Use your body!

You've probably heard of PARKOUR by now. If you haven't, this is will blow your mind!

Watch my favourite parkour video: "Russian Climbing"

Now that you've opened your mind to the possibilities of your body, I'm sure you're eagerly awaiting the upcoming release of District B13 featuring the father of parkour, the free-flowing Frenchman, David Belle. Co-founder credit goes to Sebastien Foucan who has developed his own style of parkour called Free Running. On July 2nd the super cool (come on, say it with a French accent!) film will hit theatres everywhere, except maybe Prince George, BC.

The Russian Climbing flick may not be the 'best', but it is my favourite because it's not a flashy, big budget, professional film and not over stylized. It is just some extremely athletic friends with a shaky video camera (and a lot of style!). And the film has a gritty, subaltern radicalness to it. It's a couple of guys with nothing but their clothes and well-honed strength re-imagining a derelict urban landscape, claiming it as their own playground.

parkour rethinks how we use space. Many of the films you'll find online (I'll list some below) show people 'free flowing,' as some northern American's call it, in areas that are "out of bounds" or "private, no trespassing". And while companies such as Adidas and Reebok are trying to capitalize on Parkour fervor with various merchandise such as weighted running vests which tote your mp3 cellphone and car keys, you don't actually need gear to parkour. No snowboard, climbing shoes, gloves, crash helmet, elbow pads, yoga mats, or flashing lights (well, flashing lights would look cool!!). So there, middle class!!

Many compare Parkour with Free Running, but the 'pure' Traceurs (parkour people) view the two as quite different. Read about the Parkour vs. Free Running debate here.

Okay a LIST OF KICKASS PARKOUR VIDEOS to get you started:

Parkour.net video page
Google Videos- Parkour

Other Parkour Sites (tutorials, articles, news, photos, videos and more...):
Foucan.com (aka Parkour.com) - Home of Sebastian Foucan, co-founder of parkour
Urban Free Flow - UK Parkour webportal (sponsored by Adidas)
Worldwide Jam - parkour and free running online resource and print magazine
American Parkour - comprehensive site for parkour purists ('Just say no!" to free running!)
ScrewGravity.com - Levity, a group of UK traceurs with a coolio website

GET OUT and Parkour in your community:
Parkour in Canada's Capital (that's Ottawa silly!)
Parkour Toronto Network
Le Parkour Montreal
Parkour San Franscisco
Parkour South Africa

Parkour is full body, functional fitness-- it fits perfectly with my Crossfit regime. We do crossfit at home with basic weights, rings, bars and medicine balls. It's a revolutionary fitness system that will work for everyone! It's not based on ridiculous machinery or dead end, boring repetitions that NEVER work. Furthermore, it's an open source system available for all. Read more on the main Crossfit website and find a Crossfit affiliate near you. If you can get by all the photos of US army personnel with guns on the main website, you'll find some fantastic people using their whole bodies and getting fit fast!! The Message Board link is a great resource for all things fitnessy.

PHOTO: Motion, trailblazing in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada. (May 2005)

Arms dealers work for Canada Census

Census Canada recently conducted its 2006 survey of Canada. Many of you filled out the short form and a minority got the super long form. I wish I had had the super long form.

A little known tidbit is that I love filling out forms. I'm serious! There's something insanely pleasing to me about filling out forms, like completing the Sunday New York Times Crossword, except really easy! I'm a geek, and that's okay!

Anyway, I want to talk about arms dealers- Lockheed Martin in particular. LM was contracted by our federal government to help automize national census surveys. New forms are supposed to be scanable, so citizens are asked to fill out their forms examination style--in capital letters, writing inside the boxes, using blue ball point pen etc.-- so they can all be swiftly entered into an accessible database.

I sent out an email to friends noting my own concern with the Canadian Government hiring and American arms dealer to help manage our personal statistics, especially in light of US homeland security legislation which would require LM to disclose all information in case of suspected....um...ANYTHING. And, I forwarded links to various action groups and articles such as:

Vive le Canada
Global Research
Count me out


I got the following response in an email from a long lost friend:

"I don't understand the opposition to LM just because it's an arms contractor. There are a lot of arms contractors that do a lot of other things that are useful and not associated with the arms business. And besides, the arms business itself cannot be said to be inherently immoral."

Yeah, and Shell Oil invests in alternative energy sources. Does this counterbalance it's campaign of terror in Nigeria?!?

WOW! I am sure that there are some arms dealers that do nice and 'useful' things, but they also produce and sell KILLING MACHINES to people, groups, governments so they can KILL each other. Obviously this friend of mine had not read my earlier post on the HOW WE ALL SUPPORT MILITARIZATION!

And, no, long lost friend, I don't think that businesses are 'inherently immoral'. I don't view corporations, businesses, governments or other institutions as inherently evil. They are made up of people, most of who are pretty 'good' parents, sisters, brothers, lovers etc. etc. etc. We get so caught up in blaming people and things, that we forget to critique the SYSTEMS that are harming us all: power structures and organizing relations that (re)produce inequality. See, I do believe that militarization is inherently immoral. It predicates itself on racism, classim, sexism and homophobia to name a few systems of difference... and reproduces these inequalities over and over again.

No I don't believe that Lockheed Martin (LM) is EVIL, but I do believe that it is guilty in participating in the (re)production of militarization-- the process whereby war/conflict is continuously being normalized. People may question whether or not the US should have invaded and occupied Iraq, but few question whether or not America should have an army. We see the presence of heavily armed men, our heterosexual defender-heroes as a necessary evil.

We some how feel the need to protect ourselves in the global battle for .... er... something??? Um, against terrorism from drugs and Islam. We do not question the very presence of a military systems globally and how they influence organizational systems and even peace 'marches'. We do not question enough how fighting/conflict/war become normalized behaviours for men. How masculinity is constructed in ways that make it okay for boys to hit each other, how 'fallen soldiers' come to signify the nation public, televised events such as funerals and monuments, and how so many of us have rationalized killing people in terms of defending our freedom, rights, and democracy (terms we can barely grasp and yet cling to desperately).

Why are so many American's quoted by media saying that while they are against "the war in Iraq," they support "the American troops" (Or as David Cross said ""Although I am against the war, I do support our white troops").

Did I mention that my long lost friend in the email above is a spokesperson for the Canadian Department of National Defense (I googled him!) ??? Nope, neither did he!!

I want to recommend two films, not for 'all the answers' but for presenting some crucial perspectives and questions:

'The Corporation' - a Canadian documentary based on a book of the same name, which examines the structure and legal rights of corporations as.... well... basically enabling the social, political, economic and environmental destruction that so many are fighting against.

'Why We Fight' - an American documentary looking at and beyond the development of a military-industrial complex since WWII, examining the ways in which militarization is woven into the very fabric of what is now the USA.

PHOTO: Snowshoeing, Seymour Mountain, North Vancouver, February 2006.

Arctic Arcade Architecture

I've just discovered three awesome bands that play super fun and funny indie tunes! And, they all line up back to back in alphabetical order in my itunes! Perfectly odd!

1. Arcade Fire
2. Architecture in Helsinki
3. Arctic Monkeys


Arcade Fire is a about seven people out of Montreal playing about a billion instruments to produce some upbeaty, punked-up, deep Cure-style stuff... part Gotan Project, part Magnetic Fields, part David Bowie...er... or some other artists. Hey, I'm not a musician or much of a music critic so that's how it's going be here on this blog. They won a 2006 Juno for best songwriters of the year! The Arcade Fire Website diverts you to the Fan Site and a super quirky, interactive Band Site with small blogs from each of the band members. You can check out some videos and tunes from their 2004 album 'Funeral' on the Merge Records website. I especially love Rebellion (lies) and a song called Haiti that you can listen to on BBC music. I first heard their music on Radio Paradise, a listener supported online music station I sometimes enjoy.

Architecture in Helsinki is an Aussie band and it seems that I just missed them playing in Vancouver. They played at the Plaza Club on May 26, 2006. Their website kicks ass!! It's very cartoony and as you might know, I love cartoons! You can listen to snippets of their music by simply visiting ArchitectureinHelsinki.com. 'Maybe you can owe me' is a great song! The Georgia Straight describes them as an "indie-oriented octet with a Beach Boys fixation....a madcap exploration of bubble-gum melodies set to prog-rock arrangements... made on a multitude of instruments using a variety of vocal styles." I think they are perfectly silly!

Finally, Arctic Monkeys are also super cool! Their song, 'When the sun goes down" hit #4 on CBC's National Playlist in April, 2006. I think they are from the UK. You can watch some videos of theirs on the Domino Records website. Some online reviewers don't seem to like their instant success and pop sensation qualities, but I really like many of their tunes. They are hard and fun and catchy. Jian Ghomeshi likes them and so do I!


PHOTO: Some sort of smart car parked in downtown London. A sign on the dash reads "Excempt from Parking Fees"!

The body has become a war zone!

The body is a war zone! Damn! Okay, so you can't eat x, y, z but must eat 1, 2, 3. Potatoes and corn are out while sardines and Macadamia nuts are in. In a previous post, I commented on all the toxic crap we use to clean our homes and bodies and directed people towards less toxic alternatives. Today, I want to direct you to another great Canadian website monitoring and evaluating all the effects of this crap on our bodies.

Check out Toxic Nation. They have an endless, alarming amount of information on how your house is killing you!

On the brighter side of things, there's plenty of info out there to help you remove these toxin's from your home and your body. Take CILANTRO for instance (That's the green leafy part of the coriander plant)... Well, I love cilantro and I put it on or in most things both raw and cooked. And it turns out that this is a very good idea and I am brilliant because cilantro is rumoured to help remove heavy metals from your system!

Dr Omura found that cilantro was effective at removing mercury from your entire body. Here's the suggested recipe for a tasty toxic cleansing:

Cilantro Chelation Pesto
4 cloves garlic
1/3 cup Brazil nuts (selenium)
1/3 cup sunflower seeds (cysteine)
1/3 cup pumpkin seeds (zinc, magnesium)
2 cups packed fresh cilantro (coriander, Chinese parsley) (vitamin A)
2/3 cup flaxseed oil
4 tablespoons lemon juice (vitamin C)
2 tsp dulse powder
Sea salt to taste

Even if you're skeptical about the medical studies on cilantro, you can't deny that this cilantro recipe sounds damn good!!

But maybe you're one of those bizarrely bitter cilantro-haters who eats their Thai, Chinese, Indian, Caribbean, Mexican and other tasty foods plain as can be... well, you can just piss off to ihatecilantro.com and work on your accumulation of aluminum, lead and mercury.

PHOTO: fort cochin, kerala, october 2005.

Online interactive map of the world

BBC World is hosting an INTERACTIVE MAP ON URBAN GROWTH Check it out and watch the world's largest cities grow in population numbers between 1955 and estimates for 2015.

I love interactive maps but all this one does is feed into the overpopulation scare. The authors even use the world "explosion" in their intro! You get to see the shear numbers of people that now live in these urban areas but you don't get to find out where exactly they've come from (rural areas vs population increase vs international migration vs ???) and you don't get to know about corresponding standards of living increases, national economic growth, employment rates or whether or not services and housing exists for these growing urban areas.

Instead, it's a CRAZY explosion of people. AHHH, freak out! There are too many bodies!! But what about the ideas, the freedoms, the diversity, the creativity and the other benefits of urbanism. The map tells us nothing about these things.

PHOTO: Portabello Road, London, UK, November 2005.

Shark vs. Octopus

Underwater worlds are cool yo!

Check out this AWESOME VIDEO of, you guessed it, a shark vs. an octopus!

Thank you PBS!!

PHOTO: Bangalore Aquarium, Karnataka, India. October, 2005. This is the most bizarre aquarium I've ever been to. Housed in an Octagonal building in a park, with admission fees of about $0.30 per person, the two rooms are dark and all the fish are white, black, brown or some combination of these colours. Worth visiting just because it's very odd!

Empowered

Okay, so I hear this word "EMPOWERED" a whole lot!

"Women need to be empowered."
"Minorities need to be empowered."

First, the assumption is that they are not already empowered, or more apropriately, have some means of negotiating power, working with powerful people, and/or getting what they want. In my mind, and you are free to disagree, even those we assume are 'have-nots' or 'without power' -- those who we label 'marginalized'-- have various abilities, skills, strategies, capacities at surviving and working in an unequal, often harsh world and in doing so readjusting that unjust world in small but significant ways.

Second, we make the assumption that empowerment is GOOD. What I want to examine here is what we ask of people when we say-- as researchers, community developers, policy makers, volunteers or other-- these programs/ideas/actions will empower you?!?!

First, we assume the empowerment is GOOD (as opposed to BAD), and that programs for empowerment (or agency, if you will), will undo the evils of structural inequalities and 'free' people. We might even assume that empowerment is self-fulfillment. But, I would argue that empowerment can be very BAD. Empowered people can and do very horrible things. They take advantage of their relative empowerment to use or abuse those in less powerful places.

If empowerment can be BAD, or maybe both BAD and GOOD, then this brings me to my second point: If we ask people to be empowered or we create programs for empowerment, we have to admit that we are not asking people to do what they want, but to do what we want. In other words: when we make the call for empowerment, we in fact make the call for GOOD empowerment, not for BAD empowerment.

In seeking to give voice to the marginalized by empowering people we are making a call for our own conception of what is right and not necessarily for locally defined meanings.

PHOTO: that's me dressed up silly-like in Edgewood, BC back in 1999 (date?)

I love Tron... Tron, Tron, Tron!

Did I mention that I love dogs? Here are some photos of my favourite dogs. The top one is Tron and the bottom one is... sniff... dead. Her name was Siri... may she be frolicking in swampy grasses filled with bone marrow and squirrels for ever and ever...

Now my new dog or I should say OUR new dog is Tron. He's a mutt!! We found him at the Vancouver City Pound (a.k.a. Animal Control).

He's registered as a Pointer-Mastiff-Rotweiler Crossbreed... but we think he's a Mutt-Artic Hare-Crocodile-Lap Dog Cross. People are generally scared of his HUGE HEAD, but he's actually sweet as pie. Er... well, he sometimes smells like wet dog but is very lovey and lovable!

You can get a dog from the pound for $150 and that includes all the vaccinations and spay/neutering! If you don't want a dog all for yourself, you can volunteer as a dog walker! Check out the SPCA: they are nonprofit and need volunteers as well!


Okay, so Poodles are hypoallergenic right? But they are also really ugly and annoying! Which is why they've been crossbred with other dogs to produce some funny looking dogs! Check out these cute photos! Labradoodles, Schnoodles, goldendoodles and puggles. And then there are the Bich-Poos, Chi-Poos, Cocka-Poos, and Jack-a-Poos!! I KID YOU NOT!

Dog stuff to check out:
B.A.R.F - the bone and raw food diet for dogs and cats.
Clicker Training - effective, affordable way of dog training. Nice, homey website developed by happy breeders.
WOOF: It's a dog's life - tips from the PBS show, complete with crazy trainer man videos!

Caring for the North

Last week I attended a symposium at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) called Caring for the North: Gender, Care and Northern Communities. I met some wonderful people both men and women from academia, community organizations, government health care providers, doctors and nurses... all with interesting things to say about counseling, fetal Alcohol syndrome, cronic diseases, health care continuity, teenage pregnancy, cultural perspectives and prejudices and other cool (and relevant!) stuff.

I mean, did you know that Fetal Alcohol syndrome (FAS) is highly contested and largely socially constructed to demonize women and minority groups... say like indigenous people here in Canada?!
If you google FAS, you'll get the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) website which will tell you that "FAS is 100% preventable if a woman does not drink alcohol while she is pregnant." While this statement might sound harmless and might even seem helpful, it actually helps support the moral surveillance by society upon the pregnant body. Check out Robyn Longhurst for publications on this topic.

PHOTO: Daultabad Village near New Delhi, India, 2006.

stuff I should find the time to babble about...

-cool names like Motion, Mighty, Sioban, Monique, Mollie, Finn, Quinn, Rin Tin Tin...
-living in PG
-my thesis work
-dogs and stuff
-free will and choice debates
-how to procrastinate
-crossfit functional fitness
-riding my bike
-dark chocolate
-how great craigslist is!
-all the people I love


Photo: that's me in Attie Lake near Mission Beach in Australia, 2004. Little turtles tickled my toes!

toxic cleansing

I was recently directed to a great Canadian website: Guide to Less Toxic Products maintained by the Environmental Health Association of Nova Scotia.

You can look up your favourite household and body cleaners to see how toxic they are... like laundry detergents, soaps and hair products... if they aren't eco-friendly, they won't be there! The website lists best, good, less toxic or simply unscented.

Basically the site tells you the ways in which toxins from man made and natural products end up hurting us all. It also offers great home remedies that are cheap and not as harsh like most commercial products. My favourite is the home-made alternative for metal polish! Did you know you can polish all your silver with a mix of water, salt, baking soda, aluminium foil and no rubbing whatsoever?!

The website has loads of well organized information, much of which was entirely new to me. For instance, it comments that essential oils can be dangerous and should be used with caution. Apparently orange peels contained d-lemonene, a powerful solvent potentially harmful to skin and earth!

PHOTO: I took this on a ferry between Ernakulum and Port Cochin in Kerala, India. Many people make their livings and indeed feel themselves on fish from these waters. This tanker was spewing brown junk as dug out canoes passed by! ICK!

Ludiocrity!!!

This is one of my favorite photos. Those are two jackasses. The blonde is my awesome friend Elke and the other, shorter, darker one is me. The photo represents the Jackassian Philosophy of Life put forth by Elke during a perfect, mostly naked summer in the interior of BC. When was that? hmmmm... late 1990's sometime... can't remember... memory loss.... Well, let's just say that it was a perfect, slightly hazy, mostly naked summer.

One of my favourite words was born:
LUDIOCRITY (noun) - the ludicrous quality or state of being mediocre

Justifying War- how we all support militarization

Consider the current outrage at the 'military conduct' or let's say 'murder' commited by US forces in Iraq... whether we're thinking of Abud Grab or civilian massacres in November 2005 or March 2006.

What do these events and our responses to them tell us about how we SEE WAR?

As I listen to radio coverage and disucssions, the common theme is outrage at this "unacceptable" behavoir. To me, what this suggests is that there is an "acceptable" way to conduct war! For all their good intentions, the rants of human rights agencies seem to participate in the militarization of our perspectives. By militarization I refer to the normalization of war.

In suggesting that there's a wrong way to conduct war we imply that there is a right way and hence, that war is justified.

Cynthia Enloe, Clark University, defines militarization as as a process by which a person or thing becomes controlled or dependant on or derives its value from the military. That's a loose paraphrasing from her chapter "Conclusion: Decisions, Decisions, Decisions"in her book Maneuvers: The international politics of militarizing women’s lives (UC Press, Berkeley, 2000, pp. 288-300). This text is about women, gender and militarization.

She's referring to the NORMALIZATION OF WAR... not just things related directly to the military or the amassing of weapons power, but to the race, class and gender relations that help produce and are reproduced in a cutlure of militarization. According to Enloe militarized things include marriage, massacra, gortex, prostitution or cargo pants!!! Check it out!

Cynthia Enloe gave a lection titled "How Can You Tell If You're Becoming Militarized? Some Feminist Clues" on Marcy 29, 2006, at the University of Toronto.

PHOTO: two little girls near Gurgaon in the state of Harayana, India where I did my MA field work. They were lovely!

I'm so sad I think I'll pluck my eye brows

depression - Tom Cruise publicly declared that we need to all go for a long jog, but new psychotherapy out of Jamaica by Frederick Hickling suggests this might be combined with some introspection, especially on the destructive nature of unequal social relations that make us feel like pooh.

I think drugs can help people get out of the hole so they can actually get dressed, leave the house and go for that energizing jog. GlaxoSmithKline, producers of Paxil, a 'mild' anti-depressive, anti-anxiety pill, however, recently announced that their drug leads to "increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviour" among children and teens!! DAMN.

You can check out Dr Peter Breggin's website to read about suppressed suicide Paxil data.

Shaving my legs- TheTyee.ca posted an article called Feeling Plucky about body hair and female beauty without even entering into the very real visual cues we send each other by marking or not marking our bodies. Not shaving used to be an anti establishment act but now that we have more 'choice', whatever that means, I like the right to shave my legs... Feels good on my freshly washed sheets and my boyfriends lips!

Don't tell me I've sold out to the patriarchy, because we've all sold out!! We are all woven into the very systems we critique. There is no 'stepping out of the box.' Hello biodiveristy theory. We are produced by and reproduce the box. As long as shaving my legs doesn't confine me or reduce my value as a person, I'm okay with a razor. As for plucking eye brows? Well that's for obsessive compulsive freaks!!

Speaking of EYE BROWS... watch the disturbing anti-meth video posted on the Montana Meth Project website. A rich man organized the necessary resources to run a massive public service campaign against growing methamphetamine use in Montana. The result: a host of hard-hitting ads. Wow, and I thought Dawn of the Dead was gross. PUKE, I've lost my appetite.

In other, not so disturbing news, that's my nephew in the photo above being an adorable wise ass!