28 January 2005 by Rachel Funari
is a wonderful thing! Usually I don’t have coffee until morning tea here at work, which doesn’t occur until after 10.45. Before them I’m usually a bit lollish, deeply lethargic. I don’t drink coffee in the early morning because I try to limit my coffee intake to one or two a day. My mom’s one of those people who get roaring headaches without 3 cups of java a day, and I don’t want to be like that. Anyway, i could not sleep last night. Couldn’t fall asleep with all the undone lip stuff roaring around in my head and then I kept waking up in the morning to make sure all of my body was covered to avoid the whining mosquito. So I thouhght, instead of feeling dreadful until 11.00 this morning I’d have an early-morning cup of coffee. What a difference! I feel so good! Like I have a brain, and a body, and they can do stuff!
Yay!
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21 January 2005 by Rachel Funari
Did I write that I was picking up issue 7 yesterday?
Oh, what a stupid thing to write! Why would he be being honest with me this time around rather than any of the other numerous times. So no, issue 7 is not “out”. The printer sent 16 copies away to get finished so that I’d have them at the staff party. But of course it was raining and I planned the party to be in the park and only two girls, besides Michelle and me, actually came. This issue is cursed!!!
I’m going away to Bright in a couple hours and won’t be home until Monday evening so even if they were done by this evening I couldn’t get them mailed out.
Please pray for my assertiveness abilities.
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20 January 2005 by Rachel Funari
God, I feel so much better after a cup of coffee…
I watched the last of the 3 parts that SBS showed The Corporation in last night. It was kind of pissing me off the way it was all about advocating for government regulation. I’m all for intrusive governments for the good of humanity and the earth, but the way to change the corporate world is not by a minority bunch of people holding protests and town meetings and running petitions and lobbying the government.
The way to change the corporate world is by not buying things from corporations. It’s that easy and that difficult.
Rather than getting a town meeting together to discuss the evils of local corporate headquarters and blowing steam and talking, talking, talking, it makes much more sense to me to get a town meeting together to institute a local market where everyone brings something they’ve grown, made or produced themselves for sale and trade. It’s all nice to go on about the power of the people, but until the people actually want to take responsibility for their world and their environment and accept that means having less stuff, nothing’s going to change. We’ll just keep buying
from corporations.
Picking up the mags today. Now they are a month late. And I’m completely unenthusiastic at this point. In fact, I’m scared to see them. I think there will be a lot of mistakes…
Rachel
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8 January 2005 by Michelle Lovi
Further to my comment on Rachel’s post about consumerism, I thought I’d share this weblink I stumbled across.
NO SWEAT STUFF || 100% SWEATSHOP FREE & UNION-MADE FOOTWEAR & CLOTHING
From the site: “Sweatshop exploitation is modern globalised capitalism stripped bare. Sweatshops mean slave wages, long hours, dangerous conditions, back breaking work and repression of trade unions. The bosses and sports stars take home millions while factory workers get pennies.” No Sweat (UK)
Sweatshops exist from the western suburbs of Melbourne & Sydney to the Free Trade Zones of Asia. The No Sweat label has been launched in Australia & New Zealand to give conscious consumers such as yourself a real alternative to the sweatshop-made footwear and clothing which line the shelves and clothing racks of most stores.
A percentage of each sale, whether you purchase on line or via one our retailers, helps fund social justice campaigns around the world including the Anti-Slavery Association of Australia.
Brilliant.
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5 January 2005 by Rachel Funari
Did anyone watch “The Corporation” tonight? In some ways I hate shows like this–I come away feeling so guilty. So here I am trying to put together a magazine that has nice and mushy messages, trying to do my part to make a better world, but I’m feeding into the whole problem: the absolute wastage of paper, consumerism, marketing, soon I’ll be dealing with advertising. And all these negative associations make it hard for me to do what I need to do to make lip a sucess. Does lip make enough difference to justify the part it plays in capitalism? I have to believe it does, or can, or will.
All in all, I’m pretty good about not overconsuming, I think: a large portion of my clothes were bought used, a large part of my furniture at home is used, most of my books are used, I don’t buy much in the way of beauty or cleaning products…but I still like to shop and have pretty things and own the pretty things I see in the shops. I love to eat out, to drink coffee at cafes. And then there’s the stores like Homebase, Hot Dollar, The Reject Shop, etc. All these pretty things, cheap. Why are they so cheap there? What exploitation is going on to make those things cheap? Wouldn’t it be better to buy truly homemade, artist crafted beautiful things from artists and craftspeople rather than corporations? But they are expensive and its so hard to spend that much when I can get the same thing for totally cheap at the Reject Shop. I must try though. If I can’t stop consuming because I’m too weak at least I can continue trying to be more conscious about who I’m buying from.
But then sometimes I think what’s the point? Me consuming less is not going to change the world. But that’s a cop-out. The only way the world will ever change is by people thinking their personal actions will work. Actually, I don’t think the world will change, but it can never get even marginally better if noone takes absolute personal responsibility for its evils.
And maybe in the end, to some degree, the trade-offs are worth it (well, only for rich white people). Maybe it’s better to die of cancer but have lived with lots of good stuff that made you happy until you died. In the end the earth will recover whatever we do to it, but maybe its better to kill ourselves inventing, shopping, eating too much and entertaining each other than to save ourselves and stop experiencing new things. I think I’d rather die of cancer by 40 and have read hundreds of wonderful books, than live to a ripe old age without ever having read one. But if I never had read a book, I wouldn’t know what I was missing….
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1 January 2005 by Rachel Funari
Happy New Year’s to everyone.
In case you were wondering, the magazine did not come out before Christmas. Last I heard the printers were having trouble with the colour press. I gave up worrying about it, though. This is not a world problem and there isn’t anything I can do at this point. All I can do is keep trying to move around deadlines and express myself better to my wonderful designers to make things easier for future issues. After talking to some other editors, though, I’m finding out that 12-24 hour days and lots of stress during production for each issue is fairly normal. Only difference is other publications still manage to get their magazines and newspapers out by the deadline (and they have an office and paid staff!).
I took off for my well-deserved camping Christmas break on Thursday, 23 December, without having heard from the printers. Hopefully, I’ll know on Tuesday what’s going on with the mag.
My camping break in Bournda National Park (near Merimbula) was wonderful, even though coldish and rainy. My friends and I still went swimming in the sea and a lagoon as well. I spent four nights camping and then Allan and I spent one night in a motel in Merimbula before heading off home by way of Bermagui and Tilba. I wanted to stay at the Coast longer, but Allan used the weather as an excuse to come back home. Since being back home I’ve been on a frenzy of trying to get non-lip stuff accomplished: cleaning, gardening, finishing my travel zine, writing, letters, cleaning up old emails and computer files, cross-stitching, sewing old clothes, hanging pictures, etc. I got a lot done, but not nearly enough. Tomorrow and Monday will have to be back to lip work, as I’ve got to finish doing all the mailing envelopes and try to get my computer and paper files cleaned up and organised to make my life easier for the next year.
I’ve got lots of resolutions this year, many aiming to make my life less full of full-on bursts of stress, anxiety and work. I want the future of the magazine determined: to end or continue on with some sort of revenue-making; I want to be able to move to Sydney by 2006; I want to try and be more organised so I’ve not always got so much to do hanging over my head; I want to learn how to drive in this country finally (this is a big, HUGE resolution, and I think a big freeing step for me to take as driving here scares me a lot but would make my life SO much easier); and ultimately I’d like to feel more confident about my abilities and decisions and have a clearer idea of what the fuck I want by the time I hit 30. So, it may be a big year -it could be great or it could suck. But I know that I have the love and support of all my wonderful friends here to pull me through, so I’m not too worried.
I hope everyone is able to achieve some major goals in 2005. Enjoy the summer and lip should be here very soon, I promise!
Rachel
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