flagged raze he got drunk and filmed himself burning a miniature canadian flag on dominion day. he posted the video on facebook. he thought it was funny. he wasn't laughing when the death threats started coming in. you know he got locked out of his facebook account for a while? it wasn't even because of the flag-burning video. he liked his own posts so much, whatever person or automated system was responsible for looking into things like that decided he was a bot. they weren't so far off. he got up onstage at an open mic poetry night once and read his status updates. regurgitated artless words about what he had for dinner like they were sonnets. and he didn't learn a thing. all he did was block his fake internet friends from commenting on his content so he could go back to huffing his own fumes in peace. i'm the least patriotic person you'll ever meet, and i still can't understand how anyone who isn't protesting could do a thing like that. maybe it's stupid, but those colours still mean something to me. 220716 ... epitome of incomprehensibility ...I was thinking of dream_crafts and the difficulty of making flags with clay, specifically the angles of the maple leaf on the Canadian flag - good lord, I can't even draw it - and that brought me meandering here. Your piece is so nicely put together, first of all. And second, "flag" has such rich punning possibilities. I'm surprised no one has blathed under red_flag yet. Third, I agree that the guy sounds clueless and annoying. My reasons for objecting to purposeless flag-burning would be more...ecological? I don't like to see material wasted. But also I don't want to give the concept of a country too much credence. Why burn a flag when the concept of nationhood itself lacks meaningful substance? I mean, I think community matters much more than pledging allegiance to some mostly imaginary thread woven into an empire-like conglomeration. Maybe it's unfair to call a (sort-of) democracy an empire, and maybe I'm just reacting to my past. In Cedar_Christian_Academy, students had to "pledge allegiance" to the flag of Canada. Irony: I objected to doing that (but did it anyway, since I'm a wimp) because it seemed "too American." As the joke goes, Canadian pride means not wanting to be too American. Countries aren't inherently evil, maybe. I just think we shouldn't take them too seriously. And the maple leaf at least relates to something real and tangible. Plus it IS pretty (if damnably hard to draw). 220802 ... e_o_i ...Flagged for "Oh yes, here was the other thing that made me cringe about my wording recently" - because of the word "we" in "I just think we shouldn't take them too seriously." It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. That "we" feels like I'm berating people or trying to rope them in: "You look like a decent person! Come, endorse my totally coherent Aloof Eco-Anarchist philosophy." Silly. All I had to do was change that "we" to an "I" and it wouldn't look so goddamn preachy. 220803 what's it to you? who go blather from