July 19, 2006

So this tiny Chinese kid was hell-bent on sitting behind my seat on the red-eye from Vancouver and screaming the Chinese word YEAH or YIH over and over again while kicking the back of my seat repeatedly.

Also interesting was the logomanic man sitting across the aisle from me, he tapped me on the shoulder as I was watching a movie *wearing headphones* and asked if I was doing anthropological research. I said no I was watching a feature film about an Inuit community and he told me all about his brother who had sent him a pair of mukluks made of sealskin from Barrow and how incredibly fishy they smelled.

Later I felt him trying to peek under the sweater I was wearing wrapped around my head as I did an impression of a sleeping person so he would leave me alone and stop telling me how close to Maine St Andrews was.

The reading I gave at a Haines Alaska bookstore of "Walter the incredible farting dog goes on a cruise" left a deep impression on my digestive system - since my contribution to the flight from hell was to make like Walter and have the most incredibly consistent 'little winds' for about 97% of the trip, luckily it didn't smell or anything. Actually how would I know, I had a sweater wrapped around my head.

I spent so little time in Vancouver trying to cram in as many visits as possible with all the lovely people there. I rushed from place to place dragging my newly redisovered old dear friend Karen in my wake. Vancouver was awesome. The trip was awesome. Travelling itself, is not awesome. Yet as I write this I am booking rooms at the Green Turtle hostel in San Francisco.

And I am desperate to get back to Vancouver because I think it is beginning to eclipse Montreal in my estimations as a fun place to live in. But so expensive.

More about Van/Whitehorse/Alaska later when my photos are finished loading and the jet-lag has worn off.

July 6, 2006

Erratum

Thta first paragraph there was meant to be in blockquotes. it has just spent the past 12 hours out of blockquotes giving the world at large the totally incorrect impression that I am a writer of "The Guardian" calibre. I think this paragraph aptly proves otherwise. This morning I accidenty wrote my blockquote tag as "blcoqkuote". My humble apologies to the author of the following paragraph.

Also in case you were wondering, I did not write about the "conundrum of suicide bombers" last week. I never think in big words like that around these parts.

When I wrote in this column a few weeks ago about the conundrum of suicide-bombers, the eminent military historian Michael Howard dropped me a line to remind me that European soldiers had been sent into battle in the first world war with the message that there was no higher honour than to die for your country. Not to live, to fight, to kill for your country - to die for it. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. In this respect, conservative Americans are closer to the mental world of pre-1914 Europeans or ancient Romans than they are to that of most contemporary Europeans.

From:
Between cheese-eating surrender monkeys and fire-eating war junkies

I think The Canadian mentality falls somewhere between the barbarian Picts and secularized Jews of the the Turkish empire. How do you like them apples?

My new morning ritual involves sitting in front of the 'puter drinking coffee and reading the Guardian Blog which is called "Comment is Free". The footer of which reads, "..but facts are sacred".

Why is British media so smart!?

Get a Second-Life

Has anyone made that pun yet?

Second Life is on the CBC again, apparently morning radio is obssessed with the fact that you can make-money, live, and fall in love ( etc.. etc..) in this" virtual space". They can't get enough. This last interview was with some woman who used finances won through shrewd second-life dealings to divorce her husband and move out of the house - ostensibly, so she could play second-life unencumbered by the demands of a real and unsatisfactory relationship. She mentions how Second Life gave her the self-esteem to divorce her beau and get her life back - I am not sure which life she is talking about though.

The interviewers question - "why is this new form of living so incredibly attractive to people?" got me to thinking. What makes it so much more attractive to do/aqcuire all these things you can do in the real world, online? He said; "Maybe second life and spaces like it, are replacing our 'first-lives'".

I would hazard a guess, that the reason places like Second Life are so attractive is that they satisfy very difficult desires easily, and they do not reflect the reality of our environment or actual political conditions. For example the announcer made the comparison; "In Second-Life you can easily have a beach house, even if your character that never requires sleep and doesn't have a day-job to escape from, it's simple enough to acquire a beach house, so people do".

In real-time, beach houses are exhorbitantly priced, most people cannot afford a beach-house based on their real-time income. Add to that the fact that most waterfront property is totally over-developed or ruinously polluted and you have conditions of scarcity and political inequality that render the beach houses a dream, thus a second life reality for most people and a first life dissapointment.

Rather than addres the problems inherent in over-developed waterfront or consumer culture we're all going to switch out of meat-space and go to a place where real estate is virtual and there's an infinite number of robber barons waiting to make their fortunes.

It's not much of a solution to our problems is it?

More thoughts

And yeah I know most games are about wish-fulfillment, that's a given, and I am certainly not some horrifying utilitarian asshole that thinks all art and imagination should be in service to the revolution. Totally no. But I do find it funny that if you read Second-Life as an escape from burdensome reality. The most cherished escapes revolve around very common activities. Like shopping all the time and finding pants that actually fit you, or having lots of noncomittal sex with people dressed like Trent Reznor. It's bit distressing, it must mean our day-to-day lives are so far from satisfactory that we actually imagine better day-to day lives. IMHO fantasy, generally speaking, ought to have very little correlate to our own lives, that's why it's an escape, right?

It's the difference between Peter Pan and Pornography. Now you're all going to think I hate porn. I don't hate porn, but I hate fulfillment substitution. Fantasy should be it's own fulfillment - not a subsitute for a life you find wearying, or the fact that you aren't getting laid ahem... But sometimes one looks at porn when they are getting laid? Whatever, I leave writing posts about porn up to other people. I am still reading the juicy bits from 'Written on the Body' to get my kicks.

We're getting off topic, goodnight.

You know porn is probably the worst example ever because it serves so many function in society and being the lonely boy or girls panacea is really only one of them, (she says eyeing her well-worn copy of sexing the cherry).

I like the line about Peter Pan it stays.

June 9, 2006

Well okay not yet, but maybe tomorrow.

I just received this email in one of those "I googling term X and came across your post on.." moments.

This is an open letter to Canadian Citizens from Catherine Cheechoo-Gull

I am number 14600***01 and I live in Peawanuck, a Cree community of 250 located on the Winisk River that flows into the Hudson Bay (northern Ontario). It is one of the most beautiful places in the country filled with all the abundance that nature can offer. It is also a First Nations reserve and its citizens are classified as a number, under the Indian Act.

There has recently been more talk of the soaring prices throughout the country. In Peawanuck, this has been a harsh reality for many years. Our current price of gas is $2.75 a litre. Our current price for hydro is 16 cents per kilowatt. We pay over $1600 for a return plane ticket to the closest city, which is Timmins.

Can we afford to live with these costs? No we can’t. We are a typical remote First Nation community dictated to and living under the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs (INAC), and this is not by choice.

Historically, treaties of “good faith” have brought us rights and the Indian Act maintains our status. In truth, treaties were signed under the premise that they would be nation to nation agreements, not the servant and master agreements as they now seem to be.

In my community there are many issues that need to be addressed and resolved. I would like to bring your attention to our latest, it is one of hydro that directly relates to our economy. We pay an excessive 16 cents per kilowatt in comparison to the regulated 5-5.8 cents of our southern neighbors.

In a discriminating act, INAC lowered our funding to the point where we couldn’t afford to run our diesel generator and then gave a company based out of Manitoba, Pritchard Industrial, more money to run it. This act is now generating more than our electricity. It is generating an increased state of poverty for our people and an economic leakage to the province of Manitoba. Pritchard is making a profit at the expense of our poverty.

The funding we receive is based on per capita and in addition to our small population, we are the second most northern community in Ontario. Why isn’t geographic location taken into consideration for these so-called funding formulas? It is certainly taken into consideration by the companies who charge us.

It needs to be understood that we rely on funding agreements. In accordance to the ‘Indian Act of Canada’, it is unlawful to carryout the same economic investment activities that other citizens of Ontario and Canada have and enjoy. Living on Reserve, we cannot secure loans at the banks. Our community cannot get a credit rating so we cannot borrow money similar to municipalities. There is no chance for economic opportunity because of the law, not because of our communities inabilities or lack of know how.

Next week on June 8th, Pritchard Industrial will be paying a visit to Peawanuck to disconnect the electricity for some households. This comes under the direction of Indian and Northern Affairs. They came last year for the same reason and at the time and among the disconnected was a disabled single mother with three small children. Is this how Indian Affairs treats the people whose rights they are meant to protect?

You now may be saying, reduce your consumption, pay your bills. This is not always possible with the combination of the high cost of living and no economy. It is a continuing struggle. So what are the options?

INAC Minister Jim Prentice, MP Charlie Angus and MPP Gilles Bisson, you are invited to be here when households are being disconnected. To watch as the rights you are obligated to protect are being crushed again.

So lets scratch ‘genocide and assimilation’ and pencil in ‘establish meaningful relationships and a more certain dialogue’.

We deserve more than band-aid solutions.

The only downside to seemingly beneficial decisions is this, when the government does decide to help one First Nation, another First Nation suffers. The end result? Divide and conquer. This is a tactic that has gone on long enough.

I dare anyone in this country to bring up the issue of moving the First Nation’s population to mainstream society to relieve them of their hardships on Reserve. This act would be one of assimilation and genocide.

Assimilation is the stated purpose of the Indian Act and yet we are still not assimilated. We do not want to be assimilated. We want to be allowed to live in our own traditional way and lands without being penalized by mainstream society for being First Nation people.

We are not a minority. This is a misconception. We are a distinct society, one filled with a history so vast and steeped in tradition, yet this fact is conveniently absent in the history books. The next time you wish to speak ignorantly about your Native neighbors, look up the word ‘ethnocentric’ in the dictionary and think twice.

We need to be educated, both native and non.

There are a lot of Reserves who are forced to live in third world conditions, it is an every day reality for many. Is this Canada? No, it can’t be, can it?

As citizens of this country there are basic human and distinct rights that must be protected despite our differences. How much aid has gone to other countries when the problems they deal with are also right here in Canada? Poverty, genocide, death, discrimination and natural disasters.

As our history is slowly revealed, it will tell of our situation, one of uniqueness and accountability. In fact it is not us who need to be accountable to the Federal Government and Indian Affairs, it is they, who need to be accountable to us.

On an end note, my heart goes out to our neighbors from Kashechewan. They are facing one of the hardest times they will have to face as a community. They deserve our support and they deserve their integrity for the immeasurable amount of strength they have maintained. Do not give up.

WE DESERVE BETTER.

Sincerely,

Catherine Gull, #14600***01, under the Indian Act

Keep an eye on the CBC there should be footage of the protest some time this week-end.

February 27, 2006

"Congratulations! The Graduate Admissions Committee of the Graduate Program in the School of Interactive Arts & Technology (SIAT) at SFU has recommended your admission to the Master of Arts program for the Fall 2006 semester program."

sigh.

That's one duck.

Question: Should I move to BC?

Question: Should I move to BC? (seriously)

February 22, 2006

Yeah so I went back to le Gymnase with the Laurenator and for some reason her legs are WAY WAY stronger than mine. We did lunges and let me tell you..I'm walking like a cowboy from Brokeback Mountain the day after, yee fucking hell haw.

Slower than my 12 year old dog with arthritis and you know what, it's not just that it's humiliating.. Okay it's just that it's humiliating, and it takes me 10 minutes to walk down the hall to the kitchen so when I get hungry I have to really want that banana or I am just sitting her in front of the pooter tummy grumbling gluteous maximus on fire.

Real reason for this post. The second adya of ROYOS ( room of your owns) are up over at Blogher

Check it out!: Oh yeah and vote for the science and tech room, I am tapped to participate in that and it's going to be a really edge of your seat discussion about the feminist implications of Open Source software ! i know ! It's Shocking and Exciting, and rare (a room full of smart feminists discussing OS stuff - please do not deny me this opportunity ....please) and if no-one votes for us than we are going to have to go heckle the sex blog panelists because you know they aren't worrying about capturing enough votes ; )

January 31, 2006

Remixing Voices of Native Women: Artists Demonstrating Against Violence
In celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8th, 2006

In light of International Women's Day, on March 8th, Quebec Native Women (QNW) in collaboration with Studio XX and Upgrade Montréal, will hold an artistic and social evening around the theme of violence against native women. By extension, the themes of non-violence and peace will be celebrated, at the Society for Arts and Technologies (SAT) on the night in question.

In Canada alone, 80% of native women are subjected to systematic violence. Besides physical and/or psychological violence, there exists yet a more insidious form of violence as perpetuated through the Indian Act. The resulting violations come in the form of poverty, inequality, dispossession, and exclusion.

The coalition which organises the event is planning a publication to mark the occasion. We are looking for completed critical, personal articles, or poems that a maximum length of 800 words, on the above mentioned topics. Articles written by aboriginal women will be privileged.

In addition, this event will also host the launching of the next issues of StudioXX's electronic periodical .dpi. This 5th issue will address the themes of “Sexuality, Maternity, Reproduction, and Technology”. One of the articles chosen for the publication for the International Women's
Day event will also appear on the web in this .dpi issue [http://dpi.studioxx.org]. The selected article will relate to issues of technology, sexuality, and/or reproduction, and/or maternity from a native woman perspective.

Please submit your completed entries in Word format, along with a 50-word biography, to emonnet@faq-qnw.org by February 10th, 2006 (or send them at the address below). Entries in both English and French are welcome. Only applicants whose submissions are accepted will be contacted.

Femmes Autochtones du Quebec
Business Complex River, C.P. 1989
Kahnawake, Québec, J0L 1B0
http://www.faq.qnw.org

Studio XX
http://www.studioxx.org

Upgrade Montréal
http://theupgrade.sat.qc.ca

January 25, 2006

I saw this on the way home.

I think it sums up all my feelings w/r/t to the poor suckers who voted for the conservatives.

Just to exemplify the difference between a country run by moderates and a country run by neo-cons.

Here are three of the main stories from the CBC at 6

- 17 year old girl killed in st leonard: Which is a whole story in it's own right. When did it become acceptable to allow a minor female to work alone at a gas station at the side of the highway. Since when were locked doors and plate glass windows protection against youth and naivity?

- Someone lost 2 parcels in the mail between calgary and montreal: That's right not one but two whole care packages. The memorable sound bite from this is..

"I checked on the website and its said the packages were still in calgary... I don't know what the webmaster was doing.. but that was certainly innacurate"

Some small part of me derives great satisfaction from thinking that what I do for a living is still sufficiently magical to housewives from the south shore that they would a) use the word master and b) think that there is one amazing Canada Post WEBMASTER who takes care of updating the website by hand to individually track the voyage of every single package sent across our great nation. Maybe Canada Post has an Army of WEBMASTERS who sit in a dark room in the basement writing HTML onto little textpad applications..

Okay I stray from the point.. what was the third news item..

- Our new Prime Minister walked his kids to school today: There was footage. He shook his 7 year old daughters hand. Who does that? Shakes hands with a three foot tall girl wearing a pink knapsack who is your daughter. Kiss her on the cheek you cold SOB.

Let's contrast that against the American News

- Bush made a speech at the NSA (where all the emails and phones are being tapped - said in the present tense) about how neccessary it is to continue tapping communication devices without a warrant - in the interest of national security.

- a couple of escaped criminals were pursued to within inches of the Canadian border where a gun battle ensued and both were apprehended after being shot.

- Shell oil recorded record profits - (Which makes me wonder why a 17 year old girl working the night shift at a shell station in st leonard had to work by herself from midnight to 6am in the first place) despite fears of an oil shortage because it turns out that the states has a bunch of the stuff stockpiled. Awesome.

- A priest convicted of several hundred pedophiliac acts against young boys was murdered in prison.

Personally I prefer the news produced in Canada (despite the one horrible brutal freaky murder) to the news in the US. Lets see what it's like here 4 years down the road okay?

January 23, 2006

unless you are going to vote conservative, then you should;

thinkagainthinkagainthinakagainthinkagain.

Here is a great post by chandrasutra that will help you see why Stephen Harpers assurance that we need not fear the possibility of a conservative majority is a honeyed chainsaw of false promises.

If Mr. White-eyes wins I invite all of you down to the parc near my house. I am going to erect a freestanding Harper-in-Effigy out of laminated photocopies and chipboard and use it as snowball target practise until the tory government collapses under the weight of it's own hubris and hate (oh and ego did I mention ego?).

January 9, 2006

I signed up for the Globe and Mail daily email digest just so every morning I could wake up and watch the Conservatives sweep the election.

If there ever was an indicator for masochism this is it.

Cons are at 37 percentage points and the Liberals at 29. The NDP are slipping as well as the bloc, the Green Party hasn't got over 10.

What can I say,there's nothing to say. TH etipping point of right wing sentiment has obviously been reached. As soon as the first poll came out saying they had a lead, everyone who was kinda maybe considering it, but worried that they would look "too right wing" have realized that if the majority is doing it so can they.

You know what I don't care how moderate the conservatives look in the media, now, they are hiding some nasty big teeth under that bonnet.

I am not going to make any bets about how in two years we're all going tobe rueing the day we let conservatives in public office, and I realize that my rights to an abortion and to some good old consensual homo bum-humping are constitutionally safe. I just want to register that I am " concerned" that the results of *DECISION 2006* (ps; Since when was it not an election - could someone tell me??) may end up having negative repercussions on many aspects of Canadian Politics that I hold dear.

November 14, 2005

Get your chequebooks out kids. I am teaching a great workshop! ; ) From zero to a radical newplatfrom for barfing your most intimate secrets and groundbreaking ideas on an unsuspecting public! In four easy lessons.

Yes you lads the workshop is open to boys to - but only if you promise to blog about your feelings.

I have sent this one to the yulblog peeps, mostly so that you guys will forward it the friends you have who are bugging you to help them set up their blogs.... Send them my way, get a monkey off your backs.

(English follows)

*RAPPEL :: REMINDER*

PRETES A BLOGUER!
Lun. 28 NOV.- 19 DEC. 2005, 18h - 21h
12 heures / 180$

Vous revez de publier votre propre periodique en ligne, votre blogue ?
A l'aide de HTML avance et de feuilles de styles (CSS), cet atelier intensif vous apprendra a installer, configurer, mettre en forme et entretenir un web log (ou blogue) sur votre serveur ou via un fournisseur en ligne.

Ce cours est donne majoritairement en anglais, mais des explications et des questions peuvent etre posees en francais si necessaire.

READY SET BLOG!
Mon. 28 NOV.- 19 DEC. 2005, 18h - 21h
12 hours / $180

Are you dreaming of publishing your own periodical online? Your own blog ? With the help of advanced HTML and CSS, this intensive workshop will teach you how to install, configure and style a blog either on your server, or on a free Web-based service.

****

A graduate of Concordia University's Fine Arts program, Miriam
Verberg's focus on printmaking and the multiple mutated into abiding interest in the potential of technology to alter our visual language systems. She is currently working on various webdesign and printmaking projects.

All the magic will be happening at;

Studio XX
338, Terrasse St-Denis
(métro Sherbrooke)
Montréal (Québec) H2X 1E8
514. 845.0289

November 9, 2005

Neocons Driving Priuses

Twilight of the Oil age

Can anyone say worm-turning?

Now if only they could convince the current US government to support the research on climate change as part of the "fight against terror".

..and if you still need some convincing, there's always - What Would Jesus Drive?

(Although I believe the answer to that question is a donkey.)

September 20, 2005

I was chasing mice tonight.

That's my new phrase to describe tasks as mundane as fixing errors in french in web texts that had apparently already passed a final edit.

I am not complaining, no way. I love making good use of the find and replace option.

More important NEWS

I am trying to be better at promoting myself. See that use of bold and caps.. yeah uh huh.

So to that end, this Friday September 23rd from 2.15 - 3.15 I will be participating in around table discussion on Blogs as Art at the conference Artivistic:

Heres the address:

22-23-24 sept | Quartier general du colloque _ homebase of conference
loft Eva B
:: 2013 St.Laurent, 2e etage / 2nd floor, Montreal
514.849.8246
http://www.eva-b.com/location.htm

Here is the program for the rest of the day. It looks pretty interesting...

***** Found the best song at Laurens today***

I borrowed her Great Lakes Swimmers CD. Actually Ned already played me this song once but I was listening to it on shitty laptop speakers and didn't get the full effect. The song is called Moving Pictures Silent Films. I will link to it following this blurb.

Don't listen to it if you are feeling too happy about things. It will be so much better if you are feeling a little like you feel those days you are wandering around by yourself in a vacant lot listening to headphones ...

Moving Pictures Silent Films

nb; I just removed a whole lotta text about parents dying etc.. because it sounded fake and it was.

There are some feelings that I just can't bring myself to blog and the ones I feel when I am listening to this song are of that type.

Oh here's the website : very pretty

Great Lake swimmers

Here are the lyrics to the song, don't trust me trust the great lakes swimmers.

Oh wake me please when this is over
Oh when the ice is melted away
And the hunger returns
I will feel the same but older
And I'll be twice the man that I thought I was

Where have you been?
And what have you done?

I've been under the ground
Reading prayers from this old book I found
Under the ground
Saving it up
And spending it all
On moving pictures
Silent films
Moving pictures
Silent films

Oh is this the dream I've been saving?
Oh where the heart beats slower and slower
To almost nothing
Almost nothing
Almost nothing

I took care for longer
At least something beautiful
Out there in the spotlight
But turned around softly
Turned around squinting

It's all they heard was headlights
And then the truth
The truth was unbearable
Oh and iminent
Bearing down on these two shadowed animals

Called painting a dotted line
Called painting a dotted line

Where have you been?
And what have you done?

I've been under the ground
Reading prayers from this old book I found
Under the ground
Saving it up
And spending it all
On moving pictures
Silent films
Moving pictures
Silent films

September 1, 2005

And they were sore afraid

I was at Neds for dinner and the subject of Katrina came up. Then I found this article on Opinionated Lesbian that discusses the absence of racial analysis in the coverage of the (lack of) relief efforts for residents of the cities affected (wiped out) by the hurricane.

I can't even look at pictures of the hurricane because if I did I would see behind each image a timeline of natural disasters that have occurred in the past 4 years and have to be aware of their increased frequency and than a little klaxon would go off in my head and I would actually have to start worrying about how the world is ending.

We are so screwed globally locally it doesn't really matter, everyone is fucking something up somewhere.

This was all brought on by a picture of an African American man walking down the overpass in New Orleans with a tee-shirt on his head to block the sun, carrying his little yellow dog and wearing an expression of what I imagine must be devastation. Having never experienced it myself I can only surmise, and be afraid for my own skin because I am that selfish.

****

This is funny so I feel bad writing it here, but my fear of an environmental apocalypse is fairly well-documented, so I thought I ought to mention that while searching technorati for Katrina posts I found this; The Apocalypse Church. Which is a blog devoted to harbingers of the end of days, which is like my mental timeline made flesh. Except the soundtrack they have chosen is not the one that plays in my head when I am obsessing eschatologically. I usually hear that Pixies song from Fight Club.

Blogs about katrina:

The Interdictor

mise a jour:

someone just sent me this via email;

Katrina in New Orleans: Titanic Revisited makes me think of montreal esp. this line, "The rich in New Orleans, a class that's almost entirely white, lived at higher elevations." Once upon a time, the place where I live, St. henri was notorious for flooding. Uh -huh. San Francisco was the same. When I went walking with Cisco we discussed the fact that in general Hispanics lived at the bottoms of all those steep hills. Funny, market street which was the gay throroughfare cut a diagonal across the hills.... What is that line about nature being the great equalizer, apparently in most urban centres nature is actually the great high-liter(tm), of what separates people and what puts them at greater risk.

*****

Not to further the sad end of the world vibe here, but I have been reading Cryptonomicon, which is all about cryptoanalysis, but also about the second world war.

So I was thinking about the Holocaust and then read a bit in Modern Painter about an artist who goes around Germany taking pictures of all the streets named after Jews. To mark the passage of time, and historys erasure or something says the magazine. To my mind that's bullhockey, history is obviously still there, if the streets still have their names. If the Germans in their shame had renamed the streets aphasia avenue, or something, than maybe there'd be a problem, but instead we have this entire culture of memory that has grown up around an event that as has served as a blueprint for equally devestating genocides in the years since.

Okay so, after reading the article in modern painter and the passages in cryptonomicon which deal with the ulimately pragmatic way in which the war was treated as a negotiation of global intelligence and as a theatre for the development of national reputations, and not an idealogical struggle at all. It occurred to me, that if any superpower wants to dispose of an entire group of people they must do so in such a manner that the memory of that disposal and those people is completely wiped out from the collective memory of the world. Because as history has now demonstrated, genocide war and large scale attacks only serve to re-enforce identity and memory.

Now Jewish people aren't just that wacky western religion with 8 days of christmas, they are also the people who went through the holocaust, and the Japanese are the people who had to deal with hiroshima, and the Ukrainians people who had to deal with Stalin. Memorable, as it were.

So to get back to the natural disaster thing. I can think of no better way to alleviate the world of its giant populations of desperate civilians in developing nations and impoverished areas, than to completely ignore global climate change. The people who will be the most affected are the poorest, but since it is an act of nature and a huge one at that, there isn't much way to point a finger at any nation state. Unless you can point one at Bush who cautioned Americans only to drive cars" if they really need to.." because of the growing concern over oil prices, presumably there is a *need* to drive all the time in places like LA.

Furthermore, these oft-occurring natural disasters themselves, will wipe out the memory of the human populations affected. Currently, they are discussing whether or not to even bother re-building New Orleans. What's the point? it was in a stupid place, it's underwater, lets just leave it, right? At least during genocide there are giant mindful piles of shoes and glasses left over to further guarantee that no-one will forget how many people actually died.

Where's the loophole in my argument? Well mostly it's that although there is a natural disaster that registers on the global impact scale every 6 months or so nowadays, apparently there is no hard-proof that this is related to global climate change. Nor is there hard proof that global climate change is even happening, or is the effect of human impacts on the ecosystem via such activities as oil consumption and industrial emissions.

I am waiting to be proved wrong on this theory; that the developed nations consumption of oil and general destruction of the environment is having a genocidal effect on impoverished nations and people, but I don't think I will be.

August 24, 2005

Bad subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life is looking for submissions for their intermedia issue.

Too bad the deadline is September 1st. So only those ofyou with actual papers ready and waiting at the gates are gonna make that. I have a paper but it's still only at the; think-about-the-fabulous- reception-said-paper-will-recieve-in-a-really-swell-auditorium-as-a-way-of-
putting-myself-to-sleep" stage.

No comments about how many of my ideas never make it out of that stage please, a''ight?

My categories are totally dumb. They make no sense.

August 3, 2005

Blogvertisement:: go purchase some art at my dear friends e-bay auction: called TIGER LOVE. All the proceeds go to Born Free..Also the art is really quite impressive.

It is late, I am kinda sloshed, eating organic bridge mixture meant for my flight, which was scheduled for two hours ago.

But...cancelled due to this accident. Miraculously, no one was killed.

I would have used the extra time to catch up on my blog posts but I didn't, because I enjoyed a nice light supper and a couple of beers with a fellow stranded Canadian. I liked talking to him. We talked about the health care system and favorite kinds of beers and university newspapers. I felt an inordinate sense of kinship with a business student from Western University. That's what's good about travel. It makes friends out of virtual strangers. I didn't even lose my shit when we started talking about privatizing health care, I think I was basking in the accent or something.

Oh no, the couple in the room next to mine just came back. The dude calls the chick, "sweetie" just a little too much for my liking, ya know? And these walls are thin.

I am actually feeling blog-guilt. I have so much to post and so little time, what with all this stop and go jet-setting.

The San Francisco airport is attached to their subways system. How cool is that?

Coming up! Real posts about what I really did on my trip.. just you wait.

July 28, 2005

Wow. I am so tired. I wanted to write this amazing post about the bus trip down south (Greyhound officially changes its name to Hellhound once it gets south of the border- fact: the majority of greyhound employee in the states are sociopaths).

And about the San Fransisco conservatory of flowers. Here are some photos thanks to metagrrl on flickr.

And a pile of other stuff, like how Niki and Dav got married this week at city hall with two witnesses and sent me some lovely photos... thanks dudes next time just elope - it'll be less of a shock. Holy mazel tov.

(There, I mentioned it - I hope that's what you meant Niki)

I can't do it, I am about to fall over and sleep right here in front of the computer. I wonder if I should try to get out to the two events I wanted to try and see tonight. A ladies bar up the street from my crash called the Lexington, or an indie rock show (a band called Pony Boy at a place called the make-out club. Quoting cisco, "If you get lost just stop someone and ask them the way to the make-out club" to my raised eyebrow he responds, "oh yeah I see your point." except I think he just thinks canadians are prudes.

Except I am so tired.... Okay maybe if I take a nap for an hour... I have been doing way to o much sleeping on buses and not enough on beds, is the truth.

Addendum: on listening to this song I am going to have a little lie down and try my hardest to get to the show. This Pony Boy sounds a lot like stuff I would have loved several years ago (mean red spiders et al) which is a good thing today I think.

I am sitting in a cafe called Ritual (as in ritual killing says my friend Cisco) with Cisco.

There are approximately 20 computers at this cafe. "there are probably a couple of handheld devices you can't see, that are beaming at you right now" says Cisco

Wifi has definitely caught on here.

July 26, 2005

Said the way niki would say it.

I can't believe I kept saying I hated this city..thisis city is awesome, it's like so much more fun than anything, and it hasn't rained once since I have been here. I didn't go to stanley park which is too bad.

Here's what I have done for the past 48hrs

1/ I went to value village and bought a mint green hoodie
2/ i found the best cafe in the world
3/ i went for drinks and some so-so pub food with Stu my old friend of days past
4/ i ate some really kind of low-down appetizers. but they were 241 so it doesn't matter
5/ I mended some fences with Stu after a long hiatus, which is the awe in awesome.
6/ We then argued vehemently and drunkenly about globalization/gender/the quality of the appetizers.
7/Then we sang Karaoke!! the only low point being when I tried to sing Survivor (the destinys child version) I don't know how many drinks it took to convince me that whatever Beyonce has, i got it too but I was dead dead wrong. i did great on sweet child o mine though. I think Stu took advantage of her four years in Korea to wipe the floor with my ironic east coast ass, but that's okay cuz my tambourines got heart.
8/AND THEN I BOUGHT A HOODED SUITJACKET!! I know it sounds ugly, but it's not and I have been trying to bridge the dressing like a ten year old boy to the dressing like a 28 yearold bio-girl gap for ages, and I think i finally did it. the item goes with a beautiful a-line black skirt, and the whole thing makes me look like a sexy secretary that skateboards, and it didn't cost that much considering it was made locally bya vancouver designer.
9/ AND THEN I BOUGHT 16 PEICES OF SUSHI FOR 8 DOLLARS!!!! and it was good too. spicy tuna scallpos and california rolls to name a few.
10/THEN I GOT A REALLY GREAT HAIRCUT for only 20 bucks to go with the new professional betty look.
11/ Finally, although i have managed to miss every pride event in the nation on my trip. Veda and her Friend Patsy Cline who together make up The Fits did a run through of the show they are playing at the dyke march next saturday and sang Snowbird by Anne Murrey and it was like my very own mini pride.

i will never ever say bad things about the west coast again. swear.

July 25, 2005

So I am at this incredibly sexy cafe called Prado. It has huge wooden posts and ceiling supports. The counter is blond wood and there are pale bamboo window shades. The walls are painted a nice off-white. There is no art on the walls, which is not usual for these places, but is actually kind of a relief.

I found the place by looking at the vancouver.wifimug website because I couldn't manage to locate a list of hotsposts from the bcwireless site. Maybe they don't do cafes?

The girl at the counter here was wearing a bookmobile shirt and I asked her about it, and she was very friendly and then I took some really commercial little tourist maps of downtown vancouver neighburhoods.

The wifi policy of Prado cafe is as follows.

* you cannot use it to be creepy or dirty
*WIFI is not cool. It is neccessary, but not cool.
*Be aware. We have limited seating at this cafe - however, we don't want to police the place. Some courtesy would be nice, like maybe you could buy something every hour or so, or go home to your families eventually, or feature us on your crafty blog.
*remember, nobody wins until...actually no, nobody wins.

Then if it wasn't already cool enough, one of the only other people I know in Van 517 walked in the door. Which kind of screwed my plan of quietly researching Vancouver art blogs.

They are playing Modest Mouse, and the girl in the bookmo shirt just used windex to clean some tables near me, and I have decided that the combination of sweltering heat, bamboo shade, a large industrial fan humming, modest mouse playing in the background and the tingly smell of windex are the epitome of perfect summer cafe atmospherics.

Okay time to do some of that research.

Don't under any circumstances, choose the movie to watch the first night staying at a friends house, one who is not the friend you have known since childhood, and thus can do no wrong around.

And, if you accidentally do pick the movie, pray to god you don't pick Pump Up the Volume, because you loved it - back when you were 12 years old and young and stupid.

Ned, Lauren, Jane, Nicki. ?? Where were you tonight? I needed you all saying; Mir, you pick bad movies, don't pick this movie, and you weren't there. Not that I blame you, I don't.

When people say; we're going out to get a movie, wanna come? I should just pretend I have a cramp.

Oh and the bus ride was really long and really full of boreal forest, and baby belle cheeses, (thanks for the suggestion Ruth!).

I can't believe how bad Pump up the Volume is. How many people out there thought/think it was a life altering peice of cinematic history? how many people persist in thinking Samantha Mathis is really f__ing cool? think again.

A minor god bit the dust today. I feel weaker for it.

July 21, 2005

And I am annoyed with Flickr. I just hit my monthly limit? what? does this have to do with the size of my photos or the number I am uploading I can' tell.. but now I am going to have to hold off on adding some of my favorite new photos of Skagway and Walmarts RV-rich parking lot until august. Or i pay them 24 dollars.... hmmm.. it doesn't seem like much this 24 four bucks, I like seeing how many views my photos have had.

Here's the link again. There are only 6 new photos, I will add 2 more of my favorites to this post.

I returned the camera because it chews through batteries like crazy, and because I am such a lame photographer. Oh yeah, and because I haven't got the money for a camera right now, I always forget that part.

All in all Whitehorse has been good, it's a little too country for me. Sorry Ruth, I know you've been plotting to get me to stay, but you never found me a squeeze, and my rambling heart needs to ramble on.

Anecdote: when I went to return my temporary library card the librarian was puzzled when I asked for my ten bucks back. She said; "You're not turning it in for a permanent card?" I said no thank you and she got suddenly frosty with me. I admit this is a fabulous territory full of natural wonders and lots of clean air. Unfortunately I miss the less wonderous and infinitely dirtier air of eastern Canada don't ask me why, it's totally illogical. I like populous places, maybe it would be different if I could drive or kayak? I guess I will have to learn to do both those things before I come up next.

So my last day here I spent wandering around the city, I took a picture of the way the city just stops and is replaced by massive clay cliffs, and I took a pitcure of the RVers who camp in the Walmart parking lot.

The Walmart RV thing is an intense cultural phenomenon. Tourists from America and parts of Canada buy these guidebooks The Walmart Locator, and then plan entire vacations around the driving directions and descriptions listed therein.

In fact they often never leave the Walmart parking lot, preferring to travel from one homogenous big box store to another in a bizarre parody of exploration, that typifies a xenophobic small-minded tourist without any satire whatsoever.

In fact, a movie has been made about the subculture called "This is Nowhere".

I went out to the parking lot to see what it looked like and was mildly disapointed, I think I came to late. The idea is to pull-up, park, check out the bargains, sleep and then hit the road. There isn't much to do in a parking lot once you've checked out the price of canned salmon.

Of course the real issue is not that this is a weird tacky and scary way to tour North America, but that part of Whitehorse economic backbone is the tourist industry. RV parks which I had initially veiwed as rather tacky places in their own right, now seem like wilderness outposts, compared to 500 sunbaked bermuda shorts wearing Texans grilling salmonsteaks and mollasses in the dim halogens of their big box utopias.

Most RV parks in the area say they have suffered significant losses since Walmart opened, and since no-one is willing to take the time to enforce the by-law which forbids parking lot camping the RV parks are just going to have to suck it up and look for a new clientele or go out of business.

One of the main reason it is possible for the new RVs to camp in parking lots is an increase in the autonomy of the vehicles. From a sustainable tech perspective this is interesting. New RVs are such closed systems, running on batteries with portable septic, and water tanks, that they no longer require plugs or pipes for potable water.

Convoy!

July 19, 2005

So I have a list of about seven things I wanna blog about and only 15 minutes. Also this newfound conviction that the less time i spend on -line, the less time I want to spend on-line. Which is slightly disturbing.

I think I will split up my seven into seperate posts one for each day I haven't posted. Here's numero uno.

Ensio the three year old is responsible for the title of this post, it's a phase he made up last night to the tune of "your hipbone is connected to your thighbone."

It reminded me of this paper I wrote during my last year of uni about whether or not knowledge in artificial intelligence is gendered. Of course, not surprisingly, there aren't that many books called; "Boy robots are from mars and girl robots are from venus." I found a book called Artificial Knowing: Gender and the Thinking Machine by Alison Adam and read it cover to cover. Than I found this project at MIT called COG.

Cog is a robotics project the aim of which is to mimic the development process of a real human baby. Here's an interesting article that outlines some of the major points of the project from a spiritual perspectve.

COG the baby robot takes nine superprocessors, just to create reactions to information that Ensio produces at a moments notice. I can't say for certain what COGs consumption of kilojoules of energy is per process. But I know that all Ensio requires is a bag of cherries, a cheese bun and some moose lasagna, and his synapses are doing some serious business.

I find awe-isnpiring how much new information he processes every day. As adults I think we forget taht for a three year old almost every day there is something new to deal with something they have never seen in their lives, which is probably why they need so much routine.

I think part of his learning porcess is to slowly determine what the people he cares about care about, and then try to see if he can make those ideologies and patterns of behaviour part of his epistemological system, his way of knowing. In basic terms, he's a little imitation machine.

In the three weeks I have come to disrupt his life he has integrated my love for coffee; ("miriam, make me a coffee maker." which I did out of old yogurt containers, than he played with it in the bath for two days and forgot all about it, preferring to have a belt sander just like his dad) I have noticed that he regularly picks up his mothers level of enthusiasm for subjects and even picks up her energy level.

I think he even at times gets cranky from all the work he's doing trying to figure out what things mean. I mean, when I read him a story he only understands every other word, things like "dry land" confuse him, because all land is dry, right?

If you ask him whether he understands a word he'll usually say no, but we seldom ask him whether he understands we just keep on using language to try to unravel the otherwise perplexing universe of his daily life for him. So how is he learning what they mean? Through the use of words in their context over and over again. He just sits and listens and is learning probably every second that he isn't sleeping. It's absolutely staggering.

There are evenings where I have seen him have a melt-down just screaming about nothing and everything, asking for "medicine" to take away the hurts. When he finally settles down and sleeps by the next morning he's usually developed some more sophisticated means of communication, either an enrlagement ofhis sentence structures or a refinement of his listeneing skills, the weirdest part is its completely noticeable, in the three weeks I have been here there is ahuge difference in his comprehension and his ability to focus and explain.

So last night ruth and I were making up nonsense songs to tire him out, "if theres a bee on your knee than shake your head etc..." and he sang "if your milkjar is in your tunnelbone..." and then just stopped, mostly because none of us knew what a milkjar or a tunnelbone was. Maybe he did, but he couldn't explain.

For one thing, I can see why linguists are facinated by language aquisition. who knows how he made up those words? I had been drinking hot milk out of a jam jar so I have a certain set of theories around his eyes catching site of the jar as he was speaking, but I think it is more likely that his language centre is just busy making up vocabularies to fill in the gaps in his understanding, and as he gets older and the words become more contextualized he will start throwing out some of his imagined vocabularies.

Which is regretful, since I think the ability to imagine ones words is a really liberating and creative gift that only a few adults such as JRR Tolkien or Lewis Caroll have managed to bring into their creative practise. For a child there are all sorts of misconceptions of the way things are and what they mean, and the expression and integration of those misconceptions is inherently creative. It's stifling but also helpful, that the structural basis for common meaning demands that he stop understanding things his own way..

For example this evening we were painting, and because I am the unfortunate recipient of years of scholastic fine arts training, I started painting a brown bear. Ensio had grabbed the green brush and started work on a moose, but once he saw what I was doing he said " that's a bear colour" and switched to brown.

En tout cas, The unfortunate side-effect of hours spent painting with a three year, then wrestling said three year old into pyjamas (literally. that little f__er can kick) and then reading a 400 page robert munsch compendium has made me lose my original point completely.

Something about how robots are smart but humans are miraculous I think.

Also I think I am losing the courage to have children. They require more patience and self-sacrifice than I have ever been capable of. Also eventually even three-years-olds refuse to take me seriously and stand next to my chair saying" miriam, come.. now! come play with me, miriam, come play now!" as if I were a poorly trained corgi, which I am, because I do love playing.

I am not entirely happy with this post, it meanders, and I can't remember any of the kids best misperceptions, and am stuck using the bear example.

July 14, 2005

It's only 10:00pm but everyone else is already sleeping.

I am sitting in the dining room next to a bunch of tomato plants, the vines of which are stapled to the window.

It's weird, the whole camping trip and this whole trip in general. I have been trying to commit things to memory so that when I finally get this kind of opportunity (time + an internet connection) I will have witty and amusing anecdotes to share.

However once I sit down, all I can think of is single words and small spaces of time, my sense of narrative has been completely undone. I can't figure out why. It's weird because I am trying to set out some "serious" writing goals for myself, and now I can't even tell a good yarn anymore.

Here's todays word. I made "pressure stew" for lunch out of paint and flour with Ensio my hysterical fan-club of one who insists on grabbing my ears and threw himself onto my lap today like a frog-towelled banshee.

I am so in love with that kid it's not funny. I don't think I am going to get out of this territory that easily. It's going to be like I am the wisdom tooth and this family is my jaw. It will be tears and heartbreak, I already know I don't want to leave, I fit here, I am the spinster aunt.

When we go out walking with the kid he takes a stick and shoots bears for me. Then we take the bears (more sticks) back to the cabin and eat them.

When he asks a question we both try to answer but our answers reflect the best differences between us. She tries to tell the truth and I try to make him laugh.

When he gets tired he gets in the ATV style stroller and falls asleep and his mother and I talk like we always do, about what we always talk about. As familiar as anything, and no less important for that. And I realize that for Ensio our voices are ones he will recognize as signifying safety and sleep.

Sometimes we sing him a song, and it's usually one we both know and then I feel like I am standing in a river that didn't even start with me and her. But with our mothers, and the community we grew up in.

Okay enough raw emotion, let's have some funny business

The camping trip was pretty funny.

I think tents when placed end to end on a festival ground look a lot like an alien invasion, especially the super-wowy tents that the true northern hippies buy. All of them have bevelled tent poles made of titanium widgets strung together on goat-milk spider silk. And the tent clothes are multicoloured tapestries of geometric primary colours in really "holistic" forms. Also, all of them are like, dodecahedron shaped.

Okay who am I to judge? My own northern reflections tear-drop, snow-proof two-man unit was much better in the rain than the old canvas triangle my dad stole from the dutch army in 1975.

Anyways, we get to the festival grounds, for the Atlin Music Festival, the raison d'etre of our camping trip. I pitch my tent and crack the first of my yukon gold beers, and we make up some kind of pasta. Ruth pops a botle of champagne she received at the end of her last job, and no-one else wants it so we polish it off.

I am feelings shy of Ruths frends and a little cranky. The observation is made that tents look like aliens, in fact I am the one who looks like an alien, because I am not immune to mosquitos yet, so I am swelling up like a ripe melon in khakis.

I take a second beer and we go to watch the music. It blows. I don't even wanna talk about it. There is a lot of fiddle. Eventually I just ignore it and go to bum a smoke from the beer tent.

I get the smoke from Joel, who is Kims boyfriend who I met the last time I was up here. We trade some news and then Joels friend arrives, or someone who I think is Joels friend, and Joel takes off and I am left talking to a "fisheries technician."

The key here folks is this: When you are mildly drunk and cranky, or maybe really drunk and cranky but not yet aware of how drunk you are, do not under any circumstances refer to what a fishery technician does in his average day of work, as "fish-wrestling." It does not win you any friends, and if your super short I am a montreal girl haircut and mosquito bite constellation haven't already marked you for an outsider, your blatant disregard for the plight of the pacific salmon will.

So with that potential friendship completely de-railed I went to bed.

Except my bed was in a tent, and the tent was positioned right next to the; "ALL-NIGHT SUPER BLUE GRASS JAM FEST WAHOO!"... yeessssuh.

What does a blue-grass jam sound like? Imagine that scene from the movie deliverance, set to repeat. Imagine, every songs major rhythm sounds like a horse cantering on a lonely prairie, or like your well drying up. Imagine a musical landscape that has space for a song with the chorus; "drive me home to alberta". Got it? good.

By around 3:00am, I briefly fantasized that all the dodecahedron-shaped alien beings disguised as mountain equipment co-op tents all rose up on their titanium poles and hoofed it over to the godforsaken banjo players and swallowed them whole, spitting out nothing but splinters of wood and guitar picks while I lay curled up in my mummy-bag a small smile on my face listening to the muffled screams of "Cannibal tents - lord have mercy!"

No it's not true, I really do like blue- grass, sometimes. Apparently 4:00am is not one of those times, because it was around then that I cracked open the passsenger door of the blue toyota corolla, heaved the baby seat into the front hopped in with my sleeping bag, closed all the windows and doors, and passed out.

Saturday dawned with some serious good omens though. I hadn't remembered to bring instant coffee and was all set to crank my way over to the gas bar, when I noticed an espresso maker set up next to the cooking station. Lynne one of Ruths intimidating friends, offered to make me a coffee and ten minutes later I had a steaming hot travel mug full of cafe latte. It's true about survival, it's all about who you know.

NB: Lynne was also a Francophone, so I am proven right that francaphones as a cultural group in Canada, more often then not, demonstrate serious no-holds-barred savoir-faire. It's probably because they arrived first and settled new france way before the brits. who would have made a stupid pot of tea anyways, come to think of it.

The rest of Saturday was fun as hell. Ruth and Andy were in a mess about Ensio, who wasn't sleeping so I entertained myself and made friends with some other campers from Alaska. I also took some really bad photos and drained my cameras 3rd and 4th sets of batteries.

Come evening, I managed to confound the bluegrass musicians by staying up way, way late with Ruth and some of her friends getting incredibly drunk and telling loud stories about my decadent life in the city. Jane will be pleased to hear that her gay bowling league featured prominently in one of my exaggerated tales, primarily because Whitehorse doesn't even have a bowling alley, let alone a gay bowling league.

The next morning I had people coming up to me saying.. "I fell asleep before you got to the end of the one about the gay-bowlers.. what happened?"

After the festival closed we went to the warm springs which is an organinc garden owned by a mysterious rich person. I stayed there about three years ago and it is still as beautiful and serene as it was then.

The warm springs are located in a part of northern BC that is below the permafrost line. Because it is warmer, the growing cycle is longer, so all the plants and flowers are immense. There are giant stands of cow parsley, a weed that produces a white flower with a cabbage sized head. At the warm spings the cow parsleys are over 5 feet tall. The edge of each pond is overgrown with a yellow flowering plant, the name of which I have forgotten, and are filled with lily pads and waxy white flowers.

Also at the springs is a sauna made of wood and covered with sod-roof, on which grow still more plants. Any thing not moving at the springs is generally overgrown. I think this is a typical BC rainforest characteristic.

The basic purpose of a trip to the warm springs is to do a "sauna." A ritual I will describe without further ado.

I had to go through my whole, "I hate being naked" problem, because no-one would think to wear a bathing suit either in the sauna or in the springs themselves. Once I had gotten over that, it was a most pleasurable physical experience.

Basically what you do is: Sit in the really hot wooden sauna until you think you are going to pass out. Then you run quickly out and along the grass until you hit the spring, and jump in. The water isn't cold, it's basically room-temperature, so you hit it and your body slowly regulates, and all your weary muscles unclench.

The most groundshifting-under-my-feet part (for me anyways, always) is that you're doing it with the entire group of people you arrive with. In my case it was about 7 adults and three children under 5. It's pretty vulnerable to be sitting around without clothes on, just relaxing. Not something I could ever do without a pretty serious list of quid pro quos like; 2 of those people must be my very close friends, no-pointing and laughing.. etc..

By my fifth time around. I was floating in the pond as calm and steady as a lily pad. Until the car-loads of other festival goers showed up and kind of wrecked my vibe. Definitely they completely trashed my; "I can handle being naked in public" vibe. So I quickly scrambled up the bank and put on some very Ward Cleaver pyjamas and got cranky again.

okay I think that's all for now.

Until next time. I still miss you all. Even if you haven't gotten a post-card or an email.. I miss you.

July 12, 2005

I am experiencing deep-seated computer panic. i am covered in bug bites, my hair looks like derek zoolander I have a face-tan. I just got back from a camping trip and I think I am experiencing some modern-age angst.

here are some photos of the recent trip to Atlin BC and the warm springs. Hopefully I will have time to write more on thursday or friday.

I learned how to pitch and un-pitch a tent this week-end. Next week-end I am learning the coleman stove.

flickr page

miss you all.
as usual.

July 7, 2005

Whitehorse is being built from the side of some clay cliffs. It is always under construction. Every home, every property looks like a work-in-progress. Beside the garden and the field are left-over car parts, old boats, collapsing (or half built) outbuildings.

Whitehorse spreads out. It is tiny, but its community lives a tentacled existence, following thin strips of highway to lake edges. Where they hack new properties out of the forest, build some more cabins, start settling slowly but with determination and skill I can only imagination, since I come from an island city where the only place left to build is up, or on the terra infirma of the internet.

Whitehorse is full of flowers, which grow up and around the old tires of the flatbed truck that is missing three of it's four