Tag: Oppression

Tè Tremblé

The title of today’s post means “the earth trembles” in Creole. One of Haiti’s two official languages — the other language being French. I’ve chosen that title along with the subject of today’s post as an ever so small gesture of solidarity with the Haitian people. For those unaware, there has to be one or two of you out there, and cares that today marks the one year anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake that merely furthered, but exponentially worsened, the destruction, misery and hardship a bunch of nations, Canada most definitely included, has unleashed on Haiti.

No matter how desperate things may seem and are on the ground in Haiti, I guess the least — as in the very least — I could do is let the world know I’m thinking about them and trying to get others to do the same?

Continue reading Tè Tremblé

For Christie’s sake

Just this past week I was involved in quite a personally significant conversation with a friend. In a very round about way we arrived at talking about our respective childhood’s and each of our schooling career’s — if a half-assed, uninterested effort qualifies as a “career,” then I had a glorious one! When she informed me of her experiences during high school being bullied.

In a directly related aside, also this week, I received a mailing from ZCommunications, detailing ZMagazine’s January’s 2011 issue containing Michael Bronski’s piece Glee and Queer Bullying.

It’s precisely what everyone, “Gleek’s” particularly, really should take a few moments to read and truly think about…

Continue reading For Christie’s sake

The shape of things to come?

Technically, today begins the 7th calendar year of this website’s existence. Which is abundantly surreal, actually. And, as insignificant as that first sentence may be (read: is), I’m marking this anniversary by launching the site’s 3rd official re-design. Bam (that was a not so subtle hint to those who have stumbled on my words in a feed reader, say, to get on a modern web browser and see what I’m talking about)!

And so the current iteration of this blog, rather obviously, leaves the former behind. My point, while my former “skin” was extremely stale (I’d argue, if not right out of the gates, very soon after), it served me very well. Exceptionally well, in fact. Farewell my old friend. It’s been a blast! But, if I might be frank, it didn’t really meet with as many of the design objectives as I’d have liked (way more on that than is even remotely called for in a bit).

And now we have this effort. It entailed much more than a reshuffling for appearance’s sake. It was a complete re-development from the ground up. HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, plus some neat little WordPress optimization tricks (does this site seem a tad snappier?) thrown in, for good measure. Or, in other words, I ripped it all out, and started fresh.

With more, of everything, still to come…

Continue reading The shape of things to come?

Turn that noise down!

I was going to review the year that is quickly coming to an end, in my typical cynical tone, but add a personal and somewhat optimistic touch at the end. Then I read Chris Hedges piece, 2011: A Brave New Dystopia, and suddenly everything that happened in 2010 seems quite inconsequential to what is more than likely to be waiting in 2011 and beyond.

Which, I think, says much more than it’s share. 2010 has been quite the year — The AlJazeera Top 10 does a relatively sufficient job rounding out the year, so I’ll urge all those interested to check it out. But it’s people like Mr. Hedges that can and continue to give the world in which we live a frightening context. A context we all must understand if we ever want to halt it.

Everything else has had it’s volume turned down since reading that…