Ontologies of the present demand archeologies of the future, not forecasts of the past.
                         -- Frederic Jameson, A Singular Modernity.

NOVEMBER NOTE:
        It turns out that the whole Martha Stewart thing caused a chain reaction that's rocking the American economy.  She was just the first.  Now it's coming out that a lot of corporations have been cooking their books.
        For example, some of them have been claiming sales for things not yet produced, and so adding some of the proposed sales for the next fiscal year into the sales of the current year-- thus making it seem like they're doing much more business then they actually are.  And then, the next year they have to add even more proposed sales into their books in order to cover up what they did last year.  And then the year after that, even more sales.  Until the whole thing just snowballs and over half the sales of the company are made-up, potential, "virtual" sales.  This is kind of like what happened to the Japanese economy a few years back.
        (The Japanese are so far ahead....)
        There's been other shenanigans, too.  But I don't know the full story.  Just what CNN and the CBC tells me.
        But, basically, the skinny is a bunch of American corporations have simply been telling other corporations (and banks) they're worth X-amount of dollars, and these other corporations (and banks) have been believing them.
        The thing is, however, this is how all money systems work, now.  You just convince people you're worth X-amount, and then you become worth that amount.  Of course that only works if you don't you base your worth on material goods that you have to, at some point, deliver.
        However, even material value isn't always a sure, concrete thing, either, though, these days.  Even that's not a sure guarantee of value.
        But the long and short is--
        If everyone hadn't panicked, the world economy wouldn't be shaking right now.  Sure Martha was screwing around, but so what-- it's not like money is actually worth anything anymore anyway.  I mean, stocks ate all virtual-- just numbers that go up and down based upon how many people own them.  I mean, there is no gold standard-- and so there is no real referent for monetary value.  When that happens, economics just becomes one big shell game.
        After you attain a certain level of affluence things change-- if everyone believes you're rich, you become rich.  If everyone decides you're poor, you become poor.  And if doesn't impact on the real world at all.
        (Things are slightly different if you're a middle class schmuck slaving at a crap minimum wage job, though.  If you're in the middle class, the old rules still apply.  It's like physics: order seems to only be a mid-range phenomenon.  Everything above and below a certain spectrum dissolves into virtuality, chaos, and raw potential.)
        In fact, other than some corporations going out of business, I have noticed no real effects from this crash-- none at all-- down here in the "real" world.  Everything still costs the same.  In Canada anyway.
        But, even the people I know who live in the 'States.  They're saying the same thing.
        The only people effected by this are Martha Stewart and InClone and Enron and all the multinationals and CEOs.  And most of them also don't even seem too horribly effected.
        There's a ceiling.  When you're above it, you feel the effects.  Sometimes.
        When you're below it, it's still all just business as usual.

ON THE ROAD, now.  Wishing the tape player worked.  Listening to the news.  To a show about pets.  Desperately trying to find a station that doesn't play country music or soothing classical.  Soothing classical's fine at home, but right now I don't need to relax and / or sleep.
        Eventually, I just tune into static, and then I turn up the volume.

AND SO NOW all the protesters have gone home.  Or moved onto other protests.  Or done both.  There's always something going on.

NOVEMBER NOTE:
        And the Gaptivists have moved on, protesting, chanting, stripping in other corners of the globe.
        Some Gaptivists were recently arrested protesting the International Monetary Fund in Washington.  Apparently the Gap and the IMF are behind generalized world suffering.  The same-old-same-old.
        I wonder how many of the ones in Washington were wearing Tommy Hillfiger?  I wonder how many of them went to the mall after they thrill of the party wore off?  I wonder how many of them secretly eat at McDonalds?

WHAT PEOPLE DON'T get is that I want to be proven wrong.  I really, really do.  I want to find something that's honest, experience a sense of legitimacy and unity, a group of people that actually mean something-- with all their hearts and souls-- actually stand up for ideals that are bigger than themselves, people who are into their causes because of the causes themselves.  Not because it gets them on tv.  Not because it's a good way to scarf down cheap drugs and get laid.  Not because they just feel like they have to do something because they feel like they should care-- should care, not actually honestly do care.  Or because they feel guilty for being privileged so they have to pretend to support people they've never met to assuage some vague middle class North American bullshit pseudo-guilt.
        A little while ago, (some time in October, some time in November) people were protesting George Bush, and the fact that the United States Of America looks like it's going to go to war with Iraq-- yet again.  This time's it's over some supposed "weapons of mass destruction" that Iraq may or may not have.  And the interesting thing is this will be the first time people have ever protested a war before it has happened-- and maybe, just maybe, this is finally a good cause.  In fact, there are a lot of people protesting Bush-- both inside and outside of the USA.  And at least a potential pointless war between the USA and a puppet dictatorship the USA helped to set up in the first place is a slightly better thing to be worried about than some fucking shoes made by some fucking sweatshops.  (Sorry to say, but it's true.)
        Sweatshops may oppress people, but Gaptivists oppress people, too.

AND THEN, ON the road, as Calgary shrinks and the flatness of the prairies opens up, it hits me: I never did get a copy of Run Lola Run.

THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY Fund....
        My God, is that thing still around?
        I remember Bruce Cockburn singing "IMF, dirty MF" way back when I was in highschool.  The song was called "They call It Democracy."
        I remember my English teacher telling us we should all be moved by "They Call it Democracy."  Because it was a "significant" song, and because Bruce Cockburn was "significant."
        I remember desperately trying to be moved by "They Call it Democracy."  But I just couldn't.
        But, still.  People were complaining about the IMF back in the '80s.
        Whatever's old is new again, I guess.
        And all the complaining back then didn't stop a damn thing.

AND SO WHAT have I learned?
        (I find it's always nice to take some time now and then, and think back to the events of the previous days-- if there have been events worth thinking about-- and ask myself:  "And so, what have I learned?")
        1.  Sometimes, in Calgary it can get very, very hot.
        2.  Four hundred million dollars worth of police is sure one heckofa lotta of police.
        3.  Sometimes it seems like the collapse of the World Trade Center happened just so some can schmuck can sell Chicken Soup For The Soul books.
        4.  Anticlimax is a universal phenomenon.
        5.  Cops are a lot scarier when they wear black.
        6.  Helicopters are loud as hell.
        7.  People are bored.
        8.  I still don't know if globalization is bad, or why it's bad-- or if it's good, why it's good.  I guess that isn't something I learned, though.  Oh wait, maybe it is....
        9.  I still don't know if the G8 is bad, or why it's bad-- or if it's good, why it's good.  I guess that isn't something I learned, though.  Oh wait, maybe it is....
        10.  You cannot seek focus where there is none.
        11.  Lack of focus is a universal phenomenon.
        12.  People are desperately clinging to something, anything, and looking for meaning and focus.  And finding none.  And this just makes them cling all the harder.
        13.  Revel in the ruins.  Because that's all there is.  Even if it doesn't seem like it.  Ruins repeat.  They go on forever.

IT TURNS OUT that all the money the City of Calgary spent was all for the sake of one man.  Only one person got arrested during the G8 protests.  And he wasn't even a protester.  He was just some guy, a postal worker who was going to go into some restricted building (probably the Hilton) to deliver a letter.  And the cops stopped him and told him he couldn't enter.  And he refused to leave.  In fact, he tried to pull the "neither snow nor sleet not gloom of night" crap on the cops and tried to force his way inside.  So they arrested him.
        The newspapers are calling him "The Four Hundred Million Dollar Man."
        And he had the entire jail to himself.  The city had cleared out the jail, transferred all the prisoners to some other facility, just in case they had to incarcerate thousands.  But, as it turned out, nope.
        So the guy spent the G8 in a cell all by himself, in an empty jail.
        Apparently, it was sorta fun.

THE RUINS REPEAT.  They go on forever.  They pick up speed.  They seem continuous, unfragmented.  They seem like they aren't ruins.  But that's the joke, the "irony" (in quotes because irony is-- ironically-- so very over): when ruins seem like they come together, reconfigure, become whole again like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle snapping in place, that's when they're doubly ruins.  They try to trick you into thinking they've become whole again, that entropy is running in reverse.  When in fact entropy is increasing at an infinite rate-- while it is simultaneously reversing its collapse-- at an equally infinite rate.  And so we are, in "reality" (in quotes because reality is-- realistically-- so very over) frozen in space, in time, standing very, very still, all the while reminding ourselves that progress is real, that time is a constant.

1.  Dress nicely.  You want to be taken seriously, right?  You want to seem like you have an idea in your heads, right?  Sad to say, but this society is very image based (as if you-- decked out in all the fashionably poverty stricken styles-- didn't actually know that)-- and the aspects of it you're protesting are doubly so.  So the bottom line is, people will not take you seriously if you look like a grimy hippy decked out in beads and torn, unwashed hemp clothes.  If you want to be taken seriously, try to look like a businessman.  I know that means actually having to seem like you belong in society-- but in order to change society you must first be accepted by society.  You have to work from the inside, now.  And, also, if you maybe looked kind of respectable, and not like a cliché, people might notice you.  Because clichés are a dime a dozen these days.

2.  Don't smoke pot for at least a day.  Try to be lucid.  You will make a lot more sense if, in fact, you actually make sense.  Just because you, in your drug induced state, think you are having insights and are seeing through the bullshit of society (and you may be, who knows)-- to people who aren't stoned you just look like a gibberish-spouting spittle-lipped idiot.

3.  Stay on topic.  If you are protesting the G8, actually protest the G8.  Don't wave banners demanding the legalization of pot.  Don't protest the unjust holding of prisoners of war in some country that has nothing to do with the G8 summit.  Don't complain about university tuition.  I know you believe in this stuff, and you want your voices to be heard-- but they won't be heard if you're all yelling different things.  There is a time and a place for your pet projects, your pet peeves.  So, leave your pet projects at home.  Remember, the leaders don't really care about you-- whether you live or die-- let alone what you're saying-- so if you all just make a bunch of unfocussed noise, and wave a bunch of utterly random-seeming signs, you become that much easier to ignore.  This also goes for the general public.  To the uninformed outsider you all seem like a bunch of uneducated dips-- so don't reinforce that image.  Just gathering a bunch of random, politically-disparate crap together under one name-- the "G6B" springs to mind-- does not unify anything into a "movement."

4.  Actually offer information to interested parties.  I cannot stress this enough.  If people want to know what you're about actually tell them.  You might actually win over a few converts.  Or at least you might seem like you have something meaningful or valid to say.  Remember, people already don't take you seriously, just think you're a bunch of bored stoners who dropped out of school.  Prove them wrong.

5.  Bathe.  By "bathe" I mean actually wash- with water-- the parts of our body that are dirty and smell.  Again, this is important.  If you don't like animal fat soaps because of your politics, there are alternative types of soap out there that are pretty good and don't leave you reeking like an unwashed ass.  And by "bathe," also, I don't mean slather on the patchouli oils thinking that will mask your (un)natural funk.  Water, and a lot of it, is the key ingredient here, folks.  And if it turns kind of a grey-brownish colour when you're standing or sitting in it, don't worry, it's doing its job.  And if you use it often enough, it actually doesn't turn colour all that much.

BOB:  "Ruins repeat?"  What the hell is that supposed to mean?  Is that just some fancy-ass way of saying "The more things change the more they stay the same?"
ME:  Well,  uh... maybe.
BOB:  That's awfully trite, isn't it?
ME:  Well, maybe.  But who says the world isn't trite.  Everybody seems to assume that the world is beyond reproach.  That the world isn't trite, or pretentious, or sometimes really lame.  People seem to want to hold the world up as some sort of paradigm for everything that's pure and good and uncorrupted.  Well, sometimes the world is trite, and pretentious, and really lame.  The world isn't above reproach.  The world isn't pristine, pure or unsullied.  The world is just as vile and corrupted as the rest of us-- and as petty and pretentious and stupid.  And we should never forget it.
BOB:  Hmm....

NOVEMBER NOTE:
        Let's cut the crap about all this "it's still the 80s / it's still the 90s" bullshit.  That was a good trite, only semi-successful metaphor for a while, but let's drop it now.  It's outlived its usefulness.
        This is the year 2002-- this is the 21st Century.  And the problem is-- yes, I know I've said it again and again-- it doesn't feel like it.
        Not that I know what the 21st century should feel like-- but I do know it should not feel like 1982.  And I do know it should not feel like 1992.
        And yet people keep reaching for the past, rehashing what they believe was-- and what, in fact never was.
        (The "futuristic" feeling I felt when listening to that Bowie song has now faded.  Or, maybe I should say that "finally, right on time" feeling has faded.  I mean, Heathen is a hell of a good album, but even David Bowie has his limits.)
        I just had dinner with my friend Mike-- the guy I've talked about who was in the thick of things in the 1960s.  And, as usual, the topic of the '60s came back.  The '60s won't leave him be.  They are burned into his mind.  They colour everything he sees.  He has been branded with a hot iron, scalded by acid.  And this time, Mike told me what he remembers is:
        People committing suicide.
        People being beaten up for no reason.
        People going insane because of drugs.
        All the protests failing.
        And some guy firing a machine gun in the middle of the street, in the middle of the afternoon, and everybody being so frightened they were pissing themselves.
        To him, to the guy who was there-- that is what the "freedom" of the 1960s was all about.
        And now, it's 2002.  It's not 1968.  Soon it'll be 2003.
        And yet, whenever I turn around it feels like the whole world is being bent to meet somebody's idealistic and stupid ideas of the past.  This includes me.  No one wants to look ahead.  Unless looking ahead means resuscitating what's been left behind and turning it into a desperate caricature.  This includes me.
        Part of this is due to the fact that we are running out of artistic and political ideas.  I don't know why this is.  But everything is getting predictable.
        Even terrorism.
        When the World Trade Center collapsed, that was a shock.  But if something else happens, it won't be a shock.  If it's something smaller, it won't be able to live up to the symbolic devastation of the WTC.  If it's something larger, it still won't be a shock.  We're all expecting something larger, now.  And when you expect terrorism, that means terrorism has lost its power.
        When you expect apathy, apathy has lost its power.
        When you expect activism, activism has lost its power.
        When you expect optimism, optimism has lost its power.
        When you expect pessimism, pessimism has lost its power.
        And, I don't know if there's a name for this effect.  But, whatever it's called, if it can be called anything, it is the secret face of the 21st Century.
        When you expect meaning, meaning has lost its power.
        When you expect nihilism, nihilism has lost its power.

AND NOW:
        It's still July, 1, 2002-- while at the same time it's November 15th-- and at the same time it is that future date when you, reader, read these words-- and then a future date beyond that, because there will always be more people, more readers.  And so we've got the past, present, future all at once.
        And now, I'm in the car, and the road is very flat.
        And the road is narrow.  And the sun is bright.
        And I'm going to have to face quitting my job, soon.  And face starting up a new job at the University.  And face buying and moving into a new place.  And quitting my job will scare me.  And working at the University will scare me.  And buying and moving into a new place will scare me.
        But for now, I'm still in my car.  And the air conditioning is on.  And the air feels cool on my face.
        And, the white-noise sound of the radio static is relaxing.
        And, the way the highway converges in the distance to a singularity is soothing.
        And, for some reason I'm happy.  Because I'm out here alone, probably.
        Maybe that's the reason.  Maybe not.
        Or maybe it's just the static.
        Or the fact that there's really no conclusion.  The "situation" isn't bad, it's not good, it's just indifferent.  Eternal, unchanging, and indifferent.
        The few in power don't really care about the masses-- but they say they do because they are "representatives."  The masses don't really care about the people in power-- but they say they do because they always uniformly whine about what every politician is doing "wrong."  And the people in the middle, the people speaking for the masses, they don't really care about anything but their own agendas-- but they say they do because they are "socially conscious."
        So we really are all the same, under the skin.  The great brotherhood (or sisterhood (or personhood)) or man (woman (persons)).  We are all equal after all.
        It makes me feel kind of warm inside.
        Or maybe it's just the static.
        Or the fact that it's over 30 degrees outside, I still have a long way to drive before I'm back home, and the air conditioning is beginning to fail....

Next:  Meanwhile, back on the grid....
 

INTERLUDE.
Epilogue 27y.
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