Life » unsane

You know that moment…

Life No Responses »

May 212012

You know that moment…

…where you stand in the tea room and joke with your colleague about TV overnight?

…when you look at a colleague who walks into the office and you just know they didn’t get a wink of sleep?

…where you and your colleagues do a fire drill together and joke all the way down 9 flights of stairs?

…when you look at a colleague whose face tells you they’ve just got some bad news?

…where you and your colleagues go out for lunch on a Friday afternoon and unwind after a long week of work?

…when you think about asking a colleague to help, you see the over-stressed look on their face, and decide not to?

…where you say hello to your colleagues when they come into the office?

Your colleague who works from home doesn’t know those moments any more.

Think about it.

You can’t make a beard without a bear

Life No Responses »

May 082012

Look at the word “beard”.

Then look at the word “bear”.

Can you see the similarity? By some small coincidence, the words overlap substantially:

In The Age, May 6, 2012, “Thar she grows! A city awash with urban whalers“, Gary Tippet repeatedly states that hipsters have lead the way in the return of facial hair:

“The look is not just fashion-based. It’s part of the hipster subculture…”

“Adelaide band The Beards … – evoke hipster and even lumberjack in equal measure.”

“At the epicentre of Melbourne hipsterdom, facial fuzz has resprouted as a fashion statement…”

This paints a rather awkward picture of beards as having been on life support until fixie riding counter-trendies, all uniformly unique in their anti-mainstream approach to life, decided that Beards Are Good [tm].

I think Gary needs to do a bit of research on the first four letters of the word “beard”. If beards are part of the hipster subculture, then it just goes to show that hipsters are in themselves conformists to fashion. Fashion set by bears and the bear community.

Throughout all the sad metrosexual 00′s, where men were emasculated, denied facial hair, and had to ask their women-folk if they could take their balls out of their wives or girlfriend’s purses to scratch them, the bear community stood strong and denied that path. Furry men standing on a path and shouting in one voice, “This far, and no further!” to the Balrog Preeners who would strip facial hair (and body hair) from every man they could.

Don’t thank the hipsters for the return of the beard.

Thank the bear community for providing a sanctuary for it until society recovered from its collective madness.

Hidden pain

Life No Responses »

Apr 252012

“Wow, you broke your arm? That must hurt!”

“That cut looks serious. You should get to emergency.”

“Your eye looks completely blood shot. Is it sore?”

It’s easy to sympathise with, or understand someone, their pain is visibly obvious. If their arm is in a cast, or they’re bleeding, or some other palpable injury.

For many though there’s a reluctance to believe in or accept injury when it’s not visible. What can be seen is real, what can’t be isn’t, seems to be the attitude some people and businesses have towards injury.

Yet, in that photo above, I’m in pain. Sometimes, that’s as close as I can get to clenching a fist. Thanks to some recent extensive massage it’s diminished somewhat again at the moment, but when my RSI flares up, it can cause significant pain. Years ago, I lived on Nurofen+. Goodness knows what it may have done to my stomach, but I was going through a pack of 48 every 6-7 days for sometimes months at a time. Yet in such situations, pain killers don’t fix, they just hide, and allow the problem to get worse if you don’t work towards fixing it. My ultimate lesson in that was when my RSI reached a point where I literally couldn’t go to the toilet unassisted. That’s palpable pain.

Over time I took the decision to just try to put up with the pain more, and so developed higher pain thresholds, but that in itself doesn’t take the pain away.

Hidden pain: muscular, bone, mental or otherwise – it’s just as real as visible forms of pain, and just as painful if not more. I’ve never broken a limb, but I’d say that I’d willingly trade the short-term pain of the break and set over say, 6-12 months of a dull, nigh on continuous ache gnawing away at me from my arms. I suspect many people, having spent some time with strong RSI, would likely feel the same.

It enrages me when people dismiss those who suffer hidden pain. “You’re just trying to avoid work”, “Toughen up, princess”, or “Smile, there’s nothing really wrong” – however it’s said, it’s insulting, it’s mean spirited, and it’s uncharitable. If someone tells me they’re in pain, and I can’t see it, it doesn’t for one microsecond diminish my belief. Sure, some people may lie, but do we treat all people as liars just because a very small minority do? Do we refuse to accept that the pain experienced by others is less real because it’s not immediately visible?

Pain is an extremely dehumanising thing; it tells us when we’re in trouble, of course, but it eats away at our resolve and capacity. It shouldn’t be compounded by people refusing to believe it, or belittling it, just because it can’t be seen.

Privacy is dead, long live privacy

Equal Rights, Life, Morality 2 Responses »

Apr 102012

I firmly believe that privacy is an evolving concept, significantly altered by each new generation. The expectations of privacy experienced for instance by Baby Boomers is different to the expectations of privacy experienced by Generation-X, which in turn is different to the expectations of privacy experienced by Generation-Y.

Comparing the privacy expectations of each generation is a bit like trying to compare apples and oranges, since privacy is innately tied to three key factors. These are:

Personal boundaries;
Social justice – in particular, the merger of legally enshrined rights, universal human rights and moral rights;
Technology.

The first is an entirely subjective and relative delimiter; what I deem as necessarily private may not be deemed as necessarily private by another person, and so on. What’s more, those personal boundaries are constantly evolving – the boundaries I had as an 18 year old are so far removed from the boundaries I have now I may as well be a different person. I suspect this is similar for many people.

Further, both social justice and technology are themselves constantly evolving items; the social justice and technology of the silent generation was significantly less evolved than that of the baby boomers, which was again significantly less evolved than that of generation X, and so it continues. The enshrinement of rights in particular has been constantly evolving target; women have been granted the vote, interracial marriages are legal, even same-sex marriages are growing in legal recognition throughout the world.

Since the first factor is not only inherently personal, subject to all matter of stimuli, as well as the progression of time, and the other two are also constantly evolving, it would be foolish to assume that privacy in and of itself as a static, constant set of immutable boundaries.

In her address, “Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity“, Danah Boyd said:

No matter how many times a privileged straight white male technology executive pronounces the death of privacy, Privacy Is Not Dead. People of all ages care deeply about privacy. And they care just as much about privacy online as they do offline. But what privacy means may not be what you think.

Danah makes a very interesting distinction in her article, that being between two terms, PII and PEI:

First, you must differentiate between PII and PEI. If you’ve spent any time thinking about privacy, you’ve probably heard of PII – “Personally Identifiable Information.” All too often, we assume that when people make PII available publicly that they don’t care about privacy. While some folks are deeply concerned about PII, PII isn’t the whole privacy story. What many people are concerned about is PEI – “Personally Embarrassing Information.” This is what they’re brokering, battling over, and trying to make sense of.

In fact both PII and PEI are constantly evolving, and the evolution is actually more complex in relation to PEI. After all, personally identifiable information is easier to understand – my sense of privacy, despite all it has changed, remains unalterable in relation to the publication of say, my bank account details, tax file number and ABN. I may make these details available to departments and people on an as-needs basis, but I don’t just throw it out there on the net for anyone to see.

On the other hand, PEI is by its very nature bounded by what the individual will consider to be embarrassing, which comes down to personal levels of liberation and attitude. Some people I know won’t have a photo of them on the net that shows them pulling a funny face. Others will make publicly accessible (i.e,. sans-registration) highly graphic photos and details of their sexual exploits. If it’s not personally embarrassing for them, why should it matter to others? To be perfectly frank, so long as it’s legal and consensual, after all, a person’s sexual proclivities are totally unrelated to their ability to perform a professional function.

A decade ago I’d have found it deeply personally embarrassing to state in any publicly accessible forum that I’m in an open relationship. Yet now, having been in one for over 14 years, I find it such an irrelevant point that frankly I work on the basis of people knowing it. And let’s be frank: if someone goes looking for information that they’d find personally titillating about another person, it says everything about the person seeking the titillation and nothing about the person providing it.

Lately I’ve been accused of being both an optimist and an idealist, and perhaps that’s where my view of privacy, personal details and publicity have come from; I’m tired of seeing people being judged for invalid reasons, and in particular an evolving social justice will see significant leaps of improvement on this front over the coming decades.

Privacy is not something we should give up willingly or readily – we should always be cognisant of where our privacy may be at risk, and there should be substantial obligations set on companies who have access to our personal or private details, and considerable fines for a violation of those obligations. Yet, that being said, privacy is neither a static nor an immutable set of boundaries, and those who seek to keep it such fail to appreciate that the baton is passed with each new generation, with each new piece of technology, and with each evolution of human, moral or legal rights.

Reflections of image

Life, Mental health 1 Response »

Mar 282012

It’s a fair thing to say that the bear community features a lot of larger guys. I recently saw an acerbic post on Facebook from a rather well built and muscled bloke whining about fat guys calling themselves bears. In his mind, they weren’t entitled to the name just for being larger of frame. I found his attitude repugnant and contrary to the general inclusiveness I’ve found in the community, but it certainly wasn’t the first time I’d heard mention of the problem of highly muscled men trying to seize ownership of the bear name.

You’d think for the number of … portly … men in the bear community there’d be a strong acceptance of the joy that comes in a diverse range of body types – thin, svelte, solid, build, brick shit house muscled, chubby and well, quite frankly, obese.

If you think I’m being slightly rude for using that word, I’ll call a spade a spade here.

I am obese. By any stretch of the imagination, I’m a “fat cunt”.

And if you think I’m being harsh to myself here, you don’t know the half of it. That’s me being positively pleasant about my body shape compared to what I’ve said and thought about myself in my darkest hours of self analysis. The words aren’t pretty and the images aren’t pretty.

But I know one thing for sure – misery loves company, and I equally bet that there’s a lot of guys in the bear community who, like me, sometimes have that quiet moment of self reflection about their body size and aren’t too happy with what they realise. Yet, we go on, and we celebrate being in a community that allows us to be larger and not feel persecuted or picked on for our weight – something many of us have struggled with for most of our lives, often having been subject to torturous treatment during the sharp and tactless rigours of childhood. So, to be perfectly blunt, when I walk out my door in a t-shirt that doesn’t make any effort to hide my ample stomach underneath, I no longer care, since I know I’m a member of a group of people who also don’t care.

Humans can be pricks sometimes though, and I sincerely believe that at times when we’re frustrated with ourselves we lash out at others for one of two reasons:

-a- recognising they share a common trait, one which we don’t like, and equally don’t like to acknowledge in ourselves;

-b- jealousy they have something that we find difficult if not possible to attain.

So when I see bears making snarky and unpleasant body image smears against people who happen to be skinny, it pisses me off.

We’re meant to be inclusive.

We’re meant to be tolerant.

We’re meant to understand, more than any other group in the gay community, what it’s like to have body image problems. We don’t tolerate thin people making fat jokes about our brethren. So answer me this: why do we tolerate each other making thin jokes about other people? The “I’m too fat” body image problem is one we all understand, but when people make jokes about thin people, do they stop to consider that equally there are some people who can never put on weight, no matter what they do, and they, too, have body image problems?

Perhaps the greatest lie we’re ever told as children is:

Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.

Sharp comments about weight can be as equally harsh coming from large people about thin people as they are from thin people about larger people.

Isn’t it time we actually let everyone understand they can let go of body image problems?

But do me a favour: if you think it’s funny to make jokes about thin people, remember to call me the “fat cunt” every time you see me. At least that way I’ll know you’re not being a hypocrite.

No cross on the ballot box

Equal Rights, Life, Morality, Politics No Responses »

Mar 232012

Apparently, there’s a new christian political party in town, the “Australian Christian Party”, and they mean to become the new third force in Australian politics.

The Australian political system is historically comprised of two behemoths, the supposedly left-leaning Labor Party and the conservative Liberal/National coalition. Together at any given point these represent the vast majority of where voters will place a tick on a form. In the past, the Australian Democrats were the third political force, with the semi-official motto of “keeping the bastards honest”. That lasted until the Democrats sided with the LNP in the senate to allow passage of the GST, which saw them spectacularly implode, both in terms of leadership and in the eyes of the average Australian voter.

Since then the Greens have been growing considerably to fill that vacuum, and as issues caused by climate change, unsustainable population growth and corporate greed continue to plague the country I suspect their influence will continue to grow.

Then you’ve got the fringe parties. Some of these are socially left leaning, such as the Australian Sex Party, who defend the rights of everyday Australians to have sex. And the right leaning, such as One Nation, who practically exist to promote a return to the White Australia Policy.

Past that, things get very murky. Because then, you have the whackjob parties. The Australian Shooters Party for instance – bravely defending the rights of everyday Australians to own guns and shoot animals with them for ‘sport’. You’ve got Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party – bravely defending the rights of angry conservative white men born before World War II who want to Go Back To The Fifties. (Clearly they’ve never added a flux capacity to a Delorian.) More recently you’ve got Bob Katter’s Australia party, which despite the name seems curiously concerned with state issues, but unsurprisingly given the name, it’s mostly concerned with Bob Katter.

And now there’s a new whackjob party in the mix: the Australian Christian party, who, according to their website, have the following values:

Honesty and Integrity
Hope
Justice
Freedom
Moral Law
Respect
Sacrifice

Amongst other things, the purpose of this party is to ensure that marriage stays between one man and one woman, and to promote the traditional family.

When questioned by the Sydney Star Observer, a public candidate for this new political party, Frank Papfotiou, said he was still coming up with a position on same sex marriage and likened it to a discussion about football – is it soccer, AFL, etc.? And would cricket be called football?

Now, I’m no sporting person – in fact, I generally loathe the highly unhealthy attitude towards sport this nation has, but even I know that cricket can’t be called football due to the rather basic premise that you’re not allowed to kick the ball in cricket. So I’m a little unsure where Frank was going with that analogy. However, he did tell the Observer:

“What I support in theory is that the government doesn’t restrict the freedom of choice people have, so long as those freedoms don’t impact negatively or harm other people.”

(Sydney Star Observer, 22 March 2012, “New christian party launched“)

If that’s truly the case, then Frank has only option available on the front of same sex marriage based on the principles of the party – to fully support it. Otherwise, it would be a case of allowing a group to negatively restrict the public freedoms of another group based on their private belief systems.

Yet, given the proposed defence of marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman, it would seem that a more correct interpretation of the purported values of the party would be:

Honesty and Integrity – Don’t look behind the curtain!
Hope – That we don’t get in!
Justice – For people who believe exactly what we believe in with no variation!
Freedom – To oppress people we don’t like!
Moral Law – Because nothing’s more moral then executing people for eating shellfish!
Respect – Us! Respect Us!
Sacrifice – The Gays!

Any fringe or whackjob group is entitled to assemble its own political party, and given the trends towards growing levels of atheism and a rejection (particularly by younger generations) of attitudes that impact the freedoms of others, I fully expect the amount of votes this new party will get will be a very small percentage, and likely over the course of time a dwindling percentage.

The really sad thing about religion is that many of us grew up being taught a core premise of religion was social justice. The reality is like when we discover the truth about Santa.

Yet demonstrably that is often anything but the case. Based on their founding principles of denying basic human rights to all, I can only assume the Australian Christian party intends to uphold that basic christian practice which we see demonstrated time and time again – claiming to advocate justice for all, so long as that justice aligns with some prejudices written about in a book over a millennia ago by people who had barely a clue as to how the world worked.

Just as whackjob groups are entitled to form their own political parties, it’s the job of sensible voters to minimise the damage they can cause. The United States is a perfect example of what happens when insane people start making decisions – women getting medically raped before abortions, schools being forbidden to use the word ‘gay’, abstinence being taught to horny teenagers as the only valid path before marriage, and so on. Lately Tennessee, one of those American states that seems to pride itself on the evil repressions enacted by its legislatures, has started requiring schools to teach about the “controversy” of evolution. (Hint: it’s only controversial if you’re so stupid that you blindly adhere to a faith despite clearly documented evidence to the contrary. And the controversy is with you, not the science.)

We don’t want to end up like the United States, and so if you see the Australian Christian party appear on your ballot paper, it’s very important to not mark a cross anywhere near them.

Otherwise you may end up nailed to one.

When did I become an optimist?

Life, Morality No Responses »

Mar 112012

It’s the old comparison – are you a glass-half-full sort of person or a glass-half-empty sort of person? Or maybe even a glass-half-empty-and-leaking sort of person?

Years ago, I thought I was a pessimist; “assume the worst, be pleasantly surprised”, seemed to be my mantra. It still is, in some aspects of my life – project planning for instance, is an area where you really do have to work up as many contingency plans as possible to reduce the chance of hitting a nasty surprise. Same for general quoting around services … think of the sorts of things that are likely to go wrong, or can commonly go wrong for the sort of work you’re quoting on, and build the pricing model up accordingly.

Hell, my entire core IT skillset is premised on planning for the worst. I’m a backup and recovery consultant/architect, which means I spend most of my time working on systems that are only needed if things go wrong.

Over time, I thought maybe I was just simply a realist – not caring whether the glass was half full or half empty, OK with the state of its content. Willing to expect the worst, or hope for the best, depending on what the situation warranted.

Lately though I’ve had enough people pop out of the woodwork to call me an optimist that it leaves me highly disturbed. I shouldn’t be an optimist.

What have I been called an optimist about?

Being surprised that people fail to grasp the common sense notion that if they want to get onto the train I’m alighting from, or into the elevator I’m wanting to step out of, they need to let me out first – i.e., the simple logic that if you’re in a big space wanting to get into a smaller space through a small gap then logically you let the people in the smaller space egress first;
Being surprised people are unable to appreciate commercial realities – the notion that any business, if it’s going to survive, needs to make at least some form of profit;
Thinking that the pure logic of “anyone who earns more than me should pay at least the same percentage tax as me” should be irrefutable ethics.

The simple truth is – if I’m an optimist, then either the bar is set pretty low, or my personal code of conduct is pretty damn high. Yet, I don’t personally think my personal code of conduct is extraordinary. Am I wrong? Am I more moral than the average person? Or more logical? The way in which friendships form – for me at least – means that the vast majority of people I know and count as friends share similar traits. For the most part they have a broad streak of social justice and liberal (that’s liberal, not conservative/Liberal) values to them, and they have a personal code of honour that aligns in some way to mine. Some times they’ll be the better angel of conscience, other times it may be me, but all up we tend to compliment and equalise each other nicely.

Yet, if I were to look around in the broader community based particularly on mainstream media, I don’t get that sense at all. Scratch the surface of Australia portrayed by mainstream media and you’ve got a nasty, vicious, narcissistic society so filled with self entitlement that the only rule of order is “no-one should have more than me”.

If I’m an optimist, everyone should be greatly alarmed.

Showing restraint

Life, Mental health 1 Response »

Feb 292012

Something that became extremely apparent to me last year when I explored therapy was the sheer physicality of the process of self control. When I find myself sliding I need to do physical things to arrest it, including:

Making sure I get out, if I’ve been inside too long;
Doing deep breathing exercises;
Withdrawing and taking the time to be reflective.

Yet, it doesn’t just stop there; it’s also equally true that being tired, or in pain (or both) will have consequences when it comes to my mood. This has been abundantly clear to me over the past 48+ hours. I usually have sinus issues when flying, typically resolved by taking anti-inflammatories about an hour before the descent (it’s the pressure change on descent that does it to me), but this time, travelling on top of having a cold at the time, it’s like it ended up triggering a sinus infection. For two days now my vision has been slightly blurred out of my left eye except when anti-inflammatories at their peak, I’m perpetually feeling tired, there’s a continuous ache in the left side of my forehead, and both flights I took resulted in that near scream inducing feeling of an invisible sadist driving white hot needles into my skull.

Net result is that I’ve not slept well and I’m walking around with a constant bugger of a headache.

But that’s the easy half of it. Emotionally, it’s draining. That sort of tiredness leaves me feeling on the wrong side of melancholy, and that sort of pain leaves me constantly on the edge of snapping and snarling.

I made a conscious decision during therapy that one approach I’d try to take was that if I were feeling tired, I’d constantly remind myself of that and remind myself to shelve any complex emotional decisions that loomed. When I’m in that state, I’m practically non compos mentis for such decisions; if I let myself deal with them, the glass just isn’t half empty, but it’s sprung a leak, and my iPhone is sitting underneath it. It’s something I seem to be getting better and better at achieving, and in itself it’s a pretty rewarding process.

Keeping my temper on the leash when I’m in pain though involves a bit more effort. My anger management issues were actually anger over management – keeping things bottled up too long, refusing to accept they had any validity, then exploding. As much as anything, it was refusing to accept that it was sufficient to acknowledge an emotional cause of a mood even if it couldn’t logically be rationalised. This though boils down to classic anger management; getting angry just because you’re in pain may be an animal instinct, but it’s neither logically nor emotionally valid.

I will rise to the challenge.

The politics of conformity

Life No Responses »

Feb 262012

For those of you who don’t know me well enough yet, I’ll start this with a confession:

I have no time whatsoever for Kylie Minogue;
I can listen to maybe one or two Gaga songs before I need to put something better on;
I might go 12 months between listening to Madonna tracks.

I have a huge breadth of music interest, ranging from classical and opera right through to Australian Hip Hop, rock, pop, indie folk music and new age world music.

The 3 gay divas? I honestly couldn’t give a damn.

Music to me is a classic example of where I butt my head against what I sometimes see as being an odd need for conformity, even in the GBLTI community. I remember reading, over a decade ago, a prominent DJ on the Sydney gay dance club scene in an interview express no small level of exasperation that there wasn’t enough exploration of music. He used the example of a mid-50s guy bursting into tears and running off because the DJ wouldn’t play the same Kylie song a third time in a row.

While I’ve spent most of my life being a wallflower and not getting involved, I’ve also had a completely stubborn streak all my life when it comes to deciding what I’ll like. I grew up in a house that made nominal head nods towards religion and was atheist by age 8. I grew up in a house that worshipped at the alter of sport and find it totally boring. I grew up in a largely conservative political household and I’m about as left-wing as you can get without being a communist.

Some would call me contrary, but that would just be trite.

Maybe this makes me an “anti-hipster”; I don’t mean being personally opposed to hipsters; but rather, why I do what I choose to do – not because it’s new and out there, and no-one else is doing it. Similarly, I’m not one to do something just because others are doing it. So if there’s a scale with hipster at one end and conformist in the middle, I’m at the anti-hipster point at the other end of the scale, not because I like being contrary but simply because I’ll do what I want to do. No needing to stick out, no needing to conform, just being.

Yet sometimes, I end up feeling a little like the woman in the yellow pashmina at the end of this Smack The Pony sketch. Watch it until the end, you’ll get what I mean:

(The above could be a completely normal day for me when it comes to music. The reds are Madonna lovers, the blues are Gaga, and there I am at the end apparently foolish enough to say “Actually I’d prefer Gin Wigmore”.)

Whenever a new meme or new “OMFG this is so damn awesome!” group cry comes out, you’ll usually find me hanging back and likely with a slightly suspicious look. I’m intensely wary of groupthink, and will always want my own time to form my own opinion. Invariably, if I’m not given that time, I’ll choose not to conform, instead of conforming. I have to decide, independently, whether it’s something that personally appeals to me, rather than jumping in because everyone else is.

Conformity can be useful at times because there can be a strength in a common purpose; but as the saying goes – as soon as you start dividing people into them and us, you become one of them. Or, as Mama Cass sang:

You gotta make your own kind of music

sing your own special song,

make your own kind of music even if nobody

else sings along.

So I think it’s important that we never lose that intrinsic joy that can be found from forging our own paths. Of quietly doing a bear shuffle to a song no-one else likes, or smiling at a joke that no-one else gets, or liking a song or movie not because it’s really good, but because it’s actually really bad, knowing you can take joy from the most unexpected of sources.

No, anything but that!

Humour, Life No Responses »

Feb 242012

I got a massively destructive email this morning:

How would I like unlimited hits to my website?

Well, Mr Spammer, I wouldn’t.

You see, unlimited hits would imply an infinite number of hits, which in term would imply an infinitely large server farm to actually serve those hits, which would likely collapse under the weight of its own gravity to form a supermassive black hole which would completely destroy the entire multiverse.

Much as I like hits on my website, I don’t want to be responsible for the destruction of existence itself.

So no, I might give that one a miss, thanks.

Older Entries

unsane

You know that moment…

You can’t make a beard without a bear

Hidden pain

Privacy is dead, long live privacy

Reflections of image

No cross on the ballot box

When did I become an optimist?

Showing restraint

The politics of conformity

No, anything but that!

What I’m saying

Equal rights articles

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