Hi all,
I have lately been listening to the excellent podcast found at www.wearecitizenradio.com and it has really helped me to do that political plugging in that I was missing before. I just think it's important that I say,after the last post where I was questioning some stuff, that I believe in the "socialist government" that Conservatives want so badly for us not to trust. We shouldn't trust it, but for very different reasons than the right wingers would want us to.
Since listening to this podcast I have had some wonderful/sad conversations with friends and family members about rape culture and how prevalent it is, as well as white privilege and patriarchal privilege. I've also baked my first batch of vegan cookies and served them to my students who were impressed at how tasty options that don't involve animals products can be, as was I.
Being aware and awake is a painful feeling, one that makes a person feel like it's a hopeless fight, when things like three women being locked in a basement for 10 years while being ignored by police and neighbours while suffering unimaginable abuse comes to light and the only thing people can focus on about the story is the funny black man who rescued her and his personal life. Why don't we know as much about the perpetrators, or the victims and how their recovery is progressing as we do about a man named Chales Ramsey and his relationship with McDonald's.
However, as easy as it is to feel overwhelmed with heart sickness, the important thing is to find a community of people who not only see behind that curtain, but who are positive influences in your life to help you find positive ways to take action and who don't judge you on the things you aren't ready to do yet. Something I like a lot about this podcast is their attitude towards veganism.
I realise that philisophically, I should be a vegan already. I don't at all agree with the way that meat comes to my local supermarket, knowing that living creatures were killed so that I can enjoy a hamburger, or that terrible, immoral companies are reaping profit and are being positively reinforced by my purchase. I am also an environmentalist who is deeply afraid of what is on the horizon with climate change and the environmental impact of the lifestyle we enjoy in the West. All that considered, I cannot yet being myself to stop eating meat and animal products.
What has been my excuse since hitting my teens has partially been based on my feeling of unwelcomness in the vegan community and fear of the judgement I felt from people who were already to some degree practicing this lifestyle. What I like about Citizen Radio is how non-judgemental they are about people trying to start cutting out meat and animal products, or to vegans or veggies who slip up and eat something they shouldn't. It's taken a long time to find that underlying message in the podcasts, but I am happy to have realised that small steps are better than none, like cutting down smoking, I can start modifying my way of eating in a way that more closely fits my ideology.
Just wanted to put that message out there because I think it's a really important one because I think there are a lot of people out there like me and if all of us started eating even just vegetarian for one day a week, the impact that has can be massive. It's worth at least trying!
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Time Lapses!
I thought that these were cool for comparisons of where I've lived in the past year:
Singapore:
http://vimeo.com/zweizwei/singapore
Toronto:
http://vimeo.com/63647331
Singapore:
http://vimeo.com/zweizwei/singapore
Toronto:
http://vimeo.com/63647331
Monday, April 8, 2013
I'm Baaack (To Writing)
Arrrrg, I'm back.
Ok, look here friends. They tried to scare the wits out of us in teacher's college about having any sort of online identity, especially one that could be connected to political affiliations and that really got into my bones. I felt like, I can blog about living overseas and try to keep that politically neutral cause I'mma be living in a country where I don't vote so I can't be all that political cause I frankly have no right to say anything there anyways. But I'm getting that creeping feeling in my belly and that itchy feeling in my fingers and it's been there for a while now and I just miss writing. So, I'm gonna. Yay! I'm going to hope that this is like in sex ed class when they told us that if we ever lost our virginity to someone who wasn't our husband we would immediately get genital warts, AIDS and syphilis and our junk would rot off. Or that if we ever so much as took a puff of a joint we would descend into immediate drug-induced hysteria and likely leap off a building. Let's just hope it's like that.
M'kay. I've got soooo much I've wanted to write about and I am just going to stick with like one thing today I think. Well, one thing that will bleed into the other things. I'll get to my life and all that jazz later on, but for now I want to talk about I guess we'll say Margaret Thatcher, feminism and my scary creeping middle aged conservatism. Aiyah, that's a lot.
To start, Margaret Thatcher, she died. Y'all know that by now. And I've seen lots and lots of vitriol and rage on my facebook newsfeed and people just straight up getting their glee on that Maggie kicked it. So I was all like, dude, I don't know enough about this lady to be informed (tangent time!!)
**Tangent: since my return to Canada I feel like I have had this plug that I am trying to put back into this giant switchboard I call political awareness that I literally unplugged for two years while I was away. I mean sure, I followed the elections in Canada and the States, in fact I watched ALL of the presidential debates, which I probably wouldn't have done if I'd been here in the land of the maple, but I did not get active about things, I did not participate in much political discourse and I think to an extent I shut off my critical thinking rage machine that I call my brain. Coming back to Canada I've slowly been plugging back in, one small prong at a time, but I feel like I'm sort of changed by the whole thing too, which will likely be something I discuss in tangent two!**
And so I went and read a little bit about Maggie and watched an interview with her from the CBC archives. Here's the thing. I don't necessarily get on the hating her bandwagon. For two reasons. The first is that I am a feminist. And as a feminist, I honestly and wholeheartedly wish to support women's right to make their own choices. Which sucks sometimes if I'm honest, cause women being people, they make some TERRIBLE ASS choices sometimes with that freedom that has been fought for. Thatcher pretty much being an example of this very notion.
Look, the lady was the fist female Prime Minister. And not in like, 1999 or whatever when we had the Spice Girls and a more mainstream notion of female empowerment. We are talking about when shit was pretty damn awful for da ladies. I mean, it still is, they still talk more about Hilary Clinton's hairstyles and choices of pantsuits in the media than her politics or ideology. So for that, Margaret Thatcher is a badass.
As well, I think she deserves some kudos for being a bitch, unflinchingly. In the words of Tina Fey, bitches get shit done. I think it takes some courage to be an outspoken woman who isn't liked, because our language simply has more heinous vocabulary at its disposal to hurl at you, and that builds some pathways in your brain that are a lot easier to go down when you need to articulate how terribly you loathe a person and I'm sure that doesn't lend itself well to people being kind to those of us with the boobs. If that makes sense.
Finally, and this is tangent two, I'm afraid I am becoming sort of a conservative. Which my Dad always told me would happen when I got older and I had dreadlocks and a tattoo and was like NEVER but I'm getting worried that I am anyways. Cause I was listening to this interview with her, and she's been set up as this paragon of evil, yet what she's saying is making some sense to me a little bit.
I don't think I've explored this or read enough about so I'll just talk about what I think is leading to here. It's contrast.
In Asia, where I was, people don't get shit from the government. Which is in some ways truly horrible. Elderly people, I'm talking 88 year old aunties with hunchbacks and sorrow in their eyes are cleaning up your tray at McDonald's because there is no social security and she needs to do that to work. Or someone who is blind is sitting on the pavement at this gleaming plastic mall where people are blowing hundreds of dollars on Angry Birds merchandise singing for crack change because that's all he can really do in this world he is living in. However. You don't have people on the bus talking about their parole officer being an asshole for wanting them to go see an addictions counsellor in the same conversation where the quest to score some stuff, dumpster diving and how crappy the cellphone that the government bought for them is cause the camera isn't as good quality on it as the one on the iPhone is has been discussed. You don't have psychos going in to government offices and getting money from the terrified employees there so that he can spend the weekend touring the area instead of violently attacking people because he just got out of prison and he's feeling bored.
I really don't know. The 13 year old idealist in me is arguing that the idiots who abuse the system shouldn't completely null and void the validity of said system. And that there are assholes in every society and every style of government is going to have it's flaws. I guess our system's flaws to me are still better than the blind man dancing to Gangnam style in the insane heat of Singapore at the mall so that he can eat and have a place to live in his 80's.
So for now, I thin I am going to side with my 13 year old self (she forced me to go to the Spice Girl's reunion tour and she wasn't wrong then) because I hope that I can plug my prongs back in and still keep my head on straight.
Ok, look here friends. They tried to scare the wits out of us in teacher's college about having any sort of online identity, especially one that could be connected to political affiliations and that really got into my bones. I felt like, I can blog about living overseas and try to keep that politically neutral cause I'mma be living in a country where I don't vote so I can't be all that political cause I frankly have no right to say anything there anyways. But I'm getting that creeping feeling in my belly and that itchy feeling in my fingers and it's been there for a while now and I just miss writing. So, I'm gonna. Yay! I'm going to hope that this is like in sex ed class when they told us that if we ever lost our virginity to someone who wasn't our husband we would immediately get genital warts, AIDS and syphilis and our junk would rot off. Or that if we ever so much as took a puff of a joint we would descend into immediate drug-induced hysteria and likely leap off a building. Let's just hope it's like that.
M'kay. I've got soooo much I've wanted to write about and I am just going to stick with like one thing today I think. Well, one thing that will bleed into the other things. I'll get to my life and all that jazz later on, but for now I want to talk about I guess we'll say Margaret Thatcher, feminism and my scary creeping middle aged conservatism. Aiyah, that's a lot.
To start, Margaret Thatcher, she died. Y'all know that by now. And I've seen lots and lots of vitriol and rage on my facebook newsfeed and people just straight up getting their glee on that Maggie kicked it. So I was all like, dude, I don't know enough about this lady to be informed (tangent time!!)
**Tangent: since my return to Canada I feel like I have had this plug that I am trying to put back into this giant switchboard I call political awareness that I literally unplugged for two years while I was away. I mean sure, I followed the elections in Canada and the States, in fact I watched ALL of the presidential debates, which I probably wouldn't have done if I'd been here in the land of the maple, but I did not get active about things, I did not participate in much political discourse and I think to an extent I shut off my critical thinking rage machine that I call my brain. Coming back to Canada I've slowly been plugging back in, one small prong at a time, but I feel like I'm sort of changed by the whole thing too, which will likely be something I discuss in tangent two!**
And so I went and read a little bit about Maggie and watched an interview with her from the CBC archives. Here's the thing. I don't necessarily get on the hating her bandwagon. For two reasons. The first is that I am a feminist. And as a feminist, I honestly and wholeheartedly wish to support women's right to make their own choices. Which sucks sometimes if I'm honest, cause women being people, they make some TERRIBLE ASS choices sometimes with that freedom that has been fought for. Thatcher pretty much being an example of this very notion.
Look, the lady was the fist female Prime Minister. And not in like, 1999 or whatever when we had the Spice Girls and a more mainstream notion of female empowerment. We are talking about when shit was pretty damn awful for da ladies. I mean, it still is, they still talk more about Hilary Clinton's hairstyles and choices of pantsuits in the media than her politics or ideology. So for that, Margaret Thatcher is a badass.
As well, I think she deserves some kudos for being a bitch, unflinchingly. In the words of Tina Fey, bitches get shit done. I think it takes some courage to be an outspoken woman who isn't liked, because our language simply has more heinous vocabulary at its disposal to hurl at you, and that builds some pathways in your brain that are a lot easier to go down when you need to articulate how terribly you loathe a person and I'm sure that doesn't lend itself well to people being kind to those of us with the boobs. If that makes sense.
Finally, and this is tangent two, I'm afraid I am becoming sort of a conservative. Which my Dad always told me would happen when I got older and I had dreadlocks and a tattoo and was like NEVER but I'm getting worried that I am anyways. Cause I was listening to this interview with her, and she's been set up as this paragon of evil, yet what she's saying is making some sense to me a little bit.
I don't think I've explored this or read enough about so I'll just talk about what I think is leading to here. It's contrast.
In Asia, where I was, people don't get shit from the government. Which is in some ways truly horrible. Elderly people, I'm talking 88 year old aunties with hunchbacks and sorrow in their eyes are cleaning up your tray at McDonald's because there is no social security and she needs to do that to work. Or someone who is blind is sitting on the pavement at this gleaming plastic mall where people are blowing hundreds of dollars on Angry Birds merchandise singing for crack change because that's all he can really do in this world he is living in. However. You don't have people on the bus talking about their parole officer being an asshole for wanting them to go see an addictions counsellor in the same conversation where the quest to score some stuff, dumpster diving and how crappy the cellphone that the government bought for them is cause the camera isn't as good quality on it as the one on the iPhone is has been discussed. You don't have psychos going in to government offices and getting money from the terrified employees there so that he can spend the weekend touring the area instead of violently attacking people because he just got out of prison and he's feeling bored.
I really don't know. The 13 year old idealist in me is arguing that the idiots who abuse the system shouldn't completely null and void the validity of said system. And that there are assholes in every society and every style of government is going to have it's flaws. I guess our system's flaws to me are still better than the blind man dancing to Gangnam style in the insane heat of Singapore at the mall so that he can eat and have a place to live in his 80's.
So for now, I thin I am going to side with my 13 year old self (she forced me to go to the Spice Girl's reunion tour and she wasn't wrong then) because I hope that I can plug my prongs back in and still keep my head on straight.
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