Trailers and Busses and Trucks, oh my!

All i do lately is read about diesel engines and veggie oil conversions, and lurk on kijiji's classified listings
In a week we're gonna buy this truck and trailer we've been saving for.
Or maybe it'll be a motorhome. Or maybe it'll be a school bus. Whatever it is, we've got one week to find it and buy it and inspect it and insure it and bring it back to winnipeg. Which maybe includes installing a good hitch and a brake controller and maybe sway bars? And how to get to alberta to buy it? Will we have enough time? Will we have enough money? Will we be able to find something we want?
And then, vegetable oil conversion! Adding tanks and fuel pumps and fuel lines and filters and switches! And figuring out how to process the oil for ourselves!
I'm mostly excited, mildly apprehensive.
And we've already been confirmed as vendors at the dawson city music festival, so there's no looking back. Here goes.

Busking Zine: Done!

Ta-Da!
If anyone wants a paper copy, it's here:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/71453366/busking-zine-1

Or, if you're not a buying-stuff-on-the-webs type, just email me and i'll send you one.
Hooray!

Busking Zine pages 21-24!

Busking Zine pages 17-20

The zine's finally done! The rest of it will be up shortly! An actual paper version will be available by the weekend.
Woot!

A compromise, one of many, necessary?

So i've been sort of following this minor debacle in hfx where some folks had an offensively themed party and then didn't respond well to the suggestion that they were being shitty. (http://unbeatablehigh.blogspot.com/ march 18-21)

I recently had a similar situation where i tried to call someone out on using the word "faggot" inappropriately. It was a long, painfully drawn out conversation, which started with that person arguing that people just "shouldn't be so sensitive" and ended with him finally conceding my point and, hilariously, whining about how harsh i'd been with him. Apparently gay people shouldn't be so sensitive about him reclaiming slur words for them, but he's totally allowed to be sensitive about having his privilege and ignorance pointed out to him. Right.

So anyway, i've been thinking about this thing a lot, this "what is the correct amount of 'harsh' to use on people who are somewhere in the range of ignorantly offensive to blatantly and deliberately offensive?" question.

I think this is what i've got it narrowed down to:

1. People who are using oppressive language are not the ones who deserve sympathy. Everyone is capable of thinking about the consequences of their actions and they should already be doing that.

2. That being said, i think it's possible to tell someone clearly that something they've done is offensive or inappropriate without decimating them. I feel like there's times when i need to be reminded to think about my language (i had a good conversation lately about use of the word "crazy" in daily speech, ie) and i know that it doesn't take much to make me rethink my actions, and that a really harsh judgement would probably just make me feel really guilty and awkward and miserable when that's not necessary.

3. That being said, if you're gentle and someone doesn't get it, it's fair and necessary to step it up.

4. THAT being said, even if i think someone does deserve decimating, i've learned that the more you humiliate someone, the more reluctant they are to admit they're wrong. Especially in situations where the person you're calling out isn't a friend and their friends probably think their behaviour is fine, they might easily react by just disagreeing with you. If the goal is actually to make a person stop being a douchebag, this means that some degree of tact is necessary. All-out attack will probably just enable them to write you off as a psychopath or fascist or whatever.

5. So even though i sometimes fantasize about bottling people like that, i try to be as approachable as i can when i'm talking to them about their behaviour, even if i think they're being incredibly inconsiderate and deserve no sympathy whatsoever. The situation extends beyond me and them and i don't want to reinforce their already somewhat present disrespect or even hatred of whatever group they're disrespecting.

I think the conversation i had (referenced above) barely managed to be a success, only because i barely managed to reformulate my rage into something more like bluntness. Despite the fact that this person didn't deserve to have their hand held through the process of admitting they were wrong, that was probably the only way to get them to admit they were wrong, which was my goal.

Typewriter: Icon of OPPRESSION

Dandy and i had a table at a "tea" at an old folks' home today. It was effin awesome. We spent the whole time making a list of things we wanna do when we get old. Like refuse to wear your false teeth even though you've only got three real ones left. Or make cozies for your walker. Or (admittedly probably unknowingly) pop the collar on your dress shirt/sweater vest combination. Or wear bright red lipstick. And, old folks are just great humans. They have lots of time. They care about other people and what they're doing. They appreciate craft and resourcefulness. Some of the people we met today looked over our stuff soooo thoroughly and genuinely and thoughtfully, and were so engaging.. awwwwww!

And, we had this really fascinating conversation with this woman about typewriters! We've got a few things we make that have typewriters on them, and i generally think of a typewriter as appealing as a symbol of creativity or whatever, and well, they're pretty hip, but this lady DETESTED them!

And rightly so, she says someone advised her as a girl never to learn to type, because once men figure out you can type that's the only job you ever get. And who wants to be stuck being someone's freaking secretary their whole lives? I never even thought about it that way. But there was a time when this was very true. Hmm!

busking zine pages 13-16!

also: things not to do while trying to draw tiny details: drink coffee, argue with people on the internet and get really angry at them, do chin-ups, play accordion. none of these things are good for delicate motor skills. and yet for some reason i did them all.

There is probably no hope.

This is happenning..
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/14220
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/14214

I feel like i need to educate myself, right now, about cops, how to deal with them, how to best act in solidarity with people being fucked with by them. Because while i wouldn't like to think of myself as one of the depressing majority that did NOTHING to come to the aid of the folks singled out in this case, and others, i could see myself being confused and sort of paralyzed and in actuality being one of those people.

Not that i like demos or have any inclination to go to them.

Lately i've been incredibly cynical about "awareness raising", public demos, etc. not that i condemn it all. But i can't bring myself to believe that a measurable amount of the general population notices, and if they did most of them would want the cops to crack down anyways.

Fuck society. Fuck social change.
I feel like the only remaining plausible courses of action might be isolationism and/or direct attack.

Anyway, whatever. back to the busking zine tomorrow.

Busking zine pages 9-12!

busking zine! pages 5-8

hooray!
sorry this took a couple days.. i ended up working 16 hours a day for the last two days and didn't really get anything else done. but here it is now!

Busking Zine! Issue 1!

After months (months!) of work, it's almost done. Here's the first four pages. I'll try and put four up every day for the next week.

in exile: busking

yesterday i had yet another shitty experience busking, which finally pushed me over the edge. i don't do that in this city anymore. on a good day i have a few nice interactions while being consciously ignored by the shitheads in suits that pass me on a daily basis and yet somehow still won't make eye contact. to be fair, i have a few positive interactions with people in suits. statistically, though, it's unlikely.

most of the time the weirdos and homebums, ie people who aren't suits, are really nice, and interactions with them are what keeps me feeling like a human being. but then occasionally they ask me for money, which is fine, or steal my money, which is not fine, or get up in my face trying to get me to kiss them, which is not fine, or leer at me and tell me that playing accordion is "hot", not fine, or pretend to shoot me in the face with their hand, at point blank, as they walk past, not fine, or give me a nickel "to wash my panties with", whatever the fuck that fucking means, not fine, or, yesterday, stand right beside me panhandling to people i'm trying to get money out of myself, and when i ask them nicely to give me a little more space than one metre, stand there and threaten/intimidate/insult me/threaten to take my money/take my shit/kick me in the face/etc, imitate me, mock me, say every nasty thing about me that they can think of to everyone who's passing by, and just generally demean me, until i finally left.

what frustrates me even more about it, aside from no longer feeling comfortable with doing the one thing that most reliably makes me self-sufficient, is that the only way i could have solved that situation was to get someone to call the fucking biz, who are a bunch of overgrown teenagers pretending to be cops, being abusive and shitty and having no accountability, and who generally exist to power-trip on homeless folks and panhandlers.

so i really wanted to be like, "you're putting me into a situation where the only way i can make myself feel safe is to validate these shitty people that will abuse you." which sounds like blaming the victim to me, but i don't really know how else to analyze this.

part of why this whole thing is so disturbing to me is it's instilled a genuine fear in me of native homebums, because that's who it is, every time. i don't really know how to deal with the fact that i'm developing a fear and hatred of a visible minority. it's not nice. i guess i can balance that with my understanding of the history that created this context. i'm never sure whether to put myself into the same category as someone who feels alienated by most of society and frequently gets treated like something less than human by most of society, or into the category of white privileged person who's making it even harder for this native lady who's already dealing with the infinite effects of colonization, and alcoholism, and probably a low/no income.

i don't want to feel oppressed by everyone including people who are even more fucked than i am, but i also don't want to play the role of "poor suffering white girl with an education from a middle class background who can't play her accordion because of all the panhandlers scaring her away."

i could go on about this forever. i don't know what to say. but i'm not busking in this city anymore.

I've finally emerged from the darkness of winter.

I've had a few weeks of being sometimes okay and sometimes not, (a huge improvement over the previous couple months of not feeling like a human being at all), but yesterday (or the day before?) i was suddenly completely confident that i was okay again,
that if something brings me down it will be temporary,
that i won't need to hide in bed for days at a time,
that i care about everything again,
that i'm willing to go out at night,
that i'm consumed again by a fiery desire to do everything.

nothing has changed, in a physical sense,
except that i'm finally above the surface of the water, and no longer afraid of slipping below it,
and that a problem is now only a problem, and i no longer have to worry about it breaking that delicate thread supporting all of my emotional weight.

so i realised that, while i was at my desk painting a sign for our distro, and actually cried because i was so glad.
i'm so glad to be back, i'm so glad to be back.

I'm deliberately taking the most cynical slant i can on this....

International Development!

In which a bunch of privileged kids from the west/northern hemisphere teach english in a foreign country to make their jet setting and fetishization of other cultures look edgy and progressive.

In which a bunch of people from the north FLY (at huge environmental expense) to the south to help people there build basic structures which anyone could build, including the people who are living there and will be using those structures. Often privileged volunteers have to be trained before they can be useful, but for some reason they don't just train people WHO ARE ALREADY THERE instead.

In which a bunch of privileged kids from the west/northern hemisphere get jobs or paid volunteering positions at ngos in the south which lots of local people in that area are not only qualified to do but who probably also understand better how to do that job in a way that makes sense in that specific place.

In which a bunch of religious nuts go and impose their guilt and ignorance on people who were doing just fine without it.

In which a bunch of overdeveloped westerners who would probably die within months if they didn't have running water and electricity go to "underdeveloped", relatively sustainable places, "teach" the locals how to live better, often with no real consideration for their means or their most immediate needs, and go home feeling smug because they took cold showers for a few months and survived.

In which a bunch of white people go to exotic places to learn exotic things for a few months, mostly hang out with other white people, and then go home and feel really worldly when they tell their friends about it.

In which privigeled north americans go to south america to buy knock offs of traditional south american crafts, made in sweatshops, which they could have just bought in north america or on the internet, and then take them home and tell their friends all about their "authentic" experience and knowledge of that culture

Not to say that every attempt to "help the underprivileged" is entirely ego-driven, wasteful, counterproductive, ethnocentric, racist or classist. But lots of them are lots of those things.

And really, do we really need more development?
I just want someone to figure out how to de-develop north america back down to something sustainable.

disclaimer: someone i know has made the point that critiquing international development on the grounds that we're a bunch of idiots and folks in the third world know what's up is also sort of a fetishization/idealization of "the other". this can be true.

oh hai can we be friends kthx bye.

sometimes when i'm walking around the neighborhood i see folks who are wearing all black, but who don't have what i think of as the typical anarchist aesthetic. usually they're either native folks or people who maybe look like they listen to hip hop or something. but, when i see the all-black uniform, i instinctively hope that we are somehow on the same side, that maybe they also have some anarchist tendencies, whether or not they identify as anarchists. (native folks do have, afterall, even more reasons to hate the gov than the rest of us)

i also have this reaction to neck tattoos. there's just something about a neck tattoo that says "i don't give a fuck," and i kinda secretly like it.

of course, i could be entirely wrong about all of this, and if the shit hits the fan i probably shouldn't just assume that i can trust everyone who wears black.

but still. it's strangely reassuring.

working vs being employed

okay, so i got a job. i'm not going to talk about that because my job is not my life and i refuse to acknowledge its presence beyond the necessary (being there, getting paid.)

what's sort of depressing about it is i make almost as much in two hours of busking as i do in a six hour shift of the job.

and the job conflicts with the busking. this may not last long.

but, something exciting, after existing for almost a year and receiving daily attention from us for two or three months, our (dandy's and my) etsy store is starting to be active pretty regularly. until this month we sold about one thing per month. in january we sold ten?

which means we're still not rich (only two of those sales were worth more than 2.50 to us) but that we're gradually becoming self-sustainable. fuck you, employment. this relationship is doomed to fail and i can't wait.

The last obstacle to winter biking is no more.

I realized yesterday that when your fingers freeze when you're biking, it's because you're grabbing the handlebars too tightly. (assuming the problem isn't that yr gloves suck). Yesterday i biked around a bunch and it was -39 or something, and my fingers were fine. (in fact, i noticed them getting cold at one point and managed to warm them up by wiggling them.)
Who knew.

Also, last night i dreamt that i was biking somewhere and the sun was still completely up, even though it was at least five-thirty, and it made me incredibly happy. It lifted ten layers of darkness out of me.

There is no such thing as automatic community

When someone first said it, i was outraged; "There is no such thing as community. Community is a lie."
I thought, community is all i have, and it's the only thing that makes me still want to be alive, and you're attacking it.

But after thinking about this for a long time, revision is necessary.

In the same sense that i would not call people i happen to end up hanging out with every so often my "friends", the people i see on a regular basis are not my "community".

It's only when i know someone well, personally, care about them and care for them and vice versa that i'd call them a friend, and it's only when that relationship exists with a group that i would call that group community.

My new optimism:
When the interactions that we lazily perceive as community fail to protect us, or when people within that very community do shitty things to us, this doesn't mean that there is no community. We can't assume that acquaintances are community, the fact that we listen to the same music or go to the same shows or identify with the same lifestyles means nothing, but that doesn't mean that there's no community. It means that the community we have is the people we've fostered close, caring relationships with, and that those are the people we ought to be able to rely on. It means that we need to make the effort to know each other and know the needs of our friends and be there for them and that this is our community.

My new negativism:
I have moved to a city where i only feel that close to one person. This is my own fault for not making friends with more people. (It's not that there's no one else i want to be close to.) This goes beyond my own fault because i was raised with horrible social skills in a hostile environment and while i have become aware of that and the problems it poses, i haven't completely taught myself how to socialize comfortably yet. And maybe that's just one of those things that shapes you.

Conclusion: community is possible, but it must be actively formed, and i don't think i have it right now.

I wrote a personal mission statement

It's complicated.

this is a list of goals, none of which are actually attainable in a literal and complete sense.
they're written with the understanding that life (especially life within a capitalist economy) is compromise, and that to achieve a goal partially is not a failure as long as you're constantly working to improve your achievement of it, and pushing as far as you can with it.

* to free myself from the constraints of capitalism (the neccessity of a "job", the pressure through the media to buy unneccesary things, the presence of exploitation in most of our economic interactions)
* to make a living and get the things i need to survive without exploiting or contributing to the exploitation of anyone or anything. (including animals and the environment)

* once these have become stable qualities in my life, to help enable others to achieve the same, as well as their own goals
* to use art, and music, and beauty, as a means to remind people of the value of these goals, using specific examples.
* to always share my skills and knowledge in order to empower other people rather than using my knowledge as a weapon to keep them subjugated to me.
* to offer people the resources and opportunities to actualize their own dreams and creativity and escape from the constraints of capitalism (the necessity of having a "job", of being convinced that you need to buy a lot of things that you don't really need) without doing it for them, ie to help them become independent people of their own doing.
* to use non-oppressive language, and also to be non-oppressive.

what this means in specifics:
* to become entirely self-employed and make a living only through donations or sliding scale prices
* to be willing to give things away for free
* to only make and sell things that are entirely recycled and entirely sweatshop free, and entirely locally sourced.
* to get a truck and convert it to vegetable oil, and a camper, and convert the camper into a silkscreening studio/artists' residence that i can both use myself and also bring to people who would like to have a quiet, personal space to be creative in, and also use that vehicle to travel to various bookfairs, zine and small press fairs, and small music festivals
* to offer skillshares and workshops to others to help them to learn anything i know that they want to learn, and to write zines with sort of a similar goal. (as well, to simply write zines documenting things that i experience that i think are funny/interesting/inspiring/important/tragic/terrible etc)

on a more personal level:
* to achieve the most humility possible
* to be fearless
* to never make anyone feel guilty, ever
* to be as positive as possible
* to be as realistic as possible
* to have an incredible sense of humour because almost everything that can cause me to lose my humility, to be afraid, to make others feel guilty, or to be negative can also be seen as amusing instead.
* to be ready to rethink everything, including this mission statement.

Anarcho-Capitalists!

Yes, i always thought it was a joke. But, then i got myself a table at an anarchist-run holiday craft sale. Now, what the hell does that mean?

In practice? That there were no assigned places, that vendors had to problem-solve any issues together (as a group of folks working together towards a common cause, as opposed to as competitors) rather than relying on a boss-lady to tell us what to do. That the live entertainment, instead of shlocky christmas music, was live and ranging from neutral to leftist politics. That some of the vendors had sort of alternative or radical content. That junto (the local radical lending library) got a table. That the merch there was (theoretically) local/handmade, although that's (theoretically) true at all craft sales.

So, offering a venue for local people to be self-employed and self-empowered, that's pretty great.
Encouraging people to buy local, handmade, sweatshop free, etc, that's good.
But how many of the materials used by the vendors are truly local/sweatshop free etc?
How much of the content of the stuff being sold was really in any way radical or anarchist?
And is a holiday shopping spree really anarchist?

Here are the reasons i'm still skeptical:

1) what's driving us over the edge is EXCESS. how many of the things one sees at a craft sale are unneccesary? how much of it was made with new material? is consuming these things in any way anarchist? (if i stop for a minute and envision the magical, mythical world where capitalism is gone, i could imagine folks making things to trade or give to each other and while most of it would be useful things like food etc, i think there'd still be a place for art.. but it would have to be made in a way that's respectful of the places the supplies are coming from, for starts.)

2) while we do need to have money to survive, this doesn't necessitate total compromise. we can make money selling things without being assholes about it. i really like the idea, for example, of sliding scale. i really like the idea of "pay what you want". i like the idea of taking the buyer's means into consideration when figuring out what they should pay for something. i like the idea of bartering.


So, the sale was interesting. Most of the folks there did seem to be selling things they'd made themselves, as opposed to being some sort of "middleman" (a loathsome human being and a capitalist of the worst kind). So that was good.

Things i'd love to see at future anarchist craft sales, though?
- skillshares! fuck shopping, learn how to knit and make scarves instead. or whatever.
- more visible promotion of local shopping and recycled products, explaining that there's more to shopping local than just kitcsh or (barf) nationalism. (ie buying local doesn't incur the environmental damage of shipping overseas or across the country) i really like the idea of buying local things (when you have to buy them at all) but really hate how that too is being absorbed into "green capitalism" (barf) so that's becoming sort of a touchy and complicated thing to promote properly.
- flexible pricing. set a sliding scale that can accomodate a wide range of incomes. my experience is that most people will aim for the middle or top.
- more encouragement of bartering.

So what's the point of this long ramble?
My usual point: An anarchist craft sale is sort of a compromise, but we're living a life of compromise so it's, in it's context, not a bad idea. (and that this doesn't mean we should embrace it whole-heartedly, it means we should not destroy it, but work to improve it, and use it as a tool to break down shit that really needs to go, like mindless, selfish, destructive consumerism)

I feel a bit like a liberal. I'm not entirely convinced of what i'm saying. Please help?

.