It was jungle warfare today.

My unit scurried through the bush thick with heat and humidity. [funny va-jay-jay-joke here]. The trees were abuzz with tension and frenzy. Birds were playing dangerous walk under if you dare games, clinging to wires and branches, and aiming. Always aiming.

Then, happening so suddenly I didn’t even notice, I was hit from a wire-bound sniper!

It took me a few steps and the sudden feeling of warm, watery goop running down my arm to realize what had happened. Not thinking, not feeling, just acting, I quickly staunched the wound with a napkin. Only when I was satisfied that it had absorbed all that it could did I lift the corners of the makeshift bandage.

Clear. Good news! It was only a flesh wound! No … wait … bird poo is supposed to be opaque. Maybe that bird wasn’t healthy. Hmmm.

No. No time for regret. No time for tears. Have to keep moving on. War doesn’t stop to be grumpy.

The unit resumed it’s march. Just a little farther down the trail, we encountered a booby trap:

Cunning, but easily defused. A sure sign we were getting closer.

The insects shrieked around us as we pushed through the soupy air. The noise of the nearing conflict was beginning to grow. Or maybe it was the nearby cabs. It was just really loud and hot.

On a nearby ridge, we found scattered propaganda and spent artillery shells:

According to our source, we would soon be where we needed to go.

As we descended down the embankment, we found it. Right in the middle of the jungle, a pile unlike any I’d seen yet:

And then, even farther down where the skeletal trees met the dead earth, more carnage:

When they failed me, someone nearby had chiseled out my words for me:

You may now weep.

Today was an eerily quiet day in the city. Signs of battle were quietly hidden in dumpsters and alleys. You might never know that a war was going on; unless you went to the western front.

Here, the boys are being pressed back into service:

They’re doing their best given the circumstances, and sometimes even getting a helping hand from the locals. There was a big pile of yellow garbage bags where this cage used to be:

Trust me, the little Chinese lady camouflaged inside the ramshackle shop is one of us. And enjoys sitting on trash.

In all possible ways, people all over the city are getting involved in the resistance. At some of the transfer stations (more like detention camps), the waste is piling up very high, very quickly.

That’s where the 416/79 platoon is stationed. I don’t know what their strategy is, but marching around in front of summer-heated garbage seems ill-planned. Or maybe the plan is so deviously Machiavellian that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend it.

Despite their best planning, strategy, and all sorts of fancy antique maps with blustery men exhaling trade winds, the stark reality is that it’s far too late for some:

I’m sorry folks, but that’s the real face of war; it was never meant to be pretty.  The horror and revulsion you feel is normal; tell the world what you saw here!

Now, as the sun descends again, it seems as if everyone in the city is taking a long deep breath; preparing for an onslaught of heat and misery. I also wait with bated breath, Oliver crouched on the floor beside me, both of us ready for the darkness.

And tomorrow, hell. Also, maybe no booze!

It is with heavy heart that I adopt my new responsibility of embedded reporter in the War on Trash. I took this role because, despite my fear, I know that someone in this city needs to get the word out; tell the people what’s really going on out here. Plus I live here.

Yesterday, as Much Music crowded the streets in a brilliant display of terrible musical taste (ohmygodohmygod!), soft-core porn, and just plain garbage, the 416/79 infantry began their tactical strike. Everyone was too busy watching Lady GaGa’s disco-stickery and highly impractical haircut to notice what was going on. Amidst the insane shrieking of pubescent teens, none but a few liquor-hardened reporters bunkered down in the CityTV newsroom took notice of the descending doom.

At midnight, war was declared.

By morning, the bandaged and patched casualties were starting to come in from the front lines:

Only later did I learn that the first salvo wasn’t fired by the other side or even by us. It was fired by a southern neighbour taking a shot at Perez Hilton. Some time in the yawningly early hours of Monday morning, trash became enemy and we got the first shot in. Thanks, America.

This is where it started; ground-zero:

Later today, I saw the first fatality of the war:

…and soon more:

The scenes are horrible, but I fear much worse and soon. And even more troubling is the new garbage bag that I installed in the kitchen today. Currently it only holds a few bits of trash, but pretty soon it will fill like all the others; swell with refuse and pride, become unruly, attack me in the middle of the night!

As the the dull shelling from my computer’s speakers draws nearer, I gather the reusables in the corner of my flat and wait. And wait. And watch. In the direction of the kitchen.

I won’t get much sleep tonight.

P.S. Congratulations to Renee for winning the Coffeetastic Giveaway! You couldn’t have chosen a worse time.

I had my heart broken by the union back when I was in my mid-teens, schlepping books around at Cedarbrae Library. I was tough; I grew up on the gritty streets of Scabby Row. So did my sister. And our pets. And folks, of course. Come to think of it, it was a pretty nice neighbourhood.

But I was hard.

Then, just before Christmas one year, I was handed an envelope. On it, in scratchy writing was “Happy HoliDa ys, YOUR UniOn”. Hand-written; that couldn’t be good. It felt thick – was this a letter bomb? Had my antics finally pissed them off?

I tore into it. What in god’s name could it be? I flipped it over and shook the open end over my palm in front of everyone (that way we would all go together – including the bastard who delivered it).

With a yule tide jingle, out came exactly $2.47 in change.

I believe it was a dollar coin, four quarters, four dimes, a nickel, two well-worn pennies, and one face in absolute disbelief. I held the envelope up to the light to see if there was anything else in there.

Nope. Nada.

And that’s how it ended. No goodbye. No thanks for the dinner. Nothing. Not even a hello.

That was, in fact, the first I’d heard that I was in a union and that I had been paying fees off every paycheck. I don’t recall signing anything or anyone welcoming me into the “brotherhood”.  I felt so violated.

The stuff in the envelope were the crumbs distributed to part-time lackeys like me; a fair cut of whatever unwilling contribution I had made to their organization over the past year. For a kid who could clear two to four-hundred a paycheck, that was just a slap in the face. Ooh! I can buy a coffee! — Here, keep it. No seriously; buy yourself something frilly.

God, I was a petulant youth.

But that’s the impression unions left on me. So when I hear that CUPE 416/79 are ready to strike, I’m already a bit defensive. When I see the mess that the garbage crew (of that union) leave on the streets every week, I’m also not enthusiastic. And when I compare their demands to cushy private sector jobs like mine, I think they’re being pretty bold.

But that’s not so bad, not when you read the latest few items on CUPE 416’s own site. Their further demands are that “all concessions” (of which there are 118), that the city has tabled for discussion be cleared. In other words: “City, our members want to communicate just how much we don’t give a shit about any of what you want.” (Wow! Somebody got into the wrong cookie dough!)

I’m going to point out the blazingly obvious and say that this is the worst time for that kind of approach.

I’m sure the hammer swings both ways, but Monday’s the day when the city could be without trash pickup, and for what?

For the love of all that is good and holy, won’t someone please remember Chinatown!

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For the past three weeks my breakfast plans had to be put on hold because I had no tea. This was simply due to the fact that I had neglected to follow my own advice to write my shopping list while sober. Delicious, chocolate-covered snack foods always made it on there somehow, but not tea.

So it was a happy day today when I finally remembered to pick up a box at the local Metro. As I stood in line at the checkout I ran through the great conversation I would have with the cashier: “I see you bagged that tea quite expertly. Would you consider yourself a professional teabagger?”

Two things put a major damper on that:

First, the lady ringing in my box of Wagon Wheels and no-name English Breakfast Blend had a pretty rudimentary grasp of the language and it probably wouldn’t have made the splash I was looking for. It was intended for her benefit, after all; I already know how witty I am.

Second, she preempted me abruptly with, “For five cents each, would you like to buy bag, sir?”

That shrunk my enthusiasm down to embarrassing cold-water scrotum size, and it was all thanks to that new plastic bag bylaw that came into effect today. Retailers must now sell their bags to customers at a minimum of five cents a piece and at this time next year, no retailer will be able to carry bags that are non-biodegradable.

Right.

The Indian woman with the unlikely name of Linda stood there behind the counter blinking at me, waiting for a response. “I guess I’ll take one,” I replied, “but make sure to put the tea in professionally.” — DAMN IT! The whole paying-for-a-bag affair set me off kilter. In my displacement, I couldn’t quite put my finger on why this bothered me.

It’s not the concept of paying for bags that bothers me. The intent is to put less into landfills while still giving the option to people if they want them. I think that this is as far as the planning for this project went at city hall. Had they not been so eager to get out and hoist a few, they may have noticed a few byflaws in their bylaw (damn that’s witty!):

• The money for each bag is collected and kept by the retailer to do with as they please. The bylaw recommends that this surplus money be put into community initiatives and such like. I’m sure you’ve already reached the same conclusion I have: yeah, right.
• The five cent charge is the minimum. Retailers may charge as much as they want. Locals may be apt to punch the greedy store owner in the face, but tourists…
• The Blue Box program recently started accepting plastic bags, presumably for the purposes of recycling. If this is not the case…ummm…why are we recycling again?
• My plastic bags, the same ones I use to take excessive, non-biodegradable, non-recyclable packaging to the garbage bin in, don’t really seem like the worst offenders in the grand scheme of things. Could we charge industry for packing all those unnecessary layers in there? Maybe some compensation to the Ontario Health Plan for the benefit of all those who experience injury and suffering sustained while trying to open some of those horrible plastic packages!

Consider this:

Plastic bags can be very useful and I feel it’s fair to say that no one likes to see them flapping from trees. A nickel is not a terrible price to pay for a bag that you can reuse a few times if you are so inclined. Some of the detractors of the bylaw are trying to convince people that cloth bags are cesspools of bacteria and fungi. True, if you’re keen on keeping your bag in that warm, special, moist place. So hang it up on something for a couple of days. Not really a very good argument.

Besides, plastic bags aren’t the biggest problem. I don’t mind an initiative to reduce them as long as there’s an equal share of the responsibility on the manufacturing end. Our sacks are important and everyone must lend a helping hand to support them.

I know, that was terrible. I’m still traumatized from that cashier lady.

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