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13 large cloves of garlic, bunch of basil, chili flakes, salt, chili oil, olive oil, tomato sauce, pasta.

The garlic extends life.

The garlic expands consciousness.

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“ ICE said the private workers at the Tacoma Immigration Processing Center are being threatened and the ICE agents who go out and make arrests are getting harassed. ‘Those incidents when there are bystanders who are disrupting the encounter we are attempting to conduct with the target,’ said Nathalie Asher, ICE regional director.” Good.

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Tu-ninq’ez. Cold, fresh water in the Tsilhqot’in language spoken on the remote reserves west of Williams Lake, B.C.

On Xeni Gwet’in First Nation — the most remote of the six Tsilhqot’in member bands — tu-ninq’ez (pronounced “too-ning-KAWZ”) is at the cultural heart of their salmon-fishing, wild horse-coralling, hay-baling lifestyle.

Despite that, the 252-resident community has been under a boil-water advisory for 17 years, which Ottawa originally announced in 2001 because of a high risk of sewage contamination, according to documents.

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#2yrsago We Stand on Guard: in 100 years, America seizes Canada for its water

Brian K Vaughan’s varied career in comics has had numerous and diverse hits like Saga, the epically weird and sexy space-opera; Y: The Last Man, an end-of-the-world story; now, with We Stand on Guard, Vaughan dramatically ups his body count in a tale of an American resource war that’s a lot closer to home than the invasion of Iraq.

When We Stand on Guard launched last summer, it made more news in Canada than it did in America, tickling the quintessentially Canadian anxiety about its southern neighbour, and noting with that very Canadian pride that Vaughan was married to a Canadian and that his storyboarder Steve Skroce (who also storyboards for the Wachowskis) was from Toronto.

As the series progressed – and completed, it’s a fully self-contained story now, collected in a single, handsome, hardcover volume – the American media started to take notice, and wasn’t always comfortable with what it saw.

The premise of We Stand on Guard is this: in 100 years, the President of the United States is assassinated by a Canadian drone. Canadians insist that it was a false flag operation, but the American retaliation is swift and bloody – and convenient. As the missiles rain down on Canada, enormous machines called “hosers” are maneuvered into place around Canada’s prodigious stores of fresh water, diverting them to a USA that has been turned into a dust-bowl by poor regulation and climate change.

The Canadian guerrilla fighters who remain are treated without mercy, and vanquished without risk. The American counterinsurgency uses drones – including building-sized mechas – to stamp out the underground. When leaders are captured, they’re tortured in endless neural-interface VR sims, each crueller than the last, while their interrogators telecommute from comfortable offices in the Beltway.

The parallels to 21st century American warfighting aren’t exactly subtle, but that doesn’t make them easy, either. Modern US military action – even the “boots on the ground” kind – requires fewer fighters than ever before, thanks to increasing automation. This has the side effect of making the wars more politically palatable, eliminating the need for a draft (the economically desperate can handily substitute for conscript troops when you don’t need that many warm bodies), and vastly reducing American military casualties relative to the wars of the past century. The fact that all this automation pays huge dividends to the military technology contractors who supply it is the icing on the cake, providing the capital needed for lobbying to make this a self-sustaining phenomenon.

But setting the occupation in Canada changes its complexion, literally, stamping white faces underfoot, provoking howls of anguish in English (and sometimes French). It’s embarrassing how well this juxtaposition works, because Afghanis and Iraqis suffer just as much under occupation. But countries that have suffered under dictatorship are somehow harder to stay outraged about when dictatorship gives way to bombardment and failed states, through some shameful subconscious relativism. The “after” is the same, but there’s a difference in the “before” that, I’m embarrassed to say, made my alarm and outrage over real-world events lose the urgency they merited.

That’s the real subversiveness in this comic. It’s not making us imagine what it would be like for people in a rich, industrial country to suffer occupation – it’s making us realise how inevitable the occupations in the rest of the world have come to seem.

None of that would matter if this wasn’t a good story, and it is: a self-contained, rocketing, aggressively readable, gripping graphic novel in the BK Vaughan tradition. I read it twice in one afternoon, in one sitting, because it’s that good – likable characters, exciting action, fabulous art.

We Stand on Guard [Brian K Vaughan, Matt Hollingsworth, Steve Skroce/Image]

https://boingboing.net/2016/05/18/we-stand-on-guard-in-100-year.html

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Jumping back on here for the first time in ages on to find most of the blogs I followed are inactive...

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Jim, this simple feeling is beyond V’Ger’s comprehension. No meaning. No hope. And Jim, no answers. It’s asking questions. What questions? “Is this all that I am?” “Is there nothing more?”     

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Beetlejuice - S01E01

Critter Sisters (1989)

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They Live Directed by John Carpenter (1988)

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Horror History: The 1920s, the Silent Era. Films Featured (not in order): Nosferatu (1922), The Cat and the Canary (1927), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), Haxan (1922), The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), The Golem (1920), The Hands of Orlac (1924), The Man Who Laughs (1928).

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Dirt - Object Refuse Reject Abuse 7″

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Officials in Montreal and the Eastern Townships are urging people to check on their neighbours and loved ones, especially those without access to air conditioning, as the heat wave gripping the regions peaks and is being blamed for 18 deaths.

The toll of heat-related deaths in the province rose by eight in total between Tuesday and Wednesday. Twelve have been confirmed in the Montreal area, five in the Eastern Townships and one in Laval.

The wave started last Friday and is the worst to hit Quebec in decades.

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If this weather could fuck right off, that'd be perfect.

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Boris Vallejo

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My mom said that today in church her pastor said in the sermon that Jesus told us to help the poor, and taking money away from public schools to give to charter schools only widens the gap between the rich and the poor.  She then added that Jesus spoke against adultery and lust and would not have approved of bragging about sexually assaulting women.  According to my mom, people got up and walked out.

The pastor also started the sermon by noting that she’d heard of another minister who read the entirety of the Sermon on the Mount at the pulpit, to be told by the so-called Christian parishioners after the service that it was offensive and they didn’t agree.

The Sermon on the Mount is straight up the words of Jesus.

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"Pulse-Pounding Cyber-Slam!" And yes, that is a laserdisc. #JohnnyMnemonic #cyberpunk #williamgibson