What I think has always plagued a lot of people (me) the most is the way our brains find the most traumatic moments of our history; conversations with ex-boyfriends, nasty comments made by bosses etc… And I came to a realisation the other night that perhaps it’s not an inherent lack of self esteem and self-attack. Perhaps it’s instinctual, it’s the way our brains were built. After all it seems to be such a universal trait.

Think of us as cavemenpeople, it was important back then to think about past dangers in stressful situations, to remind of us of past mistakes and ensure they wouldn’t happen again – how sick you were when you ate those berries, how you nearly died trying to pat an antelope! Whatever! I know that in rush hour when I’m driving home I’m often plagued by other incidents where I nearly killed myself, or have nearly been killed by a reckless action.

So perhaps rather than punishing ourselves it is an automatic instinct. It explains why we focus on the negative rather than the positive. In our modern society, of language, communication, hierarchy and technology the moments of shame, frustration and despair take the shape of conversations and car accidents rather than bad berries and rampaging animals.

This also explains for me why pet dogs often also suffer anxiety, their daily moments become the reprimands, the long hours of being ignored, the frustration of not being able to go outside when they want to, or the neighbours cat teasing them. Their brains are plagued by new more emotional, less instinctual memories which are attached to guilt for not behaving well, sadness at not having their love returned, that type of thing, rather than what their brain is more properly built for, chasing birds, remembering the pain or fear when the bird turns out to be able to fight back!

Obviously I’m not a neurologist or psychologist. But the thought has helped me to calm down and listen to myself more, I worry less that I have a self esteem issue and am constantly punishing myself. I find less need to drown out all thoughts and I start to think it’s a normal protective reaction, instinct, don’t worry, just listen to the message.

Who are today’s philosophers, our seekers of truth willing to see beyond popular thought and find new knowledge? We are so reliant now on science to find our knowledge we have forgotten there are many things which science cannot tell us about the world. It was philosophy which taught us to question the status quo, it was philosophy that taught the French to revolt against humanity’s slavery, it was philosophy which built the dream of liberté, fraternité, egalité, it is philosophy that drives environmentalism.

But in a time of dramatic change in our world, where our communication system draws us ever closer and changes the way we behave, no new philosophies are being born. People talk of guarding privacy, and abandoning copyright, but these are political ideas which pale in comparison with the words of Jean Jacques-Rousseau who realised “man was born free and everywhere he is in chains”.

We don’t think anymore. We surf the net, we watch tv, we work, we sleep, we party. But we avoid the silence. We avoid the taunting voices in our heads which torment us with old conversations and moments of shame, anger, frustration. We deny totally the moments of happiness or joy. We don’t think, we don’t consider. ‘Sensitive’ is an insult. Sensitivity to the world, consideration of it and for it, is out of fashion. Silence is the enemy. Numbness is the aim.

When we can’t achieve the numbness, when the moments that haunt us seep in, we collapse under anxiety or depression, the ones that escape mental illness are the ones with the best systems of numbness. We’ve created so many inputs into our heads, from texting on our mobile phones to reading books in bed.

We shut each other out, sometimes I think this is a symptom of the post-war generations who could not speak to each other of their unfamiliar pains – abandonment, unspeakable horror, cruelty, addiction to adrenaline, boredom bordering on torpor – we keep a stiff upper lip and concentrate on our knitting, fixing the shed, having children, buying more dvds. But I think this has always gone on, just as war has, I suppose.

Our unspeakable tiny pains, which we know to be universal but feel completely unique to us in our own internal worlds, are nothing to the struggles of serfdom which kept the French in chains. We feel we are too comfortable to complain, we watch as the world changes around us, as power shifts further and further away from us and into the hands of media corporations. France would never have freed itself without the free press, the voices of dissent which spread their ideas throughout the nation culminating in society’s complete upheaval. Today our minds, our opinions are controlled by individual men bent on the accumulation and manipulation of power, the disempowerment of governments and independent media.

As an aside, the Howard government attacked our higher education; our ability to think and better ourselves. They attacked our free press and worked to empower the media monster which supported them. The current government has learnt the lesson of crossing the corporations, it lost its leader in a battle against the corporate giants. But we have food and water, rooves over our heads, electric blankets on our beds, DVD players and Foxtel. So we don’t feel justified enough to revolt. It took the theft of their rainwater for Bolivia to revolt. I wonder what it will take for us? I wonder who will be our philosophers?

Some stuff I thought of when I wrote this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/romantics/ < — the instigator
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks:About < — an incredible tool
http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/presenter/about < — my hero of the hour
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Consolations_of_Philosophy < — another instigator
http://www.theschooloflife.com/ < — an incubator of ideas
http://www.jamieoliver.com/jamies-ministry-of-food/about < — an initiator

PPS. I was talking today with Dad about how ingenious Britain was in world war two, like for D-Day they made fake tyre tracks and cardboard airplanes to make the Germans think they were somewhere they were not. This kind of ingenuity seems to have died off. I get tired of looking back and glorifying the old days when so little is being done today.

Thank you Apple! They are finally leaking stuff about the new iPhone. I’ve been dying to upgrade my cancermaker! Internet sources are claiming they found the new iPhone lost in a bar, while other developers have been given the new OS and quickly YouTube’d it. I think it’s pretty suss, nothing like this would happen in the past Apple is one of the most tight-lipped companies there is.

But I’m glad… I am sick of waiting around, not knowing if I’m going to like the new phone, wondering if I should be shopping around for something else, wondering if the iPhone is going to fall short of my needs. But they’ve brought us:

• forward facing camera
• higher res camera with flash
• background pictures on home screen
• folders on main screen
• multi tasking apps
• battery power stated in percentage
• 5x zoom on camera

And that’s just the beginning. I’m sure there’ll be many more reveals as time goes on. Unfortunately they wont solve my number one annoyance – no Flash in Safari. It seems like a superfluous thing, but when i’m in Wellington next week wondering which bands to go see, i wont have a computer, I’ll just have my trusty iPhone cancermaker, and when I visit Myspace.com all the bands will be listed there, but I won’t be able to listen to a single song. Apple’s justification is that they want you to use iTUnes, but I’m sorry mate. I don’t think Flying Scribble or Paper Ghost are on iTunes.

train brakes ka-chush a perfect beatbox in motion
the train pulls along but the rhythms wont abate
steam escapes, releases, still a ka-chaka continues
the driver, ever patient, eases the train forth
eventually steam building and pushing towards
a smooth forward motion, the brakes released, are silent

i’m having a pretty bad day which may explain why some of the music i’ve bought recently is grating on my nerves more than usual.

I’m listening to Au Revoir Simone and they’re singing about being under cherry trees with apparently the love of their life, and cryptically teasing people who are ‘always waiting’, and wording things to be somehow unreal and heightened, giving the listener the sense that Au Revoir Simone are superior, above it all, live a cooler life, appreciate the smaller things that the rest of us are too numb to notice… isn’t it a bit insulting to the listener? “I’m cooler than you, listen to me sing about it for 50 minutes”.

I have friends like this too, who go on about cooking or crafting or whatever their passion is and leave you with veiled criticisms for not appreciating the world the way they do, or not being as good at it as they are, it’s usually the more yuppie of my friends who do this… as though they’re trying to live their lives out of a magazine… Normal people can love what they do without making you feel crap about it.

I’ve also seen friends, perfectly normal sweet people, develop these pretensions when being interviewed, trying to sound ‘distant and floaty’, claiming they’ve attained some goal that the rest of us could never reach (huge career success, terribly thin body, total absence of materialism, religious awakening), as though this makes them more interesting to the interviewer and therefore the reader, as though this makes them more valuable in the world, more competitive with others in the world who are playing the same game of sort of deifying themselves while leaving a total absence of actually talking about their work; the thing they’re most passionate about.

It’s alway been that this kind of self-heightening has gone in in music to some degree, but to see it spread into real life, for no apparent reason I can find…. really aggravates me.

I mean I like my friends because they show a vulnerability, I like artists and musicians who talk about their processes and share their trials and tribulations. I am repelled by people who put themselves on a pedestal. When people start to promote themselves as above me or unattainable in some way, I no longer see the point, I lose respect for them… a songwriter who tries to make what they do sound mysterious, instead of sharing their work, or a friend with a spiralling (upward) career making out that they’re somehow detached from me, or my world now…. where does this come from?

I remember reading Smash Hits as a 12 year old and believing the lives of the people depicted were somehow different/heightened, I used to wonder about it a lot, it was a given that their lives were special somehow. But was that what made me like them or did I just like their cool hair and clothes? Would I have been less interested in Johnny Depp or Christian Slater if they’d talked about running out of toilet paper, or being hurt by someone’s comments? Isn’t this kind of ‘normal stuff’ exactly the kind of thing that tabloids try to get because ‘dirt’ sells. Levelling off the playing field, finding out Jennifer Aniston’s love life isn’t so perfect after all… we love that stuff right? We love when people are candid. Our eyes glaze over when politicians speak in principles rather than concretes.

So Is this kind of pretentious behaviour the path to success? I know it’s a form of self branding but should it spread to every level of life, are we assuming it’s valuable without thinking about it? Isn’t the need for the candid moments, and ‘dirt’ a reaction against it all? And anyway do people really value pretension from their family, friends and colleagues?

Am I really the only person in the world that doesn’t want to hear about some little musicians constructed world of natural perfection?

SO much going on! but my becoming more and more wary about privacy makes it harder to post. The fact that i cant go out anymore without someone snapping a horrible photo and putting it online and linking it to my ‘online profile’ without ever once consulting me, makes me wish i had gone down the path my best friend took of never uploading images of herself online or ever using her real name, or ever letting herself be photographed… a quick google of me will show you that indeed after 14 years of being highly active online i do indeed exist digitally and now what was once a joyous thing of a truly unique name, has become a curse.

but enough of that.

i have my left hand in a cast – from a simple fall. i am left handed. hence possibly poor sentence construction, typing and punctuation. the cast comes off queen’s b’day weekend, fortunate since that’s the week I head to Canberra to stalk a librarian and reacquaint with my birthplace, then flap my way up to Brisvegas to stay in gorgeous apartments (i wont link them in case you have horror stories to tell) and hang out with my bestest buddy and generally unwind.

and why would a girl like me need to unwind, you ask? well i’ve been doing two jobs since March – full time in my dream role of running a library website as well as liaising as Science Librarian. while doing my backup dream job of teaching at university. i must say it’s all a bit overwhelming with both jobs quite new, one arm and 16 assignments to mark!

but i’ve been taking the time to reflect just how i got here. from unemployed, hopeless, struggling with a direction, health threatening to pack in on me, to having a decent job that pays well and possibly even a career path. the answer is luck and parents who let me study in their house again. i feel i can no longer wear the title of ’slacker’. not that I ever did, i just felt deep down that I identified with the cynical generation x, and that that was where I would always belong in society. yet society has won. i fill a grown up role.

This isn’t really a problem for me, this has been a gradual change over the last 5 years. My only gripe is how time-poor I have become. plus the fractured wrist doesn’t help much with the creative endeavours… i have a lot more cash to spend on other’s creative endeavours though. and since I got a car last month (again the greenie within withers a little) i am able to listen to new music on the radio and learn that Ratatat and the YYYs both have new albums. And maybe even explore new stuff if i find time to get to Polyester and listen to Au Revoir Simone at length.

The car (second hand & fuel efficient) is amazing, i get a lot more done with the little time that is mine. I feel the conversion will be complete when my RRR-FM sticker arrives in the mail and gets slapped on my rear window proudly. I was able to fossick for shoes that are comfortable, jeans that fit, and discover after 15 long years the elusive long sleeve under shirt in a variety of colours, all due to my ability to travel from one shopping hive to another.

My newest obsession, is tied with my job: pop science books. I have now “The World Without Us” to read about how the earth would change if all humans disappeared today. In fact I have been lusting over about 15 of these books and borrowed another five that I have no time to read – hell i’m still stuck on page 30 of the latest Jasper Fforde (why is the cover so ugly?? and actally it seems he’s got a newer one out now “Shades of Grey”) i keep falling asleep after a couple of pages. This is what separation from public transport does to you.

These are some of the titles that caught my eye while fossicking the shopping hives:

 
[i've taken to taking photos of books with my cancermaker, so i can research later, since there are far too many to buy on the spot]

And before the next paragraph which many of you will resent me for and will give you that one final reason to quickly delete my feed, (at the very least for the overly long post!) I’ll tell you that I got a full legal copy of Adobe Master Collection CS3 thru work, extremely cheap, which makes my inner geek soar with delight – this blog is definitely due for a revamp this year! Don’t mention CS4 I’ll only snub you!

My final recent life revelation is that I have become a stricter vegetarian again after watching McLibel (by the way i’m not buying anything from amazon, just linking for convenience) and there was this section in which I watched cows and chickens being electrocuted, gassed, skinned, hung, burnt, and tossed away like so much garbage. It reminded me why I’m vegetarian, why i have been for 18 years – because I choose not to participate in such activities on a daily basis. While the rest of the world shuts their eyes and says “I don’t want to know”, they choose for this to continue to happen, they make it happen. And the next time I’m asked why I am vegetarian that will be my answer, not the palliatives I’ve been giving to make people feel comfortable around me, and comfortable with what they’re doing, yet they cannot bear to look at it, discuss it, or admit it.

i need things to read.

i’ve just finished tidying everything i own, everything, even my wardrobe now has all the short sleeves together, dresses together etc… the box of school stuff is gone, there is an empty box ready for whatever the new year brings, the sewing things are all tidied away.

but there’s this one piece of paper, my friend ROmany was recommending books for me to read, and i just don’t know where to put it so i don’t lose it. then i realised: my blog!

Romany Recommends:

• everything bad is good for you
• how to build a time machine
• barefoot investor
• jennifer government

actually some of those may be other recomendations sneaking onto the list.

Now what have you guys got to recommend to me?

did you know…

You can email your Federal and State government representatives and tell them your views?

Search to find your federal and state electorate and link your way to that all important email address where you can send in your ideas for a better future like:

• * Australia to commit to cutting more carbon emissions than any other country – and meet those commitments
• * compressed hydrogen cars on the roads next year
• * building standards that require grey water recycling
• * TAFE fees kept affordable to encourage people to educate further
• * industry standards to prohibit the production of throwaway appliances and cars

I just think we could move forward into a motivated time, of resource saving and innovation if we had a government that would stop choosing the lesser evils and start creating better choices. Even if some of the above are not realistic, they give you an idea of the future I want and how quickly I want it!

“Life is like a box of chocolates.
A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift
that nobody ever asks for.

Unreturnable because all you get back
is another box of chocolates.

So you’re stuck with this
undefinable whipped mint crap
that you mindlessly wolf down
when there’s nothing else left to eat.

Sure, once in a while
there’s a peanut butter cup
or an English toffee.
But they’re gone too fast
and the taste is… fleeting.

So, you end up with nothing but
broken bits filled with hardened jelly
and teeth-shattering nuts.

And if you’re desperate enough to eat those,
all you got left is an empty box
filled with useless brown paper wrappers. ”

                      – Cancer Man (X-Files)

Just going through my bookmarks, cleaning out some rubbish and i found one I thought i’d long lost about future screen technology.

We may not be as far off as you think in creating some of the technologies you see above, watches like this are already on the market and you can see a sony version of the bendable prototype on the right being presented on YouTube.

This stuff fascinates me because we’re talking about the kind of technology so portable you can wear it, as powerful as your laptop but far more versatile. I’ve been extremely well behaved in not annoying you with more tales of the iPhone (aka the cancermaker), but having that device has changed aspects of my life greatly, particularly getting train timetables, maps and looking up library catalogues while i walk down the street to wherever I need to be.

Look at that luminescent newspaper! I know plastic is about to become as rare as bakelite as oil reserves run dry, (mmm bakelite… how i miss thee!) but still, one pliable sheet that carries your newspaper within would save innumerable trees and obviously help with a massive waste problem. The best bit about it is that it doesn’t look all scrunched up like a website, it’s a proper layout any graphic designer would be proud of! Actually, I lie, the best bit is how it looks like something straight out of Minority Report. Imagine reading books this way too? i know there’s a lot of books I’d want physical copies of, just for the smell of them, the feel of them, but i’d happily trade that sheet of plastic for all the heavy library text books i’ve been lugging to and from home.

… gone are my imaginings of steampunk!

ok well no that’s a total lie! I just discovered Wordle, which makes word clouds of whatever you input. Fun! So i wanted to see what my blog would look like.

It’s clear to me that i need to read more classic literature and up my vocabulary somewhat… but i wondered for a time about the words “Reeves” and “Phoenix” until i remembered my blog sale – a bit telling really… I intend to update this regularly to monitor my wordliness! (which is somehow afar more important than worldliness).

I didn’t know there was a Google browser till yesterday and the article i read about it talked like Google were the second coming:

‘Chrome is open-source, meaning that its code is available to everyone for inspection or improvement — even to its rivals. That’s a huge, promising twist that ought to shut up the conspiracy theorists.’

If you know me, you’ll know i scoffed at this. Why would a company make a browser? especially when there’s already a good open source one available? There’s always an ulterior motive.

I imagined how they’d eventually use it to extend their empire – they already save and collate everything we search for, everything we email each other and they already catalogue the web with the intents and purposes of making their search engine an A.I. (They’ve stated this themselves).

I thought ‘Gee, wouldn’t they love it if they could watch everything you do via your browser, they can’t get away with that while it’s open source, but I bet they’ll do it eventually!’

Boy was I wrong! A story that came out the same day but i missed (Thanks Mel) says that Google intends to do just that, AND they want copyright on anything you type? (does this include my passwords Google?)

‘Users who downloaded the free browser yesterday were asked to agree to a clause that gave Google a “perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly, perform, publicly display and distribute” any information they typed into a website. Part of the same clause allowed Google to share the information with “other companies, organisations or individuals with whom Google has relationships”.’

After massive uproar, the copyright clause was removed, but the ability to monitor everything you type into a website stays. They can and will store anything you enter via their browser (passwords!?) for their own ends.

Basically they have just made a move to own the web. This is the company that the NY Times heralds as the Second Coming. Lets just remember that Microsoft was the First Coming.

I’ve removed all Google cookies from my computer and banned them from being put back on. If you have Gmail, get rid of it. You’ve been warned. If you save water, if you recycle, then you should go to some lengths to protect human knowledge while you’re at it.

If you honestly think i’m exaggerating or overreacting, go see what AT&T think

So Thursday afternoon, a friend happens to mention she’s headed to Bundoora to see Shaun Tan speak at RMIT Library the next day. Just casual like, and “Oh, would you like to come?”

My jaw dropped open.

I have mentioned his beautiful illustrated books in the past, my favourite of which is The Lost Thing, it’s like another world, a hundred years ago, where odd little machine creatures roam the urban landscape picking through gutters for cog and screw snacks.

His talk was very inspiring, and if you go to his site, or listen to his talk on Radio National next Saturday afternoon, he’ll tell you all about how he learnt to draw, how he gained confidence, his setbacks and successes. He really teaches you the process and how you get to be as good as he is at it. He doesn’t mystify the process at all. He talked about how he can’t draw when he’s depressed, how heaps of his ideas never made it past the publishers, how he has days where nothing he draws is any good, and how biro on scrap paper is his favourite format because it’s low pressure, that his doodles are just messy little things, and how office work has prevented him from drawing for the last year! He also talked about how lucky he got, how hard he’s worked… and just a million amazing insights into the world of a successful illustrator.

He signed two of my books i’d brought, and he has a new one on sale called Tales from Outer Suburbia which i quickly snapped up at the local Angus & Robertson’s on my way home, but best of all he drew a little creature for me in my moleskine! (which he says he has one too, but it intimidates him!) So my moleskine has been ordained by one of the foremost illustrators who inspired me a few years ago to have a proper go at learning to draw. I virtually flew home, my feet barely touched the ground!

i’ve had a long frustrating day, so what better than to take it out on a topic that has been bugging me for years.

wtf.

i mean, it’s one thing for men to paint their panel vans with naked ladies, it’s another for illustrators to elevate themselves to the level of artist because now they’re painting naked women. Sure the Masters did it a few centuries ago. But feminine politics are a little different now, and SURELY if art has developed beyond the fruit bowl, it has developed beyond the boring nude beatification of the female.

i mean, if you want an interesting and critical analysis of nudity, why is it always women in demure/submissive/waifish poses? Where are the naked men? Where is the pubic hair and cellulite?

I’ll tell you where… in the real art. Not this popular shit.

It’d be alright if there were even allowed to be dialogue about this, but i remember subtly suggesting to an ‘artist’ that i preferred not to buy pictures of naked women and she got really upset and offended… like i’d hurt her artistic temperament.

It’d also be alright if these ‘artists’ ever showed any attempt to analyse their work beyond the materials chosen, or perhaps explore other types of subjects. But there’s no evidence of this. There’s no ‘art’ here, no context, or growth, or interest.

Women as eye candy. That’s all we are.

Artists as selfish pimps. That’s all they are.

it’s been three weeks i’ve been wanting to do a blog entry but haven’t had time… this means i have about three entries worth to stick in here! but i will be nice and spread them out!

I made this!

Candace’s birthday was quite a while ago now, and making this bag for her was the perfect procrastination from a big nasty project i had for school. it’s made of red pinwale corduroy, has inner pockets for phone, ipod etc, but the best part was doing my own messy version of patchwork for the front pocket! Sewing can be really easy on the machine except…. i hate sewing machines!

i’m desperate now to make my own bag, i bought apple green pinwale as well. But of course i love satchels… mailman bags. they’re quite a bit more involved! so i’m guessing it’ll never happen.

my favourite bag (as seen previously) is awesome and perfect in every way except it’s designed for a right hander and it wont fit my new laptop (which i should get tomorrow i hope!!) so i’d love to remake it and started to inspect it end from end… BORING! you say! well.. yes… except look at this junk!

This is all the stuff my beloved bag holds in it when it’s EMPTY!! i kid you not!! it has so many little pockets to keep things tucked away, things that never get removed, they are PART OF THE BAG…. creepy!

Starting from top left:

I had my 31st yesterday. it was really lovely! one of the best birthdays i’ve had in a long time.

last year i decided to spend my 30th in canberra, my home town. but an old friend was weird and seemed to try to cheat on his wife with me the night before i left, so i was quite disturbed and shocked the whole time i was there and by odd karma i didn’t manage to meet up with anyone in my time there, so it was quite isolating and odd.

this year, i handed in my scary first assignment and went down to meet my friends, i was on a high from having completed and finished everything! we chatted a lot waiting for people to arrive. my zine and first set of badges had sold out! so i got money! and i also got presents!

i’m going to actually talk about these presents because i think they’re all so lovely. i am so glad to have something to remember these friends by. xx

1. first thing i remembered to check my mail in the rush to get out the door and turn my assignment in, and i got a present from kathleen! I was so stressed and this band made everything nice, some colour to my grey morning. i really love it.

2. a present to myself on the day (though of course i’ve been buying little things all month) were some amazing zines i found in sticky! ‘cream suck’ is tiny and gorgeous, a new ‘westside angst’, some amazing comic called dogman, and a ‘magnetic poetry’ zine, so inspiring!

3. sarah made these brooches for me out of coloured card! she’s so scary creative! i’m so glad i have one of her artworks!

4. ginny got me a mixtape brooch with real tape in it! Sarah asked what music was on it! now i’m really curious! I wore it all night and the tape kept tickling me!

5. candace got me sanrio stationary, i *heart* it so much, it’s something i avoid because i’m an addictive personality but i LOVE cinnamaroll and the bun guy is awesome, i love translating his little japanese exclamations! i’m going to use these for school, they make me feel so much better than my crap pink book.

6. my mum got me kokeshi from a website i pointed her to, i gave her a list of nice ones i liked and she chose me some. they look so beautiful on my shelf, some of the best ones i own, they’re gorgeous! (of course mum wasn’t there for the party)

there was dispute about which dumpling house to go to, i made the executive decision to go where the most adamant disputers wanted to go, otherwise they’d have been cranky all night! plus elle was buying me dinner! the food was great, the service was super fast and i was stuffed full!! for eight of us the bill was only $95 which is pretty awesome. Then we got group photos taken in a booth, ALL of us in a booth! very funny! we got nice photos of everyone in there i think! and then off to a chocolate place for hot chocolate! poor elle got something italian that nearly killed her. it is true, there is death by chocolate. i got a lovely american hot chocolate with marshmallows.

This was such an amazing night, mostly because we haven’t gotten together for so long, it was so nice to just spend time chatting, eating, chatting. i’m so glad i have some mementos to remember it by.

androniki has the (laptop) bag i should have bought, so i’m kicking myself. I will have to go and get myself one, a proper sturdy bag… i feel stupid, both the shoes and bag i bought last week have turned out to be bad purchases, the shoes were a birthday present from mum and far too expensive for her, and they are cramping my feet despite supposedly being the most comfortable shoes ever.

The down-side was that the family side of the birthday did not go so well. i know they love me, it just didn’t work out and feelings became sour… birthdays are hard, expectations of eachother… it’s like christmas again.

I hope noone minds the photo being there, i’ve locked the lj entry. But if i don’t record this now, by next year all the precious memories will be gone.

I finally went to ACMi today to see GAME ON the video game collection you can actually PLAY… a history of computer games *drooooool* (it’s open til july 31st). I’ll admit it was much easier going on my own, if i didn’t like it i could keep moving, i didn’t have to share games with anyone and i was preprepared for the back check-in and $10 entry. (sorry i was so grumpy about it the other day Giantess!)

Anyway I played Ms. Pacman and Dig-Dug on Arcade, they had Bubble Bobble, Lemmings and heaps of other games on computer, it was very nostalgic, I wasn’t really interested in anything post 1992. The real kicker was that they had a display of consoles like the one my Dad gave me when i was little – Pacman mini-arcade (he bought it in Hong Kong Airport), he always wonders if it still works, so i got batteries today to prove it does. I love the thing it has such an annoying sound! drove my parents mental. the thing they never got me and i never forgave them for, were Nintendo Game & Watches, which look a lot like colourful DS’s. So i got me a collection via cash converters and eBay a few years back.

L – R: my collection of games – the awesome display at acmi (see my pacman!) – the game & watch people were trying to steal at ACMi

Also bought me some NAOT maryjane shoes (so comfy!) so finally i can walk uncrippled, and a Goorin laptop bag at Fat because as advised by others CMD bags are not strong enough for any weight, so again i buy a boy bag that is super practical and uber sexy… apparently girls can’t have these things….! photos later in daylight maybe….

I’m sorry, i know not everyone is into reading politics on their happy little friends lists, but i read the cover of the newspaper and whilethey understand the plight of the average australian has gotten harder, they still pipe on about “Economic Growth”.

Why do we care if the economy is strong?

No really.

Don’t give me that “if we fall into recession everyone pays” bullshit… i’ve seen the paper today and it told me the average householder is paying half their income onto their mortgage, paying higher fuel, water, electricity and land rates on top of that, and we have an interest rate rise due today thanks to the reserve bank who want to “control our spending” — this is after 11 years of massive economic growth.

Those eleven years have certainly done big business well, keeping their stockholders (read: rich people) in the black, along with those (other rich people) who could afford investment properties who have the rental crisis pushing their income up well above any interest rate rise the Reserve can come up with.

What are the Reserve Bank really after? They can see the average Australian is struggling, they know we have 161% of our expendable income in credit debts, and yet they say more money needs to come out of our pockets and into the banks, because the banks made poor investment choices, and we’re paying for it’s poor choices as well as our own. Never mind that those banks have seen record profits every year of this decade… while we’re sinking further and further under… where does all this money go? Oh i forgot… the top 10% of male workers got a 90% wage increase in the last year alone… while the lowest 30% of male workers got diddly squat… THAT’s where it’s going….

And being that so many of us have no hope of affording a home, no hope of affording rent, we spend what’s left on some dvd’s to keep us from joining mum & dad to watch Miss Marple. And this is the spending they want to cut. “no more dvd’s people, save your pennies for a rainy day!”

fucking it IS a rainy day! show me that my pennies will get me a mortgage and I’ll surely start saving, but currently i have nothing to save toward. Not unless i can find a dodgy money lender that’ll approve a mortgage that NO bank would, in which case I get the joy of losing my home five years down the track when the bottom falls out of all the dodgy lenders, the way it has in the U.S.

And just why IS it that no one is regulating these dodgy lenders when they KNOW the pressure is on home buyers now, and they will be taking more risks in order to get their home. The writing is on the fucking wall people. Do we want a third of our population under the poverty line???

When the economy is weak, big business raise prices to take more from the little guy to compensate, when the economy is strong big business looks for more ways to be economical and finds more things to take from the little guy to keep their profit margins high.

Economics, is about being economical, the reality is that there are no more undiscovered resources to plunder. the number one resource you can find ways to cut back on be economical with is The Workforce. Lower their wages, move the work to cheaper countries, employ them only when business is booming, make them casuals so you don’t have to give them a payout when you fire them, no paid holidays, overtime is worked free to hold onto your jobs…

It’s time they stopped bullshitting us with the idea that economic growth is for the prosperity of the common people. I haven’t seen the common people prosper since the eighties. Back when houses cost $150,000 not $500,000.

It just makes me angry that the lie of Economics is so far spread, so entangled in the way our media, our politicians and of course our businessmen think, and we just sit there nodding our heads saying “i guess we get screwed again” even though we know it’s screwy, everyone knows it’s screwy.

i feel i should mark this day (yesterday) in my blog, it’s pretty uplifting that finally the australian government has apologised for it’s attempted genocide, and has organised bipartisan cooperation to resolve ongoing problems in the aboriginal community.

The Age, noted that 12 months ago this day seemed impossible, mostly due to fear and intimidation. Now a unanimous vote has been passed to make amends as best possible. unanimous – only a hanfdul of MPs decided not to attend.

I didn’t wear it yesterday, but i’ve got my ‘Sorry’ badge on for the rest of the week. I did watch all of PM Rudd’s speech, but i turned off for Brendan Nelson, it’s being pointed out that the fact that he ever agreed to the resolution at all means his party will tear strips off him, so i guess I’ll forgive his inevitable speech of vitriol and passing the buck.

I just think that if people are going to make generalisations and nasty horrible comments about a group of people defined by their culture/race, then dammit, those people should first stand up and say “yeah i’m a racist”… stop trying to justify and deflect from the fact that that is what you are if you try to hold those opinions. You can have your opinions, but put a fucking NAME on them. RACIST.

http://drawn.ca/2007/05/06/the-web-is-using-us/

This article highlights this amazing YouTube video about the difference between ‘text’ ‘hypertext’ and ‘xml’. it’s done in such an empowering and invigorating way that i can watch it over and over again. And continue to get great ideas from it.