The Relative Merits of Sanity

Hi all, Cult Abandon here. As you may know, I'm the Minister of Information for the Crowbar Resistance Force and the one most responsible for increasing our Force Capacity. I'm up putting in some overtime and thought I'd vent a bit about some of the downsides of being a member of the Crowbar Resistance Force.

I hate to admit it, but every now and again it gets a little competitive around here about just who's got it roughest; Cake thinks her job is the hardest, just because she has to spend so much time surrounded by the Dark Side(TM) Forces and use all her Double Agent training to evade detection. Ok, I'll give her that, it's not easy to be surrounded by the enemy and always wondering if the other shoe's about to drop. I'll also concede that she has to be the emotional punching bag for all of us because she does all the support work. It *definitely* gets to a person, having to hear what she does all day, and simultaneously watch the Dark Side(TM) psychologically break these young women in the guise of "treatment" or "punishment".

Con Allyerd, on the other hand, is convinced her job is the worst because, as Minister of Finance, she has to constantly stress about money. I have to admit, fundraising is a crappy job and most people hate it. We all want someone else to be responsible for bringing the dollars in. Forever desperately grasping for every spare nickle, feeling like you're always trying to convince people you're worthy - these are powerless things, and that might be why Con has had to develop such a flippant and seemingly amoral persona. It's true that without her we would have no Resistance Force, so that's a lot of responsibility for one person.

But I ask you, my fair reader - it's midnight and where are Cake and Con? Well, Cake is done for the day and now only has to ruminate on all the shit she heard today in jail and try to reinforce her identity to go back in tomorrow. Sometimes the full force of the young women's pain lands her in the fetal position, but she wandered through here earlier and said today wasn't that bad. She heard and witnessed no new agony that she doesn't deal with every other day at least, so she's off the clock for now. Con is out somewhere, partying and "networking", as she likes to call it. Con did her early agent training at the Mata Hari School, meaning there was a lot of emphasis on using her "natural" charms to elicit what she needs out of people, and cosying up to the power brokers. Having joined our little frontline shoestring crew, she now spends a lot less time at the swank parties and a lot more writing dry, constrictive proposals or working the door at some community event. She chose it, and knew it wasn't going to be the champagne and cavier version of spy work she originally envisioned for herself, but she can still never pass up a chance to put on a cocktail dress and chat up a dictator while stealing his briefcase. It's work, of a sort, but also work that involves alcohol and socializing and high heels. Con glitters like the gold she chases, so she gets to be the glamour girl in our crew and is off practicing some version of that now, as I speak to you.

And what am *I* doing? Well I'm up trying to write a lecture on Punishment so I can stand in a theatre of hostile minds tomorrow and cajole them, unbeknownst to themselves, into the Resistance Force. Cake supports, Con steals, and I try to reorganize value systems. I'm not saying mine is the hardest job, but I'm still the one up writing and putting on more coffee.

I'm not actually complaining though. I like my job, and I'm good at it, and if I'm being honest it does come kind of easily to me (guess that's why I got the staff appointment). Even so, with that said, it'd still be nice of one of the others were cleaning Headquarters or plowing through the stacks of laundry, or doing the agenda for our meeting tomorrow night. It'd take some of the edge off the fact that I'm still sitting here, writing away, trying to determine what to say about Punishment; who should be punished, what should they punished for, what do we consider appropriate punishment, and who has the right to do it?

And that's where Crowbar comes in. You did notice she was missing from the "tough job" list above, right? Well Crowbar, our fearless leader, has the easiest job of all. All she has to do is smash shit. Swear, rant, practice her swing, destroy things and, you guessed it, punish. Crowbar is quite convinced she has the right to punish, and wastes no time doling it out. She's out roaming the neighbourhood now, just looking for someone to say the wrong thing so she can unapologetically kick the shit out of him. I guess you could say she puts in long hours too, as she never seems to sleep and her hit list is endless, but every now and again I think I'd rather be wantonly smashing things than constructing logical arguments, truth be told.

Of course the trade-off is that I'd have to be psychotic and, while that works for Crowbar, I think I'd always feel the need to rationalize myself out of it. Interestingly, Crowbar has no such internal conflicts. I guess that's what she has us for.

Signpost of the Apocalypse #2

...Keanu Reeves as John Constantine, sarcastic, cynical and vicious hero of the "Hellblazer" comic book series. I'm telling you right now, if any of you go see this movie I will personally visit your homes and it won't be pretty.

(This may seem like a rather weak threat but, as Resistance Force Independent Affiliates know, personal appearances by Crowbar are rare and not usually a sign of anything good.)

Today's Favourite Headline

You know, I read a lot of news (some might say 'to excess', like everything else Crowbar does) and most of the time it's just "yeah, yeah, yeah, no shock there, big surprise, blah, blah". However I can honestly say that I was not expecting this headline when I got home tonight:

Korn Guitarist Finds God, Leaves Band

For some reason, that made me laugh out loud. It seemed to make The Onion a bit redundant today.

Signpost of the Apocalypse #1

Earlier this evening an unsuspecting Crowbar was watching television when a commericial came on for a kids album. This commercial featured Austin-Powers-seventies-type graphics while children (somewhere in the 9 to 12 age range, we'd guess) posed in rock star moves while singing popular hits of the day. The ad blasted out "It's finally here! KidzBop 7!! With all your favourite songs and now with temporary tattoos included!!"

The little demon spawn children went on to sing the lyrics of generic pop/alterno songs, while pouting pensively into the camera and grooving like a Gap Kids commercial. You've all heard some variation on the saying, "It's like watching a train wreck - you can't look away" and this phenomenon was evidenced in Crowbar's open-mouthed horror.

It all got so very, very ugly, however, when mixed amongst the mangled Top 40 hits the cloven-footed monsters were chipmunking, came the strains of "Float On" by Modest Mouse.

When we found Crowbar 15 minutes later she was catatonic before the screen, looking much like our little droog Alex here:

"Aaaaghh!! KidzBop!!!"

"Drugs are bad, Mmm'kay?"

There is a theme ribboning itself around my life, of late. One of madness and death and the ever-present face of our own perceived dysfunction. Everyone I talk to thinks there's something wrong with them. Everyone believes they are broken and is despairing in their lives, wanting to know why they can't seem to make it better. Can this be? If everyone is broken, than what is 'normal'?

My week has been discussions of pills and self-medicating and psychiatric drugs and all the things that will patch up our own little brain chemistry to make us "right". Each person believing profoundly that they are supposed to feel some other way, that if they were "normal" they would. Each person reaching a point of believing that whatever the effects of the happy-pills, the result would be bigger than the risk. Then they could be "normal". They would be "fixed". Then, maybe they would not spend the hours of their lives wondering why they feel like they are waiting for something to happen.

And in the midst of all this despair about normal and dysfunctional, broken and fixed, happy and miserable; an action. One woman left her house and walked down to the waters edge to sit outside and die in the cold. And she did. By herself, alone in the dark, she let nature end her life in a way that pills had never been able to do. And Nature - cold, unstoppable and pitiless, did what Nature does and finally accomplished the job. I find some sort of irony in the fact that all the toxic man-made medications in the world couldn't succeed in taking her life no matter how many times she tried, and Nature, that force that has been here all along, did it overnight.

Yet another argument that we've become too reliant on drugs in this culture.


Credit: www.fukitol.com

Q: Who Is Most Qualified To Make Your Most Important Life Decisions? A: Your Pharmacist

I'm not sure how many of you have been following the Bush Administration's insidious little encroachments into the notion of women as autonomous human beings with rights to equal participation in their own lives, but this shit is getting more intense by the day. For those of you who just scoff and say, "Yeah, whatever, he's pro-life, screw him" and assume that your derision somehow exempts or protects you, I ask you to consider the re-sculpting of the American and global landscape over the past 4+ years. Let's play "Have You Been Paying Attention?":

1) What is the Global Gag Rule, and what does it mean?
2) Do American teenagers know more now about safe sex than they did, say 5 years ago?
3) Can a woman who wants to use birth control still access it in the US?

1) This would require such a lengthy, vitriolic rant on my part that I'll just encourage you to read the outline here . It's amazing that abortion is still legal in the United States but they have managed to essentially outlaw it in some of the poorest countries in the world.

2) Well, what do you think? Read a re-post of a New York Times op-ed column here. If you don't mind registering on the New York Times site you can read it direct from the source. It's free to register and comes in handy for Crowbar all the time.

3) This is the Read N' Rant portion of our program:

11/08/2004
USA TODAY

Druggists refuse to give out pill
Say their religion forbids the use of contraceptives

By Charisse Jones

For a year, Julee Lacey stopped in a CVS pharmacy near her home in a Fort Worth suburb to get refills of her birth-control pills. Then one day last March, the pharmacist refused to fill Lacey's prescription because she did not believe in birth control.

“I was shocked,” says Lacey, 33, who was not able to get her prescription until the next day and missed taking one of her pills. “Their job is not to regulate what people take or do. It's just to fill the prescription that was ordered by my physician.”

Some pharmacists, however, disagree and refuse on moral grounds to fill prescriptions for contraceptives. And states from Rhode Island to Washington have proposed laws that would protect such decisions.
[Did you notice that? This is not one anecdotal incident...*multiple* states are suggesting this is conscionable.]

Mississippi enacted a sweeping statute that went into effect in July that allows health care providers, including pharmacists, to not participate in procedures that go against their conscience. South Dakota and Arkansas already had laws that protect a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispense medicines. Ten other states considered similar bills this year.

The American Pharmacists Association, with 50,000 members, has a policy that says druggists can refuse to fill prescriptions if they object on moral grounds [so what if they have moral grounds that state that cancer medications aren't acceptable? Can they refuse to dispense those drugs too? After all, to impede the growth of cancer one must kill many, many living cells], but they must make arrangements so a patient can still get the pills. Yet some pharmacists have refused to hand the prescription to another druggist to fill.

In Madison, Wis., a pharmacist faces possible disciplinary action by the state pharmacy board for refusing to transfer a woman's prescription for birth-control pills to another druggist or to give the slip back to her. He would not refill it because of his religious views.
[So this numb fuck believes he has the right to decide for me whether I should have to be a mother because HE wants me to? And would actually have the nerve to TAKE my prescription from me and not give it back? What would I have done, I wonder? Called 911 and reported a theft in progress? Or just blown an artery and started demolishing the pharmacy?]

Some advocates for women's reproductive rights are worried that such actions by pharmacists and legislatures are gaining momentum.
["worried"? We should be rioting.]

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision in September that would block federal funds from local, state and federal authorities if they make health care workers perform, pay for or make referrals for abortions.

“We have always understood that the battles about abortion were just the tip of a larger ideological iceberg, and that it's really birth control that they're after also,” says Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “The explosion in the number of legislative initiatives and the number of individuals who are just saying, ‘We're not going to fill that prescription for you because we don't believe in it' is astonishing,” she said.

Pharmacists have moved to the front of the debate because of such drugs as the “morning-after” pill, which is emergency contraception that can prevent fertilization if taken within 120 hours of unprotected intercourse.

While some pharmacists cite religious reasons for opposing birth control, others believe life begins with fertilization and see hormonal contraceptives, and the morning-after pill in particular, as capable of causing an abortion.
[Um, just to clarify, that point makes it appear that there are two groups, with separate sets of reasons. Read the sentence again - they're the same group and they're both for "religious reasons".]

“I refuse to dispense a drug with a significant mechanism to stop human life,” says Karen Brauer, president of the 1,500-member Pharmacists for Life International. [Notwithstanding the number of drugs she dispenses every day that could meet that criteria, this statement should read "I'm incapable of meeting the requirements of my profession and thus need to access no-longer-existent employment programs cut by the Bush administration".] Brauer was fired in 1996 after she refused to refill a prescription for birth-control pills at a Kmart in the Cincinnati suburb of Delhi Township.

Lacey, of North Richland Hills, Texas, filed a complaint with the Texas Board of Pharmacy after her prescription was refused in March. In February, another Texas pharmacist at an Eckerd drug store in Denton wouldn't give contraceptives to a woman who was said to be a rape victim.
[This story actually sparked a lively debate on Fark about sluts who deserve to get pregnant if they open their legs, and those wanting proof she had really been raped. That was the *last* time I stopped reading Fark.]

In the Madison case, pharmacist Neil Noesen, 30, after refusing to refill a birth-control prescription, did not transfer it to another pharmacist or return it to the woman. She was able to get her prescription refilled two days later at the same pharmacy, but she missed a pill because of the delay.
["Neil, meet Crowbar." **content censored due to graphic violence**]

She filed a complaint after the incident occurred in the summer of 2002 in Menomonie, Wis. Christopher Klein, spokesman for Wisconsin's Department of Regulation and Licensing, says the issue is that Noesen didn't transfer or return the prescription. A hearing was held in October. The most severe punishment would be revoking Noesen's pharmacist license, but Klein says that is unlikely.
[Why?? Why the hell is that unlikely? He refused to do his job, thus depriving someone of a prescribed medication and potentially placing them at risk. I'm burning his license in effigy right now...]

Susan Winckler, spokeswoman and staff counsel for the American Pharmacists Association, says it is rare that pharmacists refuse to fill a prescription for moral reasons. She says it is even less common for a pharmacist to refuse to provide a referral.

“The reality is every one of those instances is one too many,” Winckler says. “Our policy supports stepping away but not obstructing.”

In the 1970s, because of abortion and sterilization, some states adopted refusal clauses to allow certain health care professionals to opt out of providing those services. The issue re-emerged in the 1990s, says Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which researches reproductive issues.

Sonfield says medical workers, insurers and employers increasingly want the right to refuse certain services because of medical developments, such as the “morning-after” pill, embryonic stem-cell research and assisted suicide.

“The more health care items you have that people feel are controversial, some people are going to object and want to opt out of being a part of that,” he says.
[No problem. Opt out. If a profession calls for you to participate in things you are morally opposed to pick another goddamned profession.
"I want to be a vet but I will not euthanize animals for any reason" --> I can't be a vet.
"I want to work in palliative care but I do not agree with morphine-based painkillers" --> I can't work in palliative care.
"I want to be a soldier but I refuse to shoot anyone, on moral grounds" --> I can't be a soldier.
"I want to be a pharmacist but I won't give out medications unless I agree with them" --> I can't be a pharmacist.

Why is this even a fucking ISSUE?! Oh, I know why....because this issue disproportionately affects women, and is about women being allowed to make basic decisions about the _rest_of_their_natural_lives. Who the hell do we think we are? Fuckin' uppity bitches.]

In Wisconsin, a petition drive is underway to revive a proposed law that would protect pharmacists who refuse to prescribe drugs they believe could cause an abortion or be used for assisted suicide.

“It just recognizes that pharmacists should not be forced to choose between their consciences and their livelihoods,” says Matt Sande of Pro-Life Wisconsin. “They should not be compelled to become parties to abortion.”

Oh you motherfuckers and your unadulterated self-serving idiocy. Ok, so let's compare:

If an emergency room doctor were a Jehovah's Witness and refused to give a blood transfusion (or even call someone else to do it), and then insisted they should not be forced to because their religion opposes it, do you think anybody would even be having this discussion? Do you think emergency room doctors would be supported in opting out of ordering transfusions, because they 'should not be forced to choose between their consciences and their livelihoods'? These same lobbyists would be the first ones screaming about having someone else's religious beliefs imposed on them and that doctor would be in jail so fast your head would spin. Point of fact, that doctor would never have made it through med school, and yet somehow, no one raised a red flag about these pharmacists' inability to do their jobs.

The hypocrisy is so incredibly thick I can barely breathe.

Of Smoldering Wood and Blackened Photographs...

Ever walk through your city at night and smell something burning? I don't mean that gentle, nostalgic smell of fireplace that makes us think of Fall and rosy cheeks and sweaters. I mean something burning. Tonight the air was pungent and thick with smoke and my eyes almost watered as I walked through the dark wet of my neighbourhood. Somewhere close, someone's house was burning down and I smelled it like a voyeur, breathed in someone else's misery uninvited and unasked. Tragedies that flame never get to be private.

When I got home, my house was still standing and, at the end of the day, that's really all I ask.

[If you feel vaguely unfulfilled by tonight's musings, listen to "Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home" by Mogwai while sitting in front of a window alone in the dark and perhaps it will fill up the spaces I have left.]

Crowbar's Interview With The Vampire

"Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
Maybe sunshine and maybe rain."
- RJD2

"It's astounding to me that one can wake up to emptiness and meaninglessness, day after day after day, and yet still decide to get up again with the next dawn. Is it the maintenance of the unsubstantiated hope that this next day might be the one in which you'll feel something different? Feel anything at all? Do we hold so tightly to the vain belief that this 24 hour cycle could be different than the one before, and the one before that?

And yet we do it. We get up again. Almost all of us. And not a single one can really explain why, except that we do. Over and over and goddamned over.

When I was a kid, I used to say, always, always say, that I didn't want to change. That I knew it was nearly unendurable to feel everything so acutely, that it was painful and destabilizing to always be in the throes of some rollercoaster misery, to never have emotional peace. I used to say that as much as that was devastating for me, as much as it tormented my daily existence, I wouldn't wish to change it, as my greatest fear was becoming one of the living dead, becoming one who lives their life in a series of repetitious, inconsequential actions, feeling nothing.

'Do not name the well from which you do not want to drink.' A friend of mine said that to me once, just before I drank so very deeply."

Lo, I Say Unto You (or: Who Is Cult Abandon?)

This week's "Daring Escape" prize goes to your hero and mine, Crowbar, for managing to extricate herself from the lethal clutches of the Dark Side! What, you didn't know Crowbar had been captured? Where the hell did you think she was for the last week? Do you think she would just wantonly abandon you with no goodbye, no 'see ya later', no "I'm bored now"? See, this is one of the dangers inherent in SuperSpydom - you disappear off the face of the earth and everyone just thinks it's par-for-the-course and forgets to look for you.

No, gentle reader, Crowbar did not just get bored and start watching old WKRP re-runs rather than talk to you - she has been deeply ensnared in the Dark Side web, fighting her way toward the surface. You may not have noticed but Dark Side activity has been running at unprecedented levels for the last few weeks, leaving almost no downtime for commandos, rebels and secret agents to write dazzling communiques to their legions of followers.

So what, exactly, HAS our hero been up to?

Most notably, this week saw multiple appearances by one of our favourite secret identities, Cultivate-A-Band-Of-Neophytes (Code-name: Cult Abandon). In charge of the Crowbar Ministry Of Information, Cult Abandon goes into action when the Resistance has need of a pseudo-intellectual to go out and pose as a credible academic. Cult plays this role beautifully and has managed to insinuate herself and our Resistance Force propaganda into university lecture halls, Dark Side staff trainings, conferences, various publications and the like. Among other exploits, Cult lectured this week on the topic of "Access To Justice" to a law class of about 350 new minds, primed and ready for capture by the Dark Side. We in the Resistance believe in sneaking in early and wooing these maleable young recruits away from the language of PURE EVIL that pervades our institutions of "higher-learning" whenever possible.

The law school lectures are always challenging, being delivered, as they are, to individuals already much-inclined to believe the Dark Side rhetoric and view of the world. This one always begins with the prof admonishing them that "they WILL be tested on this" (yes, people actually do say that somewhere other than on t.v.), and blurry, early-morning resentment from already-bored students. Then Cult starts talking and even those of us at HQ who have seen it before begin to sense a growing disturbance in the Force. Cult is highly trained in the arts of Mind-Control, Re-education, Deprogramming, and generally clubbing her enemies into submission with truth, and this weeks appearance seems to have been no exception. In fact, an unprecedented amount of Cult Abandon fanmail has flooded HQ in the subsequent hours and days. Here's an excerpt from one of our favourites:

"To start off I'd like to tell you that it is my first year here, and this was the best lecture I've attended all year. To tell you the truth, I found myself asking why I was here and doing this program."

It is that second line that infuses the crew here at HQ with hope. Cult has once again worked her magic, sucking meaning out of young lives, and replacing it with doubt. Doubt is the beginning of questioning, questioning is the beginning of deconstructing, deconstructing is the beginning of understanding, understanding is the beginning of challenging, and challenging is the beginning of revolution.

Two more speaking invitations have rolled into Crowbar Headquarters as a result of this most recent deprogramming and we're thinking of increasing the budget line for the Ministry of Information (our CFO, Con Allyerd, has just snorted derisively as she collects loose change from under the couch cushions).

Postscript:
A new identity surfaced this week, one even those of us in-the-know at Crowbar HQ were unfamiliar with. At the end of what is known as a "check-in", (the process of sharing your current mood, thoughts, or state of mind at the beginning of a support group), a young woman finished up with, "That's it for me and I'm gonna pass it over to my little homeslice now...". Crowbar, who was facilitating at the time, was shaken from her reverie when someone said, "um, I think she means you."
That is officially the first time anyone in the Crowbar crew has been referred to as "My Little Homeslice". We think we're flattered, but we'll have to get back to you on that.

"I Am Hurt, But I Am Not Slain..."

"...I will lie me down and bleed awhile, then I will rise and fight again." - Socrates

---

The following communique just arrived from Crowbar Headquarters:

"Hi all, Crowbar here. Nice to be back with you again.

First off, I need to say that I've read what some here at HQ posted below during the brief period I was incommunicado and I must protest that rumours of my mental demise have been greatly exaggerated. Jesus, just 'cause a girl mangles a couple of puppets and drools a little, suddenly everybody's going on and on about "anger issues". Let me clarify: crowbars are for smashing, ok? No matter what anyone tells you about levers and prying and all that "useful tool" crap, those of us in the know know it's all about demolition. That said, I don't see why everyone's so surprised that I busted up some shit - hell, I have to do it, by definition.

But I swept up all the crap I broke like a good little girl, no one was hospitalized and no charges were laid, so really, what's all the fuss about? I'm telling you, if everyone on the crew doesn't stop talking to me in these gentle, soothing tones there just might have to be a bloodbath in here to remind everyone exactly who's boss. It's called "Crowbar Headquarters" for a reason, people...

Now, with the minor matter of threats out of the way, let's hope we can return to the work of subverting the Dark Side(TM) agenda and achieving global domination."

- Crowbar Out.

[HQ Staff Note: Clearly, our fearless leader has returned...]

[CB Postscript: "Three floors below, someone has just come running down the street at full speed behind a shopping cart, with what looks suspiciously like another human being in it. It is 12:00 at night, that street has high traffic, and everything's covered in snow and slush. Situation Assessment: All is right with the world and as it should be."]

*
HQ Staff Update:

One fun thing that happened in the last week involved digging up a little consultation report that was worked up on our hero some time ago. Technically we're not supposed to be able to get our hands on this stuff, but, well, this is Crowbar Headquarters. We get our hands on whatever we damn well please....
Continuing; the consulting physician had some amusing misconceptions about why Crowbar is so damned intense all the time, and alternately appears to want to either fix the world, blow it up, or hide under a pile of coats. It's entertaining to read consultations of this nature, if only to note the portions that the treating physicians get so terribly, terribly wrong. For example:

"She has never had a true manic or psychotic episode."
That's hilarious. Have you met Crowbar? What did you think, that she'd volunteer the info on where she buries the bodies? S-e-c-r-e-t A-g-e-n-t. Say it with me now...

"There are no delusions, nor any homicidal, suicidal or paranoid ideations."
Oh, you're so cute.

"She is reluctant to take medication although she uses cigarettes and has taken illicit drugs in the past."
This one had all of us at HQ rolling on the floor. First off, the implication that it is illogical for someone who smokes to be against psychotropic medication just illustrates how totally fucked our societal perception of both smoking and pharmeceuticals has become. Second, the fact that Crowbar has taken "illicit drugs" in the past [she's insisting we tell you they were very, very good] might partly speak to WHY she isn't really into drugging herself into submission anymore. Clearly, she has demonstrated that if she wants to do that she knows exactly how, doesn't need your signature, and can get waaaay better shit than you've got on her own, dude. Why the hell do you think she'd even consult you, if she wanted to play chemistry with her brain to deal with things? Have you actually convinced yourself you are *necessary* to that process?

Ya know, it might be a bit easier to take psychopharmacologists seriously if they weren't so intent on exposing themselves as morons. Actually, scratch that - it's impossible to take anyone who calls themself a "psychopharmacologist" seriously, period. Good for a laugh, though, and it got some response out of Crowbar when she was still communicating using only ninja moves and fruit.

*
The new Gearhead newsletter was just delivered to the HQ inbox so we gotta split, but before we do, one final note on today's Documentary Pick (located in the sidebar). An intelligence tape containing this film was dropped off in the Crowbar HQ mailbox earlier this week by Bonez, one of our Resistance Force independent affiliates. Among multiple reels (Bonez is a rich source of information) was The Secret Policeman - our new Favourite. Movie. Ever. This documentary is the work of a BBC reporter who went undercover as an officer on the second largest British police force, in order to determine whether racism was still rampant with new recruits. The Resistance Force can only tip its hat to the stellar work he did, using hidden cameras and recorded audio to capture what these cops were saying when off the record. This is spy work of the highest calibre. The whole crew was spellbound earlier this evening when we screened it, and even Con Allyerd finally turned up to watch. Of course, being that she's probably the most crass operative in the Crowbar team, her main contribution to the discussion was to comment that the reporter, Mark Daly, was "dead sexy" before she sashayed out the door to embezzle more funds, but we were still impressed that she showed at all.

Continued thanks to Bonez for surreptitiously leaving useful intelligence outside the HQ doors when we're least expecting it, and a big recommendation to all of you Resistance Force affiliates to check it out.

Come Down And We'll Give You A Cookie...

Well, it appears we may have found an antidote for Crowbar's toxin overdose. We here at HQ were getting worried - she has to go to work in half an hour and she was no closer to being able to relate or communicate. None of our other tricks this week have been effective, so we pulled out the hard stuff and started mixing up some experimental serums. It appears the antidote contains elements of the following:

The Distillers - Die On A Rope
Mudhoney - No Song III
The Misfits - I Turned Into A Martian
DOA - Fuck You
Leftover Crack - One Dead Cop
Pennywise - Go Away
DOA - I'm Right, You're Wrong
Rage Against The Machine - Killing In The Name Of
Prong - Prove You Wrong

Somewhere about halfway through the Distillers, Crowbar appeared to be showing signs of life. Her pupils started responding again during DOA, 'Fuck You'. The kicker was the Leftover Crack - it was there that we saw the reemergence of the old superhero we know and love.

We have a new problem, however. Crowbar still has to go to work and we're not sure how to get her down off the ceiling. "Prove You Wrong" is cranked and she's up there upside down, screaming, and playing air guitar. It's good to see her back to normal, but how the hell are we supposed to get her into her boots?

Thorazine: Not Just For Breakfast Anymore...

Crowbar has a secret. She wouldn't tell you herself, but she's busy drooling and laughing manically at shadows on the wall right now, so I'll whisper it while she's distracted: [Sometimes she loses her shit].

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying she's a basketcase or anything, but sometimes juggling a bunch of secret identities, trying to micro-manage revolutions, fending off simultaneous overt and covert Dark Side (TM) attacks, and supporting close to 25 young women in less than 3 days gets under a person's skin. None of us here at Headquarters are too sure what pushed her over the edge this week - was it the two hostage takings? Those were pretty bad. The four babies taken away by CAS? The landlord who wouldn't return a deposit cheque even though the apartment was no longer available and the teen girl having to go to the street because that was all the money she had? The welfare office who wouldn't intervene or replace the deposit so she could go somewhere else, and instead told her it was her problem? The three women who showed up with bruises because their "partners" beat the crap out of them for such high crimes as "talking back" and "sleeping"? The two gang-rapes? The three separate crying girls saying they will do anything to not be sent back to one of our region's fabulous group homes? The girl who lasted 34 minutes in her 2000th group home before she went AWOL, who Crowbar KNOWS is out in the cold right now working the street to try to stay alive, and shooting herself full of shit to try to stay dead? The two crisis calls from teen women in cars with strange men, in which Crowbar frantically whispered instructions for getting to a safe place while she could hear the crazy fucks ranting and punching the steering wheels in the background? The chilling call from a teenager who could only say, "I'm dead, I already died, I'm dead, I already died..." in a monotone as Crowbar practically shouted on the other end, trying to break through her shock enough to find out where she was?

I'd continue the list but Crowbar's starting to notice I'm writing this and is getting that edgy, kinda violent look on her face again.....ah, there, she seems to have been distracted by her sock and a colourful bit of string...

Anyway, you get the point. Whatever it was, our favourite double agent kinda blew a fuse on Tuesday night and has been hanging on by her fingernails ever since. Fortunately her deep cover as Cake Wafit comes in handy, as she's been putting on the Cake identity in the morning and using it as a shield to get through the day. Cake never loses her shit, she just listens and validates, and processes in a healthy, boundaried way before she goes back to do it some more. Cake strategizes ways to get more funding, or advocates for women with prison staff and social assistance, or forms provincial actions and advisory committees to develop position papers and push for social audits. Cake agrees to be interviewed for research on police investigative techniques, sexual exploitation of youth, & the use of anonymity in sexual assault trials. Cake accepts speaking engagements to lecture in university classes, facilitates training discussions for group home and custody staff, and writes articles about legal inequities and how child protection is actually child endangerment. This is the Cake identity's coping and most people view it as quite functional, if a little annoying.

Crowbar, on the other hand, starts foaming at the mouth and begins incoherently shouting disconnected words and phrases like "injustice!", "smash shit, smashing!", "kill that pimp, I'm gonna...!" and "mutilated her!" Then she tends to slump over sideways, gibble incomprehensively, and start playing with her toes. Once in a while she can shake it off enough to make a mixed cd about killing corrupt cops who rape marginalized women or some similar subject matter, but that's usually a sign she's snapping out of it. We tried to convince her to send a communique to all of you last night, but she just stared at the computer screen with a uncomprehending look and then started reading news articles about prison guards raping female inmates. That weird eye twitch she has started coming back so we led her away, took away her lighters and sharp things, and gave her tea. Obviously we don't seem to be nearing that level of function quite yet.

Speaking of levels of function, I'd better check to see what our hero's doing....ok, no worries, she's in the corner acting out some kind of urban warfare drama with sock puppets and a banana...

All of which to say, apologies all around from all of us here at Crowbar HQ for the lack of communication this week, but we're seeing signs of improvement. Crowbar came around enough earlier (with some help from Cake) to negotiate a meeting with a whole new Dark Side(TM) Behavioural Modification & Re-education Centre, and the PURE EVIL she talked to there are just lapping up the Cake identity. She's managed to maintain the illusion that she's relatively sane in front of three different Dark Side divisions and even found space for appointments with four new young women next week. All three research studies will be done by next Friday, and she will have gotten one of three upcoming speaking gigs over with by then too. We have every faith in her, even if she is currently mangling one of the aforementioned sock puppets while chanting "PimpKilla, PimpKilla, PimpKilla..." over and over. Considering Crowbar knows how to kill a person with a mitten, we have to keep a close eye on her, but the situation appears to be under control.

We'll make sure she drops you a line herself just as soon as she can string a full sentence together.