New Years Eve and New Blogs

It’s new year’s eve; a time when family comes together including the less than savoury members of it; you know exactly who I’m talking about as every family has them. Whether it is an uncle who drinks a little too much and gets very loud and obnoxious or a sister in law who thrives on stress and tension and will do anything she can to make sure every family event has an ‘atmosphere’ these are the skeletons in the closet who come out to play at special occasions and whom we try our best to ignore the rest of them time.

I have found a wonderful new blog called ‘Local Girls Day in Pictures‘ and it is a breath of fresh air in the slightly pretentious veil of pseudo-identities the internet allows you to create. Caroline Clifford shares with us her day to day life including all the nutters she gets to associate with in a beautiful free-flow picture format very unlike my blog which often just contains big chunks of text; +1 to her.

The old adage ‘you can choose your friends but not your family’ is so true. Tonight as I raise my glass of champagne at midnight I’ll think of all of you doing likewise; friends, family and nutters included.

Happy New Year and may 2008 bring all you could wish for.

New Year, Blogs, Reviews

A Doctor’s ’stuff you’ Attitude

I am so very very weary of poor service delivery and rude assholes. My little boy has been running a fever since last night, he’s feeling absolutely miserable and first thing this morning I phone the doctor to make an appointment – the first one I could get was 1pm. I have sat with him now for 4 hours looking after and entertaining him while he burns up red faced on the couch and finally the time arrived for us to go. I dressed him and bundled him into the car and got him upstairs to the receptions rooms.

The doctor’s are short staffed over this period which I understand; instead of the usual friendly receptionist there sits Mr. muscles with the spray on shirt, the crew cut and heaps of attitude. He looks me dead pan and informs me that 2 other patients have ‘just arrived’ (clearly not needing to make appointments) and the wait is now 40 minutes. When I asked whether this was good service and whether he was incapable of picking up a telephone to let me know that there is now a huge wait he told me that there is nothing to do, I must ‘deal with it’ as that’s just the way it is.

i.e. Fuck you, you need something we have so shut up and sit down; I almost popped a blood vessel and felt like embedding a couple of knuckles in Mr. Muscles’ attitude; thankfully sanity prevailed and he got a highly contemptuous tongue lashing mostly lost on his vacuous simian intellect.

People mess with your sick kids, I tell you it brings out something primal in you.

Service delivery and human decency are a commodity which are in increasingly short supply.

Exploring a Treasure Trove of old Photos

My dad recently had the foresite to have a huge amount of photos, taken over many decades by various family members, digitally scanned. I imported the DVD of photos to my computer and have found the most amazing treasure trove of old, sometimes damaged photos that have a look and feel about them which is very difficult to replicate.

I have to wonder, what was this ship and to which far off land was it going?

update: 2 Jan
I have put together an album for all these old authentic photos over on Ipernity; hope you enjoy them.

Another Christmas Come and Gone

Wow, 2007 happened quickly! A busy frenetic year stuffed full of all sorts of things that had me so wholly preoccupied that I never noticed the 25th sneak up behind me with a hard-wood club and smack me soundly on the back of the head. I’ve heard that moving house, irrespective of country, ranks up there with life stresses like death and retrenchment (1) so to have to pack up our house, leave our jobs and desperately try and find a placement for our son in a school in another country has been a humdinger of a time; that is why the brief Yuletide respite and change of pace has been so refreshing.

Santa came as always with a veritable toy avalanche mostly consisting of lego, I’ve spent the last two days now sitting with an aching back on the carpet building a full on lego train set and we haven’t even got to the Star Wars fleet sitting on the table.

I got to take some time out and attend to my bonsai trees which have been sadly in need of a prune and a little TLC since winter. Spent a good few hours with the trees outside under the big yellowwood and stinkwood trees in our garden getting them looking lovely again.

Merry Christmas to all my readers and have a wonderful new year!

(1) only marginally better than death and taxes

The “Death Star” Galaxy

The supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy is blasting a smaller neighbor with a violent energy jet—earning it the moniker the “Death Star” galaxy—scientists announced today. The jet has probably fried the atmospheres of any planets in the way, researchers added.

link

One galaxy frying another with jets of lethal radiation; on this scale the mind boggles.

Annoy Thy God and he will make you eat your kids

Yes I know the title is controversial but I kid you not (oh the puns!), you annoy the benevolent sky-god and he’ll serve little Johnny up to your enemies and if you don’t get the hint you’ll have to eat him yourself.

Leviticus 26:16 I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.

…

Leviticus 26:29 And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.

God apparently has a cannibalism fetish especially when it’s close family:

Ezekiel 5:10 Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments in thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter into all the winds.

Deuteronomy 28:53 And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the LORD thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee:

Deuteronomy 28:57 And toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.

The only question left really is with or without fava-beans?

The Road Less Travelled

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I..
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

Robert Frost

God’s Cure for Leprosy

I was perusing the skeptic’s annotated bible as I do from time to time when I came across this gem; God’s cure for leprosy from Leviticus.
You can read it in its original form but I prefer the pithy translation as it contains all the good stuff without all the thou’s and thus’s.

God’s law for lepers: Get two birds. Kill one. Dip the live bird in the blood of the dead one. Sprinkle the blood on the leper seven times, and then let the blood-soaked bird fly away. Next find a lamb and kill it. Wipe some of its blood on the patient’s right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle seven times with oil and wipe some of the oil on his right ear, thumb and big toe. Repeat. Finally find another pair of birds. Kill one and dip the live bird in the dead bird’s blood. Wipe some blood on the patient’s right ear, thumb, and big toe. Sprinkle the house with blood 7 times. That’s all there is to it.

I’m truly at a loss to explain why God just didn’t rid the world of the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae but doubtless the millions of afflicted souls throughout history were deserving sinners and a progressive degenerative neurological disease with deformity was fitting punishment; I mean this is the same God who sends bears to maul rude children. If only this had been more widely published although I can only imagine the SPCA would be up in arms about all the little birds and gambolling lambs but at least it’s clear cut irrefutable word-of-god.

update 19.12.07
2 Kings 15:5
God struck down King Azariah with Leprosy lucky guy!

15:5 And the LORD smote the king, so that he was a leper unto the day of his death, and dwelt in a several house. And Jotham the king’s son was over the house, judging the people of the land.

Brushing off the pen

I have taken a bit of a break from writing of late, this move has been a wild ride which has left me rather exhausted and not a little stressed. Recently however, as all the millions of todo actions come together I find myself with a little more time for personal reflection and the need to write again.

I had some impetus to pull out the pen/keyboard and get cracking again when a fellow blogger wrote comments on my blog that made sense to most sane and rational minds but then spoiled the whole thing with an act of cowardice by writing all sorts of calumny on his blog calling me ignorant and saying that I believe Islam equates to terrorism. I find it rather funny actually as he clearly has not taken into account the de facto atheist standpoint of this blog, or the fact that I write about other religion as well; no doubt he believes I am another infidel out to persecute a religion of love, peace and global harmony with my ‘ignorance’; he also seems to have some hang-ups about Americans.

To end with a little saying from the Quran dedicated to Haj:

2:6 As for the Disbelievers, Whether thou warn them or thou warn them not it is all one for them; they believe not.
2:7 Allah hath sealed their hearing and their hearts, and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be an awful doom.

So it’s actually alright, you needn’t get into a twist by my reporting on the rantings of a mad Muslim Cleric and his belief that girls who get raped are asking for it – as a non-believer / Atheist my fate is pretty clear; all that stuff about awful doom gives me the shivers.

Clearly my right to air my incredulity is bigoted and anyway my blog is all about islam=terrorism; in your view. Thanks for getting it so completely wrong.

Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer’s

British fantasy and science fiction author Terry Pratchett (59) has been diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s disease, he said in a statement to his fans. ”I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news,” Pratchett said.

As someone who adores Terry Pratchett as an author this is very very sad news indeed. (source…)

Australia Signs Kyoto Protocol; U.S. Now Only Holdout

Australia’s new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd signed the paperwork Monday to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, making good on an election promise that will leave the U.S. isolated among industrialized countries in shunning the international global warming pact.The dramatic step just nine days after Rudd was elected looked likely to send Australia’s standing soaring at international climate change talks that started Monday in Indonesia and to intensify pressure on Washington to join the Kyoto framework.

Australia Signs Kyoto Protocol; U.S. Now Only Holdout

It’s about time!