"Increasing numbers of young men, like Rocco, feel the need to treat their bodies as a project whereby they re-invent, re-design, package and brand themselves into valuable commodities in order to compete against other employees, to attain and maintain a job and income, and to gain an identity that their employees can use to their... Continue Reading →
Daddy Wasn’t There
"Rob Ford showed the world many faces, all real but none really him. He is a jumble of contradictions: attention seeker and shy loner; bully and kind-hearted friend; a savvy politician who can't comprehend much of what happens around him; the self proclaimed 'best mayor this city has ever had' and the guy with such... Continue Reading →
Running Over Challenges
Living in Canada and in and around the Toronto area I have been exposed to some of Buck 65's music which I generally found to be odd (in a 20th century way), yet inspired in a 'yahhhhh progression' sort of way. Being an avid sports fan with baseball near the top of the list, I... Continue Reading →
1930’s Paris And London Calling
"It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty. You have thought so much about poverty--it is the thing you have feared all your life, the thing you knew would happen to you sooner or later; and it, is all so utterly and prosaically different. You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it... Continue Reading →
“There Is Society Where None Intrudes, By The Deep Sea, And Music In Its Roar” -Byron
"A shipwreck gave a man limitless opportunity to know himself if only he cared to find out. He could always press further, dig deeper, find places no one had mastered. To Chatterton, there always seemed to be opportunity on a shipwreck, even the simple wrecks: the opportunity to confront the problems really worth solving, and... Continue Reading →
Lest We Forget
A Tribute to a Veteran of Vietnam by Julie K. Weber-Torres is labelled as an ode to the heroism of a daughter's father, but after reading I can't help but be amazed by the compassion, resolve and love of a father's daughter. When a parental figure has spent more time out of your life than... Continue Reading →
Ghosts Are Good Company If You Can Get It
“Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind/Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind,/Now slip, now slide, now move unseen,/Above, beneath, betwixt, between.” ―Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book In 2009 twenty-two percent of people in America have admitted to encountering ghosts. The number gets higher if you take into account the experiences of young... Continue Reading →
I May Be Dead But I Refuse To Be Blind
"In my life everything was temporary. Love came the least, pain came the most and happiness sometimes didn't come at all. Rage was my only unconditional friend. It moved with me, and slept with me; everywhere I went it was their walking with me as if it did not want to let go of the... Continue Reading →
If 13,000 Years Has Proved One Thing It’s That…..
“Much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and the have-nots.” Perhaps the first colonials or humans in Africa left because of the oppressive heat and corresponding drought. Head north young man where it is much more sustainable. Perhaps it's as simple as that; Mr. Diamond, on the other hand believes... Continue Reading →
The War That Shall Not Be Named
"WCCO radio is interrupting this program to bring you breaking news. An Associated Press report confirms that at dawn, Sunday the twenty-fifth of June, elements of the North Korean Army crossed the border into South Korea, and it appears that a full-scale invasion of the south by the north is occurring. Stay tuned for further... Continue Reading →