Load of Shot (Please Buy a Different Vowel)

How goddamned hard is it to flush a toilet? Conventional wisdom has it that the girls are generally cleaner than the boys, but I’m calling bullshit. It isn’t even as if our work toilets have a choice: there’s one button to press, not some half-and-half wavy looking thing that is confusing. I hate those. Every second one in a public place seems to have the half- and full-flush reversed. Mostly, big whoop, but if there’s a bit more in the bowl standing there flushing repeatedly like a moron is a tad off-putting. Because of the assumptions of those waiting in line, okay?

And while I’m about it, how hard is it to throw hand towels in the bin? IT ISN’T. IN THE BIN PEOPLE. Is it some kind of leaving-the-scene-of-the-crime kind of thing? Flush it and flee? Or rather, not flush it and flee?

Our loo isn’t helped by the mood lighting over the sinks (because clearly us girls will spend too much time in there touching up our makeup otherwise), which is nice after the glaring fluorescents elsewhere but not much use if you want to check out the pound of gunge in the corner of one eye. The toilet part is well lit, making the mess look even worse. About a year ago we changed over from the hideous scratchy toilet paper to individual tissue things from a dispenser. While they’re much nicer on the bum end, they fall out of the dispenser and litter the floor. At least I hope they fall out. The other is a bit ick to contemplate. Ick. I’m saying nothing about wrappers for certain other things you find in girl’s bathrooms.

If I were doing a review of toilets, ours would get one star. I’m less bothered by those toilet blocks you find in parks, and that’s a scary thought. At least there you know you’re (probably) in for a treat of epic nasal proportions if nothing else. I suppose it’s better than the “worst toilet in Scotland” from Trainspotting, and now I’ve thought about that (both the book and the film versions), I may stop.

It’s better than those holes in the ground on the way to Canberra. The hilarious part about those is they’re part of the Remembrance drive, so each one has a little plaque about the truly spectacular derring-do of a fallen soldier, is (the last time I was near one) beautifully landscaped, and a latrine. Mmmm. NOW I’ll stop.

Since this entry has been fairly disgusting, I may as well go on about the nits. We are slowly clubbing them into submission, with tea-tree oil, eucalyptus oil and conditioner in a convenient spray bottle, brought to you by my unfailing search for something that will bloody work. That silicone crap doesn’t kill nits, or we have a radioactively hardy breed. Ooh, perhaps we do. The reactor isn’t that far away as the crow flies. Probably not mutants though. They'd have more legs and more freakish heads. Bummer.

I doubt it’s operator error with the silicone stuff. If I’ve had it on my head for hours and when I comb out the nits are still alive, it isn’t much use. They’re still alive with the oils and conditioner, but the point is attrition by removal rather than murder. Of course it amounts to the same thing, since they don’t live long off everyone’s heads, but what my eye doesn’t see, my heart isn’t grieving over. Indeed, I’d dance on their little nitty graves with red tap shoes if they had them. Graves, that is, not red tap shoes.

The tea tree oil smell everywhere is a bit of an experience. Imagine a particularly noisome apothecary, with frogs in delightfully heavy-looking glassware and small roots that may possibly be mummified animals (or even people!) and you get the idea. Everything tastes and smells weird. We took a couple of days off the war of attrition, and I think I’m going to be on the hunt for a new perfume, because mine smells too nice. Yes, too nice. Which annoys me. I was first given my perfume by an ex-boyfriend, who hated it. I’ve been wearing it ever since. Mwahahahaha.

Back to the nits, yes, too bad, small lad will be going off to camp shortly for three glorious days of wandering around the snowfields and Canberra. As you do. So no doubt we’re in for another two weeks or so of combing small insects out of each other’s hair.

And the thought has just occurred that we’re stuck with this until high school at least. I may shave my head after all.

Love and peace. Except for nits. They can just DIE.

Outnumbered Plenty to None

I’ve been reading, and also recovering.

I finished off Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, which left me much less emotionally wrung out and miserable than I expected. Rather, I felt relieved. All of these thoughts I’ve had, the narrative I’ve believed about my foster mother, her illness and her dying with an outside perspective.

Sometimes I think I should go or should have gone into therapy over all of this palaver, but I probably wouldn’t believe anyone else anyway. I’m the only one who knows my story.

In between the wonderful lurgy and the lurking smell of tea tree oil on everything (damn all nits - which we seem to be slowly winning the war of attrition on), I haven’t been able to speak properly for days. While I’m a fan of silence (when I’m concentrating), my own silences are not much chop.

I talk to myself all the time when I’m alone. Usually, anyway. It passes the time. But being unable to hold down conversations with the lads (husbandly and small) seems to have silenced me completely. I still think, but it isn’t the same, and I’m not much of an artist: drawing the shorthand for words in my head is beyond my sad sad sad skills. I should practise them, because I used to be reasonable back in the days where it was standard operating procedure to be drawing diagrams of plants and animals. Ahh, biology, I remember ye well.

And today I visited a bookshop. Actually, I wasn’t holding out much hope of anything. We used to have a Borders and few smaller ones around, but now not so much. And I think I’ve whinged about not being able to touch the books I’d like to buy and read the first page at least. It just isn’t the same. I have a Goodreads account, but reading what other people think of a book is a bit crap when what I really want to know is what I think of it.

I took The Hunger Games home with that first page unread. If I’d read that first page in the bookshop, I’d have grabbed Catching Fire and Mockingjay straight away. I’d have regretted it - since the first one is the strongest in the trilogy - but the agony of suspense was, well, annoying.

As a method of picking a book, it doesn’t always work: Perdido Street Station was a purchase due to repeated exposure. Every time I went into a bookshop, there it was and eventually I caved. Which is a little weird, given that now I own a lot of China Mieville’s books. The Scar is my favourite, and set in that complicated universe that includes New Crobuzon, Remaking, avancs and Uther Doul.

Today’s purchases weren’t picked that way, either. I picked up one by Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312, which I have absolutely no idea about yet (ask me tomorrow, or Sunday) because I wanted to take a punt on something. The other was Without Warning by John Birmingham. Follow the link, he’s a ripping read. It’s roughly twelve hours later, and give or take an hour or four being a responsible adult cooking tea and washing dishes (and the interminable nit comb-though) and less responsibly watching James Bond, I’ve read my way through the whole thing, wide-eyed in parts. Many parts.

It surprised me a little, since I’m not a big fan of alternate history stories (clearly, I am high maintenance and difficult), nor military fiction, but wowsers this is good stuff. I’ll bypass the story, because I hate giving spoilers, but the fun of the technical arts of the story and character interactions, and (yay!) pop culture references I will mention. See, I just did. I don’t mean the technical side of the McGuffin (damn, I do have to say it now, the Wave that takes out North America and a few more bits besides), but the way in which it all hangs together, and the depth of characters.

In one way, it’s a comfortable read, especially for one that isn’t simplistic or dumb (I had my hand on a Patricia Cornwall book today as well - I couldn’t do it to myself in the finish), which sounds like a huge back-handed compliment, but isn’t. While thrillers aren’t my scene, the ones I have read often head for the break-the-action-in-the-middle as a way of ratcheting up the tension, when I would prefer that-the-author-simply-finished-the-effing-sentence. The tension In Without Warning uses the cliffhanger a couple of times, but it isn’t gratuitous and is therefore satisfying. In terms of comfort, it may be that I’m familiar with Birmingham’s style, but I don’t think it is that; it feels very Australian to me in its tone, while encompassing all us chickens under the sun. And then, there are the (yay!) pop culture references, which are so natural as to be invisible. Oh the relief. So often it feels like there are neon signs plastered all over the damn things, and we’re supposed to get all excited. Blerk. If you have to shout about it, it wasn’t worth including.

And oh boy, this post will come back and bite me on the arse one day. Ne’er mind. Where I was headed was about the weight of other people’s words when I have none of my own, but clearly I have at least a few, so I’ll keep burbling on.

From the sublime to the less so, we saw Guardians of the Galaxy last night. Now here’s a film with lots of fun and waaaay cool stuff in it. But I have to wonder what is going to happen when the Marvel catalogue runs dry (and again, here I am clearly high maintenance and difficult). Will it all get rebooted? If so, why should I invest in it now? If ephemera are to be made more ephemeral by repetition (and therefore reduction?), will they be valueless?

I dunno. But I’m thinking about it.

Nice and Warm and Toasty

Things I did on Saturday:

• took small lad to the golden arches for crap breakfast
• slept
• rolled over and slept some more
• rolled over again, felt nice and warm and toasty and slept some more
• stretched and got up
• washed dishes
• ordered pizza
• combed nits out of small lad’s hair
• combed nits out of my own hair
• watched Gardening Australia (which we never do)
• ate pizza
• had a shower
• thought about how nice I felt being all nice and warm and toasty and rolling over to go back to sleep (LUXURY!)
• moved bags of blood from one place to another
• a QAP set (take that anti-K)

Things I did on Sunday:

• hugged husbandly
• sat next to small lad in his bed and told him to go back to sleep
• looked at this entry, faffed about with it and closed it with no changes
• took chicken out of the freezer
• slept
• got up to wee
• slept again (not in the toilet)
• ate some leftover pizza
• cooked dinner
• ate dinner
• sat still while husbandly and small lad combed nits out of my hair
• combed nits out of small lad’s hair
• washed dishes
• had a shower
• braided small lad’s hair
• bemoaned my fumble fingers since I can braid my own hair quite well, but his always turns out a mess
• emptied bottles of water into empty containers to make cleaning solution
• thumped an uncalibrated touchscreen (because that really works - the last four weeks of the same uncalibrated touch screen show that, right?)
• put rubber bands on cardboard luggage tags for use with platelets
• moved more bags of blood from one fridge to another
• threw out some platelets that weren’t used
• sat with Coraline playing in the background as I added to this list (I’m saving Corpse Bride and Lego: The Adventures of Clutch Powers for start of day jobs at midnight)

Things I will do on Monday:

• take meat out of the freezer
• remember that we have no carrots
• faceplant into my bed
• sleep
• probably get up to wee
• sleep again
• mumble at small lad when he gets home from school -or- panic that he isn’t home yet and stumble out to the car just as he ambles down the drive
• start to cook dinner, remember we have no carrots and paw through the fridge
• find the pumpkin and wonder if I can make it look like carrots
• cook it all anyway and resist putting on that annoying bright face which small lad just KNOWS means he’ll have to eat something he doesn’t want to
• eat dinner
• wash dishes
• comb nits out of small lad’s hair
• sit still for the combing out of my hair
• have a shower
• sit down to braid small lad’s hair, say bugger it, and do a simple plait instead
• feel guilty as I drive to work for not braiding small lad’s hair
• move bags of blood around
• get irritated that no one bothered to make cleaning solution or refill water bottles for making cleaning solution
• get irritated that no one bothered to check the machine needed anything else either
• get over it
• slather hemp hand cream all over my hands and arms and possibly my legs (the air con, she is verrry drying, yes?)
• try not to touch anything until the hand cream absorbs
• fail miserably and try wiping it off onto my lab gown
• clean the phone, pen, bench top and PC I had to use while hand cream was still at smearing stage
• print out confirmation slips and cut them into smaller pieces to send with blood (I went to uni so I could do this job, it’s a wonder)

Things I will do on Tuesday:

• pretty much the same as Monday, plus carrots, which I’ll remember to buy on the way home
• run very fast as someone tries to lose their blood volume
• curse blood banking and all of its works as I try to fit in an antibody, multiple antibodies and a transfusion reaction with the bleeding patient(s)
• curse this list because I pre-jinxed myself
• be hugely relieved that after this load of shit I go home and don’t do it all again until the following Monday.

Things I will do on Wednesday:

• go to a movie instead of going home and sleeping
• get inspired that I’m out and about, plan a hugely complicated dinner
• mentally slap myself sensible and go for sausages instead
• manage the drive home by grinding my teeth in the car (it feels like nails on chalkboard - not pleasant, but I won’t fall asleep)
• be really annoyed I can’t sing in the car because of illness
• get halfway through putting on a load of washing, run out of steam and sit reading facebook and/or twitter (I’ll regret that tomorrow)
• get a fifteenth wind and clean something
• hate everyone else who uses the something (WHY CAN’T THEY BE TIDIER?)

That’s my week. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Broken Under Molten

When I first started discovering all of the horrible nasties that are out there in disease land - the biggest of which in my younger days was full-blown AIDS - and working in a lab, I always used to worry about catching a nasty and not finding out until it was “too late”.

It dovetailed nicely with my fear of having a brain tumour: I’ve been getting migraines since I was sixteen or so, and what if I blew off migraines thinking they were migraines, but they were a sign of - dum-dum-DAH! - a tumour? (“It’s not a TOOMA!”)

If I were to get sick when I was at school, it would always be on the first day of the school holidays. Once I started working for a living, my previous patterning of getting sick rang true. With a job, if I had a fever, it would spike overnight rather than during the day. Leaving me rung out but vaguely functional to go to work the next day, I’d come home and the fun would start again. To wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat when the fever broke was nice from the now-the-fever-has-broken and not-being-an-ambulatory-wet-rag-in-public perspectives, but a bit concerning when a diagnostic feature of certain diseases is - dum-dum-DAH! - Night Sweats.

The only thing is, this year at least, if I’m going to get so sick there is no getting out of bed (or off the lounge), it will happen the day before I’m due to go back to work. Or the day I’m due to go back. After my five-days-off stretch. Always a good look to an employer. I am kinda waiting to get spoken to, because I don’t always go to a doctor. Well, actually, I hardly ever go to a doctor, but let us pass that one by in silence. Because otherwise I’ll rant about how the blue firetruck I’m supposed to drive myself to a doctor when the room is spinning and operating machinery is ill-advised. Ahem.

The pattern for fever still holds true: if I’m going to get it, it’s night time when it’s the worst. As it was this time. I haven’t been quiet from sheer lack of something to say (although a thousand words every few days is taking some getting used to), I’ve been sick as. We all have.

Small lad copped it last Friday, I had it by Saturday night and husbandly caught up on Monday. Lucky us. Small lad of course bounced back pretty quick (although the allergies are still playing hob), but husbandly is still coughing and blowing, as am I.

The last significant fever I had I spent an entire night dropping off and waking up thinking I’d have to remake the world because parts of it were broken, which was pretty funny in the cold light of day. I could barely count my legs.

The first night this time, I had to move very slowly turning from one side to the other, because otherwise the waves and waves of bedclothes might wash us all away. Susurrations of the manchester threatened to carry me off or bind me to a wall (the linens weren’t exactly clear in their intent). The second night was worse. If I can’t sleep, I read, or watch something, or…something. But I couldn’t read comfortably, because my eyes were jammed into sockets four sizes too small and weepy (well, der), so I sat playing mindless games on my ipad. And the paranoia lurked at the edge of every game I played. I had to fix…something…or do…something. I couldn’t choose the right game to play. I couldn’t read facebook anymore (plus I’d read it…not much happens around three in the morning). So I got up, a monumentally stupid move. I shuffled a two-foot path into the floor for about ten minutes. I was seeing the universe through panes of broken glass that slowly rotated through molten glass dripping off sharp edges. If I touched them, the molten covering would be soft and cool - until of course my fingers were cut off by those blades. I didn’t try. The part of my brain still working told me to lie back down, drink more water, have some drugs, but the fever-ridden lunatic was still holding sway. Yuck.

Of course it passed, but I think I’d rather be trying to fix parts of the world again. A lot more has happened in the world than anything I have to contribute, but all I have is a ringing silence in a multitude of voices.

Real Nitpicking

We have nits in our house or rather, on our heads. My husband has missed out, lucky bugger, and I’m close to shaving my hair off. I’ve tried scratching my scalp off my skull, but the nits don’t seem to care. Small lad is worried that I’m going to cut his hair off, which he’s been growing for over a year now, and I’m tempted only to stop my own population of the ugly suckers.

We’ve tried pesticide, eucalyptus oil, tea tree oil and silicone. We’ve wrapped our heads in plastic wrap. Of all the things I never expected to think when composing a shopping list, it was “we’re running out of Glad because we keep wrapping our heads in it” that won the prize. It was closely followed by, “must buy more dental floss to clean out the nit combs”. Third place went to, “I wonder if I could find a mini-vise to hold the combs in while I floss them”.

Of course if I did cut my hair off it would have to be a hatchet job. Most hairdressers won’t touch nit-stuffed clientele with a 10-foot stick covered in cholera (just on the nudging end). After weeks of intermittent somebody-just-cracked-an-egg-over-my-skull feeling of the tiny turds* with legs crawling around, I'm ready to brave the cholera. It should beat out the raving insanity.

The shopping list for tomorrow includes (aside from plastic wrap and dental floss) more nit-busting (yeah, right) goodies and bacon. If I’m going to have an itchy uncomfortable head, I deserve bacon. Small lad deserves bacon, husbandly deserves bacon; I decree bacon for everybody.

*I don’t think that would be a good name for a biscuit. And now I wonder if it was the working title of those Nerd lolly things, since they do look like tiny turds.

I’m a little bit concerned Victoria (the state, not a random person called Victoria whom I clearly know well and assume you do too) knows something it’s not telling the rest of us. On their number plates they have “Stay Alert Stay Alive” - which means they’re ready for the zombie apocalypse if nothing else. Will you clue us in if you know it’s coming, or will it be “et tu, Victoria”?

I currently have an anxiety about drinking a glass of water by the side of my bed in the middle of the night. (And I think I just won the prize for completely random.) I’ve been reading Agatha Christie, and have decided to eschew any sort of beverage by the bedside: someone might replace my water with acid or put atropine in it. I’m also never eating hundreds and thousands again (they might have arsenic in them), unless someone wants to make me some fairy bread. Fairy bread! It’s four-sucky-something in the morning and suddenly I want fairy bread!

At least if you drop fairy bread on the floor it doesn’t take four tries to get rid of the sticky bits. Imagine fancy cordial, a kitchen floor, and dinner about to go on the table. Quick wipe up, then with sponge, and she’ll be apples. Let’s eat dinner. Bollocks. Next time, I’m taking off and nuking the site from orbit.

It’s now five-sucky-something in the morning and my work is cheerfully spinning. I assume cheerfully since ascribing happy faces to red cells is much nicer than imagining them with teeth. There’s probably a story in that idea somewhere.

I’m reduced to staring blankly out of the window. That blank where your brain is dead, your eyes are heavy, and people can talk to you, but your replies are coming from a damn long way away. Long enough away that by the time you start talking back, the other person has left or is prodding you with a stick. Because they were raised by wolves.

The sun is up now. I conked out for a little while earlier, and for some reason this particular entry has been soothing, because the dream population were singing and/or bopping along to a soundtrack. We are all floating in a choral sea. I’d better shut this down for now and tidy things up. Though most of my work is done…it really wouldn’t do to leave an unclean deck.

Not So Celebrated, Bummer

When I started high school, I had to catch a train and went past a newsagent every day. Never much of a girly-girl, beyond liking shoes and my boobs, I used to buy Smash Hits, before it turned into a girl/boy band extravaganza. Or maybe I outgrew girl/boy bands. I disremember.

I bought it so I could wide-eyed stare in at artists, artistes and not-so-either-one (as it sometimes turns out), but also for the letters page. It was usually silly. I was in the year of Whispering Jack, and the beginning of my loving John Farnham. By then, I even had a tape (a tape! I knooow!) with “Sadie the Cleaning Lady” on it, which I thought was musically and lyrically lame, but John Farnham it was, so therefore awesome. Lovely. I outgrew it, which in some ways is a bummer, because outgrowing the belief in a song, or a collection of them, is a sad day. But finding other songs and other artists with whom your own story intersects is still lovely. I suddenly find that rather than embarrassment at thinking John was da bomb, I’m grateful he was a door. (And I still like Whispering Jack, which I no longer own.)

There was an actress I loved, and I honestly cannot remember her name. For someone who is indirectly responsible for the way I think about famous people, it’s my personal (small) shame that I don’t remember. Then again, maybe landing her with blame would be hideous, so it’s just as well.

Smash Hits reported her as “spending time” with a co-star - probably a male, it was the late 80’s after all. It was the first time that I really understood that the writer meant she was having an affair (one of them was married, possibly both). Whether she was having an affair or not, I have no idea, but eew. Smash Hits was something of a bible, so I believed them enough for it to matter.

And I didn’t like her so much after that. Having an affair is wrong, officially, but in my head, mostly eeeeeewwww. (I was twelve or thirteen at the time.) If she was in something I watched it until this article. After it, I didn’t want to. I couldn’t reconcile her work with this aspect of her personal life. Though I’m pretty sure I didn’t think of it in clear terms: I was in waters I was too young to negotiate. I wasn’t having sex myself; I didn’t even KNOW anyone I’d connect to in that way.

Fast forward about nine or ten years, and I have a friend who is having an affair with a married man. I was just (barely) married myself, which somehow ended up being code for I would disapprove with mutual friends.

I can’t help but find that funny, because the only person(s) I have problems with having an affair is my husband or myself. But I was the first of a group to get married, so maybe it’s understandable.

Anyhoo. Friend’s lurv I think is kind of a douche, but I don’t actually care on the “he’s still married” front: maybe this is true love, maybe they are right for each other. (Not so, as it turns out, but, well, bummer.) But I do think he’s kind of a douche. She can do better.

So, when it’s my friend, I’m willing to weigh up whether an affair is eeeewww, or really a discovery of the love of your life. Okay, store that away, thinking.

Alright. Someone I admire has an affair, I don’t like them: check. Someone I know has an affair, and I already loved them: slightly less check.

I wanted to believe my friend had found a good thing. I didn’t really think so, and after meeting him, wow what a complete effing moron. The one time I remember him clearly, he was appallingly rude. Dork.

Anyhoo. Or possibly, anyho (ba-doom-tish). Those couple of years go by, possibly more, and I work in pathology at night. Like most hospital waiting rooms, our tea room is armed with old women’s magazines, and they’re full of Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan. The articles themselves (or rather the magazines they came in) might have only spanned three months, but I read those things over and over…well, the covers at least. A waiting room (our tea room)=old mags. They sat there for close to twelve months, and a year of reading about two celebs something something snore really does validate the old saw: familiarity breeds contempt. Couldn’t care less.

But those mags did something. It made the link between the actress I’d admired, my friend who had an affair and these two actors I liked separately (I hadn’t seen the movie of them together - and, AND, that first actress was holding sway on what I thought about these two).

So here’s the thing. If I were friends with that actress, all those years ago, and she had told me she was having an affair, or if we were friends enough that I worked it out: I’d have still been friends with her. I wouldn’t have stopped watching her stuff. I’m not friends with anyone famous now, so maybe that last point is moot.

But my point really isn’t about that actress, may I hope she’s gone on to far better things: I don’t know these famous people taking up miles of paper, so until I actually do (because, clearly, that will happen, snort) stories about them don’t matter a damn. I don’t even read that kind of thing, much. I follow various famous people, and I pick up silly trivia. If it’s harmless, who cares? If it’s wrong, I might look a bit of a tit, but essentially, who cares? But the serious things? Dude, unless they’re my friend, I avoid.

Not So Much a Big Whoop

I should have continued on with my last post, because it seems I wasn’t finished. Which I knew, but over 1,000 words and I start thinking “I’d better wrap this up”. Plus it was getting late.

I let my sister know I was posting the last post, because I didn’t want her to come across it by accident. Just in case. We weren’t raised together - she was adopted, and both she and her mother expressed support and love when they read that infamous blort on my escutcheon*. Which I wasn’t really expecting. Colour me bemused (which I think is a kind of teal blue with possible hints of purple-to-red).

* I don’t think it is a blort on anyone’s escutcheon, but given that I usually aim silly, it was an eye-opener. A blort is not quite a blot, in case you’re wondering.

I wrote it because of the articles on Peaches Geldof, true enough, but also a way of clearing my deck. I write best when I’m telling the truth (or as near to it as I can get, since my perceptions are a series of contingencies, with every apparent shade of grey). I feel like my past, the early part, is a neon sign over my head anyway, so what difference does it make if I tell people? Husbandly was a little less sanguine about it, because it’s private. He’s right on that, but he’s also wrong. If it’s out there, it’s out there. I don’t have to worry about it.

I tried for a while not telling anyone I knew. It’s my story and I can do what I like with it. Fair enough, but sometimes there are confusions when trying to explain my sister, foster “family” and how I had two mothers. Maybe I’m not as good at exposition as I think. And I’d worry about what “the truth” meant in someone else’s head.

I worked for someone I wouldn’t have trusted as far as I could throw her (which wouldn’t have been far, the big fat cow), who I was afraid would make this thing into a big deal. Would believe that my beginnings meant that I was untrustworthy, a sneak, a dead loss. Epithets aside, I might have been doing her a disservice, but too late now.

So, I didn’t tell people. But after all this time, it doesn’t feel as if it matters anymore. I have some bad days here and there, and I’m scared green that writing will bring some memories up to the surface. But meh, enough. It was something that loomed so large when I was younger, that it seemed to define me.

I look around the internet and there are lots of stories like mine, lots of people who we interact with as they tell a story like this, but often we never see or hear from them again. So sometimes, yes, that big problem or thing or set of issues can be definitional, and now I am regretting not putting all of this into my last post. Damn. Splinter.

I’m not anything special, or at least no more so than the next person. Sure I have something, but everyone has something. Every single person. So my thing might be big for me and something my opinion of, my feelings about, my handling of may change until the day I die, but it’s…like a birthmark. That itches.

I’m important to the people who are important to me, I’m loved and I love. That’ll do, space cadets, that’ll do.

I read an article about process and purpose. My foster mother made a big deal out of purpose, that you should live to find yours, but I don’t know whether she achieved hers either. But in my case, according to her, it was to not turn out like Mum. At least. Which is harsh, and reductionist. I’m a bit harsh when it comes to my foster mother - now a mother myself, I haven’t done and won’t do some of the things she did to me to make me a functional human being. That she managed that, credit where credit is due, is a tribute to her, but wowsers, negative reinforcement is a pretty crappy way to go.

The funny thing is, I think in terms of what I’m not, rather than what I am. I’m not mean, not horrible, not awful, not dumb. Writing all of this out has made me realise that I think of life as a moment-by-moment balance, where you try to do more of the right things than the wrong. Maybe I undervalue some of the nice things I pull off - at least to people looking on - but…it’s a team thing. I’m me, and there isn’t anyone else like me - but I’m part of a family, a group of friends, a society (if you like), and what I want is for my balance to come out right. Or write. Ba-doom tish. The one thing I do think of as something I have rather than something I’m not is the engine I have in my head. I think it’s for writing. So here I am.

If that’s my purpose, yeah righteo. I think it might be process. I don’t think you find out your purpose until you die, if then. If your work means you do something that fulfils you, then maybe that’s your purpose, but that seems very small to me. I’m not just at work, or at home, or making jokes with random strangers (which I do a lot); I’m all of those things put together. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, because I damn sure can’t see everything about myself, or the results of how I interact with the world. I’m content to wait, and maybe I’ll find out, maybe I won’t.

For anyone who read the last one, and this one, aside from having a few moments of thinking “crap! It IS out there now!”, I hit a fragile peace around two minutes before posting it, and it’s lasted. I’ve been at home for the last two days, so maybe I’ll get wound up (again) going into work, but meh. Enough.

Love and peace, peeps.

Amnesia Tastes Like Chicken

Bet you thought I’d forgotten about you, you thing you. Two nights on, and I’m ready for zombie-hood. This is where I put in a trigger warning, but I’m not sure what exactly I’m warning against. Heroin and children. This one won’t be funny.

It has been a rough week or so on the thinking-and-feeling front, though the attention this post will give it makes it sound a lot worse than it is. I do have a life, after all. Peaches Geldof. Heroin overdose. Small children left behind. Commentary. It’s the commentary that’s caught me.

Beyond feeling vaguely sorry, and hoping it was accidental, I didn’t think about it very much. I did roll my eyes a little, because I could see the gear-up of the media…and blort. It isn’t as if I knew her. So vaguely sorry it is.

My biological mother was a heroin addict. And here I don’t have much else, because I remember very little. I can’t validate the dichotomy of loving her and wanting to escape, of feeling horrible things and never being able to produce an example. I have vague memories - being hit across the face, we had two cats, seeing horses for the first time, landing on a bed after being thrown (it was soft - and it might have been play), pointless sympathy from adults and not understanding it - and a scar on my shoulder. I remember Mum talking about it, saying “She doesn’t remember…we’ll tell her it’s a birthmark.” I looked at it when I was nineteen and I think it’s a cigarette burn. Very by-the-way. Barely visible now anyway.

Amnesia is annoying. It feels as if I belong to a club, but not really. And I didn’t (don’t?) belong to the rest of the world, because all of “this” happened to me. As a kid, I mostly thought that people were shit. That the nice smiling faces people wore were just faces. That kindness was a con. That if I was alone with anyone…but I didn’t know what would happen. It would just be dark and bad and somewhere, probably not out loud, I would be screaming. That makes everything in my head sound like an armed camp. And for a while it was. Years, even. But there were good people who lived their smiling faces, who were good. And I wanted, hoped it would get better. I wanted to be kind. Not like Them.

I was fostered when I was five, by someone who used to babysit me. Actually, I showed up for a babysit and asked if I could stay for good. Apparently that’s a big deal at five, but I have a vague feeling that Mum might have teed me up to do it.

And, you know, I’m so much better off because I can’t remember (please insert ambivalence at appropriate point). Except sometimes I do. The memories are still in there, and I walk softly if I think they’ll surface. So celebrities dying of overdoses, I don’t get all tightened up, but I do avoid finding anything out. When I was younger, I would read these things and viciously loathe the person who died, blaming them for their problems. As I got older, I guess I made peace with it. I was in a better place. Mum wasn’t a terrible person, and without memory to back that up, how would I know?

I know: she was clever and creative and artistic; the feel of her arms around me; she taught me to read the word extraordinary (extra-plus-ordinary, sound it out). But I also know it was always dark; I was afraid; she was afraid. I don’t want to remember but sometimes I do. Maybe what I imagine is in there (which I don’t - I only imagine its dimensions) is far worse than reality.

So I come across this article, and reading it again for this entry, realise I totes missed the author’s background, and I think I just explained how the above came to be written instead of a straightforward sum up and general silliness (always my first choice).

But I have no position. I can’t be unambiguous about drug addiction or addicts. But then I came across this one, and I still can’t bring myself to read it closely. I haven’t read any of the links, and may never do so. This screaming rage is something I really can’t stand (and I may rebut some wussypants thoughts somewhere near the end).

I don’t understand the second article, really. Heroin addiction isn’t going to make you person of the year. Unless you’re completely upfront and don’t give a shit, you’re going to lie to people about your addiction. The second piece points out children of addicts are statistically fucked. I’m using the technical term. And rants about motherhood and celebrity, and so freaking what? You just “proved” that Peaches stuffed up herself and her kids. Nice job in her defence. Remind me to hire you if I want to go down for something I didn’t do.

I could pick a position on what Peaches did and stare luridly in at her toddler, but I think I’ll pass. I’m stuck on, “you so totes screwed up there, girlfriend”, but even that seems rude. I didn’t know her. I could talk about the need for help for the disease of addiction. I could talk about the stupidity of victim-blaming. I could, but I won’t.

Pointless sympathy, on the other hand, drives me right up the wall. Now, I can raise the metaphorical two fingers and ignore you, but when I was a powerless kid, sympathy only made me feel pitiable. I already believed I was the most worthless thing alive. Cut that shit out.

So. Screaming rage. I avoid it. I try. And I wonder if I’m weak for doing that, if I am nothing but a big fat chicken. And then, spiralling, wonder if that it’s that original feeling of worthlessness makes me pause first, and (want to) fuck off when the yelling starts. And then I remember or, more rarely, have those moments of peace, where I’m not angry, not furious, and the answer doesn’t seem to matter that much. But I would like to know if leaving rage behind is an answer (not so much whether I’m a big chicken). There is a lot I would not have survived without it.

If the answer is love I need to find an immediate bucket, because that is just too saccharine for words. It might be, it might not, cynicism aside, but I don’t think love is the answer for me in particular. Love was a door. A way of seeing other possibilities. What I don’t want is to be enraged. Furious. Yelling at the the world*. Forever looking backward and assuming it will happen again. Some other bastard will hurt me, and it will validate every horrible thing I’ve experienced. Reduce me to a little one shivering in the dark. Afraid of bad things happening, I’m fine with. That’s caution and repeating the past can eff off.

* Yelling at the world, or having stern words with it, is surprisingly easy to do with a clenched jaw. You don’t clench your teeth, you just tighten your jaw. I don’t know why I’m offering advice on this - although being icy and controlled can be hilarious if you manage to keep your temper - the headache afterwards can be bad.

The story continues (one of the few times I go back and edit this thing).

At the risk of repeating myself, love and peace, peeps.

Not Even On Hiatus

On Saturday night, we sat down with dinner to awesome tv: The Last Starfighter, Stargate and Dark City. I fell out, as did husbandly and small lad, at Dark City, as it was getting late. I didn’t last two pages into a book.

I thought we had Stargate, at least, on DVD, but it turns out we don’t. (Here’s a shock: our DVD collection is organised alphabetically, it was easy to tell.) But until I checked, there was a frisson of watching a movie on tv that we could watch anytime, but didn’t. As if it was something illicit, a kiss in the dark from an acquaintance. And oddly, as if we were showing it to the Man: we are actually watching, with rapt attention, a show on free-to-air.

Yes, that’s bizarre. Free-to-air is there to be watched, but their behaviour towards their viewers is schizophrenic. They want us to watch, but fail to tell us when something big, something huge, is going to be on. Sherlock springs to mind here - channel 9 didn’t give an air date for months after its release overseas, and never bothered to explain why or why not. When they finally did, it was saturation-bombing advertising, that as a fan, was just infuriating. Did I tune in? Of course I did. And when the next season comes around (please please please please please), I may skip the air dates and simply wait for iTunes.

That disregard for viewers has been building for a while. It seems a rare fish for shows to start at their original air times. Or they’re offset: instead of showing on the hour or the half-hour, it’s three- or seven minutes past. Frustrating if you’re watching a show and a smaller member of the audience has an actual bedtime.

And it’s backfired spectacularly in my case. Castle. I’ve watched Castle since it started, which is a story in and of itself, but with Nathan Fillion on board (and nary a desperate housewife to be seen), never mind the extraneous circumstances.

Fast forward quite a few years (is it season seven this year?) and up until season four, I was as happy as a clam. I used to have it on in the background at work. There are parts of all three seasons I could recite along as I moved bags of blood from one place to another. Then in season 4, channel 7 did something weird with the schedule. They fast-tracked the first half, and left us hanging for the second.

Let me tell you, watching the first half of a season on repeat in anticipation of the second half really kills the buzz. Even one that includes Cuffed, where our heroes end up handcuffed together. With a tiger lurking somewhere. Oh Matron. No second half yet. Okay, I’ll wait. Second half, check, fast tracked fifth season. Eheu.

I try not to make the same mistake with season five, and don’t watch it too many times. But it’s been months, channel 7, and you’re not telling me an air date. Castle is curiously locked down on the internet, or perhaps I don’t look in the right corners, but it’s telling that I looked in the first place. For shows I love, I want to be shown, not told: finding spoilers ruins all the fun. Plus interminable fan arguments about what it all means, dear, are just dull. I also watch Doctor Who, and wowsers, no thanks on the arguments, I’m not one of the writers.

With Castle, it’s a gigantic shame, because I love The Final Frontier (yes, present tense), a wonderful take on all things geeky. All that was missing was Lrrr from Futurama saying wide-eyed “Is Joss Whedon here?”. But so it goes, first half shown, second half, maybe months later. After watching the first half all wide-eyed and ZOMG what happens next? I have to go on with my life without it.

Which I duly do, and second half comes on, I can’t be bothered downloading the shows half the time. Externally to scheduling, I work nights, so tv can be a bit hit-and-miss; I rely on iTunes for downloads. And then my internet fell over and died, so downloading a one-hour show took most of a day. That extra delay distanced me even further, and though I saw the first show of season six, I haven’t bothered anymore.

I may go on with it eventually, but that break has happened, and I don’t think even nifty 3-D printed casts will repair it.

As an aside, channel ten actually pulled out SEASON FINALE for the mid-season break in season two of Elementary. Yes, I really believe that when season one was twenty-three episodes and season two is…thirteen? Puh-lease.

There we are, though, goggle-eyed, watching our fillums last night, and in a quandary. After dinner we all have our showers, wash dishes, et cetera. Sometimes I iron. But we don’t want to now, because awesome movies. Well of course, we fit everything into ad breaks, with one of us calling out when said breaks end. Nice in stereo.

I did have more, and one day I may tell the story of the first episode of Castle, but I want to check my dates first.

Have a lovely, lovely day.

Chips and Gravy

Speaking of hayfever, now small lad has it. At first I thought it was the leftovers from a particularly nasty flu we all copped in June, but the last week has seen him sneezing all the time, and one eye is continuously red and half shut. Yes, I’m a terrible mother: we only go to the doctor if we’re dying. We are going next week though.

Probably he’ll be referred to a specialist, and a scratch test later we might have something more targeted than blanket antihistamines. Fingers crossed. I’m hopeful that he’ll grow out of it, but in my half-knowing things and living with hayfever myself, I don’t think the odds are that great compared to if, say, he’d copped this a few years back. He’s getting older, and this may be something he has forever.

You know that moment where you feel powerless and awful for something that you couldn’t possibly change, couldn’t even know about, but there are consequences for which you’re the cause? When I was pregnant with small lad, I had a glucose intolerance. It’s one step down from gestational diabetes. Aside from looking after my diet and being all pricking of the fingers (so nothing wicked this way would come), I felt as if I’d failed small lad before he’d even appeared. Limited family history aside (one aunt with type II diabetes), there is no way I could have known this would happen. And it wasn’t much of a problem for his nibs. He was a bit bigger than he might have been without all of the extra sugar crossing the placenta, but nothing dangerous. But that feeling of failure persisted.

With this hayfever, I feel the same way again. I thought this was a bullet he might have dodged - the inheritance of allergy is of the process, not the specific allergy - and he’s shown no signs of anything until now. But it’s my fault, I wail (in my head), since it’s my genes he’s showing there. Because of course I’m responsible for them. Snort. I think that kind of thinking is taking responsibility too far, but that’s my kid there, and he’s practically perfect in every way.

And I read that part out to husbandly, small lad heard and:
SL: “Not in every way.”
Me: “Practically perfect, so not completely.”
SL: “Okay then.”

The last couple of days I’ve spent mostly in my own head, so I have nothing to report. I started reading Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, which so far (all of the first chapter) is a beautiful read. I may have to go through this book very slowly, since my own “year” of magical thinking after my mother died lasted three or four. If I include staying in pathology, then I’m not going to admit just how many it has been, because it’s just too depressing for words. And for someone so supposedly smart, I’m dumb.

Except I’m not. Dumb, that is. I had (and still have) a life going, and if it wasn’t everything I wanted it to be, enough of it was to compensate. That will have to do, and thanks part of my brain who likes grabbing shit and smearing it around, you can shut up now.

When I was a kid, we hardly ever used the oven unless it was a baked dinner deal. Roast meat (beef/lamb/chook), roast potato and pumpkin and peas you could drink off the plate because they were boiled to buggery. I mention this because I’m sitting in the lounge with the white noise of the oven in the background, and I reflect that we have oven-cooked things all the time.

I don’t know why my mother and grandmother “saved” baked dinners and other oven things for special occasions. I wonder if my own cooking habits are the result of having power from a grid, and NOT having to stoke a fire and keep it burning for hours, or if it’s that small lad has potato issues and will only eat them certain ways. Or because baked potato is damn easy to do and it gives me time to do funky stuff with the rest of the vegetables. Or because I like chips, and the slightly upmarket diced and covered in fresh herbs seems a better dinner choice than just chips. Clearly, I am the queen of ever-recursive discourse. Or maybe just lists.

Moot point, since I’m not cooking tonight, husbandly is; I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that (until I see the sink later, but into every life some rain must fall). And he’s made gravy. Nom nom nom.

Love and peace.

Impending Doom May Not Be As Impending As It Appears

My knees are cold. I don’t like winter this year. It may have something to do with me dressing for summer when I go to work, but…air-conditioning! Which wasn’t working particularly well at four yesterday morning. There was shivering. Actual, teeth-chattering shivering. This morning as I sallied forth, I wore a jacket. Shocking!

After five nights on and not very good sleep (I think I should start charting these things, because after nearly twenty years of shift work, I’m clearly not very good at managing it), the last two nights were flipping awful. There were some work issues, but meh, I have five days off now. Consider raspberries blown.

Disjointedly, here is the tiniest of tiny round-ups, because I have no central thesis and my laptop is freezing my fingers again.

In the vein of flipping awful, I found myself thinking the worst about, well, everything. Impending doom. It’s when I feel this way that I fear losing husbandly and small lad the most and my wonderful brain can well imagine - and I’m going to stop there before falling down that hole again. Being an old hand at making myself miserable, I ponder pretty things and giggle at nearly everything. Humour is on my mind at the moment, because I found myself having been a smart-arse and (almost? actually?) offending people, but with absolutely no offence meant. We were all terribly polite about it, but I’m going to wonder when I make remarks. That some of it had to do with address (as in who was being so addressed), doesn’t change the hurt feelings.

It’s a problem with my viewpoint. I see a great many things as absurd and worthy of laughing at, but not in a mean-spirited way. The latter leaves me feeling like slime and I’d hardly pour it all over someone else. Mean-spirited humour could not be any more awful. If pulling wings off flies and calling them walks makes you snigger, you’re a twerp. Graduating to twat if you’ve made it past your thirtieth birthday. If it stops being funny when it starts being you…for straightforward slipped-on-a-banana-peel humour, it’s a no-brainer. But in complex situations, recognising an absurdity can be taken as complete, balls-out insensitivity. Ouch. Now I think I’ve dug myself in even deeper, I’ll move on.

And now, a smart-arse.

A feeling of impending doom, unlike mine, can be a sign of an ABO-incompatible blood transfusion. It’s a given in blood banking that receiving an entire unit of incompatible red cells is fatal, so that feeling is entirely accurate. Score one for our brains. I went to look it up this morning, because I’ve heard of patients surviving, and was delighted to discover that death ain’t necessarily so.

This morning I went shopping for husbandly’s birthday (it’s today, eep, I’d almost forgotten). Sitting at traffic lights I felt like a Nigel no-friends, being on my lonesome in my lane, and the one next to me was a line of about a squillion cars turning right. I vaguely wondered if I should panic about whether or not I was going in the right direction. I didn’t panic, even though I wasn’t carrying a towel. Enough sleep? Enough said.

I wandered into a shop that has a policy of searching your bags as you leave. Today to the point of counting how many DVD’s I had in the bag compared to the docket. Yes, yes, I know, theft is a big problem for stores, but really, searching my bag every single time I go there is insulting. Do I bother saying anything? I don’t know yet. But, JB Hi-Fi, I infer your name should be Ho-Fi, given the implicit moral compass of your customers.

Next to food. I’ve been reading about the advantages of a2 milks. While I poo-poo the ideas about a1 being worse for you, I have persistent dermatitis on my hands (fark! it’s under my fingernails now). In my case, it’s because of the soap we use in the lab, although it started from prolonged exposure to histolene, an orange-pith-derived xylene. Histolene was billed as safer than xylene, but so much for that. It’s depressing that eating an orange means a lot of slicing and dicing to get rid of the pith, but I shouldn’t be eating citrus anyway. At least I can have limes.

I can’t effectively remove my exposure to the chlorhexidine* wash we use in the lab. I take the ever-lovely (not really) QV hand wash to work, but the sheer amount of chlorhex smeared all over the place from everyone else’s hands means I’m exposed no matter how I try to manage it. I can use cortisone cream, but it leads to thinning of the skin, and really I just don’t want to. I’ve had periods when I haven’t had dermatitis at all, but I started scratching up my arms two weeks ago after an hour in the lab, and oh gusty sigh. I have a lovely beeswax-and-hemp hand cream that I use (and yes, I now slather it EVERYWHERE), but it isn’t terribly practical. Plus, I’m waiting for the day that someone starts thinking I’m a stoner, because the fragrance is a bit interesting.

Anyway, a2 pundits talk up a2 milks as reducing allergic symptoms. Since I’m also a package with hayfever, it might be worth a try. Every little bit helps. Eheu. In the supermarket I go looking for a2 milk, assuming from the hype there will be something that is 100%, and says so explicitly. Err, no. Dairy Farmers crack me right up, with their pretend hand-writing font declaring their milk “Naturally contains” a2’s, but the brand with the big a2 on the label blurbs about both types - and theirs is “rich in a2”. Wait a minute…I don’t think I drink enough milk. Bugger it.

I get to the checkout and see Men’s Health in the magazine stand. One headline? “FIGHT FAT AND WIN!” Since fat is basically a gelatinous mass, I would certainly assume victory.

* Just why the effing hell we’re using chlorhex, an ANTIBACTERIAL wash, is beyond me. The predominant biohazards from blood samples are viral.

I’ll close with an exchange I found in my phone as I went to keep my notes this morning. People thought I was crying as I walked along after finding it, because I was giggling and trying not to, pausing and bending over laughing so hard, and I’m amazed I wasn’t escorted out of the shopping centre. I’m certainly not showing my best side (indeed may not have one having read this again), but small lad’s responses were brilliant. Apologies to anyone who has seen it before.

We were driving into a Westfield car park, small lad and I, and had to wait at the crossing for the SLOWEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD to cross with her empty pram. And pause. And cross.

Me: Ahh, you f***ing cow, could ya just move instead of standing there like a f***ing lemon?

Woman’s friend comes up behind her and they keep crossing. Slowly.

SL: MUM! Mind your language!

Me: I don’t give a shit, f***ing bitch.

SL: MUUUUUM! That child was looking at you.

I have no idea where this child was. The windows were closed, so I don't think anyone could hear me. Pause.

Me: Sorry {small lad}. Sometimes I’m like a twelve-year-old on a sugar rush.

Pause.

SL: A very RUDE twelve-year old.

Jock McPlop and Sun Tzu

I’m waiting for someone to answer a phone. I have it on speaker, since I’m up to five minutes of brr-brr brr-brr. The ringing beats the dumbo-gumbo service announcements intercut with upbeat (!) music when on hold. I never feel very upbeat listening to that hold music, unless feeling Hulk smash counts. It might.

In the interim, I need to start keeping more thorough notes for this thing. I’ve been pretty much sitting on twitter the last couple of days (or rather, the spare time therein), and could I possibly stop qualifying every damn thing I say?

Ahem. Sitting on twitter, check. Laughing so hard I can’t breathe, check. Wanting to vomit and bawling at the next scroll, check. The feed from Gaza and the current atrocities is being documented with photos of dead children. I’ll pass by on the effectiveness of shock in transmitting a message, because really, I’m not shocked by this, I’m hurt by it - and I can’t do much but protest. And cry. Well, whoop-de-doo. Not to denigrate my own feelings, but it isn’t very useful. And worse, I’ve seem some snide commentary on people switching off on photos of dead children from Gaza, but not from continued no-news about asylum seekers. Yes good, let’s all feel smug and superior about our humanist cred. Or, let’s not and say we did. Or just not.

Given civilian bombings, planes full of people being shot down and the supposed end of the world the Abbott government is trying to save us from (yeah, I’m not seeing it either), perhaps the current thing on facebook isn’t such an odd duck. The idea is that you post three positive things per day and nominate three of your friends to do the same. I’ll confess I’m not nominating any friends, because I don’t share my toys. Strangely or not, my facebook and twitter worlds rarely collide, so one of yesterday’s positives was a great way to share some of the fun of twitter, to wit: #RemoveALetterRuinABand.

My personal favourites:

• Crowded Hose
• Dire Traits
• Taking Heads

Since I have strange associative thinking, somehow the last one lead me to thinking about a link I saw from an anti-vaccination something-or-other. I didn’t read past the first few lines because I was tired and then angry (I know, I was shocked too - I so rarely get angry, right? Right? RIGHT?). Possibly I fancied taking a few heads, which is pretty boring linkage, but so it goes.

The last few go-rounds from anti-vax palaver have included statements around how “Big Pharma” want us to vaccinate our kids because they make money out of it.

It’s an odd argument to make in Australia, where the majority of children’s diseases are on the immunisation schedule and therefore covered by Medicare. The ones that aren’t covered, as chickenpox wasn’t when small lad was getting his shots, can be paid for by anyone wanting the vaccine.

You could, if you really felt like it, start arguing that Medicare is paid for by us, and thus zee BP’s are still making a quid, but seriously? Or #srsly? Big drug companies are essentially businesses - built around the idea of providing a product and getting paid money for it. They may also be the source of all evil multi-layered conspiracies against the rest of us schlubs (if that role hasn’t been taken by Google), but I digress.

Some of the arguments against the BP’s have the sense that several tens of exclamation marks were removed in the final edit - for tone, there’s nothing like shrill hysteria to make me listen, no ma’am - and boy does it make me tired. Some of that shrillness is probably derived from the stridency of the anti-vax arguments themselves, which I’m going to avoid for the moment beyond a something-to-declare statement at the end of this post.

That BP’s have little or no regard for their customers is nothing new - and here I link a transcript from an episode of 4 Corners from 2004 - A Bitter Pill. Worth the read.

But the mercenary nature of capitalism and the possible profiteering by pharmaceutical companies is an odd argument for refusing vaccination for either yourself or your children, particularly where the vaccines are free.

If your choice is to forgo vaccination, then whether the vaccine costs anyone money is completely moot. Your answer is no, so you won’t be handing over the loot. If your next argument is you shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s anything via Medicare, then let me introduce you to society and wow that’s the kind of mercenary thinking that Big Pharma does, isn’t it? Sun Tzu might have said, “To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy”, but whose aim in life is it to be a turd?

I can get behind the idea that the behaviour of Big Pharma and their attitudes towards research and development need adjustment. Most forward R&D (such as an HIV vaccine) is not done by companies, but by independent research funded by taxpayers, which is simply insane. They’re making a product for sale, ergo they are responsible for costs in R&D, or at least the lion’s share. Independent testing and research is crucial, but shouldn’t be driving directions for companies whose livelihood is in providing medicine.

And here is where I have the real problem with anti-vaccination arguments using Big Pharma. In arguing either for or against vaccination, the connection is counter-intuitive: “I’m not vaccinating my children because you’re just making money off it!”.

Err, they’re supposed to make money off of it. I’d rather pay a drug company to make drugs than than Wee Jock Poo-Pong McPlop from Aberdeen, whose qualifications consist of being an offscreen toilet cleaner in an episode of Blackadder Goes Forth.

As a secondary argument (possibly quaternary), it must be nice to not have to repeat yourself with your reasons for refusing to vaccinate. But it’s weak, and it undermines the other stuff.

Something to Declare? Thank you, I will. I studied immunology and microbiology at uni, work in health, and get the point of epidemiology. We’re vaccinated in our house, and I fundamentally disagree with you not vaccinating your children: the risk is not only to you, but to other people you may infect. That risk rarely seems to come up as anything in anti-vax literature. But, if you wish to object, even conscientiously, I’m not going to stand in your way. That’s freedom, baby.

One last thing. Small lad dropped a cup in the kitchen and it rolled away. He watched it and declaimed, “Fly! Fly!”. When I answered, “Thou may’st revenge!” he asked what I was on about. I really need to catch him up on Bill.

Love and peace, peeps.

Whingeing and Ranting

I’ve made a kind of promise to myself to do something, anything, that isn’t work, house things or TV (although I usually combine the last two), and at the moment it’s this thing, for want of a better name. Given my terribly dilettante approach to regularity, I don’t want to say “my blog” because I think I’d have to duck my head and gulp at the same time. Which I did, even if you couldn’t see it.

I don’t offer any guarantees that I have anything interesting to say - to all three people who read this (which is, quite frankly, a relief) - but I refuse to only go to work and come home and go to work, occasional dinners out notwithstanding, and feel guilty about how much luckier I am compared to large swathes of others. I refuse, dammit.

I’m having trouble writing (or doing anything) for long periods of time. Used to the brevity of twitter and facebook, that usually isn’t a problem, but I have other things I want to do, and the lack of attention span is a complete pain in the backside.

It’s mostly attributable to my job, where if the phone rings, I have to answer it, and generally stop whatever I’m doing to take up a new thing, and then return to whatever I was doing in the first place. Or go back to the first thing, do the second thing - I don’t always get to decide, because it isn’t up to me whose patient goes first, it’s up to who’s bleeding right now.

As an aside whinge, I can pretty much be guaranteed that if I’m doing something long and complicated and time-sensitive, the phone will ring. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. And if I’ve had to get up more than once, the phone will ring just as I should be reading the end result. For anyone in the know, I’m talking about auto-adsorptions, elutions, antibody things that aren’t in cards and multiple phenotypes - where one patient needs all the things to check all their things. (Why can’t all phenotyping methods be the same? Why dammit, why?)

With most of the things I have to do, it hardly matters whether I have to stop and start a bit, because a lot of the tasks I do are quick, so big whoop, I do it my way. But that intrusion of the phone is like a claw under my scalp, trying to scratch its way out every time.

And whinging aside (see what I did there?), it has taken a toll on my attention span. So here I am, doing this thing to redress the balance.

Having stared at the cursor a bit, I’ve gone on to check twitter and facebook, and holy crap, a passenger plane brought down by a missile? What the shit? To go all sweeping generalisation on everyone’s arse, the people in charge are really screwing this up. How are we still having armed conflicts? Again, why, dammit, why?

What makes me even angrier, and I know I’m going to sound like a lone hippy yelling “hey, man” against the dark, is how this will be turned into a run around complete with sabre-rattling and blame. Continued demonisation of one group of people over another. There’ll be arguments in tea rooms. Please. As if anyone in our happy group of campers (all employed, have roofs over their heads and food on the table) can possibly understand what it’s like to be either a) so desperate that violence is the only light at the end of the tunnel, or b) have violence as the only escape because culturally, that’s all you have had. I don’t think I do, and I try for an open mind.

Violence in large chunks is simple arse-hattery, and understanding why someone acts like a shit doesn’t excuse them, but demonising only perpetuates the shit. And I think around here I’m also ranting about a really crappy graphic I saw on twitter last night about how “Muslims” are trained to be terrorists. To flip that on its head, the largest powers on this earth are primarily judeo-christian democracies: and bombing the crap out of a third-world country isn’t going to win you any trips to heaven, despite the idea that might is right, or rather, God is on OUR side, not theirs. Bollocks.

We’re better than this. We’re smarter than this. The assumption that people doing bad things are a them is a comforting one, but also stupid. Just stupid. We’re all us, kids. All people.

Right, well I haven’t been clear, but I’m going now. Love and peace, peeps.

Right Before the Murderer Gets Caught

It’s so cold my laptop is freezing my fingers off, and what I really feel like doing is making a potato salad. I’m the only one at home and potato salad is an iffy dinner choice for small lad, even if paired with sausages. And sauce. And dinner is eight hours away. Harumph.

I’m a hospital scientist, and this is my day off.

I’m annoyed by everything at the moment, but mostly because I didn’t sleep enough on my day of sleep in between, went to work Tuesday and didn’t do my best. I spent yesterday evening second-guessing what I’d done the morning before and please, brain, just lay off. I didn’t fuck up, I was just slow.

Other than poo-pooing myself, this kind of annoyance has no particular focus, I can pick up anywhere and start ranting. For hours. I don’t want to inflict that on anyone or deal with the consequences of shouting at random people, so I shut up. Which also annoys me, and gee I love this spiralling gyre leading inevitably down to mind-numbing, eye-squinting, teeth-clenching rage if I don’t get out of my own head. Soon everything will be in caps.

Cooking would make me feel better, but small lad and I have entered some kind of power struggle over food…and it stinks. I know better, and it hasn’t been an issue (much) before - a dietician friend had clued me in before small lad came along about how to feed a littl’un. We’ve always been fairly relaxed about food, and careful about what’s on offer. Some junk, of course, but beyond the Coco Pops and occasional crap (fast food, in other words), it’s meat and three veg or variations thereupon (by which I probably mean fruit, but don’t take my word for anything today).

But small lad’s tastes are changing and I’m struggling to keep up. Dammit. Some of it, too, is my fault. He has a habit of asking what he can have to eat in the afternoons after school, and I tried out letting him decide what to eat - with the proviso that he’d have to eat dinner. It didn’t work, and dinner time started being a struggle. Gah.

Today I have half-arsed plans about something that isn’t sitting around (boom-boom) “resting” where I usually fall asleep right before the murderer gets caught, but I’ve only gotten as far as what I don’t want to do. This two-on-two-off bit of my roster is the pits. I should probably start drinking coffee again.

My laptop has warmed up and my fingers are no longer freezing, so that’s something, and when I’m finished here I’m going to make a cup of tea. Mmmmmm, tea.

Mmmmm. I need that tea. Take care, and laters.

Olive Snipe and Film

I’m working my way through Alias, which for some reason I haven’t seen all of. That sentence sounded okay in my head. I really have other things to do (and I’m not watching it when small lad is around since I’m not sure about its suitability for kids), but meh, I used to watch it on and off, may as well get through it.

Eventually I’ll get through all of Game of Thrones and Walking Dead, too. I’m slow. Actually I’m more than a little paranoid about what’s playing when the lad is home. It seems stupid, but I don’t like watching things in “my” study, since a) it’s too cold in there and b) I’m away from the action.

Since the action lately has been Mr T’s Something-Or-Other-Involving-Fools (There’s A Shock), I should probably rethink that. Since it gave me the chance to paraphrase Stephen King last week (“Yes, but if it stops being funny when it starts being you, it’s not really funny”), I’m not complaining much.

I usually line things up to watch while I’m ironing (MY GOD DOMESTIC SIDENOTES IN THIS BLOG NOTWITHSTANDING WHEN DID I BECOME A HOUSEWIFE?), but I haven’t been doing any ironing. Now that we’re running out of laundry baskets and I’m sick of the sock hunts (like snipe hunts, if they came in pairs and were found under beds and in dusty corners*), ironing it is.

* “Baron, sometimes you are so wet, one could shoot snipe off of you.” The Robin Hood movie with Patrick Bergen and Uma Thurman. It came out in the same year as the Kevin Costner one. Its editing was rushed for its release date and the dye colours in the taxing the textiles scene are impossible, but you can’t have everything.

Speaking of films, and with a crappy segue I am, so please come along, we’ve worked our way back through the Matrix trilogy and the Pirates of the Caribbean lot (which always makes me sad, then angry, then cross, then angry, then angry some more). In there was also the Lego Movie, which I liked more the second time around. Because I’m high maintenance and difficult, I’ll admit it still isn’t my favourite - that twee saccharine I’ll stop now because I hate giving spoilers. But…ERK!

I was going to rant about Pirates, had half a paragraph or two (then remembered I’d ranted on facebook), because it’s harsh and quite horrible - Ellison’s hell in “Hitler Painted Roses” is a luxury compared to some of the Pirates mythology - but I think I’ve done enough ranting about it, and it’s not what I wanted to talk about anyway.

Olives.

Olives are what I wanted to talk about, since I love them and got some in a restaurant recently that lived up to the hype that is a good olive. I love olives. Green ones, black ones, ones with pimentos – I’ll even have a bash at feta-stuffed giant green ones, although I draw the line at involving anchovies.

When I saw the olives in Matrix Revolutions, I was drooling, and certainly not over the Merovingian. Creep. Those gorgeous dark-green globes on a twisty-metal cocktail stick. The feel of the cool fire of a martini (especially vodka, nom nom nom) balanced by the warm comfort of a great olive, oh yummy. My mouth is watering now.

I want those olives. I want to make a pitcher of martinis (like in MASH, because functional alcoholism is hilarious*), and pour out into frosted, probably specially purchased cocktail glasses, and plonk those olives right in. Then pick them out again, as I drink.

I fire up Google, thinking I can probably find out what variety of olives they were. Ha!

What I found instead was a crowing about a continuity error in the scene – the Merovingian has one olive on the stick, then two. I also found multiple (very interesting, but beside my point) explorations of the meanings in the Matrix trilogy. Yes, but, dammit, I’m looking for food not philosophy. Ba-doom-tish.

(And, parenthetically speaking, I think that error is more clumsy-ish handling than bloomer. There are two olives in the bottom of the glass as Seraph, Morpheus and Trinity approach. Then Merv gestures with the cocktail stick with one olive on it, right at the end of the stick. It seems pretty logical that – although we don’t see the Merovingian’s hands – he picks up the second as he talks.)

(Continuing with the sidebar, because I seem to care about this: the point of this scene establishes the Merovingian as a hedonist. He continues a business discussion while rooting around for an olive to eat, in an ever-so-sophisticated martini – it’s not that hard to work out. If you haven’t seen the movie (if you don’t like olives, you don’t care, and may be a heathen), watch this scene closely. As he talks to them, he doesn’t just eat that first olive whole, he tears off half, leaving the remaining flesh on the stick. And we see it, oh yes, sitting there, teeth-marked, the flesh begging to be finished. And it might matter too, if in the world of the story, someone had to conduct a long negotiation with him. Poison an olive, whoopee, problems solved. Instead Trinity is about to point a gun at his head and thus ends negotiation. Oh well. End of sidebar.)

I still don’t know what variety of olive they used. I’ll just have to be surprised the next time I find an olive that lives up to the hyperbole. Most of which I’ve created for this post, and more power to me.

* Don’t know where that snark came from, but it’s staying there now.

I’m now very sleepy in the eyeballs, and this turned out much longer than I expected (and I should be asleep - I'm posting this later but it's the afternoon as I type).

May all of your olives be hyperbolic and your sock hunts go better than mine.

Black Plastic Baby Head.

It’s the last day of school holidays today and we are sitting around in our pyjamas. Which is par for the course unless we have somewhere to go, but don’t tell anyone, I think I’m ashamed I’ve passed this on to my kid. Sometime today we’ll have to do useful things, like getting organised for school tomorrow, which is far less work than it sounds, even if it does sound terribly important.

I spent yesterday pleasantly squiffed on gin and white wine (sequentially, not simultaneously) and have a far better head today than I expected. Waking up at four a.m. this morning (as I usually do) with one ear spinning was gross, but reading blogs and resolutely ignoring it did the trick. Some more sleep helped too.

At one stage I fell asleep while propped up reading - one advantage of working in the MOST UNCOMFORTABLE LAB IN THE WORLD is I can sleep in almost any position, although I seem to drool more these days.

The dream about the extraordinarily loud hand-held slide projector that sprouted a black plastic baby head cut that nap short, and a good thing too. The grinding noise was so loud I was afraid it would wake the house, but of course it didn’t because it was all a dream.

This is a very disjointed entry.

I was going to go on at length about marriage and motherhood not being definitions but rather priorities, but honestly, I can’t be bothered. I really did have it all planned out, but I’d rather just be silly. Or something.

Whatever.

I think I’m done for today. Maybe some more later. Tomorrow, unless of course I get a self-venting spleen tonight. See yerz.

I don't mind Sundays

It's Sunday, and if I were on a submarine at the bottom of the ocean cataloguing the world's great art treasures, I could burst into song and spend the rest of the day loathing my existence. Since I'm not, and I've been awake since one a.m., I'll natter away on the page until it's time to get up. It's currently 6 a.m. in the neighbourhood, but daylight saving ended this morning, so I've been lying around for six hours, not five.

I wrote a post a couple of years ago* about some of the dramas with hell woman. I feel a bit slow, but so it goes. It finally occurred to me the hell woman was (and presumably still is) a psychopath. Okay then. Glad I've settled that (and any lingering doubts about whether I might be one - yes, I did actually give that a whirl when hell woman was at her height of telling me and everyone else (who passed it along to me) exactly what kind of person I was). I feel slightly giggly - the kind of giggly where you realise something nice about yourself that is quite obvious (and small, really, in the scheme of things) once you see it.

*yes, yes! I have mentioned ex-workplace a lot. Probably still will.

After crowing about how terribly-gosh-darned organised I am with uni, I'm not. I have a fair amount of catching up to do. Today will be even more reading! To be followed by reading! As a break, I get to watch a film! And pull it apart into small pieces! Then write all of those small pieces down! After that, I may write a speech! Okay, not all of that is going to happen in one day - particularly not if I'm making a frittata for dinner (which won't take that long, but there must be some relaxation).

I've actually had a social life this week/weekend. Normally I don't get around much. My world is slightly small. Small lad and I saw The Lego Movie on Thursday. It was okay, but suffered by comparison to Clutch Powers (a different, much sillier lego adventure). That's an awful comparison, I guess, but I wasn't as enthused as I'd hoped. It wasn't as much unalloyed fun - which may have to do with the nature of the protagonist (ooh, look at that long word) and the cringing awkwardness of some of the situations he finds himself in.

That said, I'm in my groove now, and I have to say I LOATHED the switch to the somewhat mawkish live action towards the end. To be followed by the mawkish-clearly-we're-making-a-point-about-how-special-everyone-is-and-you-should-never-lose-your-childish-innocence-and-imagination. The Incredibles managed the special part better, and the rest felt like a tacked-on attempt to avoid being a boilerplate animated feature. Maybe so, but it didn't work for me, although small lad had no complaints.

I suppose I'm showing my own bias here, because a lot of comedy now seems to be contingent upon excruciating awareness of social situations not shared by a comedic character. Where the humour involves the stupidity of a central character, who persists in believing in their own ... rightness. The smart set remain just as right themselves. Which is all standard comedy fare, but the revelation of astute observation by the "dumb" character is often absent. On the most basic level, it's poking fun at the eejit, which is, regardless of how you dress it, mean in a three piece suit. There is no reaffirmation of the norm on laughing, or a "win" by an underdog, so that's unsettling. Like I said, my own bias, but I can't help but contrast Prince George in Blackadder the Third - clearly a twit, but completely loveable. Even the upper class twits of Monty Python were buffoons rather than identifiable people.

Anyhoo, on Thursday I went to Newtown for lunch with a friend and we blathered over our marvellous tasting plate sharing things. Dessert undid us both: you could feed a family of four on one of them, and we ordered one each. But I can recommend the sticky black rice pudding with toasted coconut flakes and some kind of stewed peaches (I want to say a curry motif on the peaches, but don't think that was quite it), also the saffron and cardamom creme brûlée with spicy caramel popcorn and fig jam. My mouth is watering.

Yesterday involved a Minecraft day with a bunch of other kids, Minecraft being one of small lad's current enthusiasms. It felt a little bizarre walking into the Room of Many PC's. I had a vision of both of us doing this over many years as small lad got taller and taller. He had an absolute ball, although the pocket watch from Paddy's market before we went home overshadowed the day a little. He had asked for one for Christmas, but I hadn't found any...and this way he picked one he really liked. When I looked at it properly, he picked something so very him. Yay for him to find something.

I wandered around the Powerhouse Museum while he was building a Rocket Mansion and then watched Shadow of a Doubt on my iPad. The plan was to read more things, but the mood lighting in the museum wasn't really conducive. Its a good film, but I had to wonder at one point: the villain grabs the heroine by the face in one hand, leaning in threateningly as he talks to her. Her soon-to-be-boyfriend (well he is by the end) just stands there while this is going on. Villainous uncle looks like he's trying to lift his niece off the ground by her jaw, and loverboy doesn't say so much as a "DUUUDE!"?

Don't get me wrong, the threat works in drawing out the tension, but it's a jarring behaviour fail - loverboy doesn't so much as twitch. Unless of course I missed it. I moved on to Rear Window after that, but it was my afternoon sleepy time from halfway through Shadow. So, class all the way, I fell asleep huddled on a lounge in the middle of the Powerhouse Museum. Not once, but several times. All in all, I spent about four hours next to the King's cinema exhibit, and at one stage I conked for about three-quarters of an hour. At the end of that catnap, one leg was asleep, and three staff members walked past in about five minutes, with a smile for me as they did...yep, class all the way. I only hope I didn't fart while I was out - because you just know that would be when someone was walking by.

So it's now 7:20, and I'm going to have breakfast. Probably not frittata, but there may be bacon. And muffins. Take care.

Tipping End Over End

In much better spirits since my last post: there's nothing like writing a zombie story in which a stand-in antagonist gets their face ripped off. Husbandly's response was "go zombies", so that should tell you all you need to know about that particular nemesis. Actually writing it was a bit ick, because killing anyone off is fairly disgusting, yet at the same time, I finally had a flow going. I wasn't too concerned about anything other than the word count (it was a uni assignment), and the thing I'm taking a break from sketching out today doesn't currently have one. Yay. Mostly it was just fun. With more than one character to be all anxious about.

Today I should be, guess what, asleep, but why bother? I'll have a bit of a kip this afternoon, that will do. I don't have anything to do for uni until next Monday, then I'm back into two subjects all over again. I don't really want to do two subjects at once - it's draining - but I also don't want to be doing this degree until I'm ready for retirement. No thanks.

And here I have nothing much else to say. I finished reading the Earthsea Quartet, by Ursula Le Guin with much more alacrity than I expected. A Wizard of Earthsea, while good, didn't leave me enthused. Serves me right, that snap judgement, because I loved the other three. I've also gone mad online book shopping, so I have a whole pile of books wending their way to me soon. Including The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. We had a chapter as a reading for a lecture on memes, and I was pleasantly surprised at Dawkins' style. Unlike reading one of my textbooks, which I won't name here, but wow, was it dry. When I put my review up on goodreads, I got a slightly unpleasant surprise reading other people's reviews. Another reviewer considered the text as facile as it included mention of memes, a subject "not of sufficient academic rigour". Eheu.

I find that bizarre. If you're talking about internet memes, which are basically jokes and/or observations, I'd agree, but memes encompass cultural units: how to eat, how to cook, what to cook*, clothing, and much more besides. Maybe I'm being a bit too egalitarian (I certainly am about what constitutes "literature"), but I don't see the point in being particularly snobbish about (relatively) new ideas.

*I guarantee, if you're the cook in your household, there will be some things you do because you learnt to do it that way, and clearly I'm eating my lunch as I type this. The best story I ever heard was about three generations of women who would cut one corner off their legs of lamb before roasting. Going back to Grandma it was discovered that she did it because her roasting pan was a bit small. Her daughter and grand-daughter did because that's what she did.

Anyway, I want to get back to my planning, and my lunch, so this is me, signing orf.

Have a lovely day. May all of your antagonists have their faces metaphorically ripped off.

Varying Tensile Strengths

So I’m excited because I’m finally using Pages on my Mac, and the OS X Mavericks install went off a treat with no ex- or implosions of a computerly nature. Sherlock is finally showing in Australia, after much coyness about the air date by our “friends” at Channel 9*. The Day of the Doctor was really damn good, even if The Time of was less so**. I’m nearly six subjects down on the degree, and I’m about to start the seventh and eighth. Husbandly and small lad are both proceeding swimmingly, happy as clams.

*You wouldn’t think it would be hard to publish an air date, but given that the show has started at least ten minutes past the official airtime both times so far, I don’t know why I was annoyed. Oh, wait...

**I didn’t want Matt Smith to go out in a hail of bullets (or at all), but it was still a bit of a mumbler…

And for the most part, I have nothing to feel particularly, personally, glum about.

But mostly, I'm down. Our very interesting governmental effluvia since September. I’m starting to hate my facebook feed. Twitter not so much, I seem to have a more of a balance there. To sum up for anyone who comes across this blog by accident:

• Asylum seekers are being towed back to Indonesia (their usual starting point) by our Navy and being “processed offshore”. The logic behind this actually escapes me (and I am trying to be brief); instead of embracing anyone worse off than ourselves, we are, as a country, promoting awful treatment of the already-disadvantaged because they came here by boat. The official rhetoric is that it's an attempt to prevent deaths at sea because they come in shonky boats (but we seem to be ignoring anyone who comes by plane). Despite violating our agreement with the UN, our government - and since we elected them, the Australian people - don't seem to have a problem with this.
• Our “new” government have decided that the Barrier Reef and World Heritage forests in Tasmania are no longer worthy of protection, because after all, there’s coal and timber in them thar hills, respectively. (There isn’t actually coal in the Barrier Reef, there will just be dumping of waste there.)
• We can’t have a carbon tax, because it disadvantages our … economy. The planet doesn’t matter.

There is so much more, but I’m running out of steam, and there just isn’t enough wine in the world.

To top it all off, I stupidly engaged with someone about how the disadvantaged are, well disadvantaged. Apparently it’s because they’re fat, get drunk and use drugs. And this from an Arts student, which just goes to show that education isn’t worth shit if you don’t bother to learn anything from it. Or put another way, empathy is clearly for the overly-emotional masses.

Unfortunately I was one of the overly-emotional this morning. I refused to continue the argument, because I was getting upset and could hear my voice register about to rise several octaves. Plus I hate engaging with idiots. All that happens is an argument, and nobody’s mind is changed. Well, the other participant is usually a nobody - and not because they disagree with me: the sheer lack of empathy in the above opinion should tell you all you need to know - rich tapestry, everyone should have their opinion, but…unkindness should never rule social decisions. Practicality, sure; lack of understanding, no.

I could talk about it, but the accumulating months are piling up and really, the thought of three years of this hat-full of arseholes is enough to drain anyone.

What concerns me more than anything (with my way-more-involved-grasp), is that if a new election started today, this Government would get in again. Never mind the backflips on educational funding (guess…a repeal of Gonski, not a repeal of Gonski, commitments to funding that only half-addresses the promised funding: so the poor get poorer (with little education), and the rich get subsidised…nice), or the sheer lies about “no cuts” that are somehow now cuts.

I had a friend post that once KRudd ousted Julia Gillard “we” had a chance of winning the election. I didn’t disabuse them, but all I could think was the government would lose for sure now. Deposing Julia Gillard ensured that the Labour party was not to be trusted. And since Bill Shorten is a relative unknown, Labour is in a pretty crap position. I liked Julia, and not because she was a woman in politics, or our first female PM*. I liked her because she was a great politician: managing a hung parliament, actually getting legislation through. I didn’t always agree with her, but if I’m agreeing completely with a politician, I probably need my head read.

*Apologies for the sidebar, but given the Arts degree, I was reading about how women are under-represented in early science fiction and graphic novels (I got Sandman for Christmas...I just took the girls as read. Apparently that's...err...wrong). And looking back on what I've read in early sf, yeah, you bet: girls are pretty much overly sexual man-hunters, or completely absent as actual characters. But as I read those stories, I'd transpose myself into the main character regardless of gender: I either decided or intuited that equality is equality, I'm not sure which. I also didn't read a lot of the overly-sexual-manhunter ones, they annoyed me. I was always looking to escape, and I think this is where I confess I always wanted to be Luke Skywalker when I grew up...although I always wanted to be less of a drip. What I've carried over from those long-ago days is that I couldn't care less what your parts are, I look at what you are doing or can do first. Ahem, back to it.

Tony Abbott being any kind of lying whatever is less of a concern than Labour betraying their own. Once, they could get away with: I think (I don’t know, but I think) that us great unwashed believed that Rudd-O was having problems actually governing, so Julia taking over was pretty crap but still viable. Again, great politician: getting the legislation on things like the NDIS through would, could, have made more difference at the polls than any predictions could have owned. But the double betrayal (of Rudd, then Julia) inside the party made all of them untrustworthy.

I could, of course, be talking completely out of my backside. Not deliberately, strangely enough (I like making things up), but because of what I think about the Griffith by-election. I was hoping against hope that Griffith would be a clear indicator that the current government was crap…but the swing went towards the Liberals. Labour won it, but not by a landslide.

I suppose it was naive to hope for that, but really, I was hoping for…hope. Five months, and there’s no end in sight. We will be years undoing the damage this government is doing, and there is a day of reckoning, or at least apology, in our future, not our government’s, over our treatment of asylum seekers*…and everything else.

*Apparently our Stolen Generation weren’t shameful enough. We’ve decided to do it again.

I have no end phrase. Thanks for reading.