I don’t believe in god.
Traditionally, religion is considered an untouchable thing. Even these days I often get the feeling that no matter who I discuss god with, they consider themselves to have “won” the discussion by virtue of being a believer. Questioning religion, wondering about the events and stories that created what people follow today – regardless of faith – should not ever be anything people are ashamed of. I would encourage any religious types to answer questions honestly and well, and allow the person you are speaking to the option to keep asking. If you have such strong faith, you should be able to take a little curiosity about it.
I don’t accept that it’s okay for religious views to be imposed on the rest of society. I don’t accept that it’s fine and dandy for church rulings to be included in national law. I reject the notion that it’s perfectly acceptable to hate, and abuse, and destroy other people simply because they don’t attend the same church as you.
I understand the community and fellowship of church going, and for the most part I don’t have a problem with people believing whatever they want. I refuse to let religious ideals about women, behaviour and belief be imposed on me. I have a button that reads “It’s your hell, YOU burn in it” which pretty much sums up the feelings i have there.
I believe it is possible to live a good, moral life without having to subscribe to outdated laws and beliefs. For example, I may be a heathen but I am not and never will be a murderer. I will not commit adultery. I give to charity and volunteer my time for various causes. I am polite to old ladies in the street. I care for animals. It IS possible to live a good life with good morals without having to be told you’re going to hell every five minutes. It’s possible without fear of punishment.
Over the years I have met many deeply religious people. Most of them are very good about their faith and know that trying to get me to go to church is about as fruitful as nailing jelly to a tree. Pointless, tedious and ultimately there are no winners. I don’t avoid religious people, just as I don’t avoid religious second hand stores (bargains people, bargains). I do wish more so called Christian groups were doing work like the Salvation Army who seem to actually make a difference to people’s lives rather than preaching about it.
In short, I don’t believe in god. You can believe all you want, but don’t judge me as less than you for my “lack of faith”. I have faith in nature, in life and in science. This faith is just as strong as anything anyone gets from a book of fables.
Happy Blasphemy Day.
I didn’t die!
I went to the US for a couple weeks is all. I did intend to blog from there, but eh. I am lazy. I’ll blog up a few points of the trip later, right now I just want to share with you what I consider the highlight (International Beatles Rock Band Day notwithstanding).
I’ve known Matt for just about exactly 5 years. We met on the forum of a webcomic I won’t link here because I no longer follow it or support it. The forum there, however, gave me some of the best friends a gal could have. Matt and I flirted semi-seriously for a long time, before it became more serious before eventually, and early this year, we both realised we were into this deeper than just silly flirting.
The trip to Chicago was to meet Matt. Oddly, even though we’ve only been official for a short time, it felt like something I’d been waiting to do for a long time.
Short version (minus the mush, I don’t want to be that girl). Matt has asked me to marry him, I have said yes (he’s asked many times, I’ve accepted many times). So there you go, I’m getting married (at some point).
I love my Hedgehog.
I’ve been a semi-okay photographer since falling in love with the process back in high school. But even before I was developing my own film, I was a snapshot junkie. In primary school, my parents gave me a 110 camera – remember those? The film was in a cartridge that snapped into the back of the camera. The quality wasn’t great, and I was happy to upgrade to a 35mm as soon as I could, eventually getting a vintage Ricoch just before I went to the UK in 98. I love my SLR very much, but these days it’s just a pain in the arse to be taking film in to be developed. I still shoot film from time to time, just not as often.
I’m an overshooter anyway. I enjoy digital because you can take 20 shots to make sure you get THE shot with no hardship in deleting the other 19. My newest higher end digital gives me almost 2000 high quality shots on an 8gig card – so I have plenty of room to shoot to my hearts content.
But! I do miss film. And I miss the low-fi results from a non aligned viewfinder. Ages ago I was hunting around for a digital camera that gave the same results as the toy cameras which are currently popular. There wasn’t anything then, but when my photojojo newsletter came in to announce the Zumi, I ordered it right away.
The proper name for the Zumi camera is the Digital Harinezumi, which apparently means Hedgehog. It differs from standard digital cameras in 3 special ways. First difference, there’s no way to line your shot up perfectly. It has a small plastic flip up viewfinder which will give you a general idea of what you might be aiming at. Focus and framing are in the laps of the gods. The second difference is that the LCD screen only shows basic information while you compose your shot (no picture) and gives you a glimpse of the image once you’ve taken it. I’ve turned that off however, bit worried about chewing through my battery. You CAN review your images, delete them etc from the card. I’ve not done that either.
The third difference is that the camera has built in picture imperfections. Colours saturate, whites blow out, lights flare and film grain covers all. Check out these I took today (they’re on Flickr if you want to embiggen them):
Frankly, I love my little camera. I love that it’s tiny, I love that I can’t possibly know if I’m getting a great shot or a dud till I upload it. I even love that sometimes my finger ends up in frame. The shape resembles the 110 film cartridges of my youth, and the random snappyness reminds me of that old camera. The one thing that slightly worries me is that after taking 75 shots today, I’d dropped a battery charge line. Until I can get a hold of a charger and matching batteries, that’s going to worry me some.
A friend of mine, when shown the link to the camera (before I got it) said “You know you can get the same effects in Picasa?”. it’s sort of true. You can take a photo you’ve snapped with a “better” digital, mess around with it for a while and get sort of the same effect, but for me the fun is NOT knowing what the final shot will be. I love to line up photos, don’t get me wrong, but just aiming in a general direction and pressing the shutter button is very very freeing and delicious good fun.
I’m an adult.
As an adult person of the grown up type, I really think I’m more than able to choose what I do and do not access on the internet. Sadly, the Australian Government disagrees with this, and has decided the very best thing to do for Australia is to create a clean feed of information. What does that mean? It means mandatory filtering, with only one level of opt out. Parents can choose a higher filtering level, which is a good thing. I fully support the filtering of net access for children and teenagers. However, there’s no option to be UNfiltered.
In real terms, it means that a blacklist of websites created and maintained by the Government will be inaccessible to the average user of internet in Australia (I’m not, of course, counting those who can figure out workarounds). The filter will block content that is “Harmful and inappropriate for children”. Again, I’m all for filtering net access for children, but as an adult, I find it hard to swallow that an entire nation must be filtered in order to protect the kids.
The other reason for the filter is, supposedly, to prevent the transfer of child pornography and other illegal things. It’s a bit like when you were at school, and 1 kid in the class mucked up, so the whole class was kept in. A blanket filter over the entire country is basically saying “We need to look after the kids, so the rest of you can suck it.” Sen Stephen Conroy went so far as to suggest that if you were opposed to internet filtering, then you were clearly FOR child pornography.
Leaving out all the other considerations as to why this filter is a bloody terrible idea, what this will effectivly do is push illegal activities underground. Masked IP addresses, using snail mail etc – it’s basically going to make the child pornographers that much harder to trace and catch.
So, tonight I’m going to send a message to Sen Conroy, and I put this out here on the internets in the hopes maybe one or two (or more) people will do the same thing. I’m going to grab a blank CDr. I’m going to label it “Child Pornography”*[see note below] and add a note saying “There’s more than one way to transfer information”. Then I’m going to mail it to him.
If you’d like to do the same, you can send the CDs to:
Senator Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002
While I don’t hold much hope at all that this will make any difference to a misguided plan, at least I’ll feel a bit better about it.
If you’d like to know more about the clean feed plan, please check out No Clean Feed.
*Note: upon thinking about it, I decided to not be QUITE so crass. Instead I will label the CD with “Evil nasty stuff”. Because if Sen Conroy wants to treat us like children, I choose to act like one.
Shoe Love.
I’m not, it has to be said, a girly girl. I don’t wear make up because who can be bothered getting out of bed a half hour earlier to slap paint all over themselves? Not me. I’m too busy fondling my snooze button. So I shop for clothes when it’s a dire situation, and I shop for shoes ONCE a year on average. I find a pair that fits, wear them till bits fall off them and then drag myself to the shoe shop to start the whole process again. I don’t care what’s fashionable, I just want a sturdy pair of boots with low or no heels. Done.
See, the thing about my feet is they are never bloody happy. Shoes that fit right over the toes rub the hell out of my heels, shoes that make my heels happy make my toes UNhappy. Like most people, cranky feet leads to a cranky me, so once I break in a pair of shoes I wear them till they can live no more. It also means I spend a ton of money on expensive shoes. Not because they’re handtooled italian leather made by some hermit in a mountain by the light of half a candle, but because they’re well made and I don’t have to break in a new set for a loooong time.
Which is why I’m so besotted with my Five Fingers shoes. So very in love with them. Yes okay they’re odd looking, but they’re so amazingly comfortable I could almost forgive them for being hot pink (almost).
They weigh hardly anything, they fit literally like a glove. There’s nothing to rub, chafe or bother the foot and I can wear these all day without a single pain in anything.
They’re marketed as like being barefoot, which is quite true. They have thin rubber soles, so if you stand on a rock, you’ll KNOW you’ve stood on a rock, but there’s not as much pain. They also offer no support to your foot whatsoever, which is actually not a bad thing. On pavement it gets a little tiring to the toes, but on grass or dirt the surface you’re walking on will support your foot more perfectly than any shoe can.
And yes, they’re fun to wear. They’re like being barefoot, so your step is lighter, your movements freer and the neglected muscles in your legs and feet will be working as they should. I didn’t believe that bit of marketing until I had mine on for a couple of days. Oh yes, you will work your legs in these things.
I don’t have socks for mine, but will order some when I’m back from the states, because I also very much need a red pair. Once I have my red pair, I won’t need any other shoes.
The Boyfriend asked me “you wear those on purpose?” because he has no taste in footwear. I told him I either bring these to Chicago, or he listens to me bitch about my sore feet for 2 weeks.
As an aside, when I wore these in Darwin I wandered past a group of Aboriginal men. One of them pointed at my feet and shouted “Hey, hey, what are those shoes??” I said “They’re like being barefoot!”. The entire group laughed and the guy said “Why don’t you just BE barefoot?”. I shook my head “I’m too white!” I replied. 