER #5: UNRECONCILED Ron Sakolsky

Stop blaming me, accusing me, stalking me. Working yourselves into an anti-viral paralysis. All of that is childish. Let me propose a different perspective. See me as your savior instead of your gravedigger. You’re free not to believe me, but I have come to shut down the machine whose emergency brake you couldn’t find. I have come in order to suspend the operation that held you hostage. I have come in order to demonstrate the aberration that normality constitutes. Ask yourselves how you could find it so comfortable to let yourselves be governed. Don’t let those who’ve led you to the abyss claim to be saving you from it: they will prepare for you a more perfect hell, an even deeper grave. Thanks to me for an indefinite time you will no longer work, your kids won’t go to school, and yet it will be the opposite of a vacation. Vacations are the space that must be filled up at all costs while waiting for the obligatory return to work. I render you idle. Use the time I’m giving you to envision the world of the aftermath in light of what you’ve learned from the collapse that’s underway. The disaster ends when the economy ends. The economy is the devastation.

                          from “What the Virus Said”

Just when I was feeling most elated about prospects for the future given the strength of the Indigenous resistance sweeping Canada in early 2020, the coronavirus arrived on the scene with whiplash-inducing force to upstage everything in its deadly path unexpectedly shutting down whatever parts of the Canadian economy had not already been intentionally shut down by the Wet’suwet’en land defenders and those involved in solidarity actions that had immediately preceded the spread of the disease. Rather than framing The Virus exclusively within the kind of nightmare scenario that is typically associated with the mainstreaming of the term “surreal” (as if all there ever is to surrealism’s critique of reality is this dark side), I want to instead illuminate the surreal possibilities for social transformation that can be revealed by creating a surreal (rather than literal) analogy between the contagion of the virus and the contagion of revolt.

Starting in February of this year the appearance of a widespread Indigenous uprising on the stage of Canadian history swiftly moved the realm of the surreal from dreams of radical transformation to the direct action undertaken to bring it about. Railways, highways and ferries were blockaded, provincial legislatures, government administrative offices, banks and corporate headquarters were occupied. For many inconvenienced Canadians, such actions as these were considered to be unacceptable even though they would prove to be only a fraction as disruptive as the more authoritarian forms of state control that would later shelter under the legitimacy of saving us from The Virus.

Though the immediacy of the COVID-19 pandemic would quickly overshadow the earlier Indigenous revolt in the public eye, it is now evident to many that the smiley-faced mask of Canadian colonialism has been pulled off to reveal a state that in spite of its professed human rights and climate change awareness rhetoric continues to have no compunctions about invading Indigenous territory without consent to build pipelines for fracked natural gas and tar sands oil because of what it considers to be in the best interests of the almighty economy. As Tawinikay (aka Southern Wind Woman) has written, “If only one thing has brought me joy in the last few weeks, it began when the matriarchs at Unist’ot’en burned the Canadian flag and declared reconciliation dead. Like wildfire, it swept through the hearts of youth across the territories. Out of their mouths, with teeth bared, they echoed back: reconciliation is dead! reconciliation is dead! Reconciliation was a distraction, a way for them to dangle a carrot in front of us and trick us into behaving. Do we not have a right to the land stolen from our ancestors? It’s time to shut everything the fuck down”.

Just as Indigenous peoples have demanded their land back in rural areas while pronouncing the false hope of government-brokered reconciliation to be dead, the systemic dislocations to the economy brought on by the coronavirus have led urban anarchists to address fundamental land issues by calling for rent strikes. But why stop there? In response to the devastation associated with The Virus, we have heard calls for the cessation of not only rent, but mortgage and utility payments, even the cancellation of debt itself, the end of wage slavery, and demands for the cessation of arrests for minor offenses, the release of prisoners who have committed non-violent crimes, or flat-out prison abolition. As surrealists we might ask ourselves what other noxious aspects of reality might be called into question and transformed by beginning to imagine what might exist in their place.

Where I live in British Columbia, resource extraction has always been the name of the game, but the emergence this year of a widespread oppositional network ranging from “land back” Indigenous warriors to elder traditionalists and from Extinction Rebellion activists to anarchist insurrectionaries has been heartening. Together, this multi-pronged force disrupted business as usual in solidarity with Unist’ot’en and Wet’suwet’en land defenders, and threatened to bring the Canadian economy to a grinding halt. This time growing numbers of Indigenous peoples were not willing to be bought off by corporate bribes or mollified by a legal system that has never done anything but pacify, brutalize, or betray them in the process of stealing their land. This time people fought back in droves against the forces of colonial law and order. This time the air was alive with a spirit of refusal and rebellion with one action building upon another in a burgeoning movement that could not be stopped. When one railroad blockade would be busted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), another would spring up in its place elsewhere extending the frontlines of the battle all across the continent.

As I write, the wheel of change is still in spin. What the final outcome will be in relation to either the COVID-19 virus or the virus of revolt is unknown, especially in relation to the predatory nature of the times in which we live where the emphasis is often placed on the institution of statist forms of social control rather than grass roots mutual aid efforts in relation to the immanence of societal upheaval. Even though the pandemic has supposedly shut down the provincial economy with lightning speed, Coastal Gas Link’s pipeline construction efforts with their invasive industrial “man-camps” have still been allowed to continue to exist on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory with RCMP logistical support, thereby callously endangering the health and safety of the Indigenous inhabitants. It's abundantly clear whose lives matter to the Canadian government and whose don’t. Consequently, it will remain very hard for the authorities to put the genie of Indigenous rebellion back in the colonial bottle in the future. In the meantime, we are mourning what of value we’ve lost from the past, celebrating what we’ve created in the present, and still demanding the impossible.

[surrealistnyc]

A Spark in Search of a Powderkeg

Rebellion is its own justification, completely independent of the chance it has to modify the state of affairs that gives rise to it. It’s a spark in the wind, but a spark in search of a powder keg.

André Breton

If only one thing has brought me joy in the last few weeks, it began when the matriarchs at Unist’ot’en burned the Canadian flag and declared reconciliation is dead. Like wildfire, it swept through the hearts of youth across the territories. Reconciliation was a distraction, a way for them to dangle a carrot in front of us and trick us into behaving. Do we not have a right to the land stolen from our ancestors? It’s time to shut everything the fuck down!

Tawinikay (aka Southern Wind Woman)

The toxic cargo carried in Canadian pipelines, whether it be tar sands oil or fracked liquid natural gas (LNG), is, according to all serious climate scientists, a major, perhaps even decisive contribution to global warming, i.e. ecological catastrophe.   Meant to fuel industrial expansion, the pipelines have themselves become fuel for revolt. Designed to move these dirty fossil fuels from one location to another, they are a crucial element in normalizing the dubious paradise of unlimited growth in awe of which all obedient consumer/citizens are supposed to genuflect. In what the colonial mapmakers have called British Columbia (BC), resource extraction has always been the name of the game. However, the emergence in February of this year of a widespread oppositional network ranging from “land back” Indigenous warriors to elder traditionalists and from Extinction Rebellion activists to anarchist insurrectionaries was heartening. Railways, highways and ferries were blockaded, provincial legislatures, government administrative offices, banks and corporate headquarters were occupied. The catalyst for this rebellion was a widespread Indigenous uprising that refused the illusory promises of reconciliation. Together, these rebel forces disrupted business as usual in solidarity with the Unist’ot’en Big Frog clan of the Wet’suwet’en tribal house.

       ​As objective chance would have it, the primary Indigenous land defense camp is situated not far from the same Hazelton, B.C. area to which surrealist Kurt Seligmann and his wife Arlette had journeyed in 1938. During that time, they visited Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en villages, marveled at the imaginative power of the totem poles and ceremonial objects, made field notes, shot 16mm film, collected stories and recorded mythic histories. Now, in 2020, growing numbers of these same Indigenous peoples have been threatening to bring the Canadian economy to a grinding halt. Unwilling to be bought off by corporate petrodollars or mollified by a legal system that has never done anything but pacify, brutalize, or betray them in the process of stealing their land, Indigenous peoples passionately fought back against the forces of colonial law and order in a radical whirlwind of willful disobedience and social disruption. One action built upon another in creating a rolling momentum that seemed unstoppable. When one railroad blockade would be busted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), another would spring up in its place elsewhere extending the frontlines of the battle all across the continent. Then the debilitating Covid-19 virus arrived to compound the damage that had previously been done to the capitalist economy by the incendiary virus of revolt. The resistance of these Indigenous communities against the pipelines concerns all of us, worldwide, since they are on the front lines of the struggle to prevent cataclysmic climate change.

       ​In the future, a key question will be whether Canadian authorities can successfully put the genie of Indigenous rebellion back in the colonial bottle of “reconciliation”. As surrealists, we hope they will not, and we stand in solidarity with the unreconciled insurgent spirit of defiant Indigenous resistance. A new reality is to be invented and lived instead of the one that today as yesterday imposes its environmental miserabilism and its colonialist and racist hierarchies.  As surrealists, we honor our historical affinity with the Kwakwaka’wakw Peace Dance headdress that for so long had occupied a place of reverence in André Breton’s study during his lifetime before being ceremoniously returned in 2003 to Alert Bay on Cormorant Island by his daughter, Aube Elléouet, in keeping with her father’s wishes. With this former correspondence in mind, we presently assert that our ongoing desire to manifest the emancipation of the human community as distinctively undertaken in the surrealist domain of intervention is in perfect harmony with the fight of the Indigenous communities of the Americas against globalized Western Civilisation and its ecocidal folly.

                                                                                                               Surrealists in the United States: Gale Ahrens, Will Alexander, Andy Alper, Byron Baker, J.K. Bogartte, Eric Bragg, Thom Burns, Max Cafard, Casi Cline, Steven Cline, Jennifer Cohen, Laura Corsiglia, David Coulter, Jean-Jacques Dauben, Rikki Ducornet, Terri Engels, Barrett John Erickson, Alice Farley, Natalia Fernandez, Brandon Freels, Beth Garon, Paul Garon, Robert Green, Maurice Greenia, Brigitte Nicole Grice, Janice Hathaway, Dale Houstman, Karl Howeth, Joseph Jablonski, Timothy Robert Johnson, Robin D.G. Kelly, Paul McRandle, Irene Plazewska, Theresa Plese, Michael Stone-Richards, David Roediger, Penelope Rosemont, LaDonna Smith, Tamara Smith, Steve Smith, Abigail Susik, Sasha Vlad, Richard Waara, Joel Williams, Craig S. Wilson

Surrealists in the UK: Jay Blackwood, Paul Cowdell, Jill Fenton, Rachel Fijalkowski, Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Merl Fluin, Kathy Fox, Lorna Kirin, Rob Marsden, Douglas Park, Michel Remy, Wedgwood Steventon, Frank Wright, the Leeds Surrealist Group (Gareth Brown, Stephen J. Clark, Kenneth Cox, Luke Dominey, Amalia Higham, Bill Howe, Sarah Metcalf, Peter Overton, Jonathan Tarry, Martin Trippett), the London Surrealist Group (Stuart Inman, Philip Kane, Timothy B. Layden, Jane Sparkes, Darren Thomas) and the surrealists of Wales (Jean Bonnin, Neil Combs, David Greenslade, Jeremy Over, John Richardson, John Welson)

Surrealists in Paris: Ody Saban and The Surrealist Group of Paris (Elise Aru, Michèle Bachelet, Anny Bonnin, Massimo Borghese, Claude-Lucien Cauët, Taisiia Cherkasova, Sylwia Chrostowska, Hervé Delabarre, Alfredo Fernandes, Joël Gayraud, Régis Gayraud, Guy Girard, Michael Löwy, Pierre-André Sauvageot, Bertrand Schmitt, Sylvain Tanquerel, Virginia Tentindo, Michel Zimbacca)

Surrealists in Canada: Montréal (Jacques Desbiens, Peter Dube, Sabatini Lasiesta, Bernar Sancha), Toronto (Beatriz Hausner, Sherri Higgins), Québec City (David Nadeau), Victoria (Erik Volet), the Ottawa Surrealist Group (Jason Abdelhadi, Lake, Patrick Provonost) and the Inner Island Surrealist Group (as.matta, Jesse Gentes, Sheila Nopper, Ron Sakolsky)

The Surrealist Group of Madrid: Eugenio Castro, Andrés Devesa, Jesús Garcia Rodriguez, Vicente Gutiérrez Escudero, Lurdes Martinez, Noé Ortega, Antonio Ramirez, Jose Manuel Rojo, María Santana, Angel Zapata

Surrealists in Sweden: Johannes Bergmark, Erik Bohman, Kalle Eklund, Mattias Forshage, Riyota Kasamatsu, Michael Lundberg, Emma Lundenmark, Maja Lundgren, Kristoffer Noheden, Sebastian Osorio

Surrealists in Holland: Jan Bervoets, Elizé Bleys, Josse De Haan, Rik Lina, Hans Plomp, Pieter Schermer, Wijnand Steemers, Laurens Vancrevel, Her de Vries, Bastiaan Van der Velden

Surrealists in Brazil: Alex Januario, Mário Aldo Barnabé, Diego Cardoso, Elvio Fernandes, Beau Gomez, Rodrigo Qohen, Sergio Lima, Natan Schäfer, Renato Souza

Surrealists in Chile: Jaime Alfaro, Magdalena Benavente, Jorge Herrera F., Miguel Ángel Huerta, Ximena Olguín, Enrique de Santiago, Andrés Soto, Claudia Vila

 The Middle East and North Africa Surrealist Group: Algeria (Onfwan Foud), Egypt (Yasser Abdelkawy, Mohsen El-Belasy, Ghadah Kamal), Iraq (Miechel Al Raie), Syria (Tahani Jalloul), and Palestine (Fakhry Ratrout)

Surrealists in Prague: Frantisek Dryje, Joe Grim Feinberg, Katerina Pinosova, Martin Stejskal, Jan Svankmajer

The Athens Surrealist Group (Elias Melios, Sotiris Liontos, Nikos Stabakis, Theoni Tambaki, Thomas Typaldos, Marianna Xanthopoulou)

Surrealists in Costa Rica: Gaetano Andreoni, Amirah Gazel, Miguel Lohlé, Denis Magarman, Alfonso Peña

Surrealists in Buenos Aires: Silvia Guiard, Luís Conde, Alejandro Michel

Surrealists in Australia: Anthony Redmond, Michael Vandelaar, Tim White

Surrealists in Portugal: Miguel de Carvalho, Luiz Morgadinho

Surrealists in Bucharest (Dan Stanciu), Mexico (Susana Wald), and the Canary Islands (Jose Miguel Perez Corales)

 Postscript: During the process of gathering signatures for the above declaration, we were inspired to see its uncompromising stance against white supremacy and police repression reflected in the brightly sparkling flames of the Minneapolis uprising that lit a powder keg of pent-up rage and incited an earth-shaking eruption of spontaneous rebellion in the streets of America. It was only fitting that in solidarity with the uprising about police brutality kicked off by George Floyd’s execution/lynching at the hands of the police, anti-racism protestors in the United States would take direct action by beheading or bringing down statues of Christopher Columbus, genocidal symbol of the colonial expropriation of Native American lands. (Guy Girard, Michael Löwy, Penelope Rosemont, and Ron Sakolsky, June 18, 2020).

[kootenaygoon]

So,

It felt like we’d been driving for days.

Mharianne was in my passenger seat, her feet propped up on the dash, watching videos on her phone. The ethereal glow illuminated the bright pink hair that hung swirling around her face. It was pouring rain, my wipers squealing in noisy protest, and I was chain-smoking with the window cracked. I made sure to shoulder-check as we reached the turn-off on the highway.

“I think this is the left,” I said. “Yeah, this is where they turned left.”

It was like 4 a.m. and I was taking her on the route that Andrew Stevenson took the Nelson Police Department, the day of the robbery. I explained to her that it was really his partner Krista Kalmikoff driving, but Stevenson testified otherwise in court. On some level, I respected that: how he implicated himself to protect his partner. 

“Yeah, somewhere around here they lost their brakes,” I said, as we sped by looming acreages silhouetted against the purple night sky. During my Maisonneuve interview with Nate Holt he’d described the chase compared to others he’d participated in on the west coast, and he was amazed that the driver was successfully outmaneuvering them. 

“Can you imagine what that would feel like, having the cops on you like that? How desperate you would feel?” I asked, manic-puffing my cigarette. “Knowing that this particular car trip could end in your incarceration, your death? That a decade of your life was on the line?”

I turned to see if Mharianne had heard me, but she had her headphones in. She giggled to herself and swiped a video on her screen. Behind the driver’s seat Laela was asleep, her face pressed up against the wet glass. She’d been singing earlier, so there was a guitar pressed between her legs. Beside her, Kessa was still crying in her prom dress. 

I didn’t know what to say to her.

The road took a violent turn to the left, and then back to the right, before descending into a winding uphill past ranches, farms and derelict structures that stood half-collapsed amidst the scraggly trees. We passed a junkyard I was familiar with, a field of waist-high grass with rusting cars parked in tidy rows. I worked the brake.

This was the story I was born to tell. I could feel it. As we rocketed past Ryan Tapp’s property, swooping down towards Taghum Beach and then following the river out towards the dams, I imagined how it would work cinematically. It would be like a Kootenay version of Heat, like A Place Beyond the Pines but set in B.C. And this would be the opening moment of the narrative, the viewer dropped into the moment like when Tarantino opened Reservoir Dogs with Mr. Orange already writhing in his own blood in the backseat.

“This could be my masterpiece,” I said, thinking of Brad Pitt and his scalping knife. “This could be the whole reason I came to Nelson in the first place. To tell this story.”

Finally we got to the bridge, where the RCMP blockage had been set up following the robbery. It was still pouring, so I didn’t want to get out of the RAV, but I shook Mharianne’s shoulder and pointed out the branches beyond the railing. She took out her headphones. 

“That’s the tree he jumped into, but it couldn’t support his weight. Before jumping he threw his bag, and it showered money down to the riverbank. Can’t you picture it?”

“Did he think there was water underneath when he jumped?” she asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

Beyond the glare of our headlights was the other side of the bridge, where officer Chuck Brind’Amour had parked to block Stevenson’s escape. But while Nate Holt was arriving on scene and hoisting an AR-15, he was just taking pictures. Either way, it was Police Chief Paul Burkart who barrelled forward from his commandeered minivan to put the handcuffs on Kalmikoff.

“He was being so reckless, so crazy, and it was all for his kids,” I told Mharianne. She didn’t respond, just stared out at the rain with me. I decided I wanted to keep driving, so I turned up the Third Eye Blind CD and headed back towards Ryan Tapp’s place. I’d been visiting it regularly for the past three years.

When my headlights hit him, he was sitting on a stump trying to put a guitar back together. It didn’t look like it was going to work.

“Hey man,” I said. “I talked to your Dad the other day. Your sister’s still thinking about making that documentary, she’s just got some money shit to sort out.”

He smiled. “Really?”

“Yeah, apparently she’s doing really good. She misses you.”

He nodded. “I’ve always believed the universe has a way of fixing itself, you know? Like when I died so many people thought that was the end, right? But it’s not. It was just the beginning.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Exactly.”

“Who are those girls?” he asked.

I was embarrassed. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be driving them around, but they’d all come to me in crisis. I didn’t know how to kick them out, and really I didn’t want to. 

“They just told me about some stuff that happened to them, so now I’m protecting them,” I said.

Ryan made a face. “Protecting them how? Like physically?”

“No, I’m just keeping an eye on all of them. I’ve got people who report back to me. There’s 28 of them in total, but these are the only three I’ve been seen in public with. All the other 25 are anonymous.”

He nodded. “That seems smart. So what happened to them?”

I took a deep breath. This happens to me sometimes, people ask me the right question and I just gush forth with way too much information for them to handle. I chose a few choice anecdotes to share with him, describing what some men in the Kootenays had done to these three women while they were underage.

Ryan blinked at me. “Holy shit.”

Then I realized: no, I told him too much. He stood up from his stump and started pacing around his scorched trailer. There were still some embers burning, and now they were starting to light up. He punched his fist against his leg, he shook his head and blinked away hot, crazy tears.

“I want to crucify those motherfuckers,” he said. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

The Kootenay Goon

[delvalentine]

“what are you going to fucking do, outshoot them? are you insane?” Yes. I’ve been trained since I was a teen. And not just ‘shoot a box and call it a day’. My family is a mix of military/police. I have been trained by swat and spec ops. I’ve even been trained in full auto weapons. I’ve also been trained in medical treatment as well. Yes, I will most assuredly outshoot whatever threat you want to send my way. At the end of the day, the cops aren’t there to protect you, only you can do that.

this is the least funny joke i’ve ever received.

ok navy seal your bravery is so heroic congratulations on your anonymity i wish we could all celebrate you . see you at the victims’ memorials because too bad they couldn’t defend themselves like you can. if only they had guns to outshoot the man who illegally acquired weaponry. especially the RCMP officer who was killed! or the students in school shootings! we should train everybody in defence when they’re teens so they can be like you instead of working towards a society where that isn’t needed. we should never protect others or consider them because Fuck other people! we should also always have our guns on our person because who knows if the other person with the gun on their person is bad ?! (sarcasm.) thanks for protecting the peace though!!! we love your respect for the deceased ! we love how your only response to my rally for increased protection against gun violence is antagonism yes go OFF!

also? don’t bother responding. spend your time typing paying respects to the dead instead.

[saybees]

Have I mentioned I hate living here?

Yesterday we took Oscar for a walk and of course brought our cattle prod with. We first went down toward the highway and down toward the main part of town, which is usually pretty quiet, but there are two different people down there with pairs of dogs that are often loose. We spotted one of the dogs from a distance and turned around and went the other way.

We walked down the street we live off of and as we went by the one lady's house we saw her dog on the opposite side of the street that he usually is and he started charging toward us and our first reaction is that he must be loose. Jon braced himself with the cattle prod while standing in the middle of the street and I started backing up and going back the way we had come. The dog then hit the end of a rope. The guy that lives across from this lady had tied the dog up in his yard because that dog always wants to say hi to his dog so he just pulls at the end of his rope and barks so the dude just decided to bring it over to his place. It scared the piss out of me and Jon, but nobody got hurt and everything was fine. Jon was never once anywhere near the dog and he was in the street the whole time.

Jon stopped and talked to the guy for a little bit and they just chatted about work and I walked Oscar home. Later that morning Jon got a call from the RCMP and the lady that owns the dog claimed that Jon had come onto her property and zapped her dog with the cattle prod, both of which is untrue. Jon explained to them what actually happened and they told him that was fine. Jon was really upset about it all so this morning we went down to the lady's place to try to talk to them regarding the situation and just clear up what happened. She went straight into telling us to get the fuck off her property and calling Jon a psychopath and a shit disturber and she was gonna call the cops. She slammed the door in our faces and we went home.

Then we took Oscar for a walk. When we went by their house the one lady came outside and took photos of us on her phone of us just walking down the street. Then a half hour later Jon gets another call from the RCMP and apparently she was claiming that he had come to her house to harass her. All Jon did was knock on the door and ask to have a discussion. He wasn't angry or anything and he wasn't rude and she told the cops he was harassing her. Then she told them that we were walking back and forth in front of their house. All we did was take our dog for a walk. We walked by their house once and then when we went back the other way we had gone across the block and down the next street over. Jon explained what had actually happened, again, and the cop literally told him that he was well within his rights to walk his dog and carry protection since there is no animal control in the town. The RCMP officer literally told him that it is okay that we take a cattle prod with us when we go for walks to protect ourselves from off leash dogs. He told Jon that he did not break any laws and he was "well within" his rights.

The officer said he would call her back and follow up. Jon wants to talk to them and clear this whole thing up, but she won't give him the chance and keeps twisting everything and lying and it's just a shit show. We have done nothing wrong and never had a problem with these people before and suddenly they are making all kinds of false accusations against Jon (and not me even though I have literally been with him when all of this has happened). The officer told him to just try to avoid them for now and try to talk to them again in a few weeks once they cool down. Jon is thinking of going to the RM and telling them they need to deal with their animal control problem because that's the whole reason any of this is happening and they have been just blatantly not doing anything about the issue.

I am so ready to move far away from this place and these horrible people.

[seat-safety-switch]

This one’s just for people who are directly in front of me in traffic. Behind me, or off to the side? Maybe take a walk around the block, spend time with your loved ones, get started on that novel you always thought you had inside you all this time. I’ll get to you later.

Hey. We must like the same roads, because we’re occupying them all the time. You must have great taste. Thing is, you’re going a little slow. The accelerator pedal was put there by our ancestors so that you didn’t have to take all fucking day to drive down a highway. Modern cars are remarkably stable and make 1960s race cars look like ill-handling Power Wheels. That’s why you bought the bigger engine option, wasn’t it? Great. Yeah, just push that little pedal on the right a little further down.

I know it makes a big scary noise. That’s horsepower. Give it a few seconds to percolate in the ol’ hindbrain. Feels good, right? Yeah. Why don’t you see how fast those RCMP cruisers can really go? They’ll never catch you. You’re in a Highlander - no criminals can possibly drive one of those.

While we’re on the subject, why do you have your foglights on all the time? It is a clear and beautiful day and you clearly aren’t needing to have those giant deer-blinders turned on. Hell, half the time you guys don’t have your actual headlights on. This is ridiculous. Just reach down there - Jesus Christ, feel with your fingers, don’t look at the goddamn dashboard while you’re going a hundred ten! And turn it off. Yep. Great. Now I don’t have to ram you off the road and make you stare into an arc welder for an hour while I work diligently to seal you inside your shattered car.

I’m glad we had this little talk. This kind of interaction with the neighbourhood is exactly what is needed to mitigate the rolling anger-management problem I call my twincharged carbon-fibre Asüna GT. In fact, my lawyer advises me that community outreach such as this makes me “more relatable” to a jury and, eventually, a parole board.

[justsomeantifas]

Canada doesn’t interfere much in the world, it doesn’t elect crazy nationalists, it doesn’t threaten to deport people. It champions multiculturalism and tolerance. Canada is exceptional. It has its problems like all places, but when the world was on fire in 2016, we were fine. We still have systemic issues and need to deal with it, obviously. Me stating that Canada has many good qualities compared to similar nations =/= there isn’t an issue w/ racism towards aboriginals, etc.

There is so much to unpack here.

“Canada doesn’t interfere much in the world”

Except when it’s selling weapons to repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia. Or when it’s overthrowing democracies in countries like Haiti and Honduras for its own benefit. Or when Canadian-owned companies are wreaking havoc in Latin America by trampling over indigenous rights there (because doing that in Canada isn’t enough for them).

Canada’s abysmal record as an arms dealer

Former Liberal cabinet minister calls for end to Canadian arms sales to Saudi Arabia

Canada admits in court that the armored vehicles it’s selling to Saudi Arabia could be used in the fighting in Yemen

Canada Helped Overthrow Haitian Democracy

Canadian foreign policy sees Latin America as a playground for its most voracious corporations.

Human rights violations at Canadian gold miners’ operations abroad have become harder to ignore, but that’s a strange thing to celebrate

Canadian mining and petroleum companies rank among the most world’s most abusive and destructive.

Left nationalism was always a mirage. Canada is a settler-colonial state with a subjugated indigenous population. The old nationalist narrative is insufficient to deal with an imperialist country that exploits the Global South and participates in military adventurism abroad under NATO and the United Nations.[…]

Toronto-based Barrick Gold is both the world’s largest gold mining company — and its most abusive. In 2011, Human Rights Watch published a report that alleged that Barrick’s security at Papua New Guinea mines committed gang rapes and other violent assaults. In 2015, the company ended up compensating eleven women for the attacks. New rape allegations emerged later that year.

Barrick’s founder and chairman Peter Munk shrugged off his company’s liability, saying, “Gang rape is a cultural habit. Of course, you can’t say that because it’s politically incorrect. It’s outrageous. We have to pretend that everyone’s the same and cultures don’t matter. Unfortunately, it’s not that way.”

Barrick flouts indigenous rights in Latin America, profits from unsafe working conditions from Peru to Russia, and wreaks major environmental damage. Just last month, a Tanzanian inquiry heard that police killed sixty-five people and injured 270 others in the area around Barrick’s North Mara gold mine.Barrick isn’t the only bad apple. Vancouver-based Nevsun Resources was recently sued for allegedly using forced labor in its gold mine in Eritrea. The brutal dictatorship that condoned the practice holds a 40 percent stake in the mine.

Canada Is Not Honduras’ Friend: Coups, Repression and Profits

Historically, the United States has played a very negative role in supporting coups and military regimes and overthrowing governments across the Americas, and some listeners would be very familiar with that story. What people are less familiar with is with the role that Canada plays.

Whereas in the past I would say that Canada often quietly acquiesced to the interventionist role the U.S. has played in the Americas, with the Honduras coup in 2009, Canada played an explicit, front seat role in both legitimizing the coup and then politically and economically supporting the post coup regimes in power since then. As I said, it is a very repressive regime in power in Honduras, profoundly undemocratic, operating with high levels of repression, corruption and impunity.

“It doesn’t elect crazy nationalists”

Except we already elected Stephen Harper three fucking times.

With Anti-Muslim Campaign, Canada Has Its Trump Moment

Veiled Attack: Muslim-bashing is an effective campaign tactic

Goodbye, Harper. Good riddance.

Can Canadian politics get much more warped than what Harper pulled during the 2015 election? Sucking toes for votes with a crack-smoking mayor while touting family values. Trying to drive a wedge between majority and minority Canadians by exploiting the politics of bigotry over issues like the niqab — despite the court rulings against the Conservative position. Vowing to set up a rat line to expose “barbaric practices”, using the unforgettable sales team of Kellie Leitch and Chris Alexander.

Stephen Harper was Donald Trump before Trump was Trump, right down to the bigotry, fear-mongering, divisiveness, scapegoating, and profound anti-democratic impulses that had Canada’s entire parliamentary structure tottering, according to experts like Peter Milliken and Robert Marleau.

Canada’s Conservatives vow to create ‘barbaric cultural practices’ hotline

White people don’t have to worry about Canada’s new “report your neighbor” hotline

Also, remember when Stephen Harper decided to use the term “old stock Canadian” in public in the year 2015?? In spite of the fact that that word has some seriously shitty racial connotations attached to it?? And he used that word to justify why he thinks refugees aren’t entitled to univeral healthcare in Canada???

VIDEO: Um, what exactly IS an “old stock Canadian,” Stephen Harper?

“It doesn’t threaten to deport people”

No, we just arrest refugees then detain them indefinitely, and then treat them so poorly when they’re in detention that many of them wind up dying. We also scam our migrant workers and treat them like garbage and then send them packing when we don’t need them anymore.

Canada Border Services Agency must change way it treats migrants: Editorial

Fifteen people have died while in the custody of Canada Border Services Agency since 2000 and in most cases no one knows why. The service needs to be held accountable for the thousands of migrants it detains each year

These borders kill: Canada’s lethal immigration system

Migrants are the only population in Canada that can be administratively detained for long periods of time, or indefinitely, without being charged or convicted of any crime. There were 7,300 people detained in 2013, the most recent data made available by the government.

The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act gives the CBSA broad powers to detain migrants if they believe they are a flight risk, a danger to public safety, inadmissible to Canada on security grounds, or inadequately identified. The vast majority, 94.2 per cent, are detained on grounds other than posing a security threat.

Since 2012, the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act has “protected” the immigration system by imposing mandatory detention for all migrants designated as “irregular arrivals,” including those as young as 16.  

[…]

In Canada, migrants may be detained indefinitely – unlike in the United States, for example, which imposes a 90-day limit on immigration detention. Out of 585 people in immigration detention in November 2013, 60 had been held for over a year. Some have been jailed for more than 10 years, trapped in the carceral limbo of undeportability.

Incarcerating migrants is inhumane: Goar

Guatemalan workers allegedly swindled out of work permits now face deportation: Migrant workers say they were paid as little as $300 for working 85 hours a week

“It feels like the government just sells you out to a white man.” 

21 arrested for illegally crossing border in Manitoba: RCMP 

An inexcusable travesty: Canada sent a Syrian minor to solitary confinement

“When the world was on fire in 2016, we were fine”

Choosing to remain willfully ignorant wrt Canadian politics and history doesn’t mean we were “fine.” It just means people were purposefully ignorant in favour of promoting a narrative that’s not true.

“Canada is exceptional”

[livefromhouseatlantic]

Chain Breaking, pt 5

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

Same quote as last time, same ideas, hopefully little to no repetition. I just wanted to chop that entry before it became a fucking novel.

Anyway. This feeling of fragmented thinking is not new. It has existed in some form or another for at least eight years now, and could possibly be extended further back, though I'm reluctant to do so because hindsight could colour my thinking. I can clearly recall instances in 2010 (that was my first year at university and also my first living on my own away from home) where I had felt/thought things that I've previously described, such as "no one wants to talk to you, don't introduce yourself" or "don't speak, you'd be intruding on that conversation" and "don't go out to the party tonight, no one wants you there anyway". The exact sense of fragmentation (if you will) has evolved over the years. I used to just believe those thoughts/feelings, but would still want to go out to the party, for instance. This would just make me feel lonely. The most specific example I can think of in tend of fragmentation, however, is more extreme: in 2010/11, I first really struggled with suicidal ideation and impulses. I had thought about it prior to that, and I recall saying honestly in 2010 that I had never really planned much after high school, because I wasn't sure I would still be alive. As mentioned above, however, I am reluctant to look too far back to say for sure "yes. It was here, in 200-whatever, that I first thought about killing myself" because I can't really say for sure when that would have been. Might've been 2006, when I was in grade ten? Maybe earlier? I dunno. Can't say for sure and I'm reluctant to distort my perception of my past with thinking that I have now.

Anyway. Suicide. From late 2010 until about February/March I lost something like fifty pounds. I had more or less stopped eating. I think I ate once every other day, possibly more, possibly less. As near as I can tell, a lot of the problems I've had with my digestion started then, or around that time. Some of the symptoms that I've complained about and displayed that doctors have characterized as the early stages of a stomach ulcer began around then. So, frequent and intense stomach pains, a feeling of acute, sharp pressure in my guts. Problems with bowel movements. Etc. I stopped eating not to lose weight, but because I wanted to die. In times of extreme stress since then, I have adopted similar behaviors (though not always fort the same reason). My appetite more or less goes away. I know others, like my mom, who have the opposite impulse - they eat their feelings. Not so for me.

I went further than that. In Ottawa, there are a few bridges that link it to neighboring Gatineau in Quebec. I fixated on the Chaudière crossing bridge in Ottawa. It's the one beside the National War Museum. I don't actually know why I picked that one, there were ones closer to where I was living, but that was the one for me. It spans the Ottawa bridge and there are rocks. My plan was to jump. I would head out there two to three times a week at my worst and just spend an hour or two looking down at the water. Visualizing it. I wrote a note. I've kept it, though I don't often look at it anymore.

I mentioned fragmentation earlier - so there's "the guy upstairs", which is the term that I usually use to characterize my fears, doubts, and more than likely my dislike of myself. This impulse can probably be characterised as a different guy. Back then, the idea was something like "well, everything is falling apart around you, you're out of control, you're failing out of university, you are a disappointment to everyone who loves you and will never have a better shot at a decent future. Might as well head for the exit now." It eventually receded, partly thanks to my seeking therapy and medical help. My other major struggle with this kind of thinking was in 2017. At that time, my old student debts (which I'd never paid, talk about self sabotage) finally caught up to me in the form of a court summons, and I'm the same week, I failed out of the Applicant Testing Services (required for policing) as well as had my separate application to the RCMP formally deferred. This was one week in August. Prior to that, I'd already been struggling with the idea of killing myself - It presented itself back around February of that year. What bothered me about the line of thinking (you know, apart from the obvious anyway) was that no matter what I said or did, the idea would present itself in different forms. For example, at the worst of my "breakdown", I was struggling with insomnia. I was getting two, maybe three uninterrupted hours of sleep a night, and getting more over the course of the night, but frequently interrupted due to vivid nightmares. One impulse went something like "am I still dreaming? What if I am and I have to hurt myself to wake up?". That was the most disturbing impulse, I think. I felt as though I might be losing my grip on reality. The other impulses were much more... I don't want to say mundane, but they went along the lines of "you've failed. Time to quit." Or "you're not going to feel any better, it's time to end this." Or "you're not going to be able to turn all this negative emotion off on your own - but hey, there's one way to fix it for sure!" I did not do any of these things. I went to therapy instead and learned about CBT. That helped, tremendously. I've referred to "the horror show" or "the cage match in my head" in earlier posts, and I won't lie - I do still feel the impulse to end my life, particularly on very bad days where I can't stop the horror show. It's generally a feeling of "hey, there is a way to turn it off, you've just gotta turn yourself off. Go ahead." But, thankfully, that's a pretty easy one to brush aside. That isn't the answer. I have no plans to do that. I've already taken steps to get back with a therapist and also to see a psychiatrist, so I plan on fighting. If there's gonna be a cage match, after all, I might as well participate.

[finsterhunde]

birth father updates:

To make things even more worse. On top of me fucking simp money giving money and having no fgucking money

I know me and my brother were talking about how he was planning to move back there. I mentioned that at some point during my “fucking hate christmas” psychosis spiral on here. But uh, more detailed information. Nope, he's not going all the way there to where they are. He will actually be closer to ME. Absolutely fucking horrific. I am at least comforted by the fact that the place he’s moving to isn’t that close to where I am, and I’m confident in the fact that he does not know where I actually live. But the point is this east coast predator trash is deciding to stink up the west coast again. Fucking bastard.

Better news: he got his drivers license revoked (finally) He was always extremely dangerous on the road and I guess after he assaulted a police officer they finally decided to revoke his white military man privledges of (relative) legal immunity. So he won’t be driving. He relies on the woman who’s only with him for presumably free drugs now to do that. or whatever. I have no clue if he groomed her or if she’s there for the drugs or what. She is like, significantly younger than him because of course. She does not seem like an intelligent person. Then again neither does my mom if you think about it. Manipulating mentally ill/mentally disabled people is his whole fucking game. But she feels less of a victim than my mom does so I’m guessing she’s in it for the free drugs and shit. She tried to groom me and my brother when the alimony thing was starting so *gestures in a mentally ill way*

He’s saying on social media about how the reason he draft dodged was so that “his kids wouldn’t have to grow up without a father.” Which is fucking hilarious because I fucking wish you got shot to death and I never fucking saw you in my entire life and my mom banged some hot electrician or something. Because you are trash and fuck you. Your existence in my life ruined everything. Fuck you. You draft dodged because you were a lazy fucking coward. You faked a medical injury and then constantly overdosed on heroin and opioids and shit

He’s also selling all his shit because he’s in the middle of a manic deranged court case that he cannot win. Like when he made my mom bankrupt trying to win back custody of my half brother which didn’t work for obvious fucking reasons. This time he’s trying to make the court side with him after he fucking assaulted an RCMP officer. (yes he is still going on about this)

And he’s begging for money on the internet and didn’t get any and he’s saying about how he wishes he could (buy himself a bunch of shit) oh and also! “Buy gifts for his kids and pay for them to go to school” Bitch what? You have never fucking spent money on us for any fucking reason. Don’t lie. Only money we ever saw from you was after the fucking alimony thing because it was child support and shit.

So now I am just extremely pissed off like on top of everything fucking else. God I am so fucking mad. Why can’t he just die already. I hope when he tries to move he gets the fucking covid.

If my mom finds out he’s going to be less than a couple days’ drive away from me she’s going to fucking flip out.

there’s the possibility that he won’t be able to afford the move but he’s a fucking parasite who always manages to do shit he wants for some fucking reason so just my luck he’ll find a way.

these fucking bastards should stay on their filthy east coast where they belong.

[timhandelman]

10% celery

It’s hard sometimes to understand the motivations of people. Is behavior all social? Genetics? both? Both.

My alarm gets me up at 6am (although I always wake up before it goes off). Grab a coffee, make my lunch (2 hard boiled eggs, veggies, a wrap of some sort, and an apple), fill my water jug (a 3 liter cranberry juice bottle), collect my gear (shovel, pack, rain gear, bear spray, gloves), then strap on my two-way radio.

Breakfast is at 630am, trucks leave at 730am for the block. I like to get all of that done before the throng of planters converge. A few are up earlier, like me. Many appear as breakfast hits the counter (eggs, oatmeal, bacon, fruit....the usual). Some speedwalk across camp with only minutes to spare. One, always one, is running full to collect,stuff, and shove-in as the trucks prepare to depart.

We do a three day shift, then a planter day off. Yesterday, day three, a small silver hatchback burns by the camp shortly before 730.am, yelling something out of the window.

*for context: we are camped on a beautiful lake (Fishpot lake), on the Nazko Indian reservation, 100km north of Quesnel BC.*

That was annoying. Boys cruising for burgers without a Grand bend in sight.

After a few minutes they pull into our camp (we are - 50 planters, 8 staff, and 7 dogs). 4 local guys from the reservation pull in and stop. One guy (the passenger) was hanging out of the window, he was loaded: they all were loaded. Now, I’m no prude, but I know this: one is not up all night until 7am the next morning on booze alone. I’ll go with crack, maybe meth, maybe coke (but that may be out of their price range). This guy, this chemical bag, was wired man. He was professing his demeanor of calmness, while smacking the side of the door. Anywy, it doesn’t take long before his ‘calmess’ to turn into aggression. He feints opening his door: ‘you want to fight me white boy’, he snarls to a planter. The planter (a big dude with missing teeth), steps right up, followed by a ring of planters. I grab a shovel and head towards the passenger side of the car, in case the driver or passengers burst out. I was super freaked out, but felt very protective of the planters. I felt it wise of me to arm myself, hence the shovel. It takes a great deal of self mental configuration to steal yourself for a fight ( I’ve had one fight in my life: Jeff Brulette. Windsor, 1970’s. My grade 7 bully. We stood toe to toe on Sand Point beach while I found the courage to strike. I punched him in the face. He grappled me, exclaiming, I felt that, I felt that. I was grinning from ear to ear. ‘I finally did it’, I remember thinking. He showed up to class the next day with a black eye, proclaiming his brother did it... he never bothered me again. Hi Jeff, fuck you!).

No fight ensued. They spun out, with window guy yelling: ‘I’ll be back tonight to shoot all of you white and black guys!’. Good thing we have an Asian girl on camp, at least one of us won’t be shot:)

The RCMP were called, their tribe leader was informed. He didn’t come back. We spotted their car in a ditch later that night. Doors ajar, windshield smashed.

Seems odd to me, to threaten someone when outnumbered 10 times over, but, well, stupider things have happened in the name of absolutely nothing.

I figure these guys have too much time on their hands. They are bored. Treeplanters, perhaps, represent what they don’t have: jobs, health, confidence, nicer cars.

I once saw a genetic breakdown of the human genome: the percentages that we share with the world around us: apes, dogs, bears etc. Down at the bottom of that list, there at 10%, was celery. We share 10% of the genetic make-up of celery. Yesterday, I saw that number rise.

[kootenaygoon]

So,

My new therapist looked a little bit like Margaret Atwood. 

She was an older woman with an exhausted smile, recovering from a recent surgery. A few light grey hairs were beginning to alight on her otherwise black curls. I’d finally gotten around to signing up for counselling through Black Press’ mental health program, and now I was sitting in her office, which happened to be within sight of the Star building. It seemed like Nelson was getting smaller and smaller each year, like I was running out of people I didn’t already know somehow. 

“You know, I took some pictures of the ferry the other day. It got stuck on shore, beached like a whale, and it delayed everyone for about an hour. I’m pretty sure it’s happened more than once now,” she said.

“I should send you the pictures. I bet that would make an interesting story for the paper. What do you think?”

I gave her a weak smile, and waited for things to start. Instead she launched into some complaints about the parking issues caused by the Stores to Shores project, and apologized repeatedly for the inconvenience, even though I’d walked over during my lunch break. She couldn’t believe the decision-making going on at city hall, that they could greenlight something this disruptive, and she shook her head as the noisy paving work continued below her window. Finally she sat down and pulled out a small spiral notepad. I already felt like this wasn’t working, like she couldn’t be my Dr. Melfi, but I sat there obediently anyway, taking her through my litany of complaints one by one. 

“I feel like I got really cocky while I was in university, when things were going so well, and I really believed I’d successfully solved the puzzle of my depression. I felt like I was never going to be depressed again and I just drowned myself in my social life, and writing and traveling and everything else,” I said.

“But now with Paisley and the dogs, settling into just like a normal, routine life, I guess I’m not really handling that transition really well. I mean, we’re both terrible with money and we don’t really have a social life here or a proper support network and we’re fighting a lot. I’m one of eight kids, you know? So being isolated like this isn’t normal for me.”

“One of eight? And where are you in the pecking order?”

“I’m the oldest.”

She smiled warmly. “Of course you are.”

After we covered my depression history, and my meds, we starting talking about geography. I was very much committed to making Nelson my home, the same way I was steadfastly committed to Paisley, but it was seeming more and more unsustainable everyday. We had published multiple stories about the affordable housing crisis at the Star while meanwhile we were barely making rent and wondering if we should downgrade to a smaller place. Maybe a one-bedroom. This was a town for wealthy retirees, black market cannabis growers and entrepreneurs willing to risk huge amounts of capital. If I wasn’t working as a reporter, I couldn’t see any other legitimate opportunities beyond lifeguarding or delivering pizza. This whole newspaper experience was a dream turned into reality, but I couldn’t make the numbers add up. 

“So why don’t you go somewhere else?”

“Like where?”

“Somewhere new?”

I sighed. “That’s been my solution in the past. I never let myself get established, I’m always bouncing off to Whitehorse or Nova Scotia or wherever and I’m jettisoning friends like crazy and I think that’s part of the problem why I’m so lonely and fucked up. This is supposed to be our refuge, our home, the place where we can finally settle down and just live.”

“And you’re questioning that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe, yeah.”

That night I fell asleep in front of the TV drunk, partway through an episode of The Wire. I’d been re-watching from the start, fixating particularly on Omar’s storyline. He was a gay street robber who wielded a shotgun and was willing to give false testimony to implicate a drug trafficker. The scene where he faces off with the opposing lawyer in court was my favourite. I loved how Omar was unapologetically himself, existing outside the law, but still lived by a very specific moral code. President Obama called Omar his favourite character, despite his lawless ways. For me, it was a hetero man crush in full bloom, but it still didn’t touch what I felt for the show’s creator David Simon. In creating characters like Omar, and depicting Baltimore with such raw honesty, he’d deeply impacted my worldview. I wanted nothing more than to tell stories like him, to touch lives like him, to tell the truth in ways it’s not normally told. 

When I blinked open my eyes, I was standing on the sidewalk across from the Nelson Courthouse. I squinted into the afternoon sunlight, lifting one hand to shade my face. A police siren squawked beside me, and I jumped, watching as Nate Holt climbed from his cruiser and reached for his sidearm. He was gesturing to his partner, pointing in the direction of the credit union. Inside I could see a dark figure darting past the windows. Andrew Stevenson. I reached down for my camera, but it wasn’t there. 

“You don’t need your camera, Will. You just need to watch,” Cass said, appearing beside me. “When the time comes, you’ll remember what you need to remember.”

I turned to her. “But I need a picture for the Star.”

“Some stories aren’t for the newspaper. You have to think bigger than that.”

Behind her Andrew Stevenson came banging out of the bank’s side-door, directly below a blue-faced man with loonies for eyes. The barrel of his shotgun was sticking upright out of his backpack, wagging like a chastising finger as he jumped on to his bike and pedalled frantically down hill. I looked over at Nate, who was clambering back into his car, while Paul Burkart appeared at an absolute sprint, pounding across the pavement and hurtling after the bank robber at full tilt. 

Shit, I thought. Paul can run. 

Suddenly I was in Cass’ passenger seat as she rumbled out towards the highway in a jacked up truck. She was the one who had made all of this possible, the one who had lured me to the Kootenays. Everything I’d done, everything I’d experienced, she’d already been there and done that. I could tell she missed it, the rush of journalism, and she still haunted my email inbox to talk about potential stories and remind me of upcoming events. Like a reformed junkie still craving a whiff. As she drove, the landscape rushing by behind her began to take flame. Raging fires swept across my viewscape as the sky darkened. This was starting to feel like a real emergency.

“I already covered this story.”

Cass laughed. “You think just because you cover one forest fire, then that’s it? What difference does that make? What’s the point of that?”

“People need to feel safe.”

“But it’s the people themselves that are causing the fires with climate disruption, just like Naomi Klein said. We need to be thinking about our complicity, Will. It’s not enough to tell people something happened, you have to tell them why it happened.”

“Why does anything happen, though? I don’t believe in God anymore.”

“And I never believed in God. You know that.”

When we were in university, Cass was notorious for being uncooperative and combative both with her subjects and the other staff at the Martlet. She was absurdly blunt but hyper-perceptive, so she was good at offending people and telling the truth. She was one of my first journalism role models, and I wanted to be more like her. I wanted to be fearless in blurting out uncomfortable questions and then exploring them with my prose, purposely crossing lines and challenging taboos. Like a journalist version of Omar.

Cass batted her blinker and turned left off the highway, leading us down a winding hill towards the Columbia River. Ahead of her I could see RCMP cars blockading the bridge. The fires cast black silhouettes across the concrete as the cops waited for the next moment to happen. Cass parked on a switch-back overlooking the bridge, leaning over to share in my view. Then she sat back and lit a joint, the glow bathing her face for a moment. I remembered that short time, years ago, when we were a thing. It had been a poor idea and hadn’t ended well, but I didn’t regret it.

“I thought you didn’t smoke pot.”

She took a long drag, then exhaled luxuriously. The smoke lingered around the truck’s cabin, enveloping me. “This is your dream. You want some?”

I took the joint. I watched it smoulder for a moment. “Sometimes this is how I feel, you know? Like my life’s on fire and everyone’s all calm about it. Nobody knows, nobody can see.”

“That’s melodramatic.”

I shrugged. “I’m a melodramatic dude.”

The Kootenay Goon