My good friend Bryan came into town last week and stopped by to visit with me and man, did I have an awesome time. The entire day was pretty much concentrated excellent.
We collaborated on an excellent dinner which Pam quite enjoyed when she got home.
Then Greg stopped by randomly with beer. Random free beer is always the best. When it's some trendy micro-brew from t-dot that's just bonus points.
Afterwards Bryan and I went out to the bars, Pam had to get up early tomorrow so she had to stay home (cry).
We went to Winks but, because of homecoming, we would have been looking at an hour long wait so we went to Scotts Corner instead. We met up with Chris and Chris and Becky at Scotts, had a beer and then went to the Wrecked Room.
I haven't been in the Wrecked Room in years and it was sort of weird being back. Anyway it was still the same old Wrecked Room, loud, dark, full of goths, full of cheap booze and full of drunk people I've known for a decade.
Things got a little bit drunk out.
But, alas, I am getting older, I was a total wreck on Sunday and accomplished almost nothing except for recovering from staying out getting drunk on Saturday.
Oh well, made up for it the last two days. Got my post-draft 1 edits inputted for the first four chapters and wrote another insert. Oh, and I have the prologue for Volume 2 (working title: Walking the Radiant Trail: The Great Desert) down.
Don't know if I mentioned this previously but the working title for my oft-mentioned book is Walking the Radiant Trail: The Civilized East - look for it on bookstore shelves...
in a few years...
I hope.
Currently reading We - one of the original classics of Sci Fi. Bryan recommended it and, well, I wasn't going to read that Dan Brown novel. :)
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
It's Time to Unite the Left
I am a socialist.
This puts me to the left of approx. 99.9% of the people in the USA and even to the left of the mainstream left wing in Canada.
With that being said I am disgusted with the left in Canada and the USA and not because they are too far to the right.
My disgust with the left in this country is because the leftists in this continent are letting an ultra-conservative minority dictate the agenda.
We have been trapped in the morass of single-issue advocacy for far too long. People on the right identify themselves as "conservatives". People on the left instead have created a dozen names, a hundred advocacy groups, often acting at odds with each other.
Partly the political parties are to blame. The Democrats are a centre right party. In Canada our most left wing political party is the Bloc Quebecois which only fields candidates in a single province because it, like most of the popular leftist movements is a single-issue movement! The next most left wing party, the NDP, has moved so far to the right that they have lost any semblance of support from the modern left.
It's time for the left to get it's act together. American leftists: organize! I know many of you have anarchist leanings and distrust anything resembling authority but, get this, central organization lets you act more effectively at a mass level. I'm not knocking grass-root activism, it's necessary, but it's also necessary to have organization, leadership, people making sure all the activists are pointing in the same direction, working toward the same goal.
Canadian leftists: we need to organize too. We also need a new political party. We need a leftist party that will work openly with the Bloc and that will remain true to leftist ideals rather than becoming the union face of the Liberal party.
An election is coming. After this election we will either be stuck with a Liberal government (conservative) or a Conservative government (neo-fascist). Our best hope is that the bloc sweeps quebec and the liberals take a minority government with a bloc balance of power.
But now is the time to start organizing, not for the election that is upon us but for the one after that. Canada has a vibrant left wing. It's time they got off their collective asses and started marching together for a common cause - taking back the reins of this country from the tyrants.
This puts me to the left of approx. 99.9% of the people in the USA and even to the left of the mainstream left wing in Canada.
With that being said I am disgusted with the left in Canada and the USA and not because they are too far to the right.
My disgust with the left in this country is because the leftists in this continent are letting an ultra-conservative minority dictate the agenda.
We have been trapped in the morass of single-issue advocacy for far too long. People on the right identify themselves as "conservatives". People on the left instead have created a dozen names, a hundred advocacy groups, often acting at odds with each other.
Partly the political parties are to blame. The Democrats are a centre right party. In Canada our most left wing political party is the Bloc Quebecois which only fields candidates in a single province because it, like most of the popular leftist movements is a single-issue movement! The next most left wing party, the NDP, has moved so far to the right that they have lost any semblance of support from the modern left.
It's time for the left to get it's act together. American leftists: organize! I know many of you have anarchist leanings and distrust anything resembling authority but, get this, central organization lets you act more effectively at a mass level. I'm not knocking grass-root activism, it's necessary, but it's also necessary to have organization, leadership, people making sure all the activists are pointing in the same direction, working toward the same goal.
Canadian leftists: we need to organize too. We also need a new political party. We need a leftist party that will work openly with the Bloc and that will remain true to leftist ideals rather than becoming the union face of the Liberal party.
An election is coming. After this election we will either be stuck with a Liberal government (conservative) or a Conservative government (neo-fascist). Our best hope is that the bloc sweeps quebec and the liberals take a minority government with a bloc balance of power.
But now is the time to start organizing, not for the election that is upon us but for the one after that. Canada has a vibrant left wing. It's time they got off their collective asses and started marching together for a common cause - taking back the reins of this country from the tyrants.
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