work

Unemployed? More like funemployed in the Globe and Mail.

I actually knew this was coming down the pipe since a friend of mine was invited to submit his 'funemployed lifestyle" for this article. I happen to know that my friend is a pretty hard-working freelance web developer, so I am not sure if he ever did that.

Anyways, I just want to register my absolute displeasure at the headline, subject and premise of this article.

Perhaps if the headline were:

So for two weeks I have been squatting my neighbours wireless signal, and today finally, thanks to a foot-long drill bit and my landlord Mick, I am back to having my own internet service provider - who by the way is TekSavvy.

I say this only because the neighbours provider (who's name begins with an R and ends with an S) was throttling certain urls. So a project I finished up just before I moved, was not available for viewing. Which is too bad because it's a site devoted to young people's sexual health and safety.

Anyways, The Sense Project has launched an amazing website, and started an adorable sticker campaign.

Here are the stickers:

I am proud to say I was involved in the conception and execution of the two projects. The hilarious questions on the stickers were all generated by the youth peer educators however.

I know for a fact that while sex may not take away your acne, it sure makes it seem less significant in the grand scheme of things...

So since my starry eyed post of a week-ago, the gloves have pretty well come off. Cities are often characterized as places that will "chew you up and spit you up." My general fear about Toronto these days is that it will nibble me to death.

What do I mean nibble? Well, it's the one interview no call back routine. Or the handing of the business card t 5 people, only to receive no email love in return. Toronto likes to pretend it wants me, but maybe so far it only wants a taste :)

We are witnessing the passing of working-class masculinity by Margaret Wente

I think this article, predicated on the notion that the recent crisis in the auto- industry is dealing a death blow to working class masculine culture in Canada is well-thought out, if 20 years too late.

As far as I can tell, it's not the financial crisis that has killed working class culture and not just masculinity, it's the free market.

As Wente points out; "The defining value of working-class masculinity is the ability to stick up for yourself when someone tries to give you shit."

The ethos of sticking up for oneself, especially in a context of manual labour, is supported by strong collective agreements and a civic structure that gives workers, especially those on the line, whose relationship to management can have a significant power-imbalance, the right to agitate or "stick up for" themselves.

The erosion of masculine culture is not about job losses. For men, *and women* to feel that they can take power, they actually need to have some power in the first place.