Halloween Goodies: Shit That Should Not Occur In Nature

Halloween is almost here, and in many parts of Canada (the prairie provinces, for sure), this is the time of year when winter shits on us. Part of growing up Canadian is experiencing the disappointment of having to wear a snow suit under your Halloween costume, or having to down grade from "slutty nurse" to "sexy nurse" as to avoid hypothermia, or simply knowing that the next six months of your life are going to be revolved around shitty roads, wind chills, and discomfort. But there are times during our summers when I count my blessings and mutter "thank god for winter," when I realize the magnitude of what some other civilizations have to endure, and those moments occur when I come across an unusually large, mutant (possibly demon) insect.

Indeed, the creepy crawlies are at a minimum here in Canada, and the most shudder-worthy I have to endure are the Orb spiders, also referred to as "Canadian Wood spiders" in the following video.

 [No, really, watch it.]

I can deal with a few crack spiders inhabiting crack webs on my balcony and making marijuana spiders their bitches, but I cannot fathom how the average Australian deals with the psychological nightmare of co-habiting with spiders that are large enough to swallow their face. This is probably why Australians don't typically celebrate Halloween-- shit is scary enough already in the land of Oz.

Unfortunately it gets worse than these (sometimes) deadly, steroided, eight legged gifts of nature that throw around their weight in the Australian bush land. For example, SPIDERS THAT EAT BIRDS, like the Golden Orb Weaver of . . . oh wait, I guess these guys hang out in Australia, too.

Nature . . . beautiful, isn't it?

This next spider, a Camel spider, doesn't seem like a full-blooded arachnid, but more like the result of a bird-eating spider engaging in sexy time with a desert crab, or possibly a mutant scorpion from a B horror movie. Nonetheless, that doesn't minimize the nightmare factor of these Iraqi creatures from Hell.

If you haven't barfed yet, here is a (questionable) photo of a mutant, dooms day spider supposedly discovered in Manchester, UK (huh?) that supposedly had the fire brigade searching for Jesus when they showed up to the call. If this photo is legit, this spider is obviously from the sixth level of the Dulce base, or some alter-dimension where demons ride dinosaurs. Either way, awesome for the imagination-- that's what Halloween is all about, isn't it?

Here are some goodies from a thread I found titled, Giant Spiders that were posted by PhoenixOD; a member of AboveTopSecret.com [http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread759007/pg2#pid12471488]:

1948: Leesville, Louisiana, United States
William Slaydon and his grandchildren were walking north on Highway 171 to church when he motioned them to stop. After hearing a rustling in the bushes ahead a spider described as being the size of a washtub emerged and crossed the road. One of the grandchildren would later tell this story to his own son, Todd Partain, director of the documentary film "Eyes In The Dark: The Sasquatch Experience."

20th Century: Black Hills, Dakotas, United States
A woman related a similar story of a giant spider crossing a remote road. It is described as being as least as wide as one lane of the road.

1970: Cambodia
A Green Beret says that while on a mission he heard a rustling in the foliage ahead of him. Thinking it was a Viet Cong soldier he got into a firing position and put on night vision goggles. A spider "as big as a small 4 wheel ATV" was visible about ten feet from him. It soon vanished into the forest.

2001: Cameroon
Timbo, chief of the Baka tribe in Cameroon tells Williams Gibbons that in November 2000 a J'ba Fofi had built a nest near their village.

2011: Amazon
British cinematographer Richard Terry travelled to the Amazon to investigate reports of giant spiders in the June 13th episode of Man V Monster. At a remote village he was informed that giant spiders lived in holes deep within the jungle and measured roughly four feet in diameter.

If I Had Met the Premier of Alberta (Story May or May Not Include Smoking Bath Salts)

I almost voted in the last provincial election, but only because Wildrose Alliance made my asshole pucker when they introduced their Republican-esque "conscience rights" and let party candidate Allan Hunsperger out of his underground holding cell to post a poetic, online rant telling gay kids they will "suffer the rest of eternity in the lake of fire."

Face palm!

I stuck to my convictions and opted out, partly because I'm sick of "fear voting" (voting against a party rather than for a party), and also because my faith in our so-called democratic system died long before this election. I had returned to my punk rock leanings as a youth and reclaimed the title of Anarchist. Apparently I, too, would spend the rest of eternity in the "lake of fire," but at least my homo friends would be there to keep me company.

The Progressive Conservatives ended up winning a majority government (again), putting Alison Redford on the throne as Premier of Alberta. I resumed my comfortable, Albertan life, largely ignoring provincial politics as my focus returned to the capitalist whoredom of Emperor Harper and our federal government, and the scary-as-fuck political debauchery going on in the United States. But as much as I've tried to ignore Alberta politics, Alison Redford keeps popping up in the media and making me do a double take.

Double take!

I first winced from what-the-fuckery? at her Laissez-faire response to the Plains Midstream Canada oil spill, which turned out to be a kick in the groin for the area residents who are now suing Plains in a $75 million class action lawsuit. Then there was the $113, 687 tab that Redford and fellow shmoozers racked up during their trip to the London Olympics on unused hotel rooms (wtf?). And now Redford is rejecting a public inquiry into the E.coli contaminated beef that sprung from XL Foods in Brooks, Alberta, because there is no better way to rebuild a tainted reputation than to convolute shit.

Token Embarassing Cowboy Hats!

Redford was recently in town speaking at the Central Alberta Leaders dinner, and I heard through the grapevine that one of her pit stops was my old office building where she held some sort of a press pow-wow. Obviously I'm devastated I missed that glorious opportunity-- not to shake her hand, or to see our highness in the flesh, but the opportunity to say something inappropriate. 

I've been mulling over what I woulda/coulda/shoulda said or asked her if the opportunity had presented itself, and I've been fantasizing about how it could have all gone down . . .

"Redford!" I yell from the back of the room like a drunken heckler, or possibly an old lady with mental health issues and a beard, "how was the Bilderberg meeting?!"

Redford's body twitches, but she gracefully ignores me. Probably some youth, her mind scowls, probably some youth who reads words on websites inside the online interweb. Security dudes stir and mumble into their headsets, "shit disturber at two o'clock. I repeat, shit disturber at two o'clock." My former office manager (the same woman who wheeled a TV into reception as to not miss the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics and stated, "THE QUEEN JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE WITH JAMES BOND!," brings her hand to her mouth in horror-- this is her day.

And I know this is her day. Besides the birth of her future grandchildren, this is her moment. Right now. This is the day she will relive for the rest of her life, the key moment that will be typed in bold at the top of her life resume, that day of elation that will someday be mentioned in a speech of tribute at her funeral: the day she wore her special outfit to play hostess to the Premier of Alberta. Although she has no knowledge of what I, the lowly dissenter means by "Bilderberg meeting, " she knows by the neener-neener-neener tone in my voice that I mean trouble.

Special Outfit!

I reach for a complimentary danish, only because I know it is not meant for me to eat. I pick at it, methodically, licking my fingers as I taunt members of A Certain Non-Profit Organization Whom I Shall Not Name who are inhabitants of the office building and notoriously known for not sharing stuff: sweets, coffee, tea, sugar, whitener, coffee filters, stir sticks, the use of dishware, coffee makers, kettles, second hand couches, second hand coffee tables, empty parking stalls, oxygen.

Unsatisfied by the lack of response I received, I bellow again, this time as I munch on a mouthful of danish. "How was London, Redford?!"

"Shit-disturber may be under the influence of bath salts," a security dude reports into his headset, "I repeat, shit-disturber may be under the influence of bath salts."

The office manager is now lunging towards me, savagely reaching for the danish (THE DANISHES ARE MEANT FOR OUR HIGHNESS) as security dudes swarm me like I'm a hippie on a lawn protesting for peace. My first response is to throw my body on the ground and scream, "I CAN'T BREATHE," just as I did when I was a kid getting a beat down from my brother, but that seems a little too realistic for my Meet the Premier fantasy. And while I'd end the fantasy with a Tarantino-like fight scene, I don't want to get flagged on some government watch-list as a terrorist, Kung Fu ninja.

Terrorist Kung Fu Ninja White Girl!

I guess I'll just run.

So I throw the danish at Redford and take off running towards the stair case that exits into the back alley, except someone had used the motorized wheel chair ramp-- possibly Redford's ego-- and had left it down. Due to the mechanical ineptitude I suffer as a result of being an arts n' crafts nerd, I cannot fold the ramp into it's track on the wall. A low growl rumbles from my pastry-covered mouth as I search for a lever. The Global TV camera man is now filming my struggle as the security dudes, as well as the office manager (who, I must emphasize, will never forgive me) tackle me onto the wheelchair ramp, NFL style.

Shit!

I later awaken at an undetermined time with my wrist cuffed to a hospital bed. I see my boss staring down at me. "Hiiii," she says with a low giggle, like she always does, as if we're sharing an inside joke that neither of us know the punchline to.

"Hiiii," I say back and smile.

"You know I love you," she says with butterscotch sweetness. "But you're fired."

I've Never Seen Red Deerians Give a Shit About Anything . . . And Then Came The Commuter Bike Lanes

Not so long ago I was driving to work on one of the city's arterioles when I came across a denser version of my typical, daily clusterfuck. My eyes focused on the reflective vests of city workers ahead, and I realized it was almost 8:00 AM--"rush hour" in our suped up little gas town, and the city's favourite time to send out groups of fluorescent clad road workers to close off traffic lanes, stand around, and philosophize about what Ryan Gosling has that they don't. But this day was different: the city workers were painting bike lanes on the road.

I didn't think much of it at the time. This particular street was already a tight squeeze, equipt with an elementary school and a mini loading zone that forced young scholars to tuck and roll out of their parents moving vehicles, undeniably cumbersome to do while wearing skinny jeans belted below the ass. Clearly the bike lanes were a temporary, chalk-based addition to assist some Bike Against Ball Cancer fundraiser event. What a nice community activity, I thought, and I smiled as I reminisced about my youth, when I would draw giant dinks on the sidewalk with a piece of chalk the color of Flaming Foreskin Fuchsia.

 After a few days of excessive idling at congested intersections and weaving through corkscrew lanes (oops, did I say lanes? I meant lane. Singular), I made the realization that these things were legit-- they were intentionally added into the infrastructure as permanent fixtures. Which is a lovely municipal addition if it's done correctly. This, however, was quite obviously a $800,000 dollar failure.

I can't say the introduction of (more) bike lanes caused me personal strife, as I have more pressing concerns on my mind, like the New World Order, or the globs jelly that fell from the sky in 1994 and contained traces of human DNA, or the design improvements I will make to my next tin foil hat. Not long after the implementation of the bike lanes, I changed work locations, which meant my daily drive no longer included obstacle courses of bike lanes and frustrated motorists. Please note that I did not mention bicyclists, because in all honesty, I have never seen a commuter bicyclist on a road in Red Deer.

The rest of Red Deer, minus the 200-something bicyclists that signed a petition to have the bike lanes implemented in the first place, were bat-shit irate. Little did I know, the bike lanes surpassed the one unreasonable location I experienced and had been splattered in stupid locations throughout the city. In my seven years of residing in Red Deer, this was the first time I had seen Red Deerians collectively give a shit . . .  about anything.

Within a week, Red Deerians were rioting in the streets: throwing rocks through windows, lighting shit on fire, and over turning any bicycle they could find.

No, not really (it's not like this is Vancouver and we lost a hockey game), but they did the next best thing to demonstrate their social dissent: They created a petition. Weeks later, city council voted to remove many of the problematic lanes.

It's frustrating when eco initiatives fail when the models aren't tweaked to suit the unique characteristics of a municipality or geographical area. The fact that Suits have kicked bicyclists off the sidewalks in small, Canadian cities like Red Deer exemplifies this short-sighted, urban stereotyping. This is not Toronto, or New York, or Amsterdam. Here in Red Deer, most of our sidewalks are lonely and barren-- no pedestrian jams, and minimal pedestrian yielding. We also have an above par trail system (which could have been enhanced). Hence why most of our bicyclists do take to the sidewalks. Why, in a municipality like ours, is this considered bad? Why is having bicyclists (unlicensed, unregulated, free to ignore traffic laws) share 60 KM +/HR  roads with semi trucks, buses, jacked up F-350s, and worse of all, elderly people driving Camrys, deemed safer than sharing the sidewalk with Bob the jogger? And why are commuter bicycle lanes being prioritized as the reasonable alternative to motorized transportation when we live in a climate that produces six to seven months of winter (hello random, 30 kilometre an hour in-the-face wind chills that feel like -45 degrees Celcius)? Why has this initiative been deemed a priority when the bike lanes will be covered in three feet of snow for half the year due to our increasingly shotty snow removal? Wouldn't that $800,000 have had more of an impact if it had been put into our horrendous public transit system?

This isn't about harping on bicyclists; good on the bicyclists and those who commute via bicycle to work. This isn't even really about bike lanes. This is about city council putting tax payer's money into a superficial add-on that was inappropriate for the venue-- a failed attempt to regulate common sense, and in doing so, butchered common sense. This is also about the need to start critically analyzing the system we live in and the modern industrial complex that molds it. What if we evolved our communities into actual communities (resources, businesses, communal gardens/ composts-- the possibilities are enormous)? What if we played with our employment structures and encouraged/enabled more work-from-home scenarios, or tweaked hours to minimize the amount of days employees are commuting (when the type of business/ position allows for it)? These small to mid-size Canadian cities are ridiculous in ways: constantly building outwards in the same 1950s, suburban framework that is spatially wasteful and disjointed, obsessing over private property and single family dwellings (alternatives are minimal), lame public transportation, communities that don't actually serve as communities, the perpetuation of backward models like the big box malls, etcetera. To be more concise, micro cities like Red Deer are consistently building upon a framework that demands more and more transportation, and is creating shittier and shittier urban environments to walk or ride in (a shit bike lane, on a shit street, in shit traffic, with shit surroundings is still shitty).

The failure of Red Deer's Commuter Bike Lane pilot could be perceived as a lack of vision on the public's part, but in my eyes, these bike lanes are, in themselves, a result of borrowed, band-aid idealism-- what we putter on when we don't have the balls to challenge the true systemic issues that create and reinforce a way of life that is no longer working.

Summer Wrap Up 2012: Lessons In Horticulture From My Mother

This was my first summer in six years when I wasn't sleeping half the day in prep for night shift. As my mother would say, "I rejoined the land of the living": sunshine, beers on decks, fire pits, dudes in white sun glasses named Brad, pre-teen girls wearing their labias outside of their mini shorts, some sort of sensation of getting away. I had made the assumption that being awake during daylight hours would be rad, but it wasn't, and instead of basking under a sun kissed canopy of rad, I spent my days trying to block out the spiritual pollution of advertisements and dual exhausts, people and bullshit. All I wanted was to be alone with nature for five fucking minutes.

I did not achieve my goal, but I took what I could get, and my parent's garden was easy for the taking. Once in awhile I'd spend an afternoon tip toeing through the art work of flora and fauna, paying a little more attention to my Mom's green thumb play-by-plays: what had been transplanted to a more appropriate location, which flowers were due to bloom next, which vegetable the deer had devoured (I believe it was the brocoli). My mom also made me a planter of fleurs for the corner of my balcony.

"My Johnny Jumpers aren't doing very well."

" . . . you mean your Johnny Jump Ups?"

"Yep. My Chickadees are thriving though."

"Chickadees?"

"Yep."

" . . . your Hens and Chicks?"

" . . . yep."

[My parent's favourite child, Polly-Pink-Nose-Too-Many-Toes, cools off her octo-feet on some garden rocks]

[Yellow Sunshine Happy Flower-- you're right, I was A.D.D.-ing when Mom introduced this one. Sorry.]

[Part of the vegetable garden]

[My first born. God made her extra pretty because he forgot to give her a soul. Love you, Gloria!]

[My garden fave, the Dahlia-- easy to remember because of my extensive knowledge of horrendous murders]

[The Alaskan Orchids]

"Your Russian Soldiers are very pretty."

"My what?"

"Your Russian Soldiers."

"Russian Soldiers?"

"Yep."

"(sigh) ALASKAN ORCHIDS."

We Can All Sleep Soundly Now: Bad, Bad Girl, Fiona Apple Arrested For Felony Drug Charge (Eye Roll)

Last Wednesday Fiona Apple was outted by a sniffer dog for possession of marijuana and hash at a border stop in Texas. Apparently Texas law considers hashish possession of any amount a third degree felony, which means Fiona could do up to ten years in prison (Texas . . . lol). Of course she won't, because she's a famous white person, but still, it's the principle of the thing. And that principle is stupidity. Actually, it's class warfare, but stupidity sounds more succinct.  

The news segment below is an American perspective on why the War on Drugs has reached the magnitude of stupidity where it is no longer debated among reasonable people-- yes, I pulled that statement from the statistical data in my own mind. This consensus can be construed as a positive awakening, but it can also demonstrate how disconnected our governments are from the "democratic" voice of the people. And by disconnected, what I really mean is selling us out to fulfill their own agendas.

"It is not a public safety campaign. Any public safety (surrounding) taking a drug dealer off the street is completely eliminated by the fact that you're encouraging his competition to move in with violence." -Mike Riggs, Associate Editor Reason Magazine

As discussed in the video, the War on Drugs may cost the people billions, but it is incredibly profitable to certain industries-- industries which, for the most part, make capitalist dealings with governments to serve their own interests. Mike Riggs' mention of the drug testing industry resonated with a backwards phenomenon we see here in Alberta, Canada, where some who are susceptible to random drug testing will substitute marijuana use with cocaine use due to its speedy exit from the body.

It can be concluded that the War on Drugs:

• a) Buries the deeper issues surrounding drug abuse
• b) Empowers the criminal market (including global drug cartels-- oops, sorry Mexico)
• c) Nurtures violence and crime
• d) In some circumstances, feeds citizens propagandic myths to serve white-collar agendas
• e) Interferes with the prevention of some diseases
• f) Criminalizes every day, Joe Schmos
• g) Inhibits people from freely relieving themselves from chronic pain and illness by medicating with certain drugs, such as marijuana and shrooms
• h) May be inhibiting the fight against cancer
• g) May prolong the release of Apple's next album from her usual five year wait to a ten year wait

But the War on Drugs isn't all grey skies and upside down smiles. If the naughty drugs were legalized and regulated, their street market value would decrease, which means drug production/ drug dealing would turn into a hobby venture, like knitting, and would no longer be an income-generating back up plan.

It's not all bad, right?

Cue old school Kanye!