HERE IS MY

Godspeed

2009-09-07T23:32:00.000-07:00

There's something curious happening within these villa walls: at first it was a stirring and rather electric force that was urging all of us to know each other's hearts (whether we wanted to or not)...and now an eerie silence creeping from emptied rooms that pushes us toward the front door and out.

Tomorrow is our final day in the Invisible Children office - and most of those precious hours will be spent packing our vans and noggins full of final tidbits of information. And while I am extremely excited to pay forward the beautiful gifts that have been afforded to me, I am weary: we've extreme goals to reach and love to make - both of which I am familiar with but neither of which I am fully cognitive of just yet.

On top of that I have found two monsters within myself called impatience and lust for control, and I swear if I don't conquer the two extremely soon that they will obliterate and undo all the good that's been done within me. It took me a solid two weeks to come to terms with that idea, but I have arrived - just as Jason Russell promised. So if you're a praying miss or mister, please clutch your hands and bow your head for me.

Anyway, I guess this (this grand scheme, our efforts to get Obama) is our mission to the moon. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy unknowingly said the words we'd all be living by today:

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will SERVE to organize and MEASURE the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

I believe in us.

Pleased To Meet You

2009-08-25T19:42:00.000-07:00

"The only people for me are the mad ones: the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but BURN BURN BURN like fabulous yellow roman candles, exploding like spiders across the stars."

- Jack Kerouac

Let Me Introduce You To:

2009-08-22T23:39:00.000-07:00

The 2009 Fall Tour Invisible Children roadies.

When you can't afford to purchase someone a gift, just dance. (No Lady Gaga pun intended there).

Love You & Me More

2009-08-20T22:45:00.000-07:00

I watched this movie tonight, and while parts of me resonated with these characters, something else became apparent: the american dream is very real. Here in these United States there is a great divide between parents and children, as well as their ideals relative to success. Whatever I thought to be true about my own family and situation is far less tense than what these kids have to endure...

Today was a good day. I booked two screenings (a feat that seems miniscule but isn't), we did a photoshoot with the most precious gentleman ever - and more importantly - my team mate Myra got engaged! Silly. But the marvelous insight into that situation and the discovery I've found in this atmosphere as a whole is that there truly exists a great brand of guy out there; the kind that cares about more than making uncool things seem cool (fixed gears, mustaches, etc.) and having beers shotgunned into their filthy mouths. It's encouraging. It makes me want to be a better version of myself in some foreign way.

Some Just Whine & Complain

2009-08-15T19:29:00.000-07:00

At the most random moments I find myself lusting for time to stand still, but when it does, I am plagued by this unshakable restlessness that I fear will never go away, especially once life returns to its 'normal state'.

When that time comes and I get too aquainted with city smog and the pollution of my own mind, I wish I could remember the sun (as I did today). It is bright and promising and the colour it puts into my eyes makes everything seem impossibly serene in the moments that shouldn't be. And there's the air too - a limitless supply - that no money can purchase or limit. And we need it. And I hope I won't remember to ask myself why it feels so damn stiffling sometimes.

But not now.
Now I am too busy growing and growing and growing. I can't remember the last time that I rubbed the sleep from my eyes without wishing I could run it back in. Do you know how refreshing that is?

I hope so.
I miss you all.

So Far's a Far Time From Home

2009-08-08T23:10:00.001-07:00

Mandatory Group Jump Shot

Dig Your Toes In

Sunset, Pacific Beach

They Don't Look It - But HUGE Waves

Pacific Beach Cliffs

Spring Street, La Mesa

View From Our Villa

Grand Canyon!

First Steps

2009-08-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

So I've made it- either honestly or willingly - and after a dew days of reflection and a handful of tears, I think I've fallen in love with this lifetime all over again.

For those of you who aren't aware, I am currently living alongside 60 souls who've really got something to boast about (but they dont, because they're humble). Together in San Diego, we're educating ourselves on every aspect of a terrible war raging in Africa as a pre-requisite for the 3 months we will spend on the road, relaying what we've learned to anyone with ears to listen.

It's remarkable, as is the various facts and statistics that are being pumped into my brain during 13 hour days, but right now i'm trying to adhere to the humility of this all: how a single strand of compassion is threading us together and igniting an unforseeable change within. Today the filmmakers told us to "Fucking DREAM IT!" through a heap of laughter, but then reminded us to be humble in our steps. The magnitude of what we're about to do is exciting and deserves applause, but we're not to seek it or even acknowledge it. We've a job to do.

On more specific notes, so far I've:

- Routinely woke up at 4:30am without awaking my 8 roommates

- Realized that dudes in plaid = yumtown

- Learned that Americans are fat for legitimate reasons

- Discovered that there exists a brand of food called 'Krusteaz'

- Gone to In N Out and realized that it ISS as fantastic as everyone says

- Enjoyed the San Diego sunsets and deemed them the best and cheapest visual stimuli around

- Reminded myself that as surely as the sun rises, I will miss the comforts of home

Here's a little something for all of you to feast on for now:

Untitled from Lauranne Boyd on Vimeo.

So It Goes

2009-07-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

It pays (in more ways than one) to have sweet friends, and I’m definitely not lacking. However there is one in particular who comes up strong when she’s not bullying me or leading me into forests largely occupied by swarms of bloodthirsty mosquitoes. Her name is Nada Alic.

After the Northern Exposure roadies skipped town on Saturday night Nada and I navigated our way to Oakville in a beast-of-a-pickup-truck and entertained several big ideas that very well could come to light over the next year or so. Then we slept in her haunted house and woke the next morning to go to a church that wasn’t a church.

…Let me clarify. This place is a massive auditorium called The Meeting House and the premise of it is that it is a place of worship for people who have a hard time going to a church where the congregation is half dead or waaaaay too upitty (see also, Pentecostal). The worship itself is about 15 minutes long, the sermon about 45 minutes, which is then topped and finished by a group QA period. And although I didn’t necessarily find the flesh of this particular sermon to speak to me, the guts of it certainly did and an interesting idea was tossed out:

Be willing to be the answer to your own prayers.

It seems obvious, but I think when we acknowledge the sovereignty of God we sometimes get lazy in assuming that He will take care of all. I certainly do, and even when I feel like I’m being proactive there has got to be bigger strides I can take…

It was a neat weekend. I made the unfortunate decision to watch Twilight for the first time, and unfortunately I am now one of approx. 4, 567, 897 women who want to maul Edward Cullen to death. Rage.

All or Nothing

2009-07-13T19:50:00.000-07:00

Exegetical : To read the Bible for what it says and to extract truth from it no matter what it says

Eisegetical : To take your presupposed ideas and read the Bible through that lens and conform the words to fit what it is you already believe

I Went, And I Stayed

2009-07-13T13:59:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve an incredibly unimportant announcement to make: I went to Warped tour for the first time this year, and it very well may be the last time I ever go. Tragic? Perhaps. But moreso than my lack of attendance for all these future golden years is the lack of talent being demonstrated at such a large-scale tour as this, this year. I mean seriously, who the hell deemed this (left, oh the irony) miss-ter as talented enough to play alongside such acts as Alexisonfire, Flogging Molly and Anti Flag? Even the Millionaires are more deserving, despite having botched their lip synching job during soundcheck. And I dare you to ask Frank Carter to disagree with me.

Anyway it wasn’t all bad: I got to catch up with a few pals that I haven’t seen for entirely too long and somehow managed to (fleetingly) weasel the attention of a fresh-faced Toronto boy who – even if only for a moment – put a little slice of a smile on my face. And there ain’t no harm in that. I also had the most pleasurable experience of seeing Bryanne drunk – like, realllly drunk – which included the awe inspiring sight of her having beer dribbled into her mouth via a canoed piece of cardboard off the floor. First time? Who knows.

I’m leaving soon, and the more I say that phrase the more apprehensive I get. I want this, and there’s a direction in my legs that’s coming from the certainty coursing through my veins. And yet it’s there: the promise that things will never be the same for me but exactly as they were when I left.

Environmentalists are Racist

2009-07-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

When racists – real racists – go off on a tirade, it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. They’re just so shameless and oblivious, you’re thinking, can this guy hear himself?

And when environmentalists go on about Al Gore and ‘going green’, and how there are ‘way too many cars out there’ and there are ‘too many of us’, I find myself cringing and praying there are no Mexicans in the room. I mean surely those bourgeois hippies know it’s primarily Mexicans who are behind the population surge in the U.S. They know you cannot have too many cars without too many people but they won’t say, “Stop breeding you fucking wetbacks!” so they just get mad at cars. When the greeners take it to a global community level, the ethnic bashing gets even worse.

“We should supply contraceptives to all those people in the developing world,” says Norman Myers of the World Wildlife Fund. “Population growth is directly involved in the pollution and the degradation of our environment,” adds Sierra Club head Carl Pope. “Well excu-u-u-u-ussse me for living,” says the Third World…

Environmentalists pretend they only hate gas guzzling SUV’s and other rich American white-people cars, but these only account for a tiny fraction of the cars out there. The mathematical truth is impossible to deny: To say there is too many cars in America is the same as saying, “there’s too many Mexicans in America.” And to say there’s too many cars in the world is to say there is too many non-whites in the world. Sounds like most tree-huggers would like to sink Africa, Asia and South America into the sea.

They kinda already tried. After reading a poorly researched book called Silent Spring that said bug spray DDT kills birds (it doesn’t), environmentalists decided the chemical must be eradicated. Eventually this ban became a worldwide phenomenon, and the Third World was prevented from using the greatest mosquito killer ever made. This lead to millions of deaths.

The tiny South African province of KwaZulu Natal, for example, saw about 50 deaths per year before the DDT ban – a number that shot up to almost 500 the following year. The director general of health services for Uganda called the DDT ban “contemporary colonialism” after watching 50, 000 Ugandan children die of Malaria in 2005. It is an epidemic that has spread across the entire continent, and the dead have the Green movement to thank.

Environmentalists were called out for this a few years ago, but instead of letting the relatively harmless DDT go free and save African lives, they came up with a new plan: nets. That’s right, nets. “Nothing But Nets” is an organization whose ironic mantra ‘Send a net, Save a life’ seems to laugh in the face of numbers – their Bandaid solution can’t even come close to saving the lives that DDT would.

Environmentalists enjoy killing Africans with a lot more than bugs. They also enjoy murdering them with that weird prank where you leave a paper bag of burning excrement in front of someone’s house and anonymously ring the doorbell. The British Department of International Development is pushing a program called ‘Development By Dung’ wherein Africans are encouraged to “not follow the same failed patterns of energy use” and use manure instead of diesel to power their communities. With all due respect to dung, it sucks shit. Lung damage is now second only to diarrhea as a child killer in Africa and it comes from inhaling poo.

Ashesi University’s Kofi Bentil has begged the First World elites to take it easy on all this emission fascism and let the African countries use real fuel. “Please, Europe and America, spare us!” he recently pleaded. “You can cut your own emissions if you want, but don’t tell us what to do. We really have much more serious and urgent threats to deal with.” All Africa wants is the luxury to use a coal-fired power plant to give them one fucking light bulb, and, possibly, a microwave in their homes. Start them with that and they could get healthy, then educated, then organized, then wealthy, then independent, and then maybe worry about solar panels and organic soy. “Nope,” say the environmentalists. “Stick to shit.”

Hardcore environmentalists don’t even want Africans to eat. In 1970 Norman Borlog won the Nobel Peace Prize for inventing genetically engineered food. He has lived in the Third World for decades and his work has saved an estimate one billion lives. However, white upper-middle-class American health nuts in organic cotton pants call his corn ‘frankenfood’ and insist we all go back to the chemical free farming. All of us. Even Africa. Borlog did the math and tried to explain to the greenies:

a) Genetically engineered food is not bad for you
b) We do not inject animal genes into corn. We look at, say, fish genes, and try to figure out how they work – but you can’t make fishcorn. Stop calling it Frankenfood. Especially when you’re talking to Third World politicians who want to make you happy.
c) Organic farming sounds great if you live on Venice Beach and only eat raw food (what a luxury!) but even if your ‘all organic’ plan could be executed, it would only feed four billion of us. That’s 2.6 billion short of the world’s population.

The environmentalists responded, “Fuck you Borlog.” Subsequently, in October of 2002, Zambia had a huge donation of genetically engineered food slapped out of their hands when the president was told it was poison. The country responded by starving. Hippies must have danced with glee when they saw the numbers of bodies pile up to the sky. But hey, this is only the beginning – Latin America has a good 40 million poor people that could do with some suffering!

Not only does the enviro-dogma of “Stop using so much stuff” equal “Enough with the immigrant babies in America,” but environmentalists’ love of bio-fuels says, “Fuck the Mexicans and Mexico, too”. By pushing everyone from gas to ethanol, they have jacked up the price of corn so high Mexicans can’t afford their own tortillas.

In 2005 a kilo of tortillas in Mexico cost sixty-three cents per pound. Today, thanks to the demand for corn now doubling as fuel, the price is over two dollars. Try telling a poor person their grocery bills are going to triple overnight. Sucks right? Look! They’re crying! For the first time in Latin American history, Ramen noodles are overtaking tortillas as the region’s most popular food. (This sounds like a joke but I am serious)

Ethanol is a great way for actors in California to feel better about driving their cars, but it makes poor people starve and it increases global warming and it destroys forests and it inflates food prices globally. Only an elitist racist would tell the Third World that the best way to power an engine is to burn food. Even in America this new demand has raised the price of everything – fifty per cent in some cases. Livestock eat corn, and it all trickles down from there.

When customers at Whole Foods on 14th St. in Manhattan were confronted with this huge hike in food costs, most responded with, "I can take it." These are the same people, by the way, who insist on banning trans fats and have forced the Third World to switch from supplying them partially hydrogenated vegetable oil to the much less cholesterol-y palm oil. This meant dedicating the rain forests in places like Borneo to trans fat-free farms that displace all the aboriginals there, as well as the wild orangutans, and the Sumatran rhinoceroses, and the pygmy elephants. It's a move that the World Bank recently described as "a species extinction spasm of planetary proportions." You would think these hippies would be satisfied with fucking all blacks and browns in the ass. But that still leaves a billion Asians who are just asking for it!

Though Bush is blamed for leaving China out of the Kyoto treaty, the truth is Gore and Clinton just sat on it until their term was up and it was George's problem. This still hasn't prevented environmentalists from taking out a few million Asians. Chinese people love pork more than Mexicans love tortillas. Shit, they love it more than starving Africans love eating genetically engineered food. Unfortunately, ethanol fanaticism has jacked the world price of corn so high that not even pigs can eat. That means in 2007 the price for live pigs went up a whopping seventy-one per cent. And that means poor Chinese starve.

All of Asia is feeling this pinch. Even Indonesians, who are way too Muslim to give a shit about pork, had a riot in Jakarta back in January because bio-diesel had jacked the prices of soybeans through the roof and nobody could afford to eat shit. (Actually, that's the one thing they could afford to eat but Africa had used it all to heat their mud huts).

So environmentalists want Africans to starve, they want Mexicans to stop breeding, and they want all of Asia to do both.

Now, it's possible that Al Gore's fans are just naive kids with their hearts in the right place. But I don't know, I planted about 150,000 trees from 1990 to 1995 and the only people I remember in the forest working sixty hours a week were African exchange students, Native Americans, working class locals, and a few broke students who never talked about the environment once. Once again, the ones screaming, "Keep it real" the loudest are the ones the most full of shit (metaphorically of course -- the ones literally the most full of shit here would be the Africans, unfortunately).

- Gavin McInnes
Death + Taxes Magazine

Descrimination Is Important

2009-07-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

(Click photo for larger view)

Listen

2009-07-09T21:06:00.000-07:00

I am never going to have a twitter account. I will never ‘tweet’ my way through the day, and I simply do not care what you’ve been up to and what everyone else thinks about what you’ve been up to. Seriously, what happened to IRL conversations and the benefits of getting on the blower? Aside from last night, I can’t remember the last time someone called merely to talk, and more outrageously, I can’t remember the last time a dude flirted with me outside the confines of this computer screen and or my blackberry.

Grooooaaaannn. But anyway, I didn’t waste my “valuable” time at work to complain about these shenanigans, I came to tell you all about a specific musician who I think is absolutely brilliant.

*Disclaimer*: Yes, I would do questionable things to m/o with this young buck and perhaps that contributes to the reason I’m writing. However, I’m only 30% serious about that, and 70% serious about my recommendation that you make yourself an acquaintance.

He is none other than The Boogie Man Jordon Daniel. He used to front for a hardcore band from the West Coast called The Gorgeous but now he’s flying solo and doing it well: aka, independently, without being pigeonholed by the music industry, and for free. Who doesn’t like free stuff? Anyway, you can download his album HERE. I don’t support drug use at all, nor do I adhere to idolization, but whatever this man has going on…it works.

On another note and mainly due to the fact that I obviously spend most of my work day doing the precise opposite, I have stumbled across several IC Roadie blogs and now feel a solid mix of apprehension and excitement stirring up my belly. The excitement is for obvious reasons while the apprehension actually brings me back to my pubescent high school days: what if people don’t think I’m sweet in San Diego?

I mean, I’m pretty confident in myself and I know where my heart is, but I feel like there are aspects of my personality that might not jive well amongst certain people. For one, I DO have a bit of a tongue and I lay the sarcasm on thick, but furthermore, I’m not above making suggestive jokes and I’m keen on being a goofball more often than I am about being serious. And what of my identity? I’ve heard overeducated TV therapists say that teenagers are the most lost, but it’s in my twenties that I’ve found most of my most significant trials and tribulations…

I guess there’s always God. And as the days go by I’m finding more strength in my otherwise wobbly knees through Him. I only hope that I can feed off the good word others bring with them enough to gain ground because it seems everyday the devil and God are raging inside of me (thanks Brand New).

Phillipians 4: 6-7
Keep it brazen.

California Love

2009-07-08T20:06:00.000-07:00

Okay, this post is aptly titled not only because I love Tupac Shakur’s deliciously silly antics, but also because it would appear I’m officially moving to San Diego for five months in…3 weeks. I won’t bore any potential readers with the details, but I will hint that you should all check THIS out and maybe THIS one too if you’ve got any extra money kicking around (and in this failing economy, who the heck doesn’t?).

Not The Band, The Good Life

2009-06-22T08:33:00.000-07:00

This weekend started off on a pretty hilarious note: my best gal pal hosted what women call a “Fantasia Party” and what men only know as “dildo domination.” Turns out they’re mostly correct in that basically every girl walked out of that party with a rubber penis in her purse. But it was also a very educational evening: for example, did you know that male ejaculate comes out at 26 MPH? That’s faster than I drive 99.9 percent of the time. Anyway after we grew tired of self-referenced ‘Cocksucking Kate’s’ various demonstrations, we all headed over to a local pool hall where I totally annihilated everyone’s egos by reigning victorious several times (so essentially once).

Saturday Ross and I got together and he showed me his amputated thumb. I swear I saw into his soul when he unraveled those bandages – it looks like cooked hamburger meat with a sprinkle of white brain on top. Literally. Are you hungry? Thereafter we navigated our way over to St.Catharines where both Billy and PMR were set to play at L3 Nightclub. PMR is a devil lover which always proves interesting to me, the ‘Jesus Girl’, and despite his band’s incredibly offensive lyrics I still enjoyed the set – Daniel Tremblay has a fantastic voice. Billy got extra short-shorted and did some exhuberant foot stomping during his set, but the kidlets were eating it up and turns out I enjoyed their set as well.

…So basically this weekend was on point.
But I still need to get outta here…

Me Myself & I

2009-06-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

I had a bit of an epiphany while in the shower this morning: being single fucking sucks. Not only because of the garauntee that there’d be no set of rough hands waiting to admire my silky smooth stems after I jumped out, but also because there are no nuzzles to share, no agonizingly cute inside jokes to whisper about, no hand holding, no pillow talk free of societal stigma, no cute texts, nothing. Basically without a significant other there seems absolutely no point nor purpose in me continuing to live this lonesome life.

HAHA, SIKE!
But really, why you playas gotta be holdin’ out on me? Okay I know I know, I can be a touch emotional and supremely stubborn at times; I might enjoy having the underside of my buttcheeks tickled and have an inclination toward bringing cheesecake and other food items into the bedroom, but otherwise I think I’m a pretty safe catch! I don’t at all mind cooking or cleaning, I’m a good listener and even better conversationalist (modest too, obv), I’m as much a cling-on as Britney Spears is sane (Aka, not. Perfect for LD relationships, right?), openminded *wink*, I can and will fight with you when it counts (and forgive you as often, too), I’m painfully honest, non-judgemental, I rarely get jealous and aside from this one time where I got shut down for sex while dressed like a replica of this hussy right here:

I come baggage free! I don’t care what Beyonce says…as a single layday, I will not put my hands up. I give singledom two giant thumbs down. That being said, if you’re:

a) funny
b) spontaneous
c) handsome
d) thoughtful
e passionate about something
f) self-sufficient &
g) keen on learning how to make a girl feel good….

Art As A Real Threat

2009-06-10T16:16:00.001-07:00

Okay, okay, so this isn’t exactly ‘real’ graffiti art but I sure had myself a private giggle at its irony while I was standing on the corner of Parkdale and Queenston this morning. I mean shit, do or would people actually consider calling 911 if they saw someone decorating the already mostly-hideous landscapes of Hamilton? And if so, they ought to remind themselves of what that creepy/mega oldschool commercial campaign Stay Alert, Stay Safe taught us: you only call 911 in emergencies. Sharpies + paint don’t fall under this category, unless of course, you’re a jackass idiot.

I still haven’t heard anything back from Invisible Children and while parts of me are getting weary, part of me are settling just fine with the idea that I truly might NOT end up as a fall roadie. And, while I still plan on setting my feet upon European ground, there are a few things I might elect to take care of first.

Becoming a hopefully less furry but equally as lazy rendition of this lil' guy, for example.

Nah, but really, I kinda just want life to stop for a few days and let me off in the middle of nowhere so I can take a few seconds to catch my breath. By no means am I bragging (because Lord knows the things I should be doing outweigh the things I’ve done), but I’ve kept busy with and in my young life, and I think it’s time I take a break to re-evaluate and re-asses ma sitch, you know? I want to take the freedoms I still have and put good use to them before I’m seriously courting a husband or wearing mom pants with a baby on one of my mom hips. Yeuuuck.

Today’s been a good one. I slept for 13 hours last night. Triumph!