rdi | Recent Entries

Breaking radio silence for a worthwhile announcement. I’ve been working on songwriting for a few years now, and am happy to announce that my first release, a 5 track EP titled The Winter Of Our Discontent, is now available on Bandcamp.

The EP is a collection of songs inspired by themes of social justice, colonialism, institutionalized racism, and resistance. If that sounds of interest, please check it out and let me know what you think. Even if it doesn’t sound of interest, check it out and let me know what you think :-)

Spent last week at the 2016 incarnation of Richard Thompson’s Frets and Refrains camp. Last year's camp–my first time–was a transformational experience. This year was inspirational.

I went intending to take Jill Sobule’s songwriting workshop and Sloan Wainwright’s voice workshop. Having spent some time listening to Martin Carthy’s music on the 9-hour drive from Toronto (including breaks and border crossing), I decided I’d at least check out his session on the first day.

( (It gets long) )

So, the Pigfucker leaves quite a political legacy behind him.

The referendum’s not binding, but if he had any courage to speak of it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

It's hard formulating a sane reaction to senseless events.

Apart from alternating waves of anger and outrage, my first reaction was start updating Tom Robinson's "Glad To Be Gay" to reflect a more global view of queer rights ca 2016. I feel pretty sure Tom would have no issue with this, given that he's updated it a few times himself. Tragic that a 40 year old gay rights anthem remains relevant, though.

Then I read Scalzi's post on thoughts and prayers and received inspiration for a new song.

Assuming I find/make time and energy to work on these ideas over the next few weeks, I'll have some interesting stuff to take to guitar camp this summer.

There was a time when the CBC produced drama that the world envied. And I don’t mean l’affaire Ghomeshi.

I'm a couple of days behind this year, and seem to have missed posting this for the last two years, but here's the semi-traditional link to Billy Connolly's "Crucifixion" sketch and my transcription thereof.

For

grendelis: http://threepanelsoul.com/2014/08/04/egress/

Went to see Game On 2.0 at the Ontario Science Centre. Having seen the original Game On in Edinburgh, Lo These Many Years Ago, I was looking forward to it. Watching Wreck-It Ralph (which is chock full of vintage game references, a few of which even I picked up on) last night also motivated

abigor into coming along...in fact, she booked the tickets while we were watching the movie.

Unfortunately the reality was rather disappointing. The exhibit is basically a large video game arcade with some historical footnotes tacked on the wall, some of which are either badly proofread (where/were) or downright inaccurate (no, the PDP11 was not the first machine to run Unix). There was no discussion of the computer science that goes into gaming (2d graphics, 3d graphics, ray tracing, shading, lighting), of the improvement in hardware capabilities that made progression in games possible, of the sociology of gaming, of the impact of gaming on other media and culture (Scott Pilgrim, anyone?) Nice nostalgia for the generation that grew up with games, but zero out of ten for education value.

I appear to have missed my not-quite-annual Canada Day post again last year. Perhaps it's now a biannual Canada Day post?

To keep things confusing, Pride Day in TO fell on July 1st this year and pretty much took precedence. Considering that my biggest problem for Pride was deciding what to wear, I think I have it pretty good. Some people need to worry about being beaten up by right wing homophobes protected by riot cops. So overall, I still feel pretty good about being Canadian. I'm still embarrassed by, angry about about, and ashamed of our government, but we can turf those fuckers. Again, unlike some other countries. So Happy Canada Day, and Happy Pride. Hope you enjoyed it it, whatever (or whoever) you did.

Somebody came to the door yesterday to invite me to "a celebration of Jesus's death". I merely said a polite no thank-you, but as I headed upstairs though of the things I could have said: "Celebrating his death? What kind of people are you?"

Or perhaps a simple "I always thought his resurrection was more important..." would have sufficed. Not that I wanted to start a doorstep theological debate or anything.

Anyway, here's the traditional link to Billy Connolly's "Crucifixion" sketch and my transcription thereof.

And in anticipation of Sunday, happy Zombie Jeebus day. Or Chocolate Pagan Fertility Symbol Day, or if you prefer, Lucifer's Testicles Day. (Unholy testicle Sunday!.)

We're in the midst of a by election in Toronto-Danforth to replace Jack Layton (sniff)

For some reason, the Conservatives (spit), who haven't a hope in hell of winning, are fielding a candidate, and there was a leaflet from them in the mailbox today

The first thing on it says "When it comes to crime, the Liberal's top idea is to legalize marijuana!"

So my first reaction was "And that's a bad thing because...?"

...and my second was wait, are they trying to get people to vote Liberal instead of NDP?

Some kind of sneaky split-the-left strategy would seem to be the only rational explanation for leading with that kind of rhetoric in a downtown Toronto riding. Though in saying that I am also making the mistake of ascribing rational thought to Conservatives.

Eat round things and be irrational!

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is the kind of demagogue who imposes his will under the guise of "doing what the people want." One of his first steps was to announce the end of the "war on the car" which is his description of the Transit City plan created by the previous administration, which would have created a network of light rail transit along a couple of major arteries and introduced more bike lanes into the road network.

Fortunately the progressive members of city council are fighting back, among other things by getting a legal opinion on whether the Mayor had the authority to scrap Transit City. The answer to which, obviously, is that he didn't. Not that he sees it that way, as he said at a press conference on Monday where he repeated the words "taxpayers" and "subways" so often that a local columnist turned it into found poetry:

I didn’t
Overstep my boundaries
I did
What the taxpayers
Want
They want subways
That’s it.

(Continued here)

This inspired me, and several others, to take the mayor's words to the next step.

Here's my take, a sort of talking blues version.

There's also a hiphop version, in which the rapper is considerably more articulate than the mayor's ever been:

And an acoustic version

And an autotuned version

If you know of more, please post 'em in the comments.

I wrote a post on Jan 1 this year, laying out what I meant to do with the year - "Not resolutions, but things I'd like to accomplish in the next 364 days." I didn't actually get around to posting it until just now.

Looking back at it I failed at almost everything on the list, except for maintaining my weight, which is actually down a little further from where it was, and gathering some family history (though not much, really.) If nothing else this makes it pretty easy to set goals for 2012. Two of those items - renovation and consequent studio space rearrangement - probably won't happen for cost reasons; the quote we got for our intended second floor renovation was higher than we expected, and money that could have gone to that has gone elsewhere in the house - new roof, new furnace, and a new washer and drier. Which leaves me:

- maintain my current weight, which should be a matter of watching what I eat. I haven't been doing Weight Watchers tracking much this year, so I need to either resume that or find another food tracking app for the iPhone that doesn't require a subscription.
- improve fitness, specifically by improving muscle tone and mass, flexibility, and cardio fitness. I've got a Wii Fit program that should help with the muscle mass and tone; I'll add some stretching for flexibility; and running and/or cycling will be the cardio side.
- learn 50 new fiddle tunes. One a week is probably a reasonable rate, and should be much achievable if I make a list. There are about 30 tunes I can work on from a session I was attending for part of the past year, and I can pull the rest from tune books and my music collection.
- record and release 6 songs using GarageBand. That's one every two months or about 8 weeks per song. I've got at least this many in various stages of completeness, so this is more a matter of finishing and releasing what's started than creating anything from scratch.
- make a will! I have a questionnaire from our lawyer to fill in, which is a starting point for this.
- select, print, frame and hang a number of photographs (N > 0, < infinity.) In lieu of photographs, selecting and framing some of the other posters we have around waiting to go on the walls will do nicely.
- gather family history from my parents (family tree, locations and dates)
- create some art from my photography. I'm putting this in to replace another creative project, which was "write two short stories". I had story ideas this time last year which have flown on (hopefully to other, more fertile brains), and today I'm feeling more visually inspired as a result of spending the afternoon at the AGO.
- eta play more music with other people. This is actually already in progress, as I have a group of people lined up for jamming with; we just need to agree on a date and book space, which is in my court.

I'd also like to write more on LJ this year than I have in the past couple of years; I feel like FB has taking up more of my time and sucked away energy that I could use better for longer-form writing. So I'll add a goal of making at least one life-logging post per week, as opposed to the sporadic political rants and raves that have made up the bulk of this journal recently.

If nothing else, this post will give me something to measure 2012 against in 366 days time.

Originally posted by

james_nicoll at Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Originally posted by

soldiergrrrl at Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Originally posted by

twbasketcaseat Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Originally posted by

gabrielleabelleat Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Okay, so I don't usually do this, but this is an issue near and dear to me and this is getting ~~very little~~ no attention in the mainstream media.

Mississippi is voting on November 8th on whether to pass Amendment 26, the "Personhood Amendment". This amendment would grant fertilized eggs and fetuses personhood status.

Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages. This is not a good thing.

Jackson Women's Health Organization is the only place women can get abortions in the entire state, and they are trying to launch a grassroots movement against this amendment. This doesn't just apply to Mississippi, though, as Personhood USA, the group that introduced this amendment, is trying to introduce identical amendments in all 50 states.

What's more, in Mississippi, this amendment is expected to pass. It even has Mississippi Democrats, including the Attorney General, Jim Hood, backing it.

The reason I'm posting this here is because I made a meager donation to the Jackson Women's Health Organization this morning, and I received a personal email back hours later - on a Sunday - thanking me and noting that I'm one of the first "outside" people to contribute.

So if you sometimes pass on political action because you figure that enough other people will do something to make a difference, make an exception on this one. My RSS reader is near silent on this amendment. I only found out about it through a feminist blog. The mainstream media is not reporting on it.

If there is ever a time to donate or send a letter in protest, this would be it.

What to do?

- Read up on it. Wake Up, Mississippi is the home of the grassroots effort to fight this amendment. Daily Kos also has a thorough story on it.

- If you can afford it, you can donate at the site's link.

- You can contact the Democratic National Committee to see why more of our representatives aren't speaking out against this.

- Like this Facebook page to help spread awareness.

Now that our Long National Nightmare has begun in earnest, tell me: what's your worst fear for the next 5 years?

(For the benefit of non-Canadian readers, we just had an election yesterday, in which a Conservative leader who's been found in contempt of Parliament was re-elected. With a majority.)

I'm trying to persuade myself that Harper can't do too much damage in 4 years, but I've been here before: the UK, in the 80's. My UK friends may be shocked to hear this, but I think I'd take Maggot Bloody Scratcher over Thieving Harmer. Thatch may have been deluded, but she didn't set out to deliberately harm the poor and underprivileged of society: that was just a side effect of her economic and social policies. Harper's kind of neo-conservatism believes the poor and marginalized of society deserve their lot.

The Canadian electorate has just handed the keys to the kingdom over to the most aggressively secretive and centralizing party leader in history. Harper isn't the first party leader to use his office as a bully pulpit, but he takes it to extremes no previous party leader has. Let's face, Tory MPs don't fart in private without written permission from the PMO. With his precious majority in place, Harper can now unleash his real agenda. He once said "You won't recognise Canada when I get through with it." I'm afraid he might be right.

I grew up in a Canada that was the outcome of the Pearson and Trudeau governments. That Canada is now being dismantled, piece by piece, and while the NDP's 100+ seats is a commendable performance, it doesn't change the fact that Parliament is now a rubber stamp for Stephen Harper's neo-con megalomania. The only positive outcome I can find is that the attack dogs in the party might start slipping their leashes and showing their true colours. Unfortunately there's not much we can do about that for another five years.

There are two things we can do to help change things in five years, though. If you can afford it, start donating to the party of your choice. One of the first things Harper is going to go after is the federal funding of political parties. The Conservative Party has a massive war chest. We need to make sure our chosen parties have the same level of funding.

The other thing is to get people to vote. Only 60% of the electorate turned out. That means Harper' majority was granted by only 24% of Canadians. I'm sure we all must know someone who didn't vote. Find that person and make sure they get their ass to a ballot box next time.

And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go drown my sorrows in a Nice Cup of Tea.

As is traditional in this LJ at this time of year, a link to Billy Connolly's "Crucifixion" sketch and my transcription thereof.

And in anticipation of Sunday, happy Zombie Jeebus day. Or Chocolate Pagan Fertility Symbol Day, or if you prefer, Lucifer's Testicles Day. (Unholy testicle Sunday!.)

via

nickys[link]:

The High Court has declared kettling to be unlawful. The police are going to appeal against the decision, so the battle's not over, sadl.

Interesting. I'll have to see if there's any analogous case going on here. They kettled people in downtown Toronto during the G20 last year and detained over a thousand people, most of whom were subsequently released without charge. A lot of the charges laid against the rest have since been dropped, though I haven't been able to find exact numbers on how many people still face charges. (The number 99 is in my head, but I can't find a source offhand.)

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This guitar does not lie

lover, thief, fool, pretender

Recent Entries

Now Is The Winter Of Our Discontent

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My song is my weapon

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See the miracles I’ve done the day?

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Release 1.0 was so much better

Is this a good day or what?

Pride/Canada Day

He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy

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A happy π day to all my readers!

The Rob Ford remix project

In which our hero set modest goals and failed to accomplish them

Mississippi Personhood Amendment

Open thread: Worst fears?

Oh. Fuck.

Happy "Nail your messiah to a tree" day!

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December 2024

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