• Black Friday

    Low-cost, cheap, poorly-made junk is made from fossil fuel products…by slaves. Especially Chinese products.

    Workers aren’t paid fair wages, and their quality of life is dismal. If these global free-trade agreements were not allowed in the first place, more local jobs would be available closer to home. Never forget that free-trade = slave labour.

    Wal-Mart’s profit last year was 120 BILLION dollars. That money did not go towards improving any situation for the suffering it cost. It went into the pockets of families who are already so disgustingly wealthy, keeping them in the lives they’re accustomed to (unfathomably celebrated in mainstream culture).

    Please keep these things in mind when you’re making choices on what to spend your money on this gift-giving season. Every dollar you spend is a vote for the practices, products, and reality of how that thing came into existence.

    Voting for the destructive, harmful, and unhealthy situations for our sisters and brothers on the other side of our home (Earth) means we’re helping to perpetuate bad energy that always come back to us eventually.

    Please don’t vote for slavery, plastics, and green house emissions. Try as hard and dilligently as you can to find locally-made products and avoid purchasing anything that is ultimately not needed.
    Is it for looks? Conversation? Novelty? Convenience? Is it “such a great deal” that you simply can’t resist? You/they probably don’t need it. DON’T BUY IT!

    Not enough people know about what a “good deal” really means. It may be a “good deal” for the amount of dollars you’re voting with, but be assured it’s a disgusting and horrible deal for every link in between. And it is coming back to bite us all in the ass eventually.

  • Radio show podcasts and archive

    This is the link to the RSS feed (raw files)

    Listen now at this  link to my podcast page

    Wed Nov 26th 2014

    song: Edward Francis- Saxaphone
    song: Halsall- When the world was one
    Weather
    The Trews: Ferguson, What value do our laws have?
    Burnaby Mountain: A message from Tamo Campo
    Burnaby Mountain: A message from David Suzuki
    song: Camille- Le Festin
    Your Sense Too, the live call-in show that asks for your two sense

    Wed Nov 19th 2014

    song: Remix of Caribou- Sun
    song: Caribou- Bowls
    song: Bonobo-Cirrus
    song: Scalpel- Sea
    song: My Brightest Diamond- this is my hand (oops)
    song: Blitz the Ambassador- Make you no forget
    song: Kelis- Hooch
    song: Dumbo Gets Mad- Eclectic Prawn
    Weather
    song: Cosmonostro- The Blaster
    song: Watchin Out
    song: Everything Has Changed

    Wed Nov 5th 2014

    song: Swindle- Walter’s Call
    Interview about legal graffiti
    song: Polar Bear- Be Free
    Weather
    song: Synesthette
    The Trews: Can we ditch capitalism?
    Your Sense Too, the live call-in show that asks for your two cents
    song: Scalpel- Siesta
    song: Scalpel- Sea
    song: Scalpel- Transit

  • Fall photos

    A lot of my childhood summers were spent with my Nana Joan in Newfoundland.  As a gift, my mom, Aunt Sherry and myself & Pat flew her out to spend a month with us. Before the month of October, she had never been further west than Toronto.

    It was so great having her here. She loved spending all that time with Fox, and sightseeing around Vancouver Island.

    I’ve updated my September/October photo album to include some of her favourite shots.

    I’ve also started our November album, beginning with Halloween night.

    Click on the “Photo Album” tab at the top of this page, or have a peek, here!

    It took me two hours to transform myself into a reptilian overlord! Thanks to Patrick (who stayed home all night with the baby), I was able to make it to my gig at the Cambie with just enough mescal in my system to kick-start our set off with The Ballad of Henry Lee by Nick Cave and PJ Harvey.

  • Cartoon: March of Tyranny

    Cartoon: March of Tyranny

  • Planetary Culture & The World Game

    Planetary Culture & The World Game

    On the topic of democracy, a person I know poses the following questions:

    1. Are we all qualified to make the right decisions when it comes to our governance, and societal policies? We elect people to do this because there is other work for us to do.

    2.  Would we be overwhelmed by decision fatigue, something that already occurs in our everyday lives?

    To which I replied:

    Interesting questions. The current practice of the global democracies we see today is so non-functional that it could be hardly even recognized as democracy. In fact, so many believe it’s not even. My answer to your question would be: that we are totally all qualified to make those decisions and choices. And the advent of various technologies (like the internet) means that we would still have the time to do our other “work”. I think at this point there could be a major overhaul in every way we do things. Buckminster Fuller had the incredible idea to play the World Game…and that was 60 years ago! Imagine how things might change positively if we actually employed all the technology we have for purposes outside of entertainment and convenience. Starting with a zoomed-out initiative to end nationalism. Check this out, guys! [links]

    About the position paper Plan for Rapid Transition Toward Regenerative Society  http://planetaryculture.com/toward-regenerative-society…

    The actual PDF of the paper http://planetaryculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/PositionPaper_ID4_Internet.pdf

    About the World Game http://bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/world-game

     

  • Making citizen journalism easy

    Greetings, reader.

    As you may know, I have a weekly radio show called The Sweet and Sour Variety Hour, which is a show made up of segments produced by community members. The Radio Malaspina Society is a not-for-profit campus and community radio initiative. The SSVH is a radio opportunity for anyone who wants to share casually with CHLY’s listening audience a radio segment on a topic of their choice, without committing to an every-week spot, and without having to learn any technical skills.  It can be a one-time, or regular occurrence.  Indeed, this has been a chance for citizen journalism to exist in a medium currently dominated by commercial media.

    Recently, I’ve become involved with another non-profit called Mid-Island Television Society. Within the scope of this initiative,  I am extending the opportunity for community members to share programming with a television audience on Shaw Cable’s tv channel. Channel 4 is widely watched by many people in the mid-island area.

    If you,  someone you know, or an organization/business is interested in putting together either a radio show, or a television show, please pass along my e-mail.

    ashta@ashta.ca

Lookit! An Instagram!