RICHMOND, Va. – As state and local police bark outrage into TV cameras about ‘drug abuse’ and ‘urban decay’, lamenting spikes in violent crime, one often-overlooked piece of the picture in the war on drugs is the people actually using drugs.
To people like 27-year-old Jeff Norment, the heroin coming down I-75 from Detroit is “a God-send.” Norment says heroin has improved his life considerably, although his point of view is often brushed aside in favor of order and public safety.
“I was eating 20 and 40 pills a day, you name it, I was doing it,” Norment said, looking real cool. “But it was hell on my liver. But now that I’m on heroin – I’m in Heaven!”
Norment argued that the Richmond media – TV news in particular – does not represent all sides of the story, with a tendency to favor police and marginalize victims.
“Typical TV news story: we went to the Richmond police. We went to the state police,” Norment said. “But they didn’t come a-callin’ for old Jeff, saying, ‘Jeff how you liking them drugs?’ Now how are you gonna call that objective journalism and tell me I’m the bad guy?”
Norment argued that his voice is the missing piece of the story of a so-called ‘heroin epidemic’ in Richmond.
“I smoke crack on the reg. I snort dust on the reg. I shoot heroin on the reg, and you don’t see me committing no crimes. I just like me the rush, is all. And I like to lay here on this sofa playing PlayStation.”
Norment, who lives near the Grace Street Police Station, said police knock on his door almost every day – sometimes looking for suspects – sometimes just to break his balls.
“I know it ain’t good for me,” Norment said, rolling his eyes. “They’re always telling me that.”
Norment said if it weren’t for the police, he would have fewer problems.
“Thanks to heroin,” Norment said, “I’ve dodged a few bullets, both figuratively and literally. Shit, heroin even helps me escape the crushing reality of using heroin.”
28-year-old VCU alum Stephen Ascot says heroin affords him a certain lifestyle. The only difference, Ascot said, is that he is not on heroin.
“My weed dealer across the street gets me what I need, but he doesn’t give me heroin,” Ascot said. “I just know he’s going to be there, because he is on heroin.”
Richmond Police Captain Mike Ebert said drugs might feel good now, but addicts will “be pretty sore” about the crackdown on horse pouring in from Detroit.
“It’s easy to get addicted to the stuff, you just put it in your arm,” Ebert said. “But they’re going to be pretty sore about it when there ain’t no more heroin left for sale on the streets, after they do it all up.”
Ebert said his department is working with state police to set up checkpoints along the I-75 corridor to catch heroin traffickers coming down from the Motor City.
“Of course, the stops are designed to appear random,” he said. “But they’re not. We’ll know who to stop.”
This news is brought to you graciously by Lebal Drocer Pharmaceuticals.
Richmond, Va.–“Protesters” gathered behind the VCU Student Commons last week where they rallied around their anti-hate values.
Automatically failing to realize being anti-anything is a form of hate in itself, students and activists, mostly lesbians, unquestioningly stood around holding signs carrying messages of peace, or of hatred for anti-loving attitudes.
The demonstration was staged as a counter-protest to the Westboro Baptist Church picket in front of the Holocaust Museum, where cold Richmonders apathetically gazed on in bewilderment at how religious fanatics are still more educated on current events than themselves.
“Where are the Westboro Baptists?” our reporter asked a bystander shortly after arriving at the event, which was heavily publicized on the social fuckworking site Facebook.
“Oh, they aren’t here. They were at the Holocaust Museum earlier today around twelve,” replied the hate-hating lesbian whose sign read “I SAW FRED PHELPS NAKED AND NOW I’M A LESBIAN.”
That’s right. Nobody saw each other, in spite of the fact one group gathered as a counter-protest to the other. You can’t make this up. Let’s consult a map.
Fortunately the police maintained control of the situation
WBC were at the Holocaust Museum, denying the Holocaust on behalf of Iranian Dictator Ahmedinejad. It sounded like a good spot to rally, so why didn’t any counter-protesters with signs show up there instead of between school buildings where nobody could see them?
“I believe the museum asked people not to bring signs and keep that sort of thing on the downlow,” said Midlothian resident Niki S. who did not attend the counter-protest because “it sounded lame.”
And it was. There were choirs preaching to choirs, singing the gospel of their anti-hate agenda.
“I am proud to see so many of you come out today. Your unity restores my faith in people, even though, uh, you have shown up where there is no specific concept to get behind, you have all still come together. And that so many of you showed up tells me something.” -male speaker who bravely attempted to intellectually justify ambiguities of the peace protest
Most everyone stood in a semi-circle around a group of people holding signs with one word per person that read “VCU STANDS TOGETHER AGAINST HATE”, holding their signs up pointed at each other, apparently protesting themselves.
Soviet-Russia was well-represented. Enthusiastic Communists held a flag over the banner facing toward the podium. They said it represents freedom. Our reporter agreed.
This event was actually so bad we took equally bad video footage so you could believe it for yourselves. We’ll post it as soon as it’s ready.
Freedom ain't free. It's regulated and redistributed by the government first.
Some girl got on the microphone and said, “You do not have to be a rug for someone to walk on with their big, muddy, hate-filled boots,” and that was the last thing Elf Wax could stick around to report. Not because it was intolerably stupid, which it most certainly was, but because we were illegally-parked and the meter-maids have a personal vendetta to kill our reporters slowly with towing fees and child molestation charges.
[Editor’s note: he was acquitted of those charges.]
In conclusion, VCU’s silly bring-a-crazy-sign-day is an insult to all forms of protest and serves only to de-legitimize true protest when people who really stand up for what they believe in aren’t taken seriously, diluting the effects of actual protesting around real problems like war, genocide, and corporate takeovers.
Do you people even realize what you did? You made stupid signs and stood around other people who made stupid signs and fucking pretended to protest. Some of you wore iPods. This is what people associate with protest now – masturbatory, self-serving meandering that gets literally nothing done. It literally brings tears to my eyes to recall the memories of how you “protested” on that day. Oh Lord you people are terrible. Get fucked.
Do you want to stage a protest? Get a can of gasoline, make an effigy of members of your local government – or who cares, Obama – and get to work. Don’t let the word ‘work’ scare you dirty anarchohippies, because you will gather enough supporters by simply copy-pasting Elf Wax onto posterboard and ranting it continuously over a burning Dennis Kucinich doll. This kind of work does itself, gets results, and gets you fucking laid, bitch.
Once you have been forced off the grid by your legal obligations to the uprising, you will find support in Lebal Drocer’s password-protected, hyper-encrypted closed local networks in key underground areas that will be emailed to you by the [email protected] listserv when the time is right.
So protest is ruined. However, a molotov-cocktail through the back windshield of a squad car has always sent a stronger message than protest songs, anyway. Why’d we ever stop that?
This is Elf Wax Times signing off, requesting violent revolution.
If you want the change you had in mind while voting for Obama, you’re going to have to organize yourselves and take it by force – Elf Wax style. Then, maybe one day the pawns might become the knights, and we will ride together, storm the white house gates, the corporate high-rises, closed-off hotels, and Silicon Valley boutiques, and our new order will force the king to cook for us and the queen will serve as the town’s newest whore, and our skin will become greasy and tight, our souls shut off by the newfound power vested in our elected military leaders by the gun and hand grenades; until we become uglier than the pigs we overthrew; coups-d’etats will occur on a near-weekly basis heralding the collapse of Western Civilization once and for all under the suffocating forces of newly-required anarchosocialism that just won’t seem to work no matter who we kill. So go to the grocery store and don’t forget Hot Pockets…and posterboard.
Richmond, Va.–Elf Wax Times went deep into the seedy underground of the Richmond music scene to find Larry And His Flask performing songs of hate around midnight of the 23rd at Cous Cous. Motherfuckers jammed.
“Basically put like fucking Modest Mouse together with some Jefferson Airplane shit and Larry’s what you get,” said VCU Criminal Justice major Kim Something Or Other. We got her phone number.
The vocals harmonized nicely with the guitars, but all the assholes dancing around The Elf Wax Times staff were rude and did not respect others’ personal space. The authorities were notified, however no arrests have yet been made because the police are lazy scumbags who’d rather insufflate an eight ball of confiscated blow than arrest college students, although that is their second priority because nobody was nice enough to hang out with them during high school to make sure they don’t power trip in the future.
So there were VCU pigs walking up and down Grace St. late last night. On a Monday night, there’s hardly a dude worth fucking with but the police found him: an old crippled guy in a wheelchair was sitting in a recessed doorway, pointed toward the wall when some dick cop approached him asking, “What are you doing here?” to which he responded, “I’m just chilling out.”
The Elf Wax Times did not stick around to make sure civil rights were respected because we have no compassion for even the seemingly homeless. Our apathy overrides even the most basic instincts of decency especially in the presence of law enforcement. This is because we have taken copious amounts of LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, morning glory seeds, Hawaiian Baby Woodrose tea, pills, duster, and the synthetic compound known as 2C-I. No big deal, but we ate that shit all at once, so fuck that guy in a wheelchair.
And fuck you. Larry and his flask will be on tour with the Dropkick Murphys (or whatever those fags are called), unfortunately opening for the bastards even though everybody knows it should be the other way around. Fuck mainstream music and fuck you for liking it.
Fuck the government for sponsoring Elf Wax Drunkenness and fuck your mother’s failed abortion that became you. We don’t like you and don’t want you reading The Elf Wax Times because you have not taken the sworn oath drug-influenced Elf Wax piety. When the revolution comes, you’ll be forced to eat fourteen doses of acid and watch The Wall while we drill messages of fear and totalitarian government control into your enfeebled brains. In your offtime we do respect your right to smoke cigarettes but not to religion. For religion, you must turn to Carl Sagan for guidance because unlike the rest of humanity you are now a glowing ray of light, no longer bound by the human form, for you can – and do – understand and know everything under the sun. In fact, you control it.
Now get fucked up watch FOX News because it’s what you’re designed to relate to – not us. We aren’t you and you’ll never be one of us. You’ll always be a fucking scum-sucking whore of the capitalistic enterprise over our freedoms of self. Wal-Mart owns you now, and Target is where you rebel. China runs our shit, and America strives to become them. Countries’ only meaning lies in how we identify ourselves. With enough trade, this will change and our so-called “identities” will meld with the world-dominating enterprise of necessity. We’re fucking doomed to live on and serve into perpetuity the human plantation we helped create. We, and free enterprise, which should also be destroyed or undermined by faithful Elf Waxers. Destroy yourselves, and you’ve destroyed the government’s income. Well done, suicide machines.
Vote against freedom. It’s what Elf Wax would do. It’s what you have been conditioned to do. But don’t be surprised when the voice of protest sounds like a large group of angry bluegrass musicians who don’t even sit down to play the drums.
