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Capital of Nasty Vol. 07 Issue 03
Capital of Nasty Electronic Magazine
Volume VII, Issue 3, AD MMII
Monday, February 11, 2002
ISSN 1482-0471
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<deadmike> how can i argue? an unlubed goat is a hateful thing
<deadmike> godamit...my goat lubrication cream ran
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Captain America: I heard they might bomb the Super Bowl, "they"
being "the mad bombers of the world." I wouldn't really want that to
happen, but it's fun to think about.
Goatboy: Suddenly the world's IQ average would jump up.
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1. Editorial
2. What the Media Aren't Telling You about the War on Terrorism
3. Federal Reserve Fan-Fiction
4. Fish-processing in Alaska
5. Livin' in by Regent Park and how to Dodge Bullets
-------------------------------------------
This week's Golden Testicle award:
http://www.modernhumorist.com/mh/0105/guide/index.fm
Welcome to America!
-------------------------------------------
1. Editorial
By Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro
So you got yourself a brand new computer and you're thinking "yay! I
can finally surf porn with style!"
Or perhaps you're looking at your old one, unsure what to do. I
mean, some of us, grow a certain degree of affection to our old
clunker. Sure, it can't run the latest operating system, it slow
and incredibly ugly when compared to some of the things out there.
Books, as they grow older, develop a certain degree of fascination.
Old computers turn yellow and look Palaeozoic. But to some of us,
it's like your first car.
We look back, almost with a nostalgic look, at the machine that was
there, with us in the middle of the night, allowing us to write our
school essays. Or sigh at the days of the many hours passed
downloading off of BBS at 2400 BPS. Of writing and reading
intelligent content in the message forums. Ah, the by-gone era of
quality electronic content.
I think I can safely say so for many of us (especially the porn
bit).
When it comes to throwing old computers out, I can't bring myself to
it. I have difficulty throwing stuff out, period. Heck, if you
search between the various stacks of paper neatly put on the
bookshelves, chances are you'll find old papers and documents from
1994. Some even have BBS scribbles all over them, others IRC
servers from around the world, or the address of now deceased and
forgotten Archie sites.
Now a day, some people seem to simply take their old machine and
throw it out, together with the rest of their garbage, waiting for
it to be picked up in the morning.
I've rescued countless animals I've found out in the cold or in the
rain. Every pet I've had or have is some animal I found on the
street in pitiful conditions. I'm a sucker for that and my home has
been the nursing ground for many little buggers of nature I've
collected. Not all made it, but at least they got to spend their
remaining time in better conditions.
It was a cold and rainy night, as I was heading back towards the car
after a party. But instead of finding another cat, I saw the
unmistakable outline of a computer case.
I approached the site of such abandon and examined what I had found.
It looked old, a 286, I assumed. It always amazes me to see stuff
like this. Yes, the machine is old, but I remember a time when my
486 cost me $3000. You'd never even think of throwing it out.
Finding broken floppies or PC cards on the side of the road was a
sight you never deemed possible. And yet, here we are, in a new
century, with computers nothing more than a commodity that can
easily be tossed out when something better comes around to replace
it.
So I did what any hardcore geek would do. Picked up the case, which
weighted what seemed over a ton, hauled it over the car and gave it
a home. I assumed that the rain had done some good damage to it, so
at most, I may be able to use some of the parts that were still
good.
That 486 has been the very last computer I ever bought. After that,
I simply recycle whatever friends toss my way. And old P133 that is
pretty useless to you, turns into a powerful Linux server for me.
When you cannot afford the latest machine, you use a bunch of old
ones to do the job of one.
Once home, I plugged it in, hooked a keyboard and monitor and turned
it on. Nothing happened. It was fried. So I left it like that
and went on to other things. When I returned that night, I was
greeted by the blue warmth of the monitor, the machine having turned
itself on, greeting me with Windows 3.11.
It turned out to be a 386DX with 4 MB of RAM and a decently sized
hardware. At the time, an IBM no less, it must've cost a fortune.
I started fiddling around, checking out what kind of programmes it
had and something occurred to me.
When you're done with your chequebook, do you just leave it outside
for everyone to see? What about legal documents? Your phone bill?
I don't think so. And yet, this was exactly what these people had
done.
Every document that was every written on that computer was still on
the hard drive. I knew where they were from, their cultural
background, that they rent the basement and for how much. I
discovered where the father of the house worked at and what he did.
The experience their daughter had written on her resume. I
discovered how much money they still had to pay back to the bank.
And at which interest.
And that's from only reading a small percentage of the files
present.
Let this be a lesson to you. Before you toss out your old computer,
make sure you wipe it clean of all data. Hit the hard drive with a
hammer, if you're unsure you did a good job. Play hockey with it,
just to be double sure.
Or, you can just donate the machine to me.
-------------------------------------------
2. What the Media Aren't Telling You about the War on Terrorism
By Konrad the Bold
The media coverage of America's war on terrorism has been so
positive that it conceals the true state of affairs. The fighting in
Afghanistan has been portrayed as the whole of the war - after all,
it's a lot easier to report on real fighting in a concrete location
than on a murky concept like a shadowy, loosely-bound network of
terrorists located over the world. Since the war in Afghanistan has
been a great success and is nearly over we are lead to believe that
the same is true for the war against terrorism as a whole. In fact,
the real war has mostly slipped from public consciousness. Who
remembers that the defeat of the taleban was not even a goal of the
American government until the taleban refused to extradite Bin
Laden? The taleban's defeat is now being held up as the final
victory. Amid stories of unveiled women and smiling girls going to
schools that were once off-limits to them, journalists report
stories that let us know the terrorists have learned their lesson
and world is safe once more.
Let's recall why this all started: the Americans needed to destroy
Al-Qa'ida. Since Al-Qa'ida had its senior leaders operating out of
Afghanistan, under the protection of the taleban, the plan was to go
into Afghanistan and take them out. Somewhere along the way we
declared victory over the taleban and forgot about the original
plan. What happened to Al-Qa'ida's leadership? Are they still hiding
in Afghanistan, have they migrated to Pakistan, do we even know who
they are? Although the conflict resulted in a major military victory
it seems the majority of the leadership simply left for another
sanctuary.
The Bush administration keeps repeating that although the war is
going well it will take years to see concrete results. The reason
for their cautionary tone is that the real war is not taking place
in Afghanistan. The real war is a war to destroy Al-Qa'ida's support
and sanctuaries all over the world. That means arresting operatives
in the United States, collaborating with friendly governments to
help locate terrorist cells in their countries, pressuring neutral
or unfriendly governments to deny sanctuary to terrorists, and
disrupting Al-Qa'ida's funding. This war will be a slow, long-term
process that involves intelligence-gathering, coalition-building,
political negotiation and the enactment of new laws. This process
will sometimes have to be secretive, as in the case of intelligence
gathering. Other times, it will depend on the willingness of other
governments to pass laws that will make it more difficult for Al-
Qa'ida to shift money between its cells. This is the war that's not
making the nightly news for the simple reason that's it not possible
to turn it into a five-minute story with nice visuals.
Of all these challenges the most pressing is what to do about
Pakistan. It seems certain that much of Al-Qa'ida's Afghanistan
operations have moved there, yet any outright hostility towards
Pakistan would cause America to lose support from its coalition
partners.
Like most countries in the Middle East, Pakistan's government
remains in power by balancing the interests of its liberal and
fundamentalist supporters. Pakistan's fundamentalists - and there
are quite a lot of them - happen to have a strong affinity for both
the Taleban and Al-Qa'ida. Despite the Pakistani president's pro-
western rhetoric, he has done little to actually root out terrorists
because he knows doing so would piss off his more extremist
supporters and loosen his already fragile grip on the country. Even
if he did want to crack down on Al-Qa'ida network within the
country, the many Al-Qa'ida sympathizers in the government could
easily make any crackdown ineffective. As it stands, most of what
used to be Al-Qa'ida's network in Afghanistan seems to be alive and
well in Pakistan. Washington has a major problem: it can't simply
ignore the fact that Pakistan is sheltering its enemies, yet it
knows that applying any more pressure would upset the balance
between Pakistan's liberals and fundamentalists that keeps its
American-friendly government in power.
As the case of Pakistan shows, America's war against terrorism does
not have simple solutions, and sometimes its many goal interfere
with each other. Because having the support of the coalition is
indispensable, Washington cannot simply invade Pakistan, even if it
had the resources. At the same time it must deny Al-Qa'ida that
sanctuary. Any solution to this problem, like most future progress
in the war, will be delicate and time-consuming.
Even inside Afghanistan America's problems are not over. When the
Taleban abandoned the cities ahead of the invading Northern
Alliance, the media portrayed it as a rout. In contrast with the
press' optimistic proclamations, the Taleban were neither disarmed
nor defeated. Rather than fight against overwhelming odds they made
the only sensible choice: they retreated to fight a guerrilla war.
The majority of Taleban soldiers were never captured but simply
blended in with the local population. The feuding factions that make
up the Northern Alliance don't care about America's problems with
terrorism; its warlords will make no effort to hunt down Taleban
soldiers unless it furthers their own interests. Once American
soldiers leave it's likely that both the Taleban and Al-Qa'ida will
attempt to regain influence by making deals with Northern Alliance
commanders.
The war has just begun, yet enthusiasm and support for it may
quickly decline once the videos of victorious soldiers stop coming
in. The real test will come over the next few years as Americans
will keep paying the price in taxes, reduced civil rights and
political favours for help from countries like Russia and Israel.
The era of quick and decisive victories in the war on terrorism has
ended with Afghanistan.
---
Konrad the Bold is CoN's man-in-Afghanistan. He can be reached by
attaching a note to a brick and throwing it through his window.
-------------------------------------------
3. Federal Reserve Fan-Fiction: The Day the World Came Crashing
Down
By Konrad the Bold
I write fan-fiction.
In case you're not familiar with the term, fan-fiction is fiction
based on a movie or TV series, written by fans. For example, a
trekkie may write a story that takes place in the Star Trek universe
and involves characters and alien races from the series.
I'm a big fan of the Federal Reserve's Annual Reports. These modern
fairy tales tell the story of how our hero, Alan Greenspan, and his
band of sidekicks fight the evil monsters Inflation, Unemployment,
Stagnation and the dreaded Recession. As in any good series, the
good guys usually win but are never quite able to stop the bad guys
from showing up again the next episode.
As a tribute to these great stories I now present to you the world's
first Federal Reserve fan-fiction. Set in the year 2013 it purports
to review the developments of the year before and is entitled The
Federal Reserve's 99th Annual Report.
---
THE FEDERAL RESERVE'S 99th ANNUAL REPORT
Economic and Financial Developments in 2012
The last year has seen the tail end of the largest financial
collapse in the history of the world. In this report I will attempt
to reconstruct the causes of The Fall as they are understood today.
The Fall started out as a currency crisis and ended up destroying
civilization. Although no accurate census data exist, we believe
that at least 80% of the world's population has been wiped out in
the last two years. The collapse of all major financial systems led
in turn to a collapse of social order and civilization. Industries,
governments, nations, all these things no longer exist to any
relevant extent.
The lawyers and politicians were the first to go. As soon as
supermarkets ran out of food the masses turned on their leaders.
Outraged mobs stormed government buildings killed anyone wearing a
tie. The few newspapers that were still functional had front-page
pictures of politicians strung up on lamp posts or hanging out of
office windows, sometimes hanging from their ties, sometimes with
their throats slit and their ties pulled up through their throat and
out their mouths.
Reconstructing these events has been difficult due to the total
anarchy following the collapse of the western world's
infrastructure. What few documents were created during that time
were mostly destroyed in the fighting and fires. Those people that
survived the fighting in the cities burned every shred of paper they
could find in a desperate attempt to stay warm in the brutal winter
that followed.
I have searched the remains of hundreds of burned-out shells of
buildings. Each time I walk up a still escalator I see it as a ruin
of our former civilization, like the remains of an ancient Persian
palace. In the new world, "escalator" is simply another word for
stairs. It takes a concerted effort to remember that these things
once moved on their own, in a time that now seems so distant. The
records others and myself have found have enabled me to give what I
believe is a reasonably accurate portrayal of the events that caused
The Fall.
---
Most surviving economists agree that the spark that set off The Fall
was the withdrawal of Euro bills and coins in 2011. After thousands
of years of using physical currency the people of Europe switched to
purely electronic financial transactions. All transfers of wealth
went directly from bank account to bank account.
It all seemed so simple; it was, after all, simply a logical
progression. Early people bartered for goods, but transporting goods
was difficult and time-consuming so people began using gold as a
currency. Eventually some governments decided that gold was
inconvenient because its value had to be measured by weight and
purity, so they produced gold-backed currency. In the United States
each dollar "represented" some amount of gold that the government
kept in reserve. As long as people had faith that they could redeem
their dollars for gold, those dollars had value. The problem with
gold-backed currency was that the money supply was inflexible. In
order to print more money it was necessary to acquire more gold.
Eventually the United States abandoned the gold standard and the
currency was only backed by faith in the government.
In each of these changes a currency's value moved further from the
goods which it was supposed to represent and became more and more
illusory, yet it was an illusion that worked. As long people
believed that a currency was valuable it was in fact valuable. The
farmer accepted dollars as payment for his wheat and used to those
same dollars to buy clothes from the shopkeeper who used them to buy
bread from the miller who used them to pay the farmer. As long as
the farmers, shopkeepers and millers of the world shared in the
illusion of the currency's value that value became real. The system
worked because people had faith in it.
Sometimes people lost their faith and the system stopped working. In
Germany in the 1930s people lost faith in the government. Since
their currency was not backed by gold, losing faith in the
government meant losing faith in the currency it printed. This lead
to hyperinflation and Germany's currency became virtually worthless.
Despite such problems, nations world-wide eventually turned to paper
currencies without gold backing and these currencies were generally
as stable as the government that printed them.
By the 21st century the vast majority of financial transactions were
performed electronically. Banks with billions and billions of
dollars in assets usually only held several millions in currency. If
transfers between accounts meant that one million dollars had gone
from accounts in bank A to accounts in bank B while one million and
one had gone the other way then only a single dollar bill needed to
be physically transported from one bank to the other. The end result
was that most transactions were simply done by communicating changes
in records to a database rather than a transfer of physical
currency.
In 2011, the European Union decided that it was time to take the
next logical step: purely electronic currency. The experts said it
wasn't a big step at all since most transactions were already
electronic. They said most people wouldn't even notice. The majority
of consumer spending was done by credit and debit cards and even
those sums of money were small compared to the amounts that passed
electronically through banks and stock markets every day. They said
physical currency had made up only a tiny fraction of the money
supply for decades, cash transactions were rare even in tiny rural
communities. And so it was decided to withdraw bills and coins from
circulation. Currency had now become something completely abstract.
In theory it was a brilliant decision. Counterfeiting became
impossible when money was just a record in a computer. Tax fraud
became impossible because all necessary taxes were deducted during
an electronic transfer. In fact, most fraud became impossible
because all money could be traced to its source. Cash can be hidden
away, placed in a safety-deposit box under a false name - even
destroyed. The police have to investigate fraud involving cash and
track down the money. Under the new system there was no need for all
that - when all one's liquid wealth is set by a record in a database
a court can simply change that record. If someone was found guilty
of fraud the proper amount was deducted from their bank account and
returned to the victim.
Then something went wrong. That illusion we all took for granted
started crumbling. Maybe it was simply a programmer's mistake in the
banking software. Maybe it was an intentional attempt by a group of
banks to skim money from the millions of accounts they controlled.
Maybe it was a very crafty "robbery" attempt by a group of hackers.
Whatever caused it, at some point the records held by different
banks began showing inconsistencies. The banks couldn't agree on who
held what amounts and what transfers had occurred. Such
inconsistencies were supposed to be impossible but nevertheless they
were there.
Banks started halting payments and transfers. Sometimes transfers
could not be made because banks disagreed on what amounts were held
where. Emergency meetings were called, different governments drafted
different, usually conflicting, legislation on what the banks were
to do.
If a physical currency was still in wide circulation it would have
been possible to revert to it until the chaos was sorted out. Even
catastrophic, sudden drop in the money supply but would have been
preferable to what happened next. Desperate governments ordered
banks to restitute account-holders and passed laws literally
creating money in millions of accounts. Of course, each bank was in
favour of some other solution, which would maximize its own
holdings. Bank records, already corrupted, became completely
disjoint as individual banks simply changed them at will. It was
like giving every government and bank in the European Union a
license to print money at will; since anybody could simply create
money the currency became worthless.
Although the problem started in Europe its effect immediately spread
throughout the world. Most first-world nations used so little
physical currency that they would have had trouble dealing with a
sudden stop in electronic transactions in the best of times. As it
was, the world's financial systems and economies were so closely
inter-linked that only the most backwards rural areas continued
functioning.
Cities became centres of death. An area the size of a city, as a
closed system, cannot support its population with the basic
necessities of life. To survive, a city must suck in food and fresh
water from the countryside at a tremendous rate. When the monetary
system collapsed this flow stopped. The planet's urban population,
essentially the vast majority of the developed world, was stuck in
death-traps. Very large numbers of people fighting for survival
over very limited resources lead to predictable results. Only the
most ruthless and violent survived. Gangs first pillaged their
cities for food, then turned to murder and cannibalism and
eventually turned on each other. In a drastic reversal of the
demographic trends of the past centuries, more people were left
alive in rural areas than in urban ones. The number of survivors
among city dwellers is negligible. It is safe to assume that anyone
who was in an urban centre once the roads were blocked is now dead.
The countryside didn't fare much better in the long run. It seemed
logical at the time that people would simply start planting crops
and concentrate on survival. It turned out that the average
westerner had no stomach for subsistence farming. Most people did
nothing until their food stock ran out - they simply could not
believe the chaos could last. Raised in the modern world, they were
no more likely to question the certainty of stores stocked with food
than a primitive man would question the certainty of the sun rising
the next day. Farming was a foreign concept - people just refused
to believe they should have to do it. Once the food stocks ran dry
the strong would take food by force from those who had it - that
concept was much more familiar. Instead of turning into a nation of
small-scale farms we turned into a nation of starving communities
and murderous gangs that took what they needed by force.
The only groups that showed any semblance of organization were the
armed gangs. There was certainly no large-scale organized effort to
produce food. The gangs could easily overrun a farming town and
steal what they needed, then move on to the next community. It was
much harder to guard the farms from other gangs while growing crops.
As a result, most farms were simply destroyed. Even the best armed
gangs eventually found there was no more food to steal and most
ended up starving to death. Communities that were able to survive
the winter on subsistence farming still exist in small pockets here
and there, usually in the more remote parts of the country. Unless
the situation is radically different in the rest of the world, and
there is no reason to believe it would be, the most prosperous areas
of the world are what was once called the 3rd world. The people of
most remote and backward parts of the world have been protected by
their isolation.
---
In the end the only conclusion we can come to is that people simply
lost faith in the illusion of money, wealth, ownership. Bit by bit,
these things became abstract and eventually people saw through the
illusion. The disappearance of a physical currency was only the
spark that set it off. People no longer had a physical manifestation
of wealth they could see and feel. A piece of paper is arguably no
more valuable than an electronic record but with the paper there is
no doubt over who possesses it. That small-added uncertainty
suddenly made people see the uncertainty they had been taking for
granted all their lives.
During the Great Depression, the people of the United States lost
faith in the economy. That fact alone had more impact on the country
than any drought, bank failure or stock market collapse. There was
no physical reason the economy had to slow down: mines did not run
out of coal, oil wells did not run dry, farm animals did not stop
breeding. Certainly some economic slowdown was inevitable, but there
was no fundamental reason the economy could not recovery from the
bump. The real downturn came when people stopped believing in the
illusion.
It was people who decided to close down mines, to slow down oil
exploration, to foreclose on farms. Those trains and cars and people
that depended on the coal and the oil and the animals then had fewer
resources. When consumers stopped buying as much, companies could
not afford to pay out as much money in salaries and those lower
salaries meant fewer purchases. Farmers could not afford the
increased price of fuel and tractors and many were forced to sell
their land, leading to mass unemployment. The price of food rose
along with most prices and some companies such as those that refined
oil and built tractors went out of business. This is in turn caused
higher fuel and tractor prices for the farmers. The farmers that had
no jobs because they lost their farms had been producing food before
the crash, but without their farms they were producing nothing.
The same was true for most businesses: the economic downturn led to
mass unemployment all over the country. All those unemployed people
could have been producing: farming, mining coal, building tractors.
If all employers in the country suddenly decided to hire more
employees those added employees would boost productivity. Those same
employees could get wages and become consumers of the products they
turned out. That act would have taken faith in the economy. However
the employers had lost that faith. They believed if they produced
more goods no one would buy them. Because they believed this they
did not hire more, and because they did not hire more there were
fewer people with money and thus less demand for goods. What they
believed became true by virtue of their belief.
For decades economists wondered why there were no more depressions
on the scale of the Great Depression. Now another Great Depression
has come, and with what fury. It was caused by no war, no shortage
of oil, no natural disaster. This is the price mankind has paid for
glimpsing the truth. For a brief moment, we saw through an illusion
- only one of many - and it almost destroyed us.
---
As a kid, Konrad the Bold had nightmares about inflation.
-------------------------------------------
4. Fish-processing in Alaska
By REVSCRJ
Don't do it. It sucks. It REALLY sucks -- I mean there are better
ways to get carpal tunnel than slitting open the bellies of
thousands of salmon a day, believe me.
I was working on the processing line of a cannery where the "sweet
shift" was when you got to sweep the blood and organs off the floor.
Damn it felt good when all you had to do was shuffle around the guts
on the cold cement floor. I got so numb to the presence of entrails
that I used to squeeze the fish hearts to see the squirt-gun effect
of the cold dead blood shooting out of them and think nothing of it.
I once saw a shrinking violet of a girl pick up a handful of
intestines, throw them at a friend and laugh in a giddy-schoolgirl
sort of way. I had fish scales bond to me like I had grown them
myself.
Once I played hacky-sack with the decapitated head of a small salmon
too young to be anything but a throw away. Don't do it. It's not
worth it -- trust me.
You work in a warehouse kept just below freezing for long hours and
get soaked in icy bloody water. One time these HUGE king salmon
came in -- heads bigger than a human's -- so big that they couldn't
be processed by the regular line. A few of us get pulled aside to
process them.
"Process them"... so I'm cutting the head off this one that is so
big another kid has to hold the body while I saw and I hit the
primary bloodline near the back. Suddenly, WHOOSH this fucking gout
of thick black semi-coagulated gore washes out of it all over my
slickers all the way down to my boots. Me and the kid react like
you'd expect: "WHOA! THAT WAS FUCKIN' COOL!!"
Anyway, we get the heads off, the bellies slit and scraped when its
discovered that the heads are too big to fit in the grinder. The
foreman tells me, a girl and this Montana boy to reduce them to a
size that will fit and hands us these huge heavy knives.
At first I try sawing into the skull, as do the other two, when I
realize that it would be a lot easier if I just hack. So I lift the
blade up over my head and start bringing it down with these hard
aggro chops. I use all my strength, just whacking down into the
bone, cartilage, and meat.
Eyes pop, bits fly all helter-skelter. I finish my portion of the
heads and move on to help them finish theirs. By the end of the
process I'd refined the motion into an almost wood chopping rhythm.
I'm totally entranced in it. It's meditative. It's not like I am
thinking about it, or really anything at all, I am simply the action
of the metal passing through the head of the fish and I am
perfecting the movement -- it's totally engrossing.
We finish and I look up to see this girl who had been using the
"sawing" method the whole time and she's got this wide eyed, half
disgusted look on her face. She looks at me, puts a contemptuous
pucker on her mouth and says "You fucking psycho!"
I laugh, not understanding what brought it on, but Hell, I've been
called things so dramatically worse that "psycho" is just funny.
So I head to wash up and take a break and I see myself in the
mirror: bright yellow rain slickers covered head to toe in bits of
meat. Patches of purplish black blood, stains bloody handprint
smears across my chest. My hair is blackish red, my beard has
rivers running through it. There are bits of brain half dried on my
face.
Suddenly I'm out of my body looking at it almost horrified, but
mostly fascinated by how grotesque and unfamiliar it looks. I mean
the meat just don't look right like that! I stand there for a
second shocked and then laugh like a sick dog's bark and heading out
for a smoke, the taste of salt in my mouth like death.
Don't do it. Trust me. It'll change you forever.
---
REVSCRJ is a writer/musician living in Monterey, California.
Constantly on the verge of homelessness, he hopes that you enjoy his
work or else his life has been in vain. Contact REVSCRJ at
revscrj@cloudfactory.org to lodge complaints, notify of lawsuits, or
receive spiritual advice.
-------------------------------------------
5. Livin' in by Regent Park and how to Dodge Bullets
By Rolo
For those who do not know what Regent Park is, allow me to explain.
Regent Park is an area of project housing on the east fringe of
downtown. Meant to be low rent housing, it is forever synonymous
with crack whores, drug dealers and gangs. A forever and infinitely
poor district.
I use to live on the other side of the Don River, in the much more
civil and middle class Riverdale Area. For those of you who watched
the soap opera "Riverdale", this is the real thing. I always
figured I'd never live or have to deal with Regent Park. Now I live
right beside it.
My home, is a good neighbourhood, the Co-op itself is excellent.
Moving in several months ago was a harrowing experience. The first
week I slept with my martial arts weapons and machete in easy reach.
I knew I was initiated and welcomed into the neighbourhood when I
walked right through a drug deal in front of my Co-ops entrance.
A fat wad of cash is exchanged with a baggy, and here I come,
walking right through it with an "excuse me." Less than a week later
I was up late playing Counter-Strike Online when my girlfriend
remarked, "Did you just hear that? That sounded like gunshots."
I barely turned away from my game at hand.
"Hmm. Nah..." Was my only reply.
Back I went to shooting virtual online Counter-Terrorists with my
AK-47. Nummy.
Three-Thirty in the morning, cops are all around the Co-op. Sure
enough, the local drug dealer, who I had walked by only a week
before, was dead. I found the following week hilarious. A
miniature shrine was set up where he was shot.
Flowers and everything littered the area. "We'll Miss you."
plastered all over it. Regent park seemed to weep for the loss of
its outstanding denizens. I inwardly laughed, then restarted the
Safety and Security Committee.
Ah the fun I've had. Its the classical situation, everyone bitches,
yet no one is willing to help. Hey I don't mind. I get some
satisfaction for at least trying. I once attended a meeting for
Community and Police Relations and it was quite remarkable. I was
surrounded by the upper middle class who wanted the poor to be
cleaned up and out of the way.
One of the highlights was that they wanted the poor to stop "public
urination." They even managed to shut up the local Salvation Army
Captain when he remarked that "these crack whores and addicts are
people too." After all, he did freely allow them to use his meeting
room in HIS Salvation Army building. It's ironic, really.
Regent Park is a way of living. Living beside it, I have learned to
have little pity for those who dwell in it. My reasoning? Simply
because they choose to live there. Choice is one of the things we
all have. Some, if not all of the people around me have made
choices that lead them to be in the sump area of Toronto. I'm just
lucky enough to be beside it, not in it.
That drug dealer who impetuously was dealing in the open, got his
ass shot off. That idea makes me smile. Life ain't that bad now.
But if you consider every little decision, being Fated to a life
doesn't seem so true. Life is what we make of it.
The culture down here is alien. It is a counter-culture. Frankly I
wish the went ahead with the plan to bulldoze the area. Put up a
bunch of townhouses, since they seem to be springing up everywhere
in the city. At least it would evenly spread the crack whores and
poor across the city. That way everyone would see it, instead of it
simply swept under the municipal rug.
Besides, it would give the city a nice equal feeling to it. You
cannot eliminate the concept of poor or poor people. They will
exist and survive. It's human nature. It is also human nature to
care only oneself. The extent of caring only extends to a person
when it directly affects them.
I find myself in a happy medium between them. Middle class and
poor. It's kinda like a cheesy episode of those cop shows. The
cops move in, the druggies, and drug dealers hide. When the cops
go, everyone comes out of hiding. I am lucky enough to get front
row seating to Regent Park. For some odd reason my Co-op is an
untouched jewel.
So when you actually see a poor person begging for change, do
yourself and society a favour look at them carefully. Are they just
obnoxious little teens doing it for fun? Because if they are, give
them the friggin' boot to the head for wasting your time. Being
poor doesn't mean they deserve your pity. Even pity is a commodity
these days.
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