NYE=Not Your Event?

NYE events suck. They are usually blatant money-grabs that charge you an arm n' a leg, serve you warm champagne in a plastic cup and have the same entertainment you could expect any other lame club night. A lot of emphasis is placed on the turning of the Gregorian calendar. I think I'll ring in the new year w. a few friends, or find an event that doesn't smack of exploitation and line the pocket of some lame, egotistical and pompous amateur event promoter, like so many I've known.

Hey-sus is gonna...

Bodybuilder#: "who the hell is this guys doing the pelvic thrusts behind me?"

BB#2: "dunno man, says his name is Jesus, wants us to call him the son of man or something, just keep ignoring him, n' maybe he'll go away."

BB#1: "why does he keep talking how our wives must love our muscles, doesn't he realize we're gay?"

Jesus: "*censored*"

quotes from the DTES polls

"what's your name and I'll check if you are on the voter's list"
"fuck off!"
"is that your first name or your last name?"

"I don't vote, natives don't matter anyways."
"sure they do."
*slam*

"I moved here to get as far away from my family as possible, they are bureaucrats"

"I grew up as a ward of the state- not in foster care"

"It's good to see you here- I thought they'd forgotten about us"

"they are all a bunch of crooks anyways, why should I vote?"

"i've never voted in my life but I want to this time."

"this is real. this is what you get. this is a real honest neighbourhood, if you get in with people, someone's always got your back. some people do really well here, other's come here to disappear. Some people come here and die."

"i haven't got any time, i've got to go out and get a light"

Rockin' the vote in the DTES

I am registering people to vote in the DTES (Downtown Eastside) and in the next few days and weeks, I'll be posting some stories about getting Vancouver's poorest citizens to register for the polls. I've signed up a lot of people who have never voted, or not voted in decades. BC will make a difference this time and the election may be close. I have to remain painfully apolitical and non-partisan while doing this work.

When people have no home, the last thing on their mind is politics.

I picked up some work registering people in the Downtown Eastside to vote. I'm going into the SRO hotels and signing people up. I feel like one of those people who registered black voters in the south in the early 60s. I just started tonight and I have seen blood spatters on a door frame, countless doors that had been forced with prybars countless times and a real, genuine, small-caliber bullet hole in an interior window. I've seen bullet holes in buildings before, having seen many a structure that still exhibited WW2 damage and made a few bullet holes in things myself, growing up in a family with hunters. This was without question a bullet hole. I've never seen one inside before.

People are friendly for the most part, but the hopelessness that is apparent in so many of them is hard to see. It does make me really want to try to get as many SRO residents out there voting as possible.

tookie is dead

I only recently learned about Stan "Tookie" Williams and the State of California has just executed him. The day I read his story was the day I signed the petition to save him.

Aside from the fact that revenge-killing is wrong, no matter who does it, this man was a changed man, who did work to create peace between rival LA gangs and was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. As much as I love California in some ways, the fact that a state controlled by Arnold Schwarzenegger killed a Nobel nominee is going to bug me for some time. America needs to change. It has become such a reprehensible nation, I don't even want to go there anymore.

look at the 2x4 in your own eye, before criticizing the splinter in anothers...

I love paraphrasing Jesus, fulfills my messianic zeal...

I think if someone is overly concerned with the lives of others, to the point of ignoring their own existence, that person is suppressing some major issues that they perceive in the life they have created for themselves.

Your life is your own, other people's lives are their own. That proverb has been repeated many a time and is true now as it ever has been. Make your life what you want it to be and don't worry so much about what others think of you. Also, don't worry so much about the lives of others unless it affects you directly.

That is all.

today's blog posting

will be a link to another blog posting. it strikes me as strange, that I've had so little time and inclination to update my blog lately, considering how much free time I have right now.

north-west germans have a Schwarzer Peter myth too and make of it what you will, the tradition will probably stay. there's a lot of unfairness in the world, isn't there? i do think that it is an oversimplification to say that S.P. represents a black man, but I do agree that over the years, he did attain some "moorish characteristics". but then again, if I showed you some of the german books i read as a little boy, with thumb-sucking children getting their thumbs lopped off by tailors with giant scissors, you'd probably be shocked.

Make sure it's the dec 5th 2005 entry you read.

I miss Amsterdam, I miss it, miss it, miss it!