I was out at the shops yesterday, with my lovely wife and daughter. We paused for coffee - or at least, I had a coffee; Stacie went with hot-chocolate, and we heartlessly confined our offspring to water - and then had a few other things to do. Scooping up little Charlie, I leaned over to put her in the stroller, twisting slightly to get around the table as I did so. I was at that point that I felt a sensation in my back that could best be described as Ping.
As anyone who has experienced it knows, that Ping is a truly unique sensation. It needs no further explanation to the initiated; the innocent are better off not knowing. But I suppose, for the morbidly curious, it felt a little like when you grip the base of your fingers and squeeze them together, so your knuckles jump over each other. Only in my back. And agonisingly painful.
Mark Twain once said that 'The world is a book, and those that do not travel read only one page.' This pain had aspirations of reading as much of the book of Chris as possible. Its fury spread across my back of course, but intensified with every breath: as a consequence, I found myself involuntarily tensing the muscles in my stomach and chest, trying to limit their movement. Unfortunately, this not only hurt even more, it also began deprive me of a certain amount of oxygen. Which also hurt.
I have hurt myself in the past in similar ways, though seldom as severely. Always I have been told, 'make sure you see a physio.' Having the planning disability known as 'being a man', by the time I ever thought seriously about it, the pain had gone away on its own. Yesterday, however, was different. By which I mean, my wife rang the physiotherapist around the corner and made an appointment for me.
I have never before spoken to a physiotherapist - at least, not in a professional capacity. I have a friend who graduated from Physiotherapy a few years ago. Stacie and I were invited to have dinner with her and her husband a couple of weeks ago, along with some other friends. In the warm after-glow of an excellent meal (both of our hosts are very capable cooks, and they had made dinner between them, a dish each, carefully assigned separate ends of the kitchen as their work spaces, since they are both what you might call 'alpha-chefs) we sat talking over coffee and scotch. Relatively recently graduated from Social Work, I laughingly complained that I sometimes feel like a child, pretending I know how to do my job; my friend the physio agreed. (I felt an even greater deal of sympathy for her than I might otherwise; I work in a high-school, so though my coworkers are older than me, as a rule, my clients are younger. She, on the other-hand, works principally with those over the age of 60.)
However, with no sort of warm glow whatsoever today (unless you count the Deep Heat cream) I made my way to the physiotherapist. I was greeted by an even-more-recently graduated young woman (in the course of our conversation, her side even and considered, my side jerkily put forward between stabs of pain, she told me that she completed her studies at the end of last year) who assessed my back and sides before going to work.
Generally speaking, I believe that I have a reasonable immune system. However, I have made my share of trips to the doctor over the years, and I have noticed this one thing: when you walk out of a doctor's surgery, if you feel any different than when you walked in, it is normally because your level of physical discomfort has increased. Doctors poke you and prod you, put cold things on you, stick things into you and are generally fairly merciless in their quest to make you well. I find that they help, in the long term, and I get better. However, this takes time, and I cannot remember having ever walked out of a doctor's surgery feeling 'cured'. Today was something of a revelation, because when I left, it didn't hurt anymore.
Oh, certainly, by twisting a particular way, bending too far, I could still find the pain - that is, if I tried to hurt myself I could do so, easily. But the majority of the pain was gone.
I have not the slightest idea how this is possible, and I now find myself with a mystical respect for physiotherapists; I feel about Rebecca (my hero) the way I imagine a primitive tribesman must have felt about his witch doctor. I don't understand, but I do not care. I am only grateful!
Read more!
Friday, August 27, 2010
Something a Little Different
Well, as I am chronically sparse in my updates of this blog, I thought I would try something a bit different with it. (If you're reading this on Facebook, and thinking 'What blog?' hit www.room-in-nations.blogspot.com to see the original work that FB pinches without sourcing!) Since I also take photographs (rather more often than I write opinionated opinion-pieces) I figured I would post some of the more arty ones here, with a quick discussion. You know, since I'm being self-indulgent anyway, even having a blog! Hit 'Read More' to see the first upload. Be warned though, it's a photo of me without a shirt on, so you may want to give it a skip!
This photo is titled 'Flash', both for technical and terrible, pun-related reasons. It was taken in my kitchen with a single off-camera speedlight to camera left, dialed down two stops. Exposure details are F5.6, 1/80th sec, ISO1600. Also, too much skin (again with the terrible puns).
I was trying to contrast the cold flash light with the warmth of the light coming from the next room, and hoped that my pose and that contrast would create a kind of isolation and disconnection, coupled with the vulnerability of taking your shirt off in public.
So anyway. First photo. There will be more, in theory, though hopefully they will usually involve less of me.
Read more!
This photo is titled 'Flash', both for technical and terrible, pun-related reasons. It was taken in my kitchen with a single off-camera speedlight to camera left, dialed down two stops. Exposure details are F5.6, 1/80th sec, ISO1600. Also, too much skin (again with the terrible puns).
I was trying to contrast the cold flash light with the warmth of the light coming from the next room, and hoped that my pose and that contrast would create a kind of isolation and disconnection, coupled with the vulnerability of taking your shirt off in public.
So anyway. First photo. There will be more, in theory, though hopefully they will usually involve less of me.
Read more!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
An Argument in Favour of Compassion
My job, ideally, should not exist. People should care for one another instinctively, should be generous to one another, should supply for each other’s needs, and there should be no need to pay people to care. People relate to people. They do not relate to systems, and they do not relate to titles or job descriptions. The reality is, though, that people get forgotten, and other people have to be paid to care. That leads to the development of systems; with the systems come codes of ethics, which demand that people be empowered to solve their own problems, and not forge friendships with workers.
The Australian Association of Social Workers released a code of ethics in 1999, most recently updated in 2004. In Section 4, it states:
“Recognising that conflicts of interest can arise from engaging in dual or multiple relationships with clients… social workers will set and enforce explicit, appropriate professional boundaries to minimize the risk of conflict, exploitation or harm.” (AASW Code of Ethics, 4.1.4.g)
For those who don’t speak AASW jargon, a ‘dual relationship’ is one in which a person fills more than one role – in this instance, for example, trying to be someone’s social worker and their friend at the same. Dual relationships are considered to be problematic. Indeed they very often are. To use another piece of jargon, the existence of a worker-client relationship creates a ‘power differential’ between the two people; that is, there is a significant difference in the levels of power held by each party in the relationship. This is only logical, when you think about it: the client comes to the worker to receive assistance with problems that they are not able to solve themselves. While social work is heavily based on helping a client to identify and employ their own solutions to problems, rather than taking control of the situation and ‘fixing things’, there is still a difference of power that exists, almost unavoidably. Add to this the fact that many social workers are wielders of governmental and legal power, often for the purpose of compelling a client to attend a program or therapy session, and the difference in power held by each person can become substantial.
A ‘power differential’ is not something that is necessarily problematic within the social work context itself, though it can inhibit useful work. However, when social relationships are founded on interactions in which all (or most) of the power lies with one person, problems very often occur. The possibility for abuse, manipulation and control or, on the other hand, interpersonal dependency, is very real. It’s for that reason that the mantra has developed in the field, “I’m your worker, not your friend.” That’s why workers don’t (or shouldn’t, and usually don’t) go on non-work visits with clients, or more recently, accept invitations to be friends on social networking sites.
None of this means that social workers don’t genuinely care about their clients. For my own mental health, and for the sake of my family, I try not to bring my work home, on paper or in my head. Having said that, I have had, and I continue to have, clients who haunt me after hours (fortunately only in that I think of them: I’ve never looked out my kitchen window and seen one in my yard yet…). I know, from speaking to my colleagues, that most, if not all, of them, have had the same experience. None of us can explain what makes one client’s story more touching or tragic than another. Abuse, loss and pain are there everyday, under the surface, even if not directly visible. Sometimes though, it walks with you when you leave the building at the end of the day. A young person who will sleep on the streets because they have no home preys on your thoughts as you sit in your heated car; a single mother, going hungry because there’s rent to be paid, comes to mind as you begin dinner. Social workers care deeply about their clients; when they stop caring, it’s time to find another job.
But we continue to draw up those professional boundaries, for those good reasons: I’m your worker, not your friend.
Last year I attended a case-conference for a client who was in foster care. I’ll call her Kelly, though obviously that’s not her real name. The reasons why Kelly was in care are not relevant right now, but it’s enough to know that her mother couldn’t look after her; she didn’t have enough personal strength to make the changes necessary to keep Kelly when she was a baby. Kelly had no idea who her father was.
For the first few years of her life, Kelly was in a long-term foster placement, but eventually her behaviour became too problematic, and her carers were no longer willing to keep her. She was moved to another long term placement. Again, she stayed until her behaviour became too problematic, and then she had to go. At the time of the conference, she lived in what is known as ‘Transitional Accommodation’. To get through another piece of jargon, that means that she lived in a house with about five or six other young people, and was looked after by multiple carers, on a rotating roster. There are no fulltime carers in the TA houses – regulars, but no one who lives there.
Shortly before that conference, Kelly began to get close to one of the carers, and told her more details about her life and her mental health than she had told anyone previously. However, she also began to self-harm, and the worker began to feel under pressure, as she was the only real contact that Kelly had. The worker’s supervisor responded in keeping with the AASW Code of Ethics, and suggested that the worker be reassigned to another house, for her own safety and mental wellbeing. Kelly seemed to be trying to form a friendship with a worker, which had the potential for trouble.
Kelly was 13 years old – just about the age of starting high school. Remember being that age. You would have been developing into a teenager, certainly, but in most ways, you were still a child. Your experiences would have been quite limited, unless you had an unusually informative upbringing. That was Kelly’s stage of life.
Kelly’s mother couldn’t or wouldn’t, or a combination of both, make the changes necessary to keep her child. Her two long term placements ended with her being told ‘you are too big a problem to stay, so you have to go.’ Her living arrangements when I met her left her with no family, and no stable living companions outside of another few kids, all with similar problems. And as soon as she began to forge a new relationship with a positive adult, that adult was to be taken away.
At the age of 13, Kelly was told that she has to solve her own problems, and though people would support her in that, they would only be paid professionals. She cannot form friendships with them. They cannot love her.
Across the entirety of this planet, there is not a single person who will stand in front of this 13 year old child, and say ‘I love you, and I am here for you, no matter what.’ Not one. She is 13, and she is alone.
Read more!
The Australian Association of Social Workers released a code of ethics in 1999, most recently updated in 2004. In Section 4, it states:
“Recognising that conflicts of interest can arise from engaging in dual or multiple relationships with clients… social workers will set and enforce explicit, appropriate professional boundaries to minimize the risk of conflict, exploitation or harm.” (AASW Code of Ethics, 4.1.4.g)
For those who don’t speak AASW jargon, a ‘dual relationship’ is one in which a person fills more than one role – in this instance, for example, trying to be someone’s social worker and their friend at the same. Dual relationships are considered to be problematic. Indeed they very often are. To use another piece of jargon, the existence of a worker-client relationship creates a ‘power differential’ between the two people; that is, there is a significant difference in the levels of power held by each party in the relationship. This is only logical, when you think about it: the client comes to the worker to receive assistance with problems that they are not able to solve themselves. While social work is heavily based on helping a client to identify and employ their own solutions to problems, rather than taking control of the situation and ‘fixing things’, there is still a difference of power that exists, almost unavoidably. Add to this the fact that many social workers are wielders of governmental and legal power, often for the purpose of compelling a client to attend a program or therapy session, and the difference in power held by each person can become substantial.
A ‘power differential’ is not something that is necessarily problematic within the social work context itself, though it can inhibit useful work. However, when social relationships are founded on interactions in which all (or most) of the power lies with one person, problems very often occur. The possibility for abuse, manipulation and control or, on the other hand, interpersonal dependency, is very real. It’s for that reason that the mantra has developed in the field, “I’m your worker, not your friend.” That’s why workers don’t (or shouldn’t, and usually don’t) go on non-work visits with clients, or more recently, accept invitations to be friends on social networking sites.
None of this means that social workers don’t genuinely care about their clients. For my own mental health, and for the sake of my family, I try not to bring my work home, on paper or in my head. Having said that, I have had, and I continue to have, clients who haunt me after hours (fortunately only in that I think of them: I’ve never looked out my kitchen window and seen one in my yard yet…). I know, from speaking to my colleagues, that most, if not all, of them, have had the same experience. None of us can explain what makes one client’s story more touching or tragic than another. Abuse, loss and pain are there everyday, under the surface, even if not directly visible. Sometimes though, it walks with you when you leave the building at the end of the day. A young person who will sleep on the streets because they have no home preys on your thoughts as you sit in your heated car; a single mother, going hungry because there’s rent to be paid, comes to mind as you begin dinner. Social workers care deeply about their clients; when they stop caring, it’s time to find another job.
But we continue to draw up those professional boundaries, for those good reasons: I’m your worker, not your friend.
Last year I attended a case-conference for a client who was in foster care. I’ll call her Kelly, though obviously that’s not her real name. The reasons why Kelly was in care are not relevant right now, but it’s enough to know that her mother couldn’t look after her; she didn’t have enough personal strength to make the changes necessary to keep Kelly when she was a baby. Kelly had no idea who her father was.
For the first few years of her life, Kelly was in a long-term foster placement, but eventually her behaviour became too problematic, and her carers were no longer willing to keep her. She was moved to another long term placement. Again, she stayed until her behaviour became too problematic, and then she had to go. At the time of the conference, she lived in what is known as ‘Transitional Accommodation’. To get through another piece of jargon, that means that she lived in a house with about five or six other young people, and was looked after by multiple carers, on a rotating roster. There are no fulltime carers in the TA houses – regulars, but no one who lives there.
Shortly before that conference, Kelly began to get close to one of the carers, and told her more details about her life and her mental health than she had told anyone previously. However, she also began to self-harm, and the worker began to feel under pressure, as she was the only real contact that Kelly had. The worker’s supervisor responded in keeping with the AASW Code of Ethics, and suggested that the worker be reassigned to another house, for her own safety and mental wellbeing. Kelly seemed to be trying to form a friendship with a worker, which had the potential for trouble.
Kelly was 13 years old – just about the age of starting high school. Remember being that age. You would have been developing into a teenager, certainly, but in most ways, you were still a child. Your experiences would have been quite limited, unless you had an unusually informative upbringing. That was Kelly’s stage of life.
Kelly’s mother couldn’t or wouldn’t, or a combination of both, make the changes necessary to keep her child. Her two long term placements ended with her being told ‘you are too big a problem to stay, so you have to go.’ Her living arrangements when I met her left her with no family, and no stable living companions outside of another few kids, all with similar problems. And as soon as she began to forge a new relationship with a positive adult, that adult was to be taken away.
At the age of 13, Kelly was told that she has to solve her own problems, and though people would support her in that, they would only be paid professionals. She cannot form friendships with them. They cannot love her.
Across the entirety of this planet, there is not a single person who will stand in front of this 13 year old child, and say ‘I love you, and I am here for you, no matter what.’ Not one. She is 13, and she is alone.
Read more!
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
A Public Service
There are certain things in life which spawn disproportionate amounts of debate. I'm not talking about major issues which people discuss at length – spiritual, ethical, political or other. These spawn about the amount of debate you would expect, because they're beefy subjects. I mean little things, things that don't really matter, but which people seem to pour nearly endless amounts of time and energy into discussing. There are of course the obvious examples – 'Who would win out of a fight between a Star Destroyer and the Enterprise?', for instance – but I'm frequently caught out by some of the ridiculous things people get wound up about. I saw a group on Facebook the other day (indeed I received, and ignored, an invitation to join it) entitled 'Give Australia an R18+ Classification for Games!' I particularly like the exclamation point.
While I have some interest in issues of censorship – I wrote to Communications Minister Steven Conroy to state my opinion against the national broadband filter – I find this particular group a little on the self-important side. For instance, one poster informs the group of the following piece of apocalyptic terror:
“This group (myself included) has been sedentary for too long. Now we have something to galvanise us into action... Left 4 Dead 2 has been refused classification... this is a BIG DEAL. Bigger than Dark Sector and Fallout 3. I'll be following this one very closely.”
Surely, nothing is bigger than Fallout 3.
Admittedly there is a good deal of irony in writing about self-importance in a blog post, of all things. But I have good news: I am not going to spend this post railing about people's priorities and selfishness. I have a different intent in mind: public service.
I would like to attempt to shed some light on a topic, also Facebook related, that, though seemingly even more insignificant and futile than the classification of Dark Sector, nonetheless galvanises at least as many people into action, or at least into a restless bickering that has often turned the air of a room or car the colour of red whine. The issue that has resulted in so many calls for a wah-mbulance in the last couple of years? Facebook friends lists.
If you're a facebook user there's a good chance you're nodding in recognition. Most of us have heard some sort of complaint from someone about friends lists. Whether a whinge about people who 'collect' friends, or a lament from someone that they have been 'culled' from another person's list (usually discovered by accident, since the monster that will allow you to post almost any opinion, and read others' opinions about you, is nonetheless tactful enough not to tell you when you are deliberately removed from someone else's list), it's a common enough refrain that most people have heard it. So here is my service: a brief outline of the three main approaches to Facebook friend-making.
Approach Number 1: Friend Collection
This was something that was almost a hobby earlier in Facebook's life, when you could even add applications that would keep track of your friend count and advertise how many people were 'rolling in your crew'. (Try not to laugh at the image of a bunch of white folks sitting at home, slack-jawed faces bathed in white light from their monitors, reading a commercial app that told them how many people rolled in their crew). It's sort of like a popularity contest, but even more artificial and shallow – a gathering which is a mix of genuine friends, passing acquaintances, and a few high-school nerds who were puzzled to receive a friend request from 'that guy', but who accepted because they were too polite (or afraid) to be so rude as to hit Ignore. This meaningless collection of names forms a number (always at least three digits, or you wouldn't be playing) which, presumably, makes the collector feel good about themselves.
Approach Number 2: Friend Connection
This is something which seemed to appear as a reaction to Friend Collection. People began to mercilessly limit their friends-lists to people who they actually count as friends. The popular line is 'I'm not friends with anyone on Facebook who I wouldn't talk to in real life'. The people who follow this belief system are quick with the Ignore button when friend-requests come in from people they don't know or don't like. They also occasional perform a sort of pruning exercise, going through their friends list and removing people from it who shouldn't be there, people who somehow slipped through the net on the initial request, catching the pruner on a generous day, or people who used to be close to the pruner, and have drifted away. People who follow this discipline appear to feel that they are adhering to a purer form of Facebook use, a sort of asceticism, where the brevity of the list and the tightness of the number on their profile page becomes the most important thing, and indicator of their integrity, and a way of setting themselves apart from the collectors.
Approach Number 3: The Glorified Address Book
I know it doesn't rhyme with the other two approaches, and I'm sorry about that. But this is the third approach, and it seems to rest on the philosophy of 'Who cares?'. People who use Facebook in this way are happy to accept a friend request from fairly well anyone, as long as they are fairly sure they can remember where they know the person from. They know that they're being collected or snooped on from time to time, but they're too apathetic to care. People in this group can superficially resemble collectors, because their friends lists can be quite long, but there is a strong chance they don't really know who is in their list, or that they just assume nearly everyone is, because they generally say yes to anyone. There is a certain practicality to this promiscuity, because it makes it easy to get in touch with anyone, anytime; at the same time, these are the people most likely to grow frustrated by knowing so much about so many people they don't really care about but do nothing about it, because it's too much trouble.
I hope that I have defined the argument clearly, for two reasons. Firstly, altruistically, I just like to help. If you've been sitting at home, perhaps curled in a corner, rocking back and forth, wondering what model of friend-interaction you should adopt in your Facebook-keeping, worry no longer. Simply read the descriptions above, and make a selection. If you choose Approach 2, I look forward to being purged from your friends list any day now.
Secondly, and less altruistically (as well as unrealistically), I hope that I have clarified this to a point that is at least close to finality. This is not simply for the fame and publishing offers that will no doubt flow in as a result of my achievement. My motivation is a simpler thing, a thing of fields and farms, milking cows and chewing strands of wheat: basically, I never want to hear another argument about the subject again.
Shameless self-promotion: to read more head to www.room-in-nations.blogspot.com
Read more!
While I have some interest in issues of censorship – I wrote to Communications Minister Steven Conroy to state my opinion against the national broadband filter – I find this particular group a little on the self-important side. For instance, one poster informs the group of the following piece of apocalyptic terror:
“This group (myself included) has been sedentary for too long. Now we have something to galvanise us into action... Left 4 Dead 2 has been refused classification... this is a BIG DEAL. Bigger than Dark Sector and Fallout 3. I'll be following this one very closely.”
Surely, nothing is bigger than Fallout 3.
Admittedly there is a good deal of irony in writing about self-importance in a blog post, of all things. But I have good news: I am not going to spend this post railing about people's priorities and selfishness. I have a different intent in mind: public service.
I would like to attempt to shed some light on a topic, also Facebook related, that, though seemingly even more insignificant and futile than the classification of Dark Sector, nonetheless galvanises at least as many people into action, or at least into a restless bickering that has often turned the air of a room or car the colour of red whine. The issue that has resulted in so many calls for a wah-mbulance in the last couple of years? Facebook friends lists.
If you're a facebook user there's a good chance you're nodding in recognition. Most of us have heard some sort of complaint from someone about friends lists. Whether a whinge about people who 'collect' friends, or a lament from someone that they have been 'culled' from another person's list (usually discovered by accident, since the monster that will allow you to post almost any opinion, and read others' opinions about you, is nonetheless tactful enough not to tell you when you are deliberately removed from someone else's list), it's a common enough refrain that most people have heard it. So here is my service: a brief outline of the three main approaches to Facebook friend-making.
Approach Number 1: Friend Collection
This was something that was almost a hobby earlier in Facebook's life, when you could even add applications that would keep track of your friend count and advertise how many people were 'rolling in your crew'. (Try not to laugh at the image of a bunch of white folks sitting at home, slack-jawed faces bathed in white light from their monitors, reading a commercial app that told them how many people rolled in their crew). It's sort of like a popularity contest, but even more artificial and shallow – a gathering which is a mix of genuine friends, passing acquaintances, and a few high-school nerds who were puzzled to receive a friend request from 'that guy', but who accepted because they were too polite (or afraid) to be so rude as to hit Ignore. This meaningless collection of names forms a number (always at least three digits, or you wouldn't be playing) which, presumably, makes the collector feel good about themselves.
Approach Number 2: Friend Connection
This is something which seemed to appear as a reaction to Friend Collection. People began to mercilessly limit their friends-lists to people who they actually count as friends. The popular line is 'I'm not friends with anyone on Facebook who I wouldn't talk to in real life'. The people who follow this belief system are quick with the Ignore button when friend-requests come in from people they don't know or don't like. They also occasional perform a sort of pruning exercise, going through their friends list and removing people from it who shouldn't be there, people who somehow slipped through the net on the initial request, catching the pruner on a generous day, or people who used to be close to the pruner, and have drifted away. People who follow this discipline appear to feel that they are adhering to a purer form of Facebook use, a sort of asceticism, where the brevity of the list and the tightness of the number on their profile page becomes the most important thing, and indicator of their integrity, and a way of setting themselves apart from the collectors.
Approach Number 3: The Glorified Address Book
I know it doesn't rhyme with the other two approaches, and I'm sorry about that. But this is the third approach, and it seems to rest on the philosophy of 'Who cares?'. People who use Facebook in this way are happy to accept a friend request from fairly well anyone, as long as they are fairly sure they can remember where they know the person from. They know that they're being collected or snooped on from time to time, but they're too apathetic to care. People in this group can superficially resemble collectors, because their friends lists can be quite long, but there is a strong chance they don't really know who is in their list, or that they just assume nearly everyone is, because they generally say yes to anyone. There is a certain practicality to this promiscuity, because it makes it easy to get in touch with anyone, anytime; at the same time, these are the people most likely to grow frustrated by knowing so much about so many people they don't really care about but do nothing about it, because it's too much trouble.
I hope that I have defined the argument clearly, for two reasons. Firstly, altruistically, I just like to help. If you've been sitting at home, perhaps curled in a corner, rocking back and forth, wondering what model of friend-interaction you should adopt in your Facebook-keeping, worry no longer. Simply read the descriptions above, and make a selection. If you choose Approach 2, I look forward to being purged from your friends list any day now.
Secondly, and less altruistically (as well as unrealistically), I hope that I have clarified this to a point that is at least close to finality. This is not simply for the fame and publishing offers that will no doubt flow in as a result of my achievement. My motivation is a simpler thing, a thing of fields and farms, milking cows and chewing strands of wheat: basically, I never want to hear another argument about the subject again.
Shameless self-promotion: to read more head to www.room-in-nations.blogspot.com
Read more!
Monday, August 17, 2009
Road Rage
I purchased a motorcycle yesterday, my first. I’ve ridden a 50cc scooter for the last 6 months, which technically is a motorcycle; however, yesterday I bought a real one. I’m not a big guy: at about 5’7, and only 65 kilos, I’m what’s often called ‘diminutive’ (‘midget’ is another word I have heard now and again). My new bike is also not a monster, it’s a 250cc Kawasaki, a red ZXR from 1995, affectionately known as the Little Ninja.
I’ve noticed, since I’ve been in the market for a bike, how distinctive they all sound. There are bikes which roar and bikes which throb, bikes which putt and stutter, and then bikes which don’t even really sound like bikes, and purr along. My bike does none of these things. No, my bike screams. I must admit, in the past I’ve often been one of those people who tracks racing bikes as they pass, revs high, raising one eyebrow, and thinking, ‘Wanker.’ I repent. I’ve discovered that it’s impossible to ride this bike any other way. I was sitting at 80 km/h this morning on my way to work, in 6th gear – that’s the top one – and the bike was sitting comfortably at about 7,500 rpm. To put that in perspective should you not be mechanically minded, your car redlines about here, unless you’re driving something exceptional, like the Honda S2000, which will go to 9000 rpm. My little ninja redlines at a hysterical 18,000 rpm.
In short, it screams like a fiend out of hell, and riding it is like hugging a small demon (crouched over, thanks to the shape of the seat and handle-bars) which has escaped from the abyss and is screaming its rage at the sky. Now, compared to some of the big racing bikes – the Ducati Desmosedici RR, the MV Agusta F4, the BMW HP2 – it’s a bit of a foot-dragger. But for all that, it is an evil, evil machine, and I love it!
To read more, check out http://www.room-in-nations.blogspot.com
Read more!
I’ve noticed, since I’ve been in the market for a bike, how distinctive they all sound. There are bikes which roar and bikes which throb, bikes which putt and stutter, and then bikes which don’t even really sound like bikes, and purr along. My bike does none of these things. No, my bike screams. I must admit, in the past I’ve often been one of those people who tracks racing bikes as they pass, revs high, raising one eyebrow, and thinking, ‘Wanker.’ I repent. I’ve discovered that it’s impossible to ride this bike any other way. I was sitting at 80 km/h this morning on my way to work, in 6th gear – that’s the top one – and the bike was sitting comfortably at about 7,500 rpm. To put that in perspective should you not be mechanically minded, your car redlines about here, unless you’re driving something exceptional, like the Honda S2000, which will go to 9000 rpm. My little ninja redlines at a hysterical 18,000 rpm.
In short, it screams like a fiend out of hell, and riding it is like hugging a small demon (crouched over, thanks to the shape of the seat and handle-bars) which has escaped from the abyss and is screaming its rage at the sky. Now, compared to some of the big racing bikes – the Ducati Desmosedici RR, the MV Agusta F4, the BMW HP2 – it’s a bit of a foot-dragger. But for all that, it is an evil, evil machine, and I love it!
To read more, check out http://www.room-in-nations.blogspot.com
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Slippery
It has been, as they say, one of those days. My awareness that this would be the case began to dawn at about 8:00 this morning, when I started to try to leave for work. My wife looked out the window and commented that it was still raining. Sighing then, I pulled off my boots and began unrolling my waterproof pants – riding a motor-scooter, I’m very much more at the mercy of Frey and his friends. It’s not that I mind the rain – once I’m sealed in my riding gear it doesn’t touch me, and my jacket will dry, hanging on the coat hook at work – but it’s a hassle having to negotiate the layers of plastic and carbon-fibre. Still, this is the life I chose when I transitioned from four to two wheels.
Waterproofs on and done up around my boots, I was now ready to go. Again. I just needed my keys. My search for my keys became gradually more irritated and frantic as I checked all the obvious places, and then moved to the obscure – there was no reason for them to be in the shopping bag my wife had taken out yesterday, but I looked anyway. Twice. When a possibility occurred to me, I resisted it for a couple of minutes, continuing to look under pieces of paper and plates. I even lifted my daughter, but she wasn’t sitting on them. It was with a sense of fatalism that I eventually called my manager, knowing she would already be at work, and asked her to look in my desk-drawer. She found a bunch of house-keys, one scooter key, and one key for a wheel-lock. I had caught a ride with a co-worker yesterday, and forgot about them. Spare keys were dug out, and I eventually got to work, late.
The day did not get easier. The volume of calls I took throughout the morning, the printing of new appointment letters, the running back and forth, felt like being sprayed in the face with a high-pressure hose, and there seemed to be nowhere I could turn my head to get a breath. Just as lunch rolled around, and I was settling in for my first bit of peace, a client arrived who needed to be escorted to the shops for some interview clothes. Clamping a lid on my despair (and ensuring it did not spontaneously mutate into a foaming, homicidal rage) I walked through the fluorescent fun-park that is Marion shopping centre, smiling.
I commented to a friend that my day feels like trying to catch the soap in the shower, and each time my fingers begin to close on it, it slips away in a new direction, ricocheting off walls and falling, falling, falling. At least, he commented, it’s not as bad as dropping the soap in a prison shower. Possibly true. On the other hand, I have been so busy I’ve had trouble staying sitting down, so perhaps the analogy holds.
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Waterproofs on and done up around my boots, I was now ready to go. Again. I just needed my keys. My search for my keys became gradually more irritated and frantic as I checked all the obvious places, and then moved to the obscure – there was no reason for them to be in the shopping bag my wife had taken out yesterday, but I looked anyway. Twice. When a possibility occurred to me, I resisted it for a couple of minutes, continuing to look under pieces of paper and plates. I even lifted my daughter, but she wasn’t sitting on them. It was with a sense of fatalism that I eventually called my manager, knowing she would already be at work, and asked her to look in my desk-drawer. She found a bunch of house-keys, one scooter key, and one key for a wheel-lock. I had caught a ride with a co-worker yesterday, and forgot about them. Spare keys were dug out, and I eventually got to work, late.
The day did not get easier. The volume of calls I took throughout the morning, the printing of new appointment letters, the running back and forth, felt like being sprayed in the face with a high-pressure hose, and there seemed to be nowhere I could turn my head to get a breath. Just as lunch rolled around, and I was settling in for my first bit of peace, a client arrived who needed to be escorted to the shops for some interview clothes. Clamping a lid on my despair (and ensuring it did not spontaneously mutate into a foaming, homicidal rage) I walked through the fluorescent fun-park that is Marion shopping centre, smiling.
I commented to a friend that my day feels like trying to catch the soap in the shower, and each time my fingers begin to close on it, it slips away in a new direction, ricocheting off walls and falling, falling, falling. At least, he commented, it’s not as bad as dropping the soap in a prison shower. Possibly true. On the other hand, I have been so busy I’ve had trouble staying sitting down, so perhaps the analogy holds.
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Friday, July 24, 2009
Alanis, Swine Flu, and Sucking the Sack
I’m not sure when exactly it was that Alanis Morissette released ‘Ironic’. I remember I was in early high-school, so I suppose it must have been 1996 or ’97. One thing I do remember though was the absolute shit-storm (and I do not use that term lightly) of a response her use of the word Ironic got.
‘Her examples of irony,’ people kept pointing out, ‘are not ironic! That’s not what the word means! A black fly in your chardonnay is annoying, but not ironic!’ Though it doesn’t surprise me when a few people have a chuckle at the cost of some celebrity, the sheer volume of complaints about this one issue looms large in my memory, a crowd of critics, each trying to push to the front, each wanting to tell us, ‘That’s not what ironic means!’ I even remember seeing an episode of Lois and Clark, the 1990s Superman TV show, which concluded with the principal characters talking about how silly the song was. I will deflect attention from the implication about my television viewing habits as a teenager here by deftly and wittily pointing out the irony of the writers of Lois and Clark, of all shows, criticising a piece of popular culture for factual inaccuracy and internal inconsistency.
Oddly though, much as I might make light of the clamour now, I personally retain a certain nervousness about using the word in conversation. It is as though I’m afraid Teri Hatcher might leap from behind a door, laugh in my face, and point out that my example of irony is no more appropriate than meeting the man of my dreams, and then meeting his beautiful wife – an example which is suddenly imbued with greater, more disturbing meaning than ever before and for which, sadly, I have no deft or witty distractions.
I suspect however that my usage is appropriate, and that criticism of factual errors from Lois and Clark probably counts as irony. Similarly, there is a quote in the new Transformers movie, Revenge of the Fallen, which I suspect is equally ironic. It occurs relatively early in the film, when Sam, the human boy we last saw kissing his girlfriend while reclining on his car (the fact that his car is a sentient alien robot raises interesting questions about the number of beings present in this scenario; for good or evil however, those questions fall outside the scope of this post), first meets his college room-mate, Leo. In an incredible (and predictable) coincidence, Leo is a conspiracy theorist who runs a website investigating the presence of the Transformers on earth. (The film is full of such coincidences, and lends itself well to use as background for a drinking game.) In attempting to deflect Leo from his interest in the aliens, Sam tells him that it’s ‘all fake,’ and obviously made up. Leo’s response is very much in keeping with the feel of the movie, and accompanied by hand-gestures:
‘Don’t be sucking the sack, man!’ Pushed for clarification on what this statement might mean, and ignoring his friend who chips in with ‘the ball-sack’, Leo responds, ‘The mainstream-media sack!’ The implication, obviously, is that Sam should not simply absorb everything served up in the media. The irony here is hilarious and, I suspect, deliberate. An artefact of culture more tightly coiled in mainstream-media than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, is a hard (and terrifying) monster to imagine. Fallen is loud and rude, consumerist in almost every way (the movie is based on a line of toys, to start off with), and panders to American culture and the American military (there are long sequences of shots of military hardware, clearly there for no reason except to demonstrate that Michael Bay was able to get them through his astonishing brown-nosing). None of this should be taken to suggest that I did not like the movie – quite the opposite, I have seldom enjoyed a trip to the cinema so much – but I recognise it for what it is.
Comments on the tone of the film aside, I know that Leo has a point. Mainstream media is something to be taken carefully. Not, I think, because the whole thing is created as an elaborate conspiracy to keep us from knowing the truth about the alien conspiracy, but for another reason. Somebody once asked me, 'What is the main purpose of the TV news?' The typical answers sprang to mind: to convey information; to influence; to inform. The answer, however, was startlingly obvious once he said it. 'The principal purpose of the TV news is to sell advertising slots.'
TV News is prime-time television. Channel 7's Network Rating Report for New South Wales in July (you can find it here) states that at present 7 news is drawing 1.532 millions viewers, up on Nine by 253,000. To save you the maths, that puts Nine at 1.279 million, giving them a combined total of 2.811 million. New South Wales has a population of about 6.8 million at present. Even assuming that each TV is being watched by only one person (and I would assume this is unlikely) that means that the news reaches more than one person in three each night. There are few advertising platforms more powerful, and though I can't find information online about actual costs of slots, estimates seem to range between 10 and 30 thousand dollars for a 30 second slot.
The implications of using the news to sell advertising space are nothing new – people have been worried about it for a long time – and also fairly apparent: news programmers have to avoid saying anything to undermine the messages of their advertisers; they also need to avoid boring or confusing their viewers, therefore causing them to tune out. The news has to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. The lowest common denominator, if you like.
During the recent rise of swine flu across the globe, the media has provided story after story with titles like 'Australia's First Swine Flu Death', without mentioning that most of those who have died with Swine Flu have also had other, serious illnesses. Like cancer, for instance.
I don't in any way want to minimise the pain of the families of those who have died with Swine Flu. But it does seem as though the media has been content to play the story for all it has been worth, frightening people into watching, and making a good deal of money out of the whole thing.
I had thought of ending this post with a sentence a little like this: if you jump on board the media wagon, without ever once considering the motivations for running a particular story, or focusing on an element of a story, you are the lowest common denominator. However, while I was doing a bit of reading for it, I found this wikipedia article, explaining that actually, the phrase 'lowest common denominator is an error of understanding, and a more accurate use of language would be to refer to the 'highest common divisor'.
The things you learn while you're sucking the sack.
Read more!
‘Her examples of irony,’ people kept pointing out, ‘are not ironic! That’s not what the word means! A black fly in your chardonnay is annoying, but not ironic!’ Though it doesn’t surprise me when a few people have a chuckle at the cost of some celebrity, the sheer volume of complaints about this one issue looms large in my memory, a crowd of critics, each trying to push to the front, each wanting to tell us, ‘That’s not what ironic means!’ I even remember seeing an episode of Lois and Clark, the 1990s Superman TV show, which concluded with the principal characters talking about how silly the song was. I will deflect attention from the implication about my television viewing habits as a teenager here by deftly and wittily pointing out the irony of the writers of Lois and Clark, of all shows, criticising a piece of popular culture for factual inaccuracy and internal inconsistency.
Oddly though, much as I might make light of the clamour now, I personally retain a certain nervousness about using the word in conversation. It is as though I’m afraid Teri Hatcher might leap from behind a door, laugh in my face, and point out that my example of irony is no more appropriate than meeting the man of my dreams, and then meeting his beautiful wife – an example which is suddenly imbued with greater, more disturbing meaning than ever before and for which, sadly, I have no deft or witty distractions.
I suspect however that my usage is appropriate, and that criticism of factual errors from Lois and Clark probably counts as irony. Similarly, there is a quote in the new Transformers movie, Revenge of the Fallen, which I suspect is equally ironic. It occurs relatively early in the film, when Sam, the human boy we last saw kissing his girlfriend while reclining on his car (the fact that his car is a sentient alien robot raises interesting questions about the number of beings present in this scenario; for good or evil however, those questions fall outside the scope of this post), first meets his college room-mate, Leo. In an incredible (and predictable) coincidence, Leo is a conspiracy theorist who runs a website investigating the presence of the Transformers on earth. (The film is full of such coincidences, and lends itself well to use as background for a drinking game.) In attempting to deflect Leo from his interest in the aliens, Sam tells him that it’s ‘all fake,’ and obviously made up. Leo’s response is very much in keeping with the feel of the movie, and accompanied by hand-gestures:
‘Don’t be sucking the sack, man!’ Pushed for clarification on what this statement might mean, and ignoring his friend who chips in with ‘the ball-sack’, Leo responds, ‘The mainstream-media sack!’ The implication, obviously, is that Sam should not simply absorb everything served up in the media. The irony here is hilarious and, I suspect, deliberate. An artefact of culture more tightly coiled in mainstream-media than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, is a hard (and terrifying) monster to imagine. Fallen is loud and rude, consumerist in almost every way (the movie is based on a line of toys, to start off with), and panders to American culture and the American military (there are long sequences of shots of military hardware, clearly there for no reason except to demonstrate that Michael Bay was able to get them through his astonishing brown-nosing). None of this should be taken to suggest that I did not like the movie – quite the opposite, I have seldom enjoyed a trip to the cinema so much – but I recognise it for what it is.
Comments on the tone of the film aside, I know that Leo has a point. Mainstream media is something to be taken carefully. Not, I think, because the whole thing is created as an elaborate conspiracy to keep us from knowing the truth about the alien conspiracy, but for another reason. Somebody once asked me, 'What is the main purpose of the TV news?' The typical answers sprang to mind: to convey information; to influence; to inform. The answer, however, was startlingly obvious once he said it. 'The principal purpose of the TV news is to sell advertising slots.'
TV News is prime-time television. Channel 7's Network Rating Report for New South Wales in July (you can find it here) states that at present 7 news is drawing 1.532 millions viewers, up on Nine by 253,000. To save you the maths, that puts Nine at 1.279 million, giving them a combined total of 2.811 million. New South Wales has a population of about 6.8 million at present. Even assuming that each TV is being watched by only one person (and I would assume this is unlikely) that means that the news reaches more than one person in three each night. There are few advertising platforms more powerful, and though I can't find information online about actual costs of slots, estimates seem to range between 10 and 30 thousand dollars for a 30 second slot.
The implications of using the news to sell advertising space are nothing new – people have been worried about it for a long time – and also fairly apparent: news programmers have to avoid saying anything to undermine the messages of their advertisers; they also need to avoid boring or confusing their viewers, therefore causing them to tune out. The news has to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. The lowest common denominator, if you like.
During the recent rise of swine flu across the globe, the media has provided story after story with titles like 'Australia's First Swine Flu Death', without mentioning that most of those who have died with Swine Flu have also had other, serious illnesses. Like cancer, for instance.
I don't in any way want to minimise the pain of the families of those who have died with Swine Flu. But it does seem as though the media has been content to play the story for all it has been worth, frightening people into watching, and making a good deal of money out of the whole thing.
I had thought of ending this post with a sentence a little like this: if you jump on board the media wagon, without ever once considering the motivations for running a particular story, or focusing on an element of a story, you are the lowest common denominator. However, while I was doing a bit of reading for it, I found this wikipedia article, explaining that actually, the phrase 'lowest common denominator is an error of understanding, and a more accurate use of language would be to refer to the 'highest common divisor'.
The things you learn while you're sucking the sack.
Read more!
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