So. Canada. Eh.

So. I'm in Canada. You can read about it here

It's awesome.

You know what else is awesome? These two youtube clips. Go ahead. Knock yourself out.





Check out Gerald's blog, people!

Coming Soon...

Yes, OK, I haven't really blogged much lately. I've been busy getting ready to go overseas for 5 months.

I'm still trying to decide whether I will set up a separate travel blog or just use this one. I'm also trying to decide what will be my mascot for my time away. Both of these are difficult decisions...

The options for the mascot are as follows

A bear dressed as a possum
A bear decorated with the Australian flag
A bear called 'Lollipop' - a few of you may understand the significance of that one...
Julian the stuffed dog with no nose from Barcelona (would add a nice international flavour...)
A dalek, or collection thereof...
Various other small plastic villains from Doctor Who, or indeed the Doctor himself...
A Coopers dark ale monkey

You see the difficulty I am having?

So, what would you the reader most like to see travelling all over Canada? And should said mascot have its own blog?

Comment away, my three faitful readers...

An Observation

I've noticed something a little odd and quite disturbing.

I'm much more likely to forgive my cat than I am to forgive a person.

My cat bites me occasionally. She scratches. She ignores me and hates my friends, and runs away and hides everytime we have anyone around. She also has this really annoying habit of standing in her litter tray and doing her business over the edge which leads to some serious mess that needs to be cleaned up.

And yet, I can never stay mad at her for more than about 30 seconds. All she has to do is look at me with her greeny-yellow eyes and purr a bit, and I melt. She's so soft and cuddly and cute, how could anyone not just adore her?

And yet, if some of my best human friends acted in this way, would I just put up with it because they're cute? Some of them are pretty cute! But if my best friend suddenly bit me, ignored me, hated my friends and defecated in my bathroom, would I still love her? Would it take only thirty seconds to forgive her?

Sure, it's harder to understand the reasons for a person's behaviour than a cat's. But surely we shouldn't have to understand a person's motives to forgive them. Forgiveness, like love, should be unconditional, right?

So I'm thinking the way I (and, I think, many others. I just don't want to make assumptions so I've written this whole blog post like it's just about me...) forgive my kitty is almost a model of the way God forgives us. We, being human and fallible, find it hard to practice this model of perfect forgiveness in our relationships with humans. Perhaps then it is comforting that there is still something in my life over which I can exercise God's will for me, to forgive perfectly and completely with no need for explanation.

Only, it's a cat. I'm pretty sure that's not what God intended...

dang it

I wrote a big long blog post about feelings and stuff. And then accidentally deleted half of it. My bad.

Why is it when that happens I can never be bothered to write it again?

It was about the things that I have realised in the past few months. To summarise.

I hated my previous job and I don't want to be a scientist.

You can't change the past

The people who love me are awesome

I can be whatever the hell I want to be and I can do amazing things if I put my mind to it. The naysayers can go to hell. I can be awesome and I can't just sit around wishing I was as awesome as other people.

Amazing things may include: Going to Canada for 5 months (actually, there's no 'may' about this, I've booked my flights), studying design and possibly architecture, saying 'screw you' to anyone who thinks I can't or shouldn't.

That writing long blog posts about this kind of thing is cathartic.

Update on Logiesgate

Apparently when I posted yesterday I only had half the story. Another comedian by the name of Catherine Deveny has also gotten herself in hot water with people with no sense of humour

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/05/05/2890855.htm?site=thedrum

Only she got fired because of it.

GAH what is with you, Australia? Get over yourselves. And seriously, why the hell can't we make fun of Bindi Irwin? The kid asks for it.

On Humour, Wil Anderson, and Twitter

So I've been out the last couple of nights and hadn't caught up on all the uproar that Wil Anderson has apparently cause post-Logies.

For my foreign readers, let me, like the good debater I was in school, define the topic. 'The Logies' are sort of like Australia's Emmy awards, except only some of the awards actually got to people who are good. There are 'most outstanding' awards which go to people who can actually act, and a lot of them go to shows and actors no one watched/has heard of. Then, there are the 'most popular' awards which go to soap opera stars and occasionally awesome people like Shaun Micallef.

'Wil Anderson' is an Australian comedian. He also does things like host TV shows which intelligent people watch. He's actually a better host than he is comedian, in my opinion. I don't really like his style of stand-up, mostly because he usually sounds like he's taken a ton of speed before getting up there. But he's amusing and I will defend him to the death because he hosted The Glasshouse.

So, apprently, you weren't allowed to tweet at the Logie awards. For the uninitiated, 'to tweet' is a verb which describes the act of posting 140 character messages on the website Twitter. But Wil decided he would, in an act of anti-establishment defiance, or something. And he said somethings about some people that were...well...less than flattering? You can read them here http://twitter.com/Wil_Anderson

Lots of people I'm sure have had a lot of things to say. By the sounds of it, both A Current Affair and Today Tonight have laid into him. Colour me surprised [/sarcasm]

Then I read this article
http://justinhamilton.com.au/node/123

It basically sums up what I think. I know I sat at home on Sunday night and made fun of the celebrities on the red carpet. I even tweeted what I thought of the more horrendous dresses. But I'm not famous so apparently I'm allowed to. But Wil Anderson, who everyone knows is opinionated and maybe a little bit rude isn't.

Australia, grow up. Ooh, mean old Wil said something bad about your favourite soap opera star. The face that you even have a favourite soap opera star makes me think you have bigger problems in the world. The fact that Josh Thomas said hilarious and true things about Justin Bieber's hair makes you hate him. When did we turn into a country with no sense of humour who takes offence at everything? Why are we now a country who went into melt down because Justin Bieber was here for three days?

In short, when, and how the hell, did we turn into America? And why didn't I get the memo?

Americans, please don't take offence. As individuals, you're great. As a country you can be a little infuriating. And it's not really that I don't like you. I just don't think we should BE you, because we are, in fact, Australian. Or so I thought.

My Brother

My brother just posted something awesome on his blog. You should read it.

http://gw2rs.blogspot.com/2010/05/games-people-play.html

He very accurately sums up the thoughts of a large number of single people. And gives an insight into what it is actually like to have a conversation with him. You can see why sometimes we have incredible screaming matches when we live in the same house.

Love you, Gaz.

Outrage! Or something

Over the last few days I've seen all sorts of people get up in arms about the new changes to the facebook privacy settings, or some such. There's supposedly something we all have to opt out of unless we want the evil empire to own our lives and credit card details. Or something.

Here's the thing, people. I don't see the point of whinging and moaning about privacy when you put your whole life on the internet anyway. You give up a certain amount of your privacy the moment you join a social networking site. You give some nameless corporation your name and location. If you can't accept that, well, perhaps you should have thought about that before you joined.

Perhaps we all should have.

We can't all yell and scream and complain about facebook. Or myspace, or whatever brand of social networking you prefer. Because we made it happen. We joined in our droves and made the creators of these sites millionaires. Our own voyeurism and the need to feel like someone cares about our existense has fed these machines. The only people who have any right to complain about social networking sites taking over our lives are people who don't use them.

And then, well, they probably have no idea what they are talking about. In which case, they should go into politics as it seems they would be in good company.

Oh, and by the by, I went into my privacy options to uncheck this supposedly heinous new infrigement on our privacy. It was already unchecked. I did not have to opt out, because I had never opted in and apparently facebook didn't see the need to opt me in either. So what was the fuss about in the first place, anyway?

Where I'm At

It's funny now, reading over my old blog posts, and realising they very succinctly capture the goings on of the last few months. How did I write some of those things and not realise there was something going on in my head?

To be honest, though, looking back I probably knew deep down what was wrong with me. I definitely knew I had issues with anxiety. The diagnosis of depression was a bit of a surprise at the time, but now I think about it, it shouldn't have been.

In case you hadn't heard and haven't realised by now, yes, I've had a rough few weeks. Recovering from depression is a long journey. But things are definitely looking up. I'm thinking about new vocations and new adventures. I'm going to travel. I'm going to go back to Uni and study some more (and I know you're all looking forward to THOSE blog posts). I'm going to do some of the things that I've been putting off because I never had time.

My journey will probably feature in a few blog posts, because I think mental health is still something we don't talk about enough. We see it as a our own private battle and that's fine, but if you don't talk about it, other people can't help you. And if no one knows where you've been, they can't ask you for help either.

Watch This Space

I have had so many ideas for blog posts racing around my head that I don't know where to start.

So bear with me, and brace yourself for a sudden onslaught of frenzied blogging.

Laptop is still broken, sadly. Well, actually, I had it back for a week but realised it wasn't really fixed after all and took it back again.