Generation Loser has a great soundtrack thanks to Buck 65

Seeing the beauty in small things is what this blog is supposed to be about.

It's quite difficult to do that at the moment, because the world and the weather keeps dumpin' a load on us all, don't they.

But as I am up at the crack of dawn this morning, due to the not-so-small snoring sounds that were emanating from the body in the bed beside me, I thought maybe I'd catch up on some of the small things that are keeping me going through this long winter and recession.

1. CBC Radio 2 Drive, with Rich Terfry (aka Buck 65).
Those of you who know me will know I am a Buck 65 fan anyways. I feel we are psychically connected (but not in a scary, over-enthusiastic way of course) because Buck 65 played Whelans in Dublin the night before I left Ireland for Canada. And then I ended up living in his home province.

Anyways, after spending time in Paris and New York, and just a few months after his amazing collaboration with Symphony Nova Scotia (take one hour out of your day this weekend to listen to this concert - you will not be sorry), Mr. Terfry abandoned the Maritimes again, moved to Toronto, but thankfully, was snatched up by the CBC for its relaunch of its Radio 2. The Drive show goes out 3 - 6pm every weekday.

So it's like he's here in a way.

It's a good show.

You don't want to get out of the car... yes, the show is that good.

The howls of outrage from the baby boomers who wanted wall to wall classical are drowned out every day by the best of Canadian singer-songwriters, roots, and urban (whatever that is).

Drive focuses on Canadian music naturally, but plays international stuff too (actually, Buck plays Irish artist, Damian Rice a lot... I keep meaning to email the show to tell him to check out good Irish artists) and there's a little sub-genre of south american pop and reggae and dub going on there too.

The best part of the show - apart from the music and Rich Terfry's rich-voiced ramblings about whatever - is the live sessions he hosts. Tune in here for the back calendar.

There, now I've done a 'nice thing in Queenie's world', there's a rant that's been building for a bit....

I was reading Macleans magazine the other day and they had one of those moan, whinge, complain, horror articles (well they had many, but I'm going to talk about one in particular) that was all about 'Generation Loser: the generation that will be poorer than its parents'.

It featured a nice, unfortunate, Ontario-based couple in their thirties, who had done the usual thing - arsed through college and their twenties, then 'gotten lucky' working for an auto-parts company for $33 an hour, then gotten even luckier in meeting each other. They bought a house and started a baby, before suddenly getting their pink slips.

Now he's making $11 an hour doing something menial, she's at home with the baby, and they don't know how they will survive THE FUTURE.

According to Macleans, they are typical of a generation that are losers BECAUSE WE ARE THE FIRST TO END UP POORER THAN OUR PARENTS.

A number of things struck me about the article.

Firstly, to go from a household income of $1ook plus, to one of under $25k two months before you have your first child is friggin' scary enough, without having Macleans come in to do a feature on what a pair of losers you are. Even if Macleans is using that term to describe an entire generation and not just you two.

Secondly, our parents did well overall, yes, but their high end manufacturing jobs and conspicuous consumption has damaged the planet, and..... as far as I can make out, they have mostly all just lost their pensions in the stock market (as well as ours) ....

....so I'm kind of at a loss about why we are the losers.

Are we losers because we are the first generation not going to be able to do the same as our parents because it's unsustainable?

Because we could maybe wait a few more years and get judged on our overall performance.

Oh, that's right, Macleans being a paper-based media organization, it will probably have folded by then. ;-)

Thirdly... what is this shit about 'the first generation'?

There have been thousands of generations. I'm sure there are earlier generations that lost more of their best and brightest to the sabre-toothed tiger than their parents, or got whipped into a worse chain gang building some more insane necropolis than their parents, or had to pay more rent to the local squire than their parents, or didn't last as long in some hellish part of the Imperial bureaucracy, or WHATEVER.

It annoys me intensely that economic commentators only look back as far as the development of the Model T factory line, and generational commentators only look back as far as the development of the American middle classes when they purport to examine historical trends.

It narrows the potential for insight so much.

The simple fact remains that under the current model of economic development (i.e. the growth model), if we were all (as a generation) to 'do better' than our parent's generation, the natural world would collapse under the strain.

So we can't.

I'm sure some of us will.

But most of us won't.

People who build a future on a job making car parts in Upper Canada certainly won't, unless they change life direction rapid.

Our parents did the best they could with the decades they got, and they got some of it right and some of it wrong and we will be the same.

I wish we could all accept, internalise and celebrate this concept and move on with it.

Then instead of wringing our hands about what a loser generation we are, we could redefine progress and get ourselves out of this mess.

After that wish, I wish I could find some economic commentators who are looking at the slowdown in sustainability terms (feel free to post links).

And if I got the full complement of wishes, I wish Macleans et al would find and publish numbers that measure the benefits of sustaining and repairing what we already have, rather than droning on with the shock horror statistics measuring cataclysmic drops in the creation of mountains of poisonous plastic and chrome.

As JD Irving, the Tree Growing People would say in their ads that pretend they give a shit about nature 'that's my what if!'

Most hilarious economic meltdown occurance of the week

What: The world's stock markets plunging yet again, after hearing that the Chinese government wouldn't spend billions on a stimulus package to make things better.

Why: Did the running dogs of capitalism actually think that the Chinese government was going to save them?