Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Thoughts for a damp wednesday

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Monday, January 26, 2009

Skateistan rulz!

If you don't know already, Skateistan is a skateboarding school in Afghanistan. As a recently revived skateboarder, I think its a great way to help the cause of peace in that war torn place. As a proponent for peace, I think if we the people launched a massive campaign of goodwill by supporting organizations like Skateistan, the need for military intervention would be lessened. I'm not saying we can defeat the Taliban with an outpouring of love, but it can't hurt and the kids of Afghanistan need our help. Check out skateistan.org and join me in supporting them.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

unemployed? lets enjoy it and create something useful

I'd like to give a shout out to all my fellow unemployed or underemployed peeps out there in the whole wide world.

I'm sayin instead of stressin out about who we're gonna work for next, lets take a moment to ponder the possibility of creating a new possibility for ourselves.

This economic downturn is a great opportunity for us to sober up, yes, from excessive indulgence, and reassess the drivers of our drive.

The captains of industry and capitalism have been all too happy to slander and demean all people's movements, effectively brainwashing a society into a mass consumerist, environmentally devastating, militarily devastating juggernaut. But it isn't permanent and we are waking up, slowly but surely, and we know its never gonna be like it was up til now. Things are changing and its gonna be okay. It might even be great.

So here's my idea. I've said it before more or less.
We should establish an organization to provide morale support for unemployed folks like ourselves. I'm not talking about the CSC/employment center where you apply for jobs and things, certainly keep doing that but in the meantime, theres still a lot of downtime, time that feels like its wasted. Time that might be better spent at a "labor pool" center where you can just hang out and be...with people in the same boat, without having to spend a cent. The economy is being reorganized and we should at least attempt to organize for ourselves. There are many questions to be wrangled over and we need a place to wrangle with them.

Here's a simple question to start with. Do you want to go back to the system where everyone's lives depend on a cycle of bubbles bursting? Or Shall we continue this system where the workers work harder and harder for less and less and the owners get more and more? Well if the answer is no, then we need to provide an alternative. And I'm saying, we don't need to sit around and wait for someone else to create that alternative for us, we need to actively create it ourselves.

I still think I'm on to something with the Corvallis Open Forum. I haven't received much of any feedback but I still think its worth pursuing. We need more opportunities to just go somewhere, be with other people, have an intellectually stimulating atmosphere and be able to express ourselves without spending a dime.