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All of the big chain stores like Home Despot and the ‘big blue blood sucker’ carry really cheap tools that have a huge mark-up and the mom and pops and smaller chains like tractor supply and true value have to follow suit. The mom and pops might carry some better stuff but not in the pruning department. Meanwhile back on the internet you can’t find a decent objective product review because advertisers turn out to be the real ghost in the shell.
A pruning saw is like a chef’s knife and I’m stuck using a corona with a plastic handle I know is gonna break soon cause I almost broke it yesterday. Argh! I want carbon steel and a good handle.
While we’re on the subject. Anybody have any suggestions about santouku kitchen knife. I read reviews that suggested global but I feel like there must be a cheaper hand made Japanese option out there.
Please let me know what kitchen knife you use, xmas is rolling up and I don’t have kids so…
Oh here are photo’s from thanksgiving. Eat your heart out.
Lately I have been daydreaming allot it seams. I guess that’s what happens when you do 40 plus hours of hard manual labor a week. I daydream about all kinds of stuff, how to save the world, how to make money, building a natural building, painting, where I went wrong, embarrassing things that happened, etc. The thoughts usually start with feeling tired or being irritated by something, then realizing it, then cursing my job, then thinking of a way out or just thinking, to keep my mind occupied and my attitude positive.
I also daydream in the car listening to NPR. Recently the presidential race has been on the news. With McCain and Giuliani running I’m really afraid the Republicans are going to win. How would that be. I feel pretty paranoid about the republicans going further down the 1984 totalitarianism track if the genes are passed down a generation. I really think the Dems better throw all of their weight behind Obama and Edwards and politely ask Hillary to get stuffed. She is definitely not going to win against McCain or Giuliani and that’s that. People just have no idea what scumbags those two are. People think Giuliani is a great guy, grrrrr. If you spineless Liberal collaborators out there in lala land think anti war sentiment is gonna count for anything with Hillary against Giuliani you’re hopped up on goof balls. So I’ve been daydreaming about saving the world by spending all of my free time supporting Obama somehow, or at least defaming Giuliani and Clinton. Like with a website or something.
I’ve also been daydreaming about another story on NPR. The plans for an OLF in Beaufort County. I can’t figure out exactly how, but it seems the Navy is under the assumption that they can take a fat dump on the popular sentiment of eastern North Carolinians and plop a water fowl slaughtering death field right next to one of our wildlife reserves. So I’ve been daydreaming about chaining myself to a bald cypress out in the poquosin swamp.
It just happened that my work took me all over eastern NC from Oriental to Maysville, Pitch Kettle, Fort Barnwell, and Snow Hill. There is allot of history around here from the Tuscarora War, to the Civil War, Prohibition, Lynchings, Civil Rights, to the present.
The weatherhas been great lately. Great daydreaming weather except last night and this morning with the storms and all. I had the flu. I got my order from Dallas Bonsai of a couple pots, Akadama soil, and a couple supplies. I potted my first Bonsai from found plants. They are a Japanese Maple and a Trifoliate Orange Flying Dragon both were growing as weeds on job sites in Chapel Hill. Hopefully they’ll live. The flu is a great excuse for a three day weekend as far as I’m concerned. After a couple Tylenol I feel fine. I’m not sure if anybody is reading this so I’m having a hard time figuring what I should write about. I’m pretty sure nobody cares what I think.
I’m a little concerned that Greenville NC’s Spazzatorium Galleria was effectively shut down by the GPD recently. The Spazzatorium Galleria was an amazing Art and Music space set up in a storefront Downtown near the police station. It survived off of volunteer support and small donations from visitors. Incredible bands from all over the US and overseas have played there. As many know, a precedent exists which can illuminate the plight of the Spazzatorium Galleria and unfortunately continues to shine a fowl light on some functionaries of Greenville political class.
Early on in my tour of duty in Greenville, Backdoor opened the skatepark downstairs and began hosting music events. Nothing like this had happened in Eastern NC before, a Skatepark hosting alternative music and occasional art exhibitions! The culture that grew up around it was incredible, vibrant, intelligent, even fierce at times. Many, many people were very inspired by the dynamic that arose. Many have gone on to produce wonderful art, music, culture, etc.
However part of what fueled the energy of that scene, was that at all times we felt like it was going to be snuffed out in infancy. Not that that’s good, it would have been much better, much more vibrant, much safer if we hadn’t felt like the police were going to come shut us down at any point, if so much energy hadn’t bee turned to negativity.
Some who were there then or have been recently may not know how close backdoor actually came, many times, to shutting down. It was always about to shut down! Thanks to the devotion of Backdoor supporters it never did. One of the most serious hurdles Backdoor had to jump has particular pertinence to the current state of the Spazzatorium Galleria. The then Chief Fire Inspector effectively shut down the Skatepark at Backdoor for a time. Their was no way Backdoor could afford what the inspector required. Funny thing is, a friend of mine was living in an apartment owned by the inspector at the time. As I remember that apartment didn’t meet basic housing and fire safety codes. To make a long story short Backdoor got some cheep legal advice and found out that half of what the inspector demanded wasn’t necessary. Volunteers fixed a few things that had to be changed and that particular incident sort of died out. Though that wasn’t the last time Backdoor had to stand it’s ground against all types of weird forces in the city especially the GPD.
So this time as many times before they have been successful in shutting down a bright young community space. Again they have trampled on the hopes of energetic young people. Again they have denied the community at large the opportunity to build a culture that can sustain itself. They have undermined the attempts of bright people to sustain the hope and energy that is so obviously lacking Down-east, energy that could be the lifeblood that could pull our area out of economic depression, they have done their bit to ensure that the brain-drain that plagues Down-east can continue.
To make my point plain, how can Downtown ever become an Uptown if Greenville keeps stifling the culture that develops naturally. And what can we do to stop this stifling of community spaces. What can we do to remove these silly obstacles to developing a mutually supportive culture in Greenville?
Well let’s see… write your congressman, nah, how about a letter to the editor? Well actually as unradical as that is I think it could work, (shit did I just say that? alright REV-O-FUCK-ING-LUUUUTION!!! OK, that’s better). Anyway… I posted to the Reflector.com forum, yep and I think somebody close to the situation should write a letter the editor. I feel like there are people at the Daily Reflector who would be interested in this if they understood what a serious pattern this is. I wish someone at the Reflector would, as I posted to their forum, “look into this and interview the folks who created the gallery.” I feel like it would be very useful to the fledgling arts community if dialogue with the community at-large would open up. I asked the reflector to go to the Spazzatorium Galleria’s myspace profile (http://www.myspace.com/spazzgallery) and set up an interview. I wish an open dialogue with the GPD would happen about this deal. Another thing that has seemed to work in the past has been sending folks to city council meetings. Actually that never has really worked. But I think it could if things were put to them clearly. It’s a good way to draw attention and as far as building proactive dialogue it may be all that is needed.
I wonder what it is about that neighborhood near the police dept? Why are they keeping businesses out? I mean they are, someone is, if it was affordable to be there someone would be. Not that it should be gentrified. It should stay cheep. But hell the arts folks need some place to be, especially more radical artists.
It seems that the bureaucrats are paranoid that the artists are on drugs or something. I feel like that’s pretty likely, many, even most cops I’ve met think any young person with a piercing is a druggy. There is a reason they think this stuff, it’s basically because they see it on TV, but they are also often advised that this is the case by various greater institutions like the criminal law schools and various task forces etc. That’s a whole topic unto itself. They should be made to understand that that’s not the way it really is. That the young arts community are energetic dedicated bright people who are just trying to get their lives off of the ground, not stereotypes or freaks.
This is what I posted at Reflector.com; ( “They are simply trying to build a vibrant and mutually supportive community. They are trying to get art and culture off the ground in Eastern NC. It’s not a joke, it may be only a handful of energetic people, it always is. That’s exactly why they cannot contend with the city this way. They need and deserve support from the rest of the community. They have good intentions. It is not CSI Miami or whatever drug gang scenario the “City Hall” et-al seem to think it is.
As long as creativity is stifled this way, right beside a school with a giant art, drama, and music dept. like ECU, a terrible tension will be felt by young artists. They’re not hippie druggies, their not yankees, they are for a great part, young people from Down-east who want to build a vibrant future for their home” )
My generation Down-east has grown up witnessing the struggle for a decent economy there. One thing that must happen to get the east going is we have to stop the Brain-drain. A struggle is going on to make the Schools, Colleges, and Universities better. What good is that if the people who would have left for school leave anyway. It’s bad enough that jobs are hard to find, on top of that every time you try and build something for yourself bureaucrats are jumping on your back. There is little tolerance for diversity of any kind, this extends to racism and classism. This intolerance puts young Artists on the same side as working people, the poor, and minorities, and facing similar though not as drastic repression. Personally I’d rather live in a place with a vibrant community like Athens GA, or Austin TX, even if it meant I didn’t make as much. And that’s exactly why I don’t live in Greenville. There are many people Down-east who can’t deal with any sort of change. It is them who are throttling the place to death.
Please do what you can to get people to open up and communicate. Support community and volunteer spaces any way you can. If that doesn’t work simply occupy the place. When the cops tell you to leave, just don’t. Call the news. Put on some masks. Break some shit. That’ll get em talking! Do what you want to do! Don’t’ take no for an answer! For all of our sakes, don’t give up, not even for a moment. Seriously! If you have to, take it all the way, TAKE IT ALL THE WAY!
“We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
In solidarity with those whose hopes have yet again been smothered,
Whit
I can’t hold back any longer. The nasally voice of the future ruling class geek, outside the coffee shop, exchanging self congratulatory “well bush did us a favor by being such an asshole” psuedoeruditious NPR wannabe bullshit, on his cellphone, too loud, has irritated me to the point of sub action, and run on sentence. As you can tell I have little respect for the english language. I’d like you to know as well that, right now I don’t care whether I’m being rational, qualifying my arguments, backing up my facts, alienating anyone, or being at all comprehensible. All I want to do is tell some truth, be somewhat entertaining, and uncompromising, and explain to my friends my position on voting. So here goes.
I woke up this morning and it being wet out, didn’t have to go to work. Having some research to do on how to fix the water pump for our well, I came into town to get breakfast at the wifi enabled, bougy authoritarian, brave new co-op, that is weaver street. I admit that I listened to NPR last night as the votes were coming in. I must admit as well that last night provides minute evidence that American’s have opinions that collate somewhat to current events. However as I go about my day I am struck by the giant wall of sameness and banal normality that exists everywhere around me. The same poor folks at the bus-stop, the same grad student’s at the co-op, the same obscene construction going up down town, the same bottles of thunderbird in the fridge at the tobacco store, the same Audis and Suvs swerving madly up and down the street.
Turn on NPR and you’d think a revolution had taken place. So now that I’m free of the shackles of republican oppression, why am I still poor? Why is everything still the same down to the grittiest grimiest hopeless detail. Tomorrow we will hear reports of more soldiers dyeing in Iraq. Tomorrow we still wont hear the same reports we didn’t hear yesterday of organizers being murdered by government payed assassins four to six hours from here (by plane) in the homeland of a large number of orange county residents. Tomorrow we still won’t hear about the dams going up in central america that destroy irreplaceable habitats, dislocate tens of thousands of peasants who have a life-way that has existed for eons. We won’t hear about the root of the poverty that drives these peasants north away from their pastoral existence to be exploited as wage slaves. We won’t hear about their NONVIOLENT resistance and how they are being murdered for it. Tomorrow we will hear again about how Israel is “preventing Palestinian mortar attacks” by assassinating the democratically elected government of Palestine.
But we won’t hear the whole story if we hear anything at all. Bombings of the PRI headquarters and other targets in Mexico City have been pushed to the back page and out of the news. A real Revolution taking place in Oaxaca and it’s repression by the Fox regime is blacked out by the mainstream, just as the revolution in Argentina was. Yeah remember the few reports from Argentina that made demonstrators seem like mobs of riotous maniacs, when actually they were the whole freaking middle class. We won’t hear about real change taking place across the globe. We won’t hear the real reason for violence across the globe. We won’t hear about how the only way to fill the factories is to push people off of their lands or to maintain military control of every aspect of their lives, such as in Palestine.
Tomorrow we still won’t hear the whole story about the real revolution that is taking place and being repressed across the globe by the sponsors of the democrats, because neoliberal globalization, colonialism, wage slavery, is the democratic parties solution to poverty. That’s not revolution, that is reformation, not as in fixing, but as in shape-shifting. Representatives elected by the majority of Americans will never conquer poverty, they cannot stop global warming, they cannot stop war. They will not, and they cannot do these things because IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO, FROM WITHIN THE SYSTEM THAT NECESSITATES THE EXISTENCE OF POVERTY, WAR, AND INDUSTRIALISM.
No matter who is in power, life will continue to get harder and harder. We will find ourselves confined more and more to the parameters of wage slavery as far as it is expedient to the richest. Unless we are all going to get six figure jobs, all we can do to free ourselves of this prospect is subvert the the basic pretenses capitalism uses to prop itself up. One of those pretenses is democracy.
That is the kernel of it. I don’t vote because it is sick to feed into the lie that there is any justice in the system of wage slavery. It is sick to feed into the lie that we should help the system along because no better one exists. If you believe in justice, if you have compassion for other beings, if you respect the earth and want it to exist for future generations, then you are doing yourself a disservice by feeding the system of capitalist exploitation and the lie of American democracy. Maybe democracy is a good idea, be it direct, representative, or consensus. That is not the point of this article. American democracy is a lie, that is the point. A democracy that ensures the existence of globalized capitol, development, the most privileged country in the world, Empire, is not democratic in a global sense.
So what do I do then? Just slack off? Don’t I have a responsibility to society? Yes I do, and I take my responsibility very seriously. I have a responsibility to my family, my community, and my culture. I am well aware of this and I see clearly that I am in a precarious situation, that it is very difficult to do what is best for humanity, which I love. I absolutely will not buy into the lie of american democracy, capitalism, wage slavery etc. and mislead the people that I love. I will absolutely not cynically go along and work for reform within the system. I will continue to support the ‘movement of movements’ against neoliberal globalization and work for a freer, more just, more sustainable society. I reject the usefulness of industrial capitalism for humanity. I reject American Democracy as long as it is controlled by the wealthy.
I’m not an extremist. I wont advocate the violent takedown of the government as such. I simply think we should take seriously liberty and compassion. Those values have been handed down to us by a culture that has struggled for them for millennia. Unfortunately it is a culture that has learned to use those very ideals adeptly to exploit humanity and the environment. Cynical exploitation isn’t a value that was handed down to me however and neither was gullibility. As long as Globalization is common ideology to American politicians, and the existence of large scale industrial capitalism necessitates that it will be, American democracy will remain anti democratic globally, as it exists to legitimize american colonialism to the American public.
