earthgirl (18 page)

As for pollution — its a MYTH. Its simply the redistrubution of materials that already existed on this planet. Unless you know something about alien imports, you people and your green bullshit are dead wrong. Chillaxe fools.

Initially I was jarred by Stryker's meanie posts. And Nostradamnus's wacko prophecies with their almost logical idiocy. Plus I couldn't help wondering if their messages came courtesy of Darren Mankowsky or Corey Crawford (or even, yikes, Carmen in an x-treme-bitch mood?). I wanted to counterpost something so clever and seething it tore the pathetic comments to shreds.

Then I realized that would just lower me to their level. A place I refused to even visit ever again.

I suppose everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, however misguided. And so far my brilliant blog had definitely attracted more supporters than detractors. There were bound to be a few cowardly bullies ready to lunge.

It was naive to think that this new way of living would be easy peasy. That converting closed-minded dum-dums would be a snap. Nothing that mattered ever was.

Curiously, school wasn't as horrendous as before the break. Amped by the validation of Vray, Ruby and the gang of thinky, talky amazing people, I felt completely empowered. And not afraid to voice my resistance to things and situations I considered unjust or out-of-whack. Someone had to stand up and right the wrongs and that someone was definitely going to be me.

When I said we should lobby the school board to add classes on environmentalism, Mrs. Rubin did her best poker face and pretended she was interested. She even gave me a list of school board administrators so I could write letters.

“I'm not saying it's a bad idea, Sabine,” she said with her precision principal voice. “It's just that curriculum changes are a long and arduous process. By the time anything happens, you won't even be a student here.”

“I'm not doing this for myself. It's for the students after me.”

“That's a wonderful position, but your immediate focus should be your grades and getting accepted into university.”

But I had plans and I was going to carry them out. Being a defender of the planet was too important to let a bit of resistance sway me.

And so what if Darren Mankowsky and his lunkhead teammates destroyed my petition to abolish pop and snack machines in the school caf.

“Their sponsorship pays for our teams, idiot,” Darren roared as he pulverized the collection of two dozen signatures I'd convinced out of Alexis Shaw's posse.

“The companies behind those machines engage in questionable labor practices, force unhealthy products on growing bodies, not to mention limit the choice in the global playing field,” I explained.

“Oh, shut the fuck up already. All you and your stupid ranting will do is make our money disappear!”

“There are ways to pay for school sports without selling out to corporate shills,” I said calmly as I gathered up the fragments of the petition. “It's called fundraising.”

“You're an idiot, Sabine.”

“Takes one to know one,” I said, unintentionally lowering myself to his very limited communication level. “I hear chocolate-covered almonds are popular.”

“That's so funny, I forgot to laugh. And for your information, Carmen thinks you and your eco-crap is idiotic, too.” Then he and his no-neck gang tromped off, laughing.

So there I was considering a more stealth campaign to encourage healthier eating when I felt some faintly familiar fingers tap my shoulder.

Ella silently jerked her head toward the bathroom as she practically dragged me after her. She looked very nervous.

“He's a first-class ass,” she said as she fired up a disgusting cigarette. “So how are you?”

“Fine.” I was starting to wonder if these random intrusions proved everyone around me had gone squirrelly.

Ella nodded and bobbed her head as smoke flared from her nostrils. Then suddenly she reached into this massive leather purse I'd never seen before and pulled out a small sparkly package.

“What's this?” I asked as she thrust it toward me.

“Fancy pants. For your first-class ass.”

“I didn't get you anything.” It felt weird taking it.

“That's okay,” she shrugged. “Open it already!”

I untangled the ribbon from the tissue paper and tore into the little purple packet. Inside was a pair of leopard-spotted thongs with pink lace trim.

They were absolutely hideous.

“I was going to get you those abstinence panties,” she
huffed between puffs. “The ones that say things like, ‘I'm waiting for marriage.' But then I saw these and you have to buy the others on the net and like who're we kidding and what if we never get married?”

“Thanks,” I said, because it was the only thing to say. It's not like I was going to discuss my personal life with her despite this sudden burst of kindness.

I bunched them in a ball and stuffed them into the side pocket of my pack. I had no idea what to do with them, since modeling them for Vray didn't exactly make the list. Tossing them would be wasteful, so I'd do the next best thing and give them to Clare.

“It was weird over the holidays,” Ella nodded, chugging frantically on the cigarette. “Not emailing you from Ixtapa or stopping by when I got back from the airport like I always do.”

“You could've emailed,” I said, even though I don't know how I'd have felt if she had.

Anyway, I was so busy with Vray and work and all the new and, I had to admit, more open and interesting people in my world to miss alerts about her dad's funky stomach or how she sneaked out and drank tequila shots with some college guys on the beach. Not to be snarky, but that's how I felt.

And why shouldn't I? She'd abandoned me so I'd done the only rational thing under the circumstances. I moved on.

“Anyway, just so you know, I think your ideas to improve the school are really good,” she said, tossing her butt into
the toilet and flushing with her foot in one swift, practiced movement. “Especially the food reform, no matter what Darren and his fukwits say.”

“Thanks,” I said, completely shocked that not only had Ella cornered me on her own, but she seemed to have formed an opinion, too.

“Carmen was a bit harsh,” she went on. “I told her but she kept insisting we needed to teach you a lesson cause you were being such a pill, which you were, but in the end I guess the joke was on us cause you ditched us right back, huh?”

I didn't know what to say. This stunning self-awareness from Ella was unprecedented in the many years I'd known her. On the one hand I wanted to encourage it, but on the other didn't want to hurt her feelings and confirm that what she'd said was true. So I did the only sane thing in the circumstances. Got out of there pronto.

“I've gotta get to English,” I said, pulling open the door. “But thanks for the talk and the fancy pants.”

e a r t h g i r l
[ Jan. 11th | 08:33pm ]
[ mood | proactive ]
[ music | sunshowers — MIA ]

In the interests of my willingly captive (and captivating!) audience, some thoughts on the Rules for Radicals and their effectiveness.

Rule #3. Go outside the experience of your opponent. This
will create fear, confusion and retreat. Still waiting for the retreat part, but 2 outta 3 ain't bad!

Rule #6. A good tactic is fun. It's important that your people are having fun. If I count my people as me, then yes, I am having fun. So far anyway! :)

Rule #9. The threat is more terrifying than the action. Talk about understatements, my campaign to ban vending machines has made me the school leper. And though it sounds gross and sad, it's also sort of thrilling.

Oddly, being radical doesn't feel all that radical. It kind of seems like being honest and full of integrity.

link                                                                                   read 6 | post
www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/rules.html

altalake 01-11 23:58
I recommend subvertising, the modern art of ad and billboard defacement. A great means of expression + getting your yayas out. www.billboardliberation.com www.cacophony.org

lacklusterlulu 01.12 00:57
Been there, done that and totally agree! Except for the getting caught and in trouble for vandalism part, it was seriously kewl. Radicalz Rule!

It took about two weeks of research and location scouting before I finally hatched my biggish radical action – an anti-SUV campaign, which in my head I called Project U-SUX. But never on paper or online since I didn't want to leave a trail or do anything that might incriminate me in any way, especially with the parentals. Wouldn't want to alert them to my new subversive activities or I'd risk being put under house arrest for like forever, or at least until I was twenty-one.

So despite my nonstop head butting at school, I was heads down at home to keep them off the scent. And my sweet compliant doppelganger personality had been working like a charm. That and because the units were supremely busy. Dad with his annual squash tournament and Mom with the debut of yet another home decorating and useless stuff store.

Needless to say, if there were an award for cool-as-a-cucumber daughter-of-the-year, I was the hands-down winner. Oh, how little they knew the new me.

But to do it right, to really pull off the U-SUX plan, I needed help. And that's where Vray would come in. To be
my accomplice, not only in love but also in the battle against forces destroying the community and the planet (and almost him!). This would not only deepen our shared commitment to the cause, but to each other.

“So, um, this a sex thing?” Vray asked hopefully as I led him across the backyard toward the big oak and the remains of my old treehouse.

I shook my head. There was about six inches of old snow hardened to crusty after days of melt-freeze. We shuffled across the slippery white surface, suspended momentarily before our boots crunched loudly through to the ground.
Shhhhh-twink-unk!
I loved that sound and that feeling. It was like controlled falling.

“You never know,” Vray said as I dropped his hand and started climbing the ladder nailed to the tree trunk. “Unconsciously it might be what you had in mind, though you could've brought a blanket.”

“It's not,” I said seriously as he practically climbed over me to get up the tree. The weight of him against my legs and bum was distracting, but I refused to be distracted.

This wasn't a game. I was on an important mission.

“So, what's with the secret hideout?” he asked, pushing himself up into what I called the Moon Room when I was little. He mostly used his good arm since even though his collarbone was way better, it still wasn't one hundred percent.

“Just a special place and I have to tell you something special, away from nosy sisters and parents and just, people.”

“All right,” he said, plopping down and shushing himself back against the wall. “Give ‘er.”

“Well, when we first met, you told me how they were going to drill for oil in Alaska and confuse and kill all the caribou. Then all this weird weather keeps happening everywhere and that voodoo flu epidemic crosses the ocean and then out of nowhere you get taken out by an SUV,” I said, breathlessly realizing there was so much to explain.

“Heap of shitty coincidences for sure.”

“You don't believe in coincidences. Everything happens for reasons, always,” I insisted.

“Yeah, jerks don't know how to drive.”

“No, everything happens according to some bigger epic plan, fate and destiny and karmic reasons. I get pelted with garbage on my bike, you get nailed by an S.U.X. It has to mean something and there have to be consequences and the amazing thing is we can create consequences.”

Vray was leaning forward now, looking at me very intensely.

“And?” he asked with a tone that suggested he was pretty amped about everything I was saying. Exactly the way I knew he would be.

“This,” I said, pulling my one, and so far only, hand-blocked, magic-markered U-SUX poster out of my pocket and unfolding it.

“I don't get it,” he said.

“I've done some research. Reconnaissance or spying even, mostly on these midtown GM dealerships. I picked them cause GM and Chev make so many SUVs and also Hummers plus they own Cadillac who make those stupid Navigators and Escalade things. And I found this place and
it's amazing. No videocameras on the far lot, so I thought we could go really late at night and put these on the cars.”

“What, like under the windshield wipers?”

“No, that won't do anything. I want to paste them over windows and make a real mess,” I said, my arms flying around now to show the magnitude of the venture. “But the glue has to be serious, not something they can just blast away with a powerwasher, so I asked the guy at Thompson's Hardware and he says this epoxy mix is so crazy sticky that if you get it on your fingers it rips the flesh right off so we'll need to wear medical gloves, but I'm all over that, too. Already scoffed a box from my dad's stash in the basement.”

Vray stared at me for a long time, paying very close attention to every detail.

“So? What do you think?” I was almost bursting with excitement.

“It's completely lame, no offense.”

“It's not lame. It's proactive and radical!”

“What, like your pop-machine ban? And some tree-hugging class? People are on the frontlines of this battle risking jail time by breaking into medical labs to free animals or staring down chainsaws to protest logging practices. C'mon, gluing posters on windshields? It's total amateur hour.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing! My open-minded, incredibly progressive and lovely boyfriend was being such a...asshole! It was like someone had snatched the real Vray and replaced him with some deviant, snippy replicant.