I had to call Jerry for a ride home from the trailer park because I couldn’t walk. My foot had swelled up roughly to the size of child’s party balloon.

Me and Meegan made a plan to meet up once my foot got better and investigate what JoyTech was doing experimenting with geothermal energy. Then she made me go wait at the top of the road because she doesn’t agree with using gas-powered vehicles for transportation. I told her it was bio-diesel, but she didn’t care.

Anyway, I made it home. It wasn’t hard to convince Jerry that the hospital was not the answer. And I even made it up to my room without having to answer too many questions. Then I did a bit of research on geothermal energy.

The big environmental conspiracy theory when it comes to geothermal power is that using it too much will cause the core temperature of the earth to go down, eventually causing our planet to spin off its axis or stop spinning, or something else equally science fictional and dubious.

More realistic problems related to the environment are things like:

- The destruction of ecologically important areas, like the Coal Mouth Hot Springs.

- The use of toxic chemicals, and the release of dangerous and toxic emissions during the process of extraction.

- The potential for depleting a source of geothermal energy to the point where it is destroyed.

It’s not a perfectly renewable resource, especially when it’s being used heavily - for example, by a plant, as a opposed to a private home.

And I’m not just after JoyTech for doing this, or for taking Meegan’s ancestral land. The reason I found out about the geothermal thing in the first place is because I knew JoyTech was keeping a secret about something.

If geothermal is part of positive future, why would a company that loves to brag about their ecological stewardship cover up the existence of a geothermal site with smokestacks that do nothing but emit smoke from burning garbage???

It makes no sense. I’ve got to get back on my feet and get more information.

Things I have discovered which suck:

1 – New Guy and his family came to town at the same time as JoyTech because they ARE JoyTech.

Big question: Does Aurora know or doesn’t she?

2 – Everything I’ve been doing to expose JoyTech has just been making them stronger.

It wasn’t long ago that I called JoyTech’s recycling program a case of greenwashing. Turns out I’M the new greenwashing program.

Suspect 7, that’s me.

According to these guys, there are six ‘sins of greenwashing.’ In no particular order, they are:

No Proof: Claiming to be doing environmentally friendly stuff when you’re not. I.e. – the scam recycling center.

Vagueness: Making yourself sound like you care when you don’t by using vague language. Watch any of JoyTech’s commercials for examples of this.

Irrelevance: Bragging about something you do that seems eco-friendly, but really has nothing to do with the real problem. For example, JoyTech loves putting “ALL ORGANIC” stickers on products that were never non-organic to begin with.

Fibbing: This, of course, is just straight-up lying about how ‘green’ you are. Hmm, like accepting awards for environmental stewardship when you’re engaged in unethical animal testing? Remind you of anyone in particular?

Lesser of Two Evils: Making a big deal about how great some ‘green’ initiative you have going is, when the big picture is still a disaster area. Example: The new JoyTech plant was built using all these recycled and sustainable materials, but it farts black smoke into the air all day – uh, what’s the point?

And last but not least, the Hidden Trade-Off: Focusing on how one thing you do is great so it covers up the bad stuff. Like, how every time I force JoyTech into a corner on one issue, Mr. Giggles spins it into a big show of how great and responsible they are.

Someday, there’s going to be a class you have to take in school about how the JoyTech Global Improvement Company greenwashed the entire planet, while actually rendering it black, and poisonous, and dead.

The problem is that being eco-conscious has become just another trend marketed to consumers. You see earthy colors in packaging, you see words like ‘all-natural’ and ‘organic’ and you think, ‘Oh, I’ll save the planet by buying this product.’

Newsflash: You’ll save the planet by NOT buying any more stupid products!

Buy less! Buy used! Buy experiences instead of products! Live a life of the mind instead of the store shelf!

Shit. Sorry to rant at you. But sometimes I feel like the world is a pretty awful place. And it’s getting worse, not better, isn’t it?

Here’s another full comic. Images tooned, as always, by Toon-Photo!

I really tried to come prepared. I had my camera, for the purpose of documentation, and I had an old gray horse blanket I found in the basement that I threw over the top of the barbed wire perimeter fence. I took a running start and got up and over fast.

I had to cross a huge parking lot before I got to the first outbuildings, but it was monitored by cameras and floodlights.

I pulled the blanket off the fence and over my head, and I ran for it, trying to stay out of the light and look like a piece of pavement. It was probably the worst part of the whole night, because I had to guess where I was going and I couldn’t tell if there was a whole army of JoyTech thugs chasing me.

Eventually I hit a wall – hard. I ripped the blanket off my head, and rolled behind a row of garbage bins until I was sure no one was coming to investigate.

After all that, when I finally got up to take a look around, it was pretty hilarious. The place was dead. Now that I was out of the parking lot, there was minimal lighting, no cameras, and no patrols or anything.

I jumped up on the bins and pulled myself up onto the roof of the small outbuilding I had run into. It wasn’t very high up, but it gave me an amazing view of the compound layout. The plant itself was at the center, low and squatting like a dull metallic spider, with pipes and smokestacks coming out of every surface.

Even at 3am, the vents and smokestacks were still belching fire and noxious substances up into the night sky. No rest for the wicked, as they say.

All the pipes connected the main plant to about two dozen outbuildings of various sizes. And it really looked like some kind of malevolent creature with all its tentacles reaching out, feeding off the smaller creatures and the earth around it.

Before I could follow that train of thought to a creepy conclusion, I took off down the pipeline that led from the roof of the building I was on towards the main plant.

About halfway down the pipe, I realized that it was heading straight for the wall of either the main plant, or a big building attached to the plant. And it didn’t look like there was anywhere left to go.

When I got to the wall, it looked like I’d have to turn back. I was probably twenty feet off the ground, and the pipe fed into a blank wall made up of panels of some opaque synthetic material.

I sat down on the pipe a minute to think, and that’s when I felt a gust of warm air on my legs.

I hung over the side of the pipe, and saw a vent located just underneath the pipe! Score!

Using the ridges of the piping material for grip, I hung upside down from the pipe and tried pulling the vent off. No such luck. It was screwed on tight. What kind of idiot doesn’t bring a screwdriver on a recon mission?

While I was mentally kicking myself, my legs lost their grip on the pipe and I fell, straight into a giant heap of cardboard. I heard my shoulder pop. Dislocated. Hurt like a b*tch, but luckily I was one of those little brats who was always popping his shoulders out, so I held my breath and slammed it into the wall, jamming it back into place. Don’t try it at home, kids.

Getting out of the compound was no problem. I retrieved my trusty blanket (every superhero should have one) then looped around to a spot I had seen from the roof where there was only a few feet between a building and the fence. Much easier than running across the parking lot.

Only one really weird thing happened on my way out. As I was passing a small building that looked like it was a toxic materials storage shed, I thought I heard this little yelping noise. I stopped to listen, but the sound didn’t come again. Then, though, as I was walking away, I swore I heard this whole series of little squeaks.

JoyTech has a rat problem, maybe?

Anyway, I’ll go back tomorrow or Sunday night, with the right tools this time.

Okay, maybe it’s just me, but it seems like there’s an almost anti-planet-friendly hysteria building up in Ring City right now?

I don’t know if it’s because people like to argue, or because they don’t want to change their lifestyle, but more and more I’m hearing “global warming doesn’t exist,” and “there’s no proof that we created the holes in the ozone layer,” and “looking for alternative fuel sources is a waste of time.”

No kidding!

In Ring City, first it was this “recycling doesn’t work” thing, and now there’s all the trouble surrounding the JoyTech plant. All in the space of a week. WTF?

Some background: When all the towns and cities that got surrounded by the Ring Road became the Western Conurbation Area a,k.a. Ring City, there was all this green space in the middle that divided a few of the bigger cites, and only had a few small towns (or ‘neighborhoods’ as they’re now called) in it.

I live in one of those towns.

The Conurbation Council originally promised that all the green space would become protected parkland.

Then the JoyTech Global Improvement Company came to town.

They bought up a huge chunk of land between my ‘neighborhood’ and the urban center across the Blood River, and built the plant, outbuildings, and sprawling parking and warehousing areas surrounding it.

So much for green space, and so much for clean air.

The JoyTech plant belches black smoke 24/7, viololating “every CO2 emissions standards law in existence,” according to Aurora. Standards which, Jerry is quick to point out, are already pathetically low.

The point of all this is to say that Aurora has somehow miraculously mobilized this big protest, planned for tomorrow in front of the JoyTech plant, and we just found out that there’s going to be a counter-protest to protest Aurora’s protest!

They say the air quality in the area hasn’t gone down, and that the original protesters are just left-wing nutjobs that are trying to destroy the industries that built this country.

It seems like everybody is missing a simple truth here: the planet is fragile. Our ecosystem is not indestructible, and the nicer we are to it, the longer it will take care of us.

Show me all the facts and statistics in the world to prove that a problem doesn’t exist, you’ll never convince me that what we’re doing to the ecosystem is without consequence.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens tomorrow. I’ll be going as my regular self, because something tells me they’ll have some thugs on crowd control that might recognize my mask.

As usual, all the photos in this post were tooned using Toon-Photo.

Nothing good ever lasts. That stupid old saying is true, isn’t it? Every time you think something’s going to be different, it’s not. Every time you think someone’s going to change, they don’t.

Every time you’re convinced that the evil multinational corporation you’ve been trying to take down is going to do something good for a change, they wriggle out of it.

No rest for the wicked. Not even the toonified wicked.

The Conurban Council formed this special committee that was supposed to be in charge of independently overseeing quality control at the JoyTech recycling center, but as it turns out, there is no quality to control.

What the special committee found inside the center was a big warehouse filled with boxes. Nothing like the pictures supposedly taken by the Daily Ringer when they did a big editorial on the place.

Predictably, JoyTech blamed the whole thing on the same ‘independent contractors’ that were supposedly at fault for the Blood River dumping. Said contractors have managed to disappear, unnamed and without penalty.

Now the recycling center is closed until further notice, and the worst news is that everybody in Ring City is jaded about recycling now, like they think that because of what happened, recycling doesn’t work!

Yes, let’s just let the city turn into a bit toxic waste dump. It will look pretty, in a post-apocalyptic wasteland kind of way.

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:

All pics toonified with Toon-Photo.

If you live in a big city, you know it’s pretty much impossible to get anyone to pay attention to anything. I could run up and down my street naked, screaming my head off, and people would just close their blinds and turn their TVs up a bit louder.

As of last night, that was basically how everyone was reacting to the rumors that were buzzing around about JoyTech dumping recycling in the Blood River. Unlike a real superhero, I can’t fly or throw a bus or do anything that will really get people’s attention, but I figure one thing I can do is make a crazy mess.

Once I have the truck fueled and some fuel lines changed to Jerry’s satisfaction, I’m back on track.

Here’s how it goes down.

I bring the net we were using with the donkey engine back out of retirement, and head out at about 1am. I go down to the bend in the Blood where I’ve been working, and start filling the net, this time manually instead of dragging the bank.

When I’m done, the net is so full it’s spilling over the sides of the bed and dragging behind the back of the truck, which is perfect.

The plan is to create a giant, nasty trail of mud-caked recycling, stretching from the recycling plant to JoyTech’s Blood River dumpsite.

I start the trail at the Ridge, by cutting a small hole in the bottom of the net and starting to drive. Luckily, there’s no one on River Road, and I’m only going to have to go through one big intersection between the Ridge and JoyTech.

I get about 1/3 of the way down the route I have planned before the net is empty. It looks like all the recycling has literally crawled out of the Blood River, and is on its way back to the center.

And now I’m back to the river bank, back to filling the net. It rained the night before, so by now I’m covered in red mud, but at least my heart isn’t pounding, like it is when I’m driving.

Unfortunately, by the time I get the net filled again, it’s almost 5am, and I can see the light of dawn beginning to creep up over the horizon, lighting up the smoke coming from the JoyTech plant across the river.

That means this is gonna have to be the last load. It’s going to have to stretch the rest of the distance.

I smear mud over Jerry’s license plate and start driving, pretty fast this time, because the garbage has to stretch.

As I get closer to JoyTech, I’m freaking out. I can tell that I’m freaking out because I keep seeing the guys in riot gear out of the corners of my vision, but there’s no one there, the streets are deserted.

I’m not seeing things when I turn onto the street with the recycling center and there’s a high chain-link fence that’s gone up around the facility, and thugs in riot gear walking around the perimeter.

Suddenly, it’s super hot behind my mask, and for some reason, all I can think about is ripping it off so I can breathe.

I try to force my brain to work properly, and now I’m gunning the stupid slow motor, and in the time it takes me to argue with myself about the whole surreal scene, I’m up in front of the gate, pulling a u-turn that sends the recycling left in the net, and all the mud stuck to the net, spraying out across the boulevard in front of the centre.

And then I’m burning rubber getting out of there but, oh shit, a couple of the thugs have actually GRABBED ON TO THE DRAGGING NET!!! It is over for me.

Except that luckily, my life is not actually an action movie, and I’m only driving for a couple of seconds before the net pulls of the bed of the truck and I leave the whole mess in my dust.

No one is chasing me, but I drive downtown and then back towards my neighborhood in circles anyway. And again I ditch the truck at buddy’s wrecking yard.

I walk the rest of the way home and fall into bed. I’ve never been so tired in my whole life but suddenly Jerry’s hollering at me to pick up the phone, and then I’m hearing Aurora’s voice screaming that I gotta come see this, the most incredible thing, she’s talking about the vigilante recycler, and I fall asleep with her voice in my ear.

All pics toonified with Toon-Photo.

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.