While I was making brunch yesterday, I was lucky enough to catch a documentary on activism burnout that aired on CBC’s The Sunday Edition:

Our documentary in Hour Two this morning describes what happens when political activists have had too much. Too much marching, too much anger, too many grueling hours of organizational meetings. Some flame out and hit rock bottom. The life of an activist is hardly stress- free. Producer Frank Faulk wanted to find out why this happens so he talked to the activists themselves. His report in our Middle Hour, Burning Bright.

There is a player embedded in the page with the latest broadcast. Let it load and skip to 1:01:43 for the beginning of Burning Bright.

I’m impressed with the perspectives in this documentary. The participants eloquently discuss aspects of being an activist that can be unpleasant, and that we don’t often talk about. The unrealistic goals we set ourselves, and the personal fallout when we don’t achieve them. The infighting. The anger (doled out at the world and at each other). The depression.

One of the interviewees, Anaheed, with whom I strongly identified, talks about how she used to behave as an activist. Strong-willed and passionate, always having the answer, and considering herself right 99% of the time. But now she feels like that time was characterized by a lack of patience, humility, and compassion.

(more inside…)

I love Come As You Are. For my money they’re one of the best sex shops out there. (Also a nod to Good For Her of course — in part because of their fabulous name.)

It’s at the Come As You Are website (sometimes abstinence-only posters just make you want to shop for sex toys) that I came across this:

“Whassat” you say? Well, I’m glad you asked. That, friends, is The Cone. It’s a vibrator. And “unlike most other toys, it’s not based on a man’s bits.”

I have nothing against a man’s bits (not right now anyways *badum-ching!*), but you have to admit that The Cone doesn’t look like all the other sex toys on the shelf. Sex toys have a(n unnecessary) tendency to look like more of the same — an occasionally unsettling combination of glittering purple peni replica with rabbits/dolphins/muskrats attached…

(more inside…)

Because it’s Friday, and because I have a big old crush on Eddie Izzard, here’s some YouTube therapy for when your relationship with technology gets that ‘not so fresh’ feeling:

Because when you switch to ‘shuffle’ mode, songs from 1999 pop into your playlist.

Unpretty by TLC

This is a two-fer post — Wired Wednesdays plus some Comics are for Everybody action.

Because…

Google has a browser.

It’s a Beta version, and it’s only available for Windows for now. But still -
Google has a browser.

At home I mostly use a Mac, so (besides my undying allegiance to Firefox) I can’t actually play with Chrome. Until Google releases a Mac version. Cough cough coughity cough Google. (Oh, and also a Linux one please, k thx).

But what I can do is read their launch materials, which are presented in… wait for it… comic book form! Not just a comic book, but a Creative Commons licensed comic book put together by Scott McCloud, of Understanding Comics fame.

(more inside…)

I really should change the radio station on my alarm, because waking up to the news just makes me start my day angry.

Half-awake, I drift in and out of how the Green Party is (once again) not being included in the leaders’ debates.

Why? Because the Conservatives, Bloc and NDP threw “if she’s there I’m not going” hissy fits.

Elizabeth May fronts a party that received nearly 5% of the votes in the last election, when they received the votes of 664,068 Canadians. Canadian taxpayers finance the Green Party (political parties with more than 2% of the popular vote receive federal funding). They even had a member sitting in parliament (since BC independent Blair Wilson joined the party in 2008). A criteria that a 2006 CBC ombudsman report declared “indisputable” for inclusion in the national debate.

There’s a good rundown presented by the Green Party here. Which includes some “fun” facts on the arbitrariness of inclusion in these debates. Like how Preston Manning was included in the 1993 debate, based on Reform winning one seat in 1989. Or the Bloc getting a podium, which they’ve had since before they had a member in parliament, and before they had official party status.

If this bothers you, this is the petition set up the last time an “editorial decision” excluded the Green Party.

“Tell the network executives who control the leaders’ debates that Four Men in Dark Suits is last year’s show. The new season demands a vivid splash of Green.”

Or it would be if I was doing it on a Curta Mechanical Calculator.
(Damned newfangled electronic calculators have no personality.)

Summary description of the Curta from Dark Roasted Blend:

* Entirely mechanical, no electricity or batteries involved.
* Designed by Curt Herzstark in 1938 and perfected inside a concentration camp.
* Considered to be the most efficient portable calculator (until electronic calculators came in the 70s)
* Simply a thing of beauty, stunning piece of engineering art.

Click the link for more backstory, or watch the Curta do its thing (brace yourself for enthusiastic voiceover action):

I want it I want it I want it. The end.

Before I hit “delete all spam messages now”, I usually quickly scan the folder for any real emails.

Today I noticed something. When did sex spam become so much more… egalitarian?

A sample of actual subject lines:
* “Give your lady the very best”
* “Give her the best loving every night”
* “Your lady deserves only the best”
* “Only for your lover”
* “Making her come”
* “How to take time for relationships”

Sort of warms your heart doesn’t it?

Happy Friday!

Squarely in the category of “I don’t know what to think about this”. From Boing Boing:

The Victorian Aboriginal Education Association has called for the Australian edition of The Daring Book for Girls to be pulped because it teaches girls how to pay the didgeridoo. The organization says women who play the instrument will be cursed with infertility.

“The section on the didgeridoo was ‘part of a general ignorance that mainstream Australia has about Aboriginal culture,’ the association’s general manager Mark Rose told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

‘We know very clearly that there’s a range of consequences for a female touching a didgeridoo — infertility would be the start of it, ranging to other consequences,’ he said, adding: ‘I won’t even let my daughter touch one.’”

Full article at AFP.