photo credit: klash

In looking for gender neutral language and genderless pronouns, myself and others have stumbled over such words as ze, hir, and even they in grammatically incorrect moments. After years of dedicating myself to feminist politics and the queer movement, I have finally admitted another side of my identity – the repressed gangster.

But it took a overwhelming enthusiasm for the show The Wire, to realize what we could have been doing this whole time is using YO! It may be Baltimore slang but what is wrong with that?

Yo has been recognized in the American Speech journal as a gender neutral pronoun and has been used in The Wire as such. In the March/April 2008 issue of Mother Jones they detail a history of gender neutral terms ranging from hse, co, ve, na, e, and the one they were reporting on hu.

A writing instructor from John Hopkins University finds that hu (pronounced huh)is superior to yo,but I have to disagree with him.   A gender neutral language, riveted together with street corner slang? Now that’s where it’s at.

photo credit: Banff Lake Louise

I started playing hockey this year, or rather shinny. Shinny for beginners, just to be precise. People show up, they throw their sticks in the middle of the rink and once split up in two groups, one lucky team gets to be team hi viz. I don’t believe through the whole season we ever kept track of the score. But believe me, you keep track of your own. Although once I was told I got a hat trick and stared back blankly, hoping I would be filled in with this hockey lingo.

The group that met in Dufferin Grove was a mixture of hockey enthusiasts learning a bit later in life, but still know the stats of each player in those flashy boxes on TV screens in sports bars, and people who didn’t even know how to stop, let alone what off side is.

Shinny is an informal game with very few rules, the only ones being that there’s no body checking, and the puck stays on the ice, since players are not wearing equipment. One infamous shinny story in the city comes from the tourist city hall skating rink, where shinny is not allowed. At eleven at night when the lights are turned off, the city flocks to play shinny in the glow of the hotels across the street, well until the early hours of the morning.

Before hockey season there was a threat from the city that the rinks would not open this year. They were cutting Parks and Recreation’s budget to deal with a major budget shortage. Then 6 weeks before opening day the mayor accepted an offer of $160, 000 from Mastercard. The deal meant there was no advertising and no strings attached. But they sure got more advertising in that statement then a few posters could have given to them.

The 2007 and 2008 season come to an end just on the brink of Parks and Recreation increasing facility fees across the whole city, cutting back even on free programs like removing dead branches from trees. We are left with the threat of either cutting our services, privatizing them or making them inaccessible to the masses. One regular, who has come every Wednesday night at ten pm, for two years running passed around a sheet expressing his love of the game, the park and our dedicated hockey facilitator. It made suggestions on how we can keep the rinks open, so the option of an open beginners hockey is available to all that fancy grabbing a stick.

People talk about throwing in cash to the park fund with ease. Where you find prices elsewhere in the city hitting $7-10, this is a park that goes out of its way to make skating accessible to the neighborhood by renting out skates for $2. The Zombonie cafe there sells great food at some of the cheapest prices in the city, leaving all the skaters well fed and safe in knowing the small profits are going to keep them in great equipment.

Sure we’ll toss in some cash, after all, beginners’ open shinny provided a reason to love winter for some thirty five people each week. In the mean time many realize that structured hockey is quite expensive, a few hundred may sign up to the womens’ hockey school but first, you need full gear. They don’t lend it to you like at the Dufferin Grove shinny, and a women told me yesterday, that although she got much of her gear used, the cost was near the $500 mark.

Perhaps we will leave it again till next year, where those dedicated to the free shinny, leave their houses in minus temperatures at quarter to ten, on school nights at that, just for the chance to chase a puck around and learn a few new skills from our ring master at Dufferin Grove. Master card depending I suppose.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I saw them for the first time in Dublin at Crawdaddy. Perhaps the crowd was of the new rave persuasion but we were up front having a blast and not taking notice. Some people have said that new rave is the combination of electronics and punk, and I suppose this is how I would have described Bonde Do Role, they were fun, they were raunchy and they put on a good show.

They don’t claim to be political, they don’t claim to do proper baile funk, but they do claim to have jumped on a bandwagon that has taken them around the world. They are playing nightly on their world tour and are doing the festival circuit this summer including Irelands own Electric Picnic.

Friday night at The Social in Toronto was a disappointment; a good band ruined by the scene. Their initial Toronto gig was set for The Horseshoe tavern that was to be opened by Canadian Bonjay but that was cancelled and rescheduled in gentrified queer west at The Social, where they don’t really need a sign since the crowds of hipsters will give the location away.

They really must have friends in the city since as of last week there was no gig and on Thursday the day of it, they had an article in the Toronto Star and front page of Eye Magazine. Whether people were following and waiting for the reschedule like yours truly or the it was a regular Thursday night crowd, as the line ups at 1 am indicated, this was a jammed packed night. No room to dance only to rub up against plastic jackets and witness what one friend coined as a “New Kids On The Block concert.”

They played again tonight in Hamilton and tomorrow back in Toronto at Lee’s Palace. A much better venue, for the space and the sound– hope the crowd tomorrow can enjoy a bit a room to dance because this band does inspire it and with the stage a bit higher they will have a chance to see MC Marina do her thing!

Bonde do Role will be playing The Pod on Harcourt Street in Dublin on May 30th, entry is from 8pm and is a hefty 14 squids.

Our trip started off in full force that has us cycling through many a country and 117 kms in the first day. If we didn’t have a bed waiting for us at the end of that day I would have given up and fallen into any ditch to make the pain go away. But in the end it was all worth it, we left the green fields of the midlands and arrived to the coast of Mayo. All I have to say is I heart Mayo.

With my illumimous vest stating Shell to Sea that I never seemed to take off and ruined many a photo with the reflection I could pretend that yes this fun bike ride had some thing to do with politics. But the reality is the few flyers we gave out were just an after thought to things like swimming in the bay of Grainne Whales castle and sitting at the edge of cliffs while we
ate our picnic.

So don’t worry I havn’t become a lifestylist . . . just needed a holiday and believe you me the weather was with us the whole way. They say the Rossport solidarity camp is no holiday but when the weather is like this and they are located at one of the most beautiful spots in all of ireland with an isolated beach you can’t go wrong.

Click here to see a photo essay of the weekend and here to read a random bits about the bike ride.

Animal Farm George Orwell - I got this book in Lunag Prabang when I traded in my scuba diving book that I had no use for and which apparently has no value outside the islands. The question might be why have I not read this before, the answer to that includes families, gender prejudice and teenage angst. Its a simple book, screaming absolute power corrupts absolutley and begging people to fight for anarchism. It did encourage me to buy Burmese dreams go continue my George Orwell and South East Asia theme, but alas by the time that became a possiblity I was stuck into cyber punk novels. 

Sex Slave; Traffiking of Asian Women Louise Brown – This book is just badly written. Really this woman has all this knowledge and information and she wants to get it out but what ends up happening is a spewed mess that repeats the same point through examples of a dozen countries. If you want to find out more about the sex industry in Asia I would suggest starting from her bibliography but giving this book a miss.

GB84 David Peace- This is another book that Antrophe suggested I bring, this time I didn’t listen to him (mainly because the book was to large to drag around for two months.) But the second island I was on had it in their library. WARNING it can seem confusing to start off with. Its a historial fiction about the Miners’ Strike. I actually really enjoyed the confusion of it all, you have a diary entry of an average joe on one side of the page then a novel who’s chapters are split into weeks of the strike. You end up flipping back and fourth alot trying to get it all in. I left this book half way through since it still was too big for me to drag around and secondly because it really started to bring be down . . . corruption, money – power – control. I read it dirrectly after Homage to Catalonia and started to be sick of human behaviour in general. I will pick it up and finish it now that I am home and don’t need to drag it around.

The Princess Bride S. Morgenstern - Classic. For all those who watched and loved the movie as a kid, this will bring back the greatest memories and let you hear Vizzine lisp “INCONCEIVABLE” in the dialogue in your head and it makes all your adventures a bit more fun, the crazy cliffs that you kayak past become the cliffs of insanity. Classic.

Pattern Recognition William Gibson - William Gibson is said to be the god father of cyber punk novels. This is a more recent one of his that I would say he has not lost his touch. You will be infatuated with the main character unsure if you want to be with her or be her. The discriptions of London, Tokyo and Moscow are brilliant along with the internet message board world. Its a gate way drug to the cyber punk world.

VURT Jeff Noon - Yet another cyber punk novel. Dealing with drugs, dreams, virtual reality, love, sex and fighting cops. Jeff Noon takes you to the world of the Vurt filled with robodog, shadowgoth, robocrustie, pures and many more. This book will take you a bit longer to read then the average novel but really its worth getting your head around the stash riders world.

Around The World In Eighty Days Jules Verne - Mud traded something to get this. I felt through out the book that I was going to be asked to write an essay on how the British colonists viewed the orient and the other. The discriptions of cultures and places were so full of arrogant sterotypes. Yet its a great read to have when you are traveling. Any time you are taking long journeys of trains, boats, buses etc, you can always say Phileas Fogg would have been proud. It started an adventure reading tread for Mud. Which resulting in her naming her dragon (the one that would accompany her on her adventures after I left) Jules.

The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown - Ok there was this couple that saw me reading The Princess Bride and got all excited, they wanted to know if they could trade it for some classic after I was done. They were all cute about it. The guy had never read it before and the two of them were going to read it out loud to each other. A few days went by and we never say them. We had given up on the trade untill we ran into them agian on the way to Bangkok. We gave them the book happily only to discover The Da Vinci Code was all they had left to trade. I had avoided reading this book for years, since EVERYONE plus your grandmother has raved about it. It felt like reading the subtitles to a Hollywood film. Don’t get me wrong the female goddess stuff was interesting and made we want to look at paintings in a new way. But nothing has screamed block buster to me like this before. So wait and watch the film, its on its way out.

The Plough and Stars Sean O’Casey - This is an Irish play that created mad controversy when it first came out. Its a critique of the Easter Uprising. Basically saying that it was out of touch with what the working class people wanted. Its a realist play and blatently says what it likes. And really a nice touch of Dublin while you are away.

Heart of a Dog Mikhail Bulgakov - This book was lent to me by Doc, saying it was a good travel book. Its a parady of the Russian Revolution. Very weird, very good. But it did make me start to wonder about my book choices.

Parody/discription/analysis of revolution: 5/11
Books where animals stand up like humans: 3/11
That means more then 25% of the books I read had dogs or pigs walking around like humans.

photo credit: anuradhac

So I have been traveling for 8 weeks now to the day. I have only had three days that didnt’ work out. Three days. These three days have been in the past four, which have all been in Chaing Mai! Really disasterous. the thing is this is the city where “you just have to go to” (don’t believe the hype!) everything is pre organised for you. Life becomes a package. The reason people come to is to get out. Really, its for organising treks, taking classes etc, it is impossible to just enjoy something on your own, there are set prices/times etc for your enjoyment. You want to see a park but the only way to get there and back is a group taxi and they say you can only stay an hour. When you refuse and stay as long as you want there is no way to get back.

But here comes my love hate relationship with the Thai tourist industry. I hate how they organise my time and tell me when to smile, laugh, take photos and when to leave. But since they have a reputation to uphold you can work outside the system. Like yesterday we were 30 km away from Chaing Mai on top of this mountain the only westerners in this beautiful park (the rest of the westerners were told that they had to leave by three but the place is open for ages after that). So we walk out and there is no tuk tuks to be found. We were planning on starting to walk and hitch a ride. We decided to ask the security guards if there were anymore buses or taxis. Suddenly they went into panic mode, two falangs got stuck here, oh no. This guy started to stop cars and he hooked us up with a ride back.

The same thing happened to me today, I rented a bike and biked 12 km out to this water reservoir ( I will have water surrounding me even if I am in a land locked city!) of course the bike breaks down a few km from the place. It was only the chain falling off, but for some reason the chain is covered in metal casing and with no screw driver or anything that could act as one, the chain debilated the bike. But the park guy concerned that yet again a white tourist would be put out found someone to give me a ride in the back of their truck to a place I could fix the bike.

The contradiction of the Thai tourist industry is that if something does go wrong in your world and it is there fault or at least not your own, there is no apologies. This country is said to be the land of a thousand smiles, but really people here don’t seem happy, they only smile when they are ripping you off. But lets say there is a huge cockroach in your food – no apology and definitly no discount. Lets say they forget your food all together or give you completely the wrong thing- you are treated like you put them out for reminding them you did order something. And lets say your bike breaks down in the middle of no where, you have to walk a few kms in the heat to a place you can rent another bike for a few hours and then pay to get it fixed. Well don’t expect anything in return instead expect to feel contempt as if your sheer existance has put them out.

It interesting to note that the Laos people seems to smile for real and laugh all the time. They live in a poor communist country. Thailand is flithy rich in comparison and I have never seen a people so miserable.

Did i meniton I hate it here! Overhearing brain dead American conversations is mind numbing enough when they are in their 20’s but then you see them a bit older and you realise that the idiots and the assholes somehow get positions of power. The same guys you hear screaming white power (with out realising the connection to any nazi idiology) at a boxing match between a Thai guy and a Canadian grows up and sits in a restaurant with you and talks about how people at work have a duty to serve you and if you just change the language around and make them sound more important then they are they they will be happy to serve you. AHHHHH!

I hate tourists, the tourist industry and not the biggest fan of Thailand (at least where they have high quanities of both of these) But take me to the non tourist rest of South East Asia and my heart beat drops a few beats and I feal that I am in paradise and might never leave.

photo credit: Timo Kozlowski

So it suddenly hit me that today was my last Saturday and that I shouldn’t be saving my big night out for my last day in this city since that will be a Tuesday. So I change gears and get ready to go on an adventure to find the lesbian bar. Since the two of us have looked so much like dykes compared to the regular backpackers I had no hesitation on asking at the front desk of our guest house where the dyke bar was. I went with the information that I have. There is a place called Le Femme Fetale and I have what looks like an area but no address. The first woman I ask tells me that its Saturday and therefore closed. I give her a look of suspicion and go ask the expat what the story is.

Since I have been here there has been some political upset in Thailand. The Prime minster made a few bad moves and people don’t trust him as much now. Huge protest on the streets and people wanting him to step down. I really don’t know the details, but there is something to do with a free trade agreeement that people don’t neccesarily want and he was just going ahead with it. While we were in Laos they called an election. And the election day is tomorrow.

How does this effect going to a lesbian bar on a Saturday? Well aparently the night before an election places don’t serve alcohol. Seriously. This is a typical Thai strategy. You don’t want apathy due to a hangover so you ban alcohol the night before and day of an election. Which then fouls our plans for dancing with Thai dykes grrr politics.

photo credit: cathyducky

So I find myself in a city that EVERYONE says that I will love. Meanwhile my body goes into shock on driving into the centre with all the lights and people and it makes me think that Chaing Mai is to the 20 year old backpacker what Pattaya is to the 50 year old male ex-pat. I do have to realise how spoiled I have been in Laos, where the builidings are beautiful, the food is great and cheap and most of all the tourists are quite and few and far between. Everything in this city screams backpacker and really these are a breed of people I have kept away from. Not to say that your average backpacker is someone I would have nothing in common with, just that to have no else around when you go hiking and swimming in waterfalls, kayaking or cooking has its perks. Plus the Laos people themselves are just more chilled out.

The thing is Laos is a communist country right. And that has its advantages. No major corporations, no sales billboards. The governement won’t let multi nations in. Even though they have all these minerals they refuse to let Americans into the country. They finally let the Australians in, with the understnading that they had to hire Laos people. And if there was not a skilled Laos person they had to train them and replace the Aussie once training was complete. when you go to a market or a store the people making the stuff are right there. They are not screaming at you to buy. But here “BUY BUY BUY I make good price for you . . .” so much junk. Its overwhelming.

We have made a good go of this city and found what it has to offer us, including Maui Thai, which is the Thai kick boxing. Which we sat through 3 1/2 hours of it yesterday and got our selves all riled up. we might even take a class. And today we went to a cooking class on this organic farm. I will leave this city will so many great experience while hating it all the while. Strange that.

After the 1975 communist revolution the borders were closed and only ten years ago reopened. Initially getting in the country was a feat onto itself, you could only come in on organized tours. This was all speculating on human rights violations – keeping the westerns out.

But now after a 13 hour train ride fom Bangkok (which I might add we stopped it in its tracks at 5:20 in the morning, with sleepy eyes we nervously mentioned to the armed worker that we don’t yet have a ticket and he smiles, laughs when we say we are going to the end of the line and charges us around 3 euros. 3 euros- 13 hours!) you arrive in a town on the north east of Thailand. Take a bus over the friendship bridge that the Australians paid for, get your phone taken at the back of a fruit stand, fill out a few forms, pay a bit of American money and you are in for 15 days.

This country is so sleepy and relaxed, my heart beat has dropped during my acclimatisation to the culture. We arrived in the capital during the 8th national congress of the revolutionary party. Communist flag and Laos flag covering all buildings and streets. Laos also being an ex French colony has beautiful colonial buildings everywhere, great cheese, bread, wine etc and all these luxuries for the budget of a crusty punk.

We spent the first day treating our selves. We had taken sleep very little in the past week or so, early trains, over night buses getting us from the most southern part of Thailand to Laos in a few days. And before that we spent a week camping on beaches (1 euro a night). so we went to this herbal sauna and massage. 2 1/2 hours for only 3 or so euros! We could harldy understand this city, everything was so beautiful, people laughing all around us, the food was the best I have had since I got here and at prices; well I think you get the point.

We leave this wonderful capital city on yet another night bus (we loved traveling with the locals, somehow we seem to never have any tourists with us) to this absolutely fabulous world heritage city. Again the French influence is beautiful and since they have serious funds for keeping the city looking good, they do! Here we do things like take a private kayak trip down the river and many rapids and paddle under the cliffs of insanity. We show up at a rain forest with furious waterfalls and pools and again are the only ones there. Its in the off season and we go places on the off times but I tell you its worth it, swimming in paradise and no annoying American accents.

I have come to realize that I don’t take photos of the most beautiful things. So when I’m taking loads its more to do with expectations I guess. The cliffs of insanity (yes it is a Princess Bride reference and if you have read or seen it you will understand that it is impossible to capture them on film.) Part of me wishes I had an underwater camera, especially when we were at the marine park. but the joy of not taking photos is, you get to fully enjoy what you are seeing and experience it for yourself and not for all those who want a picture and a story.

Stories I have more then I could share . . .but three weeks of non blogging will keep them in my mind and diary alone. Tomorrow, a full day cooking class . . . yes that means next time you come over for dinner I will subject you to Laos food!