Re-stringing my Soul
So, last night I read more from Naomi Klein's No Logo, featuring pictures of Bill Gates being pied and discussing the disturbing short-term relationship between job growth and economic growth. It seems that we are heading towards increased job instability, outsourcing, decreasing wages, and increased skill specialization. In other words, we are being commodified for the skills we have which are outside of labor laws and will one day be highly regulated by machines. (We already use machines for surveillance over employees, eroding the sense of trust and cooperation between employees and employers).
Today I spent some more time recording material with my classical guitar. I bought new strings for both guitars (Lucy and Angela) and a little winder to make the process faster, but I haven't re-strung Angela (the Fender Stratocaster) yet. I saw my old friend Justin, who's living in Toronto, doing his acting thing. He told me about the abysmal Shakespearian productions that he had the misfortune of being in and we walked around the mall (which is still insane several days after Christmas) to return books and look for jeans. Him and Meagan, another friend who dropped in from Vancouver, who I worked with for half a summer doing program directing for a children's camp, showered me with friendliness, and made me feel less encumbered by anxiety about my life.
She vented about family issues over Christmas. Apparently hers wasn't as smooth as mine, and she vowed to "never come back for Christmas again!"
I remember my old chiropractor telling me that our bodies are like instruments that get out of tune. If that is the case, then my friends are the ones that restring my soul.
However, recently, there's a reason why I'm feeling out of tune. The state of the world and more locally Toronto made me feel disappointed about my country. On Boxing Day, in the middle of heavy crowds, some people opened gunfire and injured 6 people, killing a 15 year old girl. This kind of random violence is becoming only too familiar in Toronto, where of the 78 murders this year, 52 were gun-related. Paul Martin has rightly made gun control a big issue of his campaign, saying he will ban them. I don't want a 'cowboy country' either. When the statistics of megacities like Toronto start resembling dangerous cities in the states, we can no longer claim to be a safe country. However, banning guns is only a start. As we know from earlier this year when Jim Roscoe killed bullet-proof vest-wearing RCMP officers with a rifle he acquired illegally. It is sickening to see a beautiful, intelligent, innocent and caring young woman reduced to a scene that police tape off and cover up, after unassuming shoppers hit the floor in reaction to probably a dozen gunshots by drive-by thugs. Further, streets that most people felt safe walking are now making us feel uneasy and sending a shocking message to tourists from abroad.
In other news, Japan has reopened it's borders to some Canadian beef after two years of sanctions after the Mad Cow scare. This should cheer my father a little considering that the market has basically been giving him peanuts for all his hard work. We remember the Tsunami crisis, which to try to notice the positives of such a catastrophic disaster, was one of immediate response from around the world. Although we are still struggling from the effects, trying to get drinkable water and basic resources to isolated towns, we have come a long way. In Sri Lanka, temporary shelters and aid became a subject of conflict for guerrillas and Tamils to fight over, but in Indonesia, the cooperated effort of people to survive led to greater peace. In Iraq, there's the constitution and there have been elections, but they're both moot because the US won't turn over security issues to Iraqis and the Iraqis themselves want a united government representing both Sunnis and Shiites. Real news gets boring, so I checked out this brilliant (albeit fictional) plan that US has of exiting Iraq.
The news, the news. Soon there will be those panoramic news features showing little specks of current events from throughout the year to sum it up. I recorded a song I wanted to post of one of Jack Johnson's songs, but it didn't work, so instead, I'll simply leave you his lyrical message about news, portraying our shared attitude:
The News -by Jack Johnson
A billion people died on the news tonight
But not so many cried at the terrible sight
Well mama said
It's just make believe
You can't believe everything you see
So baby close your eyes to the lullabies
On the news tonight
Who's the one to decide that it would be alright
To put the music behind the news tonight
Well mama said
You can't believe everything you hear
The diagetic world is so unclear
So baby close your ears
On the news tonight
On the news tonight
The unobtrusive tones on the news tonight
And mama said
Why don't the newscasters cry when they read about people who die?
At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eyes
Mama said
It's just make believe
You cant believe everything you see
So baby close your eyes to the lullabies
On the news tonight
Filed as News Reviews
Today I spent some more time recording material with my classical guitar. I bought new strings for both guitars (Lucy and Angela) and a little winder to make the process faster, but I haven't re-strung Angela (the Fender Stratocaster) yet. I saw my old friend Justin, who's living in Toronto, doing his acting thing. He told me about the abysmal Shakespearian productions that he had the misfortune of being in and we walked around the mall (which is still insane several days after Christmas) to return books and look for jeans. Him and Meagan, another friend who dropped in from Vancouver, who I worked with for half a summer doing program directing for a children's camp, showered me with friendliness, and made me feel less encumbered by anxiety about my life.
She vented about family issues over Christmas. Apparently hers wasn't as smooth as mine, and she vowed to "never come back for Christmas again!"
I remember my old chiropractor telling me that our bodies are like instruments that get out of tune. If that is the case, then my friends are the ones that restring my soul.
However, recently, there's a reason why I'm feeling out of tune. The state of the world and more locally Toronto made me feel disappointed about my country. On Boxing Day, in the middle of heavy crowds, some people opened gunfire and injured 6 people, killing a 15 year old girl. This kind of random violence is becoming only too familiar in Toronto, where of the 78 murders this year, 52 were gun-related. Paul Martin has rightly made gun control a big issue of his campaign, saying he will ban them. I don't want a 'cowboy country' either. When the statistics of megacities like Toronto start resembling dangerous cities in the states, we can no longer claim to be a safe country. However, banning guns is only a start. As we know from earlier this year when Jim Roscoe killed bullet-proof vest-wearing RCMP officers with a rifle he acquired illegally. It is sickening to see a beautiful, intelligent, innocent and caring young woman reduced to a scene that police tape off and cover up, after unassuming shoppers hit the floor in reaction to probably a dozen gunshots by drive-by thugs. Further, streets that most people felt safe walking are now making us feel uneasy and sending a shocking message to tourists from abroad.
In other news, Japan has reopened it's borders to some Canadian beef after two years of sanctions after the Mad Cow scare. This should cheer my father a little considering that the market has basically been giving him peanuts for all his hard work. We remember the Tsunami crisis, which to try to notice the positives of such a catastrophic disaster, was one of immediate response from around the world. Although we are still struggling from the effects, trying to get drinkable water and basic resources to isolated towns, we have come a long way. In Sri Lanka, temporary shelters and aid became a subject of conflict for guerrillas and Tamils to fight over, but in Indonesia, the cooperated effort of people to survive led to greater peace. In Iraq, there's the constitution and there have been elections, but they're both moot because the US won't turn over security issues to Iraqis and the Iraqis themselves want a united government representing both Sunnis and Shiites. Real news gets boring, so I checked out this brilliant (albeit fictional) plan that US has of exiting Iraq.
The news, the news. Soon there will be those panoramic news features showing little specks of current events from throughout the year to sum it up. I recorded a song I wanted to post of one of Jack Johnson's songs, but it didn't work, so instead, I'll simply leave you his lyrical message about news, portraying our shared attitude:
The News -by Jack Johnson
A billion people died on the news tonight
But not so many cried at the terrible sight
Well mama said
It's just make believe
You can't believe everything you see
So baby close your eyes to the lullabies
On the news tonight
Who's the one to decide that it would be alright
To put the music behind the news tonight
Well mama said
You can't believe everything you hear
The diagetic world is so unclear
So baby close your ears
On the news tonight
On the news tonight
The unobtrusive tones on the news tonight
And mama said
Why don't the newscasters cry when they read about people who die?
At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eyes
Mama said
It's just make believe
You cant believe everything you see
So baby close your eyes to the lullabies
On the news tonight
Filed as News Reviews
posted by sirbarrett at 9:50 p.m.
1 Comments:
More gun control laws? I don't really think underground gangs will pay much attention to them. We've already seen that they don't care about the laws already in existence--firearm or otherwise.
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