When the second rider came, all dressed in red, he was a vibrant saviour. We rushed out into the streets to greet him with open arms. We thought he was bringing us freedom from terror. We drank his health, and worked long into the night melting metals for weapons and for bullets. We laid out a feast in his honour and served him the rarest of delicacies. We pureed decency, filleted soul. To return the honour, he entertained us with tricks of fire. He turned the sky red and black, turned bodies to smoke. We stood in the circle of firelight, transfixed with shock and awe.

When the third rider came, he was inky black, invisible. He moved only at night, and we never actually saw him. He curdled the milk in our breasts and contaminated the meat on our forks. Water tasted of bitter metals, fruit rotted on the limbs, and vegetables withered at the root. We heard the children crying for something wholesome, something real. But for the most part, we were able to distract them with shiny things, with baubles and tinsel.

When the fourth rider came, he was pale as an angel. We threw our doors wide, and begged him to step inside. We were that tired, you see. All around us, the world was in flames. All around us, the poison was spilling and spreading. We begged the pale rider to step inside and lead us to a better place. We begged him to bring us some peace. We begged him to release us from the prison of our own making. He threw back his head and laughed.

Be a good little girl and don’t get in the way when Mommy’s trying to do the housework.

Be a brave little boy and don’t cry. It’s just a little blood.

Be a good little girl and smile through your troubles.

Be a good little boy, and look mean and hard.

Be a good little girl and remember to put the make-up away when you’re done playing with it.

Be a good little boy and watch how Daddy fixes the lawn mower.

Be a good little girl and put away your dolls and your Easy-Bake Oven.

Be a good little boy and don’t embarrass your parents by acting like such a sissy.

Be a nice good little girl and help Mommy wash the dishes.

Be a good little boy and practice your slap shot.

Be a considerate little girl and give other children a chance to answer the questions in math class.

Be a brave little boy and face up to the bullies.

Be a helpful little girl and look after the infant.

Be a normal little boy and play with your action figures.

Be a normal little girl and care about others more than yourself.

Be a big strong man and sew your oats.

Be a good little girl and starve yourself to please others.

Be a big strong man and drown your fears.

Be a good little girl and find a husband.

Be a big strong man and fulfill your destiny.

Be a good little girl and raise your children.

Be a big strong man and hide your pain in whatever ways you can.

Be a good little girl and hide your pain in whatever ways we allow you.

Be a big strong man and lash out in anger.

Be a good little girl and disfigure yourself.

Be a big strong man and get ready for your coronary and your triple by-pass.

Be a good little girl and smile through your troubles.

Be a brave little soldier and die for your country. Don’t forget to look mean and hard.

Be a good little old lady and keep your opinions to yourself.

Be a distinguished old man and buy a Buick.

Be a good little old lady and let your husband tell you how to vote.

Be a distinguished old man and don’t rock the boat.

Be a good little old lady and quietly die.

Be a distinguished old man and quietly die.

If I’m in a grocery store and the clerk forgets to ring through the case of root beer on the bottom of my shopping cart, then too bad for her. I’ll just load it into the trunk of my car and, Bob’s-Your-Uncle, I’m off and away.

I don’t recycle anything anymore; unless I’m worried that someone is checking my garbage. Glass and plastic bottles, tin cans, used toner cartridges — I’ll usually just throw everything straight into the trash. Sometimes, I’ll pour dirty motor oil or solvents down the kitchen sink. When I burn leaves in the back yard, I sometimes put plastic bleach bottles on the fire, so I can watch the acrid black smoke curling up into the evening sky.

If I hear someone in the night calling for help, it’s easier to just turn over and pull the covers about my head.

When one of my friends has some minor success, like winning some award, getting a promotion, or buying a new home, I’ll pretend to be happy for them. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? In reality, though I feel miserable. I’ll think to myself, “Why should they have something that I don’t have? It’s not fair. It’s not right.” I’ll secretly hope that whatever this good fortune is, it will somehow slip through their grasp, or that it will somehow end up being the ruin of them. I want them to fail, miserably and spectacularly, so everyone will realize how fortunate I am.

On the other hand, if something bad were to befall them, I would feign sympathy (in order to get all of the juicy details), but in reality I would be glad. Truth be told, I like to hear about friends and acquaintances losing their jobs, filing for bankruptcy, and morbidly dwelling on mysterious skin conditions. And when the woman who works in administration questions my expense account, I secretly hope she dies of some terrible disease.

At night, when everything is quiet as the grave and I can’t sleep, I make voodoo dolls out of wax candles. I pierce their hearts with hatpins. I brew dark potions filled with unspeakable ingredients in bubbling saucepans on the top of my stove. I pray to shadowy deities for infestations and plagues, pernicious droughts and weeping boils to be visited on my enemies.

When the evening news comes on, I like to hear all those stories about bombs going off in crowded markets. All those earthquakes and derailings, those cities wiped out in seconds, are delicious entertainment beamed in from thousands of miles away. I sit back and sip my rye-and-seven and smile while I watch the world coming apart at the seams. I do a little jig whenever I see a beautiful archival image of a mushroom cloud swelling up above the ground.

The hypocrites always say that everybody should do their part to make the world a better place. But I say “You First!.” I say, it’s every man for himself. I say, “Let it all come crashing down around the bastards’ ears, because it’ll serve them all right.” I say, “You can’t fight human nature, so why bother to try?”

But I was still hungry. You ever had that? You know what I mean?

I realized that maybe it wasn’t food I was hungry for. I went to the mall, loaded up my cart with all the pretty things; all the precious things locked up tight in bubble wrap and jewel cases. I loaded up with all the pretty things that went buzz, the things that went whirrrrr.

But I was still so very, very hungry. You ever had that? You know what I mean?

Then, I figured if it’s not pretty things that I’m so hungry for, maybe it’s the big experiences of life, you know? So I bought myself a big black car, and I drove around the world. I visited jungles and strange cities. I smoked opium and drank Mai Tais. I bought sex from starving children, and took digital photos of volcanoes. I ate human flesh from all-you-can-eat buffets.

But I was still so very hungry. Know what I mean?

And all of a sudden, it came to me. I am pure hunger. I am hunger itself. I have no name. I have no face.

In a frenzy I began to eat. And I saw that it was good. I gnawed like a rat through telephone books and electrical cables. I ate whole fields of wheat. I ate paving stones and bicycles. I ate bonsai trees. I ate my television set and my two-car garage. My mouth was a buzz saw with diamond-hard teeth. I tore through skyscrapers and armoured cars. I ate freighters in the bay. I ate the winter wind. I ate Tokyo and Bombay. My mouth was a terrible, glistening maw, blood red and savage. My hunger filled the sky. I ate your family while you were on holiday. I ate the love that you gave me. I ate libraries full of books. I ate sun dogs and cumulus clouds. I ate shadows and ghosts. I ate the outer arm of the Milky Way. I ate good fortune. I ate history. I ate time. I ate all the tortured souls in all the circles of hell. I ate God.

And then, when there was nothing else left, I ate myself. I was like that snake, the one that swallows its tail. I grew smaller and smaller, an ever diminishing circle, until I completely disappeared inside my own stomach. A speck. A dot. A small dark space. And empty still.

As compensation for taking away a little bit of their freedom, causing damage to a little bit of their childhood, we take them to Burger King and then shopping at the mall on Thursday night. On the way home, we will stop at Blockbusters for a good family flick, something that will reinforce our sense of safety while we munch on our microwave popcorn. We buckle them into their car seats and head towards the freeway. I wonder, statistically speaking, what the chances of them dying in a fiery car accident are, as compared to the odds of them ever being abducted. A thousand times greater? Ten thousand? Perhaps only several hundred times?

When we drive down into the underground parking, we wait for the security gate to close behind us, because you never know what sort of filth will seep in like diseased shadows when your back is turned. To keep our children safe, we try to tell them about the dangers of a terrorist attack. We tell them to trust the police and to obey authority. We tell them not to lie and to believe in their country.

We tell them not to drink so much Coca Cola before bedtime. I wish I had never read that magazine article about all of the chemicals. It described all of the chemicals coursing around in their little bodies. Complex compounds, many of them, that didn’t even exist, hadn’t even been invented, when we were born. They include chemicals from red meat and chemicals from fire-retardant mattresses. As well as the chemicals from the mattresses on their beds, there are the chemicals from non-stick frying pans, the paint on the walls, and the carpets they walk across to kiss us good night.

They kiss us good night, and we hold onto them tightly, pouring out all of our love, our ignorance and our fear, black as cancer, into their waiting souls.

Bikini models stand up in the passenger seats of expensive automobiles and toss handfuls of hundred dollar bills at those who don’t look as though they need them. Low flying aircraft napalm the filthier parts of the city to stop any possible contagion from spreading to the tourists.

Caught up in the carnival atmosphere, some of the assembled crowd is passing the time by bashing in the skulls of a few social deviants and burning a witch or two. The smells of candy floss, grease paint and gasoline hang on the sunny afternoon air.

Finally, the emperor himself arrives in a shiny black limousine one full city block long. The grill is decorated with skulls and bristling with knives. The headlights are burning bright with some greasy fuel. The road the limousine rolls along is paved with flesh and bone. Someone is stuck under the chassis and being dragged behind, but no one can hear above the oohing and aahing.

The emperor, you see, as anyone who can afford to buy a program has been informed, is wearing the most magnificent of clothes. His suit, it is rumoured, has been stitched from the skins of rare creatures and coloured with delicate shellfish dyes. In his crisp top hat is the feather of a captured angel.

At the very back of the crowd is one rail-thin boy, begrimed and coughing, standing on a tower of garbage cans. The boy’s jaw is hanging open in amazement as he watches the stark naked fatso in the mile long car. He watches the grotesque old man’s belly wobbling up and down, his ancient moon-white ass shining in the light of the fashion photographers’ cameras.

The boy starts yelling something about, “No clothes! No clothes!” but his voice is drowned out by the gawping, cheering throng. Already the secret police are closing in on him, as he high-tails it down the alley, hoping to live and be heard another day.

Having said this, though, I also strongly believe that those of us who are committed to freedom of speech must defend the right of these artists, tasteless though they may be, to have their say. The thing about freedom of expression is that it doesn’t work to pick and choose for others which issues can or cannot be discussed. All censorship, as far as I can see, is a slippery slope. As much as I despise the messages of violent video games, misogynistic rappers, and narrow-minded bigotry in whatever forms it takes, I am perpetually aware of the fact that there are plenty of people out there who find my views and those of others I respect, equally outrageous and distasteful. When I see that some newspapers, then, have come out and denounced the decision of publications such as the Calgary-based Western Standard to reproduce these cartoons, it makes me worry that we are entering some fairly Orwellian territory. Today, some journalists argue for acts of media self-censorship to protect the sensibilities of a particular religious group. What if tomorrow they do the same thing in order to protect the stability of the Bush government, the military-industrial complex, or the Catholic Church?

Interestingly, I made this point during a discussion with some friends recently, and the issue stirred up some pretty heated discussion. At one point, it was argued that the sort of racism evident in the Danish cartoons was an example of the sort of dangerous lies and hateful propaganda that helped the horrors of Nazi Germany to become a reality. With due respect to the person who made this statement, I would argue that those atrocities were due, at least in part, to the control and manipulation of public opinion through the suppression of free speech. When only certain views are allowed to be expressed, when dissenting voices and alternative outlooks are discouraged by threats of violent reprisals, thought control and totalitarianism are only a hair’s breadth away.

I believe very strongly in the process of democracy. I have voted in every election — municipal, provincial, and federal — since the time I reached the age of majority. Furthermore, I hold the belief that many of the people who run for political office in this country are fundamentally intelligent, hard-working, and well-meaning individuals. It’s easy to see, though, why so many people feel alienated by the world of politics. For one thing, there is the ludicrously antiquated “first past the post” electoral system, which more or less guarantees that a good chunk of the total votes cast will be cast to no avail. Then, there is the ongoing public perception of government corruption and venality, evident no matter which political party is in power. (Anyone remember Airbus?) Emerson’s about-face is just one more nail in the coffin of credibility when it comes to politics.

On the other hand, though, I can’t help but rejoice at the fact that this politician has displayed his true colours. For one thing, it demonstrates just how conservative the so-called Liberal party has become of late. Mr. Emerson is indeed correct when he suggests there is little difference between Stephen Harper’s agenda and the one that Martin’s Liberals were pushing when they were in power. As many of us are aware, it’s just the same old “the rich get richer” kowtowing to the big business crowd. As witnessed by Martin’s desperate last-minute attempts to portray himself as anti-conservative, it’s not until big-L liberals find themselves on the verge of losing power that they actually condescend/pretend to any sort of progressive platform policies.

It is always good to have your enemies out in the open. Another reason that I’m happy about the Emerson backstab is the fact that it unveils Harper’s claims to government integrity for the hollow pandering that they actually are. Expect more of the same and quickly. Another benefit of the whole fiasco is the point it makes about the futility of voting strategically. Voting should never be an act of holding your nose and choosing between the lesser of two evils. If you believe that progressive thinking is needed in Ottawa, then for Christ-sake vote NDP or Green. Finally, I am truly grateful to Emerson for removing any doubt as to what his personal political beliefs and morals are. And I am hopeful they will be firmly in the minds of his constituents when it comes time to mark their ballots and cast their votes once again, and hand this two-timing weasel his political head on a platter.

A few blocks away on Granville, you can see the homeless runaway kids, burnt out of meth, huddled in doorways. You can see the schizophrenics staggering around with transistor radios propped to the front of their shopping carts, the drunks staggering out into the street oblivious of the buses bearing down on them, and the after work partiers lining up outside the Roxy and the Yale.

A little further east, a little further north, you can see the truly damned lying face first in the gutter, waiting for the end of the night, the end of the world, to come rolling over on top of them. There are prostitutes who won’t live to see their fourteenth birthdays getting into the font seats of sports utilities being driven by suburban marketing reps. There are rooming houses filled with the sick and the dying and the invisible shivering underneath thin, filthy blankets.

A few years from now, this city of immense contrasts will host the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The local newspapers and phone-in radio shows are all a-buzz with the news that, due to escalating construction costs, the budget for the games has risen from an estimated 470 million to a new estimate of approximately 520 million. We are being told by the organizers that there was no way to predict this upturn in costs. We are told that there will be a rich legacy of new sporting facilities for the city.

When this happens, many of the people who are now living in these cockroach infested rooming houses will be dead. Many of the ones who have replaced them in their bug-infested beds will be turned out onto the streets to make way for the tourists. A handful of the young and wealthy will have world class skating facilities. The gap widens, and life goes on.