Security culture

This week I engaged in an activity that I rarely even think about - fighting on the internet.

Granted, I spend a fair amount of time reading over things online that make me very angry, and then spend even more time griping about them to my friends in "real life", but there are very few instances where I feel compelled to actually jump in and say my piece.

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine was criticized (on facebook, full disclosure) for having joined a group whose aim was to support those who had been arrested in relation to the fire bombing of an Ottawa RBC. This dude, who I've never had the pleasure of meeting in person, told my friend that she had been living in the North End too long, and kept making references to "hippies" and "terrorists".

I don't want to go into the gritty details, but the catalyst was that this dude had the nerve to say that the Olympics were ok because "BC Natives supported [them]". If there's one thing I wont keep quiet over, it's the god damned Olympic games, and there was no fucking way I was going to let his bullshit slide. Long story short, we battled back and forth until he ended up deleting everything he wrote. I don't know what that means. Either I won, or he was the more mature person and decided to back out. While I would totally respect someone who decided to pull out of a pointless online battle, something tells me the kind of person who would say something like "I hear you can get high from just the smell of the hippies they're burning in Toronto" is not the kind of person who would be like "This is silly, I'm not fighting anymore".

In any case, I didn't actually start writing this post to brag about potentially having won a facebook fight (woohoo), I actually started writing this post to talk about a seemingly unimportant detail in the above anectdote: my friend joined an online group to support those who had been arrested in relation to the fire bombing of an Ottawa RBC.

What the HECK, people?!

Yes! Absolutely, those people need support. They are facing extremely serious charges (like terrorism! seriously!), and even if they weren't, the judicial system is designed to crush human beings and destroy them from all angles at once. They need money, because legal representation is extremely expensive (sometimes I feel like fighting a court battle is akin to playing Warhammer, all the really kickass pieces are way too expensive for everyone to be able to afford.), and they need to know that there are people in the world who believe in them and their cause, but do they really need a fucking FACEBOOK group?

Does that guy I shared a couple of classes with in junior high, or that girl I worked with at the NDP call center, really need to know that I'm totally down with the fact that someone blew up a bank? No. It doesn't do ANYONE any good. Maybe it would give me a sense of self satisfaction, showing off how damn radical I am, but it's so not worth it.

I know that I'm an enormous hypocrite. I do plan to phase out my usage of facebook over the summer, but the fact is that I continue to use it, and engage with it enough that I friggin' fight with people on it regarding very important issues in my life. There are hundreds of photos of me on there, they've learned how to advertise to me, and there is just way too much personal information floating around.

I think the first time I seriously balked at mt friend's transparency on the internet(facebook) was when all of a sudden, people were anouncing to the world that they were "attending" an "event" called "Steal From Work Day". I shit you not, people felt the need to alert to all their friends, their family, and the random acquaintances that they felt too polite to deny false friendships to, that there was one particular day in April where they would steal from their jobs. Dude, the internet is not PRIVATE, and bragging to the internet about intended theft is fucking STUPID!

So here's the hypocrisy rearing it's head again, as here I am, exposing myself to the internet, but somehow Facebook just seems so much worse. I feel like here I can muse about things like firebombing and shoplifting and various sketchy topics, but I don't feel quite as bad about it since I'm not putting a big stamp saying "I'm going to fuck up my job by commiting a crime!" next to 400 pictures of my face, my hometown, and my relationship status.

Seriously, my dear friends, stop posturing on Facebook about your fucking revolutionary exploits, and just fucking do it already. Don't "attend" stealing from work on one specific day. If that's how you want to bring the total destroy, then just do it and keep damn quiet about it, because the more you let your bosses and your aunts and your aunt's bosses know the heaty shit you're in to, the more difficult you're going to make things for yourself and for others.

So please. Support arrestees, fuck the pigs, steal from work, etcetera etcetera, but keep social networking the heck out of it.

And DON'T talk to me about the Olympics, I'm burnt out.

(Also, please note that I'm really not as angry as I may sound. I'm actually in a super-good mood today, but I guess sometimes passion and anger get confused with eachother?)

Curmudgeonly

My house is so full of so many wonderful folks, so how come I'm being such a grump? I'm not even being a grump outwardly, I feel like I've been super accommodating and friendly and stoked, but inwardly I've been getting agitated.

I don't think I would change the company. Long lost and unexpected friends have shown up at our door and it fills my heart with so much happiness! My new room mates fit in so well (even though the only time I see one of them is when he's out the door, but at least each time we cross paths he's like "Hi Rosie, nice to see you! I'm going again, but we'll hang out really soon!" and I know he means it). One of our guests right now I was actually on the verge of...not really cutting off, but I sincerely felt he had no interest in being my friend, so I was ready to sever emotional ties. But we had a few good chats in Montreal (he helped me recover from the heat stroke I inflicted upon myself at a crust show) and the first thing he said to me when I saw him yesterday was "I drove from southern New Hampshire to see you!". He seems to be having a lot more fun in this city than he usually does. I'm comfortable saying our friendship is rekindled. Yes!

I think (and I know this is going to sound petty) I'm jealous that I'm the only one that hasn't been getting drunk over the last week. Isn't that ridiculous? What a thing to be bothered by! I decided back in Montreal that I would try this thing I'm calling "No Junk June". My rules were that I wouldn't be allowed to spend my money on beer or crappy food, because that's where all my busking money kept disappearing to. What's funny is that I hadn't planned on getting a job when I got back to Halifax (I'm a full time baker now for a local-ish shitty coffee shop!). I expected that I'd be busking hard core every single day so I could scrape by and maybe feed my cat (not true, she gets priority and eats more expensive food than I do. If only she could also survive off of pita). Instead, I now work 8 hours a day. I'm happy to be working again, since having absolutely no money was actually starting to become a problem. Visa has been harassing me, my cell phone got disconnected, we haven't had real coffee filters in months. I'm looking forward to having a regular pay cheque, especially after 4 months of unlearning how to spend money on frivolous shit.

The source of my minor irritation, I think, is that after working 8 hours a day with no break (did you know Nova Scotia has no labour law that regulates breaks? Or many labour laws at all?) I get home to a house full of people drinking beer. I love beer, but since my bank account is actually in the red right now and I made a promise to myself not to buy alcohol, I've been sober this whole week while the empties pile up around us. I don't know, maybe it's just an indication of my alcoholism that it makes me uncomfortable to be the sober one in the group, or maybe it's just because this week has been so stressful for everyone that I'm hyper sensitive and maybe my friends are just a little too wound up (I had to squash a friendly yet raucous fight happening in the kitchen last night). People are yelling at eachother, fist fights are popping up, people who are normally total non-smokers are smoking cigarettes, important things are getting ignored, it's just been a weird energy at home. I love everyone under this roof very dearly, I'm just feeling like I can't fit in with their games. The only thing I can think to attribute it to is the fact that I'm too broke to get growlered.

I've been using pretty creative means (in my opinion) to cope with my frustration/inability to get tanked. Yesterday was especially productive, as I hosted a meeting to discuss starting up an infoshop in Halifax, watched a bit of a documentary that, while really poorly done, made me want to build a tall bike SO BAD, and had the most epic dumpstering adventure ever.

I can't decide whether I need to just stick it out and get over the fact that my friends can afford to drink and I can't or whether I should just go busk the bar crowd tomorrow night and get like, a really good porter or wheat beer or something, have rowdy fun with the Roarphans, and let

things balance themselves out when I have money next week.

All I've managed to accomplish today is shutting myself in my room and deciding to clean it until 6:30 am when I plan on hitting up the food bank.

Bad sign?

In which I drop the silly title thing since I've realized I'm updating this thing too often and it's getting annoying. Sorry folx.

So (how often do I start sentences with the word "so"? I can't really come up with an alternative!) I am super in love with my living situation right now. My punk rock apartment, The Orphanage, has always been super-rad, but lately it's really outdoing itself. We have two new room mates (one lives in a fort in the living room, the other lives in Ryley's closet) and a near constant supply of guests. Our kitties are adorable, our land lord is practically non-existent, and we live maybe 100 paces from the library in one direction, and a delicious brewery in the other. At the bottom of our street you can see the harbour (and it's wealth of naval vessels...) and at the top of our street is the North Common, which is pretty much what we have instead of a yard. The Orphans (or, Roarphans as we've started to call ourselves since 5 out of the 7 inhabitants now have names that start with "R") have a close relationship with the Commons, and we've spent many a sunny day lounging around on the grass, drinking well concealed and yet refreshing beer, playing "who's that skid?" and "laugh at the bro".

This morning, while having breakfast, I noticed a little green flier on the fridge about events happening on the Commons this summer.

I don't want to talk about the Kid Rock concert. Not even a little bit.

I also don't want to talk about the Relay for Life which just took place, although I honestly think they should re-name their event since I spent a very long time resenting them, thinking they were anti-abortion activists (turns out they raise money to fight cancer...).

The thing that really caught my attention was the Mawio'mi Grand Chief Membertou 400 Pow-Wow 2010 (the tag line is "A Culture to Celebrate, A Time to Share"). At first glance I was like "Oh cool! There's going to be a pow wow on the commons, I'm really glad!", then I read the description. Special event, blah blah blah, end of June, blah blah blah, marking the 400th anniversary of the baptism of Grand Chief Henri Membertou. Baptism, eh? I hope they don't mean what I think they mean....

THEY FUCKING DO! THEY MEAN BAPTIZED CATHOLIC!

Halifax, which was founded by genocidal maniac Edward Cornwallis (who actually put a bounty on the heads of the Mi'kmaq people) is hosting a pow wow to celebrate the first steps the European settlers took to wholly oppress and dominate the indigenous communities of Turtle Island. This is fucking backwards! Why aren't they having their big celebration in St. Mary's fucking Basilica? In a Catholic church?

The write up of the event says that Mebertou's baptism "signalled the Mi'kmaq's desire for peaceful relations with the European nations and helped shape the course of our country's history." So, from my perspective, this country was shaped rather well as here I am, sitting on Cornwallis street (yeah, named after the aforementioned grand asshole founder of this fair city) paying relatively low-rent and enjoying a life essentially free of hardships and oppression. Because I'm a descendant of those fucking European nations! Do you know how "our country" was shaped for the Mi'kmaq?

Genocide.

Residential schools (which were only officially apologized for 2 years ago).

The continued effort by the colonialists to wipe out any sort of indigenous culture or religion, and to white-wash everything and spread the plague of Christianity (and other infectious diseases).

Systematic oppression and racism.

Sub-standard living conditions (this is a total understatement, some canadian reserves don't have doctors or running water).

Cultural appropriation.

Aboriginal women are exponentially more likely to become victims of sexual assault, and aboriginal youth are growing up in a world that has been taught to belittle and abuse them, and many turn to substance abuse to cope.

Well bra-fucking-vo, Samuel de Champlain. What a delightful ball you got rolling there.

As I've mentioned several times, I'm a white kid. I have Scottish and English ancestry. I cannot speak of behalf of the Mi'kmaq community in Halifax. But I am seriously so fucking disgusted. I honestly do not understand how something like this could possibly go unchallenged.

If anyone has any insight, please let me know, cause right now this is just too baffling, and too upsetting.