SCRIBBLES

This may ruffle some feathers...but I doubt it.

I was scrolling through Twitter the other day, marketing my story and looking for people who might retweet my message, thinking: I’m not getting anywhere. So I let myself get distracted by answering one of those quizzes they sometimes offer up for nerds like me. Apparently, they can guess your education just by simply answering a set of questions; I’m proud to say this ol’ high school grad is a candidate for a Phd. I got a whopping 46/60.

76%?

Pretty pathetic in my eyes. But, at my age I guess it’s good to have something to fall back on. But it was shortly after getting my Phd notice that I came across a Tweet that said something about WOKE, and how it should be illegal and unconstitutional to try and eliminate it as a Movement. A Movement? Now, I don’t profess to know much of anything when it comes to the Woke Movement; I tend to ignore that sort of shit. It’s a Snowflake Movement as far as I’m concerned. As far as I know, it, and the Cancel Culture, might be one and the same thing. So I did a little digging. As a result of said digging—(exactly ONE article, because it’s late and I want to go to bed)—I came to the conclusion that they’re pretty fucked up as far as Cultural Movements go.

Cancel Culture got rid of our beloved rootin’est, tootin’est, baddest cowboy, North, South, East, aaaaand, West of the Pecos: Yosemite Sam. In the article I read (Krystell d’Souza, by the way, and a 2nd one by, Jan Servaes) “the term 'woke' has evolved from being a common adjective, to now identifying what a person stands for.”

“It was popularized as a call to action that went hand in hand with the black lives matter movement,” D’Souza goes on to say. “However, the idea of getting (and staying) "woke" has taken on a different, more complex meaning since it first began to spread across social media.” And it has, hasn’t it? Like I said, I don’t claim to know, or even pretend to know, a lot about what’s going on in today’s world. I live in my own little fantasy world (don’t worry, it has dragons), by purposely not watching the news or reading the newspaper. That doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s going on. You can’t remain completely obvious to life going on around you, it’s that I don’t really care. Too many people up here are crying about Trump. They say, Trump this, and Trump that, and go on and on with everything to do with America.

But we live in Canada.

I had one person drop me—we’d been on a writing page together for years—but she dropped me because I didn’t agree with the Black Lives Matter movement. Sure, Black Lives Matter, but up here, it wasn’t as big of a movement as it was down there. I told her, that up here, we’re more inclined to treating the Indigenous people more harshly. And shortly after I told her that, she said she couldn’t accept that. And then the bodies started showing up at the Indigenous Schools across Canada. She never acknowledged it, and she never took my back as a friend. Too bad, so sad, but whatever; it’s not like we went out for drinks together on a regular basis. I mean, she did live in the Carolina’s.

But anyway, back to the Woke/Cancel Culture BS. I read this Tweet, and rather than just passing it by, I felt I had to say something. I mean, as a writer I don’t believe in that kind of control when it comes to censorship. And isn’t that what it is? A movement that has the power to basically “cancel” you as a Voice. It’s mind boggling. If you don’t agree with what someone has to say, you simply turn the page, or switch the channel, or walk away. But no, these people feel they have to protect Society in general, because, well, their sympathies have been offended by what you’ve written.

“In the cancel culture, ostracism means publicly expelling someone from social or professional circles. This can be online, on social media, or in person. Those who are subject to this ostracism are thus 'cancelled'. Being excluded, and no longer belonging, becomes unbearable when the perpetrators express stereotypical suspicions via social media. To silence someone because he is a bad parent, snitch, racist, paedophile, misogynist, Marxist or Salafist”—Jan Servaes.

Well, I had to say something to this “woke” individual. I told him I had a story. The story was about a discussion involving Mohammad, Siddhartha, and Christ, all three of them eventually speaking with Beelzebub—(call me Al)—and all talking about the Anti-Christ with another character, who is the victim of an assassination in Israel. I asked him if it would be considered “bad.”

And what did I mean by “bad”? I don’t know. It was something that I wrote about three or maybe four years ago, thinking that if controversy sells, or there’s no such thing as bad publicity, what would people say about something like that? I couldn’t sell it. I cut it, to bring the word count down. No luck. I changed it up. No luck. I changed the title a couple of times—and then again. I thought, can’t people see this is obvious satire? I mean, I called Mohammed, Moe; Siddhartha, Sid, and Christ BJ. I also made him a pot smoker. Obvious satire. You have to ask yourself, are people afraid of satire these days? Is satire another victim of Cancel Culture?

So I’m in the process of rewriting the story, and I’m putting it up on Sunday. If you feel you might be offended reading it, don’t read it. But I have to ask you, if you read it, and it offends you, why is that my fault? There’s nothing in it that’s offensive. Christ smokes a joint? Big deal. Christ is called BJ? Why, you ask? How about this, as far as history tells us, his name was Jehuda, and he was the son of Joseph, so, Jehuda bar Joseph. BJ. Is that offensive? Or is it because BJ is a sexual ambiguity? That’s not me thinking that, that’s you.