Olive Branch

T.K. McNeil

It's done. Like Emperor Palpatine another war has been ended in one fell swoop. War On Christmas in one fell swoop. Forget the "Happy Holidays" and secular "Christmas Songs" (get out of here Irving Berlin, you talentless hack!). Christmas is Christmas once more and all ye faithful are once again able to celebrate unabashed. Still though, one mustn't to be too arrogant in victory. So as a gesture of good-will to all men (and women), I have dedicated this weeks guide to ways those of the occult and pagan faiths can avoid being persecuted during this season of giving. 

1.Wear earbuds while performing incantations and pretend your are singing along.

2. Birthday candles work just as well for rituals as full sized ones.

3. Grimories can easily be disguised as poetry book manuscripts.

4. Kitchen spices and extracts still work for potions and require less mixing.

5. Make your smartphone into your wand.

6. Mix up the black in your wardrobe with other colours, like red blue and lavender.

7. Trees, birds and cats count as magic symbols.

8. Put a rubber end on your staff of power and say it is a walking stick.

9. Keep magic books and other related materials on encrypted PDFs.

10. Cooking counts as a form of conjuring.

11. “Cute” names like Goofball and Mr. Muffins make Familiars sound like pets.

12. An oversized black hoodie can work as a cloak.

13. Marijuana and incense can have very similar smells.

14. If asked about your pentacle say you are a Communist.

A Tourists Guide To Quebec 

Amy Wright

Everyone needs to make a living. Some how the currency needs to come in so it can go back out and keep the system running. Fittingly the food industry is one of the most successful. Another surefire way folk have found to made make some much needed cash is to make the place they live seem like the most interesting place in the world to get people to go there and see it. It doesn't even matter if the locale in question is particularly notable or even safe. Just look at the massive success of the Australia and New York in terms of getting bums on planes. Though to be fair, the Belfast Tourism Board has had a pretty rough go of it up until recently.

One place that has made fleecing foreigners into a near art form is the Canadian Province of Quebec. The largest of the Canadian provinces with the largest population, it is also the only place in North America where the official language is French. Even going so far as to adopt the Civil Law system of law as opposed to the Common Law type used in Britain and all other civilized corners of the world. A built-in selling point in terms of the “come-see-our-stuff” business of tourism despite the majority of the majority Caucasian, Catholic French speakers having at best a veiled hostility toward anyone who is not at least two of those things. Not all of course (that would be statistically impossible) but most. Not that this has discouraged many people from going there. In light of this (truly baffling) fact, here is a friendly guide for visitors to “La Belle Province”.

Road Safety

One of the first things you will likely notice, particularly if your first port of call is Montreal, is the roads. Referred to as “Autoroutes” these stretches of asphalt are a great example of infrastructure done right. They run straight through town with several exits going to major streets none of which are forced exits and the lanes are very well separated with cement walls between them giving the whole thing the general feeling of a race track. Considering that the posted limits on this, and all other roads in Quebec are taken more as polite suggestions than actually rules this likely is not a coincidence.

Blessing or Curse?

Unlike many other places on earth, the truly unique and distinct folk of Quebec have a system on cursing based on religion rather than more prurient interests. One of the most popular and commonly used words is “tabernac”. Derived from “tabernacle”, this is roughly equivalent to the F-word in English.

Customer Service

As the more perceptive among you will have likely already sussed out, it can be somewhat of a challenge for non-French speakers to perform business interactions. Though it is by no means impossible a good bit of broken French and pantomime may be required. It is not always true but a general guideline is that younger people, particularly in urban centres, are more likely to be able to speak English than older people or those who live in the rural areas.

It's A Nation You Know

When in Quebec it is generally a good idea not to make any sort of reference to “Canada” or being “Canadian.” At least if you value your safety. For, you see, many of the citizens, roughly 62%, operate under the impression Quebec is a not a province but a nation in and of itself. A delusion the Canadian government decided to indulge by officially granting the Quebecois people the status of a “nation within a united Canada” in 2006.

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Dues

T.K. McNeil 

The idea of merit, laughable as it may seem, is very strong in most societies. Western ones anyway. Tied in with the idea of “justice”, most do not like the idea has made gains which they have not properly earned. Alleged “ill-gotten gains” being and an old and powerful accusation in polite society. Creativity is no different, which is why there is the idea of “selling out.” A truly stupid word which can't even make up its mind on what it wants to mean. First meaning a creator who changes major parts of their art to make more money, it is now slung at anyone who makes any money at all. Like the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Stooges, all of who signed to major record labels.

When “sell-outs” happen, whether it is real or imagined, usually imagined, there is a set of cringe that can be heard around the world. Particularly among the producer's “fans.” Such moves towards actually wanting to make a living for one's work, perish the thought, used to be blamed on the callously, crapulent, corporate interests of the commercially consummate companies that ran the music business. With the glorious rise social media, beginning with the much martyred Napster in terms of music, the so-called “Gate-Keepers” assumed to be ruining everything were completely and utterly overthrown, there being nothing but the new media left after the mighty struggle culminating in the year of victory 2010. After which their rose a brave, new, egalitarian media based entirely online in which literally anyone could put out literally anything and, potentially, build an international audience. Just as the designers and original promoters of the internet intended. This revolution of hearts and minds has led to the assumption in some quarters that it is now too easy for anyone to build a career in arts or journalism. If anything it has made people more honest and open to trying new things, which on the whole is a positive result. As we all know there has never been anything negative to come out of digital media and the long-ago destroyed “traditional” media had nothing but garbage in it. Who needs the difficult to read ravings of Jonathan Swift or Shakespeare when we have the independent genius of The Young Turks and Web-Series in which to bask.

For anyone who are still holding on to the decimated old media system who thinks that those who rise to heights similar to those formerly allowed before the traditional mainstream media's inevitable downfall have not earned it, are clearly completely unaware of social media if not computers, the review system being far more rigorous than any that has existed before. Rather than being based on arbitrary and self serving criteria of “quality” and what might “sell”, the new system of enlightened individuals instead assess what content will ascend to the heights of internet stardom, based entirely who they know and what they like.

Some might call this “pandering” and trying to “be everything to everyone” but they simply do not understand how the principle of fairness works and how a Soviet-style review board with no distinction between producer and audience is the ideal way to go about things. 

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Battlefield Internet 

Amy Wright

The Internet is, quite correctly, seen as the greatest innovation since the discovery the insulin. In recent years however, the nature of that communication has also begun to change. Particularly with the increased popularity of social media. Since 2010, the old order of boring ghettoization, where everyone kept to their own and largely ignored each other, has been slowly destroyed. Opposing sides flooding into the battlefield of open-platform social media to rumble like Greasers with switchblades. It has gotten to the point now that “Tumblr Feminist”, once a punchline, has become social media short-hand for the sort of girl who posts a photo of herself proudly displaying the hand she broke punching someone who said something she did not like.

Youtube, while still having fine comedy vlogs, cat videos, free music (they have cracked down on the movies quite a bit) and original web series, has also become a boxing ring for ideologues of all stripes to get in and beat the tar out of each other. There is the now notorious dust up between Feminists and Anti-Feminists, DOSSing, Doxxing and lawsuits becoming as common as saying “what up”. Several people have been fired, often unjustly in terms of the pesky law, as part of the fallout of this war of attrition, which has seen many groups and individuals openly despise each other, often without actually having “met”. Though Skype and Google Hangouts definitely count as “meeting” no matter what the out-of-touch traditionalist might shout.

The battle-lines are also getting entertainingly blurred. Just like how the White Nationalists Movement of the 1990s started to each itself by the mid-2000s, high-profile leaders like Wolfgang Droege getting gunned down by their own henchmen, the knives have started coming out online. In that cool out-of-the-sleeve way. One of the main examples of this is the Atheist/Skeptic community. The trouble really started with the invention of the now defunct “Atheism+” community. The “plus” refers to the adding of Social Justice ideals to Atheism. Which is roughly akin to trying to add the ideals of peace, order and good government to the philosophy of Anarchism. 

One of the most high-profile and meanest examples being the argument pitting T.J. “The Amazing Atheist” Kirk, who has some rather “pronounced liberal views”, against, Mr. Charming himself, that's why he has so many friends, Devon “Atheism-Is-Unstoppable” Tracey, whom one genuinely hopes is kidding. Though it doesn't seem likely. While it is not entirely clear who started the feud, it has only gotten worse as it has gone on. The atmosphere in the political quarters of YouTube becoming so toxic people are being accused of saying and doing things there is no evidence of them having said or done. As thought the truth actually means anything online.

Not that it really matters. The new media landscape has come to be overrun with what amounts to angry kittens hissing ineffectually at each other. A situation rooted deeply set previously unvented animosity, that has only recently been able to flourish with the development of no-barriers social media outlets. 

Shattered Glass 

Amy Wright 

Remember MySpace? Segways? America Online? The Centre For

the Easily Amused? All former powerhouses of popularity almost

no one remembers any either by virtue of being to young or having

repressed the memory. A device that has recently undergone this

transition from “next great thing” to “the what again?” is Google Glass. Once, the next new thing that everybody had to have, no one seems to really see them around anymore Despite the evangelical fervour on the part of the early adopters proclaiming the device to be the second coming, there were those who still harbour doubts about the funny looking eye decorations.

Some going so far as to put forward the theory that they were a hoax and did not actually work at all. Suspicions that were roundly mocked by users, minions and band-wagon jumpers alike. As it turns out, while a lot of the software for the devices were still in the development stage, the mockers were right.

Much of the reason for the early exit of Google Glass is the negative reaction of the close-minded, self-centred techno-phobic Luddites who objected to their use in public places. The shunning got so bad, that people just stopped wearing them before the technology could be developed to its fullest potential.

Human beings are, at our core, fearful, stupid creatures, especially when confronted with something we do not understand and particularly when we are certain we are right. The following is what happened to forward thinkers who saw the potential of Google Glass when no one else was willing to accept them.

In San Francisco, one place where one might think people would know brilliant technology when they saw it, a woman was asked to remove her Google Glasses in a bar. When she would not, they were ripped off her face. While trying to get them back her purse and cellphone were stolen in revenge by one of the unwashed simpletons.

In an example of abusive policing at its most paranoid, a journalist named Kyle Russell was on his way home following a protest against a Google employee when his glasses were pulled off his face and smashed on the ground to destroy the evidence.

Always keen to find new and interesting ways to put more into the public coffers out of which their salary is paid, police started ticketing drivers for wearing Google Glass while behind the wheel. No particular reason behind it except vague excuses about the glasses being a “distraction” despite there being absolutely no evidence that the device was even turned on at the time.

Perhaps one of the greatest examples of blistering overreaction in modern history, a Google Glass user was dragged out of a movie theatre and interrogated by agents from the Department of Homeland Security, it apparently taking three hours for the crack national security experts to comprehend the fact that the glasses were turned off and the wearer was, in fact, not trying to record the movie for purposes of most vile and dangerous piracy. Making a better place and saving orphans and little kittens in the process.