Brainiacs
One of the things I really love about where I work has nothing at all to do with my job (like that’s a shock). When I pop outside for a ciggy (shut up) there’s very often a small collection of crows wandering around the raised garden bed. I adore watching them, they’re utterly enchanting.
I like birds anyway. From the tiny little wrens with such skinny legs you wonder how they work to massive eagles and hawks, I just think birds are awesome. I love their social structures and habits – for example, the white winged chough (which against all logic is pronounced “chuff”) lives in large family groups and because bigger families mean more babies, they kidnap the young birds from other family groups in order to grow their own. Nifty huh?
But back to the crows. They live entire life cycles around the building. A couple of months ago it was all babies screaming for more food. Now they seem to be out on their own for the most part. They don’t tend to worry about me, they’ve seen me out there so much I’m part of the landscape to them now I suppose (and I’ve been known to smuggle them some meat when we have left overs from functions). What really gets me about crows is that they are incredibly bright.
I’ve often seen them hiding bits of food for later on. They dig careful holes and make sure that the holes are properly covered with mulch and things. I’ve seen them walk away, check from a distance and come back to make things just so. I’ve seen them dig with sticks, gather more nesting material in their beak without dropping the bundle they’d already collected… lots of smart things these birds do.
Today however, took the cake. We’ve a couple of those big volcanic type rocks outside the staff door – the kind that’s riddled with interesting holes. Moss tends to grow in these holes when enough dust and dirt accumulates in them. Today I stood enthralled watching a big shiny crow as he (or she) very carefully lifted the moss out of the holes, slipped in a little bit of the food he’d found and then place the moss back into the same hole, sometimes patting it down to keep it in place. I figure while I was watching he hid about 7 or 8 little morsels for later, in the most amazingly secret hiding place I’ve ever seen them use. Brilliant.
The Football Culture.
It’s really – REALLY – time to stop glorifying footballers in this country. I appreciate that sport is important to a lot of people, and football particularly so. Kids in the playground at school make and break friendships on the basis of which team they follow, workmates bond over the latest win or loss of their team, and footballers are held up as the highest possible order of humanity. They are treated like gods, and it has to stop.
Apparently, there’s a type of woman who makes it her main aim to sleep with as many footballers as she can. If that’s what this sort of woman wants, then sure, more power to her I hope she’s having safe sex every single time. However, there’s a breeding culture in footballers themselves that seems to state that ALL women want to have sex with them at ALL times.
Yet accusations of rape, violence toward women and other men, taking a shit in hotel hallways, binge drinking and god knows what else don’t make a dent in the worship of these sportsmen. No matter what disgrace they bring to themselves or the team, it’s all forgiven when they kick a goal or take a high mark.
And the rot is clearly setting in for suburban clubs. Three members of the Monty (I call it Monty as it’s a local team to me) Footy team have been charged with the gang rape of a woman at Philip Island earlier this month. There were actually two women involved, but one has dropped charges. Add to this $10,000 damage done to the house the young men were renting, and you basically have some honest to god AFL footballers coming up the ranks.
Depending on which source you believe, these three and the other under 20′s out trashing rental houses over a drunken weekend either had or had not attended “education sessions about the proper treatment of women”. I’m sorry, but if as a sports culture you need to be telling 17 year olds it’s NOT okay to rape women, then clearly something is very very wrong.
Which brings me back to hero worship. I really do understand the importance of sport to society, although I don’t watch much of it myself, but this blanket forgiveness and acceptance of what amounts to dickhead behaviour cannot go on if we want young men and little boys to understand it’s not okay to do these things.
I’m not saying these guys should be staying up all night knitting socks for the homeless (though it might help) and i’m not saying they can’t enjoy a night out. They are, despite what the newspapers might tell you, only human. I can understand speeding tickets etc, these are mistakes people make all the time. Rape, violence and basically acting like a shit is not a “mistake” that normal people get away with. If they can’t act like the role models they are supposed to be, then they should be dropped from any team they are involved with. No press coverage, no draft picks, just back to nobody land working for a wage like a normal person.
Blather Blather Blah Blah
Some Viddler rambling about this years Nano.
Clearing the cobwebs
I think we’ve established I have too much yarn, and I tend to buy yarn without any good reason for doing so. However, last night, as I sat in a puddle of self loathing, I suddenly thought “Right! I’ll make myself something” so I zapped over to Spotlight. I was after a kind of lumpy, stringy, handy dyed yarn which is about $20 a pop, but delicious. I’d put off buying it in the past because of the price, but I adore it. Sadly, due to the impending Christmasness, most of the yarn was off the shelves in favour of tinsel and plastic reindeer. I did pick up some utterly delectable cleckheaton (I love cleckheaton) in three tones of orangy red, so I will make myself a wrap out of those.
Since leaving Second Life, I’ve had an utter explosion in creative juices, and I find it’s something I can do that will really lift my mood. Even just crocheting a line of a scarf or something is a wonderful mental break, especially when in the dumps like I get sometimes. I’m trying to something a little bit creative every single day, and for the most part I’m doing that. Not by any means anything huge – I’m not doing a major oil painting every evening, or finishing an afghan every three days, but just a little something or other to keep the brain active and happy.
I do have oil paints I have yet to try, so I may crack those open this weekend. Can i paint? No. I can barely draw, but who cares. Getting over the idea that we need to be perfect at anything before we do it is a hard one, I’ve had many discussions with people about that. For a long time I shied away from doing anything new because I simply couldn’t bear being terrible at something. I think jumping in to painting, crochet or anything else is a good cure for that.
I also love the all absorbing nature of sewing, or sketching, or writing. Losing all sense of place and time as you work on something that fascinates you is a wonderful thing, and a perfect mental break. What you walk with at the end might not even be anything like what you were aiming for, but it’s yours and it’s new and you poured energy and care into it.
For those reading who are not “creative” I urge you to try something. It doesn’t have to be a big investment, a pencil and a small sketchbook should be under $10. Find something that totally absorbs your mind and soul and do it as often as you can. We live in a stupid, fast paced world full of mass production and angry people and bad drivers and god knows what else. Curl up with yourself and create a small something. It’s good for you.
Crappy suck crappyness
I’m having a bad couple of days, emotionally. Well, emotionally I’m alright I think, but my self esteem which is barely there at the best of times has been utterly erased. Utterly. To the point where I can’t bear the thought of walking out the door tomorrow morning to go to work. I have a class to teach in the morning, so I can’t take the day off, but I’m terrified.
At the same time, I’m incredibly annoyed with myself. I’ve been fat since I was about 11, so it’s now 20 years and surely I should have better coping mechanisms by now. I should be used to seeing skinny models and diet ads without feeling like a waste of skin, but I am not. What triggered this plummet? What else – wedding dresses.
When I shop for clothes, which I honestly do try to avoid as much as I possibly can, the first thing I ever look at is the neckline. Anything lower than a shallow scoop neck – say around t-shirt level – is instantly dismissed as unsuitable. This is because I have, thanks to PCOS, hair on my chest. Yup, I’m fuzzy and it’s probably the thing that depresses me most about my appearance. No matter how gorgeous, flattering or amazing a shirt or dress is, I will not buy it if the neckline is wrong. I simply can’t wear it.
Now, logically I know that the chances of anyone even noticing this chest fuzz are very slim, but we live in a society where billions of dollars are spent on hair removal because women who dare to be a bit beardy are subjected to humiliation on a grand scale. I often wish I was a stronger person and able to just say “Fuck you too!” but I cannot. All I can seem to do is crawl into a cave and hope it all goes away. Which it doesn’t.
So poking around for dresses starts as “Don’t any of these have a high neckline” and moves to “God I wish I could look that good” which leads to “I hate how all these women get to show cleavage” which leads to “I’m hideous and cannot have a wedding and I need to tell Matt we’re eloping so no one has to see this mess”. Not logical, and hard to escape.
I don’t actually know how to make it better though. After almost 20 years of being as covered as possible, avoiding hair dressers, dentists and doctors and giving up on swimming and other fun things, it’s difficult to now say “I don’t care any more, I’m fuzzy, YOU deal with it”. Instead I’m going to start the hair removal cycle over again. Because it’s just not okay to be a hairy woman.
Nano… again.
Third time is the charm? I started Nanoing in 2007, with my first attempt reaching around 35,000 words. Last year I did much less good, hitting about 20,000 words. This year? Who knows. I actually have a story I’m plotting in my noggin as we speak, and have been brewing it for some time. I don’t know how sold I am on the idea of the story, but it’s pretty well developed so far, so I might as well start it and see what happens.
For those who do not know, Nanowrimo is National Novel Writing Month, a month where you throw yourself into writing a terrible novel. The goal? 50,000 words. It’s about 1667 words a day or something like that. It’s held officially in November, which is when the website gets dusted off and wound up again for another spell of what they call Literary Abandon.
To be honest, I really wasn’t planning to do it this year. I had some bad people experiences last year (“I am better than you nyah nyah”) which put me off the community and interaction angle of the whole deal, and forcing another 1600 words out isn’t easy when there’s no support. In fact, I only decided to go ahead about 20 minutes ago. The warming weather, and a glance at the website making me get the bug again.
I’m not a brilliant writer, but I love to do it. Which I suspect is the appeal of Nano. There’s no time to second guess, redraft or otherwise fuss over what you’ve written. Sounds bad? TOO bad! Next chapter please, time is awasting. Decide halfway through everything is crap? Change it, but don’t go back. Those words are precious, and all that word padding you’ve done is going to be wasted if you start over!
So yes, once more unto Nano my friends. Don’t expect blog posts. Or me being in any way nice to you. Just for November, promise.