First of many I hope...

So I decided that I wanted to post here rather then on myspace as I'm kinda sick of the way that one works. Enjoy.

Also I'm going to just copy and paste what I've done so far on myspace here so that I can delete that and just do it from here.

For those of you not in the know, which is none of you, I'm at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Just look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_State_College, which does not say much about the reputation that Evergreen, has; that reputation is one of a "drug school", "hippie school" etc. In truth this is the hardest I've ever worked in school. Compared to other higher education intuitions Evergreen is considered "radical", and very left wing.

So this year I'm taking a program called Colonialism and Decolonization. This is a study of the European invasion of Africa, the Americas, and the Middle East and the damage that was done as a result there of. Just to make life easy I'll give you a rough definition of colonialism. Colonialism is the act of one nation forcefully occupying another sovereign nation or nations for the economic, political and military advantage of that occupying nation. Traditionally colonialism is thought to have ended with the removal of British governing over India. This might be thought because those nations that have the power to do so are "civilized" and recognize the right of other sovereign nations to exist with out the interference from other nations. (cough) Yeah, and I'm the Pope. This not academia and I am under no obligation to be "academic" with what I say here.

Jared introduced me to a wonderful musician name K'naan, and for those of you who have not heard what this man has to say listen to the song on mine and his profile then add K'naan as a friend because his is a first hand account of what colonialism has and IS doing to poor people around the world.

Colonialism is not a thing of the past; it is not something that happened a "long, long time ago" It is happening right now. You want to read about it in a historical context? Try Howard Zinns "A Peoples History of the United States" or David E. Stannards' "American Holocaust." I just finished Stannard's book which quotes HEAVILY from the first hand accounts of what white Europeans did in the Americas from 1492 until the early 1900's. First ask your self how many people do were in the western hemisphere prior to European invasion? Then ask your self how many different groups do you think there were prior to 1492. The answer to the first question is somewhere between 60,000,000 (that's sixty MILLION kids) and 100,000,000 (that's ONE HUNDRED MILLION) people prior to 1492. The reason that these are estimates is that we don't know how many people there were. Why don't we know? Well that's simple and it is spelled like this: G-E-N-O-C-I-D-E, now say it with me GENOCIDE (genocide: The systematic killing of all the people from a national, ethnic, or religious group, or an attempt to do this.) This JUST the Americas, there are hundreds of millions of people killed in other parts of the world for this same reason. Like I said the YEAR LONG focus of this program is about AFRICA, THE MIDDLE EAST, AND THE AMERICAS. This does not cover India, all of Asia, Eastern Europe, Scotland, Ireland, Australia and the rest of the world. In my mind colonialism is one of the biggest defining factors affecting the world today.

So yeah you can understand how I might be a little "cynical" right now. Please do me a favor and read Stannards book the title again is "American Holocaust". It's big, it's upsetting, it's TRUE, and it's more then likely something you've never heard before. So I'll say it again, READ AMERICAN HOLOCAUST BY DAVID E. STANNARD!

So I'm making this about school only from now on.

So, here I am... I was in the shower just now thinking about somethings, mostly the fact that I'm now getting 150.00 bucks a week from the state of Utah because I've been unable to find a job up here. So what do I do with 150.00 a week? well about the only things I have to do are pay the interest on my loan for school and buy food. I've yet to find out what the interest is on my loan, but I'll know soon enough. Food. Yeah that's an important thing to have. But the plus side to being on unemployment is I have no job. Meaning I can travel when ever I feel like it, save I don't impact the first two things I have to pay every month.

Another thing I've been thinking about is the fact I moved my self away from all my friends and my immediate family. So here I am 800 miles away from everything I've known since I was born and for the first time since I've been going to school, I mean ever so this includes k-12 and the last two years the SLCC, I've learned something I really wanted to learn about and in a way that makes sense to me. It sucks ass not having friends but I'm learning a lot and for once I find it useful. Unlike all but maybe two or three classes I took at SLCC.