On 'Stuff'

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“Sounds of nature on tape such as rivers and rain

Paint by numbers and Duraflame

Pre-fab houses and astro yards

Collagen lips and credit cards

Is just some of the stuff which I think is grand

Alternative crab meat makes me one happy man

Santa Ana’s at Christmas won’t ruin my plans

I got a video fireplace and snow in a can”

    ~ ‘Snow In A Can’, by Camarillo Eddy

from the Swirling Eddies album “The midget, the speck and the molecule”, 2007

I’ve never had a great sense of sentimentality.  It’s a blessing and a curse.  On one hand, I don’t seem to freely make memories of events and occasions that others often find important.  Many’s the time I’ve found myself in strife because I’ve neglected to remember a birthday or I look blankly when someone asks if I “remember that thing at that place that one time?”.  I have kept few memories from when I was younger, which I guess is any time prior to the present.  The past is something I’ve left behind.  On the positive side, I also keep only a tenuous grasp on ‘things’, the material stuff that one surrounds oneself with a sense of ownership.

What I mean by tenuous is that I try not to hold too tightly on to anything that I own.  I’m calling it a positive because attachment to ‘stuff’ merely causes pain should you lose it.  I found myself in a nasty position in my late 20’s when in the space of a few short months, I lost my partner, a new job I was really starting to sink my teeth into and enjoying, and my home.  Losing things I was attached to hurt.  A more jaded me emerged from this episode hoping to not again feel too attached to things that can be lost.

Value is what we determine it is.  In essence, everything is worth exactly the same amount - what someone is prepared to pay for it, or give up for it.  Not a bit more.  

There’s a great piece of stand-up comedy by the late comedian and social commentator George Carlin (second time I’ve quoted Carlin in a couple of weeks…) which he entitled ‘A Place For My Stuff’ which I’ve always found hilarious and illuminating.  Carlin asks his audience: 

“Have you noticed that [other people’s] stuff is $#!% and your $#!% is stuff?”  

It’s perhaps the most pointed (and funny) observation Carlin makes in the routine.  He goes on and later brings the issue of one’s home into cynical focus:

“That’s all your house is, it’s a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get... more stuff!”  

He goes on to discuss the necessity to move house because you’ve got “too much stuff”.  Of course, Carlin uses exaggeration to great effect, but like all good satire, there’s truth to be found amongst the guffaws.

Chuck Palahniuk’s dark, nihilistic 1996 novel Fight Club has quite a bit to say on the topic too.  The book’s narrator loses the majority of his worldly possessions fairly early on in the book.  He speaks of a “nesting instinct” and states:

“You buy furniture.  You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life.  Buy the sofa, then for a couple of years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got the sofa issue handled.  Then the right set of dishes.  Then the perfect bed.  The drapes.  The rug.

Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.”

Later on, he is encouraged to remark to a policeman investigating the apparent arson of his home:

“ ‘The liberator who destroys my property,’ Tyler said, ‘is fighting to save my spirit.  The teacher who clears all possessions from my path will set me free.’ ”

I read stuff like that and it smarts a tad.  Good satire, again, shines a light in places one may not feel comfortable.  Despite my attempts to keep ‘things’ at relative arm’s length, I’ve still got plenty of stuff.  Would I mind seeing it all go?  Would I be emotionally torn asunder by having nothing besides the proverbial shirt on my back?  It’s the things that have so-called ‘sentimental value’ that would be the trickiest of things, photos and relics and things irreplaceable.

I’m a collector and sometimes trader of small plastic toys that turn from robots into cars and trucks and things.  It’s a reasonably expansive collection when viewed from the perspective of one who is not particularly interested in such things but modest (no, really) when I compare it to the really freaky, hard-core, obsessive collectors – believe me they are out there.  Despite my labeling of the collection of modest (yes, OK, I doth protest too much), it gives me pause for thought when I consider: how much are they worth to me really?

I am seriously mod-conned out.  I’ve got nifty gadgets and modern knick-knacks that do all kinds of fun things.  While it’s awfully nice to have cool stuff that I can use, or a cool home environment, things like the TV and the stereo and the computer are not really necessities, are they?  Virtually none of my stuff is absolutely necessary for my survival.  I’ve spent long periods of time with little or no TV and it makes you realise how little it actually contributes to your being on a fundamental level.  Same with all my stuff.  I’m probably overdue to do a serious de-clutter of my house and I wonder why getting this done has been difficult in the past considering I don’t really view any of it as being essential to who I am.

I’ve made the conscious choice to try not to deliberately place the label of ‘sentimental’ on anything I own.  I say that without pride, as it probably means that I live a less rich life than I may otherwise have if I surrounded myself with objects that prove a life has been lived.  It also means I’m less likely to inherit a collection of spoons or postcards or decorative doilies or other heirlooms from my parents one day.  A curse or a blessing?  I’m sure you can decide for yourself.

On 'The Incredibles'

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“I’m only a man in a silly red sheet

Digging for kryptonite on this one way street

Only a man in a funny red sheet

Looking for special things inside of me”

~ ‘Superman (It’s Not Easy)’, by John Ondrasik

from the Five For Fighting album “America Town”, 2000

Pixar Movie Studios boasts the impressive distinction of having huge cinema box-office success with each and every one of its 11 feature length films so far.  Virtually any film studio would be envious of even their most modest success, that being 1995’s Toy Story, which according to BoxOfficeMojo.com took over a staggering $361 million worldwide at the box office.  Even more impressive is their critical acclaim: only one of their films rates below 91% on RottenTomatoes.com (that website being an amalgamated percentage score of a large number of critical reviews across a range of media).  Personally, I have yet to dislike a Pixar film.  Some are more favourites than others, but for mine their Magnum Opus is The Incredibles (2004)*.

Directed by Brad Bird, The Incredibles tells the story of a family of superheroes, in hiding for many years following the legislated prohibition of “superheroics” following damaging lawsuits from the public at large.  Mr Incredible, Bob Parr (voiced by Craig T Nelson) suffers something of a mid-life crisis whilst working in a drab cube farm for a stingy insurance company.  He is an intensely decent man and doesn’t need much encouragement to resume his crime-fighting activities once an opportunity presents itself.  Nothing is what it seems, however: he is soon embroiled in a plot to destroy not only him but all superheroes.  His family is very quickly also in danger and Mr Incredible discovers that the threat they all face may be one of his own making...

There’s a lot to like about The Incredibles.   The voice actors are perfectly cast, as they are in all of Pixar’s films, and its retro orchestral jazz score echoes the very best of John Barry.   Being something of a comic and movie geek, I adore its clever nods to its forebears in The Fantastic Four, Superman, Doom Patrol, James Bond, and The Thunderbirds, to name a very, very few .  I love the film’s Googie–inspired production design, which owes a huge debt to Pixar’s near-fanatical pre-production artwork efforts.  These guys are seriously art obsessed; they have stores of literally hundreds of thousands of pieces of artwork generated in every medium imaginable, for the creation of each and every one of their films.  I also adore the writing, with some serious themes infused with lighter, comedic moments.  Where Pixar gets it most right, however, is in their absolute devotion to character and dedication above all else, to story.

Why do I love The Incredibles so much?  What elevates it passed it’s Pixar brethren?

Firstly, I love the note-perfect characters.  Possibly the most intriguing and well rounded character in the film (a film positively brimming with well rounded characters) is Mrs Incredible herself, Helen Parr AKA ElastiGirl, voiced by Holly Hunter.  When you get passed the lame sounding name (positively de rigueur in comic book tradition), she is a strong female character in an industry that often suffers a dearth of such things.  Indeed while Pixar have been criticised for not having a female character in a lead role (a deficiency to be remedied in their upcoming 13th feature film, Brave), Pixar’s storytellers have never shied away from portraying strong women: Jeneane Garofalo’s Colette in Ratatouille, Joan Cusack’s Jesse in Toy Story 2 & 3, even Elissa Knight’s EVE from Wall*E.  Helen gets plenty of screen time, a genuine character arc, and more than one moment to shine.  It could be argued that Helen and Bob really share the lead as the mother and father of the eponymous family.

Not without her flaws, Helen is sometimes short-tempered with her children and shares several misunderstandings with her husband.  She is, however, like many mothers, the glue that binds the family together.  She provides for them, nurtures them, she protects them fiercely, even in the face of potential harm.  She is frequently shown fighting the villains of the piece alongside her husband, and if you’ll indulge my comic-book loving side, she is completely confident in the use of her abilities.  She displays creativity in the use of her (otherwise pretty feeble) power of being able to stretch herself unnaturally, even using her powers to their limits, causing her some discomfort.  One knows she is a force to be reckoned with from the very first time we see her in the movie, when she brashly states: “Settle down, are you kidding? I'm at the top of my game! I'm right up there with the big dogs! Girls, come on. Leave the saving of the world to the men? I don't think so.” Gold.

My absolute favourite element of the movie is its thematic examination of what it means to be special.  The late comedian/political & social commentator George Carlin spoke once** about children and he reflected:

“There are no losers anymore.  Everyone’s a winner, no matter what the sport or competition, everybody wins.  Everybody wins, everybody gets a trophy, no-one is a loser.  No child these days ever gets to hear those all-important character-building words ‘You lost, Bobby!’”

And later:

“Of course Bobby’s parents can’t understand why he can’t hold a job, in school he was always on the honour role.  Well, what they don’t understand of course, is that in today’s schools, everyone is on the honour roll.”

The young son of the Incredible family, Dash Parr, has a conversation with his mother early in the film, which progresses later into a debate between Bob and Helen about whether or not Dash should be allowed to participate in school sports, given that Dash’s speed-based powers would make him so far and above anyone else that he couldn’t really lose.  Should they let him be the best he can be or not allow him to live up to his full potential in order to fit in?  When Dash says “But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of, our powers made us special!” Helen replies “Everyone is special, Dash.”  He quickly retorts “Which is another way of saying nobody is.” More gold!

This is mirrored later in the film by the main villain Syndrome’s grand plan to install himself as a new hero, after ‘defeating’ a threat of his own making, and then selling his hi-tech gadgets and weapons to all and sundry.  Then, he says, “When everyone is special... no-one will be”.  His own damaged ego rails the thought of anyone truly standing out in a positive and noble manner.  That’s some pretty strong writing there.

I’ll leave you with an amusing anecdote from the making of the film.  Sometimes, during the process of animation, the computer technicians need to dub temporary voices into the footage prior to the professional voice actors recording their parts.  Oscar nominated and Emmy award winning actress Lily Tomlin was initially cast to lend her voice to the hilarious Edna Mode (the creator of the Parr family’s amazing super-suits).  When Tomlin arrived at Pixar to record her part, she first listened to the voice initially dubbed by director Brad Bird. She then promptly quit, reportedly saying “What do you need me for? You got it already.”  Amazingly classy.  Bird’s voice remains in the movie.

Next time you see a Pixar movie released, you can bet I’ll be there very close to opening night.  No matter how ridiculously expensive cinema prices get, you can be guaranteed that it’ll be worth it.  I for one will be expecting an incredible experience.

* The Incredibles made over $631 million at the worldwide cinema box office to date, and maintains a RottenTomatoes.com score of an extraordinary 97%.  It was nominated for 4 Academy Awards and won 2 of those, won a BAFTA Award, was nominated for a Golden Globe and a Grammy, and was nominated and won many, many more awards in almost every conceivable category.

** It can be found here, but its strong profanity means it’s not for children or the faint of heart.

On Politics

“Everyone seems to think you’re on their side

But I don’t think you’re that small

How could they see it when reason has died

We haven’t a clue to it all”

~ ‘Half Light, Epoch And Phase’, by Terry Scott Taylor

from the Daniel Amos album “Darn Floor, Big Bite”, 1987

I have a horrible, dark confession to make.  The following confession will not likely win me new friends among many of the circles I belong to.  It may even make me a couple of new enemies.  Are you ready?

I’m a Leftist.

I’m a Left-wing Liberal Hippy Tree-hugging Pinko Commie.

OK, perhaps that is going a little far for the sake of effect, but it remains that I am far more sympathetic to left-wing politics than to the conservative.

Left and right-wing politics, as I understand it, came from the time of the French Revolution, when those involved in the Legislative Assembly of 1791 sat on either the left or right depending on their political allegiance.  The left has traditionally been linked with socialism, the rights of the (often poor) lower classes and working people, while the right is  associated with class order, consumerism and capitalism, and in its extreme, fascism.

What I don’t get, what I cannot seem to wrap my head around, is the so-called Christian Right.  At the very least, I cannot understand why the Christian Church seems to be inextricably linked with the right of politics, as if being a conservative automatically follows a belief in God.  Left-wing politics, as defined during the French Revolution, was associated with the secularisation of politics, so a degree of connection between the Christian Church and the conservative right is at least understandable.  However, it does seem to me that in left-wing politics, an individual of faith may very well find much that ought be considered desirable; a respect for the rights of individuals, a sense of social justice, the belief that all are created equal, a sentiment which finds itself an echo of Biblical Scripture.  This last point has a particular resonance for me, being a descendant of the Huguenots, a left-wing French Protestant people that were persecuted heavily by the ruling Catholic nobility in the time before the Revolution.  It’s true that the Left often views the Christian Right’s pro-religious stance as a tendency to authoritarianism and repression, and historically, sadly, it seems there is often good reason, as the Huguenots can attest.

On a personal note, I tend to find a coldness in right-wing politics that I often find distasteful.  In the recent long period of Federal conservatism in Australia under John Howard’s Liberal/National coalition government, there seems to have been an uneasy increase in the politics of fear, where free speech was curtailed*, and lowest-common-denominator politics was frequently pushed to the forefront of national debate.  One doesn’t need to go much further than the ongoing asylum-seeker debate to see evidence of the legacy of this push.  It saddens me that many of the Left are seemingly competing with the Right for the slimy bottom-of-the-barrel of that particular issue, which frankly should be a no-brainer for those who espouse tolerance and kindness.

If I’m sounding like I’m really not enamoured with the (oxymoronic) Liberal party in Australia, then you’re not at all wrong.  If you still don’t quite understand why, then I guess I can say only two more words: Children Overboard.  If you’re not familiar with this nasty little episode, please look it up.

I’m bringing all this up because these viewpoints have not won me friends with Christians, and I have been a target of petty and dismissive scorn on more than one occasion for not choosing to have a political bent that many of my friends have.  I once heard Jim Reiher (Christian, theological lecturer, author and shock! horror! Greens candidate) say** to a disgracefully hostile Christian gathering that in his opinion, one cannot expect to find a single political party whose policies line up absolutely and completely with an individual’s personal views on each and every issue.  Indeed, not every member of a political party will agree with everyone in their own party on every issue.  Perhaps the best one can do is to weigh up all the policies of every party and find the party that represents your views the most. I remember the crowd scoffing and even jeering whenever Mr Reiher spoke.  I took what he had to say to heart. I find more compassion in left-wing politics.  As a Christian, when the choice is either dogmatic stringency or compassion, I’ll choose compassion every time.

In the end, it seems that of recent times, the Left has been doing it’s darnedest to shift to the middle.  There is an increasing pressure in politics to be fiscally conservative, so much so that the Left and Right are often fighting for the same ground rather than delineating points of difference.  The Right doesn’t seem quite so anxious not to be who they are than Australia’s Labor Left seems to be, and the Australian Greens are now very far more to the left of Australian politics than the ALP.  In my efforts to avoid confrontation (honestly, who needs more ridicule?), perhaps I have also been too quick to be hide my politics, much like the ALP has.  Perhaps I shouldn’t allow myself to be embarrassed by my convictions.  Maybe being a Lefty is not such a horrible, dark confession after all.

*I have strong memories of Mr Howard and his ministers physically and forcibly preventing opposing members of the Federal Senate, specifically Kerry Nettle, from passing on a letter to a visiting fellow-arch-conservative in George W Bush - see http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2003/s973858.htm for details.

**I’m paraphrasing rather than directly quoting.  I hope I’ve expressed the sentiments of Mr Reiher’s words accurately.  If not, then sincere apologies.

On Taking A Break...

“Why don't you give

Give a little bit

For future's sake

Give the kid a break”

~ ‘Give The Kid A Break’, by 1927

from their album “Ish”, 1987

The On Writing Blog is taking a week off.  I have several pieces on the go at present which I'm hoping will be interesting enough to read, but they are not of adequate quality to post just yet.  Next week, I promise you.

Thanks for reading and supporting my writing, and a special thanks to everyone who has encouraged me following last week's entry.

On Babies

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY BEFORE GOING FURTHER:

What follows is mostly the On Writing Blog that I planned for this week.  Those of you who know me well and know what has happened this week may feel what follows is inappropriate.  Fair enough.  What follows is extremely personal. Writing it, and completing it the way I have, has been part of dealing with my own issues.  No doubt reading it will not be for everyone.

Firstly, please understand that most of the initial drafts of the post, except the Post Script, was written before this week.  Hence, the first portion is written in a very light-hearted manner. Some may find this somewhat tasteless.  But, like Steve Hindalong once said, “There’s something funny about a lot of sad things”.

Secondly, I did discuss this with my dear, precious wife.  When I asked her if she thought I should post it or keep it to myself she said yes I should.  When i asked why, she simply said “I like how you write”.  So perhaps it is part of both of our coping.

If you’re not sure whether or not to read on, do both yourself and I a favour - skip this week.  It’s OK.  Come back to the On Writing Blog next week.  I’ll try my best to make it worth your while.

----~|~----

“Baby baby, I’m taken with the notion

To love you with the sweetest of devotion...

...And ever since the day you put my heart in motion

Baby I realize that there’s just no getting over you”

~ ‘Baby Baby’, by Amy Grant & Keith Thomas

from the Amy Grant album “Heart In Motion”, 1991

I had a day off one perfectly pleasant Monday in late March this year, and spent the early morning snuggled in bed as no pressing concerns demanded my attention.  My wife, my amazing WonderWoman, was up before me and emerged from the en suite bathroom with a warm grin and dancing eyes.  She had apparently just spent a few moments peeing on a little stick, whose double lines confirmed the news we had been hoping and praying for for some months:  She was carrying our first child.  I think those little sticks must be magic.

We had spent the best part of a year trying to conceive, and while the trying was quite an enjoyable experience, we had begun to wonder if it was ever going to happen for us.  We had gone so far as to procure a pathology request slip with which the agility and motility of my ‘little swimmers’ could be ascertained.  I was not actually present at the appointment with the doctor who provided the request, so I was unable to enquire as to the logistics of such a test.  Did one produce the ‘sample’ at the pathology office, or transport it from home?  After several mildly embarrassing phone calls  (several because the pathology company had recently moved premises and changed phone numbers, so it took multiple avenues of inquiry to track them down), I found out what I needed to know to organise the ‘sample’.  I procrastinated a bit, until that day the lines appeared on the magic stick, whereby the swimmers were saved from scrutiny and I was relieved.

No doubt you find your head filled with images you neither wanted nor knew you were to receive today.  I’ll move right along shall I?

The first priority we had was to work out when exactly our lives were to be turned upside down.  There was, I was told, a simple way of working out the approximate due date.  WonderWoman launched into what sounded like an overly complex algorithm of dates and calculations and I was quickly lost.  She came upon a date.

“Is that correct?” I asked, in a mild haze.

“I think so. Mostly” she replied.

Maybe it was the hour and the lingering sleep I had only recently emerged from, but surely, surely, something like giving birth, an activity that humans have been quietly attending to since humans first existed would be fairly well defined by now.

I tried working it out myself.  The start point is apparently the first day of the woman’s last period.  I was immediately stumped.  My understanding of human biology was sufficient enough to know that at this time, and likely the next fortnight, was clearly a period when you are definitively not pregnant.  When I ventured some thought to the idea of 40 weeks of pregnancy that woman experience, I also realised that this did not equate to the 9 months I had equally been led to believe was the appropriate gestation period.

I applied the relevant calculations and decided that our baby was due either this November, last November, Stardate 7412.6, or sometime in the late 1960’s. 

What I needed to do, I decided, was to consult the considered writing of experts, of studied and learned individuals who longed to pass on their hard earned knowledge to us. We had an appropriately weighty book on pregnancy and babies and suchlike on the bookshelf.  I turned to a page that described the various weeks of development of the foetus.  Under a heading entitled WEEK 5 (which I was told we were up to) it stated boldly “Your baby is now 3 weeks old”.

No help at all from the experts then.

We’ve been debating baby names for a while now, and we have not quite reached a consensus.  The names WonderWoman loves I’m only cool on.  The names I adore she simply can’t stand.  After protracted discussions, we have rejected the names Wednesday, Adelaide, Chardonnay, 99, Zeus, Mongo, Buster, Buddy, Geraldo, Maximillian, Blackbeard, Frodo, Tiberius, Cosmo, Luigi, Optimus Prime, Apple, Wall*E, Adolf, Willis, Fozzy, Darth, Captain America, and The Admiral.  Mind you, they are only rejected if it’s a girl.

In the meantime, while in utero, the baby has been given the name Jellybean.

It’s going to be a ride, no doubt. An exciting one, and I will not hesitate in regaling you with tales of nausea, doctor’s appointments, ill-fitting clothes, naming rights debates, and bloating.  I will bore you and you will pretend that what I am saying doesn’t fit into the category of ‘too much information’.  Exciting times!

----~|~----

Post Script:

Many will already be aware that as of right now, this story, sadly, does not end well.

On Monday evening, 25th of April, my wife discovered some blood spots after going to the toilet.  We consulted a doctor late that night at an all-night bulk billing clinic that was open on due to a public holiday.  He ran some cursory tests and told us to visit our regular doctor as soon as we could to organise an ultrasound.  He smiled encouragingly as we left.  He said that it was not necessarily worst case scenario we were dreading, but it was best to be sure.  We went to our trusted GP shortly after and he organised the relevant scans.

A thoroughly professional and sympathetic sonographer, whose name I missed in the stressful anxiety of the day, confirmed what we feared.  We had lost our Jellybean.

God willing, WonderWoman and I will have another chance at parenthood soon.  I very much look forward to sharing with you when that time comes.

On Predictions, part 2

“I can see clearly now the rain has gone

I can see all obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

It’s gonna be a bright, bright sun-shiny day”

~ ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ by Johnny Nash

from his album “I Can See Clearly Now”, 1972*

Last week, I wrote about an article I read late last year, where several supposed ‘experts’ made certain predictions about what may be ahead of us in 2011 (and once again, the original article can be found at http://tinyurl.com/6dnpfqs , and once again, I really don’t recommend you bother - I’ll put direct quotes in parentheses and italics for the sake of clarity).  I can only hope that reasonable minds found my take on their predictions more grounded in reality that the drivel they spewed.

So, where were we?  I believe the next individual quoted is a clairvoyant.

Spiritual mediums and clairvoyants are perhaps the most criminal of our ‘experts’.  It takes so little effort to disabuse yourself of the belief that the fundamentals of who they are and what they do is nothing more than quackery.  If I found myself suddenly endowed with the ‘gifts’ clairvoyants claim to have, I’d get myself in a room with Sir Paul McCartney, summon John Lennon, make a few quick million dollars and retire in quick fashion.  If Sir Paul was otherwise engaged, there’s always the lottery.

Man alive, why is it that clairvoyants have any followers brick-stupid enough to give them money for what they do?  I am powerless to speculate.

Wild predictions of matrimony, babies and adoptions in the lives of several celebrities follow.  First reactions are ‘why the heck would we care?’, but then I remember the intellectually bereft Today Tonight viewers and their propensity for buying tabloid-trash magazines aimed at women (and for the love of Pete, don’t get me started on those vile little rags).  The problem with these predictions is that no one is going to be bothered bailing up this charlatan in 12 months and ask her how she got things so badly wrong.

Of course, some of her scattershot projections are likely to be correct via a well educated and lucky guess and she’d no doubt claim that she was mostly right, wasn’t she? And no-one gets everything perfect every time, right?  I may well at this point ask this white-collar crook why she was entirely incapable of predicting Yasi, devastating floods in both Queensland and Victoria, massive earthquakes in Christchurch and Japan, the Fukushima nuclear crisis, and Charlie ‘Tiger’s Blood’ Sheen.

I have read several pieces of well considered writing by so-called futurists, enough to feel like their potential predictions are worth casting thought over, if not agreeing with whole-heartedly.  But the young man quoted in the article is just that - young.  Like many of today’s youth, he seems to see the shiny gleam of the future rather than the fair chance that we will see much of the same as we’ve seen in most every single day of human experience; greed, corruption, hate, and selfishness.  By-and-large, we’ll just see it with better tech.

I can’t really blame this youngster for not having the cynicism that comes with age, but I would suggest that his predictions of the rise and development of social media and mobile computing is possibly more past than future.  This whipper-snapper is not telling me when I can expect my flying car and personal rocket pack, so I will leave him to his “micro-patronage”-funded exercises and his pimple cream.

The only soul quoted in the article who really escapes any criticism from your scribe is the demographer.  For a start, his field of work is one that is being exercised following years of learning and research.  Hard work and a degree of intelligence gets you kudos here, yes sir.  Unlike our futurist, he also suggests a less than rosy future, based on availability of housing, an aging population, labour availability and the demands of wage inflation.  But what I like most is that he does not fall into the trap of popular disrespect of us Gen X’ers.  He suggests that hope is there, available for us to reach out to.  Even if this prediction is found to not eventuate, at least it was because we didn’t do well enough to achieve it rather than because it was a lot of hooey. 

My own personal goal for the coming year, without sounding too high-minded, is to not allow myself to become one of the sheep that chooses the path of least resistance when it comes to thought, words and actions.  And my prediction for 2011 is that Pluto is going to skip merrily over Capricorn, causing songstress Susan Boyle to marry Oprah Winfrey while dressed in a camel playsuit, and then Tweet about it.  I’m guessing the availability of affordable housing won’t be too much of an issue for them though.

*(Special thanks to John Skinner for the song quote suggestion, and also to Paul Tero, Don Fouché, Erini Thompson, Colin Rayner, Jess Merrett, Tim Lokot, and Kirsty Ploeg for their input)

On Predictions, part 1

“Well I'm heavenly blessed and worldly wise,

I'm a peeping-tom techie with X-Ray eyes,

Things are going great, and they're only getting better,

I'm doing all right, getting good grades,

The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades”

~ ‘The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades’ by Pat McDonald

from the Timbuk3 album “Welcome To Timbuk3”, 1986

I tend more towards cynicism than critique.  It takes far more effort to present an argument that allows you to be measured, intelligent and knowing than to roll your eyes with indifference.  Arguing with those you feel are wrong is, in my experience, rarely a successful exercise and I find little comfort or enjoyment in confrontation.  And besides, other than the nature of opinion being highly individual, who on Earth am I anyway?  My opinion is not nearly as valuable as I would hope it is.  Neither is most other peoples.  I write this to offer context to what follows.  I take no pride in being critical of other’s work, and my motives are the selfish fun I find in attempting to eviscerate something that is just plain dumb.

Between Christmas and New Year’s 2010 I read a laugh-out-loud article from a lift-out magazine in a weekend newspaper (and while it can be found at http://tinyurl.com/6dnpfqs , I really don’t recommend you bother - I’ll put direct quotes in parentheses and italics for the sake of clarity).  It purported to predict some of the trends and events of the coming year by those whose opinions are apparently worth listening to.  The apparently high value of their statements has a lot more to do with the gullibility and propensity for people to not engage their brains when they really ought.  Those that believe that the bulk of these prognosticators have anything of substance to add to society must be the same folk who believe that A Current Affair and Today Tonight have anything more than a passing resemblance to hard-hitting journalism.  It pains me to know that they are out there.

I find that I can’t lay the blame completely at the feet at the ‘experts’ quoted here.  They may very well be bright and learned individuals, albeit people whose personal ethics (or lack thereof) allows them to take advantage of others.  I prefer to lay blame at the writer and editors who not only decided it wise to garner the opinions found in the article, but to publish them as well.  To be fair, there is a lot of disposable, ‘junk’, filler content in many periodicals over the holiday period, as it is with TV.  I imagine that these kind of articles are not much more than an attempt to fill pages that not many are likely to read, let alone care about.  I can easily imagine a writer weighing up the deadline pressure against spending Christmas time not working and opting for the latter.  I’ve been there.

I shall proceed regardless.  Names are withheld to protect the moronic.

The first nuffer out of the gates is an astrologer.  Astrologers are those who believe that celestial bodies moved about by forces easily explained by basic physics, millions of kilometers from human beings, somehow have a bearing on activities here on Earth.  That they even have an effect on our personalities and futures.  Despite the dark ages being a fair while behind us and education being well more common than not, people still think these are viable opinions.  We are told that the “shift of Uranus into Aries” and the “continuing drama of Pluto in Capricorn” means that people will dress in more vibrant colours, wear their hair longer, and that it is a good time to be a female artist.  I was hereto ignorant of the dramas being experienced by Pluto.  I suppose its demotion from planet to planetoid is having more of an effect than NASA ever dreamt.  

I would like to suggest that the increasing expected transparency from governments predicted by our astrologer has less to do with the “Uranus/Aries relationship” and more to do with Julian Assange.  Furthermore, while I think a “mass spiritual awakening” is a lofty goal, I would settle for idiots being given less attention by popular media.  The belief of the astrologer that “2011 marks the real beginning of the 21st century” merely makes me want to give the poor lass a calendar and an abacus.

Onwards we go.  I can think of few bigger insults than to be called a fashionista, in no small part because the world of fashion seems to me to become increasingly indulgent, excessive, and shallow with the passage of time.  I’m absolutely in favour of the arts in all forms, even that which often can be viewed as controversial or offensive or difficult for me to understand.  However, I’m mildly offended by those in the fashion ‘industry’ who believe their more ridiculous ‘creations’ are things of intrinsic value.

The second of our ‘experts’ is a university-employed member of the fashion industry.  This person feels a trend towards “investment dressing”.  That is “buying less and making our purchases count”.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but is this not more akin to common sense?  Why aren’t people doing this already?  Are they going to stop shopping for clothes like idiots?  Can we expect A Current Affair’s ratings to drop in equal measure?  Where she really loses me is at the suggestion of “overalls, jumpsuits and playsuits”.  Playsuits?  I must have been away from school the day they explained the value of whatever the heck that is.  And no, I will not be wearing “head-to-toe camel”.  By the way, camel is a four-legged desert-wandering animal, not a colour, you vacuous twit.

That’s quite enough for now.  I will simmer down a bit now.  Next week, I’ll delve further into the nonsense that I found in this pointless article.