a rolling stone waiting to be set in motion

I owe kirk a huge apology. Sorry, i've been busy, but I know that that is not enough.
The I Agree With Doug page (link to your right) is finally finished. So please go and see the completed page in all its glory!

This blog has a lot of history. Almost three years. I can go back and read the crazy stuff I wrote when I was in bible college, read about my summer as a garbage man and so much more. I intend to keep this blog running but I feel that I should inform you that as of now, I plan to do most of my posting here:

http://threemenandababy.blogspot.com/

However I will maintain this blog (ie not delete) too keep the history and also incase my co-bloggers(?) decide to bail on me. HOpefully we can keep the new blog going.

So update your bookmarks and links and get ready for a blogging revolution!

ya, So I probablly failed it. BUt like I said, if I do the math then I should round out with a D or a C this semester can I can work my butt of next semester to bring it up to a C or B. we'll see how she plays out.

What about me? well, the cold is still strong. I'm looking forward to the Johnny Cash movie coming out. Johnny Cash was a punk, I like him.

Also downloading some old school punk (I got out of punk for a long time but now that i'm back in I seem to be stuck). Social Distortion is good times. listening to Prison Bound.

Oh here's a great free download from Anti-flag. nice little acoustic song.
1984-MP3
Lyrics

I update now because I have a final tomorrow morning at 8am. Also I have this hacking cough/cold, the kind where your whole chest heaves as you cough and you cough up flem... or possibly stomache lineing. Anyways this exam will be killer, multiple choice, short answer and 4 ESSAYS. (who puts four essays in a second year midterm?!?). It's gonna be rough.
remember how those high school teachers said that you would need life to function after high school? they were right. I mean I don't ever use math in class, however I do need it for things like this:
If my labs are woth 25% of my final mark for this semester, and my mid-term is worth 25% then and my lab average is B+ then if I can somehow manage to bs my way through (I hard thing to do for research) and come up with a C then my overall average should be about a B-. which is good enough! so here hoping I can pull this one of at 8:30 AM tomorrow.
back to the books (and then simpsons, war at home and family guy, and then back to the books again!)

From Pensees by Pascal

"We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching.

Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so"

So I wish I had somthing really witty and funny to update about, but I got nothing. oh the monatony of university life (I still like it more then a job).
Oddly enough the only thing I've really asked for this christmas is books. this is odd because I don't really have anytime to read non-class books. But i'm really intrested in reading 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism' by Max Weber. I wonder what my mom thinks when i ask for titles like this.
Also I've been catching up on my dvd of sliders. Good times.

Plans for after graduation (thats 3-4 years from now)
1) Move in with Kirk for a year. actually first ask kirk if I can move in then do it. Too be honest I just recetnly found out about Kirk's new sexy body and chances are by the time I'm out of here he'll be married. So I might fast track to get out early, we'll see.
2) With the huge amounts of money i've made while living with kirk on the island, i'll go and life in australia for a few months. To be honest I've never had an urge to go to australia, not really my kinda country. But Caleb is there (for now) so it will be worth a stop.
3) Spend some time in Scotland. Go to the MacKenzie traditional lands, get caught up with the ancestors.

thats it for now, but as long as exam time is approaching I might as well keep dreaming. better days ahead

taken from a conversation with Kirk Perry
OK, so as many of you can tell from the picture at the above, i've grown my hair out and grown a 'beard' (it's a weak beard, but it's MY beard). Anyways, needless to say I'm holding out for the part of Jesus in the churches passion play this year. We've never had a fat Jesus and I think that that is just ridiculous. Why couldn't Jesus have been fat?!? I mean ya, he used to be a carpenter (which would probablly mean he was buff) but he didn't do that for the last three years of his life. Imagine if you gave up your work out routine for three years, you'd probablly get fat too. And he could eat as much food as he wanted. I mean he fed the crowds and had 12 baskets left!!! That was leftovers for a midnight snack. I mean he probablly stayed up late that night cause he had to study up cause he knew the pharisees would confront him the next day. You gotta be well studied if you're going to attack the pharisees verbally. And let's face it Jesus had some stress. I mean the last supper- that was total stress eating! Just a little comfort food. So I will ask again, Why can't there be a fat Jesus. There has never been a fat Jesus in our passion play. For that matter, there has never been an ethnic Jesus, which is strange since Jesus was ethnic.

This is a quick response to anon (about 2 posts down in the comments).
Who do you work for? You rip apart pepsi but try to portray coke as an innocent victim. I smell a coka cola manager! (although probablly more likelly a fat diabetic guy who doesn't wanna give up his coke). I don't have time to give an indepth researched answer, so instead i'll just uneducatedly rant:

"With respect to Coca Cola, the problem with violence against union activitists (and citizens for that matter) in Columbia is more a national, systemic problem there than a Coca Cola problem..."

So your defence is 'everyone is doing it". I went to highschool and I had decent parents, I know that that defence doesn't hold up in court (at least parent court). If Coke is such a great company why aren't the leaders in creating a safe working enviroment in these troubled nations. Instead they go into poor countries and get away with as much as they can. This is one (of the many) problems of economic globalization, it leads to deregulation espicially in human rights and the envirmoent. thank you WTO.

"At any rate, the International Union of Food Workers, et. al. (IUF) represents workers in Coca Cola plants in 23 countries, and they do not believe that Coca Cola Intl. is behind the violence in Columbia. They also do not support the boycott, as what good does it do to stop buying products made by union labour in 23 other countries..."

Here's the thing about unions. I like unions. They are usually good. But often union heads don't always represent the intrest thier workers, and in some cases the unions heads will out right sell out thier workers. The IUF is an international union representative. So if people boycott coke in lets say north america or europe (where many campus are starting to ban coke) Then coke sales will drop and this will eventually trickle down so that the IUF will also get less money from less union dues, etc. Also with such a large union it's more then possible the some of the leaders in the IUF are being 'taken care off' by coke. I don't care what some international union organization seated safely in Geneva has to say. Lets ask the workers getting shot or the people being force fed bottles of coke because the corporation used up all thier water. Of course coke will want to avoid boycotss. In places like grocery stores, people prefer to buy pepsi. Coke is the number one seller because of things like exclusive contracts with universities and high schools, etc.

"Another country with a horrible human rights record is, of course, China. Heard any calls for boycotts of their products lately?

"

yes, I have. It's called free trade. It's an effort to create fair trading policies within the context of this globalized economy which will lead to better working conditions for places like China. But please remember that we were talking about Coke, a transnational corporation (TNC). China is a country. Under the current economic globalization (from now on i'll just say globalization) these TNC's will go to countries where they can get labour for as low as possible and in a country with as few regulations as possible. Uncer this system thing like the WTO lobby for these TNC's and try to get even lower regulations (usually shooting down any enviromental complaints, etc). So third world countries tend to de-regulate and develop poorer working conditions to appease the TNC's and convince them to set up shop in thier country. Once the TNC's are in the country, if the country or the people try to create better working conditions by creating more enviromental regulations or forming unions, increasing minimum wage, etc then either the WTO will shoot them down or else the TNC will just pick up and go to an even poorer country, devastating the first countries economy. I'm not saying that China is innocent, but it's because in large part of the TNC's that places like CHina have such shitty conditions. This is like economic globalization 101.

"The attached article from last month's Economist (an extremely reliable source of information) has more on Coke's efforts to rectify the problems."

the only person the actually interviewed in this article was from coca-cola management. They didn't take the time to go talk to the researcher in India or anyone else. They quoted other people but only interviewed a coca cola manager. That seems a tad biased to me.

"Pepsi is worse than Coke, and a quick internet search (of reliable, more mainstream sources) will reveal it has a history of union busting and disruptive practices, as well as the same water issues in India. "

Just because somthing is mainstream doesn't make it reliable. CNN is, in my mind, a joke. And Fox News... well, it just makes CNN look good. These things become mainstream because they have money behind them. News is a buisness, and it is often owned by large corporations. The corporations want thier intrests met (hence they buy news stations). And because somthing is not mainstream doesn't mean it's wrong. I often read the Socialist Worker. Clearly a left wing newspaper, but I have a friend in journalism who said that despite it's bias, it is considered a very dependable resource. Everything has to be taken on a case by case basis, you can never totally trust any source all the time. It's also this comment that you made that leads me to believe that you have a bias for coke.

"While the anti-globalization crowd (a bunch of white middle-class kids looking for a cause if I ever saw one...) pick on Coca-Cola, the IUF indicates that Pepsi keeps rolling along"

a couple of things. First of all are you seriously trying to make Coke out to be a victim? A multi billion dollar corporation that controls the lives of thousands of workers and affect millions of consumers is getting picked on?!? Stop trying to gain sympathy for coke through victimization. I don't feel sorry for the company.
Second "a bunch of white middle-class kids looking for a cause if I ever saw one" what the fuck does that mean?!? ya, i'm white, middle class (maybe not as middle-class as I used to be, but thats beside the point), so now my opinion doesn't matter? sorry for the 'racial' and socio-economic class that I was born into. If I was a poor black kid or a rich white kid would my opinion be more or less valid? I'm not 'looking for a cause" like any cause will do. This is a real cause, workers rights, human rights and the enviroment. yes thats very broad but they are things that are worth fighting for no matter what your socio-econmic status is. so please don't try to make my opinions invalid because I am part of a majority. I also think that the downside of economic globalization far out way the good sides, but thats an entirely other debate (for which I have no time).

"Question: Why does a group of activists calling for boycotts in defence of unionized workers not have the support of those unions?"

Who says we don't have support of the workers? I've already explained the down side of unions (very briefly). Heres a piece of gold from good ole wikipedia:
"SINALTRAINAL is a Colombian food industry labor union. They have repeatedly tried to form unions in Columbia for workers of Coca-Cola and have documentation of many members or leaders being murdered, kidnapped, and tortured. They are a central focus in the ongoing Stop Killer Coke movement[1] across college campuses." The IUF only represents workers who are unionized (probablly more in europe and north america). Coca Cola doesn't allow the columbians to get unionized and so then the IUF doesn't represent coca cola workers in columbia. So of course they are going to downplay any violence by coke in that country because they don't want thier workers in the richer countries to be affected. They turn a blind eye.

FINALLY, The reason why I talk about coke so much is not because I think pepsi is innocent or 'less bad'. It's because I was raised on coke, I love coke, I'll probablly die 10 years earlier then I should because of Coke. Really only my friends read this, and they know I love coke, so I used coke because I wanted to show that even though I was raised a coke kid I could still see the bad sides of this corporation.

Anon- if you're not a white middle class kid, then what are you (since it seems to matter so much). why don't you post your e-mail or a link to your website next time.

I went like a day and a half without internet and it feels like forever. For somereason our wireless network stopped working so I had to buy a ethernet cord. Being the typical man, I didn't bother to measure anything, I just went out and bought the biggest cord the store had (100 ft). So 40 dollars later I realize I could have bought a 50 ft cord for $10 less and spend that $10 on a small hawiain pizza and a coke (eerrr I mean a non brutal pro-union cola product). Anyways I have a lot to do today so I'm gonna find another way to procrastinate for another 4 hours.

looks like I was going pretty crazy last night. oh well got it done... now think of somthing intresting to talk about! I've got nothing in my life, so why don't we start with a corporation spotlight.
Coca-Cola, as most people know, this is my favortie soft drink, very delicious and helps when studying late nights as the caffine and sugar give a buzz that I believe to be better then coffee. But lets look at this corporation through alternative news sources:
Coke in India
-Causing Severe Water Shortages for Communities Across India
-Polluting Groundwater and Soil Around its Bottling Facilities
-Distributing its Toxic Waste as "Fertilizer" to Farmers
-Selling Drinks with Extremely High Levels of Pesticides
more

Coke in Columbia
"To date, there have been a total of 179 major human rights violations of Coca-Cola's workers, including nine murders. Family members of union activists have been abducted and tortured. Union members have been fired for attending union meetings. The company has pressured workers to resign their union membership and contractual rights, and fired workers who refused to do so."

"Most troubling to the delegation were the persistent allegations that paramilitary violence against workers was done with the knowledge of and likely under the direction of company managers. The physical access that paramilitaries have had to Coca-Cola bottling plants is impossible without company knowledge and/or tacit approval...."
more

So On

Doesn't go down so smooth now, does it? (or maybe it still does, there are a lot of apathetic people who read this)

ya, so five cups of coffee and a caffine pill were not enough. i'm going to bed, i'll get up at 7 and try to continue this bad boy. Why am I telling you guys this? no one cares about my homework life... well... my home work life is the only life I have. I'm not even cool enough to be a geek anymore.

after 4 cups of coffee i'm no further along. however I did have a good conversation with a new friend. so the night is not a total waste. I can get this assignment done by 2 am, thats my goal... here we go!

So I'm on my second cup of coffee and stare-ing at a blank Word document (or at least i was) and trying to get pumped to do this assignment which is due tomorrow (it's only worth 15%). Like all my assignments this semester, i've left it till the night before because I knew that it would cause me to think and thinking sucks. Anyways, because of the bereavment group I'm in, I can get a letter written by a counsellor to get extensions, etc. So i was thinking about getting a letter and then taking it into my prof/ta and explaining it to them. But then that reminded me of high school. In OAC I remember I stayed after class, it was law class, and trying to explain to the teacher how I needed to write the extension on a different day because I had to help take my dad to the hospital (i think in kingston or maybe ottawa or maybe toronto) and then I broke down crying. He didn't really know what to say. 3 years is a long time, but the rest of my life is an even longer time. anyways i'm gonna try to write this mofo by tomorrow

clam chowder= good. pizza= better. sleeping away the afternoon when you should be doing homework= not so good.

Today is special. Today I'm trying somthing new (food wise). Now people who know me know that I am renouned for my like of trying new things. pizza is my staple and anything in between is just filler till the next pizza. Anyways the other day My mom bought me New England Clam Chowder. I'll be honest, I think it's going to be gross. But i'm deterimened to try it.(maybe by watching my favorite new englander on tv) I'll report back in a couple of hours or days with my experience. Here's to new things.

hey,
so i've being pretty emo lately, being emo sucks (you can tell when I'm being emo cause I post more on here. When I only post like once a week it means that things are going pretty good)

anyways I've learned that when i'm feeling emo not to post anything about it on the net, cause i'll spill my guts, and once someone reads it, you can't really take it back.

I miss the Parslow road days. If there was a single period of my life that I could live in, that would be it! Burning down the Poelman house was the best thing I ever did! (there I said it).

so last night was interesting! I've started going to IS (international Socialists). THey are marxists socialists (in a basic form- they want socialism which will eventually become communisim). I personally am not sure If I ascribe to this type of socialism, I guess I kinda feel like I'm more a democratic socialists (like the NDP). BUt anyways, thats all side notes. Before I wen to the meeting I was reading my propaganding textbook- VERY INTRESTING)
It gives the history about how propaganda really started to be formed in the Roman empire. And many of the main points developed then are used today. So in this context (of highly developed propaganda (arguing skills)) comes Augustus ceaser (after Julius). He was super good at propaganda. He was the grandnephew of Julias, and when old Julius died he adopted Augusts as is son. Augusts played this up and since Julius was considered divine, Augustus encouraged the idea that he was 'the song of god'. So along comes in this historical context and he says 'give unto cesar what is cesars and give onto God what is Gods'. So before when people tried to wuote this verse it was usually about not living for money or somthing like that, but it's actually so much more. Jesus is blatantly defying the king. It's a big FU to old Augusts. anyways, I thought that was super intresting.

anyways after the IS meeting we went to the pub to hang out and some of us got on the discussion on religion, marxism etc. It was really cool though cause we talked about early christianity and it's similarities with communism (they knew more about a lot of it then me) and then how once the romans realized they couldn't beat it (after trying to feed all the xians to the lions) the basically joined on. BUt they just didn't 'join' they took thier developed propaganda and made christianity something that could be used to control the people (marxists idea- religion is used to control the people) and since then christianity has been a tool of the powerfull to excert control (ie Bush). I mean did Constantine really have a vision of the cross (by this sign, you will conquer)which was send to him by God so he could conquer by the sword and spread? or was he simply well educated in propaganda and made it up so he would have solidarity in controlling the people? anyways, I guess my point is that I was suprised that some marxists have spirituality (i shouldn't judge or pre-suppose, also they are for spirituality but against any formal religion) and was glad that both my text book and IS group reminded me that Jesus was a punk.

side note- IF from almost the very beginning christianity became a tool used by those in power to control the people, and has mainly stayed that way, is it possible that today we not only have a not very good form of christianity, but in fact a corrupt form of it?

wow that was long. did anyone make it to the end?