fun with geography!

Photo: SFU geography people atop Whistler Mountain, BC (September, 2006)








Test your knowledge about the names of countries (some contested- Palestine, Western Sahara) in North Africa and the Middle East.

Rethinking schools hosts an online interactive map- test your knowledge.

check out this blog

Photo: in case you hadn't yet met my dog, Tron.








Head over to Solarider's blog. He's posted some info and comments on fur trading and a protest outside Canada House (that's our high commission/embassy) in London. Good photos, good links!

Not that fur trading is funny or anything, but this stuff always makes me think of The Simpson's where Mr. Burn's sings "See my vest, see my vest, made from real gorilla's chest...."


Read the awesome lyrics here!

www.jacksonpollack.org

Some of you may view this as a huge time waster, but urge those taking a break from more focused projects to have a look (and some fun) with this interactive website. Don't worry, that's not a blank page, it's a canvass. Don't forget to left and right click!

www.jacksonpollock.org

HAVE FUN!!

International talk like a pirate day?

PHOTO: no pirates, just some drunken halloweeners- a logger, Captain Highliner of fishstick fame and me, the Amnesty International candle (October 2005).






International talk like a pirate day? According to talklikeapriate.com, Septembrrrr 19th is the annual, international day to drawl, swagger, slur and grrrrr like a pirate!

Arrrrrrrrggg, this must be an homage to me matey Cap'n Steve the Pirate from Dodgeball?

The Best EVER!

Photo: me cracking up (summer 2006)




If you have time for some open sourced, super indie, very creative, totally hilarious home video making then head on over to Nerve Video and check out Neal Medlyn's Land of Make Believe!

Oh, and be warned, this isn't for the narrowly-minded, easily-offended. I'm talking about a stuffed animal and house pet orgy. Yeah... so that may sound weird, and I guess it is weird, but it is also the best EVER!

Oh and speaking of hilarious, I saw a fabulous play this week at Vancouver's Fringe Festival called Legoland, (which you can still catch in the Pick of the Fringe from Sept 21-24). It was a two person play with singing, dancing, antics, photos and some puppetry. There was even a short puppet show of Jeffery Dahmer, but the sock monkey puppet was my favourite.

Sock monkey you say?? Um, yeah, sock monkey!!

I don't have a photo of it, but Motion has a sock monkey and we found this brilliant online sock monkey forum! We liked it because the entries were about spreading good vibes and making people smile and not at all condescending, competitive or unwelcoming like a certain other forum we'd visited for fitness/nutrition discussions.

Anyway, for some interesting sock monkey inspirations check out Sock Monkey Dreams.

Now, that's a fact!

Photo: Brother and sister (India, July 2005)













I fell into a conversation with an internet stranger not long ago. The issue was our different conceptions of fact and bias. This other person felt that although history is written by the victors and such and therefore biased, there exist true facts, such as "Alexander the Great conquered some lands." I'm not comfortable with this idea. I think that the things we call facts have meanings that are socially produced and meaningful.

I'm posting my response here in hope of continuing this debate/exploration:

I’m just not sure that it is possible to divorce fact from the discourses that produced and relied upon those things we call facts. I’m not sure it is possible to isolate fact from the very messy social and political positions from which we use them, create them, find them, write about them, talk about them, make them valid or acceptable.

We may count as fact that combinations of methotrexate and misoprostol or mifepristone (RU 486) and misoprostol cause induced abortion, but the ways in which women's bodies have become understood, constructed and regulated create very different meanings of these allopathic medications that can not and are not separable from the pills or 'facts' themselves.

You write, "It is indisputable that Alexander the Great conquered the region and that the Caliphate and Ottoman Empire later occupied the region."

Could this not be rewritten as "Alexander, brutal murderer, or "the accursed Alexander", ravished the hereditary/previously conquered/disputed (?) territories of x,y,z...” and that his colonization of vast areas east of Europe has been glorified by western scholars and may be evidence of early Orientalist constructions of “the middle east’ and/or other (re)constructed places.

I must confess I know very little of the long time history of this region. But, to me the word 'conquered' is loaded with meanings that may glorify military might instead of say diplomatic measures and the idea of his ‘greatness’ is based on masculinist notions of strong heros, putting aside the fact that this man encouraged his troops to ‘mate’ with ‘the locals’. Is this another way of saying rape? Again, I don’t really know that much about this person and the histories written about him. I’m not just suggesting discourse analysis here but recognizing the epistemologies that produce these facts.

I just think that these objective, historical truths are actually subjective knowledges and open to reinterpretation and tied to ways of knowing. My point however is not that everything is false because objectivity is unattainable, but that if we recognize our subjectivity, and validate partial knowledges, we might have a better grasp on what we actually do know and why we know it and maybe more importantly, what we don’t know. The uncertainties that exist between my thinking and your thinking about say Alexander the Great, may actually produce or enable new ways of thinking about history, conquerors and so on. Gillian Rose (1997) “Situating Knowledges: positionality, reflexivities and other tactics” Progress in Human Geography 21(3): 305-20) has an excellent discussion of these issues.

While you present a fact- that this man called Alexander became ruler of certain lands- the ways in which this fact is presented, creates very different meanings and understandings of him, the lands, not to mention the construction of gender, race, political rule and place. Beyond the positioning of the historian the language s/he uses, the theories of knowledge used to produce and present that piece of fact are always present. I feel that fact and epistemology are inseparable.

As an add on, presenting Alexander's conquests as fact creates a false sense of exhaustive knowledge- that Alexander conquered and that was that, the only thing to happen, excluding all other events. Any resistances against him, the many people who helped him achieve his goals, or even the everday acts of people being born, getting married, eating dinner, inventing something or herding sheep all around him are excluded as unworthy 'facts'.

Check out Pete Mandik's website for an interesting philosophical and more in-depth look at debates around objectivity vs. subjectivity.

Guilt and shame

Maybe it is the guilt and shame people face when they realize (again and again) just how wrong, self-centered, and imperfect they are that drives some towards a victimized embodiment of depression. As a victim you have an excuse for being selfish and faulty.

Obviously there must be a million reasons and causes and types and experiences of depression but shame and guilt seem so pervasive.

Resistance vs conformity

Photo: Miranda and Me celebrating the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement (March 2006).









We live in a world of Either/Or. You're either with us or against us.... thanks Mr. Bush! Your either conforming to mass consumerism or your resisting the machine!! Either a trendy trendster or an alternative anarchist.

Anyway, in my research, I'm following the lead of many feminist scholars who argue that we are all both conforming and resisting. Check out Atkinson's "Pretty in Ink" about female tatooing for a cool look at this idea. We are often conforming to things we are unaware of... which explains pervasive sexism, homophobia, racism and other crap. So I'm writing about how a group of women in an Indian village that I interviewed are not simply 'poor, ignorant, needy, passive', nor are they 'active, all knowing, rational, heroines'. Instead, while they conform to many things that constrain them, they also actively subvert these oppressive processes, structures, norms and so on.

So I got to thinking:

IS RESISTING GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN? Or is it going with the grain, while conforming is going against the grain? If gender is so absurdly false-- or unnaturally imposed upon people in harmful ways-- —then resistance of gender is finding your more comfortable grain, while conformity requires pushing in a direction that may not suit you entirely.

Just another way of thinking about it all I guess!!

Television

No TV was watched in the riding of this elephant. Stefan and I encounter a friendly pachyderm. 1-2am, New Delhi (June 2005).

I watched some TV recently. For those who may not know, I don't really watch very much TV. Mostly because I don't have a TV or at least it is locked away in storage. Not having TV or cable has been a conscious decision that has easily been my life for many years now.

I didn't want my life to get sucked away- hours, days, weeks wasted on the flickering tube. It's not that TV is all bad or evil and that I'm waging some reactionary war and holding the moral high ground over here. There's actually a lot of great stuff of TV. This is where the anti-TV lobby/movement has gone wrong. They've framed the boob tube as "all bad, all the time". But really there are tons of great documentaries, demonstrations of grassroots activism, nature shows, intelligent discussions and parody and good, old, fun entertainment.

The thing is, from my perspective, it's not that TV is terrible, but that life is so much better. Sure you might be missing an episode of The Office or The Simpsons or The Daily Show, but you could be doing something equally, if not much more, fun!!

Watching TV means you're not doing any of the gazillion other things that you could be doing (and enjoying)!! Like kite surfing. Well, okay, that's kind of out there. But talking to people, cooking a nutritious meal, working out, going to a live show of some sort, riding your bicycle, calling a friend, writing a thank you note, finishing homework, researching something of interest, helping some one, dancing, hula hooping, painting, baking, baby sitting, writting...er...blogging ... You know, all those things you dream of doing because you know that they will ALL make you happier.

So, while I wish I could find the time and money to purchase a TIVO or the like to record some choice shows, sans les advertisements, I think I'll just live my life instead (oh aren't I great?!?).

Now, that being said, I have to admit that I recently got sucked into TV land while staying with a friend and enjoyed watching some crappy home redesign shows. What struck me were not the shows themselves , but all the god damn shitty commercials. Apparently there are 18-20 mins of commercials for every hour of programming. That's crazy! And how did I feel after watching Joe Sports and Maggie McKitch redo their family room in a faux-leather, pleather taupe motif whatever.... Well, I felt tired and fat and hungry. Yup, those ads spend half the time making you feel fat and half the time making you feel hungry and therefore completely tired (POOH!)... Great combo!!

And then it was time for the news. PANIC, PANIC, PANIC. Wow, I bet if you watched your local news each night you'd be fucking terrified. Yup, you be scared that someone was going to break into your house and kill you and your children and that terrorist were plotting to destroy YOUR freedom (yes, it is all about YOU).

Thank god Law and Order came on with a fantastic Emmy award-winning program about yet another woman getting kidnapped and brutally raped by someone devious and yet cool, man. GEEZ, after CIS (insert city here) and Law and Order (how many are there now?) and Missing and god knows what else is out there, it's a wonder that women even leave their homes at all. The majority of these shows are based on the vicitimization of women. Their stories show and/or describe brutal violence against women as entertainment and win awards and acclaim for their savvy scripts, stylin' threads and inovative cinematography. SWEET!

I know that the news, design shows and 'Police Overcoming Criminals' shows are not Evil and are not intentionally trying to ruin my days, weeks, very existence, but really their presence in my life, there taking of my time and leaving a bad taste in my mouth are not welcome anymore. They present fear of self and others, loathing of self and others, simplistic scenarios of good vs evil and male vs female. Personally I like happiness and silliness, creativity and complexity, ever changing and fluid identities and most of all I like and I want hope.

So until I catch a segment of the some random Simpons episode at one of my friends homes, I happily bid television so long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu...

:)

I Love Tron

I miss my dog Tron (above)! He's up in Prince George with Motion. For now I get to hang out with Anderson who belongs to Jamie.

I'll be living with Jamie and Rhonda (and Anderson and Max the cat) this semester while I try and finish up my thesis.

Who can work on a day like this?

Vancouver is the best place on earth!