Read my latest flash, Venison, at 52|250.

My April Fool’s Day post didn’t make quite the splash I was hoping for today; I guess the humor was a bit too obscure. Google, as usual, had a marvelous entry with its Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity, and even Starbucks got into the act with a device I wish were real.

Did anyone else see or play an impressive prank today? (Since it’s also national poetry month, comments that show attention to rhyme, meter, alliteration, or any other poetic device will be awarded bonus points.)

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Those of you have been following me for the past several months know that I said my return to the Seattle area was due to visa trouble but, in fact, that was a deception. I returned from my semi-voluntary exile after receiving word that the approximately 5,000,000 community councils of the region of Cascadia had at last agreed on a preliminary plan for announcing independence for the regions formerly known as Washington and Oregon but now to be known as Upper Columbia and Free Columbia (the latter a last minute replacement for Lower Columbia which some residents deemed insulting). At the time it had already been agreed to split the new nation into these two provinces and that each should be further subdivided into coastal, mountain, and inland prefectures. While the bulk of decisions will continue to be made, or at least confirmed, by the community councils, it will be necessary for them to send representatives to prefectural, provincial, and national disappearing and recurring task forces to deal with certain issues. As such, no national capital as such will be necessary, as task force members may arrange to meet in a variety of physical locations (should they wish to combine their meeting with a potluck) or online chatrooms (the software for this will be provided by Microsoft but using their private programs, not the buggy stuff that’s available for public consumption).

Ironically, then, the location of the national capital was the thorny issues my disappearing task force was required to hammer out before the formal declaration of independence. There are, you see, functions other than legislative that such capitals fulfill. At last, we decided that Portland should be the capital for greeting foreign dignitaries and Seattle the capital for mass protest. We had some concern that community councils in Seattle would object but, fortunately, our language to the effect that this honored the city’s spirit of resistance to Imperial America as demonstrated by the WTO riots. What we did not anticipate was that certain members of Eugene, Free Columbia community councils would object that they had actually been the instigators of such riots. Finally, once we scrubbed that language from the declaration (despite the objections of some that the story of Eugene Anarchists had been a media myth), it was accepted.

Another task force made the first statement of foreign policy: that Cascadia would welcome Northern California and British Columbia to join within its borders (should their community councils approve) but that any other states or provinces wishing to become independent must form their own nations with which we would happily ally ourselves, as borders should be bioregionally logical.

The task force to determine our new national anthem is still stuck between “Roll On Columbia, Roll On” and “Lithium“, but we decided to go ahead with this announcement anyway. We do not expect great resistance from Imperial America, as it is still wrapped up in conflicts in the Middle East (a rather interesting echo of Ecotopia Emerging).

For more information and the latest developments, visit Slog (Upper Columbia) and Blogtown (Free Columbia).

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