Synthesis Weekly - July 7, 2014

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Volume 20 Issue 46 July 7, 2014

For 20 years The Synthesis’ goal has remained to provide a forum for entertainment, music, humor, community awareness, opinions, and change.

Columns

This Week...

A Troll’s Life

Letter From the Editor

Behold, the true and shocking exploits of an internet troll! Yes folks, he was trolling before trolling was cool, he was trolling before it was even called trolling, and he is here, right now, today, to tell you what this mysterious, nefarious, nebulous activity is all about!

Be amazed at his candor, his boldness, his needlessly cruel treatment of others!

Publisher/Managing Editor

by Amy Olson

amy@synthesis.net

PAGE 4

Creative Director

Comical Ruminations

Tanner Ulsh graphics@synthesis.net

by Zooey Mae

zooey@synthesis.net

PAGE 5

Exotic Adventures in Smalltown, USA

PAGE 6

Contributing Writers

PAGE 16

Productivity Wasted PAGE 17

Ben Kirby

PAGE 18

Director of Operations Karen Potter

Owner

June Art Report

Bill Fishkin bill@synthesis.net

PAGE 19

Howl howlmovesmountains.tumblr.com

PAGE 20

Immaculate Infection

by Bob Howard

PAGE 21

Kozmik Debris

by Koz McKev

COVER ART Logan Kruidenier

Nerd

Accounting

Warped Tour

kozmckev@sunset.net

Jessica Sid Vincent Latham

Dain Sandoval dain@synthesis.net

Scene Report

Madbob@madbob.com

Arielle Mullen, Bob Howard, Howl, Koz McKev, Tommy Diestel, Jayme Washburn, Eli Schwartz, Mona Treme, Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff, Jon Williams

Photography

by Eli Schwartz

PAGE 6

Liz Watters, Mike Valdez graphics@synthesis.net Joey Murphy, Jennifer Foti

logankruidenier.tumblr.com

Double Behold! The true and shocking exploits of our own Exotic Adventurer, Emiliano, as he joins the ranks (Get it? Ranks? Because people smell bad when they sweat.) of the true believers at the Sacred Movement Healing Arts and Music Festival. Be amazed, because he’s a really good writer and has a unique way of seeing things.

Alex Light Alex@synthesis.net SynthesisWeekly.com/submit-yourevent/

Deliveries

Supertime!

by Logan Kruidenier

Hippie Sweat

Entertainment Editor

Designers

by Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff

PAGE 8

Amy Olson amy@synthesis.net

PAGE 22

The Synthesis is both owned and published

by Apartment 8 Productions. All things published in these pages are the property of Apartment 8 Productions and may not be reproduced, copied or used in any other way, shape or form without the written consent of Apartment 8 Productions. One copy (maybe two) of the Synthesis is available free to residents in Butte, Tehama and Shasta counties. Anyone caught removing papers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. All opinions expressed throughout the Synthesis are those of the author and are not necessarily the same opinions as Apartment 8 Productions and the Synthesis.

The Synthesis welcomes, wants, and will even desperately beg for letters because we care what you think. We can be reached via snail mail at the Synthesis, 210 W. 6th St., Chico, California, 95928. Email letters@ synthesis.net. Please sign all of your letters with your real name, address and preferably a phone number. We may also edit your submission for content and space.

210 West 6th Street Chico Ca 95928 530.899.7708 editorial@synthesis.net

FACEBOOK.COM/SYNTHESISCHICO 3

BLACK&WHITE PHOTO CONTEST

I admit to having a fascination with trolls (hence, our cover feature). Not just the online variety, trolls in general. The idea of going around trying to start shit is so counter to every instinct I have: I want to see everybody happy, have all arguments resolved, have everything work in its most efficiently productive manner.

S E C R E T S

H I D D E N

P L A C E S Who among you would refuse a shower of attention and praise, a chance to be declared better than your peers, and a mysterious mystery prize that is probably the greatest thing you can imagine?

(Or possibly a gift card) Our favorite submissions will be published in an upcoming issue of Synthesis, and showcased on our Life in Chico facebook page.

Black and white photos only limit 5 entries per person.

Deliver to: design@synthesis.net

P H O T O S

D U E

J U LY

14

Troll Talk

B Y

But every now and then I’ll see a comment on an article—particularly if it’s an article where someone is being really sincere and vulnerable—that seems so wildly off base or mean-spirited I feel a little tingle up my spine.

A thought creeps into my head: somebody should shut them up. What if I said just the right thing, the totally diplomatic and even handed thing, and put their asinine point of view to shame? Or what if I created a fake profile and just took out my frustrations by going all batshit crazy on them? What if I traced back who they were and threw a spotlight on them, robbing them of their shield of anonymity? But all of those are horrendously dumb ideas (on top of being a waste of time and energy), it would be further polluting the conversation with more of the exact same need for power and attention, plus it would just feed the troll, giving them exactly what they’re looking for.

Besides, It doesn’t matter who’s right if you’re arguing about utter bullshit. Better to just analyze your own logic, decide what you believe to be true, and then move on without making it about controlling idiots.

I suppose there are situations in life where people could legitimately benefit from arguing, although it’s hard for me to pinpoint a case where non-offensive/defensive conversational dynamics couldn’t get the job done better.

I find it especially odd that the two most common situations where arguments are acceptable are between anonymous strangers and people in intimate relationships. Why is that? People seldom argue with friends, coworkers, or people they interact with casually.

Somehow it’s become acceptable that the

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SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM JULY 7 2014

people we’re closest to get the same level of trust and respect as people who have no relationship with us at all. Learning how not to fight with my loved ones while still being honest has been one of the most challenging, liberating, and valuable changes I ever made.

But I digress; we’re not talking about normal human failings, we’re talking about trolls.

There are definitely people who don’t adhere to any boundaries whatsoever: people who fight with everyone, every chance they get.

I’d like to think they lash out because they feel weak and they just need to be shown kindness or have their basic needs met, but upon contemplation, it seems more likely they just like the rush of power, the ability to make an entire scene about them and what they can make other people feel and do.

It’s easy to talk around trolls on the internet, but the ones who needle you in the real world make for much stickier situations. Especially topic-oriented “activists” who find ways to constantly make things about what everyone else should be eating/thinking/valuing/ doing. I relate to having strong feelings and opinions—to the desire to improve the world in some way—but when people go about it by being dicks, I tend to see the trollish behavior as their true motivation, and as a result, I wind up glazing over and ignoring everything they have to say. That’s not to say all activism is trolling; I’m a big believer in collective expression to make social progress; I just think it goes over a whole lot more effectively when people are authentic and kind.

Letter From the Editor

by Amy Olson

amy@synthesis.net

Stranger Danger With the weather hitting triple digits last week, I guess it’s safe to say that summer is officially here. Arguably the cornerstone(s) of summer, the Thursday Night Market (AKA come downtown and rub shoulder sweat with every other asshole in town), and One Mile, have been at full capacity just about every day. I don’t swim in One Mile, because the thought of being in the same giant outdoor bathtub with so many strangers and the various fluids excreting from them, makes me a little sick. This isn’t an “I’m better than than them” situation, I actually kind of envy the ability to ignore the microbial nightmare that is One Mile. This is simply yet another example of my broken brain sucking the potential fun and normalcy out of my life.

the one it’s supposed to. It’s hard to say what triggered it exactly. It could have been that time when I was a little kid and a hobo sitting on a curb in San Francisco sneezed into my open eyes and mouth, then laughed. Maybe. I don’t know, I’m not a psychiatrist.

I’ve been called a germaphobe on a number of occasions, but I do not agree with that assessment. I think the hard-hitting notion of “stranger-danger” just took on a different and more concentrated focus in my life than

I can recall being dragged to dozens of my parents’ softball games in the summer throughout my childhood. While my parents warmed up and shot the proverbial shit with their weirdo softball buddies, my older

Anyway, back to summer. I was sitting on the grass at One Mile the other day, watching the churning froth of that people-dog-bacteria soup, when I saw something that filled my broken brain with joy; the snack bar was open!

As a person who had their childhood largely in the ‘90s, are there really any other two words in the English language that so completely embody summer as “snack bar”? No. No there aren’t. (“Otter Pop” may be a distant second.)

brother and I devised ways to slip into my dad’s truck to sneak quarters out of the center console to buy peach rings, Fun Dip, and beef jerky from the snack bar. We’d run back and forth through clouds of kicked-up dust, the air thick with the heady scent of heat mixed with bubblegum, hot dogs and sweat, high on sugar and the freedom of summer. After our initial high stakes heist (75 cent maximum for each of us), we’d post up by the dugout and divvy up our purchases, while trying to hide them from our parents. I haven’t actually purchased anything from a snack bar in over a decade, but the very idea of them still being a thing that exists makes me really happy. It’s the little things. Happy summer, you guys.

Comical Ruminations

by Zooey Mae

zooey@synthesis.net

FACEBOOK.COM/SYNTHESISCHICO 5

A P P R O P R I AT I O N AT T I R E

EXOTIC ADVENTURES AT THE SACRED MOVEMENT HEALING ARTS AND MUSIC FESTIVAL “Oh, that’s gonna chillax you a little bit,” Sage says. I’ve just squeezed a few drops from one of her sample-vials of Sacred Mayan Healing Tonic into my mouth. It burns like Jägermeister.

“Hmmm,” I think, “I don’t want to chillax too much.” So I take a few drops of Chi Builder Tonic, too. (Anthropological note: If you’ve ever doubted the validity of the Asia-America Land Bridge Theory, here, finally, is definitive proof: Mayans are into Chi!) Sage is not Mayan. She’s blonde. And she’s tall and in a low-cut rainbow-patterned dress and she’s almost spastic with vitality and good vibes.

I point out the sparkly green thingy she has at her third-eye. “Yeah, someone bindied me!” she giggles.

I tell Sage that I’m here to report for my column. She insists that if I really want to experience the “true medicine” that this festival is all about, I need to follow her right this instant. Though I’ve just arrived at the festival, and haven’t had a chance yet to check anything out, I say OK. And then Sage leans a little handmade sign up against one of her bags of Four Elements System Tea. The sign reads: “At the Sweat Lodge, be right back.”

The Sweat Lodge is next to a brook, surrounded by towering pines that jut up and disappear out of your field of vision.

There’s a bonfire going. The actual Lodge is a low circular structure, partially built into the ground, with a roof of branches radiating out from the center.

Around the fire there are perhaps three dozen half-naked white people (and one black guy with beads in his hair). Some have feathers woven into their dreads. Many are painting themselves in vivid red or black paints, in an approximation of some sort of Native look. A few are doing labored deep-breathing, moving their open palms up and down and guiding what I can only assume is their invisible Mayan Chi. They are wearing Calvin Klein boxer-briefs

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SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM JULY 7 2014

or Marijuana Leaf boxers or bikinis or organic cotton loincloths, but they’re all wearing looks of deep spiritual solemnity.

I feel extremely uncomfortable about participating in this Sweat Lodge for vague reasons concerning cultural appropriation, spiritual tourism, infiltrating-the-sacred. Also, a man in his underwear with bushy white eyebrows tells me “it’s like dying and being reborn,” which sounds sort of good but also sort of bad.

In the name of “journalism”-my excuse for everything-I strip down.

The Shaman’s (I know that term is totally not right) name is Jack. He has a strong-looking squat body and handsome dark eyes, each with a single deep-etched crows’ foot going back a considerable distance toward his ears. Jack is Sage’s boyfriend, it turns out.

He tells us that he is Native and that his people are cousins with the Maidu who are native to this area and that he grew up with these ceremonies—establishing, in some way, the authenticity of what we’re about to participate in. He asks us to sign up on his Facebook page and his email list. Then he asks us to take a pinch of American Spirit tobacco and “offer it” to the fire.

We do this. And then we wash ourselves in smoke. And then we stoop down low and enter the Lodge, sitting down on the soft cool earth by the central pit, or along the roughhewn benches in the back. Two people are sitting full-lotus, with their palms up, index fingers to thumbs. We are packed in shoulder to shoulder; someone is even sitting on my feet. The smell-of earth, of wood-fire, of pine forest, but especially of the three-dozen sweating hippies who’ve been participating in Yoga workshops all day-is intense, almost tactile, like an object or a dark force in the room.

Jack talks to us for a while. He seems to be defending himself from an imagined critic of these ceremonies being done for white people. “People say, ‘Why do you do this?’

but I say, ‘You’re just people to me,’” he says, crouched by the entrance. “You all, you’re just people to me. That’s all.” He says that he loves hippies and that hippies remind him of his own people and that he even considers himself a “Native Hippy.”

This “just people” line of thought resonates with me, in a way.

What are spiritually impoverished white (I mean “white” in the larger you-don’t-actually-have-to-be-white-to-be-“white” sense of the term) Americans supposed to do, exactly? Are they only allowed to go to Christian churches or the Mall? What about just being open and seeking and learning from different human traditions and finding connection and not always questioning and self-policing so much? Maybe this hyper-selfaware over-analyzing thing I do all the fucking time is the real problem? Maybe I just need to let go, man.

Yet there just seems to be something garish and in poor taste to dress up like Indians; to play make-believe with cultures one has only a shallow connection to; to take sacred traditions from people who’ve already had so much stolen from them; to be entitled Consumers of Culture; to pick and choose from other people’s sacred practices and patch them together—as if the world is still our Anthropological Oyster.

By the time the red-glowing stones are brought in on a pitchfork from the fire, and by the time the blanket at the opening is dropped and the water is ladled onto the stones so that everything is dark and steamy and unbearably hot—by that time I’m already tied up into my usual neurotic knots.

Why can’t I just enjoy this and have an unmediated cathartic

experience like everyone else in here?

Because people are feeling it. You can see it on their faces. A girl next to me is already weeping cleansing tears. People are rocking forward and back, mumbling prayers, having genuine personal experiences. They’re doing those ululating “Indian war-whoops” with their hands going on and off their mouths, and they’re not feeling ridiculous doing them— they’re just pure expressions of gratitude and joy.

There’s the steady drum, like a heartbeat heard in utero, and Jack is leading everyone in song and then people start “offering” their own hippie songs and prayers and thanks to “The Grandfather and The Grandmother” and they’re heartfelt, so heartfelt.

When it’s over, outside, everyone embraces.

I don’t feel like embracing. Don’t feel right doing that. So I just go right over to the brook and let myself down into the cool waters and it’s like all my cells were just individually cleansed and I feel physically amazing and yet separate, very separate. I wish I could be a Hippie-it seems so much more fun to be a Hippie-but I can’t; I’m not.

On the way back up to the festival grounds, the man walking in front of me spots a leopard-spotted wildcat—like an Ocelot, except I’m pretty sure Ocelots don’t live up here—in the tall grass, five yards from us. The cat is maybe 35 pounds and she’s gorgeous.

Other people from the Sweat Lodge Diaspora come wandering up, and they see the cat, too. You can see in their eyes that they’re wondering, “What does it mean?”—á la Double Rainbow Guy. Then one of them asks, to no one in particular: “What do you think that means?”

But nobody has the answer.

The Sacred Movement Healing Arts and Music Festival is set against Lake Concow under a spare canopy of sky-bound pine. It’s a truly lovely setting.

Generally speaking it’s what you’d expect a

Hippie/New Agey Festival to be like. There’s a stage with Jam Bands jammin’ in front of psychedelic projections. The projections are being made live by this awesome ponytailed guy with a video mixer and a plate he moves around on colored oil and water. There’s another stage with DJs playing Dubstep and girls doing sensual Belly-Dance-inspired hippy-dancing in midriff shirts and one dude (that dude) doing a combination of Ecstatic Dance and Pop-Locking off to one side (drawing, from Ecstatic Dance, the imperative to not be concerned with being “good.” I can only imagine, since I came very late, what the “hip hop cypher” and Poetry Slams were like, though I cringe, cringe at the thoughts).

There’s laughing children running about.

There’s the open enjoyment of Medicine.

There’s slacklining (Gen-Y’s hacky-sacking).

There are Aerialists dangling from long stretches of fabric suspended from branches, sort of stuck-looking but trying to play it off.

There are booths with Saris and paisley sarong-dresses and another with Tie-Dye. At one booth I meet Anthony and Sunkiss.

Anthony sells these pendants that he says are “energy generators.” “Every stone has a unique energy and the wrap just amplifies it,” he explains. The pendants are pretty.

And Sunkiss, who has butt-length dreads, draws trippy watercolors. There’s one of a big marijuana bud with crystals coming out of it. The drawing is titled “Bicolor Urkline”—a combination of the type of crystals and the strain of marijuana.

“The crystals coming out of medicine isn’t all I do,” Sunkiss tells me. “If you wanted a synapsis (sic) of what I do it’d be visionary meditation and mandala,” she says. “I meditate with the name of the festival I’m going to and then feel what my gift to offer that community is,” she explains.

Sunkiss also does massage.

(Note: I mostly just tried not to interview any hippies at all because, if I quote them, it invariably seems like I’m trying to mock them,

which I really don’t want to do. But Hippies just say/do such hippyish shit, man. There’s not much I can do.)

It’s dark now, and I’ve caught a chill from my brook-wet underwear and so I buy a Tie-Dye sweatshirt and then I buy a hot chocolate, too. I’m really excited about my hot chocolate even though it’s made, it turns out, from chia seeds and hemp seeds and coconut sugar and a banana.

I sit by the big bonfire in my Tie-Dye and sip my “hot chocolate” and chat with a few people. I like the people I talk to. I like hippies, even though they can be such hippies, sometimes. They’re trying, you know? Trying to rediscover the sacred, trying to do the right thing, trying to love each other, eat healthy, not be consumer shit-heads. Like I said, I wish I could be a Hippie.

Exotic Adventures in Smalltown, USA

by Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff

FACEBOOK.COM/SYNTHESISCHICO 7

CONFESSIONS OF AN INTERNET TROLL THE SECRET HISTORY OF ORGANIZED INTERNET DICKERY

I GUESS I’VE NEVER BEEN MUCH FOR THE GENERAL “CAST A NET AND SEE WHO GETS MAD,” I always had kind of an

agenda. I think the first time... was more trolling through abuse of power. I was a community manager for a small gaming community. There was someone applying for a hierarchal position—they had those positions mostly because it was a community made up of kids under 18, and they just wanted a name tag rather than any sort of responsibility, myself included.

Anyway, I really didn’t like this guy. And rather than trying to bring up any specific arguments against him, I used this community manager power that I had to turn off the marks that let you know if somebody had edited a post on the board, then went through his entire history and started editing his posts to be saying 8

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM JULY 7 2014

unscrupulous things. Like, I edited his posts so that he was posting these awful images and saying these terrible things, and gave him bad grammar and stuff. It was just an ego trip/kind of a power trip thing for me. He got really mad about it, and I was like, “Dude what are you even talking about, you can’t cover up your past behavior by just saying it never happened, we have clear evidence right here.”

He didn’t know it was me, he just knew that there was something wrong here.

He was like, “I didn’t post this,” and I was like, “Dude, you totally posted this.

Just because you’re not a good fit for our community...”

That’s kind of how I got started.

It was the first time I tried to be anything other than accepted. I had

always tried to be a very well-liked person, and that generally works. I could really gain a lot of trust in a community, and often I would have positions of power— despite the fact that I was far too young to handle any kind of responsible community management.

I’d had my first taste of how I can manipulate people by making them so angry that they’ll leave, or humiliate themselves.

And It was so effective. Being in a position where I had any power at all just amplified my ability to do whatever I wanted to people’s reputations and competing communities and things like that. This was also before it was a blanket term, “trolling.”

We used to call it psyops. It was fun for us to pretend that we were part of something important.

BUT THERE’S THIS MIX OF AN ADRENALINE RUSH AND THIS FEELING OF SATISFACTION THAT YOU CAN HAVE THIS POWER. I GUESS IT TOTALLY IS A POWER TRIP THING. People have been making other people mad on the Internet all along, but there was definitely a period around 2006 and 2007 where all of a sudden it became an organized thing, like organized attacks and trying to use people’s vices to bring them or their communities down.

Anyway, I figured out that if I’m anonymous and I speak correctly, I can sow the seeds of dissent and I

can make people so mad that they’ll leave. There was this gamer I didn’t like very much, but we always hung around on the same servers. I just kind of arbitrarily decided that I didn’t like people sometimes; I was not a very inclusive person at this point in my life. Looking back, I realize it was just because he was young, but at the time he was just some random name online and I didn’t like him; he was annoying, always awkwardly butting into things. He just had bad social skills, but again, it was just that he was younger than me and I didn’t realize it.

So whenever I got online I would check to make sure he wasn’t. If he wasn’t online and playing I would go into servers that he frequented sort of using his name— except there were systems to make sure you couldn’t use someone’s exact name, so I would be close enough that someone might not notice the difference, or I would just make it look like he was going by something slightly different that day maybe. So for the first few days I pretended to be him but I didn’t really do anything unusual and just got people used to the secondary name. Over the course of a week and a half I slowly started adding a lot of racial epithets into “his” speech and calling people the foulest things.

I think that toxicity amplified my own toxic behavior. And that’s definitely what drew me in—they were other people who understood this method of operation

THERE REALLY IS NO FEELING THAT EXACTLY MATCHES SUCCESSFULLY TORMENTING SOMEONE YOU REALLY DON’T LIKE.

By doing this I kind of wound up turning the entire community against this guy, until they were like “dude, get out. We can’t take this anymore it’s like you have a split personality; you keep saying all these awful things.” So this went on for one or two weeks, until I screwed up one day. I didn’t check to see if he was online—I just came on pretending to be him and he was just like, “Excuse me, who are you?” And I realized I was so boned, so I just totally played it back at him like, “No, who are you, pretending to be me?” So I start pretending to be him to his face; I wasn’t going to run away, and it was either that or admit everything. He just got so mad at it that he wound up leaving, and I was like, “I totally drove him off.”

That was about the second thing I did that really solidified that this was totally fun and totally within my power.

There really is no feeling that exactly matches successfully tormenting someone you really don’t like. It sounds really bad to say, like I’m a really awful person, and you know, I really was. But there’s this mix of an adrenaline rush and this feeling of satisfaction that you can have this power. I guess it totally is a power trip thing.

You don’t necessarily need to be strong or fast or good looking, all you have to do is just know how to make people mad. You just have to be a little bit clever and a little bit sly—and it helps to know the right people. Once you know the right people, you can get away with more than you can otherwise. All this is true especially over the Internet. In person, if you wanted to exert this kind of power over someone you were in a beef with, you’d have to actually confront them, and you’d have to be

able to beat them up and get physically confrontational.

It’s a different power dynamic where you use your conversational skills and quick thinking to be able to get your way.

I chilled off for a little bit after doing that. There wasn’t anyone else that bothered me that much until I started getting into the competitive gaming scene. Then I started joining groups that are called clans. Clans are kind of like teams; you form a clan together, then you go play competitive matches. So I joined a clan—it was a very divisive group of people; they were absolutely the best players, and nobody liked them because they were very toxic. I think that toxicity amplified my own toxic behavior.

And that’s definitely what drew me in—they were other people who understood this method of operation, like I can be nasty on the Internet and that brings me pleasure.

So I wound up joining this group and we, just for the sake of it, started shit with other people.

We found this group that was another one of these clans that we didn’t like very much, for

multiple reasons: They were not very good, but they talked a big game, and they would constantly come in and try and bug us. They would try and tell people that we were nasty people and not to let us on their server... So what we wound up doing was we (myself and two other members of my clan) were like, “If they’re going to come in and try to wreck our already awful reputation, we’re going to do something back.” continued...

FACEBOOK.COM/SYNTHESISCHICO 9

PEOPLE ONLINE WILL JUST BELIEVE ANYTHING, WITHOUT ANY PROOF. IT ALLOWS YOU TO GET INTO LITTLE WEAK POINTS. So again, being anonymous online, I started hanging around their server, pretending to be a new and bad player who’s kind of like a hopeful. Because they were around 16 they decided, “We can’t have any 13-year-olds; we’ll have you join the training program.” Which wasn’t even really a training program, they just wanted status over somebody.

That’s a huge thing about teenage boys on the Internet: they want status. So I joined this “training plan,” and I tried to figure out who was the most likely to move up into the real group. I found this one guy who was the most enthusiastic, most genuine... It was his dream; he wanted in so badly. He was probably like 14 and this was his first opportunity where he could be above somebody else.

So I was hanging out at their server, and I waited until this young hopeful and the leader were both gone, with a few other members hanging around. I called my real clan mates and said, “Hey, now is the perfect time.” So they come in—one of them named as the leader and the other one named as this hopeful, and they start having this conversation in the public chat where the “leader” is like, “Hey, you’ve been around for a while and you seem really enthusiastic. I’d like to welcome you into the group. You’re in, buddy!” And so my other clan mate, who is acting as the young hopeful, puts the group tag on and says, “Oh, I’m so grateful, thank you so much! I’m going to go celebrate!” And he acts all excited and jubilant and they both leave. So then the real trainee actually comes back in, and I message him and say, “Hey, congratulations on getting in! The leader said that he was letting you in right now. He just left a minute ago.” So he starts freaking out, and he puts on this tag that says you’re part of the group and starts acting like he’s a member, but then the leader comes in and says, “What are you doing? You need to leave now. Take that off. You’re not a part of this, why are you pretending to be?”

This all blows up a little bit. The other members say,

“Dude, you were just here a minute ago and you let him in.

You can’t do this to him. That’s fucked up. I can’t believe that you would do this.” And he’s like, “I never let anyone in! Don’t tell me what I did and didn’t do.” He starts arguing with his own community, and he winds up banning and removing a whole bunch of his community members 10

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM JULY 7 2014

because they’re like, “That wasn’t cool,” and he’s like, “Dude, YOU’RE not cool,” and this little scheme of mine dismantles this entire community.

It’s the weirdest thing how people online will just believe anything, without any proof. It allows you to get into little weak points. It seems really believable. And that’s kind of the nature of it: you lay this trap.

The death of this more involved manipulation

emerged with the bigger sites, like reddit. All of a sudden you’re not going to consistent sites for this kind of stuff.

You’re not dealing with regular community members.

Your voice isn’t as equal because there’s so many people passing through, and they’re anonymous too. (With the exception of a few people, and they tend to have an understanding of the system well enough to deal with trolls.) I’d say that was definitely the death of it: there aren’t as many small communities now.

As a result, people aren’t as creative anymore. As I said earlier, making people mad on the Internet has always been around, but this kind of structured, unified trolling was a fledgling thing at the time, and people were experimenting with lots of new things. What really came along with that was meme culture. A lot of this was coming from 4Chan at the time—4Chan opened in 2003 and it was still a really small site, and memes were still underground culture. Both of these things moved out into mainstream Internet culture together, with meme culture and trolling kind of paired into this one thing.

Now people are like, “Oh you do it this one specific way. You say this one specific set of things and it makes people mad.” And sometimes it does make people mad, but people just aren’t very creative about their sabotage anymore. Usually if they are, it’s not about more harmless stuff like this. And it wasn’t before; it kind of shifted from where if you could manipulate people and steal credit card numbers, and then it transitioned so that if you knew how to manipulate people you started wrecking online communities, and now it’s kind of transitioned back to stealing credit card numbers again.

Was it because I felt like this area of mine was my domain, and anybody I didn’t want in there needed to go? Or was it that I was just bored, and I couldn’t do this stuff in real life? I would say it was a little bit of both. I can’t think of any teenage boy that doesn’t want to start shit. I think that was part of why I did it. But I would say the bigger thing is that it’s just a very satisfying power dynamic. You can really get at these people, with minimal effort.

Do I troll anymore? If I ever play games-and since I used to play competitively I still have some skills, maybe not the best in the world, but enough to make people angry-I tend to name myself something really homoerotic. People get so upset when they lose to somebody who represents homoeroticism. That’s the closest I get to it now. I don’t plan things anymore. I’m not intentionally mean to people, but if people happen to get mad at video games, and mad at something they dislike at the same time, then it’s just kind of funny. But I wouldn’t say it’s falling into the old ways.

So, is there any way to stop someone who’s just out there to get a power trip? To just make you

pissed off? Does it actually help if you ignore them, or is it better to try to take them on?

Absolutely ignoring them is what’s best. Just have a conversation around them; don’t address them. If you’re in a community that has moderation or anything of the voting system, just quietly vote them down. Never comment back; never say “Look how much everybody disagrees with you!” and get all superior. For one thing, that puts you in a position where you’re their target, and it’s also doing the the same thing as the troll: you’re invested in being dominant over this other person. I see people get all like, “Ha ha, you failed, you didn’t start an argument!”

It immediately puts them in a position where they are now in an argument with a person who was only trying to suck other people in and make them mad in the first place.

A Celebration of Music, Food & Life In Chico!

Saturday July 12th, 2014 12-9pm Manzanita Place Featuring Music Performances by:

* Food Sampling *Lagunitas Beer Garden *Wine Bar

*Volleyball Tournaments 2-5 PM for prizes! * Children’s Play Area *Croquet & Down Range Archery Exhibit *Snapshots Souvini Souvinir VW Photo bus

NORTHERN TRADITIONZ ALLI BATTAGLIA & THE MUSIC BREWING CO. DOCTOR LUNA * THE LOLOS * THE BLUE MERLES * DEVOLL THREE FINGER WHISKEY * GRAVYBRAIN * THE MERCANTILES

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Thursday, July 10th

GAMMA AT BASSMINT PEKING

Thursday is Monstros punk day (so I decided, just now)—pizza, beer, circle pits, kids in leather and spikes, and you. On The Ground from Seattle plays raucous punk with epic choruses worthy of audience sing-a-longs. Super Nothing is from Seattle too, and they’re cool and loud too; check out their track “Sonic Junkie.” Born Into This is sick. Gorilla Guerilla may or may not be dressed like gorillas. $5, 8pm.

GAMMA mixes bass music. Bass music is, like... electronic, bass-y, and wonderful. As always, the Friday night bass party will be taking advantage of one the best sound systems in Chico, compliments of local DJ ALO. GAMMA is a big deal because he’s throwing the StillDream festival in Belden, an awesomely huge bass music festival that’s headlined this year by Alex & Allison Grey. Yeah, I know they’re not DJs, shut up. Friday night also features Eyere Eyes and ALO. 9:30pm.

Saturday, July 12th

Saturday, July 12th

If you have haven’t heard Io Torus (pictured) yet, then you have some musical education in your future.

They’re metal, and experimental, and they change time signatures about every 5 seconds, and their songs’ run-times are all hella minutes (long songs, bro). Their vocalist is one of my favorite metal singers ever. Sick bands from out of town are playing, it costs $5, and you’ll show up at 7:30pm.

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM JULY 7 2014

Friday, July 11th

ON THE GROUND, SUPER NOTHING, BORN INTO THIS, GORILLA GUERILLA MONSTROS PIZZA

IO TORUS, FIGHTING THE VILLAIN, SAVE US FROM THE ARCHON, UFO VS. NASA 1078 GALLERY

14

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CANDY APPLE REUNION SHOW MALTESE

Jake Sprecher (pictured) leads a sick rock band in playing balls-y, Doors-y music that will get you dancing in about 30 seconds, for about 30 minutes.

You want to witness this flashback to the first decade of the 2000’s. For the occasion, their friends in the SF-based group Magic Bullets are getting back together to play a reunion set as well. They’re more chilled and melodic, with some very fancy, clean guitar-work. $5, 9pm.

New & Exciting Ongoing Events Candy Apple

8 Tuesday

Sierra Nevada Big Room: The Kruger Brothers. $22, 7:30pm

9 Wednesday

Sierra Nevada Big Room: Old Chico ESB Release Party. 21+ only, $5, 6pm

10 Thursday

Monstros: On The Ground (WA), Super Nothing (WA), Born Into This, Gorilla Guerilla. $5, 8pm Thursday Market: Enter to win a hula hoop from Meg Amor.

Hooping performance at 3rd & Main. 6pm

11 Friday

1078 Gallery: Cold Blue Mountain, Negative Standards (Oakland), Dump Star, Mom & Dad. $5, 8pm City Plaza: Swamp Daddy.

7:30pm Lost On Main: World’s Finest.

Maltese: Swamp Zen. 9pm Peking: BassMint. GAMMA, Eyere Eyes, ALO. 9:30pm

12 Saturday

1078 Gallery: Io Torus, Fighting The Villain, Save Us From The Archon, UFO vs. NASA. $5, 7:30pm Lost On Main: For The Funk Of It preparty ft. Mojo Green, Big Sticky Mess.

Maltese: Candy Apple reunion, ft. Magic Bullets (SF) and Belda Beast. $5, 9pm Manzanita Place: Summerfest Chico! Music, food, Lagunitas beer garden, and more, ft. Alli Battaglia, Swamp Zen, The Lolos, and much more. 12pm-9pm

13 Sunday

1078 Gallery: CJ Boyd, John Horner. $5, 7:30pm

7 Monday

The Bear: Bear-E-oke! 9pm Cafe Coda: 1st Monday Jazz. $10, 7-8:30pm Chico Art Center: Sal Casa Retrospective. 10am-4pm Chico Womens Club: Prenatal Yoga.

5:30-6:30pm DownLo: Comedy Night. Free.

Pool League. 3 player teams, signup with bartender. 7pm. All ages until 10pm Maltese: Open Mic Comedy or Music, alternates every week. Signups at 8pm, starts at 9pm. Mug Night 7-11:30pm The Tackle Box: Latin Dance Classes.

Free, 7-9pm University Bar: Free Pool 6-8pm Yoga Center Of Chico: Sound Healing w. Emiliano. Breathwork, Meditation, Healing.

8 Tuesday

100th Monkey: Fusion Belly Dance mixed-level class, with BellySutra. $8/class or $32/month. 6pm Open Mic plus showcase by local musicians. 7pm Chico Art Center: Sal Casa Retrospective. 10am-4pm Chico Women’s Club: Yoga. 9-10am.

Afro Carribean Dance. $10/class or $35/mo. 5:50-7pm. Followed by Capoeira, $3-$10. 7:30-8:30pm Crazy Horse Saloon: All Request Karaoke. 21+ DownLo: Game night. All ages until 10pm Holiday Inn Bar: Salsa Lessons, 7-10pm LaSalles: ’90s night. 21+ Maltese: Karaoke. 9pm-Close Studio Inn Lounge: Karaoke.

8:30pm-1am The Tackle Box: Karaoke, 9pm University Bar: Free Pool 6-8pm Woodstocks: Trivia Challenge. Call

at 4pm to reserve a table. Starts 6:30pm

9 Wednesday

Avenue 9 Gallery: “Carlos Loarca in Chico,” paintings of Guatemalan folklore.

The Bear: Trike Races. Post time 10pm Chico Art Center: Sal Casa Retrospective. 10am-4pm Chico Women’s Club: Afro Brazilian Dance. 5:30-7pm DownLo: Wednesday night jazz.

8 Ball Tournament, signups 6pm, starts 7pm Duffys: Dance Night! DJ Spenny and Jeff Howse. $1, 9pm The Graduate: Free Pool after 10pm Jesus Center: Derelict Voice Writing Group, everyone welcome.

9-10:30am The Maltese: Friends With Vinyl!

Bring your vinyl and share up to 3 songs/12 minutes on the turntable.

9pm-1am The Tackle Box: Line Dance classes.

Free, 5:30-7:30pm. Swing Dance classes. Free, 7:30-9:30pm University Bar: Free Pool 6-8pm VIP Ultra Lounge: Laurie Dana.

7-9pm Woodstocks: Trivia Night plus Happy Hour. call at 4pm to reserve a table. Starts at 8pm

10 Thursday

Avenue 9 Gallery: “Carlos Loarca in Chico,” paintings of Guatemalan folklore.

The Beach: DJ Mack Morris.

10:30pm The Bear: DJ Dancing. Free, 9pm Chico Art Center: Sal Casa Retrospective. 10am-4pm DownLo: Chico Jazz Collective.

8-11pm. All ages until 10pm The Graduate: Free Pool after 10pm Has Beans Downtown: Open Mic

EAT. DRINK. PLAY. Find Out How you Can Play Pool for Only $1/Day!

Night. 7-10pm. Signups start at 6pm Holiday Inn Bar: Karaoke. 8pm-midnight LaSalles: Free live music on the patio. 6-9pm Maltese: Karaoke. 9pm-close Panamas: Buck night and DJ Eclectic & guests on the patio. 9pm Quackers: Karaoke night with Andy.

9pm-1am University Bar: Free Pool 6-8pm VIP Ultra Lounge: Acoustic performance with Bradley Relf. 7-9pm. No Cover.

Woodstocks: Open Mic Night Yoga Center Of Chico: Ecstatic Dance with Clay Olson. 7:30-9:30pm

11 Friday

Avenue 9 Gallery: “Carlos Loarca in Chico,” paintings of Guatemalan folklore. Opening Reception 5-8pm The Beach: DJ2k & Mack Morris.

9pm The Bear: DJ Dancing. Free, 9pm Cafe Coda: Friday Morning Jazz with Bogg. 11am Chico Art Center: Sal Casa Retrospective. 10am-4pm Crazy Horse Saloon: Fusion Fridays, the best country, rock, oldies, 80s & top 40. Country dance lessons 9-10:30pm DownLo: ½ off pool. All ages until 10pm. Live Music, 8pm Duffys: Pub Scouts - Happy Hour.

4-7pm The Graduate: Free Pool after 10pm Holiday Inn Bar: DJ Dance Party.

8pm-midnight LaSalles: Open Mic night on the patio. 6-9pm Maltese: Happy hour with live jazz

by Bogg. 5-7pm. LGBTQ+ Dance Party. 9pm Panamas: Jigga Julee, DJ Mah on the patio. 9pm Peeking: BassMint. Weekly electronic dance party. $3. 9:30pm

Quackers: Live DJ. 9pm Sultan’s Bistro: Bellydance Performance. 6:30-7:30pm University Bar: Free Pool 6-8pm

12 Saturday

Avenue 9 Gallery: “Carlos Loarca in Chico,” paintings of Guatemalan folklore. 12-5pm The Beach: DJ Mah. 9pm The Bear: DJ Dancing. No Cover.

9pm Crazy Horse Saloon: Ladies Night Dancing. 10pm-1:30am DownLo: 9 Ball tournament.

Signups at noon, starts at 1pm. All ages until 10pm The Graduate: Free Pool after 10pm Holiday Inn Bar: DJ Dancing. 70s and 80s music. The Molly Gunn’s Revival! 8pm-midnight LaSalles: 80’s Night. 8pm-close Panamas: DJ Eclectic on the patio.

9pm University Bar: Free Pool 6-8pm

13 Sunday

100th Monkey: Death Cafe. Eat and drink, and talk about death. 2pm Dorothy Johnson Center: Soul Shake Dance Church. Free-style dance wave, $8-$15 sliding scale.

10am-12:30pm DownLo: Free Pool, 1 hour with every $8 purchase. All ages until 10pm LaSalles: Karaoke. 9pm Maltese: Live Jazz 4-7pm. Trivia 8pm Tackle Box: Karaoke, 8pm

LESSONS, LEAGUES AND TOURNAMENTS! GREAT FOOD! LIVE MUSIC! 319 Main Street (530) 892-2473 FACEBOOK.COM/SYNTHESISCHICO 15

On The Town 16

PHOTOS BY VINCE LATHAM FACEBOOK.COM/VANGUARD.PHOTOGRAPHY

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM JULY 7 2014

On The Town

PHOTOS BY JESSICA SID

Paranoia A GAME OF DICKISH DIPLOMACY

Recently I’ve been playing an obscene amount of tabletop, Pen and Paper RPGs. I’ve been Mastering some games [As in “Dungeon Master,” as in the original tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons—ed], assisting in the creation of some, and playing in quite a few, but the most fun I’ve had in this sudden frenzy of character sheets is Mongoose Publishing’s Paranoia system. Before I dip into the review, for the sake of my readerbase (hi Dad), I’ll define a few terms, as most people’s perception of the tabletop roleplaying game is “some sort of vague ritual involving colored robes and maybe suicide.”

In PnP RPGs, you’ve got your Master, the maker and leader of the game. They are judge, jury, and sovereign creator of the universe.

They tell the story, portray characters, make the rules, and keep track of about ten thousand different pieces of information, all while smiling malevolently, usually behind a screen or laptop. Then you’ve got your players, the persistent characters who are exploring the adventure that has been set up for them.

Usually they’ve got statistics of some kind to measure how good they are at what they do, and a good game features customization options to make your characters not only unique, but (hopefully) complementary to the other players. Then you roll some dice and everyone gets really mad.

Paranoia is set in post-apocalyptic underground Alpha Complex, run by a badly corrupted, totalitarian, anti-communist AI running a rig right out of 1983’s War Games. 80 percent of the population are worker drones kept in place by drugs, and the remaining 20 percent have realized that life is terrible and the only way to get ahead is to cheat. It could be the most depressing setting in the world, if

the game wasn’t so goddamned silly.

The goal of the game is to run impossibly dangerous missions assigned from the computer’s false info, and kill traitors.

Unfortunately, all of the players are traitors.

Just about everybody is a traitor. And you all know that everybody else is a traitor, you just don’t know how yet, except of course, by your own traitorous alliances and mutations.

The real goal is to satisfy the computer, your treasonous contacts, and report back to briefing with no evidence that you did anything wrong. Of course, considering that your party members are with you all the time, the only way to do that is to be the only one to report to briefing.

PHOTOS BY VINCE LATHAM FACEBOOK.COM/VANGUARD.PHOTOGRAPHY

On The Town

Most of the game is spent pretending to cooperate, writing secret notes to your contacts, stealing from your opponents/ friends, and constantly trying to catch your fellow party members speaking treason on camera. Did I mention there’s a camera? One of the character-classes is a guy who holds a giant, celluloid film camera, and because of its ridiculous size, cannot “hold” anything else. He is inevitably the first to die. Once he’s out of the way, it’s all combat knives and laser pistols. Or as it was in my case, meat cleavers and boiling grease.

It’s a complicated, silly RPG that plays like a demented party game that tests your acting, lying, and nefarious plotting. It’s a rather social experience, and it is, of course, fun. It has to be. Fun is mandatory in Alpha Complex!

Productivity Wasted

by Eli Schwartz

FACEBOOK.COM/SYNTHESISCHICO 17

Warped Tour 2014

BY ALEX LIGHT Finch Finch was the first band of the day for me, and I was only vaguely familiar with their material (pop/rock/screamo from the 2000s). People I respect like Finch, and this was their first live tour in something like four years, so after a brief look at my other options (six total shit bands) I decided to see what this screamo band is all about.

Finch is all about moderately good poprock with some great singing and incredible screaming from the eccentric/awkward/selfconscious singer Nate Barcalow. The song that got the greatest crowd response seemed to be called “I Miss You,” where he and the crowd sang “I miss you, I miss you so” over and over again. I liked it.

Attila This band was something else. About two hundred 14 to 18 year olds were waiting eagerly for the arrival of Fronz, the tattooed Georgia-raised singer who was rocking a shock of purple hair, thick-rimmed neon green glasses, and long purple socks. He yelled “Six, six, six!” and all the teenagers yelled “I party with the devil, bitch!” before they all started pogo-ing like madmen. (Pogo-ing is jumping up and down like a pogo stick; in this case, when a metal band starts playing a breakdown.)

And so the music goes. There were breakdowns, and breakdowns, and some pop-punk kind of song, and Fronz leading everyone in a crowd-wide shout of “Suck my fucking cock!” followed by more breakdowns.

Here was his this-is-our-last-song speech: “Alright, I have something to say. Suck my fuck! (The crowd cheered.) No, no, that’s not what I’m really wanting to say. Here it is, this is my most important statement today. Fuck her right in the pussy! There’s your quote for the day. Write it in your diaries.” They finished with a song I think might’ve been called “Suck My Fuck,” the crowd swiftly shrunk from two hundred to about fifty, and Every Time I Die took the stage.

Every Time I Die I went by ETID’s merch tent before hand (which was printed completely with rainbows) 18

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM JULY 7 2014

to check out the album art for their new album (the art is all the member’s heads shooting rainbow lasers) and shake hands with singer Keith Buckley. He’s sexy AF and I had butterflies. I nerded out with him about the new album (“Moor” is the best track) and asked what it’s like to sing/scream when Warped Tour schedules them to play at 11am, as they did the day before in San Diego (“It’s horrible... I just wake up, drink lots of water, and go onstage.”)

Every Time I Die

After roughly 14 years writing heavy metal/ southern rock albums and giving some of the greatest rock performances ever, their live show today was a little rusty, a little sweaty and tired; they were no doubt a little discouraged at the lack of people watching them. In spite of all this, they fucking killed it; they brought everything they had. The opening song was their famous breakdown anthem “Floater,” and all fifty fans lost their shit. From there they dived headlong into the equally legendary “Bored Stiff,” and it was pure rock gold from then on. After the last song of the set, guitarist Jordan Buckley crowd-surfed the entire two hundred feet back to their merch tent (the same seven kids carried him most of the way. It was still awesome) and the enormous other guitarist Andy Williams walked into the crowd to give sweaty hugs to anyone willing (myself included).

Atilla (via Samantha Mattick)

Finch

July Art Report

SUMMER’S HERE

BY MICHELE FRENCH “My work will speak for itself—therefore there are no titles.” This terse statement is the introduction to Sal Casa’s retrospective at the Chico Art Center which will run through July 11. He further elucidates his work by saying, “The process of creation is not addition but subtraction; this is my philosophy.” Casa is nationally recognized as a water media artist and his paintings are in collections around the world. His work reveals a fascination with color, brushwork and words.

In this group of 25 to 30 paintings the earliest is from 1960—the study of a man’s head taken, perhaps, from a Renaissance painting. The figure’s leonine head and craggy features are rendered with bold strokes in monochromatic colors which give the image an almost sculptural quality. One of the latest paintings in the show is from this year, an abstract consisting of three blocks of color: a light pink area on the bottom with two oblong tan areas above on a light tan background. It is simplicity itself, beautiful beyond description.

You might say David Gilhooly had a puckish sense of humor. Guests at the opening for his retrospective at James Snidle Fine Arts openly laughed at the charming, witty images on the walls and tables, but the images make you think, as well. Gilhooly died only last year at the age of 70. He went to U.C. Davis in the early 1960s with the view of becoming a veterinarian, but when he met a girl who was an art student, who he sought to impress, he signed up for a class from ceramicist Robert Arneson in the fall of 1963 and the rest-as they say!-was history. He also studied with the internationally famous painter Wayne Thiebaud and was influenced by Roy DeForest.

Gilhooly’s work passed through stages, an early stage being the creation of ceramic frog sculptures. At some point he got tired of that and, to this day, his official website has a little green frog gif waving at you and announcing, “Frog Fred sez, No More Frogs.” He went on to produce acrylic Hawaiian shirts for awhile and then did parodies of Marcel DuChamp’s famous “Nude Descending a Staircase.”

Several of these are displayed at Snidle’s, but the crowd favorite was from Gilhooly’s junk art period, his send-up of DaVinci’s “Last Supper” with a nod to Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans. This framed wall sculpture is made of layers of jigsaw puzzles with the figure of

Christ at the center spreading his hands in a gesture that seems to offer a blessed meal of tomato soup. This show will be in place through the end of July.

In Meow Meow at the Winchester Goose, Sea Monster (Christine Fulton) displays her intriguing and delightfully skewed watercolor images. You can’t take everything in at once when you look at a Sea Monster painting. My personal favorite in this show is the head of a young woman and her (seemingly) faithful cat. I didn’t notice, at first, that the girl’s disembodied head is actually floating inside a bell jar. The girl’s cat, sitting slightly behind the glass jar with the hair of its chest forming a heart, has sort of a snarky expression which, on further reflection, makes it appear the cat’s actually gloating.

A passing glance won’t reveal all the subtle details of this painting, or of others in the show either. The young woman’s neck has a butterfly tattooed on it which is formed, in part, by two penises and—is that a sketch of a dead cat on the wall behind her? To the bottom right there’s a can of “Big Cat malt liquor” with a paper parasol sticking out of the top along with two small purple roses crowned by a bee holding a human eyeball.

These fine details create an enchanting air of decadence to Sea Monster’s paintings, and the theme here is on one of my favorite subjects: cats! The show will run through most of July.

The Chico Art Center is located at 450 Orange St. and its hours are 10am to 4pm seven days a week. James Snidle Fine Arts is located at 254 E. 4th St. and their hours are 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday, and 10am to 2pm Saturday. The Winchester Goose is at 800 Broadway and is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11am to 11pm.

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Multidimensional Ladybug Rides The wind rushed through the boy’s hair.

Shoots of green plants and slender blades of grass were passing closely to either side, narrowly avoiding impact. The ladybug skimmed at supersonic speeds through the wilderness, and Howl had only the insect’s antenna to hold onto for safety. Riding on his friend Lady had seemed liked a fun idea a few moments ago, when he’d been standing firmly on the ground, but now he was not at all sure he’d made the right choice. Lady turned her black head and shouted something.

“What?” Howl shouted against the wind. He bent his head closer to hers.

“We’re about to hit a Glinderflux up ahead!

One of those gates I told you about. It might feel a little strange in there for a human…”

Howl didn’t quite know what to say to this, but the need for a response was soon taken from him. More sudden than thought, there came rushing up a cold blackness in front of them that swiftly swallowed all sensations.

No longer could he feel Lady’s antenna gripped in his hands. Howl tried to look down in surprise before realizing he had no hands…

Indeed, he had no eyes to look at his hands with. And now, if he had been a something a moment ago, he could no longer remember it.

For awhile, the blackness existed in solitude, with nothing to differentiate experience from personality, or vice versa. Gradually, a pinpoint of light grew into being, and it continued to grow until it became a wideopen window into a changing panorama of experience.

opening and closing, every one speaking in a deafening, almost understandable language, a cacophony that kept growing into a blinding light— The bright sunlight shone down on a single hill of dirt, which breathed in time with the earth underneath—flowers, grass, shrubs, insects; all blossomed and covered the dirt hill, only to faint back in death, decomposing into the dirt hill; a bare hill once more. An eternal, inexorable rhythm, life breathing in and out endlessly— Countless experiences were passing through Howl’s mind, each one so all-encompassing and landing with such a feeling of grave import that he had long since forgotten that he was a boy, much less that he was still riding Lady through a Glinderflux. Now he was a toddler licking his first caramel-apple pop; now he was a caterpillar going through all the awkwardness of growing a cocoon; now he was a vast redwood forest trembling with the foreknowledge of death, approaching in just a few short centuries—but slowly, slowly, the window of experience began to remember that he was Howl, a small boy, riding a friend who was a ladybug.

Slender blades of grass rushed by to either side, Lady’s wings beating steadily around him. “It’s a bit of a rush, isn’t it!” she shouted over her shoulder. “Sorry, I should’ve warned you about those… Ladybugs fly through them a few times a day. You kinda just get used to it.”

Howl howlmovesmountains.tumblr.com

There was a sea of faces… rolling into, under, over each other. Each face had its mouth 20

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM JULY 7 2014

The Cons and Pros of High Heat THE CHICO SUMMER HEAT ISN’T SO GREAT FOR METAL-WORKING, BUT IT SURE DOES PRODUCE SOME NICE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES! The heat is on. Here at the farm I’ve been cutting grass in the mornings, then sequestering myself inside with the swamp cooler and old movies until the weather breaks in the evening. Then Trish and I will go out with a couple of drinks and watch the bats rise up. They roost underneath the train trestle located near the southwest corner of the property.

I’ve been gathering materials for the Death or Glory. Beams were ordered yesterday and I found the metal I’ll need to fabricate a few dozen brackets at the scrap yard. My experience there was less dramatic than my last visit—I managed to avoid hooking myself through the nose with barbed wire. The scrap yard is a magical place for a metal-worker. The place is littered with piles and bins and stacks of different types and sizes of metal. I had to put on the blinders and only come home with more or less what I’d come for. Making those brackets will save me a lot of dough—I priced inferior brackets at Lowe’s and they came in around six bucks a pop. A beefier bracket at Meek’s was sixteen. I need at least thirty-two of them. The metal I bought cost me forty five bucks and I could probably make a hundred or more brackets out of it. I’m thrilled about the savings, but now I have to cut the metal, hammer it flat, bend it, and drill holes through for the bolts. Banging on hot metal isn’t the most comfortable activity you could choose on a day when the mercury is hovering over a hundred.

On a more positive note, the heat is ripening some of the fruits and vegetables. A

particularly luscious “donut” peach tree is producing wonderful, white-fleshed peaches laden with natural sugars. The fruit is flat and wide, hence the name, and has a small pit. I had high hopes for making a peach wine, but the tree is young and smallish, and the fruit is simply too delicious to wait on; it looks like they will all be eaten before the fourth of July.

The donut is one of three different varieties of peach in the yard, and fortunately they don’t all ripen at the same time. My favorite is an old variety called “Indian Free.” It was a type grown by Thomas Jefferson, and the tree is disease-resistant and beautifully formed.

It produces a pink-purplish fruit with a skin thicker than most peaches I’m used to. This is the second year this tree has produced, and it looks like we’re in for a bounty, but right now the Indian Free peaches are small and hard—I expect it will be at least a few weeks before they are ripe enough to start harvesting.

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Thus far we’ve only harvested cherry tomatoes, but the larger types are finally starting to blush. We may have ripe tomatoes by week’s end. The peppers are the only annual crop we’ve got that is producing consistently right now. All varieties are fruiting regularly.

Immaculate Infection

by Bob Howard

Madbob@madbob.com

FACEBOOK.COM/SYNTHESISCHICO 21

JULY 7, 2014

BY KOZ MCKEV

Aries

Taurus

Gemini

Cancer

Leo

Virgo

Memory meets motor skills this week. Learning how to do things in an efficient way takes practice. Mars is spending its final days in the seventh house. Relationship woes will begin to improve.

Ego issues are ever present in front of you. Tuesday night through Thursday night are you best days for adventure and risk taking. Friday night/ Saturday morning’s full moon helps you to understand your comfort zones and could even help you recover deeply repressed memories. Saturday night and Sunday look good for parties and socializing.

You are expanding your love of family and personal values. Financial improvement is around the corner for you.

Make a practical effort to improve your finances. Work on relationship issues early in the week. Venus and Mars will be in harmony over the weekend. The full moon highlights long distance travel, higher education, and being exposed to new things. Find new things to appreciate about your environment.

Stay in touch with siblings, old friends, and neighbors.

Establish better modes of communication.

Everything we do expresses our values one way or another. Being free is different than being secure. Mercury moves into your second house Saturday night. Issues involving family, money, and food are more likely to come up. Keep working on creative projects, childrens’ issues, and good sportsmanship. Tuesday night through Thursday are good for romance. Venus and Mercury in your first house makes you more attractive to others.

The full moon in the eighth house will reveal just what’s bothering you.

Go with the things that renew you and help you to feel better about yourself.

Monday and Tuesday find you in an open-hearted as well as a creative and playful mood. The full moon Friday/ Saturday will prompt better relationships and social improvements. Be honest and practical in regards to how you’re limited in being there for other people. Be aware of the many things that you have to be grateful for. Be aware and conscious in regards to the ways in which you spend your resources.

The last few weeks may have felt like you were being led blindfolded down an arduous path. Depend more on your intuition and spiritual sensibilities. You enjoy being a people pleaser. Being able to distinguish between those who have your best interests from those that don’t is important. Socializing, travel, and utilizing spiritual teachings are most important this week. Tuesday night through Thursday your propensity for playful and artistic energy is high. Continue to help those who are isolated and in need of friends.

Allow yourself to feel good in the company of others without giving in to criticism, regret or comparisons. People like you for who you are.

View being yourself as part of your spiritual practice. Be conscious about what it is in this natural world that makes you more comfortable. Mercury moves into your eleventh house this week bringing renewed intelligence and brilliant social contacts. The full moon will renew your creative abilities and allow you to gain more spiritual wisdom. Seek strength through self mastery.

Libra

Scorpio

Saggitarius

Capricorn

Aquarius

Pisces

You’ve been in a more career-oriented place as of lately. Projects that were pushed to the back burner begin to move forward. You are a good listener and you’re sensitive to how other people feel. Now is a time when you’re more aware of your own feelings.

You may need to help your parents, or do something with your own living space.

The full moon heightens psychic abilities and makes past karma more evident to you. Saturday night and Sunday will help you feel more comfortable with accepting things as they are.

Begin the week with a emotional renewal this Monday.

The moon in Scorpio trines the sun in Cancer, giving deep positive healing and empathetic support. On Monday and Tuesday, pray for good to happen to those that might hurt you. Fear no one, but be a support for all who seek help. Stay conscious and grounded during the full moon Friday/Saturday. By Sunday you’ll be more aware of how to work within your limits. Out of your travels and educational experience new career opportunities are bound to come up for you.

Once you’ve accepted the fact that nothing is in your control, you’ll be able to adjust to the consequences of the poor choices on the part of yourself as well as others.

Pay off your debts and free yourself from old and stale karma. Do good and allow for some freshness in your life.

Spread mercy. Help others with their difficulties and you will be making good karma for yourself. The moon will be in Sagittarius Tuesday night through Thursday. There will be something positive to focus on those days. The full moon affects family, money, eating, and vocalizing.

You are the sign that is opposite Cancer, and therefore has the best overall view as to what is going on these days.

You begin the week from a social place and move through your karma, ending up being at the center of what is going on. The moon will be in Capricorn from Thursday night at 8:25pm PDT till Saturday at 8:07pm when it goes into Aquarius. It culminates in fullness Saturday early in the morning at 4:25am PDT. This is a powerful moon of change and transformation. Meditate on who you want to be.

Koz McKev is on YouTube, on cable 11 BCTV and is heard on 90.1FM KZFR Chico. Also available by appointment for personal horoscopes call (530)891-5147 or e-mail kozmickev@sunset.net

22

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM JULY 7 2014

Most worthwhile things are going to take time, effort and commitment. Admire other people’s commitments. Be persistent with the constructive steps you take to reach a goal. Now is a good time to work on health issues, charitable causes, and creating a better spirit of teamwork. Don’t expect other people to be as good as you. The moon enters Aquarius Saturday night at 8:07pm PDT. Sunday would be a good day for a party and a team effort combined. Work is hard for now. Pace yourself and enjoy minor successes.

Good just got better. Your heart feels elevated. Creative juice is flowing. Monday and Tuesday feel like days of divine cosmic support. People will see you for who you are this week. Jupiter is getting ready to leave your fifth house for the sixth house. Once you are happy with yourself the work will present itself to you.

The full moon will bring invitations to parties and helpful friends showing up at your door. Take some time out Sunday to work on your spiritual practice. As you give, the good karma will keep on flowing.