The middle

So, dear reader, where is the obsession with endings going? This metaphor for life. This penchant for death? Well in reflection I guess it all leads to this important point.

It is the journey.

An end is an end but the journey is life. All things that begin end but the bit in the middle is where the enjoyment is, it is where we live. Slice it up and concentrate on the moment. Don’t believe the “I’ll be happy when’s”. Fall in love with the moment. Seek the unexpected.

Look for the opportunity to live. Never accept being miserable for some perceived future happiness - well, there are some strong qualifiers around that one but you get my drift.

Accept the path as the destination, the bit at the end is not the point.

Love

Is Memes the plural of Meme?

It seems this blog is circling around the subject of endings. I just finished listening to the last in the BBC H2G2 series. The Quintessential Phase (the fifth part of a trilogy) final episode aired in the UK last week and thanks to the wonders of Bittorrent I was listening to it in my car on the way to work this morning.

I can almost remember my first taste of the H2G2. I was catching a lift from my sisters boy friend (now one of my brothers in law). It was being played on the album show of a local radio station, I guess I was 16 or so. Naturally I bought the vinyl. And then second album and then the book. I still have the books but can’t remember exactly what happened to the vinyl. I think I lent them to my ex girlfriends brother – he has a natural talent as a sponge – and have not seen them since.

That was a long time ago and the movie rekindled my interest. As mentioned previously I downloaded phase 1 & 2 of the radio original play – delightful – and my son loved it as well. I found a great article in Wilkpedia about the series and, with great joy, discovered that the BBC had recorder the next three parts – oh joy, oh happy days…

The rest is history, at least from the perspective of an ape descendant travelling linearly in the time dimension.

So long Douglas and thanks for all the memes.

ZZ plural alpha

Human Resource

Here is an interesting piece of human resource management for you. My present employer may or may not be moving the division I work for to a hick town just on the edge of the middle of nowhere.

While I was being interviewed for this position the interviewers did mention it, but, that it was a remote possibility. I rejoined that my moving in that eventuality was also a remote possibility – at least it got a laugh. Now, a year down the track, the possibility of the move is the favourite topic of the rumour mill. Starting about three or five months ago the consensus estimate of the gossip has increase the chances of this move from not very likely to “they are going to tell us we are going next week”.

The sad thing is that most of the people that work here don’t want to move – especially me. So here I am filling time until an announcement is made.

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Don’t get me wrong I am being productive, but not motivated or focused. The other consequence is that I now habitually read the help wanted web pages – there is heaps of demand for my skill set in town so no problem. I haven’t hit the contact network yet – that happens if the move is on.

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It isn't that I haven’t been pro-active in this mater - for this is my nature. I ask my boss and his boss and his bosses boss over the past months but only got a collection of slippery words. A less stubborn person would take this as confirmation. Or may be I am just self delusional?

To quote the Smiths (from the album “Hatfull of Hollow”)

I was looking for a job, and then I found a job

And heaven knows I'm miserable now

In my life

Oh, why do I give valuable time

To people who don't care if I live or die ?

What more can I say?

Smile

Every now and then I see a man out walking in the suburb pushing a pram or with a child on his shoulders or just holding hands with his kid and it makes me feel good.

Dread

Dread

Forgive the slowness of my typing today. My son appeared next to my bed at about 4:30 this morning. “Dad, I’ve had a bad dream”. He is 9 and rarely has bad dreams – the last occasion I can remember was just after Monsters Inc when he was 6 or 7.

I managed to ask him what it was about – “Robbers were breaking into the house”. It sounded scary and he was shaking so he slept in our bed – I didn’t.

I can remember having bad dreams as a child – or remember remembering. My bad dreams at that age revolved around monsters (well actually one particular monster) jumping out of the ground – sort of a conglomerate of bone in a human shape. It would chase me with the goal of putting me across its knee and smacking my arse (butt - if you prefer). I wonder if my mum was having a bad midlife event at that time?

It is interesting that my boy has more realistic nocturnal tormentors. I suspect this reflects on his upbringing in a strict atheist household. Don’t get me wrong. We enjoy all sorts of mumbo jumbo entertainments ala Harry Potter etc and he is taught respect for the religious beliefs of other but these are always put in the context of “made up by people” – “what can you make up”. And, indeed, he plays all the usual kids fantasy stuff – Starwars, mysterious potions, flying dogs etc. So despite the absence of deities, devils, angels, leprechauns, whatever, his imagination is very active.

I am guessing the trigger for the event was a brief mention my partner made of cars being broken into at the Basketball stadium where she played earlier that evening. My son also plays there so has a strong connection with the goings on at the stadium. I wonder what the robbers looked like – I will ask.

Good night

Endings

One of my previous posts motioned conclusions of long running series. I only just realised what a strong metaphor for life that was… One of my relatives passed away on Friday.

He was the brother of my brother in-law. I am not sure how to react. I know my Brother in-law would be in a lot of pain, as I would be in his situation, but I don’t know how to express my condolences to him. I last saw them together at my nieces engagement party – it was the first time I had seen them together for some years. I even commented how much alike they were becoming in looks.

My imediate family is very remote from its cultural root. The kind of rules and protocols for dealing with this sort of thing are absent or, at least, very confused – My mother and father were from very different backgrounds (countries actually) and cultures. The same goes for my grand mother on mums side. In her case she even denied her cultural origins to the point my mother though her Mum was Greek. Things are a bit less confused on Dads side but even so his parents were from different sides of the Irish sea.

So in my cultural vacuum I called my brother in-law not knowing what to say or offer. Luckily no one answered and I was able to leave a brief message to him on his answering machine. I know this is cowardly and I will call him again soon.

Do not forget the face of your Father.

Share And Enjoy

O.K. may be this isn’t funny for every one but my son and I were waiting in a Pharmacy for my partner to make a purchase. We were standing beside one of those Kodak digital photo self serve machines. It was babbling away about its function and features and then, as its auto triggered self promotion came to a conclusion, it used the catch slogan “Share and Enjoy”. My son looked up at me and we both burst out laughing.

To be in on this joke you have to listen to the original BBC H2G2 radio series.

Share and Enjoy!




To save you 6 hours of you life to be in on a tenuous, but funny, moment in my past the phrase is the advertising slogan penned by the fictitious advertising executives at the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation - the group used by Adams to represent all that is wrong with marketing and the values of our culture.

The original radio play is good. While not listening to it will save 6 hours of you life. Your life will be very much richer for the experience. Probably not enriched enough to actually take 6 hours and sit down and listen to it as a sole purpose but more as an adjunct to a long commute to work or while doing some other task that doesn’t deserver your 100% attention. Worst case it will make you laugh, especially if you find yourself listening to a pre-programmed, proximity triggered photo machine telling you to Share and Enjoy.

I had a couple of random thoughts.

The first one was about bullying. I have told my son that if he is gets bullied to attack the bully back as hard as possible. Don’t hold back. The theory is that a bully will only pick on weak kids who don’t fight back (well it was good advice from my dad that worked for me). If you fight back then the bully will find a more compliant victim. Looking at world politics and war I believe this concept to be scalable. I would go on but I don’t want to upset readers in the US.

The other one was about early 70s heavy metal. I was enjoying the Wolf Mother EP and trying to pin down whether it was closer to Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin. The wonder is that the Wolf Mother EP sounds so vibrant and fresh using musical style that I though had been truly exhausted. The thought was that only talented youth are only capable of producing good heavy metal, not that the genre was dead. I guess you could have used Jet as the example. This naturally leads to the question ‘was eighties hair rock heavy metal or an exercise in homoerotica?’ I don’t know, I kind of dismissed the whole period as a joke. I could go on for hours….

So now you have an insight into how disorganised my mind really is.

Damaged

It’s been just over three weeks since the big storm pulled my part of the world apart. While I only lost a few tree branches there was a lot of damage (A$25M by one count).

Any how while I was driving through the suburb there was a family moving out. Their house was fairly battered in the storm. A yellow tarp was all that was separating the outside from the inside of their house. I guess they gave up waiting for repairs.

Looking out my back door I can see a heap of tarpaulin covered roofs and know there are people doing it hard. Winter is now fully in this part of the globe with regular rain and cold nights. So much for insurance.

I guess the bigger question is what would have happened if the damage was wider spread or more extensive. Like three weeks on and repairs have yet to start for some folks.

The Hitchhikers Guide to Starwars

O.K. Starwars has been concluded, Douglas Adams dream of HHGTTG on the big stream has been done and Stephen King has released the last book in the Dark Tower series. What is left? All these series have been kicking around for most of my life. I guess there will be spin offs, especially for Starwars and the Dark Tower.

Having said that Douglas Adams and HHGTTG has had, and will continue to have, an influence on our culture. I’m actually listening to the original radio play at the moment, not at the moment at the moment but while travelling to/from work on a so called freeway. His usage of language was very clever and the little throw away ideas were brilliant. It should be one of those books that you have to study for high school English – atleast it would keep the students interested.

Here is something to do. Watch the Matrix and then read/listen or watch the HHGTTG. Apart from the main theme of the Matrix being one of the minor sub plot of the HHGTTG try and identify how many of Adams ideas were picked up. I wonder if it was deliberate?

By the way I loved the HHGTTG move. Also thought Starwars III was fairly good. I haven’t read Dark Tower VII but V was one of the best books I have read in a few years (VI was no where near as good).