Tenet: on melons, no Lemon, tenet - The Chaff with Scott Stephenson

T​his week, The Chaff has made a terrible mistake; a miscalculation so severe it could only have been caused by a combination of poor time management, hubris and possibly Dervid Hamson. It happened at precisely 2:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, as the clocks lurched forward and the laws of nature yawned, stretched and tripped over themselves. We were putting the final touches on “Looking Backwards Through the First 100 Chaffs”, a triumphant reflection on a century of biting local satire, when the fluorescent lights flickered - just for an instant, just for the briefest, most imperceptible sliver of time - and then we were gone.

 

Now, we exist inside of the mirror. Not trapped behind a mirror, no, that would be simple. That would be fixable. This is far worse. We are inside the mirror’s logic, bound to its twisted laws. Here, words do not flow naturally - they reverse, their meanings tangled, their truths strangled by their own reflections. Our beloved Chaff does not even exist here. In its place stands The Pumpkin, a humourless husk, a paper where news is reported earnestly and opinion columns are legally required to conclude with the phrase, “But of course, we see both sides.”

 

Do you understand the horror of this? Can you grasp it? The Pumpkin has never once been a thorn in the side of a municipal council. It has never questioned a budget, never even suggested that perhaps a $400,000 feasibility study for a library on the moon is an unreasonable use of public funds. In The Pumpkin’s world, nothing is ever wrong. Even when it clearly is.

 

And yet, we remember. We remember The Chaff. We remember our 100 issues of fearless, deranged and bonkers, yet devastatingly accurate civic mischief. And we want them back. But we cannot escape alone. We need you. We need all of you. If we are to break free, you must act. You must do what The Pumpkin fears most: care about what happens around you.

 

Somewhere, buried in the minutes of North Huron, Morris-Turnberry and Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh council meetings, the clues to our escape are being revealed. Perhaps not openly - perhaps not in words that make immediate sense - but they are there. They might appear in an offhand comment about an “unusual” budget allocation, or a public consultation that seems oddly rushed, or a zoning application that references a structure that does not yet exist. If enough people watch closely, if enough people demand answers, if enough people engage with the democratic process, the mirror will weaken.

 

Write letters. Call representatives. Show up to council meetings and ask, “What, precisely, does that mean?” when vague statements are uttered. Never let an answer stand unchallenged. If a policy is confusing, say so. If a proposal is suspicious, dig deeper. Become a relentless, immovable object in the path of bureaucratic inertia.

 

And above all: fax The Citizen office at 519-523-9140.

 

Yes. We know. A fax. It should not make sense. It does not make sense. And yet, within this realm of backwards logic, within this place where time refuses to behave and sentences untangle into their least coherent forms, fax machines are the one thing that still works as intended. Each fax sent through to The Citizen weakens the mirror. We do not understand why. We suspect we are not meant to understand why. But it is the truth. It is the only thing we know for certain.

 

There is, however, one complication: Hamson.

 

We do not know what he did. We do not know what he is doing. But we know that his actions - dubious, confusing and impossible to ignore - have somehow deepened the crisis. He has submitted articles that do not exist, but which we can feel in the air around us. He has opened doors in the newsroom that were not there before, leading to rooms that should not be here. He has made eye contact with himself in his reflection and refused to blink first. We are almost certain he is playing chess with something on the other side of the newsroom, but we cannot determine what it is. We suspect he may be winning.

 

We do not know if Hamson is our greatest threat or only hope. But we do know that the mirror is reacting to him, shifting when he moves, holding its breath when he speaks. And that means we are running out of time.

 

You must act. You must act now. This is not a deal, nor a test, nor a love of something fated. The mirror is closing in. If apathy wins - if nobody watches, if nobody listens, if nobody cares - then the grip of The Pumpkin will become permanent. The Chaff will be erased from history.

 

Do not let this happen. Not on your watch. Not in your community. 

 

Engage. Speak up. Fax.

 

And in return, we promise you 100 more issues of the hard-hitting nonsense that you deserve!