some posts will be public, for the most part they wont. comment to be added. i ♥ friends.

that's my name, don't wear it out.

this is the first time since i started ta-ing, actually since i started university, that someone has asked me to teach about how globalization is a great thing, inequalities are caused by internal politics not globalization and we should really just let free markets go free.

am i missing something here? is it wrong i feel like this is the stupidest thing i've heard. i'll admit, i see problems with globalization but that's not to say people who don't are wrong, it's just to say this is university, shouldn't both sides be presented?

also if globalization was perfect, why do people riot about it?

anyway, i'm bringing in clips of the yes men, two naomi klein articles, links to the imf and structural adjustment programs (so my students can fairly see both sides) as well as the NAFTA, OAS and WTO documentation.

seriously, i am really perturbed by the one-sidedness of this textbook.

slickety jim's chat and chew and Lugz are gone :(

I'm tired of Canada. Don't get me wrong I love this country. I would die for this country because I believe that we are all born somewhere for a reason. I was born in Canada, I'm going to do what I can to make Canada a better place. But I am tired of it.

I am tired of selling the things that make us who we are.
I am tired of lying down while others come in and take what is ours.
I am tired of raw exports.
I am tired of exporting power.
I am tired of not protecting the north.
I am tired of partisan divisions. We can exist as one Canada. We can be a country divided.
I am tired of privatisation.
I am tired of limited inter-provincial mobility.
I am tired of tender going to the friend of the minister and not the best employer for the job.
I am tired of bad television made in the name of the Canadian film industry. We make good TV and movies, we just have to be confident.
I am tired of bad immigration policies that hurt us all. A Dr. is a Dr.
I am tired of pathetic minimum wages.

We can recognise French rights and still be one country.
We can give title to aboriginals.
We can give homeless people shelter.
We can educate our children to the best of our abilities while providing it to them for free with quality teachers.
We can have public health care. Real. Complete. Public. Health Care.
We can lower the crime rates.
We can stand up for ourselves internationally.
We can provide aid and assistance to those who aren't quite strong enough to do it themselves.
We can fund research and development.
We can go green.
We will be carbon neutral.
We will protect the true north strong and free.

I once told a friend of mine that the world is our oyster. That we are free and young and can do whatever we want. We are free and young, and I do need to see every corner of the world but I need to know that when I slap that maple leaf on my backpack it's because I mean it. Not because it goes over better than some stars and stripes.

my roommate and i were trying on clothes, like our whole closets and we started taking photos. part way through i was laughing to the point of... almost crying.... because we were shouting tyra style ANTM comments at each other.

So my step brother and I have our wheels turning about what we want to do with our lives. We have an idea, but we don't know if it's good or not. We are interested in working with social media and political issues and some how bringing the two together.

So far all that's emerged from that is this

A short quiz

If you could please take the time to fill it out that would be really awesome, we would really really appreciate it. If you get an email about it I'm sorry, but I want to reach as many people as possible.

It's anonymous and really only takes about 2 minutes.

Thanks!

EDIT - I love all of you who have already filled it out. Thank you, and keep going, this is so much more helpful than I ever thought it would be and it's only been up for three hours. Thank you! thank you! thank you!

What is a good study name:

a) Insite: Explaining development of Canada's only safe-injection site.
b) Supervised Safe Injection: Why Vancouver is home to Canada's only safe-injection site
c) Insite: a tale of two takes on harm reduction
d) Supervised Safe Injection: a look at Toronto, Vancouver and Canada's only safe-injection site
e) Poverty - the musical.

okay some of these are more serious than others.

HELP!

“Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to stand on the side of the executioners.”

Howard Zinn - A People's History of the United States

oh my gods.



I WANT I WANT I WANT

and for the final event of the weekend






dorothy and toto

last night was my house party. i got my zombie on.

tonight it's celebrities. i'm going as dorothy from wizard of oz. cg will be my toto. i've never done a "couples" costume before.

we went to see evil dead the musical at the JCC last night. I decided to dress up




tonight it's zombie time.

day fifty one (i can't count) already. hard to believe.

i got new hair. it's the best hair i've ever had i think. it's all asymmetrical and chopping and it blows my mind.

We all make decisions in our lives. We choose what to wear each day, where to eat lunch, how to get to work, whether or not to go to work. Sometimes we make those decisions with great clarity. Sometimes we weigh the costs and benefits thoroughly, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes our decision making ability is inhibited, our ability to see what is right and wrong, what are our options are is clouded. Sometimes it’s so clouded we don’t actually know what we believe to be right or wrong.

I’ve been struggling lately to figure out what I am. Who I am. What I believe in, if I really believe in anything. More importantly if I even believe in my self. I often wonder what keeps a person moving, what keeps them alive, what motivates them. I always wonder what motivates me.

I make bad decisions. I make them all the time, and the worst part is, the part that I have got to figure out or it will kill me, is why. I don’t know why I make these decisions. There’s a part of me that will never be happy. There is this little piece inside my head or heart, or for all I know my left big toe, but there is a part of me that will always be sad. So sad and so miserable that the sun will never shine on that part.

And yet, for the most part, I am able to force the light in on that part. Sometimes I am not. I wonder if maybe it’s that little piece. That little piece that lives in an abyss of sorrow and misery that I know will always be there and I wonder if some part of me knows that if I just let that little piece win I never have to feel what it’s like to lose happiness or love.

I hate soul searching. It makes me mad, it makes me hate people who suggest it, it makes me hate myself for not having sorted everything out already.

What’s even harder for me is that I don’t know what it will take for me to figure that all out. I don’t know what makes me tick. I want to. But I don’t know how.

I know that a really big part of it is not believing in myself. I don’t have faith that I can do anything. But more than that, I feel like I can’t even take the first step.
Hell, I can hardly finish a journal entry about it.

today i wore combat boots. i love combat boots. combat boots and men's wool socks.

i'm quite happy with today's photo

i've been really missing asia lately.