Fake it or Make it

Happy Halloween Dogs! After almost one yesr in brainwash camp, I have found a way to defeat melancholy without allowing my brain to become pudding Although I have developed a twitch under my left eye from the constant reeducation, sleep deprivation, high stress and all around dangerous atmosphere of prison I have been reading! I have always loved to read. But here in prison, and especially in the program dorm. It has taken on a sanity preserving aspect fo rme. The department of corrections has become a means of warehousing the surplus population. As more and more people are being sent to prison for less and less serious crimes. Long before Orwell warned us of a totalitarian police state, the human race had been heading towards its predictable fate with its predictable mass hysterias.

But why be depressed about it? Most people are too busy worried about feeding their families. And stacking colourful pieces of paper in order to rent a concrete cubicle for protection from the elements. Perhaps prison has given me too much time to think? WHatever is going to happen is going to happen anyway, right? I should stick to minding my own business instead of being a squeaky wheel, right? After all a squeaky wheel gets replaced! Or oiled, whatever!

Almost four years in prison now! A felon! For allowing an undercover policeman (who approached and befriended me) into gong to buy a few ten dollar bags of dope for us. Indeed my crime is being a happless fellow who just wanted to get hight.

So now with two months left in this kinder gentler concentration camp I have learned to fake it or make it. In other words not to let your true feelings become known. Just repeat the slogans and the catch phrases in a brilliant soliquay both forward and backwards without raising any suspicion. When asked a quesiton do not answer with rhetorical self righteous blather (no matter how you truthful you feel it to be) as any resistance to the state doctrine program philosophy will be seen as 'needs futher programming'. I made that mistake already (They asked me a trick question).

So truthful record v appropriate concealment

objectivity v ethical instruction

freedom is slavery

war is peace

knowledge is ignorance and

christianity has always been at war with islam

So don't be happy! Take your State sponsored stimulants (tobacco and caffeine) or depressants and get in line! Take a number. And be patient. They'll get to you soon.

At night as I lie in my bunk farting silently, listening to classical music and reading Aristotle it's almost as if I am not a prisoner. And until they take away even these humbler favourite, creature comforts of mine I will be ok! I still write letters and wait for an ever dwindling circle of friends and family to write back. Time is growing longer between every responsee. As life outside goes on as usual, people on the outside have work to do and bills to pay so I understand. After all, in here I'm also paying my bill. It's all a terrible misunderstanding! But soon an agreement will be reached and I will be allowed to go to the work release program wich is really the 'work or prison' or rather 'work and prison' program.

A prison in the heart of the city where they let you out only to go to work at an approved job: Macdonalds or street sweeper! For minimum wage. Pay checks have to be turned in so they can extort a quarter of your pay. Any money you receive from friends or family has to be declared so they can take their cut - a quarter of whatever that is!

Having to return to prison every night, subject to a strip search, hungry and tired only to be crammed like sardines into a stinking double bunk barracks. We're under the constant scrutiny of police who patrol the floor at all times.Waiting every two weeks for a $100 check so I can purchase metro cards and perhaps have two or three good meals. I was denied four different jobs that paid well by a counsellor who said 'that's too much money for you right now'. I was getting $20 a week from my parents and still I was always hungry. I ate out of the garbage more than once. Being woken up at 5am and not having to be at work til 9am. 'No lying down, make your beds'. Getting off work at 5pm and rushing back by 6pm to avoid getting a ticket for being out of place, which can result in being sent back to an upstate prison. Also getting back for chow - which is a slice of bread and a ladle of stew. Twelve hours until breakfast. No food allowed in the dorm so a smuggled candy bar is a risk of a ticket for contraband. Likewise trying to bring a book, newspaper or magazine into the facility. Contraband. Another ticket. Sneaking a cigarette in the toilet. Anything! The stress was nearly unbearable.One hour to get to work, one hour to return to the facility was the allotted travel time. Hungry, miserable, broke...

Laundery is once a week. 'Put all your dirty clothes into a net bag'. This got washed in the bag. It came back wet, wrinkled and stinking. Some men tried to hang their wet clothes out on the bunk bed to dry only to have the officers on occasion come by with a trash bag snatching their clothes. What litle clothes we had...

Weekend furloughts: come back with a trace of alcohol in your urine gets you a ticket back to an upstate prison. This is what has happened to me. Excuse me for being a human being. After two and a half years in prison all I could think about was having a woman and a few beers.

If I sound bitter it's only because I am! I have a lot of contempt it seems.They have succeeded in making me contempous of them. They, them, the system, me, me, me, my own fault, mea culpa.

This is what they want me to say in Room 101 in this prison brainwash program I am being blackmailed into attending. For a refusal to enter programming means more prison time. What choice do we have? Entrapment, kidnapping, extortion, blackmail.

Let's call it what it is!

Now I realise I can't dwell too much on my bad luck or I'll go crazy, get depressed or become an anarchiat (Lord forbid!)...so lately I have learned to fake it to make it. I drone out the slogans and catchphrases, stand and recite the philosophy )at the beginning and end of every session), to force myself to admire the emperors new clothes and keep myself from the urge to shout out 'He's naked'.

So perhaps, I am making progress. Sometimes, life seems like being dropped in the middle of the ocean without a liferaft. One must tread water calmly, not thrash about attracting sharks and therre is always hope of something drifting by to help stay afloat. Or a ship appearing on the horizon. Or that search plane flying high in the sky above your head may just spot you! An insignificant dot in the middle of the sea! Just think, if and when you are rescued what a story you'll have to tell! So cheer up

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