LIMBIDGIT

Super glasses man. We love him.

2012-01-22T22:14:00.000+08:00

We're tired of having crap. Tired of the stuff building up around us. So at Christmas we decided rather than give a gift that was material we bought a goat! Just kidding now. I mean, that goat we got had babies and now we have baby goats. Kids, if you will. That's entirely a lie. We decided we'd get a family zoo pass.

So this morning we decided to go off to the zoo.
There were a bunch of animals there.

Anyway here's the bit worth telling.

Taz stops to take out her sunglasses and drops them. POW. Out goes a lens.

I break into a Latino accent, "Man these glasses are BULLSHEET! Aint no way yo ever get them back in there."

She sighs because all the kids are there and I'm yelling stuff with an accent in the middle of the zoo. Or maybe she's sighing because she just got these glasses after I accidentally snapped the arm off her other glasses. I figure, better to snap the arm off that rather than someone who matters.

All of a sudden there is this giant man standing right behind us. He is HUGE. He is blonde and really good looking and really well built. He says, "can I take a look at those?" And he gentle takes the glasses. Within seconds he has them fixed while he says, almost apologetically,"When you have glasses for fourteen years you know how to fix them." He begins to hurry away and then turns back to ask, "Do you need lens cleaner, 'cause I have some?" Taz laughs and says no. There's a moment and then I yell out "THANK YOU GLASSES FIXER MAN!!!" EXACTLY like when someone gets rescued in a Superman film.

My favourite quote, and has been for years is: "Things are always darkest just before they go pitch black." Thank you Sylvia Plath. That, by the way has nothing to do with the trip to the zoo.

Thinking about all this....

2012-01-08T00:11:00.001+08:00

Every time I decide to shut up shop on this thing I reread it. I get such a kick out of it that I decide to leave it be. I mean, you (and by you I mean me - laugh out loud frickin' crazy right?!) realise that you're the only one reading this. Not sure why I take so much care with it. Well, use to. Now I neglect it like I neglect those folks out the front of EVERYWHERE who collect money. Hate that. So many of them are back-packers who earn more per hour than goes in their pvc money collecting thing. Go figure. My friend thinks they' re a cover for organised crime and money laundering. le sigh.

Also the layout is rubbish. Looks terrible. Needs to be said. FIX IT!

Hey maybe this is my New Years resolution to just write crap into this thing and not get so anal about being careful about what I write. Although one does need to be careful. This year I'm going to put up more of MY photos. That's right I'm yelling that. Ah, the memories. btw the pictures are never random. The Swan Brewery is a significant place to me. Haunting for may reasons. Not the least of which is that there are many really old photos with it in the background and it kind of adds perspective about the passage of time. Also significant because on the site there used to be these beautiful round rocks that the Noongar believed were sacred. They were stolen. Because of the lack of evidence of this the people could never cite this as a sacred site and so the redevelopment rolled on. Oddly enough I read about the rocks and their theft in an issue of the Daily News dating back to the 1880s. Don't quote me but it was something like that. Hate to have to prove that.

So you want a Zebra Finch?

2011-05-10T20:16:00.004+08:00

How do you say 'no' to your son about getting a Zebra Finch when your wife is in defence of the idea?

Here's a few tips.

First, talk about your own childhood and explain how you desperately wanted a Zebra Finch, but your parents said 'No'.

Second, think of an animal your wife hates and bring that into the conversation.

"Hey, I used to own a Ferret."
Daughter (Online with kid brother checking out Zebra Finch): What's a Ferret?
Me: Google it.
Daughter:(a moment later - awestruck): Wow! These are really cute.
Me: Yeah... they are.
Wife: No. They're not. They smell and they bite. They kill babies.
Me: Who needs babies anyway. You train them not to bite and you buy a female, they don't stink so much.
Wife: You're not having a Ferret.
Daughter: Can we pleeeeeeeeease have a Ferret.
ME: You know, they can, like some birds, mimic human speech.
Daughter: REALLY?!
Wife: Hang on...
Me: Yeah... the one I used to have, we trained it to say"I LOVE YOU" and it would look at you with these really cute shiny eyes and say it in a tiny voice. It would make me tear up.
Wife: Until it bit you.
Son: Yeah but can I have a Zebra Finch?
ME: Absolutely buddy. You get the Zebra Finch and your sister can have a Ferret, that would be fair.
Kids: YAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wife: We are not getting a Ferret!
Daughter: But Dad, do you want a Ferret?
ME: You bet I do but ...(make sure you pause for effect then look at wife) your mother doesn't want one. And if we can't have a Ferret then your brother can't have a Zebra Finch.
(Sadly look at both children).

And points go to me for not having to have a bloody bird in the house, though odds on we get a Zebra Finch and a Ferret. Ferret WILL eat the bird. Guaranteed.

When the muse attacks

2011-04-27T17:05:00.002+08:00

It bothers me that most of the Philosophers throughout history were wealthy men with the means to pursue a life of Philosophy. It seems to defy the heart of the issue. I realise of course that everyone is capable of suffering and the wealthy will obviously encounter their fair share - I mean it's entirely subjective and humans being what they are, are fairly adaptive. So one person living in poverty is going to suffer in their experience. However the wealthy will also suffer - perhaps it's suffering loneliness, or boredom - or whatever. The point is in each person's experience the suffering while quantitatively different will qualitatively be similar. An injury is still an injury, a broken heart is still a broken heart.

I've picked a stupid dichotomy because all the research about happiness points out that everything between abject poverty and what we'd call substantially wealthy register similar levels of happiness. I have the typical imaginary ranter (she changes form - at the moment she's a hip athiest who is quite vocal and well educated - it's entirely likely she's my muse which would totally figure - that mysterious figure supposed to quietly inspire you is abusing me - holy cow she's doing it even now!

Muse: Oh, so you're writing a blog and that makes you an artist?
Me: What?! No, I'm just saying that you're supposed to inspire me and you're abusing me.
Muse: Yeah well you're the one make gross over generalisations about how the suffering of the wealthy are essentially the same as those in poverty...
Me: Here we go.
Muse:... because we all know that not having clean water and and basic shelter IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS SOMEONE TURNING UP TO THE BALL FOR THE GOVERNOR IN THE EXACT SAME DRESS AS YOU!!!!
Me: Yeah well it would be quite humiliating if you were a man.
Muse: Oh right make a joke out of it - why don't you throw in some sort of gay slur.
Me: That's an example cross dressing, doesn't mean you're gay so essentially you're the one whose being the biggot.
Muse: We're talking about the suffering of the poor and the down trodden being the same as the wealthy. You don't know what you're talking about and you're putting on weight.
Me: Ok, you know what you're out of control..
Muse: OUT OF CONTROL! YOU HAVEN'T SEEN ANYTHIN...... OUT OF CONTROL? ARE YOU RETARDED?
Me: Hey! Steady now that's kind of out of line.
Muse: SHUT.UP. And what is this? Why are you even writing this. Why? Who is reading this?
Me: No one has to it's just creative...
Muse: Then keep a fricken' journal genius. Spewing your junk trash thoughts all over the internet.
Me: While that's a tautology it's a relevant good point.
Muse: Right so can we stop this nonsense then and go back to that quiet despair you were quietly working on?
Me: Can we please keep to the point? I was raising the whole thing about Philosophers pondering stuff and living in the lap of luxury while they did so. I just don't think it's fair. What about normal people like me.
Muse: You can't use the term 'normal' with reference to your self.
Me: You know what I mean.
Muse: Yeah but you're still essentially privileged, compared to the rest of the world.
Me: That's just crippling Western guilt brow beating me.
Muse: No. It's me making a substantial point.
Me: I helped out someone by mowing their radically overgrown lawn yesterday and then I sat through a film with horrific hay fever - it was embarrassing - sounded like I was crying.
Muse: Don't chat to me, I'm not interested. Least you could go to a film. Spose it was 3D
Me: Yeah it was - it was $25 to see and it was obviously post converted. There wasn't any 2D screenings of it.
Muse: What film?
Me: Thor.
Muse: You know there's people with no clean water to drink in the world, don't you?
Me: Yes. I know. That's why you're in my head.

Check your facts or get bitten in the face

2011-03-29T21:16:00.007+08:00

Sigh. I should check and double check before I mention something. Ridiculous really, given that I haven't blogged in a while.

Anyway.

Here's a follow up to the Mark Bao story I posted the other day. Seems like certain things don't add up - which in light of everything, makes more sense. Hit on the following link to go to "People Liking People" blogspot where they call out Bao's story.

I've not written anything of late - and in what now appears rather desperate, I've resorted to uploading entries based on old events. Yep - nothing cool happens to me anymore so I'm now drifting back over my past, looking wistfully at previous events. Smiling through glazed eyes as I recall them. Cept the whole time I was in Turkey I spent it with mounting concern that we were going to die. Retelling the past always sounds good, largely because you obviously survived it. Next thing you know I'll be standing at a checkout recounting events like an old person. Come to think of it I did just that at a reticulation shop - you know - for sprinklers and stuff I'm in the habit of destroying. I started telling thus story to the owner of the store when I suddenly realised he gave not a crap. I fled, muttering an apology for going on but stumbling along with the fresh revelation that I had become 'that guy'.

No - it's not true that nothing cool happens. I said that just so I could write a blog. Wait....

What would you do?

2011-03-26T15:00:00.000+08:00

Here's an ethical dilemma for you:

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/worse-than-jail-sentenced-to-life-on-youtube-20110325-1c9di.html

Stumps

2010-09-11T10:43:00.004+08:00

Friend on the phone. Hand the phone to Tan who’s cutting 7 month old baby C’s nails. Tan, distracted as she take the phone casually asks me to finish cutting’s C’s nails. There’s only one more to cut. Thumb nail. Jumped up on my second cup of coffee I take the baby and proceed to demonstrate my breath taking efficiency and ingenuity with the nail cutters. The rules of nail cutting:

1. Restrain baby
2. Distract baby
3. Don’t allow baby to see what you’re doing

But I’m a prodigy. I put him in the high chair where he is free to move, see and most importantly, participate. I take his little hand and deftly slip the cutting implement under the nail and snip. My brain is confused. Baby C’s brain is confused, he was watching as well. For moments forever sliced more finely upon repeat play back in my mind I look for the Houdini like slip of the hand. THe nail was clearly in the blades. I cut. I look and the nail is intact. But I felt the resistance of the cut. Something fell out onto the shiny white table of his high chair. It looked like nail. He begins to wail and then scream. There’s blood. My heart shrinks. I have cut my little baby’s thumb. It’s a tiny sliver. Tan’s hung up and standing next to me in a blur. She is completely non judgmental, quietly explaining the rules again. Meanwhile grief and guilt are wrestling on the floor of my mind and in the commotion they blame my wife. It’s her fault. She should never handed those baby nail cutters to a maniac. Moments later he’s fine, he doesn’t mind. I’m quietly haunted. I’m so careful, usually. We have a great time together. My wife and I have agreed that our baby should have talons, lest he end up with stumps.

Excuse me, but that stick appears to be on fire

2010-02-03T20:42:00.003+08:00

This is another extract from the emails I sent to my sister back in 04 while I travelled through Turkey with my dear friend Darren, hence forth known as Daggs.

Dear C.

Okay. Some time after arriving in Fethiya Mark our guide offered to take us to the Barber for a shave. This struck me as weird. What’s wrong with the privacy of one’s own bathroom. Darren seemed confident about the whole thing so I mildly followed along.

Mark drops us off and says see you in forty minutes. The place was empty except for a couple of barbers and three of their friends drinking tea or something. So without much ceremony we’re seated and this chap starts lathering me up.
And proceeds to get WAY too intimate. Far to close to my personal space, right up in my face. I quietly explained that really, in Australia, we only let women do this sort of thing. Otherwise nice men, like your dear self, get smacked in the head. I laughed kindly as I said this. Turns out that none of them spoke English. He keeps working away and then pulls out a cut throat razor, and starts shaving.
He shaves, good.

And the he starts again.

After dousing me in this lemon smelling stuff, he finishes shaving and then gets out the scissors. Trim, trim, trim - happy, happy, happy until he shoves them up my nose. What the hell compelled him to do that? Up. My. Nose. Have you seen my nose? Is there something you haven’t told me. Is this dear sweet soul the first to confront me over this issue? I doubt it. I sat very still - saddened by the subtle violation. Perhaps he was laying bets with his mates about how he can stick scissors up the nose of Aussies.

Then he walks off.

And reappears with a blazing stick. Just in case you missed it: a longish stick that looked an awful lot like it was on fire. He then placed the back of his palm against my face and started hitting this blazing stick against my face just above his hand. And yes it was hot. A hot burning stick being smacked against my face.

The funny thing was they all started laughing when I said 'Holy Crap what is THAT?' As I said, none of them spoke a scrap of English until a taxi driver walked in and started answering our questions in English. Apparently the fire burns off ear hair. That’s refreshing. Who wants ear hair. But is there such a thing as a preventative for ear hair? Because I ain't got any.So why was he burning down my face? Another dare perchance. Reckless individual, I could have been anyone. Unfortunately for me I was a nobody from Oz.

Possibly to make some amends for potentially setting me on fire he then proceeded to massage my face, eye lids, neck, parts of my back - and it was only our first date. Having a man doing that who I can’t communicate with is just wrong on so many levels. Having done all of this, he shaved my face again. I would have had a face like a baby’s bottom had it not been set on fire.

The Business of Monkeys

2010-01-20T14:09:00.014+08:00

A couple of years ago in the midst of my stint doing stand up comedy I talked about going to the zoo a young family, much like my own and all the associated merriment. I recall that at the time the zoo was going through some sort of financial difficulty and were lamenting this in a very public fashion. Having said this I may have dreamt it. In one particular section of my 'gig' I considered that if the zoo wanted to fix it's fiscal problems it should allow people to bring their dogs along. In fact it should become a more interactive experience. Take for example the smaller monkeys, the Tamarin Monkey.

Not a particularly beautiful creature but versatile, I think you’ll find. Why not have races, create little vests and racing caps and secure the tiny simians to the backs of Jack Russels or Silky Terriers with a spot of gaffer tape. In fact, why not dress them up as ninjas? Of course with that kind of breed you run the risk of the dogs turning on their riders and tearing them to piece. Not a spectacle for the younger ones but a revenue raiser none the less. It was met with deafening silence from the audience. In fact they looked horrified. I was, of course, joking – reflecting on the dangers of commercial enterprise compromising the integrity of innocent ventures like a trip to the zoo. Well, it seems someone somewhere didn’t have someone in their life to say, ‘No – that’s a really bad idea”. Or perhaps they didn't raise the idea in front of my particular audience. . I will concede however that perhaps the Kelpie breed and whatever that terrified monkey is were perhaps a better mix than I envisioned.

On the subject of Englýsh.

2010-01-14T10:08:00.002+08:00

Currently I am attempting to read through a history of Political Philosophy from Socrates to Rawls. The thought of it drains the blood from my hope. My Blog has been nagging at the loose threads of my mind for months now and in keeping with bumping into C yesterday (one of my students from the Philosophy class last year – I call this person C not out of any malevolence but that’s the first letter of their name and I’m not sure if they would want me writing names in blogs etc… so out of respect for them I’m simply writing ‘C’) I have decided to write something. Given the constraints on my time, that is how long it is possible for a person like me to sit in one place and concentrate I have decided to shorten the process by sharing some of the emails I wrote to my sister during my trip to Turkey in 2004. I’ve always meant to record these on my blog but never made the time. I also have four hours of video recording of our trip that I will one day get around to editing.

Well things have continued to remain interesting. Today is Saturday and it is really cold here. Spent some time in McDonalds writing and thinking.

Couple were getting a little too hot and heavy in one of the booths so I got out of there. No one was in there anyhow and I wanted to be where the action was. The other action. This McDonalds has a great view of the square, which is actually a circle, so that’s why I sat there writing. Most people were across the road in a big Turkish fast food place that serves bread stuffed with cheese etc... I tried to ask one of the staff why McDonalds was empty, he just kept saying yes.

I'm starting to develop this expression - kind of a bored stare of mild disbelief, it stems from the following - you ask someone on the street if they speak English? Like in the following example where I had taken an interest in a peculiar building with a dome shaped roof covered entirely in grass.

I politely inquired of a gentleman who looked like he was waiting for someone,'Do you speak English?'
Very enthusiastically, 'YES, YES, speak English!'
'Good. What is that building over there?' I pointed at the large ancient ruin with grass on it’s roof in the middle of this giant turning circle (called a square) surrounded by new and old five to six story buildings - obviously of some significance this building. It’s right in the middle of everything.
'Taksým square.'
'No...' I pointed at the building, making square in the air with my fingers around the building and for some reason began speaking in pigeon English'...building right over there, building in front of us, right in front, what is building?' This is a terrible habit of mine. I tend to mimic the inflection, if not the accent and general way of speaking.
'Is bus.' Man is clearly surprised at my stupidity.
'What? No behind bus!' Now I’m making jumping signs with my hands,’behind bus is building, what is it?'
'Is city.'
'City' I repeat. 'That tiny little building is a city.'
'Yes is city' Man is now making broad sweeping gestures.
I stare politely at this man before wishing him a good day by saying Merribah which is actually hello.

I was asking Darren something about the structure and another man interrupted, answering my question he apparently overheard about whether or not anyone spoke English. 'Yes I speak English,’ he said and then had absolutely no idea what I was talking about - structure with no windows, in the square, very old, grass on top, what is it?. Zip. Stare. Finally answers 'Hotel' Yes, of course. Thanks. Thanks very much, it’s clearly a hotel with no windows and grass for a roof. It turns out that when people answer "Yes, I speak a little English!" that is precisely what they mean, that is the only phrase they know - "Yes, I speak a little English."

This old lady walks into a bar...

2009-03-29T19:30:00.002+08:00

"It's not that I'm a control freak, it's just that you don't do what I want." She yelled that last bit at me in order to get my attention. My dearly beloved talks a lot about controlling behavior, and quotes that woman Beyonce or Oprah or something like that.

Today I’m going to talk about Battlestar Galactica.

Those words relegate me to the dank and shadowy internment of geekdom or nerdom. Does it save me from being either, that I haven’t really worked out which is which? Surely knowledge of which is which would mean it would make me one of those. But given I don’t know…

I’ve made the mistake of telling someone I figured them for a nerd and they became indignant and insisted they were a geek. They went on to explain that geeks were kind of cool whereas nerds were social misfits. You know – during the formative stages of their life they could only make friends with computers and books and subsequently found actual human beings laughably disappointing. You’ll know the type of person I’m talking about because they’re always laughing cynically at the most inappropriate time. Alternatively they say the sorts of breathtakingly insensitive things that leave people shuffling inches in the opposite direction. Failing that they have breath that could stun a chimp.

See, the extent of my relationship with computers is word processing and itunes (I feel technically proficient because I can upload podcasts - hell, I'm dancing in a tight circle because I use terms like 'upload'). I wouldn’t claim too loudly that I’d got the human side of things worked out though. The only thing I’ve established is that people, by and large, want to be lied to. If they ask you how they look, you’ve got to subtlely assess what it is they want to see in the mirror. Then you give feedback on those grounds. You don’t go in blind. Phrases like “You’re joking, right?” or “That’s a little tight, don’t you think?” or “I’m going to walk near to you, not next to you because I don’t want to be beaten to death along with you.” I realize that sounds cynical, but think about it, how often do people like to be 'told it straight'? There's a half dozen anecdotes I could tell right now. I should mention the time a Dr. tried to break something to me gently, seeing that he was struggling I told him to just given straight. That cost me three months of worthless anxiety 'cause it turned out he was wrong. Hack.

Worse still is the teenager. They crave affirmation while at the same time encouraging you to take to them with something blunt. They don’t want to hear anything that even hints at some inadequacy or misunderstanding. They must be approached in much the same way as a large bear must be approached. Any bear for that matter. I sometimes explain to a class “It’s funny you say that because teenager is actually Latin for ‘thinks with mouth open’, except ‘thinks’ is one of those tricky words that doesn’t quite mean what we think it does – the closest translation I can muster up is clay pot…”

On another note but still the same tune, sort of…
I have a class of older students that I attempt to teach Philosophy to. I say attempt because by and large their intellect leaves me for dead. Some of these people are humiliatingly smart and some days class feels like a gladiatorial arena.

Anyway.

This one time I’m chiming on about old people (just for laughs - whose going to know? Gormless, I know) and one of the girls looks, I don’t know, pale. So I ask if she’s ok and she says no, her grandmother just died. And then I’m in a really awkward spot. If she’s lying and I say “Far out, I’m really sorry” she may laugh and go “You’re so stupid… she’s not dead, YOU’RE A FOOL!” and then the room will spin slowly shifting in and out of focus as people laugh and point . So I decide to play it safe. “Well, let’s face it though,” I say building up to a punch line as the rest of the class breaks into a look that could only be described as horror, “there’s nothing worse than having to share a table with an old person, the noise they make when they're eating, those slapping gums...” and with that she’s out of her chair and three steps in she’s not crying, she’s choking on her grief.
There’s a stunned silence. For about a second. And then, predictably, the room turns. “You’re a BASTARD Mr.Limb” and there’s projectiles made up of pens, tissues and other fairly unimportant but potentially sharps bits showering across at me.

It’s funny, I really sit down to write this blog to try and compile some sort of dialogue about what I’m thinking about and reading in the hope of dialogue with people out there in the icy reaches of cyber space. If you want to be challenged have a read of FULLMETALSEAN. His last blog is friggin mint. I recommended the thing he comments on but lets face it, he actually watched it, and then deconstructed it opening dialogue on the 'net. My blog is like little pieces of a puzzle that when you finally get most of them down and step back it just spells the word DYSFUNCTION, and worse it’s all on a background of blue with clouds so it takes forever to work out where the pieces go. Don’t get me started on jigsaw puzzles. I think I can justify spending the odd hour on the PS3 when it comes to jigsaw puzzles.

So, next blog Peter Gabriel’s SACD releases and Battlestar Galactica. And my Empire Strikes Back card collection. BTW... just for the record, not a fan of Star Trek.

The distinction concerning extinction

2009-03-23T21:23:00.009+09:00

The following is an actual extract from a moment in class where I answered a question pertaining to the various theories in regards to the extinction of the Dinosaurs. I wrote this down a little while after it happened out of sheer astonishment.

Precocious Student: So what wiped out the Dinosaurs then?
Me: Well, they think it was a meteorite that hit the Earth.
PS: Huh? A meteorite killed the Dinosaurs?
Me: Yes.
PS: What it just hit and killed the dinosaurs?
Me: (patiently) No. It struck the earth with such force that it blew millions of tonnes of dirt into the higher atmosphere where there isn't the wind to clear away dust and muck and this blocked out the sun. No sun means all the vegetation died, which in turn killed the Dinosaurs who ate vegetation and when they died there was nothing for the meat eating dinosaurs so they died. That’s how the theory goes.
PS: Yeah, then where’d the meteorite come from. It just appeared out of the sky and killed everything?
Me: Yes.
PS: What? A meteorite just came from nowhere?
Me: No it came from space.
PS: So a meteorite came from space and that’s how the Earth was made?
Me: What?
PS: So a meteorite came from space and that’s how the Earth was made?
I turn in exasperation to no one in particular.
Me: Can you understand why I get frustrated?
Seconds later I’m met by another student who challenges me.
Sneering students: I was told that it was extinction that killed the dinosaurs.
Me: Yes, a meteorite hit the Earth, killed the dinosaurs. They all died
S.S.:Yeah but they were supposed to have been killed by extinction.
Me: They all died, they all became extinct. That rock hitting the earth resulted in the dinosaurs dying. That is called extinct.

I’d like to point out that this does not represent the majority of students. In fact this sort of exchange is usually had by a very particular type of student. Those that show not the slightest interest in listening to anyone else’s opinion other than their own. This is often coupled with this sort of sneering attitude that presumes you obviously have no idea what you’re talking about, in fact, according to their assessment you must have come down in the last shower because unless you're drawing your information straight from Neighbours or Home and Away you're obviously talking absolute nonsense. Dinosaurs, as everyone knows, weren't killed by a meteorite, they were killed by extinction.

Sorry about turning off the ability to leave comments anonymously. Situation developed last year where someone was being intellectually disruptive and one of my dear friends attempted a literary spear tackle. So now feel free to comment if you so desire.

...to the ridiculous

2008-10-09T15:14:00.011+08:00

It was a massive fissure, splitting the desert apart that the eight of us climbed into. Step after precarious step, observing each thin line in the gorge wall deposited there after each rain season, marking every millimetre down to the gorge floor 80 metres below.

It was overcast and signs were placed at every entrance into the gorge that we would need to exit immediately if it looked like rain because people had been swept away in flash floods in the past. In fact we had only an hour before read the memorial erected in memory of a rescue worker who had lost his life attempting to save the life of an individual who had been caught in one of the aforementioned flash floods.

The day threatened rain and it had been at the bottom of one of the more inaccessible gorges with two small children that it had indeed started to rain. Needless to say I panicked and had tremendous difficulty maintaining an air of cavalier nonchalance. In fact, I think I had said something to the effect “I’m having an anxiety attack” as people confirmed that they too were, in a more colloquial sense, starting to ‘shit themselves’.

The journey into the Gorge had been one of those life affirming confidence building experiences for the children where their Uncle Ian had done a brilliant job patiently directing the children where to place their hands and how to carefully negotiate their way along an otherwise death friendly environment. The whole journey we were taking into the most difficult part of the gorge took about forty five minutes. By difficult I mean that there existed more treacherous parts, but these were largely inaccessible without the equipment to abseil. The parts we were in didn’t need ropes to get through, but one wrong step and you would at best get wet and worst be swept away to a plummeting injury. There are no adverts for one punch sentencing for gorges so… safe to say the gorge would be acting in innocence should it inadvertently murder you.

And so at the most tranquil and beautiful parts, rain began to fall.

I looked out across the distance to notice two men abseiling their way down into the pool that was further down from where we were. It would have been so beautiful watching the rain fall splendidly down between the metres and meters of sheer rock face into the tranquil pool of water if it wasn’t for the gripping fear that by my calculations we were 45 minutes away from the exit. The point where we had got to was called Regan’s Pool. It was named after a rescue worker who was tragically killed mere meters from that very spot during a flash flood four years previously. Thankfully I made no link between the plaque we had been reading a couple of hours ago and where we currently were.

Ian was keen for the kids to find their own pace. I abandoned this idea as, fighting hysteria, dragged the children as one would perhaps drag hand luggage through a crowded airport. I crashed through the water, tossing them up on to rocks that had previously taken long minutes to negotiate over and unceremoniously dropped them onto the other side. Lessons in self-actualisation were over.

Once we were safely out of the bit I felt would hurt the most should a wall of water come bearing down upon us I was stunned to meet a German walking casually through to the point we had just evacuated. What struck me as patently absurd was the shiny black leather cowboy hat he had perched on his head. I don’t think there is anything that could be worn with such a hat that would make it look like it belonged, but this guy didn’t even try. A light coloured polo shirt with comfortable looking board shorts finished off his appearance I mean really, really finished it off. I casually wondered out loud whether it was a brilliant idea whether he should continue. He explained that he had spoken to a State Emergency Worker and while bad weather was on the way there wasn’t much of a risk of a flash flood. I guess I subconsciously put together the words ‘much of a risk’, the fact that the information had come from someone who may not be the foremost expert in unpredictable weather patterns, the guys black hat and the sign that had said EXIT IMMEDIATELY IF IT LOOKS LIKE RAIN a point which seemed a little lost on everyone because it was actually now raining…anyway I just nodded. I wished him luck and then made a note of the time so I could let the authorities know when we got back to the top that a German tourist was last seen at ten to twelve and for that matter it may all be for the best given what he was wearing.

The rest of the journey out of Hell’s mouth was a little more dignified and I was starting to feel a more relaxed the closer we got to the exit point when I was startled by the men we had seen abseiling down into Regan’s Pool accompanied by the German who now appeared quite insane - looking panic stricken in his shiny black leather hat. Upon inquiring about his change of heart he said something about taking two photos and deciding that it perhaps wasn’t the best sense to risk his life taking any more. They came tearing up behind us and crashed through the women and children in their efforts to lay hands on the ladder and haul arse out of there. The two abseilers were either deaf or German because they made no attempt to communicate with us, although one of them had the name Tom written on his helmet, a means to identify his body we presumed upon discussing the events later. I will add in my defence that my wife recalls none of the fear I noted in the men’s eyes but I will insist that this can be the only reason for their apparent rudeness and wild eyed appearance they had taken on.

Once we were a considerable distance out of the gorge I quietly wished that a wall of turbulent water would come rumbling out past us at a safe distance and I would feel a heroic sense of self satisfaction. Instead there was just an echoing silence and deep seated sense that there was something wrong with me and that I should perhaps take to wearing a shiny black leather hat with the word ‘Shmuck’ written across the back of it.

John Naish and The Irony of it all

2008-09-14T20:56:00.006+08:00

Damn it I’m going to write this! I have been haunted by the fact that I haven’t written for days now, and I really think I need to do this. It is half past eight on Sunday night and I am tempted to disengage and go and waste my time watching TV. I’ll watch the TV and then get caught up doing something else and that will be that. The prospect of sitting down and writing (difficult to write any other way) an entry will seem very unattractive.

Nevertheless I have now been forced to move. My wife has just turned the Olympics on, the one where you’ve got to guess what is actually wrong with the person to warrant their participation in the ‘special Olympics’. It makes the mind boggle at the fact China is hosting this event, and winning the thing no less. The pressure they seemed to place on competitors a few weeks ago, and everyone else participating for that matter (the little girl who ‘sang’ at the opening ceremony anyone?) you wonder how anyone ‘special’ survived let alone competed. I know, I know, you’re only meant to think this stuff. So yeah, I’ve got my ipod on listening to Bruce Springsteen just so I can block out all the distractions.

Had a discussion during the week with a colleague I love and respect about listening to ipods at work. He is advocating the free use of them at school (where we work). I was against this idea, but all for having them in private study, one of the classes I take care of. He disagreed and said it wasn’t possible to concentrate while working on something and listening to music so yeah I fed the horse this carrot and it bit my hand, things with big human teeth have scared the hell out of me ever since… actually he’s right to an extent. Classical music is ok, so is soundtrack music, but contemporary rock etc… it’s hard to think deeply. Specially when it’s the BOSS. Undervalued, I feel, is Bruce Springsteen. And I have taken to writing like Yoda because I’m listening to Bruce Springsteen so I don’t have to listen to the special Olympics and find myself distracted listening carefully to try and pick if there is a distinctive slur in people’s speech. Yes, I teach children there is nothing wrong with being different, provided what makes you different is the fact that you can run faster than a significant part of the population.

By the way don’t start on me about writing this stuff and not understanding because I do understand and actually care very much about people. So as long as you read what I’ve written with that in mind you won’t find it as breath takingly offensive at it at first appears. Of course if you’ve read this far and not busy furiously writing a blistering comment sweat beading on your forehead because it’s people like me who blah blah blah. Like I said it’s hard to concentrate with Bruce in my ear.

I wanted to reflect on John Naish’s article Enough is Enough that appeared in the Weekend Australian Magazine March 22-23 this year. Funnily enough it talked about the inundation of information and the effect it’s having on us. Things as simple as anticipating emails when you’re doing work can completely undermine your effort to do anything effective in your job. Welcome to my world. Holy cow the irony in all of this is making my head spin.

This crushing drive to get writing about some of the stuff I’m thinking about in the area of what I teach, only to ultimately question the possibility that I am an information junkie. Running to you with the article grasped in my sweaty hand panting with wide eyed enthusiasm only to register a look across my face. A look of “I have to write about all this information… I have to tell everyone about starting with this one about information overload….wait a second… I think I’m actually participating in being part of the problem”. Might be better to say nothing at all. You can see why I’ve struggled to write anything.

Out of the mouth of....

2008-08-25T20:57:00.005+08:00

Today I was eating some left over stir fry and a pea bounced out of the snow pea I was eating. The colleague I was talking to at the time picked it up and said, "Hey, an escapee!"

I just felt that should be immortalized. And yes, I'm coming back

In case of ermergency smash class

2008-04-05T16:07:00.003+08:00

Sometimes when things go wrong I don’t react in any outward way. I sigh so deep it comes out of my soul and I just have to stand still. You can’t see me move, and only I understand what’s going on. Some people are struck by the oddness of it, you can tell because they stare while the rest of the world goes crazy.

During a Year Nine Beliefs and Values class a bunch of girls want to meet at lunch to discuss how God talks. It strikes the teens as ridiculous, incomprehensible that God would talk. They visibly struggle with the concept in half sentences and erratic hand waving, spitting out sentences like, “So he talks in your head… like a voice?”
“No it’s kind of like a thought that isn’t part of your own stream of consciousness.”
“So He doesn’t talk?”
“Not in the conventional sense, no. But you talk to Him and as the days go by you watch and wait, paying attention to seeming coincidence, except the things that happen, or the things that people say just happen to answer some of the questions you were asking. But it’s really important to first and foremost to read the Bible. Test everything against that.”

So a group of girls decide they want to talk about it further, can they meet at lunch? I set the bar high, telling them they need to bring another twenty kids who want to talk about the matter. I’ve been confronted by enthusiastic teens over the years that you give up your free time for only to find that they don’t turn up. I mean, there have been times when huge gangs of students turn up, a couple of years ago there was about twenty five year twelves who wanted to go through a little bit of the Gospel of Luke. That was a wonderful time. But having chased my tail I’m not so enthusiastic anymore. If it cost me it cost my family in the end and they haven’t asked to pay a price.

Nine girls meet me at lunch time. We’re eleven short but I meet with them anyway. I casually walk over to close the door to the class. My classroom is an old foyer converted by slapping up a few false walls and a million power-points. The huge glass double doors remain. As I casually go to close the door a year ten student grabs the door.
“What are you doing?” (Subtext: why are they allowed in there and we’re not?)
“I’m talking to these girls about talking to God.”
He smiles through my explanation without a hint of comprehension. I finish my point by closing the door.
He grabs it from me.
I pull it closed, dragging him with me. Suddenly three adolescent males grab the door and start pulling.
I pull back. Then I think to myself, no, use the situation to my advantage. They’re all pulling so if I push it suddenly they’ll go reeling. Suddenly I shove the door and brace that action by slamming my boot into the metal cross beam in the aluminium frame. Except I put my boot into the glass and it shatters spectacularly with a ‘set your teeth on edge’ crack.

In my defence the idea worked, they let go of the door… to fall about on the floor laughing.

The girls behind me in the class fall about laughing. The school yard outside has come to a grinding halt as students come across the court yard to see what’s going on. They try to fall about laughing, but now there's no more room on the gorund, so they just stand there laughing.
It’s like those films where people laugh in slow motion, the camera tilting wildly and careering about.
I mutter to myself a single word and after a moment, sigh.
Two girls stand and watch off to my right. They are completely silent and perplexed by my inaction. It is a mystery to them. I’m not laughing, or yelling or jumping around with the boys. I’m just standing there.
I finally move across to the set of draws where I have left my lunch.
A girl stares incredulously, “How long’s that lunch been in there?”
“A week,” I lie. She recoils in horror.
I sit and allow the questions to come.
“Are you angry Mr. Limb”
“No, I wasn’t angry, just hopelessly uncoordinated. It was supposed to look a lot cooler than that.”

And so we talk about Jesus and how He talks all the time to His Father, and how He teaches His disciples to pray. I go and photocopy the Lord’s prayer, taking a quick detour to explain to the groundsman that I’ve smashed a door. He thinks I’m kidding. I explain which door it is and leave him to his lunch.

In closing our discussion, as I mentally gear up for the onslaught of Year Tens, one of the girls pipes up.
“Do Christians swear?”
One of the girls yells out in a rebuke. “Derrrr! Mr. Limb swears.”
“What does he say?” Asks the girl.
“Crap.” Offers a bright eyed blond girl.
“No, that’s not a swear word… he says ‘shit’ I just heard him say it when he smashed the door.” She says matter-of-factly.
I was going to offer that I thought that I had said it under my breath. I don’t bother.

Rapper Boy and the Cliff

2008-03-14T00:28:00.009+09:00

Now just add a beard and you've got the general idea.

It's the second last lesson for the day and there is a pitched battle as both sides grasp for control of the room. In the blue corner a pack of roughly 30 fourteen year olds. In the red corner is me, sitting fairly safely somewhere along the spectrum for high functioning autism. I'm trying to explain the concept of self-control and it's relationship to happiness. Self control + teenagers + afternoon class = stupid teacher.

It's a bun fight.

Half way through the analogy in which I attempt to explain the idea that reality isn't too fussed about whether or not you believe in it, I make two important discoveries. (I have to note at this juncture that teenagers have this marvelous apprehension of the belief that "if I can't see it, it's not there" and apply this to general knowledge - if they haven't seen something it ain't there. If reality was Chuck Norris they'd all be dead.) Discovery number one: two girls right at the front on the room, I mean right under my nose, are busy doing maths homework. Discovery number two: they haven't got a clue what I'm talking about.

Me: You see, just because I don't believe in gravity doesn't stop it from existing. So if I dance on top of a building in the belief that gravity isn't real regardless of what I believe the reality is I may well fall to my death. In the same way morality is a law that may very well... girls? What are you doing?
Girls: Maths homework.
Me: Maths homework?
Girls: Yeah we have a test next session.
Me: Yeah but you probably have a party to go to this weekend.
Girls: So?
Me: (walking across the room and taking the work off them) So think of this as study for that.
Girls: What?
Interfering child #1: Tear the work up Mr. Limb!
Me: Shut up.
Me:(putting work in draw) Now girls I hate maths almost as much as I hate inebriated teenage girls..
Girls: What?
Me: Shut up. And I find it troubling that you would do that work in my class.
Girls: But what has gravity got to do with parties?
Me: I'm talking about the reality and implication of a moral law, whether or not you believe in that moral law.
Girls: But what has gravity got to do with parties?
Me:...
Girls: (one of them suddenly puts up their hands) I don't understand what you're talking about. What's morality?
Me: (beat) What?
Girls: What's that word mean?
Me: You are kidding, right? (Looks at room in disbelief, he suddenly notices something he hadn't before - a complete lack of comprehension) Who can tell me what morality is?
Room: Silence
Me: Put up your hand if you know what morality is. (there is the no movement - two students turn to ask each other a question) SHUTUP! Who knows what.... ok no-one know s what the term morality means. This is so getting blogged.
Girls: Hey rapper boy's dead.
General mass along that side of the room erupts.
I bring a meter ruler down on a desk.
Me: QUIET. Does anyone have a working definition of what morals are?
Girls: No he's dead, he jumped off a cliff 'cause he thought he could fly.
Girls: You know who he is Mr. Limb, you know? Rapper boy?
Me: (I stare)
Girls: yeah... (one of them starts absurdly bobbing up and down in her chair folding and unfolding her arms like a mummy having second thoughts) (She sings... badly)
Class erupts again.
I explode again. Ruler starts to splinter.
Me: You don't know what... that makes things a little more difficult.
Girls: Yeah morals is rules about doing the right thing.
Me: Ok. Good, now morality is the same idea.
Girls: But what's that got to do with gravity and parties?
Me: You know Rapper Boy who jumped off the cliff?
Girls: Yeah?
Me: Was he drunk?
Girls: Yep and high on...
Me: Good. Now you understand the link I'm trying to make between gravity and parties.
Boy: But you can't prove that God exists.
Me: What?
Boy: You think God might exist but you can't prove that!
Me: Where did you... (I try to make the link)
Class erupts.
Teacher quietly thinks that rapper boy may have been onto something.

The Lonely Moon

2008-01-10T10:44:00.000+09:00

We care about our children's health. We care about our mental health more, and this is why I decided to buy a Coke and go thirds with both my kids. There had been some earlier travesty in which my daughter had been embezzled out of the last mouthful of the only coke she had been allowed to ever have and was justifiably upset by the whole thing. I had found myself in the unenviable situation of having to wait for what turned out to be three hours with the kids while Tan was in an eye appointment.My daughter's misery weighed heavily upon my frame.

I decided to amp the kids up on sugar and caffeine in order to improve their moods.

Upon purchasing the Coke we found a place to sit, us three, while we consumed it. The venue was the dispatch/drop off entry at the rear of Charles Gairdener Hospital. A massive empty room last decorated in 1972. The carpet was made up of those square tiles of pony hair that any poor soul tripping or sliding across would be eviscerated. In fact there were darkened patches in places across this enormous chamber. Around the walls of this catacomb were pieces of artwork created by Western Australian artists and understandably hidden here.

In this setting we sat listlessly, silently, passing the bottle back and forth. No one speaking. After some minutes the bore water stained doors abruptly slid open and an elderly man in a wheelchair was delivered by a large mustached man in a white uniform.

"You can take yourself the rest of the way." Were the only words uttered as the doors suddenly closed again.

The man sat motionless at the other end of the cavern. A huddled form that seems entirely incapable of doing anything. The coke continued to be sipped as we passed it back and forth in silence. The three of us sitting on the only chair in the entire room. The man, the room, the three of us set out like some sort of Post Modernist Exhibition. It was the most exciting thing the room had seen in years.

His withered hands unfolded from his lap and almost incredibly the wheelchair began to move. It hissed as his leathery hands slid to find their place and move the wheels inches forward. And this was all there was as we silently watched the man move across the room like the moon across the evening sky.

Eventually, as he drew closer I broke the endless silence by asking if he wanted to be pushed. I waited, dreading the response.

There was no response.

He had absolutely no idea that we were there. He was completely unaware of anything other than the chair. Probably a good thing given the art was truly deplorable.

It hissed passed us. None of us took our eyes off him.

Then, as he was about to pass out of sight around the corner he spoke. Startling us.

"Thirty bloody years of THIS."

The silence swallowed his words as he vanished around the corner. We silent witnesses beheld the futility and the passion contained within. My daughter then began to giggle, trying to drink the last of the Coke, becoming increasingly hysterical with laughter as my eight year old failed to purse her lips around the bottle. The word 'bloody' had struck her as mud slung across the masterpiece of post-modernity we had all beheld. Perfect and a privilege to behold.

Kissmas

2007-12-19T14:21:00.000+09:00

Santa and his Ninjas. Crazy.

Christmas.

It's the time of year for reconciliation and hope. A time when family and friends get the chance to put their differences aside and gather around the manger for quiet reflection. Sure it's commercial, rushed and tends to be a bit stressful but dang it, it's worth it.

As we sit around the Christmas tree sipping eggnog with Christmas carols playing in the background and laughing together at this or that, suddenly, quietly there comes a disquieting sense that you're merely acting out something you saw in a film. In fact, it's 35 degrees and everyone has jumpers on. As you step out of your chair, eggnog smashing in slow motion to the floor you realize there's a blazing fire and the heat has sent you stark raving mad. You rip off the santa hat and the jumper, exposing your black t-shirt. Pointing to everyone who have now frozen in toothy smiles with looks of confusion you scream out the command to turn the shiny poisonous music off.

You sink to your knees, fists at your ears, eyes squeezed tightly shut....

Christmas.

Look I don't hate Christmas... it's just that Christmas and me don't speak so much anymore. We both decided it was better for all involved, you know (conspiratorial whisper) the kids.

Actually I do hate Christmas, but if I opened this entry with "My giddy aunt I hate Christmas..." most people may very well go "Well there's a surprise..." and go and spend their time on a less dysfunctional activity.

But let me explain.

The whole thing tears me up because I can't make up my mind. I wouldn't want to call for an end to Christmas, not that anyone's asking me to make that decision for them. Cut to:

(It's a darkened room, like those war rooms you see in Armageddon and million other stupid films full of men in uniform)
General (sweat drips from his forehead): It's time to call it Mr. Limb
The camera pans taking in anxious faces.
Limb: (Head down teeth clenched, he suddenly looks up): Burn him, burn the fat man.... end Christmas.
General: We have it men, GO GO GO!
It's pandemonium in the room as men run through the room with guns - a massive computer display featuring a flashing Santa with a cross through him with the title:

MISSION: Burn Fat Boy, Burn.

Anyway I digress. Not that anyone's about to ban Christmas. If people decided to ban Christmas I'd worry about a future event involving empty streets with newspaper and tumble weeds wandering listlessly about with gray houses filled with miserable children staring at an empty corner. I'm not ready to call it quits, but nor do I want the ordeal. You see I'm jammed.

The arguments for it aren't compelling.

1.It's a time for family to get together.
Let's face it, if that's the only time the family gets together then maybe it isn't worth the trouble, I mean they're not busting their guts to get together at any other point in the year. Should these people really be in the same room together with a surplus of food and alcohol.

2.Gift giving.
Love presents - but I don't like presents given under compunction. They end up being shit. You know I like the way Patrick thinks about things. He's a fan of coming across something and thinking "Such and such would like this..." Versus scrambling about a few weeks or even days before the event grabbing anything that looks substantial in wrapping paper. A possible solution is to do something along the lines of Patrick's idea, but hold onto until Christmas. If you are that organized chances are you probably don't enjoy Christmas, it will kill you or alternatively it all becomes such a competition for you that you should not be allowed to participate on the grounds that you are in danger of turning the whole thing into a Jihad.

3. Jesus' Birthday
No, it wasn't.
Here's a little history of Christmas
Here's a little something about the date of Jesus' birth
and here's something else
Yeah but it's an opportunity for people who don't go to church to, you know, go to church. See point number 1.

Having said all that there are some people that just love doing the cards and the presents and all the other cute red and white celebratory stuff and at the end of the day you've just got to let them be, live and let live. Unless of course they start imposing their views on you. Then it's time to burn the fat man.

This image was going to be my title image. But then I thought about it and... well, here it is for your viewing pleasure. I couldn't pull my eyes away there's just so much that's... wrong. Go to the website - many other images, many.

taken from: http://www.dudeirock.com/
worth checking out if you have a moment or two...

Oh, and then I found this. Always loved this guy, but this is really something else.

Tiny Spiders of Shame

2007-11-08T19:51:00.000+09:00

There are times when I actually believe that I am a decent person. For some reason this always occurs to me when I'm walking into the male staff toilet at school. It's kind of like a confessional sans the priest. A priest in there would make it awkward. A priest in there isn't likely to be a priest, rather a man dressed as a priest in which case he is there because he is taking a break from his nefarious plans. Alternatively, he is in the middle of one of said nefarious plans.

Anyway.

I walk into the alcove and through the orange toilet door and that's when the thought hits me. I'm doing okay... people like me... my life matters... blah blah blah.... blah. Unless of course someone is in there and the door is (hopefully) locked. Then I just slam into it, hurt my wrist, hope that I wasn't talking to myself too loudly so that whoever I scared the proverbial out of doesn't work out it was me and make like a bat out of hell out of there.

There are times when I think that I am a decent person.

Today wasn't one of them.

Tan was working today and that meant I had to get off my arse and provide some sort of assistance. On Thursdays that means dropping her off at work, and taking Zed and his friend to school. My oldest is already at school and the plan is to meet her and then take her to the uniform shop.

I drop Tan off. Me and the boys find ourselves a little early so I park the car out the front of school and crank up The Shins. The boys kick around in the back seat. So I read a magazine and let the clock tick round until class is only 5 minutes away.

I jump out the car and tell the boys to do the same.

They do this. His mate grabs his own bag and hops out. Zed jumps out and starts to strut off like, I don't know, Huckleberry Finn. I notice that his sandals are on the wrong feet.
"Hang on, where's your school bag?"
He heads back to the car.
Nothing.
I open the boot. The boot looks alarmingly empty. I'm actually alarmed before I realize why exactly I'm alarmed. Then it hits me. This means there's no bag in the car at all. Spiders begin to skitter across my heart.
"Oi... where's your bag?"
"At home."
At HOME?!"
Silence.
Parents. Glances. I forget he's five. I talk to him like he's my idiot henchmen in one of those gangster films.
"Right, boys, back in the car."
The spiders in my heart produce knives and start stabbing my heart as I begin to do the math.

I'm supposed to meet my daughter in 2 minutes.
The round trip will take 10 minutes.
Failure to meet daughter will mean no uniform.
Last chance for uniform.
No uniform means an unhappy wife.

I picture the scene for a moment.
It unsettles me

It's ok, I'll drop the boys and then meet daughter then I'll go home and....
No.
I've got to be in class to teach in fifteen minutes.
Uniform = at least ten minutes... at least.
Round trip back = ten minutes... at least.
Zed needs his bag. He can't go all day without food.
There is no way I'm going to get that bag in time.

There is no chance of pulling all of this off.

I start to yell.
I'm actually yelling the sums in my head out loud. And as I start I'm angry. But halfway through the list my eyes point in different directions and my mouth moves like it belongs to a marionette. I've shot straight through to bastard maniac at the children in the back seat. I glance in the rear vision mirror. My son's eyes are perfect circles. The other child's explaining something about not forgetting HIS bag but I can't hear him over my noise.

I finally work out that I have to turn the car around.

I swing it and suddenly it's like we've just got the call for back-up. Cept I'm not a cop, I'm a loser Dad having a tantrum.

On and on I go like Tony Soprano. There is no object lesson for my son in this. The lesson, if there was ever one in the first instance is blown away by the hurricane of me and my dancing, angry, stabbing spiders who wear tiny T-shirts with a picture of me with the title "DICKHEAD".

I ring my wife. I yell down the phone at her. I think I'm actually explaining something to her, like that's the intention but it must just sound like she's got a call from a war zone evac gone wrong.

I get the guys to class. Miss my daughter. Fish her out of class. Sort out uniforms. Talk to a friend who had wound up behind me when I chewed up the asphalt (she's actually a cop... I play back the tape in my head... the spider's T-Shirt now say something I've made the decision not to publish). I work out how I can fix everything - I'll be late to my appointment with the University in Fremantle... but for the most part I can work things out.

I get back in the car to get to class.

I think how little my son is and a part of me dies inside.

There are times when I think that I am a decent person.

Today wasn't one of them.

A Lesson In How To Ignite Their Gasps

2007-09-17T18:15:00.000+08:00

Currently as I write this I have year nine exam supervision. I hate exams. Really, really hate them. Nevertheless I have to tow the line in terms of being a demonstrative bastard.

The students come tumbling into the room and one of them cheerfully greets me. “GET OUT OF THE ROOM” I roar at him. Then without changing pitch or volume I instruct all of them that any talking will result in them being thrown out of the room. The great thing at the moment is I’ve got a mild cold that makes me sound like a chronic smoker so my voice is particularly shattering when uttered with any volume. Upon reflection it was probably a little bit much, nevertheless I wanted students to have the notion absolutely crystal clear that exams are not environments in which one should have a happy go lucky approach. Least ways have any ideas in your head that you can chat. Police pull people over, teachers have exams, it's just the way things are.

What isn’t helping is that I’ve got a really high blood sugar at the moment. As a diabetic a high blood sugar can make you somewhat easy to irritate. It is hard to convey, but imagine being cut off in traffic. Someone cuts you off in traffic and gives you the bird. That feeling right there, that’s what everything feels like. Take for example the fact there were no tissues in the exam. It’s a simple mistake, in fact you couldn’t even really in all fairness call it a mistake. There are simply no tissues in the room. Ordinarily you would smile graciously to the child requesting the absent tissues, politely lean out the door. Upon seeing there was no-one outside the room to assist you quietly inform the student that there weren’t any tissues and that if they just waited a couple of minutes there would be enough tissues to stuff a mattress. I would chuckle, sigh, put my hands on my hips and cock my head to one side with a wink. That particular scenario with a high blood sugar evokes a response from me that would be on a par with insulting a Europeans’ mother. The absence of tissues is a personal affront. It would be like setting my dog on fire. Personal. Affront.

A student puts up their hand and requested a tissue. I quickly scan the room. No tissues. I step backward out the door. No floater. A floater incidentally is a staff member who hangs about outside the room to assist teachers in the classroom with requests pertaining to things like tissues. I waited. The sounds coming from the waiting student continued to bubble and hiss. I glare at the student – there are other ways to resolve this. I pause and think better of it. No floater. I leave the exam and storm across the foyer into the English staff room and explode upon the teacher standing there. “Where’s the frigging floater? I need some tissues!”
“Why, that’s alliteration!”
I stare. A moment passes and then I flick the back of her head so that her face smashes into the table she’s sitting at.”
A male staff member offers the following comment much like I imagine a Lewis Carroll character would speak. “The floater’s meant to be sitting out in the foyer.”
I grab his elbow and hurry the him over to the filing cabinet, open a draw and slam his fingers firmly. “I know that, I know the floater is supposed to be sitting in the foyer. But they’re not. They are not sitting there. They are gone.”
Slowly, with trembling hands he hands me a box of tissues.
I re-enter the room and hurl the box at the student, killing him instantly. He bubbles and churns, like a snail frothing to death. That by the way is a simile. The children gasp. Gasping. Hate gasping. Probably a little bit more than exams. I make my way to the groundsman’s office. The gasoline is easy to find. Back in the exam I start to empty the contents on the floor. Shaking the tin wildly above my head.The world about me shimmers. Stepping back I draw on my cigarette and explain apologetically – no gasping in exams. The cigarette is flicked John Woo style into the air igniting their gasps.

I blink. The room smells like hair conditioner and students. The occasional one yawns. Time passes.

On another note – another Zac story. Zac and Tan are shopping. They pass a woman in a full burhka and Zac excitedly points out to Tanya – “Mum, I just saw a real Ninja.” Made his day, to see a Ninja out at the shops.

This goes for nine minutes, so only if you have time. I've heard about it over the years and remember it in the media at the time, but boy, does Safran have nerve.

The Mirror

2007-08-23T20:48:00.000+08:00

The thing that concerns me the most about living in a bureaucracy is that you could very well end up where you don't want to. Often in a bureaucracy there are forms to fill in. While at first these forms appear to have a variety of boxes to tick giving us what appears to be innumerable choices on closer inspection, (or in the event you actually fill in of these forms) you realise that you don't really fit into the descriptions provided. There's not actually that much choice. No big deal. No big deal until you wind up dead that is. Then it is a big deal. Obviously not to you, but to everyone else. Hopefully.

I get nervous filling out organ donor information when reapplying for my driver's license. As a diabetic I kind of wonder who the hell would want my organs anyway. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with them. Not that I’m aware of. But I could imagine that’s there’s a little bit more wear and tear on them. Perhaps it’s not even that, maybe it’s the thought that the recipient would be told, “By the way your heart belonged to a diabetic.”

“A diabetic? So… why do I get the heart of the diabetic… like they can’t even get life insurance… why would anyone want their heart?”

“Look do you want the heart or not… it’s got 10 maybe 20 good years left in it… how much did your heart have left? A week, week an a half?”

“I guess… I just… I just hoped I’d get like, you know an athlete’s heart, someone young, strong, and possibly black… you know?”

“Oh this guy wasn’t black… nope, nothin’ even close. Wasn’t tall either. Nope. School teacher. Sorry buddy it’s that or the 75 year old that kicked it at the picnic.”

I have this fear of letting down complete strangers as well. I don't want to meet the eyes of the lady behind the counter as I hand the completed form to her. Like, I don’t want to be sexist but in my mind it's a woman - a biggish middle aged woman with no sense of humour who mentions that I've checked the bit that says I'm not handing over my organs upon death. She keeps staring. Even when I look away, I can feel her eyes on me. Even in my imagination she’s staring at me and if you look closely (even though I’m not looking at her I can because it’s my imagination – actually if it was my imagination I’d have adimantium claws and a light sabre) you can see her eye lid twitch. Either way I apologise and hastily correct the information.

I don't want to feel bad.

I don't want to explain that I'm diabetic.

And most importantly, I don't want to face the poster that says, "Don't take your organs to heaven, heaven knows we need them here." Apart from the unlikelihood that we are actually going to take ourselves off to heaven in our present form and God is going to receive us only to turn us around and say,

"Hold on a minute tiger. No kidneys... you have no kidneys... were you aware that... you know this is happening more and more what's going on? Why is everyone giving them away. You need them here. Did you know you need them here?" He pauses, maybe for a minute, maybe for an eternity, thing is you're in Heaven. Finally He says, "And it's not just the kidneys, you name it, livers, hearts, eyes, brains... people are turning up without brains. Try playing chess sans a brain." At this points God sighs and folds His arms with a faraway look in His eyes. " This wasn't happening 50 years ago. Now you people turn up like sock puppets..." He trailed away,"...sock puppets."

So now I'm worried that upon an accident I might look dead, a brief discussion ensues amongst rescue workers and out comes the esky and Stanley trimmers.

That's not really what I'm talking about though. I'm talking about online tax returns that you simply haven't really got any idea whether or not you've provided the right information and then upon pressing return your house gets repossessed for tax fraud.

Well, the reason I'm bringing all this up is because of that particular feeling being invoked when I responded to an email. It read, simply Fred (not Sarah's real name) wants you to join Facebook. Should be called My Face. (Big shout out to Katie)
Well, that's nice, I thought. I'll join. I'll join and say hello. How nice.
Next thing I had a Facebook and I was contacting all my friends telling THEM to join. I didn't recall deciding to do that today. It wasn't even at the back of my mind. THEN I had one friend write back and say I needed to spice up my Facebook. So I urinated on my laptop and yelled "Is that enough salt for you? IS IT?" But I'm not sure if salt is a spice.

So now I'm part of something I can't abide.

Myspace tried to lure me in with their cheap tricks. Tom and some other guy. Wish I could remember his name. I've had him two if not three times try to get me to join. When I first got the email I was genuinely touched. Wow... someone wants to be my friend. Well, I will be their friend. And we will be friends. So I clicked on the link. And there he was, all by himself. That's about when my alarm bells went off. Why was a good looking guy like that all by himself. Someone I've never even heard of is smiling back from his desk where he is writing on his laptop, presumably to me. Suddenly I was a budgie in a cage staring into the mirror. And for a second I bought it. For a second I thought I had a friend. So I emailed him and told him that I wasn't going to be his friend. In fact, I had chosen to be his enemy. I was going to have my picture posted not under friend, but enemy. Sworn enemy. Come knocking on my cage, will you?. My diabetic cage of vengeance and… vengenceness.

Oh, and this is just for nerds only.

And Patrick needs thanking for putting me onto this one. Magic.

My Son the Bat.

2007-08-04T14:02:00.000+08:00

Everyone wants their kids to be special. Special in a way that leaves the other kids in the dust. Not that we'd say that out loud of course but we want the rush of watching our kid finish the race first, or write something in class (or anywhere apart from a wall for that matter), that leaves us beaming with pride. We do not want our children to be special in the other sense of the word. The kind of special that makes us aware that other parents glance sidewards at us.

Recently we got Zac's report home from his pre-primary class. He's five.

It's possibly a little hard to read, double click on it and you can read it for yourself. If you can't be bothered it essentially breaks down as such:

Creates a recognizable person: partially achieved

Includes a body, head arms, legs and facial features in their picture: partially achieved

Adds extra features to their portrait: Not yet evident

Uses a variety of colours in their portrait to distinguish features: Not yet evident.

So what precisely did my son draw when he was asked to create a self portrait?

Teacher's comment: Zac has drawn himself as a bat with his eyes closed.

Teacher is fairly certain Zac is autistic.

We suspect he is anti authoritarian.

Draw a picture of myself?! Noooooooo.... that's boring. No we really need a picture of a bat with his eyes closed.

I asked Zac why the bat's eyes were closed. Zac looked at me as if I was insane. "Because the sun is up."

I thought that showed some sort of intelligence. Bet the other kids didn't draw their self portrait depicting themselves with their eyes closed.

And hello to Emma who must start her own blog and Max who must also bite the bullet and start her own blog.... way to cool for anonymity these two. And they sell wine and are forced to listen to diabolically bad music. Cept Sting... I'm exempting Sting from that. And maybe a tiny bit of Wendy Matthews. But I can say that cause I love Arcade Fire and Modest Mouse and that balances out the uncoolness. Cept Sting is cool. Love Sting.

Oh, and by the way... there is something wrong with our new dog. His mouth is too big.

Hirsute

2007-07-15T21:01:00.000+08:00

Hey, if you're ever in Karratha ( if you are from somewhere other than Western Australia write in Karratha + Wikipedia - it will impress you that people live here) check out the television advertising. The actual Television is the usual commercial pap however I was corpulent with joy for the ABC on Saturday morning when in my feverish stupor I got to watch Rave - it makes so much more sense when you have a fever. Anyway the advertising is read by people humming like Buddhist Monks. Hooley Dooley it actually grabs your attention and then it holds it with astonishment. Surely, surely there is someone who knows what inflection is.

Oh and the word Hirsute went my brain like a woodpecker. I thought it meant hairy which would be weird because who on EARTH would be so cruel as to make a word up that sounds like HAIR SUIT that actually means "Gee, he looks like he has a suit of hair on." Who is NOT going to get upset at that.

FOR EXAMPLE:

Vivian tried desperately to placate Susan as to why her husband could not join them in the spa. "Why, it's just that he's well, very hirsute."
Susan hesitated for a moment unsure as to whether Vivian had offered a compliment as to why her husband could not join them in the spa. "What.... what does hirsute mean Vivian?"
"Oh my Gawd," Susan drawled "it means hairy... it means he looks like he's wearing a hairy suit!"
"Then why not just say 'He is too hairy for our spa, Susan," Susan began to involuntarily shake, her hand to her mouth she barely uttered the words "oh my.... Vivian...why?" Hot, angry tears rolled down her checks.
Vivian merely stared back with feline ice. "It always gives me time to do this.." Leaping unexpectedly to the side Vivian suddenly threw an ice pick savagely into Susan with a sickening thud.

The mere force of the blow brought Susan breathlessly off her feet.

Vivian landed, high heeled, neatly on both feet with a tidy click. The wet ground squealed as she turned and began to walk away, glancing briefly over her shoulder she muttered. "There is no way, on this Earth, that I am unclogging the filter after your husband has been in there. He has a hairy suit and he is hairy... he is Hirsuit."

The yellow angry stare of Susan's husband met Vivian as she turned. He slowly, as if in a dream, rolled his eyes with a blink over to where his wife lay. As though lightning struck a blackened sky Nathan flashed his massive canines in a soul shattering scream. He was indeed hairy, even for an simian.

Hirsute: Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source hir·sute [hur-soot, hur-soot] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–adjective

1.	hairy; shaggy.

2.	Botany, Zoology. covered with long, rather stiff hairs.

3.	of, pertaining to, or characteristic of hair.

[Origin: 1615–25; <>hirsūtus rough, shaggy, bristly; akin to horrid]

Heartless. Absolutely heartless.

I WANT A BADGER

2007-07-12T19:33:00.000+08:00

"CCCCCCRRRRRAAAAAAPPPPPPPP," he exclaimed.

The left foot is cramping up something rotten as I sit on the floor writing this and my nose is running - I have the flu. I don't think the foot is symptomatic of the flu although I generally never suffer from cramps... so I'm putting it down to cramp. Or menstruation. (this is where men claim that the situation they have just regaled you with, no matter how patently untrue, is true - and cramp to validate their sincerity) Long story as to why it is really, really not great timing. Supposed to be going out bush with Marnus and Shoz and my family.... blahhhhhh really have been looking forward to it. I would have been in a gorge. Out in the Australian outback. So far out you need a GPS. Pan pipes play when you walk around and native animals eat from your hand. And now? Now I get to wallow in my own mucous and exhaustion - good news is I have Owen for company. Owen is their Labrador. Shoz and Marnus (NOT to henceforth be referred to as S&M) call him squish... he is actually squishy - except when he treads on your genitals - he is squisher and he's good for a laugh and knocking over children. Same thing really.

Cool things: BTW - you gotta read to the end of this one... priceless.

Giant 'corpse-eating' badgers terrorise Iraqi city

July 11, 2007

THE Iraqi port city of Basra, already prey to a nasty turf war between rival militia factions, has now been gripped by a scary rumour – giant badgers are stalking the streets by night, eating humans.

Mushtaq Abdul-Mahdi, director of Basra's veterinary hospital, has inspected the corpses of several badgers and tries to reassure Iraqis that the animals are not a new post-war arrival in the region.

“These animals appeared before the fall of the regime in 1986. They are known as Al-Ghirayri and locally as Al-Girta,” he told AFP. “Talk that this animal was brought by the British forces is incorrect and unscientific.”

Not everybody is convinced.

The honey badger, or ratel, is known as a brave predator capable of killing a cobra. It weighs up to 14kg.

Sattar Jabbar, a 50-year-old local farmer from Abu Sakhar north of Basra, believes the badger can tackle even large prey.

“I saw it three days ago at night attacking animals. It even ate a cow. It tore the cow up piece by piece. I tried to shoot it with my gun but it ran away into the orchards. I missed it,” he said.

Speaking of tearing up a cow....

And now a slight segue
Context: After constant provocation from Judah Babylon goes in and nails the place to the wall. This scripture details the final stroke where the officials of the invading king enter the city and begin to sort out the details of what will happen:

Quote from the Bible: Jeremiah 39

Now when Jerusalem was captured in the ninth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the tenth month, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his army came to Jerusalem and laid siege to it; 2 in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, in the ninth day of the month, the city wall was breached. 3 Then all the officials of the king of Babylon came in and sat down at the Middle Gate: Nergal-sar-ezer, Samgar-nebu, Sar-sekim the Rab-saris, Nergal-sar-ezer the Rab-mag, and all the rest of the officials of the king of Babylon. 4 When Zedekiah the king of Judah and all the men of war saw them, they fled and went out of the city at night by way of the king's garden through the gate between the two walls; and he went out toward the Arabah. NASU

Of course none of this REALLY happened because it's the Bible and the Bible is a collection of stories that serve this or that Israeli King's agenda. There's no actual supporting evidence like extra biblical manuscripts and texts that actually identify obscure people independently of their existence in the Bible.

Actually Higgaion has already dealt with this in his usually freakin genius fashion - check this link. Higgaion's take on things

Old Testament figure named on 2600-year-old tablet

By Dalya Alberge in London

July 12, 2007 01:00am

Article from:

Tablet dating from 595BC deciphered
Names figure in court of Nebuchadnezzar
Figure was 'witness to turning point' in history

The tablet names a Babylonian officer called Nebo-Sarsekim who, according to Jeremiah 39 was present in 587BC when Nebuchadnezzar "marched against Jerusalem with his whole army and laid siege to it".

The cuneiform inscription records how Nebo-Sarsekim lavished a gift of gold on the Temple of Esangila in the fabled city of Babylon, where, at least in folk tradition, Nebuchadnezzar is credited with building the Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

So did you spot the link?

Yep... Nebuchadnezzar the King of Babylon was actually King of what is know known as Iraq and giant badgers are eating Iraqis.

And Um... this just to hand: what you see here is actual footage of a Badger on the rampage in Iraq.

Why the hell doesn't this guy use a chainsaw effect?

That horrible thinking feeling may just be boredom...

2007-07-11T18:17:00.000+08:00

This is a pretty accurate depiction of me in the car park. Read on...

I have made something of an important discovery. There is nothing to do in Karratha. Evidence of this: they have one of the biggest Video Ezy stores I have seen - which is where I picked up Bubba Ho-Tep and GoodNight and Goodluck for a total of 10 bucks between the both of them. Then I found the complete season 4 of Curb Your Enthusiasm for 6 bucks. Worth traveling 1600 kms for I say. But that's about it people. It's a mining town with nada history -

Wikipedia please....

"Karratha is an important centre in the resource-rich WA's northwest. It is located approximately 1,535 kilometres (954 mi) north of Perth and 850 kilometres (528 mi) south of Broome on the North West Coastal Highway.

Its economic base includes local iron ore, salt mining, ammonia and export operations, together with the North West Shelf Natural Gas Project, Australia's largest natural resource development. All this makes it the biggest town in the northwest after Port Hedland with a population around 10,000. Karratha came into being in the late 1960s due to the tremendous growth of the iron ore industry and the need for a new regional centre caused by the lack of land in Dampier. Karratha also has the biggest shopping centre in the Pilbara, called Centro Karratha."

I'm quite sure with a different take on things I would find mystery and intrigue in this place. I did with Carnarvon when I lived there - largely because of it's history. But here we are catching up with family. So I'm treating it as an extended chill session.

Here's one of the other things we did today.

Here's something I found quite interesting. It's a bird

These are some of the interesting things I took away from the library this morning:

Neurobiologist Antonio Damasio - University of Southern Califronia in Los Angeles studied people with damage to only the emotional part of their brains and found they were crippled by indecision, unable to make even the most basic choices, such as what to eat. Damasio speculates that this may be because our brains store emotional memories of past choices, which we use to inform present decisions. p. 38 New Scientist 5 May 2007

Now I have been wondering what would happen to a person were they to undergo an extremely traumatic event in their infancy or childhood, given Damasio's research it would suggest that it would mean that in adulthood people may very well be affected by these past events. Medication helpfully covers the symptoms but is unable to resolve the cause - something that I suspect may be able to be healed and restored once you identified the event and bought restoration to the point of emotional 'damage'.

I also found the actual experiment that I sometimes refer to in class - in terms of research by Stanley Milgram into how so many were complicit in the activities of the Nazi in Germany during the Second World War. It set up a test where everyday people applied certain amounts of.... look it's too boring to write. Average Joe's committed heinous acts while under the direction of men in lab coats. Nothing new there really. Through this stuff round at parties while everyone gets stumbling drunk for no other reason than it's the done thing.

THEN I FOUND THE SHOWSTOPPER.
James Stirling: Admiral and Founding Governor of Western Australia - Pamela Statham-Drew
Wanted to get my hands on this for ages... this is an extract from the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards - 2003 Judges' Report Poo Bum Wee I AM QUOTING A LOT TODAY...

"This is a monumental work of academic scholarship. Pamela Statham-Drew has documented the life of James Stirling, founding governor of Western Australia, in comprehensive detail. In doing so, she has given us new insights into the character of her subject, as well as the origins of our State. James Stirling emerges from Statham-Drew's book as a man of vision and adventure, compassion and resolve, qualities that enabled him to withstand the vicissitudes of founding a colony in the most remote corner of the British Empire."

My observation:
Pam has astutely identified where the Beer company "Cages Road" makers of relatively average beer (obviously in my opinion) has obtained it's name. " Exploration of this area was now all but complete, so on 21 March at 1pm the Success weighed anchor and MADE SAIL INTO GAGE'S ROADS where they anchored for the night. ....Stirling had named after his future commander-in-Chief, Rear Admiral William Gage..."p.79.

YEAH?! How about that for stunning obscurity. Not that Pam actually wrote about any link about the beer company.

Now what the hell is Rogers named after.

Man, with time on my hands this Blog is TOTALLY ROCKING!!!!
I did an awesome handbreak in the car park of Video Ezy. There was an Aboriginal guy watching in his car... and yeah he was pretty impressed. DO NOT DO THIS ON VENTILON because you will look like a bigger loser than you could imagine and what's more once you gauge what a complete dick you look from people's reactions (country people what's more) you will not care.

Bubba Ho-Tep people. Let's hear it for the King. You will wet your pants if you haven't heard of this film before. Very, very cool once you look into who's in it.

By the way, I'm still coming down off of the Ventolin.
Here's a close up of the bird.

It's a 24 hour tuna...

2007-07-10T12:37:00.000+08:00

The Road into Carnarvon

I have missed the Walkers. The Walkers are the folks that kept me sane and safe when life went pear shaped around the time I got ready to depart from Carnarvon all those years ago. Bruce, Sue, Judy and I would sit and talk for hours in his living room – it was probably the closest thing to Christian community I have ever encountered. In those days Bruce was the Shire Clerk, Sue (his wife) was a primary teacher, Judy was alive and I work as a Clerk in the local hospital. Upon returning to Perth I experienced bewildering loneliness after having experienced such close life together.

Some thirteen years later we’re sitting around on Bruce and Sue’s porch at their new place – a place reminiscent of a cross between iconic outback Australia and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. This time though, I have a wife and two kids, but apart from that and massive life change the essentials are still the same. Close friendship. A pint of Guinness, two glasses of wine and into my third and I’m suitably giddy with joy. Felt like joy. Could have been inebriated a little bit, but it was still joy. There is certainly no doubt that it was joy when Bruce struck up the fire – a pit with an iron table placed over it and meat was thrown on from every creature known. And chilli – straight from the garden. Friggin’ ridiculously brilliant. And we sat, drank, ate and talked into the night.

In the midst of the process I was introduced to Michael. Michael is a local carpenter. What is interesting about Michael is that he epitomizes the essential Carnarvon quality. Lunacy. Michael had gone out for the third afternoon in a row with mates looking for Tuna. They tracked a school, cut the engine and then Michael climbed into a kayak, where he silently moved into place over the school. Apparently they had a three days of no luck concerning this cunning creature and this was a new approach. He then cast out his handheld rod and instantly struck gold. Cept, he’s fishing for Tuna. These things are fairly large to be pulling out of the water with a hand rod. On a Kayak. Out in the middle of the ocean. With help a significant distance away. Any way in a Hemmingway type of struggle with nature he got the Tuna onto the Kayak.

This is Michael. He caught a Tuna. He is quite, quite out of his mind.

By the way, don't watch this, it's horrible. Laughed myself silly. But it's horrible.

A Punch in the Face

2007-07-03T17:48:00.000+08:00

I keep forgetting that should I ever lack a topic to write about all I need do is try to log in. I can't even be bothered describing the incident, suffice to say it ended with me waving my impotent fist at the uncaring sky.

The other source of amazement is my kid's conversation.
My daughter has some vicious flu thing and has been home the last few days. It is half past five and I am under instruction not to let the kids go to sleep. Upon writing this I have also recalled that my wife has also told me to ring her step-mother to ask to borrow the car on Thursday. Her entry to the room is imminent and I am thinking of setting one of the kids afire to create a diversion.

She enters the room coughing and I am led to actually provoked her by now telling her I have not made the call. She is blowing her nose. There is silence. I punched her in the face the other day. She did actually deserve it. It wasn't like those adverts where those simpering He-Men whisper and whimper. "Yeah, well I said I wanted dinner and so I hit her. She said she probably deserved it" Followed by the stamping in big red letters across the screen NO SHE DIDN'T. Of course there is no irony or subtlety in the commercial because it's aimed at people without the use of an opposable thumb. And by the way if you are screaming alll teeth and spit at what I'm writing, pulling frantically at your prehensile tale, relax.... I'm not advocating violence in any form. Let me finish my story. Later.

My daughter's conversation - she's lying on the couch eyes closed. My five year old is totally in her personal space declaring:
"Hey, she's asleep!"
Daughter: (eyes closed) "No, I'm just waiting... I'm resting my eyes."
Son (in astonishment and fear) Nah.... your eyes are closed so you're asleep."
"No I've just got my eyes closed."
"You're asleep, your eyes are closed.'
Daughter: "Have you been to Karatha before."
Me: "No, no I haven't."
Daughter: "Not you Dad... him."
Stupid me. Karatha, over 1600kms away, and she's asking the five year old has he been there. He doesn't answer, because she's asleep.
I don't answer because I'm offended. Should have asked me. A 5 year old can't go to Karatha.

Saturday morning I'm lying in bed. My wife tells me to get up. I make a wise crack. She makes a wise crack. I throw a pillow. She yells out "RRRRRIIIGHT!" Running at me. Running at me in an Amazonian warrior like fashion at my twig like body. I spin like a naked ninja ( I have known these things to end poorly even fully dressed - each knee contains a testicle magnet: rarely fails to find them. You could drop a man or woman thousands of metres onto an individual lying on the ground. Even if they are miles out of alignment the knee will still manage to connect. Got to tell you my "My friend Will, story") so i spin she lands and again like a Ninja I reach around to pin her with my left arm. Cept for some reason as I swing my arm around at full speed my knuckles connect with teeth. (for in case you conceive that I have have just launched around and punched her right in the mouth I have not... now keep pulling your stupid monkey tail) Not great. Then as I show concern (I've seen this done in movies) I reach to console her but I'm met with "Don't touch me."
Man... just when we started to connect I connect.

Well... I will have to save my story about my Year Eights being sentenced to dath for not having a clue who Bono is. Not because of who he is so much, as they let me waffle about his contribution to humanity for about five minutes before they asked the question, "Who's Bono". Ok.... Bono is the lead singer of U2 and he helps poor people. "Who's U2". "You're surely taking the mickey," I mutter more to myself. They, sadly, were not. They must be taken out of the gene pool.

There were these two chickens.....

2007-06-17T18:13:00.000+08:00

Earlier this year my son astonished everyone by exploring the nature of evil and the effect it has upon the innocent. He was four. He used the medium of "found objects' to create his existential masterpiece.

It is called, "The really, really freaked out chicken and the evil chicken."

THIS IS THE REALLY, REALLY FREAKED OUT CHICKEN

THIS IS THE SCARY EVIL CHICKEN

Sex Workers and Reticulation Can't Be Friends

2007-06-17T11:20:00.000+08:00

AS YOU CAN SEE THE GARDEN OUT THE FRONT IS WAY TOO BIG

I am working on an entry that is driving me to distraction - it just aint gonna get finished and meanwhile there are no new entries and the Rogue Traders (who can collectively fall in a well at this point) are the image anyone who hits the site first sees. UNACCEPTABLE. And now I'm stir crazy. It's the children who are suffering as I write this. Zac keeps asking how to draw Jabba the Hutt. "It's a blob"
"Can you draw it?"
"No. Draw a blob..."
There is drawing.
"How do I draw the Gamorean guard?" (and NO-ONE correct the spelling on that)
"I.... DON'T KNOW."
My daughter comes in. The bath is full of water because I rushed out last night without letting it out after their bath. She wants to play with the water and so asks me.
"No, you could drown."
"Huh?"
"You could drown."
She thinks about this and it occurs to her that this is ridiculous.
"How could I drown?"
"I'll explain later - but just stay out of there.... you could drown..."
She leaves. Whispers in her brother's ear and off they go. To play with the bath water I suppose.

I shouldn't be writing this. I should be out teh front of the house fixing the reticulation. I put a hoe through the pipes yesterday. Ripping out shrubs that proved to be ill suited to the front of out house I am now fulfilling the most most pathetic of all man's fated existence, fixing the garden where I never wanted one in the first instance. It's like Outcome statements. Never NEVER should have gone that way - EVERYONE - said we should not go that way except the little beurocrat that thought they could. HOLY COW. And now - now they're ripping them all out. Shutting it down. And the place we are in is worse than before. Now English staff are being told to mark "going off your gut feelings". That my friends has actually been advised. I despair. History repeats itself because it's full of bossy lying idiots. It's the mitigating factor in all of these stuff ups. We had the reticulation guy advise us to put native plants in. Save water. Cept he rigged up the reticulation to water the garden and the lawn simultaneously. No water saved. Native plants over watered. Native plants overgrown and unmanageable. Have to take them out. Managed to take out not just reticulation, but the connection to the neighbor's property. Managed to drive the hoe right through the t-junction of the whole thing.
Sat down for a moment after I did it and thought... of course.

Me, and suburbia can't be friends.

CAN'T BE FRIENDS.

I've said yes to doing a gig at the end of the week. Crap. WHY? WHY did I say yes?
Not just that - it's to a Christian group. I must write about why on all occasions that has never worked. You can't enjoy comedy if you are sitting there wondering "Should he say that? Should I laugh. It's funny sure.... but if I laugh... I'm just not sure. I won't laugh. None of the others are laughing. Why am I the only one wanting to laugh. What's wrong with me.... what's wrong with me?" She/he stares into the floor. The comedy dies. Horribly.

Well, I'd better get that hooker back out of the pipes.

People don't kill pipes. People with hookers kill pipes.

I'm loving this sketch. Sent to me by Linc.

The Landlord

Someone stop the insanity

2007-06-08T20:41:00.000+08:00

"ROGUE TRADERS TAKE TOO LONG TO EXIT STAGE"
SALLY aged 10

Got to share a couple of things with you.

Tan and I were sitting at the dining table when she suddenly reads the following out of the school newsletter where my kids attend. This is penned by a ten year old, I have changed nothing...

ROGUE TRADERS!
ON THE WEEKEND WE WENT TO THE ROGUE TRADERS. THERE WERE A LOT OF DIFFERENT SONGS. WE ALL SAT ON THE GROUND. THE BAND WAS SO LOUD. WE YELLED AT ROGUE TRADERS BECAUSE WE SAID,"HURRY UP! HURRY UP!" J____ AND I WERE VERY EXCITED. WE GOT AN EAR PLUG. THE END.
BY C______

Tan could not fathom how this piece of tripe was published. Hello? Ten Year Old at a concert hurling abuse at the band and getting one, ONE ear plug for their trouble. Gold. As a teacher I can see this as a savvy editorial decision. Can't punish a child, publish them.

Check this link out and then ask the question:
Sure it's cute, but what happens when one of them wants to be more than friends?
BTW check out the "pigs in a blanket" - these guys will end their mortal struggle as hors dourves

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

2007-06-06T20:00:00.000+08:00

THIS is what happens when you bottle up that anger

It seems that it's the done thing that whenever anyone gets a Mac they write a post gushing about the moments of arrival. Their joy, the tears that well up, the gibbering about the sensual feel of the scrabble like keys. For me it's slightly different.

We tend to attribute human characteristics to anything we use on a frequent basis. Whether that 'thing' works well or fails abysmally we refer to it by a name or (not so p.c.)a gender. Take for example something that doesn't work, we imbue it with a malevolent force bent on making our lives just a little bit worse.

I still remember my brother (who interestingly enough developed schizophrenia later in life) yelling at soldering irons and hi fi components that didn't work, threatening merry hell if they didn't comply with his simply wish of building working nuclear fusion. (We all put it down to autism) At the time I would pause in whatever I was doing to listen in on the escalating scenario. A mini Bay of Pigs, if you will, peppered with floating consonants and incomplete words.
"You just s'."
The word would vanish as if the sound suddenly had just been cut.
"...... just, just stay."
The instructions he gave were always reasonable enough.

Cept it was to inanimate objects.

You were always at risk of being fooled into thinking for the briefest of moments he was talking to something that could consciously comply with his requests.

"Staaaaaaaay.... good... now... good."
There was always a period of silence in which you would then hear the barely audible sound of something small and metal hitting the work bench.
Right there the the escalation would begin. Actually escalation is too gradual. It was an accelerated incline with a g-force that would smear your eyelids across your forehead.
"OH MY G'...OH....MY..... You!....YOU!"
Then there was the sound of teeth grinding their way back to bloody gums.
"RIGHT RIIIIIGHT....Stay...."
Then there was the quiet and focussed imploring.
"Staaaaaaaaaaaayyyyaaa. STAY. Good. That's a good boy."
A sigh.
"Now stay."
(endless silence)
The sound of happy work.
"Good."
I would remain listening because it was with wearying predictibility that things would go horribly and irreconcilably wrong, largely because the task he had set himself was impossible.
And so the inevitable would happen.
The second barely audible sound of something small and metal hitting the work bench.
And then...
"OH MYYYYYY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD. I.... YOU... NO!! NOOO! NO! YOU.....! (SMASH)

And so I would resume my work. Actually there are any number of entertaining stories I could regale people with about my brother, and this would seem like just the spot as there is little opportunity to bring him up in conversation without killing the very conversation you were attempting to have.

To my point. I got my MacBook on Monday and it was not with the giddy joy of a teenager at port meeting her sailor boy. It was deep seated apprehension. I had grown attached to my HP Pavillion. After three years of working closely together we had formed an almost organic bond. Nothing was ever too much of a problem for the two of us, and when we weren't working together we would catch up on Sopranos, one of the few who would join me in that past time. And so I have moved over to the MacBook. It's cute and white and smells new and has widgets and makes cute noises and can do video chat with colleagues (holy crap just give me an Ugly Betty make over. I am assured that it is a brilliant machine, and I deeply believe that with time and practice it will allow for greater productivity and creativity. But right now it is quietly trying to slash my wrists. The edges where I rest my wrist (now there's some art right there people - 'where''rest''wrist') are quite sharp. Damn thing is too white to be emo. But it just ain't comfy.

It's ok though. I've just picked up the latest season of Deadwood. Happiness is an angry man with a gun on something other than the news.

Ah, to be white and middle class.

2007-06-04T20:37:00.001+08:00

Teacher phones ape

2007-05-28T20:30:00.000+08:00

MONKEYS WITH GUNS: PRICELESS

Part One: The Ape phones

Had the delightful experience of confronting a lunatic today. At the end of the school day one of the female students had received a phone call from the aforementioned lunatic and, in a spirit of ‘older brother’ protectiveness a couple of the male students took the call on her behalf. A crowd rapidly gathered and I was once again caught in a situation that I dearly wished I wasn't. One of them, a Maori kid, listened briefly before he responded with “Who you calling nigga?!” it went downhill from there and off the ravine with another student’s yelled retort “you have gay sex with your gay dad.” Clearly not enough as this individual was harassing 16 year old girls.

Upon asking the girls what was going on one of them explained that this guy had rung them constantly all day long, like 20 times. He chocked up number 21 as I was standing there. The girl articulated clearly that she was not desiring to continue having anything to do with him etcetera etcetera… we could all hear his response. She hung up. After discovering that the girl had in no way solicited the call in any way, I pointed out to her that it was really a matter she could hand on to the police and if she wanted me to I could call this guy and gentle point out that his advances had to stop. Look, whether or not she had given the number out, the guy was still threatening her, just in case you're about to lynch me for suggesting that "the 'ho' asked for it." And just in case you think I'm suggesting that the girl was a 'ho', I was being...forget it.... She's a nice kid, didn't ask for trouble, I have been watching The Godfather and she showed me respect. Anyway, she was more than happy for me to intervene.

Part Two: I phone the ape

So I got the number and approached the appropriate authorities within the school. The person responsible for the particular year group advocated my course of action. So I phoned the individual with great trepidation, rolling over and over in my head the phrase ”Hi, I believe you have been calling a couple of students, aaaaaaaand I’m their teacher and… um…. Yeah, please don’t ring them anymore…please…. Because I’m their teacher… and they feel threatened because you’re not saying things that are nice… “ and wondering how it was going to come out over the phone. The only saving grace is the guy would have no way of really contacting me as he would have to ring the school and then get the call directed through. I wasn't about to give any names.

The phone rang and he answered.

“Yo nigga”

Beat…

“Hi…” I said in an overly chirpy voiced “um… look, this is awkward but I believe you phoned a couple of students at my school and as their teacher I’m just politely warning you that if you don’t stop, this will have to become a police matter.”

“WHO THA F******? DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO????? YOU F******ING C**** I didn’t ring no girls”

At this point I started getting cross.

“Judging by your response, I think you did. Look, if you don’t change the way you're speaking to me I am going to make this a police matter.” I felt like a Wiggle. I wish I felt like Tony Soprano.

“F*** YOU! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHO YOU ARE TALKING TO?!!!…. WHAT THE F**** ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT YOU F***** YOU CAN'T RING ME AND TELL ME WHO I CAN AND CAN'T TALK TO!”

“Look, all I’m asking you is to not ring my girls.” Even as I said this I realized that the whole objectivity of my position had just gone out the window… I winced.

“So they’re YOUR girls, you’re a f******ing pedophile F**** YOU I’ve got your number so why don’t I…”

Now I got angry.

“…. NO EINSTEIN YOU DO NOT HAVE MY NUMBER, and this is your last chance to listen to what I am saying.”

“I''m a nineteen year old guy, why would I be ringing school kids. You don’t know whether or not I’ve been ringing anyone.”

“Yeah,” I said “I do know, we’ve all been listening to you when you rang before.” I wanted to add 'pedophile but I felt that would have been inflammatory.

Strangely enough his tone completely changed, I don’t really remember what he said then, but he hung up on me shortly after that. So then I phoned the police, then the girl’s parents who then have the option of going to the police with the guy’s phone number. Failing that, I have some ‘friends’ I could call.

My belief shakes it's tin

2007-05-17T18:01:00.000+08:00

Want to stem the tide of children on liquor and drugs - ply them with the cautionary tale of Latawnya, the naughty horse.

The fact this book even exists... humans... they leave me speechless.

Children of Men & Elf Sex

2007-05-10T19:49:00.000+08:00

Blown away by this very moving film the other night. I have avoided it for a long time because I really didn’t want to subject myself to an apocalyptic jaunt in hopelessness. Yes, it was apocalyptic. Yes it was something of a road movie. Yes, there was a sense of hopelessness. But what moved me was that in the depth of loss, when all things appeared to reach their end and destruction consumed all, the awe and humility of the human race reached out. I can’t give anything away because I want you to see this film, but in light of trying to assess what this film is all about, I think the most clarity was in the beautiful portrayal of hope that is constructed in this film. The human response to innocence and frailty came across as natural and innate. And then as suddenly as it appear it vanished as War exhaled.

Philip French in his review of the film published in the Guardian (Sunday September 24, 2006), made this great observation;

“In his great essay 'The Crack-Up', written at a personal low ebb in 1936, Scott Fitzgerald said: 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/screen/story/0,,1879569,00.html

I need to also point out that Alfonso Cuaron, the director of this film has received accolades for a couple of set pieces that are breathtaking in their realisation. I’m referring to a couple of lengthy sequence that are shot without any cut, creating fluidity and beauty – (nothing like Russian Ark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Ark of course but then I think Russian Ark suffers because the director goes to extremes with that feature, something like 90minutes all shot in one take, but I do realise that it is an amazing feat and needs to be seen on account of this – so please watch this film as well)

If you will forgive me for taking another tangential turn this idea reminds me of a quote referring to the creator of Lord of the Rings J.R.R Tolkien who spoke of giving up hope as a sin. I can’t remember which doco this was in – I suspect it was in the Two Towers special features because it examined the battle at Helm’s Deep where Legolas despairs of surviving the Battle and then gets a bitch slappin’ from Aragorn. Tolkien, through Aragorn, regarded the loss of hope as a sin because we cannot presume to know the future, giving up supposes we know the outcome, and none of us knows how things will turn out. By the way in trying to remember the name of Legolas I stumbled upon this article on Elf sex …. There’s Nerds, Geeks and then something so extreme that I don’t think they see the light of day.

I think there is freedom in being free from death. I am not talking about embracing death, or giving up on life, but having faith in something beyond yourself that doesn’t require that things necessarily work out in your way or in your favor. A message out of favor in the contemporary media (except, perhaps in the work of Alfonso Cuaron – incidentally I think it is the reason why a lot of people didn’t like the film) but present in some of the greatest teachings throughout history. It is a hope that calls us to deny ourselves and set our eyes on a road that isn’t all about us.

The mother load

2007-05-01T22:34:00.000+08:00

I am hesitant to write at this point because my head is so full and I can’t quite discern all the strands in my thinking. Some of these ideas, thoughts and beliefs intersect with each other, some have reached conclusions but overall I am not satisfied that I have found the conclusion that I am reaching for. That is why it has been some time since I wrote anything in the Blog. I have become mentally constipated. So here comes the big one.

It’s about the desire to see the crisis we face in the Western World turned around. I’m looking for answers. I don’t think the breakdown of the family, the rise of depression, suicide and all the rest is the beginning of a new stage in humanity. I don’t think disintegration is the brave new future. I’m afraid I tend to agree with the Evolutionary Psychologists about that one.

In the earlier half of April I had the privilege of traveling to a conference in Brisbane. The conference was entitled “A crisis of meaning, challenges facing science and religion in the 21^st century”. It was deeply encouraging to hear people speak of the caliber of Dr Peter Vardy from London, Reverend Dr. Eamonn Conway from Ireland, Dr Bernadette Tobin from Sydney and Reverend Dr Mark Worthing from Adelaide. Googling any of these names will reveal the depth and commitment each of these individuals have to each of their fields. The audience comprised of largely religious educators from around Australia who listened to the overall message – we alienate the public when we oversimplify or force scripture to fit our own agendas when it comes to science. Each speaker was an expert in their field and duly had a deep knowledge of scripture and also of science and maintained their faith by looking at the essential message of scripture – not in the certainty of a scientific position, but rather in the openness to a huge universe that we haven’t at this point entirely understood. The fact is, it would seem the deeper we look the more we discover that it’s a little more incomprehensible than we initially thought.

In the same way this could be said of religion.

What is clear in scripture is that there is a loving God who calls us into community with Himself and with each other. This seemed to be the uniting aspect of all presenters in the conference. There were many aspects to the conference that delved outside this front and that needs to be said and hoped that it is understood that you will gather there is much left unsaid.

The other message that I believed was communicated in the conference was that we live in a society undergoing a crisis of meaning. It is not so much science or religion that is in crisis, as the society that is a recipient of both, and that is perhaps what the title of the conference was implying. Science or religion does not make the meaning, but the participant. They are not some monolithic unchanging institution but the sum total of the practitioner and the participant – in many cases the same person. When people believe that it is the impersonal religion or science that is the meaning maker they fail to recognize that either institution is transient and always changing.

When we make our beliefs about either institution our bedrock we find we are sliding down the slope of doubt and subsequently, insecurity, soon to be taken down into the sea where we are tossed about by the waves of many doctrines. When we exchanged knowledge for wisdom we fell.

Now I have to make a point here where it will appear that I am going to to contradict myself by saying that I believe the scriptures in where they say that God is unchanging. (Please note: the scriptures are not the religion – the interface between the human race, God and the guidance of scripture, that expression I think is religion) If you examine His dealings with us from generation to generation you will see that it is us who change. His love never changes. Even those figures who are leader amongst us, look at their lives. Look at each figure who has emerged over the two thousand years since Christ and find me one who has consistently been faultless. You can love and treat as a hero any number of these figures only to find that there is always someone who has a dislike for a certain aspect of their character, from Augustine to Bonhoeffer. No one person has ever had all the answers. They were part of the process.

Science and religion are not fixed. So you will not find the best expression of science and religion. Some I suspect are more accurate to the truth than others, but oft times it is only later that we find out which is which. Many of Einstein’s theories were proved well outside his life time. There are times we look back at decisions made by the church that seemed right at the time, only to cringe at how far off we were. So in our attempt to find security in the institution of science or religion we are on no rock of security, because it is always changing.

Knowledge is the quest for certainty, wisdom is the quest for relationship. We live in a time of crisis because we have turned to our own devices. Certain that God is not there on the basis of the certainty of science, or perhaps the hope He wasn’t there because - we pulled back the curtains to find the place where God should have been, empty. The Romans made that very mistake. Upon sacking Jerusalem and looting the temples the Romans thought the Jews piteous because they had no god. He was not present. They were quite right, He wasn’t there, but in their arrogance they made the fatal error of thinking the absence of what they were looking for was nowhere to be found, it simply was not in existence. We do this every day. We decide and outline for God His parameters for existence because we’ve worked it all out, and because He won’t be a good God and stay where told Him He should, He therefore is not there. We need to be very careful about where our certainties lie.

Don’t get me wrong though. There are certainties. And where there are not, I fall back on Occam’s razor. Google it. I believe that Jesus is an historical figure. I mean what I say. I take the New Testament at face value. I treat it like any document, I do my best to read as much as I can in it and about it and I am satisfied that it is a meticulous document. I trust what is written there. There are many reasons for this, archeology and theology being the main ones. But there is another. It stands the test of everyday living. I am yet to find one instruction by Jesus to be faulty. Reading carefully what He says, when applied, it works. And here’s the thing. It is applied only in practice. It is not an intellectual exercise. It works itself out in my daily living. As I apply it I realize the depth of it’s truth. The teaching of Christ are absolutely rock solid. Seriously, read them. Forget everything you think you know about Christians and read what He says. Put it into practice. Look at what He does, and when you do you will find it difficult to criticize Him. Find fault with what He does, go ahead and try.

Now my point. Christ does not call us to a set of ideals. You will notice they are surprisingly hard to find and follow when you decide to write a list of do’s and don’t. He calls us to Himself. If He is dead, then fine, make up your own rules. If He did resurrect then His call to follow Him is quite literally that. A call to follow Him.

There is a crisis in contemporary society, I suspect, because we put our faith in institutions and ideals. The latest and greatest that will save us, save our society and save our world. The call is to follow Him and allow Him to direct us to what needs doing. We like to choose because we have become like God, knowing good and evil. This is knowledge. We should put this aside and choose to follow Him, to rest with Him to choose His way, the way of obedience. This is wisdom. Putting anything before this as an answer is to turn it into idol. I suspect this is why religion and science have let us down.

Finally....

2007-04-20T14:37:00.000+08:00

Every so often someone manages to marry together two good ideas. Here are two examples.

Isn’t that dangerous?

2007-04-14T08:42:00.000+08:00

Five hours waiting in an airport makes you take risks you wouldn’t ordinarily consider worth losing your life over. I decided to break my time into manageable pieces and the first part of the program was eating. I call the first activity ‘danger eating’. This requires you engage in conversation with someone who may or may not be insane.

So given that I was looking at an interminable stretch of time alone I made a beeline for the scariest looking person. These sort of people are great because generally speaking, they simply aren’t suspicious of any alternative agendas. Not like, say, an attractive woman or male. To engage in dialogue with attractive folk turns you into the scariest person in the conversation. This, please note, becomes awkward.

Maria was a fairly menacing looking woman well into her fifties, dressed in a large black mountaineering jacket with a beanie that covered her eyebrows. I don’t know if this says more about me than her, but I noticed she also had an impressive thick rope of black braided hair slung over her shoulder. The other important thing to note was she was well on her way to a happy place, plied with alcohol and loud music courtesy of her ipod, which she later informed me that she had no idea about how it worked other than it was on random.

So I sat, having got my lunch, with Maria in the ‘bar’ (symbolically separated from the smallish food court by the type of people seated there – tense looking mothers raging quietly at their children in the food court, tense looking mothers raging loudly at their children in the bar). I of course checked it was okay to join Maria because nothing is quite as embarrassing as being kicked to death in the make shift bar of an airport. Maria shared her story with me of her work on the mine site up north, at one point suddenly slapping the table with a bear like swat, proclaiming that she was having a change of scenery supervising the loading of acid into some sort of refinery process. Something of a tangent, but I am the last who should be complaining.

“Acid?” I asked.

“Containers of acid sweetheart.” She tended to swallow her vowels as she masked her belching.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” I asked this thinking that the safety measures in place were probably so over the top that her answer would be a resounding assurance that it was totally safe. Maria’s body betrayed the advanced state of intoxication by gurgling as she said,
“DANGEROUS?! (insert peculiar hollow noise from esophagus on third syllable) IS IT DANGEROUS?! FUCKIN’ OATH IT’S DANGEROUS IT’LL KILL YA. THAT TIPS ON YA – YOU GOT NO BONES LEFT NO NUTHIN’ !’.” She emphasized this with a far away look in her eye as she took a swig of beer. Believe it or not it is deeply encouraging that people like Maria are out on the job, and I can’t do justice to the deepness of this weary traveler’s story. Needless to say I was incredulous about the acid component of her story.

I come from a world where senior high school students have to swim in water no deeper than their waist, in a group of no more than 35, supervised by a qualified life saver. It is a pathetic site – teenagers standing listlessly in thigh deep glassy water. I miss the days where death could stroll casually by as life’s consummate teacher, taking the odd participant out by the ear as a object lesson about human stupidity. These days stupidity is nurtured and allowed to remain in the gene pool. Where’s the risk?

Well, apparently it’s in Queensland Airport and Port Moresby.

I said goodbye to Maria as she thanked me for her company and careened off to make her flight. I then found the Reverend Richard Turnbull. I only registered that he was a reverend after a read his business card hours after leaving his company. I had sat at a table with Richard at the Conference I was returning from but didn’t have the opportunity to talk to him. Suffice to say he had a sense of humor. During a thank-you speech at the end of the conference, given by one of our New Zealand colleagues he echoed quietly each sharpened syllable as she wound her way through her speech. I’ve got to admit it was one of the most pronounced New Zealand accents I’ve ever heard, but she had a nice dress on.

Anyway, we were conversing politely when a molar shattering alarm erupted over the food court. It was the sort of noise that was incongruent with people calmly strolling around. Which is precisely what everyone did as no one seemed to know what to do. What was needed was for people to scream and run in random directions, indiscriminately smashing stuff. Look, even just one person screaming and smashing stuff would have sufficed. A business man throwing a stainless steel bin through one of the large plate glass windows and heroically beckoning for us to follow him to safety as he leapt down into a jet turbine of a waiting aircraft, would have sufficed. But instead people continued to walk calmly around. So I went off to the toilet where I noticed in the toilet you could vaguely hear an announcement. It sounded important. But I figured if it WAS important then surely I should have been able to hear it. It was an airport, it was post 9/11. I didn’t take into account it was Queensland.

I returned to Richard where the shops of the food court were now being closed by giggling girls. Yeah, weird, but they were laughing uproarishly in a girly sort of way, while they clacked in loose footwear and covered their butt cracks as they bent down to secure things in their low slung hipsters. Finally the Queenslanders were taking things seriously. So Richard and I moved a little way over to the departure lounge of Gate 22. Now floods of people were moving briskly down the escalators. In fact, crowds of people who I had only just seen twenty minutes ago board a plane were now leaving.

It occurred to me that something might be wrong.

People glanced at the two of us in disbelief. Now I felt we were perhaps being a little cavalier about the whole thing. Maybe there was a fire, or a bomb or perhaps Maria had a little accident with an acid sample.

I persuaded Richard that perhaps it was for the best that we leave like everyone else, because being reduced to carbon, ash or fat was not cool.

Too my utter amazement we walked past a girl sitting reading a book at the counter of an expensive accessories shop. I walked in and inquired if she had a) heard the alarm (which I was talking over the top of) and b) noticed the crowds of people fleeing.

She responded, barely taking her eyes off the page, “No, it’s just like, they’re testing the sirens.”

“Um….yes, except that everyone has left…” There was no reaction until I said, “…yeah… even the skinny giggling girls from the Beach shop, the Australia shop and the News Agent shop – they’ve closed their shops and left with the crowds, all that’s left up here is a woman with her baby and Maria, and they’re all drunk.” (Look, I don’t know if the baby was drunk, but given she was probably breast fed the odds were pretty good, plus it was Queensland) We finally had her attention. Some ancient rivalry had stirred deep within at the mention of her arch nemesis the skinny giggling shop girls. With a mixture of disgust and hurt she uttered, “No one tells me anything,” before throwing her book down and leaving. I wondered if she should have at least thrown a bin out of a plate glass window before launching herself at the turbine of a jet engine.

Finally, once down stairs Richard and I could hear the unnerving voice over “THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. PLEASE EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY. BLAH BLAH BLAH SOMETHING ABOUT NOT SMASHING STUFF AND ACTING CALMLY.”

Apparently the food court upstairs didn’t have an adequate P.A. system. So Richard and I followed the masses outside all the time waiting for the sudden eruption of whatever death dealing device had prompted the evacuation. Unsurprisingly, and I must say thankfully, no event occurred and we returned through security half an hour later talking loudly about God, Biblical Exegesis and our theories about good looking women. Judging by the glances we were getting, several rules were apparently contravened about what can and can’t mention about God.

Next entry: The D.A.N. Conference. Warning: It’s probably going to be one of those serious sober entries. Then again I usually start off that way.

This is an advertisment for Levi Jeans and Aquatic Pepper Spray

2007-04-08T00:18:00.000+08:00

Noticed I can put adsense on my blog site now. It is hassle free because it assesses what your content is about and determines what ads should go on your page. Incredible. What's more, they pay you. I am giddy with anticipation, everytime I write an entry it will be like Christmas, a new little billboard for each new topic I bring up to discuss. Like they say in the adsense help page if my blog space was all about baseball then the advertising would automatically match the predicted target audience.

Surprised to learn that many people know little about Dolphin Rape. Our friends in the ocean may undergo an image change in much the same way as those Steve Irwin murdering bastards, the Manta Ray... Rays.... murdering murderers who are called Manta Rays but only one did the murdering, so it's really Ray. Murderous murdering Ray the Manta Ray. Just... look... all I'm saying is just wear sensible pants when you go swimming - apparently black denim jeans are fairly safe, especially when they get wet, damn hard to get off and as far as dolphins go, they're clever, but a belt buckle and a sensible pair of denims... People got smart about Manta Rays...Ray.... Rays, putting on breast plates. Pinned to the bottom of the ocean makes it damn near impossible to get a barb in the heart. After a few drowings people just took to shooting them. The Manta Rays. In their barbs. Bastards. Steve Irwin murdering bastards.

And in other news Full Metal Sean is open for less that a week (and it's a great blog by the way...) and gets a post from Random Panda. Admittedly she accused him of stealing from her blog.... but like, I have been doing this for pretty much a year, in fact my second entry acknowledges Random Panda as someone who has inspired me to finally do the blog thing... and a year later I get a comment. A YEAR. LATER. Then she leaves a link to a picture of a tumor.
The future of meat eating. Well. I'm not... I am NOT... worried about the future of meat because you know what we can eat plenty of Rapist Dolphins and Murdering Manta Rays called Ray.

I so cannot wait to see what ads Adsense put on my blog.

Easter. Booyakasha!

Knee deep in Quokka Crap

2007-04-03T22:21:00.000+08:00

That's me on the left - as you can see Quokkas are huge.

Going on camp tomorrow and thought I'd throw this together before anyone else read the previous blog and, well, contacted the authorities.

Rottnest island will be our destination with the 70, actually maybe 80, year 12 students. I'm running some seminars on stuff like happiness.

Here's an extract from the second seminar, just in case you thought you were missing out on somin'k.

Social isolation, the breakdown of community, has lead to sadness becoming pathological. Modern technologies and materialism ain’t doing much to help.

I came across an article that grabbed my attention, and while I didn’t entirely agree with the theory, the central tenets did address some of the things that I felt had gone wrong.

The article in question was from the Time magazine, written by the Evolutionary Psychologist Richard Wright. Evolutionary Psychology is as it sounds, an analysis of the way humans have developed and the way they best function within their environment. A lot of currency has been put into looking into the ancestral conditions humans found themselves.

In his article “Evolution of Despair”, Richard Wright describes his work as the “study of maladies resulting from contrasts between the modern environment and the “ancestral environment”, something he suggests being called ‘mismatch theory’.

Wright puts forward that we are designed for social cooperation, as it improves our chances of survival; natural selection has imbued our minds with an infrastructure for friendship; including affection, gratitude and trust.

Anxiety has a role to play in that having unpleasant feelings gets us into the next generation. Feeling ashamed or disappointed for actions taken that are not condoned by society are useful in causing us to stop and think. Bad feelings are natural.

What is not natural is going crazy: sadness to linger into debilitating depression, for anxiety to become chronic and paralyzing – these are diseases of the modern world.

IN trying to reconstruct the ancestral environment evolutionary psychologists have turned to technologically primitive society. One astonishing thing discovered was the low levels of cortisol (a by-product of anxiety) and when a Western Anthropologist tried to study depression amongst the Kaluli of New Guinea, he couldn’t find any.

The thing that turns sadness or dejection into pathology is social isolation.

It is tough living with social transparency. However the

Anthropologist Phillip Walker studied bones of more than 5000 children over a period of reaching back to 4000BC – he could find no evidence of scattered bone bruises. In modern society such bruises would be found on more that 1 in 20 children who die between the ages of 1-4. In the ancestral environment there is little mystery about what went on behind closed doors, because there simply weren’t any.

It is not urbanization that has so much been the problem, but suburbanization. The combination of transience and residential isolation leaves many people feeling along. The suburbs have been especially hard on women with young children. The Anthropologist Marjorie Shostak writing about life in an African hunter gatherer village that she did not come across isolated, bored mothers.

Evolutionary Psychology explains why modern feminist movement got it’s start after the suburbanization of the 1950s.

The 1963 book The Feminine Mystique apparently grew out of a conversation that the Betty Friedman with a stay at home mother in which the woman spoke with quiet desperation about the anger and the despair that Friedman came to call the problem with no name, and doctors came to call the housewife’s syndrome.

Harvard Professor Robert Putnam notes that the ultimate in isolating technology is the television. 28 hours (the average – which is highly likely to be more these days) in front of the TV is a lot of time bonding that you’re not doing.

Randolph Nesse, another evolutionary psychologist, points out that “Television can distort our self perception”. It is a fact that we compare ourselves with others, but now, we compete with the fantasy lives we see on television. Our own wives and husbands, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters can seem profoundly inadequate by comparison. So we are dissatisfied with them and even more so with ourselves.p.67

Timothy Miller in How to want what you have writes “The pursuit of more can keep us from better knowing our neighbors, better loving our kin – in general, from cultivating the warm affirmative side of human nature…People spend their lives honestly believing that they have almost enough of whatever they want. Just a little bit more will put them over the top; then they will be happy forever.”

The Worried Well

We are medicating our depression without asking why it is there. Gail Bell examines some of the factors, while Guy Rundle assesses the questionable values we have subscribed to.

Part of Gail Bell’s answer lies in re-examining the role that depression plays. Guy Rundle (executive producer of ABC arts) puts it well in his published response to Bell’s essay:

“Much of what is currently called ‘depression’ is a new and real social – psychological disorder, produced by widespread transformations of Western societies in the past three decades. In response to these transformations - in shorthand, the media revolution, and the changes to work and home life, and social space and culture – many of us have become more vulnerable to the onset of feelings that selfhood, existence and connection to others have been pulverized, and that meaning and contentment are not only absent, but impossible. ”p83

Rundle goes on to say

“ Our culture…has become one in which strength, aggressiveness, selfishness and hardness have become the cardinal virtues. The hard bodied ethos of the gym, the competitive nature of the contractual and outsourced work, the visibility of enormous wealth, the surgically enhanced standards of beauty, and the theme of social life as competition (a la Big Brother) have become central motifs. Even in areas of public emotional life – pop music, TV shows like Oprah – the ‘touchy feely’ content is frequently subsumed under the idea of shaping oneself for maximum success…(We are)…one step on from “greed is good” – it is not money per se, but power, recognition and the capacity to “make a mark” that one shapes oneself towards…What could be worse than admitting something is wrong”p.86

Richard Wright would say that it is social isolation, the breakdown of community that has created an environment of despair.

Gail Bell, and further Guy Rundle put it down in part to the changes of our values that are unsustainable in light of the destruction they are causing.

Ok... move on now, go watch some Beat Takeshi or listen to Arcade Fire...

Eating people is wrong I think

2007-03-26T21:15:00.000+08:00

I convinced my Year Nine students that there was nothing wrong with eating human flesh….

No, really.

It all started innocently enough. I wanted to challenge their world view and they wandered into my classroom with something that smelt a lot like ambivalence.

I smell it when I walk to work past the dog kennels after it has rained.

But yes, we talked about the values present in other cultures and someone rolled their eyes. Eye rolling is the equivalent of someone producing a small side arm and firing it at heavily armed militia.

I proceeded as one who stood little to lose.

“Yes… well, seeing we are merely a sophisticated animal, and people eat animals, I can’t see the harm of eating a human being.”

Laughter.

“No really, I wouldn’t kill a human being, like murder someone and proceed to eat them. But you know, just eating them.”

Less laughter, but nevertheless laughter.

“No, like if they wanted to be euthanized or painlessly removed from this life then sure I’d eat them. Why waste perfectly good flesh.”

Almost silence now. I’m wondering when I will stop.

Student: What do people taste like?

“Well (clearly I have no intention of stopping until I’m sitting before a disciplinary committee), contrary to what some people will tell you, human flesh tastes like really salty pork.”

I screw up my face at this point.

“But I’ve found that if you soak it, or better yet stew it, it comes up ok.”

And now to really drive home the horror. I start by laughing quietly.

“Of course, the wonderful thing is I can say all of this to you and you won’t believe me. Then again even if you did believe me what are you going to do about it? You’re Westerners. You’ll listen, be morally outraged and then wander off to the next thing that distracts you. You won’t actually do anything. Will you?”

There is no laughter. Someone shifts uncomfortably in their chair, and my slightly glazed eyes roll over to them whence upon a leer a slight smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t eat any of you. You’re fee paying students… Of course, you go and get yourselves expelled then all bets are off… but I’m just saying, until that day comes... and I trail off. Heck, some of the students even debated quietly amongst themselves whether or not it was illegal to eat another human being. I did not get the last laugh though. I had a gander at the student’s journal writing after my class. This particular entry was written by a quaint little red headed girl.

"If you/people want to eat other people that would be alright, just don't tell anyone"

Sometimes I lie awake at night thinking about the things I’ve done. Sometime.

White Trash and Dogs

2007-03-14T21:39:00.000+09:00

Tanya has also got into mud wrestling. That may come as a surprise to many of you as I could imagine as you might see it as improper or trashy. But you’ve got to understand that “White Trash” is really big at the moment. Pole Dancing, Speed Dating, Crystal Meth, heck if it’s good enough for Kate Moss… (though she did coke) Of course it’s not real mud. It’s that health spa stuff, and the rules are basically 1. “Don’t pull hair” 2. “Stop if the other person ceases to move”, except they don’t use the word ‘cease’ because it confuses some of the participants. Instead the instructors use phrases like “please stop if you think the other person is dead”.

Actually this is all a lie. She does go to the gym though. And some of the people she knows do pole dancing. And some of those people do it on the grounds that it’s for fitness. And please don’t write to me about using a conjunction at the start of a sentence because it’s all the rage with White Trash.

And now to mistakes. We were sitting round with some friends who were talking about buying a dog. During the discussion they mentioned that one of the pups they had seen was going to be put down because it suffered from a slipping patella. It was a Fox Terrier pup worth $600, getting chucked out because of a dodgy knee. Hope these people never open a nursing home. Anyway, these folk were going to give the dog away if someone would take care of him. Have I mentioned that Fox Terriers are bred to kill foxes. Anyway I went to check him out. My friend directed my attention to this cute little dog, actually handed it to me to hold. We bonded immediately. My friend, Giff, and I sat amongst the two pups that were left. This dog seemed absolutely fantastic, much better than the other idiot pup that lumbered around like Frankenstein’s monster - tearing the place up. Damn thing also took a piece out of my thumb – idiot. I expressed my satisfaction with the animal to the owners and my surprise that no one liked it. I was promptly handed Frankenstein’s monster. The damn thing one. The idiot.

There was an awkward silence. Followed by another.

The desire to express the thought that perhaps destroying him was for the best was left unspoken and Giff and I proceeded home with Frankenstein's monster; just to see if he got on with everyone. He stayed the night and the new dog and our old dog (car accident survivor veteran) got on quite well. What I omit to mention is what stands as substantially more significant. My wife and the new dog did not get on quite well. Ollie (short for Oliver – my daughter’s idea) couldn’t speak English at all and never understood what Tanya meant by “I hope he doesn’t dig up the plants”. Of course if he did understand I could only put it down to the fact his knee was causing him terrible pain and he didn’t wish to live any longer. Suffice to say he should be called a tree/shrub terrier In hindsight I should have given him a couple of foxes to tear up.

The other intriguing thing is Ollie is quite vengeful when it comes to reticulation. Something about the way they jump out the ground when he least expects it and wets him. Just him, not the grass, or the trees, or the house or the other dog. Just him. So he waits until everything goes quite and then he digs up the reticulation. Every other morning I wake up to the tirade of abuse my wife directs at Ollie about some such thing. These vary now. Clothes pulled off the line, barking rudely, jumping up on a fresh cleaned pair of pants, eating something he shouldn’t, not being dead. But the reticulation was the stone end. I thought “Right, he needs to be set straight”.

Tanya had left the house and I smashed a window.

That’s a bit of a jump in the story, but I’m worried I am going on, so I thought I would get to the point. I walked out to the sight of Ollie tearing up reticulation. Coffee in hand I yelled out "Oi". Ollie did not respond to my clearly articulated requests to desist. So I tapped the window with my shoe/boot.

Glass, pretty lame stuff really. Who would have thought? Great to look through, not that resilient. Dog stopped digging though. Getting showered in glass kind of got his attention. It was like an action movie. The only thing missing was a bad guy getting tossed through the window. That happened later when Tanya heard my story. Sure, I come out looking like a lunatic. “So, you got angry at the dog and smashed the window?”

“Not in that order, but yes.”

Shop Girl - Dodgy Old Men

2007-03-08T22:51:00.000+09:00

Don't want this to turn into a 'film blog' but I really have to write a little note on this amazing film.

The girl who rented this to me mentioned that it left her a little lost and that it was a weird film. I totally connected with this film ( and please watch all of it, don't march over and turn it off - slowly realizing that Limb is a pervert) and found it to be a thing of beauty.

It is a brave move for Steve Martin because it leaves him not looking so great. That, for me was part of the beauty. In what starts off looking like an exercise in self aggrandizement spirals into something quite the opposite. I won't say much more other than Claire Danes is beautiful. Watch it to see someone who can act - portraying so much through very subtle facial change. Of course there are not so subtle moments - but it is a film that lingers. the soundtrack plays a huge part in that.

I have to warn some of you that if you decide to watch this film, be prepared to have your values challenged. It is a love story between a 26 year old and a 50 year old, and yes I most assuredly cringed. There's a whole lot of in your face stuff here - but as the film draws to it's conclusion I thought the insights about Lust and Love what we think we want and what we need are beautifully portrayed. It is heartbreaking to see Martin's self inflicted isolation as the revelation dawns on him. So many men in his position - well, maybe not anywhere as rich. The voice over jars and I don't think it is necessary but then what are you gonna do. And yeah you can tear the film apart. But this is my blog, and I'll cuddle bags of poo if I so please.

One day I'll go on about Miller's Crossing. Watched it again the other night and it still sits there as my all time favorite film. And you care because....

International Incident at BBQ

2007-03-06T17:05:00.000+09:00

So much irrelevant stuff goes through my head that it becomes difficult to decide what to put in to my blog. As a result next to nothing goes into my blog. I read some blogs and I wonder what the hell people were thinking. Does anyone else really care about your cactus collection. Surely not others amongst the cactus fraternity. They would look upon your cactus photos and quaint anecdotes with either contempt or scorn. Contempt, because your cactus collection was woefully inadequate compared to theirs and quite frankly your unapologetic gushing is embarrassing. Scorn, because your cactus collection is better than theirs and not being able to compete with your ‘hilarious cactus growing out of the clown pot like a spiky penis’ means they degenerate into personal attacks. And lets face facts here. Anyone with a cactus blog site is going to be way open to critique. Unless it’s peyote. Then you’re not going to give a damn. In fact, you will probably let them live because you are a benevolent god.

So, I’m not going to write about cacti.

Went down to the Perth foreshore for a family get to together for my sister law and husband who are soon to travel to Geneva. Recently acquired husband actually, but that’s not really something worth going into because only two of the four people that read this will know who Leah is. So Leah got married. Ian, Leah got married. Linc… you knew that. Moving on. Actually Ian… you probably knew that as well. Well we were having a BBQ.

Stop.

No, see that’s the thing. We turn up, my wife, two kids and it dawns on me that others were privy (for there was a considerable gathering of family and friends) to an important piece of information. Reason I thought something was up was everyone bought cold food. Only a couple of us bought sausages. Turns out the Perth foreshore has two (2) BBQs. So I walk over to the BBQs. One is occupied by a lovely couple of girls cooking the entire Asian contents of what they could muster up out of their kitchen. Fine. Weird…. and fine. What was not fine was the British chap that had obviously been here a very brief period and had no idea about BBQ etiquette.

No…. idea.

I don’t usually mind the British, I work with one and my ancestors were British… but I can understand why a few of them got speared in the early days. It is highly likely they didn’t know how to share BBQs. So I’m standing there as this guy cleans the BBQ. He’s got it into his head that he can clean burnt grease with water. So he’s putting water on and then scraping, scraping, scraping. He repeats this process three times all the time growing increasingly anxious about the fact that I’m quietly standing there looking into the distance feeling really stupid, waiting to find out WHAT THE HELL THIS LOON WAS DOING. In Australia, what you are meant to do is walk up to BBQ, crank it up, have a vague go at cleaning the damn thing while all the time hoping it’s hot enough to kill off the bacteria from the urine that has caked up on the plate over the course of the night… although anyone stupid enough to have a BBQ breakfast will have dealt with that problem. But after the essentially symbolic process of cleaning you throw your meat on, and so does everyone else who is standing around and you use every last inch on the hot plate so that you end up balancing your sausages on end. In fact it is a never ending process of people coming and going. No one ever gets a hotplate to themselves so that this sort of incident can occur. That is what I was waiting for, the invitation. For the guy to stop cleaning like a deranged lab mouse. All the time standing in awkward silence.

Actually, actually no. I remember.

I walked up and said “Hey, how you going?” The man looked at me in horror. Like, the sort of horror you get when you stand too close to a person and make a salubrious comment about his wife, or worse, him. That’s what tipped me off that we were all in for some sort of cultural misunderstanding. So yeah, then we had silence that went on until he asked if I was right. Yes, I was fine. “Where are you sitting?” I outlined as clearly as I could where we were. Then he told me he would be twenty minutes and then he would come and get me. He told me to go away. He… the British tourist… told me…. A 7^th generation Australian…. To go the hell away…. For twenty minutes… and that he….. the tourist…. Would come and get me. I stood there… gob smacked. He was getting testy. Angry even…. Protective of his new found hot plate. Hot, clean…… his. Me being me wanted just a little bit more time to find out if he was indeed… mad. I wanted to see what he was actually going to put on the hotplate. Because then I could put the six (6) sausages I had down. Ian (new brother in law) came across to see what was going on. He is use to dealing with foreigners. He peers into what the girls are doing – now a seething primordial marvel of noodles, alfoil and whatever else they decided to utilize in their insatiable quest to cook every fowl known to the human race, and politely engages in light conversation by telling them that he hopes they enjoy cooking on the BBQs that he has preheated. People produce firearms and a gun fight ensues. Food is inevitably wasted as nobody wants to really eat after they’ve taken human life. Plus a lot of blood got on the chicken. No… the truth is I obligingly went and waited as our conquering hero cooked his three course meal. Got to say I did want to ceremonially pitch his big British bald head into the sizzling delicacies and bury a spear in his kidney for good measure. Hoping as he fell, it was onto a clown with a cactus for it’s penis.

What are you gonna do

2007-02-07T20:29:00.000+09:00

Been in something of a hiatus of late. I like to call it a melt down. It’s probably some form of depression. Seems to be an annual event where I hit the wall after a year of teaching. It involves turning into a recluse, putting on weight, waking up every morning with a pang of guilt about something, although I’m never sure what, making promises to myself about getting to the gym and returning back to work after the break with a muscular bronzed body that people can’t help casting admiring glances at. It also involved watching five seasons of Sopranos back to back.

Needless to say I identified strongly with Tony. I got fat, depressed, irritable and thought it might be cool to… well… you know, strangle someone with length of electrical cable and get myself a Gomare.

Tony got me through though. Often echoing my own internal struggles with moral quandaries about things. Of course his involved the mounting burden on his conscience of all the murders that took place at his bidding. But SYMBOLICALLY the struggles are kind of similar. You know, the demands of suburban life on the 21 century man. It does gnaw at me a little that his is a downward spiral fueled by drug, food, alcohol and sex binges and fits of pique that result in someone's death. I am careful these days not to break any eggs though.

So now, I’m back at school and life is returning to normal. Normal…. I wish I could tell you what goes through my head though when someone disappoints me.

DO NOT LEAVE ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT LYING AROUND

2006-12-01T19:53:00.000+08:00

This all dates from last year. Just found it looking through a few photos. They tell the story.

Ok... this is me telling my daughter to quit taking photos of me. She was five at the time. There are far, far less flattering photos of me.

Once More with Feeling

2006-11-30T23:17:00.000+08:00

This is the speech I made at the Year Nine Graduation Night tonight. I was the keynote speaker. Often with these things they go for a long time and, while important, can get a bit much for parents. As beliefs and values manager I wanted to do something people weren’t anticipating. The entire speech was done with a Scottish accent. It worked so well the Principal told of an English couple who exclaimed that they hadn’t realized that I was Scottish. He took great pleasure in telling them that I wasn’t. Yep… it was a huge risk but I think we pulled it off. It ends with a Flashdance routine. Seriously.

I’d like to thank Miss O’Leary for the opportunity to speak to everyone, it is a privilege for you to be able to listen to the sound of my voice tonight.

I wanted to do something a bit different to what you’re perhaps used to … so I asked Miss O’Leary: do you think I could dance for them tonight – interpretive dance of 1 Corinthians Chapter 13…. but she thought better of it. Alarms the parents.
And so I thought I’d let you in on a couple of secrets about my self… something of my past, something of where I come from, and how I got here.

A lot of students ask me “Mr. Limb… why did you choose to become a priest?”
Well, for a start there’s a couple of things to clear up. Number One… I’m not a priest, and number two it’s Mrs….

Well, the question gives me pause to think about my time as a young person in Scotland. We didn’t have all the advantages that you have, for example there were no lights in the halls we had to meet in. They were cold and damp and they had tonnes of old people – called teachers – they weren’t the sexy young things that are surrounding you here tonight. And you could see these old folk drifting around in the murky darkness. They used to scare the daylights out of me, you could never pick where they would pop up.
“Limb! What are you doing here?”
“Havin a heart attack… I thought I was being attacked by a giant stick o’ leather or the undead.”
They weren’t particularly fast, but then they didn’t have to be it was dark even in the middle of the day.

And the reigns that we used to have in Scotland… let me tell you about the reigns. From 7.30am till 6 o’clock in the evening we would have to wear reigns like a horse until we were 6 years old. It was terrible, the metal bits they used to put in your mouth would chip your teeth – and all of us had these badly chipped wee milk teeth, it was good for tourism though – we’d bear our teeth at tourists and play village of the damned on Friday nights.

On weekends we would be yoked to ploughs were we would work the fields, for we’d eaten all the horses. But we kept up our spirits, of course the longer we kept up our spirits, the more crooked the lines we ploughed became.

And so when we were old enough we were boxed up and sent to boarding school. It was awful being put in those boxes. There wasn’t much room to move, and then once they started moving us our food would go everywhere. And then, when you need to go to the toilet… well lets just say it got a wee bit confusing as to what was what. It was a bit frightening at first, but once we learnt we could look through the air holes and other such luxuries it gave us the giddy sense of freedom. At one point in the journey some of us ended up in the same post office – that was great. We’d whisper to one another,
“Edwards…. What are you doing?”
“Nothin’ what are you doing…?”
“Nothing (pause) hey Edwards do you want to set fire to something?”
“Yes!” (kind of like a ‘hell yes’)
“Do you have any matches?”
“No…. do you?”
“No”
“Is your cardboard wet?”
And to think, all that combustible material…..

One of my friends, Warren, his parents put the wrong address on his box and he wound up in Switzerland. He told us that there are no old people there, they chased them off the mountains. And he also got a Swiss Army Knife. Let me tell you that came in useful during our school years and we were attacked by bears. We’re the reason why there are no more bears in Scotland.

There was one thing I hated about Boarding school more than anything else. And people talk about boarding school – all the horrors they had to face. But there was one horror more horrible than all the other horrors out together to create the horrible of all horribles.

(whisper) It was the dancing.

After being soundly whipped, so we’d pay attention to the lessons about love and grace, we were taken to this great big hall with wooden floors. It was dark and then something moved off in the gloom. Warren leaned over to me, “It’s an old person”
“Nah,” I said, “it’s moving too quickly… it something else”.
Then we saw this… glow. This tiny red glow getting closer and closer. And then behind the little red glow, a enormous shadow loomed. It was the biggest nun I had ever seen in me life. And I’ll never forget what she said that first time we met her… as she took a drag on her Cigarette.
(Burlesque American accent) “ Life is going to throw some nasty things at ya boys. If you’re to get through life…. You’re going to have to be able to (do a dance move) dance. You see, dancing is the antidote to life’s miseries. Sadness – Happiness. Tears – Smiling, Fear – Courage.”. Well, I fairly filled my pants. AND then she danced like we’d never seen dancing before. And her cigarette lit up the darkness like a neon light – forming words as she moved about.…. Faith… Hope …. Love
I remember Warren looking at me… “ She’s not bad”
“I’ve seen better”
“What? Dancing?”
“Oh… I thought…her teeth… yeah, no she’s really good at dancing”

So the nun, Bertha, along with some other nuns, taught us to dance. Days, turned to weeks, weeks turned into months, and the months became a year. And then we were ready to tour. We were called “Bertha and the Nunettes” It was exciting at first, going to all those exotic places. Glasgow, Edinborough, London, Paris, Phuket. But then, when we got older we saw it for what it was. The mockeries from other school children who were taken to see us perform, as an example of what dancing could mean. far from being impressed they would yell out insults – “dance little nun boys”, “shake ya habit”, and the most savage of all, “hey look, dancing”. Well Warren had a shocking temper and he would just …explode – it was like fight club in tap shoes – but ultimately it was through those children that we saw what we really had become.

The word that began to circulate amongst us was… Exploitation with a distinctive Latino feel. … Soon the strain began to show. The late nights, show after show after show, the only relaxation that was allowed was Peter Allen videos. Peter Allen videos?!?

And then one night it all went horribly wrong. One of the stage managers left his pipe and matches back stage. Edwards got a hold of them. Bertha was out doing her opening routine with the other nuns “Come here all ye faithful or you’ll get yours”. Warren dared Edwards to flick a match onto the stage. The first match went up, a tiny symbol of dissention, of resistance, but Bertha’s tap shoe snuffed that out before anything could happen. One of the other nun’s saw us out of the corner of her eye and rushed across the stage when unfortunately the hem of her garment caught a stage light.

Now these stage lights were so hot that moths would evaporate if they ever danced across that beam of light. One time a circus troop lost all its poodles and ponies because they got too close to those lights. The smell was reported to be terrible. Well, this nun went up in a shrieking pillar of smoke and fire. And nun after nun burst into fire as they came in contact with one another. But as consummate performers they threw themselves into the act. They were like fiery stars in heaven. Dancing fiery nuns. The crowd went nuts, standing, cheering… applauding. And us boys learnt what commitment was.

Warren looked at me and Edwards and said – “You know what this means?” “Yeah”, I said, “the nuns have taken to wearing a polyester nylon mix– if only it were wool…. If only if were wool.”

We were all taken into custody. And we were told that we had a choice. You could either do time, or you could be sent down to Australia. I begged and I pleaded. “Please, please lock me up forever and throw away the key, just don’t send to that terrible, terrible place.”
Father Allen stopped me, sent all the others out of the room and leaned in close.
“Oh no Limb, we’ve got something special for you. You are going to where you won’t be coming back… a place we’ve arranged a rather special job for you so you can atone for all your sins.”

And now here I stand before you looking at your faces. The story finally told… of how it was that I became the Beliefs and Values manager. Each one a little punishment for all the sins of my past.

And sometimes, when I’m weary from another day of working at Carey Baptist College I will close my tired eyes and see Bertha -dancing in the gloom and the words lighting up the darkness. Faith, Hope ….Love.

To close (taking maracas from podium) I would like to do a brief interpretive dance. Flashdance music – “What a feeling” begins to play as I slow raise maracas into the air. I queued Nat (Year Nine Manager) to briskly arrive on stage and escort me off.

Blogging: Fun and exciting new experience may end in tears...and fire

2006-11-29T21:21:00.000+08:00

Holy COW!!!!! Thought I'd have to donate an organ to get this entry in tonight.... all that google stuff.

There have been so many moments this last couple of weeks where I have gone – that should go in my blog…. That really needs to go in my blog…. Oh… that has to go in my blog. And so what went in my blog? – Nadda. Zip. Zero. Just this, the ultimate in emptiness; telling no-one about nothing.

Got a bit of an alarm last week when a guy I know who is a youth pastor made a couple of comments in his blog that went down like the Hindenburg. He got absolutely slaughtered by all these ‘anonymous’ entries who actually know him. It was a mess – admittedly I doubt he should have shot his mouth off about as much as he did in a blog attached to the Youth Group Website that he was overseeing. It was like a fight I saw many years ago when this guy couldn’t work out what was going on because people were taking pot shots every time he turned around to confront the coward who had hit him in the back. Once again the guy had asked for it, but nevertheless it was disturbing to see what people will do if they think they won’t be held accountable.

So…. Yes….

It made me wonder about doing this blog because I hold a fairly significant position. A position where, if I shot my mouth off, (which I can tend to) about matters where I really don’t know a lot about (which I tend to) involving people who don’t really need another person throwing in their observations (which I tend to do)… where the heck was I going with that…. Even as I read back over that I can’t remember my point. Something about being nice to the other kids. Everything… I… say… is …. in ….writing…. need …. to…. be….careful….because… it … is …. in …..writing…. can’t… do… much… when… people… have… it… in… writing.

Look, in case you are reading this and it has dawned on you that there was really no point to this – fear not! We simply call it ‘Post Modernist’ and hey presto, there’s a point in not having a point. Brilliant! Conceited and utterly pointless. And by putting the word ‘brilliant’ with an exclamation mark, people will be rushing to agree – too scared to stop and say, “Um… I don’t get what it is that was so brilliant.”
To which we say “Ah…. That’s because you are not educated.”
They will say… “…yes… I ….” And hang their head in uneducated shame. Of course if they are educated they will stalk away to their red wine, and pointlessness. Ah…. Post Modernity. The truly hip will renounce me for even referring to Post Modernity – because it is soooooooo yesteryear.

See…. Things you would never risk putting in print and do…. Blogging.

Hey and if you read this leave a comment. Someone told me they left a comment but it didn't show up. Email if it doesn't show: limbidgit@hotmail.com

Thecollective hole in the donkey

2006-11-14T19:34:00.000+08:00

Made…. It ….. through… another……. Tuesday…..(cough) Staggers through door, reaching for a chair but misses and lands in a shower of dust on the floor. His eyes are open…. Then…. Nothing.

Tuesdays are my ‘I quit’ days. These start innocently enough with my Year Sevens. This morning I was a tad late and they were already in tearing up the place. There were a couple of girls running around the room, another couple were up at the whiteboard trying to write with a bloodied finger (I think) and then a bunch of guys were fighting over the furniture. It was chaos. I yelled at them like a drill sergeant and threw them all out of the room. Except the throwing was relatively short lived because yet another bunch of guys thought it would be hilarious to stop everyone from leaving the room. So, instead of stopping the mass continued to move forward, creating a tangle of humanity that continued to mount up around the door until the little one’s bones began to snap and the screaming began. This is the point at which I want to use expletives – to really let rip and say awful, awful things about people’s mothers and the holes in their donkeys.

This was the first minute and a half of class. I turned to find the deputy principal standing there. This is where you want to point out to her that, “actually this is part of my lesson plan, it’s a community project which allows for individual expression as part of…..
(I reassess)

….Actually, this is the result of a crap classroom which is too narrow and entirely made of metal which I suspect has magnetic properties because the TV ends up with purple in one corner and is almost unwatchable and the whole shebang sounds a lot louder than it actually is, the room, not the TV, and it makes me sound like a crap teacher. Loud classes = useless teacher. I’m not complaining, because I know in some countries these kids would be employed as child soldiers…

3 minutes of class have gone by as I stare at the Deputy as her lips move in slow motion. She wants me to grab a particular student out of the mash of humanity building up behind me.

I get everyone in and they’re seated. Then I threaten to kill them. Like, dead. Someone puts up their hand and asks why the Palestinians and the Israelis can’t just be friends. I explain. The lesson is a success.

Next lesson. Year Eights. Same again, but this time with attitude. We talk about communication skills. I do this particular lesson a total of three times, three different classes. Each class progressively worse as I get more and more worn out.

I stop for lunch then address a Year Nine assembly about why calling each others hoes and other terms of address isn’t really great. I get to say crap and hoe. I finish the day with my last group of eights and we talk about the most horrific accidents we’ve witnessed.

Then we wash the rest of the day away with a staff meeting where the Principal announces that as part of the end of year staff event we will go Lawn Bowling. Lawn …. Bowling. An alarming number of staff turn to see my reaction. I mime blowing my brains out.

2006-11-09T23:20:00.000+08:00

I can't write at the moment except that I am actually writing. I do wonder what the point of all this is. Like who gives a flying fig what I think - really. If I were reading a blog what would I look for?

Well, for a start, a perspective on something I was interested in. Something that had some sort of insight about a matter I cared about. Perspectives on a film. Reflections by an actor. Something a journalist is considering behind the scenes. I am interested in writing, not because I like writing, but I love stories - I try to avoid the stories because it sounds a bit… lame, I prefer to call them narratives. Let’s face it though – it’s a big person’s word for story time.

Narrative lets you encounter a range of things. As I write what comes to mind is that it lets you revisit emotions that you've had in the past, it lets you experience them in a safe environment. I recall that this was the reason why the ancient Greeks loved their tragedies. They wanted to experience the feeling of loss without having to experience actual loss. This was something that the writer of the particular article found deplorable. At the time I agreed, but now days, I think - isn't that a bit judgmental? The tragedies allowed for the viewers to participate in the spectacle, but it wouldn't have been the only thing that they brought away with them.

Tan and I are watching Battlestar Galactica at the moment and loving it. I think it succeeds where Star Wars ended up failing. Well, it doesn't make merchandising a deciding factor in terms of what you put up on the screen. But putting that aside it succeeds because it explores the nature of relationships, the dynamics of our decisions in the many places we occupy in our lives. What it is to be in a position of authority, trusting those in a position of authority, the experience of being a son, a daughter, a friend, a lover - all these things are done so well. It actually uses the genre of Science Fiction well, the main ingredients are there, not least of which is the theme of the human race over-reaching itself. The essentials of being a human – that even in the face of extinction we still fight and betray, that we can be petty and that ultimately the enemy will always be us. A theme explored by having the enemies, the Cylons, actually look like us – imperceptibly different save a synthetic compound in their ‘blood’ that is almost impossible to detect. I could go on… but I need to get onto death.

At the cemetery yesterday I came across an old tombstone shaped like an open book. On the left hand side was the faded insignia of a husband that was loved and missed by his wife - I don't remember if there were children. He died in the 1940s in his early 60s.

The other side was blank.

It looked strange seeing something so old, so faded, waiting like a fresh page forgotten. It was like he had been left at the station. His wife never came. What happened to her? Surely she was dead, there is no way that she is still alive. Did she remarry? Did she return to a home over seas? Did she really not love him? That empty page strikes me, the waiting....

Outside it is raining in the darkness and this seems more appropriate to this memory of a blank tombstone than the sun and warmth of when I encountered this grave stone

I think about that, I think about loss and waiting and expecting. Sometimes the days can seem like a production line, our obligation to stand as the mundane and the ritual of it all pass in succession with each hour. Not sure what it is I expect. I'm not unhappy. But there is an emotion or a feeling that is sitting in my chest - it's a constriction, it doesn't hurt but sometimes it flares and it feels... like if I were to yell it out my voice would be too small.

There are lines all around my life, like fences on properties. There are roads between the fences and the properties and I walk them everyday. I dare not deviate from them. I remember feeling that years ago driving to and from the school where I was a relief teacher. Thinking that I should pull over and go for a walk in a park before I got home.

To stop every so often and savor life.

There was a costal freeway, I remember reading about once, and on it there were signs telling people not to pull over to watch the whales. Sure enough it may cause an accident, but what an opportunity at sunset and that every so often someone out of the thousands that pass by there everyday would stop and risk their safety to experience that sight. Would we enjoy cooking if it didn’t smell so good? We have to eat, but it’s the pleasure involved that makes life worth living.

The Macabre - It's spelt like a dance

2006-11-07T23:08:00.000+08:00

Tomorrow I'm running a seminar for the Year 11s at the school where I teach. Actually, it won't be at school - rather it will be at Karrakatta Cemetary. Why? I hear nobody ask.... Because we don't want our teens to drive into trees, have reckless sex and become accountants as a result of the misconception that they are impervious to death.

Yes... it sounds macabre... but that's not all - then we look at birth. The birth bit is to give them hope. We bring in a Mid Wife who's been in the job for 25 year AND SHE LETS THEM HAVE IT. No, she's very sweet and talks about.... birth.

Look, just read this stuff I've got from Alan De Botton, he puts it into perspective.

The ancient Greek Herodotus writes about an interesting custom practiced by Egyptians at their grandest social gatherings, feasts and picnics. When guests were at their most exuberant, their thoughts focused upon pleasure and power, servants would pass between the tables carrying skeletons on stretchers.

The ritual was to remind party goers vividly of their mortality

It might seem unnecessarily grim to turn our thoughts to death, but doing so might be the fastest way we have of dispelling any worries we have about status.

Nothing helps us sort out our priorities as much in life.

The effect of the thought of death can be to lead us towards what we most value and at the same time to encourage us to pay less attention to the views of other people. Other people will not after all have to do the dying for us.

The prospect of our own extinction may lead us to take more seriously what we most value in our hearts

The contemplation of death has a long history in western art. Vanitas paintings were hugely popular in the 17th century (1600s) Hung in domestic environments – studies or bedrooms

New found wealth resulted in this work – A skull and Hourglass were set in the middle of a bunch of trinkets and fun things and things of values – along with the Latin “Death always wins”

It wasn’t leave the owners depressed about the vanity of all things but rather to make them bold to find fault with specific aspects of their experience, and to urge them to attend more seriously to the virtues of love, goodness, sincerity, humility and kindness

YOOOOOUR MUM!

2006-10-04T00:05:00.000+08:00

Look this has a spoiler alert. So if you want to watch Code 46 don't read this. Having read this, you won't want to watch Code 46 any way.

So onto the task at hand. This is the second Winterbottom I have seen. It’s highly likely I won’t watch a third. I have Megan Spencer from the film review segment on JJJ to thank for watching this. I like Megan, so I won’t hold it her against her. Actually, I think to be fair she said there was plenty going for it, some good ideas, but it left her a bit ambivalent. I think. I think she might have said that.

Watched Code 46 tonight, it's one of those films I felt sorry for - a lot of money spent on it, big name stars and an attempt to make a sci fi film that isn't glitzy and over the top. It did raise some emotion in me but not quite enough to check my brain at the door. You're sort of sucked along and then HELLO he just had sex with WHO?

People just didn't like it.

Rotten Tomatoes gave it 51% .

Nik Huggins from http://www.futuremovies.co.uk/review.asp?ID=243 sums it all up pretty well:

Code 46 seeks a kind of geography of the body and mind in its central relationship to burn brightly amidst the shackling hegemony of this anonymous future world. Unfortunately the lack of on screen chemistry between Robbins and Morton crucially lets the dramatic element of the film down and thus reduces the entire enterprise to little more than a sumptuous mood piece. There isn’t enough at stake emotionally to draw you into the story and the relationship becomes lost and confused amidst the awesome visual scale. High on atmosphere, low on drama, Code 46 washes pleasantly across the senses, and remains a rewarding viewing experience, but in the end it’s little more than an exquisitely crafted travelogue laced with an overwhelming sense of missed opportunity.

I would have to agree with this assessment. I think further to this - if you want to create an empathy with the audience, why the hell have the character married, and totally cheating on his wife? Sure, they did that in The Bridges of Madison County - and people lapped that up (even though that wasn't Merryl Streep's naked body) Yep... and Clint Eastwood wasn't making whoopee with his mum. WITH HIS MUM.

Sure, if you're going to start playing with taboos like sleeping with your mother why hold back - but if you are going to create a film that rings true with the audience at some level, surely create a character we can empathize with. Usually films manipulate us to think the wife is an emotionally black hole and then we sort of see our way round to saying.... "Yeah.... yeah, don't agree with it but I can understand why...." Like Walk the Line. They did that in Walk the Line and we lapped that up. Actually I saw that and went "Uh Oh.... "

I found myself musing at William Geld's (Robbins) increasingly outlandish behavior (and yes - I did make the link to the empathy bacteria he had) and wondering why reason didn't prevail. Even if his emotions were riding him strong, his sense of "CRAP - I can't get home to his family" would knock him out of careering off into the desert with his floozy. Hey... maybe careering out in to the desert with his floozy would do it - didn't though.

Ultimately the film failed with me because I just couldn't see the warning Winterbottom was presenting us with. Holy Cow in the future a computer system called the Sphinx will use DNA to stop you cheating on your wife and sleeping with a woman that shares the exact same DNA sequencing as your mum, in fact a clone of your mum. And stopping all that from happening is bad because........ well, because it's romantic and wistful to leave your central character totally screwed over living out in the desert on the bare bones of her arse. That's no way to treat your mum.

SONOFA.....

2006-10-01T00:33:00.000+08:00

Just flippin lost a post I have worked on for... a while - like I wrote what I thought was a great piece and then it just.... went.

So much for "Well, I'm going to have another go at this..cept this time I won't be so pretentious... and I hope that I spelt that right... because pretention is worse when you can't spell...

so yeah it was like my come back tour only to have the band go up in smoke.

Anyway....

this is so no one thinks I'm dead or worse... giving up.
Which I kind of did.

Superheroes arn't as practical as I once thought

2006-05-23T20:11:00.000+08:00

Sometimes I write stuff that has no useful place in the known universe.

Until now...

Transcript of Police Interview
Date: 15/2/04

Suspect Warren Troy

Troy: Then he steps up onto the ledge of the apartment block and as he goes to leave I said, "Hey, thanks for saving me." Then he goes "Anytime you're in Gotham you're…" but he stood on something loose and it just broke off, and he was gone. And there was this thwack, like…. I don't know... a watermelon hitting a car…

Officer 1: How did you know this?

Troy: What?

Officer 1: How do you know what a watermelon sounds like when it hits a car?

Troy: Oh… I don't. I guess he just sounded like a guy falling fifteen floors in a latex and rubber suit. Anyway I looked over and he's just laying there all sprawled out like a puppet when you cut his strings.

Officer 2: What strings?

Troy: You know, puppet strings.

Officer 1: You were talking to a puppet?

Troy: What?

Officer 1: You were having a talk to a puppet after it saved you?

Troy: No, I’m just trying to explain the picture to you. He looked like a puppet when you cut it’s strings, it just lays there all twisted and bent.

Officer1: Puppets don’t have strings

Officer 2: That's correct. Puppets don’t have strings. They’re like hand puppets. The man puts his hand up the puppet – they don’t use strings

Troy: That's not correct. Look... look... the guy looked like scribble, okay? Human scribble in a bat suit? So I call out...

Officer 2: Hang on... just...does puppet have one 'p' or two?

Officer 1: Just the one.

Officer 2:....

Officer 2:.... alright, continue.

Troy: So I call out... "Hey mister… hey Mister are you okay? Hey! Are you….” And I just stare and he's lying there looking, I don't know… pathetic... I felt sorry for him. Like, he's this big crime fighter, putting terror into the hearts of criminals and he's just lying there. He looked ridiculous… why would an adult do that? Dress up like that? Restricting your vision so that you fall off a flipping building, it was sad.

Officer 1: And was there anyone else?

Troy: Yeah…. then this kid comes out, looking really stupid in a yellow cape and a little black mask and green boots

Officer:1 Green boots?

Troy: You stop me at green boots? And he looks at him and then looks up and starts screaming at me. "You killed him, you killed batman"

Officer 1: Batman.

Troy: Yep. Batman.

Officer 1: The little boy in the red boots.

Troy: Green.. he was in green boots. That’s what he said. “You killed Batman.”

Officer2: That sounds like a confession.

Troy: No… that’s what the kid said. And I'm like, looking around going, "no, he fell… he fell off!"

Officer 1: So you’re saying he just fell off.

Troy: Yeah…but the kid was screaming at me. He reaches for the guy’s belt all the time yelling and yelling, clearly not paying enough attention to whatever he was trying to do. Then suddenly there's this little pop and all this yellow smoke, real weird colour, came hissing out everywhere. Then he's just rolling and screaming, reaching out at nothing…. It was horrible.

Officer 1: So what did you do then?

Troy: I …well.. I pushed the guy on the roof off.

Officer: What?

Troy: The guy who tried to mug me? Yeah, I thought, ‘Man, whose going to protect me when he wakes up?’ So…he was really heavy but I managed to get him off the roof.

Officer 1: And what sort of sound did he make?

Troy: The sort of sound you hear when 110 kilograms of adult male falls on a kid in a yellow cape and green shoes.

He has nothing to say...nothing

2006-05-11T19:09:00.000+08:00

The most recent Blogs are at the bottom of the page. So scan down to the bottom of the page for the latest entries.

I have a couple of people to acknowledge for the existence of this... weblog. First, Lincoln, he has been doing this thing for a bit and while I've always been intrigued by blogs, he's the first person I know well who has a blog. A student of mine from some time back keeps a blog - but I've forgotten the site.

The other person to acknowledge is the enigmatic Panda. That's not actually her name, like it's not "Enigmatic Panda". It's Just Panda. She put a spin on the whole 'Blog' thing that just blew my mind. She inadvertantly encouraged me to look into all of tis a bit deeper and what I found really... well, it's huge. Some have some terribly important things to say, some have some have absolutely nothing to say.

I figured, I've got nothing to say too.

And by jingo, I'm going to say it. Softly at first, but then louder and louder until others catch the cry, and they will then cry out with one accord,

"HE HAS NOTHING TO SAY..... NOTHING" except there will be one guy and he will say "NOTHING" just out of time with everone else.

So yeah... I was talking about Panda.

(Awkward pause)

That reminds me of a story. Pandas look cute and cuddly but there was this tourist guy, in China, where Panda's are native (actually where the Chinese are native as well, which probably negates the whole tourist guy thing I just wrote) and he figured he'd climb into the Panda enclosure and give it a hug. The Panda took exception to the guy. The guy and the hug. The guy and the hug and his camera. The guy and the hug and his camera and his arm. Suufice to say the man parted ways with his arm with a little help from the Panda, and with a little further encouragement, his life. Wild animals are real funny about personal space. Nasty. Nasty Panda. The Chinese guy hugging the Panda went right round the world. Something to encoourage people NOT to do. If it's in an enclosure, they spent all that money for a reason. You know, and I know this is probably not the right thing to say, but people who hug wild animals get what they deserve. It's Mother Nature's way of culling those who shouldn't really be contributing to the gene pool. Take the Grizzly Man. The Bears certainly did. Hope his mum never reads this.
I tried to find a link to the news story, but to no avail. Instead check out this link and enjoy watching a hunter getting the crap knocked out of him by an angry deer. You will have to scan down the page a tad to find the link.

And just to make it crystal clear, Panda is not a real Panda. She works in a book shop and that's how I met her. Through that shop I bought a copy of the book Barons to Bloggers: Confronting Media Power. The blurg on the book summed up the importance of the whole blog thing:

Whatever one thinks of Rupert Murdoch or his ethics, when a mogul of his stature stands on a public platform and predicts the end of God-like media figures telling people what's important, you begin to realise that there's something seismic going on in the world of communications. Seismic, but unpredictable. -

Eric Beecher, Publisher,

crikey.com.au

The picture of the Panda? This is a dramatic reconstruction of events leading up to the attack. Note the constricted pupils, a dead give-away that Pandas are about to attack. That and the screams from the people on the other side of the enclosure.

Teaching and Terrorists

2006-05-11T02:39:00.000+08:00

Well, it’s the second post and the feedback hasn’t been glowing.

Panda didn’t have much to say other than make the astonishing observation that my blog could be called “Just in limbo”.

In all my life no-one has put that sentence together. Suffice to say my wife was very impressed. Panda, very sharp girl. By the way did I mention she attacked a Chinese tourist, took his arm right off. Terrible.

Linc thought I had been taken over by some sort of alien life form. He actually asked me that. He suggested that I write in English. I spouted all this crap justifying the disaster by claiming that my first blog was a critique of the two extremes of blogging. Which it was, but you know I had to explain that so.... yeah, it failed.

Sigh.

So… Part Two.

I work with teenagers, I am a teacher. I won’t tell you what I teach, we can work up to that later, although I can tell you that I’m not a manual arts teacher – so I don’t make bombs.

There are moments that, well, leave you gob-smacked. Not because of how jaw droppingly naïve the individual is, but how much physical danger they put themselves in. Mainly from me.

I’m not really a person to upset.

I’m not a fan of smiling sweetly at a cheap shot made by a kid; placing my finger on my chin with arms folded in thoughtful repose and pointing out the error of their ways.

No.

I want a big messy pile of blood, gore and carbon left where I’ve struck.

I don’t believe in yelling though.

Yelling at a student leaves you with no place to go. You impress no one. You’ve got to leave them with the distinct impression that something terrifying lurks beneath your restraint. Something that requires a parole officer to check up on you each night at 6pm. Yelling just makes you look like an imbecile – all that teeth and spit, and then you loose the faculty for lucid speech so your witty retort comes out so far short of what you wanted.

For example, here’s a transcript of typical midmorning English classroom incident:

Teacher: I’VE ASKED YOU REPEATEDLY TO GET YOUR WORK OUT AND STOP TALKING!

Jinny: (gums slapping with the chewing of gum) I wasn’t talking.

Teacher: RIGHT! I’VE TOLD YOU!

Jinny: (gum makes strange little popping noises) But I wasn’t talking, that was Sharron!

With eyes blazing you turn on Sharron. Sharron is colouring-in her pencil case and could care a tiny bit less than zero that you exist. She casually turns to talk to her friend you’ve been remonstrating with and begins to continue her point about Barrie or Bescuit or whatever his damn new age sensitive mispelt name is when you actually interrupt her. Needless to say she exhibits her annoyance with the roll of her heavily made up eyes.

You can’t remember what happened next. Except you play it back in your head and you seem to have come across like a children’s television co-host with your arms outstretched pretending to be a bear. And yelling. Lots of yelling. And there’s makeup and blood all over your hands.

We put more and more restrictions and demands on teachers and then wonder why the only people teaching are those who are out of their mind, trapped or just can’t find other work – the shortage of teachers makes schools even more desperate and prepared to employ people who don’t brush their hair in the morning.

Having said that there are good days. Don’t let me put you off teaching. Just go in with your eyes wide open and the safety off your Glock.