allergies

i feel like i ought to post again and clean this dusty place up!

get out and vote, kids!

Check out the wonderful wikipedia to learn more about the candidates wanting to be Toronto's new mayor, 2006.

rawk on

Aaaahhhh, music...

The Joel Plaskett Emergency (nowhere with you),
Les Trois Accords,
Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton, and
Les Breastfeeders are playing See Vous Play: a free concert to celebrate International Music Day on Oct 1st!


International Music Day (IMD) was initiated in 1975 by Lord Yehudi Menuhin to encourage:

• the promotion of musical art among all sections of society,
  
• the application of the UNESCO ideals of peace and friendship between peoples, of the evolution of their cultures, of the exchange of experience and of the mutual appreciation of their aesthetic values
  
• the promotion of the activities of IMC, its international member organizations and national committees,as well as its programme policy in general.
  

the power of words

I don't want to use the word "drama" to describe situations or people in general anymore. According to Wikipedia "drama is used colloquially to refer to unnecessary emotional turmoil, such as that created through social events or gossip or any situation or series of events having vivid, emotional, conflicting, or striking interest or results.

One only needs to walk down the street to encounter someone talking about not wanting to be involved with this situation or that person because of the "drama." Check online personals and casual conversations with friends and the word invariably comes up to describe what they don't want in a lover or about a conflict with a friend.

It seems that we use this word to describe everything we don't like about relationships. Have we lost our ability to use words effectively? Have we gotten lazy? We use the word "fuck-ed" to describe just about everything. We use the word "love" so often that it may have lost its meaning (eg. I LOVED that movie!) If words/language are a reflection of society - has our existence lost meaning?

Or, have we (the western world) become distracted by extraneous things - things that aren't really important. It's not the basic needs stuff that we apply the word "drama" to it's the "unnecessary emotional turmoil" that we are referring to.

Or, are we trapped in a society that is addicted to unnecessary drama? According to sixwise "Manufactured" or "self-created" drama includes mind games, temper tantrums, screaming matches, rages, and other negative behaviors that tend to occur with alarming frequency in the vast majority of unhealthy, non-nurturing relationships."

Are we obsessed with it?

The author, Rachel G. Baldino goes on to say "The older we get, the more we come to realize that real life provides us with more than enough genuine dramas and actual crises (in the form of illnesses, the deaths of loved ones, job losses, financial struggles, etc.). Of course, this means that there is absolutely no need for us to add any needless, manufactured melodrama into the mix."

The author suggests the first step toward dropping the drama, is that "if you spend too much time dwelling on your partner's [friends] faults-rather than on his or her strengths-you might just lose sight of why you [cared for them] fell in love in the first place." She says: "Some people who feel bored, emotionally numb, lonely, or unfulfilled in some way tend to pick fights with those they love in an attempt to escape their sense of emotional numbness or emptiness"

Are we (western culture) so "bored, emotionally numb, lonely, or unfulfilled" that we pursue and perpetuate this unecessary tormoil 'cause we have lost touch with what is truly important?

I figure that if I refuse to use the word I can in some way shift my world. Of course, this technique (choosing carefully the words you speak/think/use) can only work if you believe in the power of words.

speakin' of food

“In this groundbreaking book, one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating.

His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavours reflects our evolutionary inheritance.

The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.”

black coffee

I really enjoy learning about the history of what we eat and drink and why and how we do it.

Much Depends on Dinner a book by Margaret Visser

---

“takes us on an amazing excursion through the history and mythology of an ordinary meal. Corn, chicken, lettuce, ice cream, and other familiar foods become far from ordinary in an account that is sometimes hilarious or frightening but always enlightening and entertaining.”

---

Now – sipping my OMFG so good Grizzly Claw coffee, I type this…

I watched the first part of three of the documentary Black Coffee on TVO The View from Here last night. I recommend it!

Want to know more about the history of that liquid gold? Take a peak at the facts from the doc...

• Coffee is the world's most widely taken legal drug.
  
• Only one cent of the price of a $2 cup of coffee goes to the grower.
  
• Coffee helped foster the slave trade.
  
• Coffee is the second most traded legal commodity on earth.
  
• In various times, coffee has been considered both an aphrodisiac and a sex inhibitor.
  
• 500 billion cups of coffee a years are consumer around the world, half of them at breakfast.
  
• Coffee provides a livelihood for 25 million people; 100 million more depend on it for survival.
  
• Coffee is a green bean hidden in the red cherry of the coffee tree.
  
• It is said the bean was discovered by the frisky goats of an Ethiopian goatherd called Kaldi.
  
• Coffee was roasted for the first time in the 1400s.
  
• Only the women of the house can roast the coffee beans in Ethiopia.
  
• Coffee traveled from Ethiopia to Arabia to Turkey and thence to Europe.
  
• The fertile seeds were smuggled to India, then Holland, then their colony Java.
  
• When Arabs tried to seize Vienna, a Pole warned the French who repulsed the Arabs, found the bags of coffee left behind, and the first European coffeehouse was opened.
  
• Coffee was perfected in Italy; even the Pope liked it.
  
• "The heart wants friend and coffee is only the excuse." –Turkish saying
  
• Cappuccinos name came from its resemblance to the colour and peak of the Capucin monk's cloak
  
• Espresso came from Neapolitan impatience; they couldn't wait for coffee to be brewed.
  
• Balzac is reputed to have drunk 40 cups of coffee a day.
  
• The first French café—Le Procope was opened in 1686 by Italians.
  
• Cafés stimulated not only nervous systems but political and social ferment.
  
• By 1700, the English were big coffee drinkers.
  
• The Tatler started as a coffeehouse broadsheet, along with the institution of TIPS for service.
  
• The French Revolution was planned in coffeehouses.
  
• By 1790, half of all the coffee in the world was grown in Haiti by African slaves.
  
• One of the French king's mistresses gave a coffee plant to a French lieutenant she'd slept with; on the ocean voyage to Martinique he protected the plant from storms and pirates. From the single Martinique plant almost all the coffee in Latin America descends.
  
• The French established the slave-run plantations in the colonized islands
  
• In 1791 the slaves of Haiti rose up and destroyed the coffee and sugar plantations; the revolt lasted 12 years and defeated Napoleon's troops.
  
• Only 10% of the rainforest in Sao Paolo remains, with coffee growing the dominant reason
  
• By 1816 there were 1 million slaves in Brazil, comprising 1/3 of the population, more than half of them working on coffee plantations from dawn to sunset, eating only once a day.
  
• The coffee crash in Brazil occurred only a few weeks before the 1929 economic crash.
  
• The scion of the Folger's coffee empire doesn't drink Folger's. He roasts and brews his own.
  
• The term "cup o' joe" originated in World War II.
  
• The coffee break was an advertising ploy to sell more coffee.
  
• Brazilian president Vargas committed suicide over coffee politics.
  
• It costs a full day's wages for most coffee farmers to buy a cappuccino.
  
• Many coffee workers are only marginally better off than their enslaved ancestors.
  
• Most coffee farmers have never tasted their own coffee.
  
• Barristas are the bartenders of the speciality coffee industry
  

to do lists

I have so many things in my head that I want to do. I've decided to post the ideas and they'll serve as a reminder of the things I did or didn't accomplish. I hope the latter doesn't happen more often than the former.

TO DO:

1. Put together a cookbook of my favourite recipes. I tend to throw stuff together using a recipe as a guideline only which makes me a not-so-great baker since baking requires a more structured way of doing things. Of course, every cookbook needs some pix!


Japanese cold noodles - fab in the summer


Never-ending egg breakfast inventions based on what's in the fridge.


And, of course presentation is just as important as the ingredients IMHO... yummmmah!

Speaking of cooking - I'm curious about the restaurant that queer (?) grrrrl Heather won on Hell's Kitchen and what became of the connection between her and Rachel... gotta love it when queer women are featured as "real peeps" which according to After Ellen Hell's Kitchen accomplished in the first season by showing a first ever open-mouthed lesbian kiss on a primetime network reality show and not following it up with exploitation to increase viewers. I only discovered Hell Kitchen when I came upon the oh-so recognizable heat between Heather and Rachel and watched the rest of the episodes just for that.

So, two seasons and two queer women. I know that reality shows aren't reflective of the general population - but - I wonder if there are a disproportionate numbers of queer women vying for the competitive and lucrative positions like head chef 'cause we're tougher and more ambitious? You must have heard that we queer women make more money than str8 women do. Is this because we have more options than our str8 sisters do? Because we have reprogrammed ourselves to expect more from the world? Are we braver? Marching right into our bosses' offices with nicely polished, black, sturdy-heeled, leather shoes and demand more 'cause we have struggled as a result learned how to be fierce?

Hmmmm... is this a privileged perspective?

Revolutionary?

Faulty?

something blue

I get lulled into feeling that most people are reasonable, that extremism is exactly that - extreme - AKA rare. And, I suppose I ought to check my blind consumption of television sensationalism but the program I couldn’t turn off last night was about hate and generational training.

The propaganda machine would like us to think extremists are only found overseas in those religious, fundamentalist parts of the world. But, there it is – right across the border.

Two girls (who will require some hardcore deprogramming if they get far enough away from their evil mother and grandfather to realise WTF they are doing) perform sweet little “love songs” about Nazi Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy Fuhrer. There were clips of the girls doing a little jig around a swastika drawn on their kitchen floor and statements like “I don’t even think that there were that many Jews alive back then” spilled out of their 13-year-old mouths when referring to the Holocaust.

David Duke (you make me puke) a white supremacist and a former US presidential candidate hires these girls to perform at White Nationalist gatherings. Their mother home schooled them and obviously fully supports their career pursuits . Oh, and she got full custody of them after a legal battle with their father, a former drug addict, leaving it free for her to move the family to a “more white area.” Hmmm, gotta wonder which would be a better place for these girls.

I worry about them as kids, but if they continue down the same path I expect I’ll loath them as adults. The piece apparently offended the national vanguard. Awww… They describe the story as “viciously negative coverage of Prussian Blue” and suggest that it was “slavish purveyor of political correctness” Cynthia McFadden’s evil plan to “warp” (umm, okaaay) what these girls are taught to do…

Gawd, just looking at some of these sites made me physically retch.

Cross your fingers and hope these girls REBEL HARD.

power spot

Does everyone have a power spot somewhere on the earth that somehow heals them, washes away the smallness of everyday problems and conflicts and re-balances them?

I'm lucky 'cause I do. And, here are a few pics from my trip up north - to my power spot somewhere off Highway 17, north of Sault Ste Marie.

Only the locals know about it.

Its unofficial name is Pebble Beach.

It's here I want my ashes released after all the good working bits of my body are used by someone who needs 'em.

And, yes, that's right - there were just my and my lover's footprints that day.

It was beautiful to share it with her...

I'm so glad you came with me, my kokoro.

d bi young: wow.

This power house artist, d bi young, is on stage at Ryerson from Aug 29-Sept 10/06. I saw her at the Harbourfront performing a dub poetry piece that got me to the edge of my seat (and kept me there) and swirled these emotions up and down my body – pain, fear, guilt, awe, -humility- and a strong desire to do something – to better my life.

She simply rawks.

And, if you don't believe me, listen to this

From d bi young's website, her Oomaanifesto
“dub poetry: dub is word. dub is sound. dub is powah. dub poetry is nation language / performance / poetry / politrix / roots / reggae. dub emerged from the psyche/life experience of conscious ghetto youth in jamaica and england in the late 70s - early 80s (such as oku onoura. mikey smith. anita stewart. mutabaruka. jean binta breeze. poets in unity. linton kwesi johnson. and many others). they demanded an art form that would represent and reflect the working class linguistically, socially, and politically. coming from the roots of reggae, dub fiercely challenges capitalism. imperialism. patriarchy. and other forms of oppression. while riding a wicked reggae beat. through this old/new form of poetry/music, an outgrowth of the afrikan griot tradition, jamaicans and people worldwide continue to identify with revolushunary art and struggle.”