The past few days have been totally crazy. My garbage trail didn’t work out exactly how I expected it to, because JoyTech started cleaning it up as soon as I laid it down, but I did manage to make a big enough mess to get noticed, which was the whole point.

Some early morning joggers found where the trail started at the Ridge, and they picked their way down to the bend in the river where the biggest part of the mess gathered. I guess it was bad enough for them to make a scene to the Conurban Council, because by Friday morning, they had boats out dragging the bottom of the Blood.

Me and Jerry went down to check it out, and we found out that about five miles downriver, the real trouble started.

There was a beaver dam built partially across the river at that point, and a ton of plastic and other junk got caught up in it. I don’t think any beavers got hurt or anything, but it was a pretty ugly scene, and by then there were crowds all over the river and all these people looking horrified.

In Saturday’s Daily Ringer, the front page story confirmed that the “deluge of waste discover in the Blood River does appear to be comprised primarily of recyclable materials.” But of course, no one at the Ringer is pointing the finger. Yet.

Yesterday was pretty quiet. I was dying to talk to Aurora about the whole thing, but I guess she went away for the weekend with New Guy’s family or something???

That’s what her mom said when I tried to call her house, and she said it in that apologetic mom voice, like so you know they feel sorry for you? Yeah.

Anyway, at least I’ve got some time to play with Toon-FX, which I haven’t in a while. Check out this cool effect:

FYI: All the images in this post were toonified using Toon-Photo…

Home safe. Just barely. I had to ditch Jerry’s truck and hide out around the school for five hours before the coast was clear to move. And I’m not crazy, because from the roof of the gym, I could see them in their fake riot gear cop suits combing the neighborhood.

Bad, bad, bad. Because that means they know what area I live in. I don’t even want to imagine what Jerry would do if he caught on to some JoyTech thugs sneaking around the house.

Last night was another sleepless night. Not as successful as previous nights.

I started out at the recycling plant to make sure there wasn’t any unusual activity, like extra security or anything. Then I followed the trucks to the river, and while they were busy, I started bagging garbage.

There’s so much down there, it’s unbelievable. And the water near the banks has started to take on this weird, oily look, like all these toxins are leaching into the water, or something.

Anyway, I got a lot done, because I couldn’t start returning the junk until the truckers were home safe in their beds.

By the time the trucks stopped coming, it was after 1 am. When I took my first load to the plant, it was completely dead, dark, nobody around, I swear, and no cameras, at least not visible ones.

Second load, same thing. I was racing, though. I didn’t have long til dawn, but I’d bagged a lot of recycling while the JoyTech trucks were dumping.

On the third load, I roll up like usual with my headlights off, just in case, and I jump out of the cab, and the next thing I know these guys in riot gear and facemasks are coming OUT of the pile of garbage I made.

At first I thought it must be the cops, but these guys were all silent, they didn’t shout anything at me, and they didn’t have flashlights or anything. Then, instead of running at me, this one guy puts his finger to the mouth of the mask - shhhhh.

I knew then that they were definitely not cops.

So I jumped back in the truck – thanking God I kept the motor running – and I drove straight at them. I don’t know what I would have done if they didn’t get out of the way, but they did, and it didn’t seem like they were going to chase me, so I stupidly drove like crazy back to my neighborhood, and ditched Jerry’s truck out at his buddy’s wrecking yard.

I figure I’ll head home on foot, but about a block away from the yard – and it’s dead silent predawn – I hear this static. Crackling. And all of a sudden, right in my ear, a voice, whispering.

That’s when I ran like hell. Off the street, through backyards mostly. I wasn’t even thinking, so it was a fluke I ended up at school, and I thought I lost them, but I took the fire escape up to the gym roof anyway, and two minutes later I see six of these JoyTech guys run by, stop, and mill around just past the fire escape like so.

How the hell did they find me? How the hell were they following me that far back?

This is me, sighing heavily, inside having a heart attack.

The rest you already know.

Another night hauling trash out of Blood River.

Didn’t sleep. I was a zombie all day at school, but through the haze, I could hear people talking. They had heard about the garbage piles in front of the recycling center, but everyone thought it was just random.

Random. Two nights in a row.

Of course.

The Daily Ringer called it “a test of JoyTech’s ability to handle high-volume drops.”

They did call the anonymous source of the garbage a “vigilante recycler,” which makes me feel a bit better. Weird thing is, I’m not actually depressed that no one sees what’s going on yet. I kind of figured this would take more than a couple nights of work.

Plus I’m totally sleep-deprived. During free period, I actually pulled my mask out of my backpack and put it on. What could I have been thinking when I did that. I was standing by myself by the bleachers, and Aurora was a little ways away, talking with New Guy and a bunch of people.

Only Aurora saw me, but she took a pic, tooned it, and emailed it to me. Which is saying what?

Anyway, point is, I slept a bit since then, not feeling so crazy. Back to the trenches tonight. It’s Wednesday, which means JoyTech will probably be dumping at the Ridge, at the same time that I’m cleaning up their mess a mile downriver.

Ha.

What did you do this weekend, Nemo?

Oh, not much. Just exposed the corrupt and fraudulent recycling schemes of an evil corporation.

Really? How on EARTH did you accomplish that?

Simple. I returned their garbage to them.

I started on Friday with a vague plan: I was gonna get all the garbage out of the Blood River. Then I was gonna take it back to the JoyTech recycling plant, and leave it in a big pile on their front lawn.

Friday. The plan was to use a tractor borrowed from a friend of Jerry’s to drag the riverbank at the bend where all the trash was accumulating.

Getting the tractor down to the river, though, proved to be a total effin’ disaster.

Now I have to get a part-time job to pay for tractor repair. Like I don’t have my hands full already.

Saturday. Me and Jerry spent all day rigging up this winch system that’s kind of like a mini donkey engine, but runs on biofuel. The idea was to cast a net into the river, and drag out loads of garbage that the donkey would pull up the bank.

But when we went down to scout the best path for the net, we found all these dead fish on the bank that had gotten caught in plastic bags and other junk. And then we realized that we’d be dragging fish out of the river along with the recycling.

I called the operation off, and Jerry got all pissed. He took the donkey and left me to walk home. I tried to ride a sweet bike I found amongst the junk, but it was a bit small. Here’s a tooned-up glamour shot.

Sunday. Faced with the reality that I’m not one of those superheroes with cool technology that solves all my problems. I buy industrial garbage bags. I steal the truck that Jerry’s also been converting over to biofuel. As soon as it gets dark, I head down to the river and I start filling bags.

The bags go in the truck. The truck goes to the recycling plant. The bags get emptied on the front lawn. Long. Slow. Excruciating. But ten hours later, I’ve got a decent pile of garbage. Over my head, like. And as the sun starts to come up this morning, I see that all the tin and plastic and cardboard and other unspeakable junk is streaked, stained with the red mud of the Blood River.

Incriminating much?

(I woulda got this up yesterday but I got Jerry to call me in sick and I slept all day.)

I keep thinking about Chad Pregracke. The work he does with his non-profit, Living Lands and Waters, forces people to see the things they want to make disappear.

When I was looking at the Living Lands and Waters stats of things they’ve pulled out of the Mississippi, I couldn’t believe the stuff that people thought they could disappear by throwing it in the river – beds, fridges, cars – and that’s just the stuff people actually dump in the river. It doesn’t count all the crap that ends up getting randomly washed downstream.

What Chad does that’s real superhero style is not just clean up the river, but bring the garbage and the waste back into the light, where we can see the consequences of our actions.

When I was researching him and what he does last week, I never expected to find myself in a situation so much like his, but here I am.

I might not be able to single-handedly clean up Blood River, but I think I can get this party started.

Just to remind myself that I’m not crazy, I hiked up the river after school. About a mile and half past the Ridge, I came across this bend in the river that’s really slow and lazy. The banks were literally packed with garbage. Check out this toonified photo of the mess.

I guess JoyTech didn’t research their dumpsite very well.

At first I thought the best thing I could do was find a way to clean up the river, but no matter how much I do, JoyTech’s just going to keep dumping, or find somewhere else to hide their mess, which means I’ve got to stop it first, clean it up second.

And to stop it, I’ve got to expose the situation. Unfortunately, I don’t think getting everyone to hike down to the bend in the river with me is going to do the trick. Not because they wouldn’t care. Because they wouldn’t follow me down to the river.

The only way I’m going to prove to Aurora, and to everyone, that JoyTech is dumping in Blood River is by coming up with some tangible evidence.

I’m gonna talk to Jerry. Like I said, he’s been working on some stuff.

I went back to the JoyTech recycling center last night, and it was the exact same story as the night before. For some reason, I thought maybe it was a one-time thing. Like they were just getting going and couldn’t handle the volume right off the bat. Which was a stupid way to think. If they were just overloaded, they would dump in a landfill, not Ring City’s largest river.

Anyway, I told Aurora what I saw, and she was actually kind of skeptical, which is BS. Fine. Maybe it was 4 in the morning, but she never doubted me before New Guy came along. In the end, she agreed to send an email to The Daily Ringer asking them to investigate. She said that if there is something going on, they’ll get to the bottom of it.

But I’m doubtful. Jerry says that JoyTech’s got the Ringer wrapped around its finger. He says you can’t trust the news anymore.

Lately, Jerry and Aurora disagree about everything, so in a way, it’s a good thing she never comes over anymore.

Whatevs. We’ll do it her way. And if the Ringer does turn this into a snowjob, we’ll do it my way.

I’m not really sure how to start this post. Maybe just by saying what I saw. But I keep thinking that I must have seen wrong, or misunderstood what I was seeing. It’s just so cliché. So predictable. So exactly what I expected from JoyTech.

Okay, so shut up, Nemo. What’s going on, right?

I finally got up the guts to head over to the JoyTech recycling center last night. And I don’t really know what I was expecting to find. Maybe some evidence that they were throwing out more stuff than they were recycling.

Every recycling program is different, but it happens a lot that they don’t have the time or resources to recycling materials that aren’t properly sorted, so a huge percentage of recycling ends up getting trashed. I wasn’t going to let a big rich company like JoyTech get away with that.

Turns out the situation is about a million times worse.

When I got to the ‘recycling center’ last night, there were a bunch of trucks lined up outside the building – the kind they use at construction sites to haul away rubble. The trucks were going into the center’s loading bay empty, and coming out full. I couldn’t really see what was in the trucks, but it was easy to guess, so I hitched a ride on the back of one, thinking I’d follow them to a landfill, and take some pics of how much recycling JoyTech was getting rid of in secret.

Except we didn’t go to a landfill. We went to the Ridge, a spot where people party over the widest, deepest part of Blood River. Blood River got its name because the mud around here makes the water this dark reddish color. Some people think the color of the river means it’s polluted, but it’s great for swimming and fishing in the summer. Or it used to be.

One by one, the trucks backed up and dumped their loads of ‘recycling over the edge of the Ridge. In the dark, all the tons of junk disappeared into the water.

The trucks all drove away, but I stayed at the lookout a while, watching the water rush past below me. I imagined all the rivers in the world connecting to each other, and all of those rivers flowing out into the ocean, and the ocean, deep and huge and secret, and the world’s biggest garbage dump.

It’s all so horrible. I’ve got to figure out what I can do to fix things.