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musings of mark since 2001

A little more uplifting post for this time of day courtesy of Jane Fonda apparently, haven’t tracked this to the source but I like the sentiments anyways for this day and age and if the whole world was amendable it would be such a great Christmas present eh. Technically this was a piece of spam that showed up on the Photoshop-Haven list but the surfs that I went through to arrive at this was well worth it:

”…but just because Patriarchy has ruled for 10,000 years since the beginning of agriculture, that doesn’t make it inevitable.”

Maybe at some earlier stage in human evolution, Patriarchy was what was needed just for the species to survive. But today, there’s nothing threatening the human species but humans. We’ve conquered our predators, we’ve subdued nature almost to extinction, and there are no more frontiers to conquer or to escape into so as to avoid having to deal with the mess we’ve left behind. Frontiers have always given capitalism, Patriarchy’s economic face, a way to avoid dealing with its shortcomings. Well, we’re having to face them now in this post-frontier era and inevitably – especially when we have leaders who suffer from toxic masculinity – that leads to war, the conquering of new markets, and the destruction of the earth.

However, it is altogether possible, that we are on the verge of a tectonic shift in paradigms – that what we are seeing happening today are the paroxysms, the final terrible death throes of the old, no longer workable, no longer justifiable system. Look at it this way: it’s Patriarchy’s third act and we have to make sure it’s its last.

It’s possible that the extreme, neo-conservative version of Patriarchy which makes up our current Executive branch will over-play its hand and cause the house of cards to collapse. We know that this new “preventive war” doctrine will put us on a permanent war footing. We know there can’t be guns and butter, right? We learned that with Vietnam. We know that a Pandora’s box has been opened in the Middle East and that the administration is not prepared for the complexities that are emerging. We know that friends are becoming foes and angry young Muslims with no connection to Al Qaeda are becoming terrorists in greater numbers. We know that with the new tax plan the rich will be better off and the rest will be poorer. We know what happens when poor young men and women can only get jobs by joining the military and what happens when they come home and discover that the day after Congress passed the “Support Our Troops” Resolution, $25 billion was cut from the VA budget. We know that already, families of servicemen have to go on welfare and
are angry about it.

So, as Eve Ensler says, we have to change the verbs from obliterate, dominate, humiliate, to liberate, appreciate, celebrate. We have to make sure that head and heart can be reunited in the body politic, and relationship and democracy can be restored.”

   Four-thirty in the morning and can’t sleep while thinking about an early Xmas present today consisting of a notice from the federal govt. that they aren’t sending me a GST check this time around and instead it’s going to the provincial govt. for MSP premiums on a plan that I never wanted and can not afford and cancelled long ago. Makes you wonder how these people working for the govt. can sleep at night knowing they are ruining what little Xmas is left for people that need their GST rebate. With a bag of frozen peas and a few cups of rice left in the cupboard for my holiday dinner, that little trickle down from the expense account people with the big fat pensions (that’s another nice notice they sent me, a whole $317/month for moi when I retire) would have been very welcome indeed. Still waiting for a reply from them telling me how much they think I owe, hope they don’t go out and garnish my wages as they are wont to do, forcing me to change my living conditions again and go back to sleeping in the car until I find a place that’s in the $300-400/month range, which is affordable but very hard to find. You would think that with average rents in the lower mainland at about $7200/year and my net income last year at $9k they would see that this is legislated poverty that will eventually create class warfare. Mind you, they are following the american example of govt. by corporate fiat so that shouldn’t surprise anyone when it does happen. Merry Christmas from Premier Gordon Campbell, ho ho ha ha ha.

When our local forum gets a little too serious, someone always comes along with a post to lighten things up a bit, click here: Bowen Island, BC CANADA: Forums

   A post on the Bowen Island Forum about the recent passing of someone started me surfing, after all there aren’t many people that can claim a four letter dot com address (thea.com) and if they have one it’s generally because they’ve been on the internet since the olden days. One of her sites contains an autobiography with what seems now to be a prescient goodbye. She was a blogger to the end, her last blog entry about learning Flash was on the same day she suffered a brain aneurysm while at work.

   Listening to some fun play lists from http://isrn.org after giving a neighbor a ride up the hill and finding out they are contributors to a great cause. It’s a great listen, especially if you are using alternate media software such as Winamp from Nullsoft where their home page motto is, “More fun than a new pair of Wonder Woman Underoos!”. Seriously, the contributors to this community have come up with a product that is par excellence. Even on my old ‘puter there’s nary a skip, the skins are all swank and the visualization makes Real Player look like an amateur show.