MC Frontalot is coming to Berkeley next Saturday and the tickets are only $5 so I'm stoked. Plus there's, you know, JC the next day :D And Tony Lucca and Joe Firstman the next week. I think I like May. A lot.

On Thursday I'm going in to SFSU for "advising day", mostly cause I need to know what classes I need to take so that I can graduate on time. That should be cool, but if I want to get there at 8:15 I have to leave at 5:30 which is just, earlier than all getout, so that's daunting.

I'm really annoyed with myself right now, I keep half-writing these terribly depressing posts about politics and then not posting them because they're horribly depressing. I mostly use this journal for fandom stuff, and gushing and well, just generally being stupid and shallow and happy. And while I'm normally a happy person, I don't think the rest fully applies. Fandom is a really small part of me, my life is a lot more encompassed in activism and politics than I really talk about here. And I think the reason for that is because I don't think anyone wants to get a daily dose of reality check that the world is going to shit. But this is what I really want to be talking about and damnit, my journal, my topics.

I don't pretend to know the answers to the world's problems but one of the things I do in real life is educate people about them and spread awareness. I also talk to people about things they can do to help. One thing I'm really excited about right now are the protests planned for San Francisco that are partly in cunjunction with the G8 meeting in Georgia but also because the biotech-pharmaceutical industry is having their largest gathering of lobbyists for the BIO 2004 conference here in SF.

These corporations are poisoning our food and the FDA has completely folded to their demands. Currently the FDA doesn't require any labeling or testing of genetically altered foods. None. So we have no clue what the food we're eating will do to us and we have no way to avoid eating GM foods since nothing is labeled. According to the Organic Consumers Association 70 to 80% of all processed foods contain GE ingredients and they are all unlabeled. 90% of Americans have said that they want labels, but the biotech companies are fighting that with all the money they can throw at the FDA and Washington. And we're the only country who allows this the EU, China, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and at least 11 other countries all require labeling, some have even banned the import of GE foods entirely.

Last March some Mendocino county residents put a measure on the ballot to ban the "propagation, cultivation, raising and growing of genetically modified organisms" and while the Biotech companies spend $621,000 to try to defeat the measure (that's $55 per "no" vote) the proponents spent less that $100,000 (raised in small local contributions) and they won. That's pretty fucking cool. And just like electing someone other than Bush will be a small step in a really big fight, it's a necessary one. The protests in San Francisco are going to be happening June 3-9. On the 8th, the first day of the G8 meeting in Georgia, an international day of action against their actions and policies has been called. I'm pretty excited to see what'll come out of this. Now let's see if i can actually press the post button this time.