Yeah, I'm totally down for soccer as well. Paras or Pam; if either of you are driving would it be possible I could get a ride???

I'm all for soccer at Hawrelak at 4:00 on Saturday.

I'm also all for drinking on Thursday (it may make the dry run of my presentation more difficult, though.)

Alison, I don't think anything is wrong with your posts. You do what you gotta do and if you have any doubts, let it burn. BURN!!! It's always fun.

Oh yeah, and as Alison pointed out to me, my email said Pam and I are having a party the 28 of May, when it is in fact the 28 of April. I'm sure you all figured that out anyway but it's a good excuse for me to mention the party here too, for the benefit of those people whose email addresses I do not have. So if you didn't get the email:

Party April 28, meeting at my house 7:30, drinking continued on Whyte Ave later. (so call me if you're gonna be late, so I can tell you were we are). There will be cake!

I'm going to respond too, Alison, because you asked us to.

Firstly I wouldn't say you are the token environmentalist here. Certainly you are the only one crazy enough to try and do this as a living, but I think most of us here try to do things that may minimize our impact on the environment in ways that are big and small. I do think you are the only angelicizing (sp?) environmentalist here, but that's a different thing.

Where I think you, and many other environmentalists do themselves and their cause a disserve (though improving tone would help a lot too) is that they fail to consider the neogiation that people need to undergo to minimize their impact. Everything that humans do has a negative impact somewhere. Eating, shitting, even breathing. And there is a huge gap between us now and us being sustainable. Huge enough that I would say it is uncloseable within our lifetimes. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try. But we all need to do things that make us enjoy life, and if Jeremy's is mountain biking, then I think we need to respect that. Mine's horseback riding despite the fact that it's a money (and therefore resource) pit, I waste a ton of gas driving back and forth all the time, and barns aren't exactly careful where they dump their wastes. And horses piss a lot. There are burnt out fields all over Gorsline (some in places where birds nest). I do think it's really important to educate people about their impact their preferred activies have, it is also really important for activists to remember that what people do with that information is completely outside your control. People won't change unless they want to, and that too is outside your control.

A good example of this is the girls I ride with. They have some ideas that are pretty different from mine. They all vote Conservative, none of them bother recycling, they drive big goddamn cars everywhere, think women should stay at home, hate gay people, and don't think people should get divorced, ever. (they don't all think all of these things (they did all vote Conservative though)). And there's nothing I can do about that. If it comes up in conversation, then I'll share what I think and why, but only ever once. What they choose to do with that is totally up to them and I try to not judge them for choosing to ignore it (and I make really sure they never know I am judging them, when I can't help it.) Anything else I try to do to change their minds (I think) is rude and, ultimately, counter-productive. I do more good by making them all leave their empty pop and water bottles in the corner and taking them in myself.

Having said all that, Alison, I do really respect a lot of the things you do and try to do. You've made me more aware of environmentalist-y things that I probably would never have heard of otherwise and I appreciate that. But I do think sometimes, and your response to Jeremy was one of those times, you do need to distance yourself from the choices that other people make.

I would love to welcome Spring - because we've been having this wonderful weather
However i fear, that sometime before the end of may, we will have a dump of snow.
But as for now, i must welcome this beautiful weather.

AS for this weekend goes:

Friday night - doesn't seen to fit a lot of people schedules, so the 7pm soccer is off. However, if you want to come over and relax around 8:30pm or anytime there after, feel free. And if we have a bunch of people, maybe we can go play some midnight basevall or soccer or frisbee.

SATURDAY- Soccer, 4pm. I think that is the plan so far. As for location, I was thinking Quad because then people could study, and then realized it will probably only be Jere and I studying there. So i have decided on Hawerlak(sorry, i know i can't spell). By the big Parking lot, where we usually meet to play.

Everyone OK with that?

Did I say "light-hearted"? Because I meant "annoying as fuck."

Ok, first off, I fixed those two posts. You may now, as the kids say, "knock yourself out." (Although for future reference, as eric found out earlier, I respond much better to 'honeybunch' and 'shnookums' than I do to 'sucking' and 'like hell'. Just a suggestion.)

Secondly, I'd like to point out that, while we all have opinions, ideas, and beliefs that we hold dear, attacking people is not the best way to go about convincing people of your belief. And, to be fair, alison, while a lot of misinterpretation has been flying around here lately, it's tough to misinterpret what you wrote there as anything but an attack on Jere. You may not have meant spirited, or even to attack Jere per se, but it sure reads that way. (Not to generalize, but this does seem to be one of the roadblocks environmentalists run into when discussing these kinds of issues. Skipping to a vitriolic tirade about how wrong people are is unlikely to convince them that you're right; it's more likely to drive them in the other direction.)

The flip side, of course, is that we do dump on alison on occasion. (The most recent example I recall involves feet, and eric, coincidentally.) Maybe it's because we see her more often here and less often in person, or because she's actually voicing (sometimes unpopular) opinions here (rather than, say, trying to just take both sides of an issue, and crack wise at the same time), but it does happen. I know I have taken part in ganging up on her and others in a similar way, and for all those cases, I'd like to apologize. I do feel I owe an apology in this vein to Pam, not only for what happened last Friday, but for my grumbling thereafter.

Now, because I have trouble leaving stuff on such a serious note, because I love repeating previous posts, and because this is the first thing that came to mind when I was thinking light-hearted, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring...

paras, login is sucking for me. how often do I have to log in? every post? every re-submittance? I logged in for those last two, but like hell can I access them...

okay, so I know I'm alienating everyone. I hope in time that you'll forgive me for my idealism and jerky comments. I also hope in time that I'll cool down and stop being such a jerk here, and also stop flying off the handle so much.

but at the present time, I think I've said some things that, while they are not popular, need to be said - especially with regard to my preceding statement. and maybe I am just that crazy hippie environmentalist, and maybe I deserve to lose friendships over what I feel are core statements. but I'd also like to think that I can say some stuff like that - to point out where we all need to improve (me too) and not get rained on, because we're all okay with eachother enough to be able to do this. Or am I stepping beyond the confines of our friendships into those icy waters reserved for comments about religious or political ideaology?

Let me know. because, if that's the case, maybe I should just disappear for a while and figure out how I am to behave around all of you in order to preserve these friendships that I do value - incredibly. relationships are two-way streets (at the very least) and if I'm failing terribly on my side, let me know.