Eyes on the ground are imperative when
you are walking a road cut through the jungle. In Southwestern
Ontario only ticks will try and climb into your pants and there's
nothing else to worry about. In Honduras everything has fangs,
everything has poison and everything jumps onto the cuffs of your
pants when your foot lands near it. These are aggressive critters,
and you need to be vigilant or you end up screaming like so many
other Firestone acolytes. 2.5 million people with their pants tucked
into their socks are coming up on the Guatemalan/Honduran border, on
their way to confront a horde of biometric organisms that have set
South American technology back to the 1930's. Millions of biorobos
are scattered through the south of Columbia and Venezuela, grabbing
anything with internet capabilities and tossing it into the nearest
lake, slowly making their way north as they send each successive
region back to the dark ages where storytelling was the only way to
entertain. An enterprising bard could probably make a bit of coin
down there now. I'll have to remember that for later.
It's incredible how much easier it is
to cross from Mexico to Guatemala than it is America to Mexico. It's
literally the difference between having your belongings torn apart by a Mexican border guard and just showing a Guatemalan that you have a
passport. It doesn't have to be your passport, because they don't get
out of their chair to look at it in Guatemala, but they at least want
to know you have someone's documentation. Most of the
Firestone migration made it through without incident. There are
rumours of one smart-ass acolyte sarcastically applauding how
thorough the Guatemalan guards were, and now he won't talk about what
happened in the windowless room he got dragged into. The Constant Law
of Comeuppance, the karmic physics equation that seems to underpin
the balance of space-time by carving chunks out of people who test fate for the fuck of it, it works, and it will be in physics
textbooks one day. That smart-ass acolyte who got the Level 2 search
could prove it, if he would put up his hand in a crowd of 2.5 million
so we could find him. C'est la vie, eh?
The Ontario election broke me, broke
everything I tried to do. There was too much, the history, the
platforms, the talking points, the mudslinging, there were so many
valid ways in, picking one over another defied logic because there
was always something sitting right beside it that seemed like a
better angle. Stutter to article length with that tactic and by the
end you have something that will never hold together because
stretching a thought into a paragraph is useless when everything you
need to say can be covered easily in a single sentence. The PC's
didn't have a leader or a platform, Liberals = Gas Plants, and you
want another Bob Rae? And why can't the Libertarian and Freedom
Parties get along? They should have so much in common. Then the None
of the Above Party showed up just in time to present an option to
people who wanted an elected representative that didn't have a
fucking clue. So I got on a plane to Mexico to dodge the confusion
and ennui machine and left my absentee ballot at the gate on my way
to join up with the Firestone migration. For now the white noise of
election season has faded, so hopefully I'll be back in time to cover
London's mayoral election, which should be fun because all you have
to do is fill out a single page of paperwork to run for Mayor of
London. No primaries, no leadership elections, no oversight at all.
That's why crazy people can run for Mayor, and that's why paying
attention to municipal elections can be tolerable. I'm looking
forward to it.
For now I'm amongst the Firestone
migration, coming up on the Honduran border, constantly checking that
my pants are still tucked into my socks lest a living nightmare start
burrowing into my skin. Sleep is a form of torture along this road.
There are thousands of people all around you, all in their own tents,
but you are alone in yours and questioning it's integrity while your
face is next to the ground where the insects walk, constantly
thinking that there's no way a single layer of nylon could keep out
something with tiny knives on it's face. The sleeping conditions have
the acolytes as bleary eyed and short tempered as I usually am. It
doesn't make for pleasant day travel, but at least we are fairly well
fed. The Catholic populations of Latin America have a lot of room in
their hearts for pilgrims on a pilgrimage, and they're trying their
best to keep the acolytes travelling toward their goal, which most
experts speculate is their own annihilation at the hands of a clearly
superior biometric weapon. Reports out of London said Sandra was
travelling with the migration. I'm keeping an ear out for her as I
make my way. More next week from the crowded jungle roads of
Honduras.
