Little Salt For Those Wounds?

Today I heard a Dark Side PURE EVIL operative say, "my memory's getting almost as bad as yours and I'm not even coming off crack" to a young woman in the midst of a painful detox. PURE EVIL immediately started laughing nervously as she realized; (1) I'd heard her say it; and, (2) just exactly how fucked up what she'd just said was. I don't think she intended to demean the young woman in that moment, or throw her humiliating situation in her face, but she accomplished both quite well. The young woman in question laughed along with her, 'ha ha, yeah, that's really funny...'. What else could she do?

Who's In Charge Of This Ship, Anyway?

Mission Update - Received from HQ Tuesday July 5, 2005 at 1700hrs:

Hi all, Cult Abandon here....

I know, I'm not usually the one sending you off communiques and updates, but we're running on a bit of a skeleton crew this week at Headquarters. Believe it or not, we somehow managed to get both Crowbar and Cake to take a week off. As you can imagine, without Crowbar around to be corralled, controlled, appeased, bailed out and cleaned up after, we require only a nominal staff presence to keep Headquarters in good shape. Crowbar (and her daytime alter-ego, Cake) in a shocking display of forethought, booked time off in order to allow me some time to craft some top-notch propaganda to recruit more unsuspecting souls into the Resistance Force. Crowbar has retreated to parts unknown to break things (she wouldn't tell us where but when she left she was whistling and had a whole lotta guns with her, so I'm guessing it involves target shooting) and Cake claims to be relaxing and enjoying some downtime out of pager range.

[Note: Cake isn't fooling anyone. She thinks we don't know it, but she's actually haunting the corners of Headquarters and moping around in the stairwell, trying to make sure no service users "need" her. The staff keeps shooing her off, but she continues to sidle back again, asking every crew member on their way in or out whether we've checked her office messages or not. The girl needs help.]

As for me, I'm a little amazed at the degree of organization around here. Usually I have to wait until the staff, Crowbar, and Cake are done with our main systems terminal before I can get anywhere near it. This generally means I churn out all our propaganda, media, analyses, speeches and presentations somewhere between 2 and 6 a.m. It's a longstanding pattern, albeit a bit annoying, but Crowbar just ignores my pleading for actual allocated time and growls out gutteral commands to 'get in line'. It could make a girl feel kind of under-valued, to tell the truth.

This time around, however, they all cleared out, left me some staff and a relatively tidy HQ, and full access to the Crowbar Resistance Force Mainframe in order to try to cobble together a work of art to sway the international masses. And am I using this opportunity to fullest advantage, you ask? Well, I'm sad to say that the last 5 days - all of which have been scheduled for writing for well over two months - have been entirely occupied by the simple day-to-day machinations of running a Resistance Force. Meaning: No. I haven't written a word. Well, correction...not a word of what I'm supposed to be writing - I've been throwing together a shitload of other stuff though, and would be feeling pretty good about it if it had anything to do with our current Mission Objectives.

But that's all about to change, friends and neighbours. We have one more Operatives meeting tonight, and from there on in, it's all about the propaganda. Well, from there until Friday, anyway. I'm sure nothing else will come up to distract me, right? Right.

Hmmm. How to get around this silo?

The Dark SideTM is messin' with us, my friends, messin' with us.

Today they managed, through their deviousness, to keep our hero Crowbar far from the downtown core for at least 3 hours. From 12:30 pm to 3:30 pm they conspired to have the leader of the Resistance Force driving around in circles aimlessly through back country roads and cutting across fields. Fortunately they were unable to jam up her sophisticated radio equipment, so she had loud music throughout the sortie, but they were at least successful in screwing up the GPS enough to have her guessing as to which county she was in.

You see, Crowbar sometimes needs - as a function of her work - to hit the highway at high speeds, heading in no particular direction, with a loud and aggressive accompanying soundtrack. Particularly on sunny days. Particularly after leaving jail. Today was a slight exception, as she was not technically supposed to be on any missions, and was thus freed up to chart her own course after a brief morning jail run. With a light heart and loud speakers she landed on the highway heading east. A few hours into it, it seemed a prudent time to hit an off-ramp, circle around over the highway and pick up the westbound lane to take her back to Headquarters and her waiting responsibilities.

This is where the true devilish nature of the Dark SideTM kicked in. Crowbar exited, crossed the bridge over the highway and discovered....the westbound on-ramp was closed. As was the eastbound on-ramp which would have allowed her to get back on the highway and continue eastward to the next exit, perchance to pick up a westbound there. Nope, this was the true definition of "you can't get there from here".

Well, there was nothing for it but to keep going, deep into farm country and points unknown. It's not easy to phase Crowbar, and she has an instinctively strong sense of direction, so she was not too put out by this little detour. Instead she bombed down some back roads, picked up some side concessions that appeared to be going in the right direction and generally pointed herself west. After about 50 kms on this track, she doubled back in search of the ever-elusive highway once more. Which she found. Only to discover that, while there was a bridge that would take her over it, there was once again no on-ramp that would lead her ON to it.

Curiouser and curiouser, she thought, as she did a U-turn in some farmers front yard, cast a longing glance at her unreachable highway, and headed back into the endless green fields.

Further down the country roads she went, marking territory mile by mile as she zigged, zagged and diagonaled her way into a tiny little industrial town where the locals stared at her car and muttered. Following those razor-sharp instincts once again, she finally worked her way back to the highway, now some 70 clicks west of where she originally exited and - ta da! - found an on-ramp.

Once back on the highway she pondered this interesting little turn of events. This was clearly a Dark SideTM plot, but to what end? Why did she need to be kept away from Headquarters for such an extended period of time? She examined our Nerve Center with a critical and cautious eye when she arrived back, looking for signs of infiltration and recording equipment. The Command Centre appears to be clean and no major events seem to have happened in the city while our fearless leader spun around in circles in points eastward, so we can only ruminate on what the possible purpose of our country run-around was. Oh, but there was one, of that we're sure. Never underestimate The Dark SideTM. There's always some kind of trickery afoot, even if you can't tell what it is. Crowbar knows this, and this is why she (like the Boy Scouts) lives by "Be Prepared".