Of Cabbages and Things

When you eat nuts you eat bits of wood. Softish bits of wood. The best bits of wood are the macadamia kind, followed by cashew wood. Peanuts, contrary to their name, aren't wood. They're legumes, so they're seeds, I think.



You'd think false friends like zucchinis and cucumbers (people in the Fresh Produce section have got these confused) wouldn't be related, but they are. Other members of their family are watermelons and pumpkins, and other voluptuous produce. Because marrows are so curvy and weighty, their puny vines can't hold them above the ground.

Don't puzzle that fruit and vegetables seem to share a family. Seed bearing fruit is a more delineated category than vegetable, which seems more to refer anything organic and savoury, excluding herbs and legumes. Of course that caveat is often violated when referring to vegetables. Is rocket a herb or a vegetable? I guess it depends on how Fresh Produce packages it. But here my botanical knowledge ends; maybe there is a qualitative distinction between herb and say lettuce - one is annular and the other isn't?



I am not a gardener.

Planning in Advance

Any excuse to have a party. My birthday is a bit over a month away. In an ideal world, here's what I'd do. Have an afternoon tea picnic in the gardens in pretty Rococo frocks and pink fancy cupcakes with a gorgeous porcelain tea set. Probably only girls would turn up to this part, although the blokes would certainly be invited! Then go sleep for a few hours. Then wake up at about 1 or 2am and strap on armour and laser tag gear. Hop on bikes, divide into teams and ride around Hobart playing laser tag on push bikes (I think the blokes would be more interested in this part). I submit that that would be very awesome indeed.

Most Podernism

I have a feeling I might have played with this idea before and it's certainly not a new one, although the way it expressed itself in my mind tonight seemed to me to be fresh. We were doing a study on angels at the Imms' Bible Study (an excellent small group. Pryderi and I invented the Whip-on-Chip as an alternative to peanut butter and celery, much to everyone else's chagrin). Someone mentioned that in OT (and NT) times people were accustomed to witnessing supernatural occurrences. Okay, maybe not accustomed, because they certainly were alarmed by fiery angels and miraculous occurrences. But they were much less likely to explain them away by appealing to a reductionist, mechanical worldview.

Perhaps it wasn't just the worldview that was different in times past, but reality itself was of a different kind, a kind that permitted magical and supernatural occurrences to be integrated into everyday life. This entails that maybe the fabric of reality is a fluid thing with its changes in possibility and impossibility noted in paradigm shifts. Maybe.

I don't think this is just post-modernism (which is oh so passe) expressed once again. I think that maybe post-modernism has its focus on interpretation and the subject, and sometimes a denial of reality itself. Instead, the focus I'm suggesting stays firmly on reality, and interpretation and worldview are subordinate to that, but it's reality itself which is fluid.

What do you think?

Sex and Writing

I'm writing an article on sex for Salt magazine. For once it's: I want to write it and you want to read it. All writing should be like that. Why do we waste time boring ourselves writing only to bore the reader?

It would be wierd if...

... I went on bike rides with my cyclist landlord.

... I went along to the 'Over 30's dessert with the pastor" small group.

... there was a fourth housemate who slept on my trundle bed and used the empty bottom draw to keep all his/her stuff.

Now it's your turn to do some.

Visible City

I've got to stop starting all my sentences thusly: "In America..."

This post isn't about America.

Flies sit on the rubbish bin lid. It's as close as they'll get to the dead rat inside. They just want to get up close and personal to that festering piece of festiness and delight in it and revel in it and multiply its festiness. In every nook and cranny in the city; at the roots of the long grass by the back fence, in the rivulets and the storm drains, behind the boxes and bins in the alley ways, beneath the foundations of the city - there lurks the festiness, you can't find it, you can't eradicate it. The city is built on festering dead rats.

In another city, the people breath in ennui. They all suffer from the airbourne plague, but there is no solidarity; each person is numb to the other. If this was Hamlin, would they care about the rats? If a dead rat rose to the surface of the visible city, in her bed, between her sheets, would she detest it?

Maybe she would. The inhabitants of anti-Hamlin need to see their rats.

More Poetry

Global victim,
Anarchy dictum.
Forest porn is hippies hugg'n trees,
Roof top cities sink into quays.

Glow-ball victim,
Anarchy dictum.
Burning cities





Oh $#&*^ this.

Phew.

The girl didn't actually break her neck. Praise God!

A Poem

1. Come in to my office little girl

Lined with bones and skulls and little postcards of witches

I will hex you

With my eyes wide shut

And a smile unmoved by your

Bad luck


2. Sort these papers into fails and passes

I’ll give you good marks in all my classes



3. This is an academic institution

You can study the constitution

Of conspiracy theories

Buffy the vampire series

And how a Pagan buried her womb

Don’t mention the ancient, empty tomb

Operation Rex Kwon Do

Talking of Dreams

My wildest dreams...

...have come true. They want to take me home and cook me some curry. But I'm not so keen. I bought a samosa on the way home instead.

I'm a being without a centre. Socially, that is. "Be yourself", but being myself might entail choosing to treat you in a certain, appropriate way. And that way is chosen from a bunch of live options, that are all authentically me, and all morally good. Actors upon a stage - but in this pseudo-modern era the director handed us a bunch of scripts and a vague explanation of how the play might go.

Stole, but committed no crime. Vandalized, but didn't leave a mark. It was arson, and the town got raised
up in the middle of the night
but didn't go back down
because the town got
razed
down in the middle of the night
but didn't go back up
because the town got
lowered
into the ground
no one to be found
to rebuild it.


Find a beautiful boy who doesn't look a thing like Jesus but talks like a gentleman. He'll save me from myself. The sun creeps in, I'm a gone and it's all a mystery. Stand up and be a man, because he's a beautiful boy. You should have fought him; it's a distraction.

It's eerie. On paper, their language is the same as ours. Their clothes are sort of similar to ours. The cars are a bit like ours, but bigger. But just below the surface of thick make-up and big hair, they are aliens.

Avoiding the Wrath.

3 years old = avoiding the wrath of mum and dad, older siblings and pet cat.

13 years old = avoiding the wrath of teachers and mum and dad.

23 years old = avoiding the wrath of flatmates and Centrelink.

33 years old = avoiding the wrath of spouse, boss and tax department.

43 - 83 years old = avoiding the wrath of God by trying to fruitlessly thwart death.

Around Town

Laws of Attraction

Everyone has come up with at some time a formula or theory or equation that explains or describes attraction. So here's my attempt.

Firstly, my assumptions are as follows:

1 Human beings deeply desire to have their human being-ness affirmed. Different people need different modes of affirmation, but the function of that affirmation is always the same: to make us feel real and valuable, to make us feel like a person.

2 If you've had good parents and a good early life, you will probably have internalised affirmation and probably feel good about yourself. This means that some people will not actively seek affirmation of their humanity. Such people still need affirmation, though, and but they'll just be much less intentional about getting it.

3 We are most attracted to people who seem to be complete and autonomous. That is, we are attracted to people who seem to be human beings at their fullest. Such a person will appear to not need to have their human being-ness affirmed, that would be redundant.

4 People are fundamentally selfish and lazy and do not want to have to make the effort to affirm another person's human being- ness.

I think 4 sort of explains 3, but I also think there are pure reasons for desiring 3; that humanity is a good thing and we desire good things, and its a good thing to desire good things.

But anyway, I think we are less attracted to people who obviously want to have their human-being-ness affirmed, and more attracted to those who hide their need to have their human-being-ness affirmed. That is why we're more attracted to the people described in 2, from training at an early age, they get affirmation of their humanity easily and naturally.

Some of us are better or worse at detecting the activity of humanity-affirmation in others. This is why each person finds different people attractive. Some of us are better or worse at hiding that need.

The most attractive people are probably those with highly sophisticated means of getting others to affirm their own humanity without others realizing that they are affirming the sophisticates' need to have their humanity affirmed. And this type of person has so much affirmation of their own humanity, that they hardly feel the need to have it affirmed (but of course if it was taken from them, they'd notice).

Maybe some examples? Someone who has naturally entertaining and makes jokes without waiting for others to laugh at them might be considered more attractive, than a David Brent type.

What do my readers think? Can you think of counterexamples to floor this theory?

Words + Pictures

That's my fireplace. That's what happens to visitors.

I've been listening to Thirsty Merc. He's a bit of a whinger, but that's part of the appeal. He sings about girls who he pines after but can't get, probably because he's such a whinger. Angus lent me The Killers, who are much better and are not whingers. Hot Fuss is a good album.

This is from Marie Antoinette. That's not her husband.

Dad's Poetry

I haven't paid my respects to my dad's poetry lately. It's brilliant stuff. And I'm not just saying that because he's my dad. They're all good but check out Poet Tree.

Mr Gormsbey

Shaun and I had a great friendship going on. But then I crossed the line and gave up something I can never get back. Our friendship is ruined. Shaun has lost all respect for me.


Because I watched about five episodes back to back of Seven Periods with Mr Gormsbey. I gave up over 90 minutes of my life that I will never get back. If you ever get to watch it, it is badness on wheels. Production values no badness can ever trump. Yet I was hooked. Each episode ended on a cliffhanger, and I was willing to suffer the bad script to just to see what happens in the world of wooden NZ acting. Can anything good ever come out of New Zealand?

(Hey, it might have been the Maori guys that had me watching... yeah I know they're school kids on the show, but they're probably adult actors?)

(I'm also willing to watch the rest of the season. I'm almost addicted to the badness of it.)

Book Meme

Is it bad netiquette to do a meme you weren't tagged for? Because that's what I'm about to do.

Hardback or trade paperback or mass market paperback?

I'm on a budget, so paperback.

Online purchase or brick and mortar?

Brick and mortar, I don't have a credit card.

Barnes & Noble or Borders?

Venus or the Morning Star? Coriander or Cilantro? Smarties or M&M's?

Bookmark or dog-ear?

My mum taught us to always bookmark, but sometimes I'm a bit naughty and leave the book open, upside down.

Mark or not mark?

Only if it strikes a chord within my soul, or it's some crucial premise to an argument I've been having with someone. I use a pen, usually.

Alphabetise by author or alphabetize by title or random?

I'm not anal about everyday stuff, but when it comes to the more abstract, "deeper" things, my OCD tendencies emerge. My books are categorized subject wise. Theology, philosophy, science and then fiction. At times I've managed to blend these categories, with Swinburne segueing philosophy into theology, and my Environmental Ethics reader followed by Alas Poor Darwin blends philosophy into science.



Keep, throw away, or sell?

Keep. These are books!

Keep dustjacket or toss it?

Keep it! There's something about dust jackets.

Read with dustjacket or remove it?

If it becomes a nuisance, then remove it. But the blurb bit also serves as a good bookmark.

Short story or novel?

Short story. I usually don't finish novels. The punchiness of a short story suits me better.

Collection (short stories by same author) or anthology (short stories by different authors)?

Depends on the how talented the author is.

Lord of the Rings or Narnia.

Lord of the Rings.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?

Bit of both.

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?

Either, but with different words.

Buy or Borrow?

Steal.

New or used?

New, if I can afford it.

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendation or browse?

Recommendation. It also serves a good way to connect with people.

Tidy ending or cliffhanger?

Depends on the content of the story.

Morning reading, afternoon reading or night time reading?

My brain used to work best in the morning, so morning. But now I'm more relaxed in the afternoon and night, and its easier to read when one is relaxed.

Standalone or series?

Standalone.

Favorite series?

The Tripod Trilogy.

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard?

The Prince in Waiting Trilogy?

Favorite books read last year?

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.
Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
How Long O Lord by D. A. Carson

Favorite book of all time?

I'll get back to you on that one.

Bingo!

Sex and Sharehousing

I grew up with blokes, I've lived with girls and now I'm living with blokes again. It's so much easier! Blokes are helpful too. And you can keep out of each other's way and this doesn't have to mean that "there's something going on" with cold shoulders.

What have my readers found? Would you rather sharehouse with the same sex or the opposite sex?

After church:

Jenny Can I be your new housemate?

Bob No.

Jenny Why not?

Bob Because I'm a little bit sexually attracted to you, so I don't think it would be appropriate if you moved in.

I don't know if that's ever happened, but it would be funny if it did.

Independence

I'm not really sure what it means, in modern parlance, to be an "independent person" (and it probably means lots of different things), but it seems that independence is generally agreed upon to be a Good Thing, at least in these times. I suppose the combination of the loss of traditional social institutions that implicate identity and the accompanying obsession with Identity that this generation has, has rendered "independence" a virtue, like "tolerance". Financial independence, independence of spirit, the "f__ you" - in - your - face - punk independence, independence in thinking... and so on. It is also perhaps synonymous with self-actualisation.



No one is immune to culture; it's in the air we breathe. I think that I've valued independence from a young age, even though I never articulated it as such. We made our own school lunches, invented our own games, created our own worlds with elaborate maps and pretty much just entertained ourselves. I would thank my mother for this; the being on whom I was totally dependent for at least the first three years of my life.


In my honours year, one of my lecturers wrote on my draft paper "this clearly displays much independent thought". Maybe he was damning me with faint praise, but it was enough to boost my self esteem.



At L'Abri one guy told me "That's because you're too independent." He was talking about traveling into Boston by myself on our days off. A lady later told me that it was not possible to be too independent.

Or is it? Perhaps you really can be too eccentric. It all depends on what your ends are, I guess. If you want to be socially accepted, you do need to be somewhat normalised. But if you want to be a reclusive bush hippie, then go for it.


In the dialouges and discourses of things, being normal is as just important as thinking independently and originally. In philosophy, for example, you must use the lexicon of the current debate so that your argument can be understood, and you must locate your idea in philosophical terms so that it is philosophy.


What about being normal in social circles? Independence might be doing whatever crazy thing enters your head without first moderating it with the norms of your audience/social circle*. Is this being revolutionary or just plain mad and inaccessible? This is not rhetoric, by the way, but these are genuine questions.


Furthermore, "independence" (which I have avoided defining) might be an illusion. As the Bedroom Philosopher sings "High on life and mum's the dealer, yeah/ First eighteen years are free, yeah/ Then you got to start paying rent". You're dependent on your parents, even if you've rejected all their ideologies and traditions and conventions. You're dependent on the state, even if you live in Capitalist America. You're dependent on the media and the fashion industry, which choose the cultural commodities you will identify with. You're dependent on your cultural history and the collective consciousness, which thinks "your" thoughts with you. You're dependent on the farmers who grow your food. You're dependent on the natural world around you, for the seasons, the sun and the rain. And most importantly, you're dependent on Him who is sovereign over the rain, the sun, the seasons, the natural world, and even our created non-natural world of music, media, culture and state.

So you're really just a suckling baby, like that fetus in the deep black of space at the end of 2001 Space Odyssey (the movie).



*Hmm, I'm equating audience with social circle. Is this some pseudo-modern thing to do?

Marie Antoinette

Sugar coated, pink ruffled, kudos to Sofia Coppolla, Marie Antoinette rocks.

To those who didn’t like it because it lacked a plot “bob loblaw, whatever”. That’s not the point. It’s one of those movies like Girl With A Pearl Earring where you are to become entranced by the sight and movements of the film itself, and you need not be engaged by a thick plot.

But it’s not all pink and ruffles. Coppolla is a voice of this generation. Marie Antoinette is an anachronism; she parties hard, loves fashion and puppies and cute boys and is absorbed in the world that extends no further than the Court. (Or perhaps the royals really were like that.)

However, you are struck that Marie Antoinette is a girl of these times. After her lavish birthday party, she and her friends run outside with bottles in hand to watch the sunrise, as any young person might do today on New Years. The camera never leaves the glowing faces of the group, though, it focuses exclusively on their experience of the sunrise, not the sunrise itself, because this generation values experience in and of itself far above the content of that experience.

Note also that you never see the grimy, poverty stricken streets of Paris, which are the necessary consequences of the royals’ luxurious lifestyle. When you finally see the peasants revolting outside the Bastille, it feels like a Sim City game; when you’ve been too busy building blocks and blocks of houses and have neglected the pollution problem and suddenly there’s a Japanese monster stomping across your city. Because the farce of a royal family have been myopically living it up in the parlour they only do something about the condition of their nation when it comes banging on their chamber doors.

Kirstin Dunst does a good job of a girl who wakes up one morning as the Queen of France. The momentous moments such as being handed over to France, marriage, the death of a king and the coronation of Louis XVI, are experienced without the appropriate accompanying emotion, and simply roll over Marie Antoinette. It reminds me of not feeling like you’ve graduated, even though you’ve been to the ceremony. The numbness is accentuated by Louis XVI’s unwillingness to consummate; the monochromatic marriage feels like no marriage at all. It is only the celebrations without occasion and the forbidden love which elicit excitement and happiness in Marie Antoinette.

I also thoroughly enjoyed this movie on an aesthetic level. It makes me want to have a Marie Antoinette party with pink cakes and biscuits and sugar flowers and colourful ribboned shoes and pretty frocks. No guys would come. Except maybe Angus. ;)

(I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but in one of the "shoe shopping" scenes, I'm pretty sure there's a pair of converses. Can anyone confirm this? It appears for only a split second of course.)

Fathers, Babies and Irresponsibility

You'd probably agree that one of the core social problems of this generation is fatherlessness. Sociopathic and promiscuous behaviour may have their origins in fatherlessness. It causes people to have confused identities and to commit violent crime because they grew up with no male role model, and without the support that only a father can provide. It may turn out that other socio-psychological problems like ennui and depression have their origins and absent or effectively absent fathers.

No child is knitted together in his mother's womb without the prelude of a father. So fatherlessness is a peculiar phenomena. Every child has a father (unless of course he has died), but the man who has conceived the child has disowned responsibility*. Not to sound like a crazy feminazi, but responsibility avoidance is something men do a lot. I'm not the only one saying it. Psychologists will tell you that typically, women blame themselves, men blame other people. Or women. Or that woman. It was that woman you put here with me. She gave me the fruit. Nevermind that I could have told her that the fruit is forbidden. Nevermind that I could have taken responsibility and stopped her from taking the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

Does this mean that men are forever doomed to avoid responsibility, to blame the woman for the existence of their offspring and run away, like a boy from his prank gone wrong, leaving the woman with the evidence? I don't think so.

Through history, by the grace of God, many men have been redeemed. I know of many proud fathers, who care deeply for their children, who love their children (and their wives!). My own father has carried the burden of our family's welfare and gives generously to his children, financially and relationally.

There's plenty of biblical examples of good fathers, from Joseph who did not leave the woman who was carrying a child that was not his, but instead trusted God. And we have a heavenly father who will never forsake or abandon us, if we continue in him.

Further, Jesus, the ultimate redeemed man, reversed the curse of irresponsibility and took the weight of the world's sin and suffered even though he was without blame!

So there is hope!

The Most...

...phallic* disaster movie ever:

The hard Core!

Good, clean, formulaic fun.


The disaster is a bit contrived, and takes lots of awkward scientific explanation of high school physics. I'm willing to tolerate that for a somewhat original disaster movie idea, journeying into the vast unknown (where no man has penetrated before) of the earth's crust, mantle and core. We have no hard empirical evidence of what really lies down there; no one has drilled below 10km into the earth's crust, and certainly not into the virginal mantle. So the speculated conditions were fun to watch, and even though you feel closer to knowing by virtue of watching the movie, in reality you're not.

*The earth (Gai) and her inhabitants are saved through penetration (courtesy of the man-made drilling device). Certainly a film in support of patriarchy.

Can you please be objective...

...because the other boys are queuing up behind us.

Okay, a meme:

Favourite US city: Boston. Boston is Sydney's hipper, more organised older brother. I haven't visited New York yet.

Who is gayer, Belle and Sebastian OR The Scissor Sisters? A hard one. I'd say the latter, since they're more out of the closet about it. Who has the better lyrics? B&S? They are wittier and more nuanced. Subtlety gets lost in the waters of the Atlantic.

Best place to buy samosas in Hobart: Little India.

Favourtie disaster movie: The Day After Tomorrow, although I haven't seen The Core yet. I'm looking forward to that upcoming one about continental shift.

That's all. Who do I tag? All of youse.

Rob Loblaw Blog

This blog is such a spank because I'm about to talk about myself yet again.

I just wanted to apologise to anyone who may have had to experience the prickly, mean, cynical, bossy biatch that I've been over the last bit. I must be emotionally immature or something, because that seems to be the way I deal with bad things happening to me; I don't want to mope, I want to be strong, and unfortunately that "strength" manifests itself as taking control, and not letting myself be vulnerable. I've prayed about this, that God will transform into someone who is kind and gentle with others.

If you haven't noticed that I've been like this, its probably because I hold myself up to a very high standard, so I'm painfully aware when I don't reach it.

In other news, we just had the Crossroads weekend away. Hopefully Mike or Jonny will post pics, because, while I brought my Gamera, I didn't take any photos. Mainly because social interation and photographing are two mutually exclusive kinds of interaction, and I opted for the former. Anyways, the "weekend away" was a good church family time. I think there was good bonding and mutual encouragment, and I came away thinking "I'd like to get to know X and Y and Z better". The talks were good too, with Mikey and Jake delivering powerful sermons on Revelation and Proverbs. And the church all prayed together, and it was good to see, through that, God raising up people who share his desires.