10 things people STILL believe, and it blows my freaking mind.

Ten things people still believe, and it blows my mind:

1) Creationism. That the Earth, no, the Universe, was created in six days, the seventh used for a game of golf. (What was the foursome? The holy Trinity and who else?). Apparently Creationists believe the world/universe was built a mere 10,000 years ago, or so. Especially curious this because there are fossil-y things that are a fuck of a lot older. Apparently there's an argument that the "Creator" made them look that old.

Why?

Really, why? What earthly purpose would there be to create shit that looked eons older than the lump of dirt that that thing was buried in? There is absolutely no explanation that satisfies that one.

2) In a similar vein, the "afterlife". Come on, really. Who are you kidding? This is the ultimate boogie man, a creature we should have grown out of before our 10th birthday. If you're good, heaven awaits (descriptions vary). Naughties go to hell (for a full description see Dante -- apparently he's been there. It's pretty well mapped out. Better than the other place. Makes you wonder). Personally, I believe that when I die, my organs will be harvested, per my instructions, I'll be cremated, per my instructions, and my ashes sprinkled over the local nude beach. That's MY afterlife.

2a) The ability to talk to those IN the afterlife. John Edwards has made a good living off his ability to guess regular folks stuff in a really vague and wishy-washy manner. "I'm getting the letter N". Really? One of the more common letters in the alphabet? I'd be impressed if he said "Does the letter 'X' mean anything to you?" And the person said "Yes! Xavier was my great uncles third cousins half sister." But no, it's always N or M or T.

3) In a similar, similar vein, ghosts. Demi Moore is cute (sorry, Mrs Kutcher is cute) but that movie was totally unbelievable. Vacuous, vaporous spirits wandering the earth because they can't get to the 'other side'. I thought we established there was no other side. Dead is dead. Not dead is not dead. There is no dead but not dead.

4) Starbucks is good value for money. This is a biggie. In the United States there's a Starbucks for every 14.3 residents (includes illegals). A Venti half-caf skim Cap is not only a shitty tasting brew, it costs in the neighbourhood of $8.00. For that amount of green I can buy a bag of ALREADY GROUND coffee that will provide for me, with very little effort, twenty venti cups. By the way. Venti? That's Italian for 20. What's that supposed to mean?

5) Dane Cook is funny. He isn't

6) Good blended malt scotch can be as good as single malt scotch. It can't.

7) There is a group of really special people that can see the future. Ha! They would put the lottery business under in a week. I had a 'psychic' tell me, in 1992, that I would be running my own business making cabinets by the year 2000. Slight miss. But I was wearing work boots, jeans and a denim jacket. Maybe I looked the part.

8) Jack Bauer is real. If only.

9) (and this MAY allow me to check out Dante's architectural plans) the supreme being. Deity. Creator. (kinda ties in with point 1. Good callback, eh?) I thought we were descendants of aliens (sorry, getting ahead of myself). I have a difficult time believing that there's a grand architect that a) knows what we're doing and b) judges us accordingly. Wait. That's Santa!

10) Aliens. Hmmmm. Green men, crashing space craft in Nevada...and why do ALL of the aliens seem to land in the States? I haven't heard of a single one landing in Bhutan. Well, that's a bad choice. Very hilly. No really good landing spots. Okay. You never hear of green-skinned googly-eyed visitors from a star way far away landing in the Congo. Wouldn't THAT fuck them up?

Bottom line, we are small, insignificant lumps of flesh, on a tiny planet, orbiting a mediocre star in one of a multitude of galaxies, capable of creating beautiful art, soaring symphonies, mind blowing technology, all in the real world. Accept THAT.

PANIC! FUD! HYSTERIA!

A couple of days ago there were 24 documented cases of swine flu (No, I'm NOT changing what I call it to keep the pig farmers happy!) in Australia. Yesterday there were 60. Today, around lunch time-ish we were looking at a bit over 100.

The newspapers have rolled out their barrels of hysterical ink.

"10,000" deaths in Australia has been mooted.

Some idiot spoke of the number cases doubling every day.

DO THE MATH MORON!

If we doubled every day, by June 15th, check the calendar people, that's less than three weeks from now, every single breathing human being in Australia would be infected with the pig that flu. And half of us would have it TWICE!

Ten days after that, assuming we keep this ridiculous "double every day" assumption alive and well, everybody on the planet will have the swine flu five times over.

Sheesh.

Perspective, like the kind I learned in first year Engineering, is needed.

Relax.

Don't let anybody sneeze on you (sneeze right back on them if they do!).

Do the handshake like Howie Mandel (look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about) and chill the fuck out people

Winter?

Lord Byron wrote: "The English winter - ending in July, to recommence in August." Kind of the exact opposite of winters here in Sydney: Commencing in July, ending in August. I prefer it this way.

But enough weather talk, after all "Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative" (according to Oscar Wilde)

This weekend is the weekend that really, officially, unquestionably ends winter in the UK.

The final Premiership week, when fortunes will be saved or lost (none to be gained -- you can't be promoted above the Premier League, at least not yet).

An avid follower of football since my wee son (who now stands taller than his mom) took up the sport, this weekend tinges my heart with a bit of sadness. Regular team football at the highest level takes a break, and the selfish spectator that I am can't understand why they won't consent to a year 'round job, like mine.

There is still the youth football that is followed equally as avidly by all parents whose children are involved in the sport, but aside from that, and a handful of World Cup 2010 qualifying games (decisions are almost all completed on that front) it's going to be a dry spell. At least next year the end of the regular season will be followed by the World Cup in South Africa.

The end of the season, though, is always filled with last minute dramatics. Like will Hull beat Manchester United (scoff, scoff) and dodge relegation to the lower league? Will Sir Alex Ferguson play his under 13 team (he doesn't need to win this and has a cracker of a Champions League final next week), or will he field a team that challenges Hull? Will Newcastle United have a spectacular day (a thing they've been avoiding for the better part of three months), beat Aston Villa and dodge relegation?

All kinds of drama. (I know. Most people don't care.) And while I'm not a Newcastle fan, I'd hate to see that team drop a division. So I'll be up late tonight, flipping between the games (all games on the final day are played at the same time, the bastards), setting myself up for a very tired Monday.

At the Saturday morning games a group of five or six of us dads sideline-coach, exhort the players to, well, play, and discuss at length the ins and outs, ups and downs, of the Premier league.

After this week we'll have to actually focus on the boys on the pitch. We've got twelve more weeks of games.

Up to the 15th of August.

Up to the weekend that really, officially, unquestionably ends winter in Australia.

(Re)cursive writing

(My shift key is too close to my 'Enter' key and as a result I have three empty posts that I can't seem to delete. Please disregard.)

[edit: Found out how to delete, so the bit above will make no sense now. Please disregard my request for you to disregard]

So...

Ironically I'm writing today about writing, the effects booze has on writing and writers - prolific and respected writers - that seem to manage to have massive careers while, if the press is to be believed, hammered, and also on what influences and experiences are important, and necessary, to develop good writers.

And no, I m not currently under the influence. The multiple empty posts are merely fat pinkie errors. I'm overdosing on very strong, black coffee right now.

Hemingway tops the list in the 'you've got to live it to write it' category. Living in Spain, fishing in Bimini, hanging with Castro, reporting on the Spanish Civil War; pretty much everything he did formed the basis of his writings. I guess the equivalent is method acting. Personally I think he went a bit overboard. If that makes a good writer, then I need to kill myself a bull, pronto.

Maybe I can string a story around the four months I spent as an electrician's apprentice in the zinc mine in Northern Manitoba (actually, an idea just came to me...). Or maybe, the four months with the Naval Engineering Unit of the Canadian Navy. (A Chief Petty Officer offered to get me ball cap with 'Civilian Under Naval Training' on the brim. After a quick thought I politely declined.) Of course there's the current job...wait, there's some of that in what I'm writing now.

Write what you know, they say...which brings us to the guy that inspires me the most as a writer.

Stephen King, (I'm making some broad assumptions here) can not have experienced much of anything that he's written about (at least the fiction bits, anyway). Wouldn't think he was a rabid dog, menstruating, telekinetic teen or a young pyrokinetic (if that indeed is the term), yet he can spew (and I mean that in a good way) a torrent of words.

In his book On Writing he mentioned that he has almost no recollection of writing Cujo, the story of the rabid Saint Bernard.

Amazing, when you think of it.

It would be an interesting exercise to measure relative popularity of his writings against his average blood-alcohol level while writing the first draft.

I recall everything I've read, although I have, on occasion, written while under the influence of scotch. Those writings, I'll admit, tend to stray from the plot, rename characters (in my current efforts, a terrorist apprentice named 'Bashir' became 'Brian'. Very strange), and tend to be generally dyslexic. I can only hope Mr. King's editor was paid very, very well during that stage of his writing life.

--oOo--

Separate note. I read the funniest The Onion headline yet. "Paranoid Optimist Just Knows Someone is Out to Get Him a Present". Brilliant!

--oOo--

...and before I get back to my other writings (researching the SAS, of which I've never been a member, for a story plot line), one more thing. The kids and I are heading to see the new Star Trek movie this afternoon. For some inexplicable reason I keep calling it 'Star Wars'. WTF!

Will post my thoughts on it later.

bits and bots, spicks and specks, odds and ends

[Hey, I wrote this a while ago and didn't post it. It's been sitting in a 'draft'y place. Don't know why. Posting it now]

First...


Thanks for the notes asking...sonny-boy is just fine. Played the last 10 minutes of the game on the weekend, really stretched out the leg and came through it just fine. One more physio trip for good measure and it's back to regular trainings and games.

[edit: fully healed, he played almost the entire game on the weekend and ROCKED! - we lost though]

--oOo--

Second...


It's starting to get freaking cold here at night.


Yeah, I know, I grew up in that particular hell where snot freezes to your nose and you have to plug in the block heater on your car or -- and this isn't hyperbole -- the coolant will freeze and possibly crack your block. I grew up in a place where the snow at Halloween was old, dirty brown snow, it had been down that long, and Halloween costumes had to fit over the big-assed snowsuits we had to wear. A place where you had to allow a good twenty minutes at the front end of your schedule to scrape all the frozen crap off your car. A place where snowbanks 10 feet tall were not at all uncommon.


But I left that kind of weather for a reason. I HATE IT.


And I've aclimated to the lovely weather we have here, to the extent that when it gets down to 7 or 8 degrees C at night, I think I'm going to die.



[Digressive aside: Old guy was talking to a couple of tourists in Northern Canada interested in exploring the vast, tree-less country-side one February.


Old guy: "You need to get back here before night. The temperature is going down to 65 below tonight."


Touristy guy: "Celcius or Farenheit?"


Old guy: "First one, then the other."]


So we're lighting fires at night, got the electric blankets out, and we'll endure the frigid highs of 20C until it starts warming up again in August.

--oOo--

And third...


I was in a meeting today that got crashed by an idiot. I'm going to thread that fine line between obscuring identity enough to protect myself should this person, somehow, stumble across this and knows who I'm talking about, and revealing enough for it to be somewhat cathartic.


[Another digressive aside. I'm in a male dominated job, in as much that the he-to-she ratio is at least 10-to-1. In environments such as this, I find, hiding a persons gender almost exclusively means it's a 'she',


Exception to the rule? There's always exceptions, and I've got one.


I have worked with a guy who was gay. No big deal. Everyone knew he was gay. Nobody seemed to care, but he was old enough (at least I think that was the reason) that he felt he had to hide the fact.


His gayness didn't bother me, but his incessant, boring, Higgens-like stories did.


Here's the exception to the rule that hiding a persons gender means that the person is a she. In every single discussion about his personal life he talked about 'his partner', 'friend', 'person', you get the picture; all gender non-specific words. The 'partner' were a guy. Ah well. He'll loosen up soon enough. Bud, if you're reading this and know who you are, we know, and don't really care.


But I'm digressing]


I was talking about the gender non-specific person that loves to insert themself into meetings that a) they really don't need to be in and b) have no fucking idea what the subject matter is. Because this person has the ear of some highly placed people, we can't really say what we're thinking to this person. As soon as this person shows up -- usually unannounced -- I write in my notebook 'SHUT THE FUCK UP'.

It's addressed to me.

Should I slip, and it's happened before, and I end up attempting to have a discussion with this person, my head will explode. This is not just a saying. There will be a loud POP, a spray of skull and brain matter, and there will be a bloody stump where my head should be.


It's happened before.


So, when the neutral-gendered, annoying to the brink of murder-suicide, person shows up now my twittering volume will increase.


I have to vent somewhere.


Cheers all, and maybe I'll see you in twitterville.