Confessions From A Comfortable Couch

I Quit!

2010-12-01T12:28:00.004+11:00

Well, this is the end.

Not the end of everything, you understand. Just the end. Or, rather, an end.

As most of you know, I have spent the past three years working (or, if I'm honest, undertaking a not always convincing facsimile of working) in a convenience store in order to make a contribution to the household budget while my Dearly Beloved and I candidated to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church. But now that we have completed our Exit Year (and, presumably, have completed the assessment requirements!) and are awaiting placement in permanent ministry positions, the time has come to draw a close to certain things. And one of those things has been the job at the store.

So, I have resigned. Actually, even if I hadn't resigned, I would have gone anyway, on account of the fact that the store has been taken over by another retail chain and is currently closed for refurbishment. Owing to the business model employed by that chain, it is unlikely that I would have secured a position with the new owners; and I didn't fancy trying to get a shift at one of my former employer's stores which had not yet been taken over - having done it once, there is no way I was going to work a graveyard or whatever other unwanted unpleasant shift they thought they could squeeze me into. Besides, my Dearly Beloved and I were determined that, this year, I would be spending Christmas Day with the family, not at work.

So, no more of that for Yours Truly. But since this has been a not insignificant part of my life, and since my escapades at the store have formed a large slice of this blog's content, I thought I would mark the end of this particular era by sharing a few thoughts.

Employees. The first thing I want you to do is to urge you all to change your attitude to all the people who work behind the counter at convenience stores and other related retail outlets. I have worked in a lot of different environments, from factories to corporate offices, but in few of them have I encountered an environment in which the work was as repetitive, tedious, physically exhausting, and mind-numbingly dull. When you add to that the fact that the workload (in terms of customer flows) can switch from inertially boring to frantically busy in a matter of seconds; and the fact that an enormous burden of responsibility rests on convenience store employees in terms of OH&S, security, and corporate responsibility/reputation, then the convenience store represents one of the most demanding and least rewarding workplace environments I have ever encountered. So, please, next time you go to a convenience store, no matter how angry, busy, existentially angst-ridden, or otherwise pissed off with the world you may be, remember that there is someone who is in a much worse position than you - namely, the poor sod behind the counter who has to serve you. So try a little kindness - or, if not that, a little understand. Okay?

Customers. The first thing I want to say is that 95% of the people I encountered were basically decent human beings: just working stiffs trying to make their way in the world like the rest of us. I know I have written more than one post taking the piss out of customers and their foibles; but that is only because they were the exception not the rule. It is the exceptions that make for interesting stories, as any tabloid hack can tell you; the people and situations I wrote about were not representative of the whole. But having said that, let me also say this: that being a convenience store clerk sure brings you into contact with an especially rich cross-section of human society (particularly when you work nights or graveyards on the weekends), and much of that humanity is profoundly broken and limited. It reminds you how inadequate your own experience is, and how vast a world of human reality exists beyond the confines of your own life. And you come to appreciate how sadly constrained so many others' horizons are, a realisation that does not fill you with a sense of your own superiority, but with a lament for the inadequacy of the human condition. So, in the long run, I think you learn compassion. Yes, you also learn to deploy dark humour, sometimes as a coping mechanism, and sometimes as a necessary corrective to human stupidity. But I think you also learn to respect the struggle that is the "daily grind" for so many people, whether because of the circumstances they find themselves in, or because of their own limitations.

Relationships. Most people are used to forming relationships through work, not just because you have to operate co-operatively with other people, but because there is something innately human that seeks out the other in order to make a connection. Indeed, some work relationships become truly significant, leading to anything from life-long friendship to marriage. But that's not the case with the convenience store clerk. Because the staff are all employed on a casual shift basis, and are rarely all together in the same place (shift-changes and store meetings being about the only time more than one clerk is there at once) the bonds that tie other workplaces simply don't exist. To be sure, there were long-standing employees at the store with whom I did form connections; but with the changes of management and staff turnover that are endemic to the convenience store environment, these connections are easily sundered. Indeed, when the store closed, and after I had worked my last shift, it seemed to me that we had all become like leaves scattered before the wind; leaves that had been none-too-securely attached to the workplace "branch" to begin with. And yet, oddly, this lack of connection was made up for by an attachment to the "regulars" one encountered on most shifts, the people who lived locally and who came into the store on a frequent basis. After a while, you got to know their names; and, through conversation, learned a little about their lives. Granted, a small number of "regulars" came with a degree of "nuisance value" attached; but the bulk were, in fact, people you looked forward to seeing. They either helped mark the passing of the hours because their metronomic habits ensured they always came to the store at the same time; or, more importantly, they were the ones who offered consolation after your shift had been spoiled by some aggressive, impatient, arrogant twat. In many ways the "regulars" were a reminder that, even in the most sterile of environments, meaningful human relationships are possible.

I'm sure there's more I could tell you, but I think that's about it for now. I hated the job and every minute I was compelled to perform it; but I am also grateful for the income it provided, and for the people who meant that it wasn't the dehumanising nullity it might otherwise have been. At the end of the day, I guess all I can do is mark it down to experience and hope to learn the lessons it provided. And breathe a big sigh of relief that it is now a chapter in my life that is well and truly over!

And, since this post is about endings, I now announce that this post also represents the end of this blog. Like the job at the store, it has, I think, served its purpose. So while I won't delete this blog, it is highly unlikely that any further posts will be listed here. So thank you for listening and commenting and for coming along on the ride together. I hope you join me on my other blog The Still Circle.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in days of old moved heaven and earth, that which we are we are; one equal temper of heroic hearts made weak by time and fate but not in will; to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson - "Ulysses")

For What It's Worth...

2010-07-02T11:48:00.004+10:00

Why, if I think it's great Australia now has a female Prime Minister, do I feel so heartsick?

Sure, the coup - and let's not be pedantic about this, it was a coup, albeit a political rather than military one - was conducted with swift, sure precision, the kind of clinical surgical strike the American military only wishes its so-called "smart" weaponry could achieve. There was no long, drawn-out saga of innuendo and undermining, leaving behind great tearing wounds of bitterness and public disillusion. We quite literally went to bed one night with Kevin Rudd as PM and woke up the next morning with Julia Gillard as our new Prime Minister.

I don't for a moment believe that Gillard didn't know what was happening. Even if only indirectly, she would have been aware of the numbers tilting against Rudd as his popularity declined and the ALP "brand" became ever more on the nose with the electorate. Maybe she even tried to warn Rudd, perhaps obliquely at first and then directly, that the forces of deposition were gathering against him. Either way, Gillard is too experienced and assured a political operator not to have seen what was coming and to have positioned herself accordingly.

But that isn't what has got me feeling as though our country has taken one almighty step backwards. True, the fact that a politically astute woman has shown herself to be as ruthless and unsentimental as "the boys" doesn't give me much confidence that our political culture specifically - or our social culture generally - has matured much. Which doesn't mean that I don't think Gillard will be a competent, perhaps even excellent, PM. But I suspect the circumstances of Gillard's ascent to the Prime Ministership tell us that while women are able to play "the boys" at their own game, the fact remains that it is still "the boys" game that is being played. No new territory has been staked out, no new paradigm has been put into place.

Still, I kind of expect that from Gillard. She is, afterall, a product of the same cynical, mercenary party "machine" that has produced her factional contemporaries within the ALP. So why am I feeling like I want to curl into a foetal ball and start keening for my country?

In part, I think it's because I'm angry with Kevin Rudd. In party political terms, Rudd was a relative outsider, having been "foisted" upon the federal parliamentary ALP via the party's Queensland administrative wing and his connections to the Queensland Premier's office. This meant that he largely lacked either a factional power-base or cross-factional support - as is the case with most parliamentarians, who do their time as footsoldiers in the factional machine before being given the nod to step up to the bright lights of elected office. But the fact of Rudd's outsidership meant that he had a great opportunity to change the political narrative of our country, both in terms of the ALP specifically and the wider political process generally.

Remember when Rudd was Leader of the Opposition, and when he first came to power? Back then, he articulated a cohesive political-social framework founded in a set of principles that spoke to the yearning of the Australian public for a new kind of politics: a politics of ideas, a politics of engagement, a politics of the "big picture" whose vision extended beyond the horizon of the three year electoral cycle. For the first time in a long time, Australians glimpsed a vision of the political process that transcended both the cynical "consensus pragmatism" of ALP factionalism, and the conceited "natural party of rule" arrogance of the Coalition and its neo-classical ideologues.

For the first time in a long time, Australians began to hope for something more.

But Rudd blew it. Once in power, and despite an impressive catalogue of initiatives that included affirming the Kyoto climate change protocols and the much-delayed apology to indigenous Australia, Rudd lapsed into an autocratic, presidential style of leadership that brooked no dissent and heard no other points of view. Decision making was limited to a restricted coterie of senior parliamentarians (the so-called "gang of four", which ironically included Gillard and Treasurer - now deputy PM - Wayne Swann), as well as a select group of staffers appointed by Rudd himself. Moreover, stories soon began to leak out about personality flaws in Rudd that presaged problems for the future: his frenetic, almost insane addiction to work; his short fuse and temper tantrums; his apparent insensitivity to the human and personal needs of those around him.

None of which was going to threaten Rudd while he was so spectacularly popular. The alienated parliamentary colleagues and factional mandarins couldn't move against a leader who so obviously had the nation's confidence. But it was in this fact that the seeds of disaster lay. For instead of using his outsider status to bring change into the ALP - and, by extension, the whole political culture of Australia - Rudd refused to persuade his colleagues to back his vision, instead demanding obedience and loyalty. Had he done so, once things turned sour he could have drawn on depths of goodwill and support that were previously absent. Indeed, it seems that Rudd's own consciousness of his "outsider" status provoked a sense of personal insecurity that drove him toward authoritarianism and the hostility from others which it engenders. Instead of being able to draw on the support of others, he found the knives were drawn against him.

And those knives came out for two reasons. The first was the "reform obsession" which seemed to characterise the Rudd government. Like the Whitlam government before it, Rudd tried to push through a raft of reforms at every conceivable level of policy, from industrial relations to climate change, from tax policy to health services. And like the Whitlam government, the Rudd government found itself swamped by the logistics of trying to implement reform across such a wide spectrum of policy areas. Which, combined with the relative inexperience of most of Rudd's ministers, and the corresponding inexperience of their personal staffers, resulted in some monumental policy disasters. Instead of tackling a couple of major projects at a time and getting them attended to in detail, the Rudd government tried to do everything at once - and paid the penalty for its poor judgement.

But the second cause of Rudd's downfall lay in Rudd himself. As noted above, rumours about some of Rudd's less attractive personality traits began to circulate earlier in his Prime Ministership. But when these were just "quirks" of the man himself, they were - electorally speaking - more or less harmless. But when they manifested themselves on the policy stage, they were disastrous for Rudd the politician, and gave the signal to his factional enemies to start organising the numbers.

Perhaps the most egregious example was Rudd's handling of the Trading Emissions legislation. Having tried and failed to get the legislation passed on more than one occasion, Rudd should have explained to the Australian public that the parliamentary process had not enabled the government to pass its legislation, as a consequence of which, the government would go to the next election seeking a clear mandate for both houses of parliament so that the legislation could be put in place. However, and in an almost inconceivable display of petulance, Rudd did the policy equivalent of taking his bat and ball and going home, declaring unilaterally that there was no community consensus on an emissions trading scheme, and delaying any legislation until at least 2012.

A response that only served to disillusion the public who had believed Rudd's image of "big picture" commitment, and who now not only questioned that commitment, but began to wonder whether his personality traits made him fit to be PM. The polls began to plummet, the knives were sharpened, the numbers counted. Rudd's continued refusal to realise his peril and change his ways only hastened the end. To borrow a classical allusion, Rudd started off looking like Australian politics' equivalent of Marcus Aurelius, only to end up its Tiberius: an isolated, ill-tempered, suspicious, and mistrusted individual whose unpopularity was largely of his own making.

And, ultimately, I think it's the rather pathetic humanity lying at the core of this tragedy that makes me feel the way I do. The almost unbearable sight of Rudd making his all-too-late appeal for support based on his record the night he realised the chickens had come home to roost; the gut-wrenching agony of watching him realise and struggle with the extent of his failure at the next day's media conference; the indescribable pathos of Rudd sitting in the backbench while parliamentary colleagues and opponents alike poured out their crocodile tears (a spectacle made all the more poignant by the presence of a delegation from Vietnam in the chamber). All these sights had me thinking: well, we could have one in a different direction in this country, but we blew it. Rudd blew it, the ALP blew it, the whole Australian electorate has blown it.

Maybe I'm being melodramatic. Maybe I'm being sentimental. Maybe I'm being a fool. But there's something within me that says, no matter how good a PM Julia Gillard turns out to be, there was a moment here for the seizing which, collectively, together as a society and a body politic, we have let slip through our fingers. And I think we're all going to be the poorer for it.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Opportunity: that which comes disguised as hard work in order that it not be recognised by most people. (Ann Landers)

The Cup From The Couch II

2010-06-23T19:16:00.003+10:00

Yes, I know I said I would be providing updates about the World Cup, and that what follows is hopelessly dated, but this last week has seen my computer (and my ISP) let me down badly, so I'm afraid you've ot what you've got. Now that things appear to have returned to something approximating normal, enjoy...or endure...

Netherlands 2 vs Denmark 0

This was a dour, charmless match in which the Danes defended in depth, while the Netherlands played a possession football that was more akin to a training run than to any serious attempt at play-making. Indeed, the crowd became so restless the perennial sign of spectator boredom – the Mexican Wave – made an appearance in force. After 20 mins of stultifyingly dull play, the Dutch bean to pressure the Danish defence, cutting down the right flank and breaking through the centre; but the resulting opportunities were all-too-easily defended. Against the run of play, a 26th minute break by the Danes saw the Dutch goal in serious danger without producing a result; likewise, similar thrusts in the 33rd and 36th minutes. Granted, after half-time, the game became somewhat more engaging – but this due almost entirely to a comical defensive error inside the 1st minute after the restart which gifted the Dutch the lead. Similarly farcical moments in the 50th, 75th, and 81st minutes almost repeated the gift, while the Netherlands made strong attacks in the 58th, 68th, and 72nd minutes without result. Finally, the pressure told: in the 84th minute, the Danish defence cracked at the seams, allowing the Netherlands to score for the second time; while a third goal was only prevented in the 87th minute by a frantic clearance off the Danish goal-line. Mercifully, the game came to an end shortly afterwards; the Netherlands walked away from a technically proficient but aesthetically sterile performance with a 2-0 win and all three points.

Italy 1 vs Paraguay 1

The outstanding feature of this match was the quality of both sides’ tackling and interceptions, a fact made all the more remarkable because of the wind and rains that prevailed during most of the match. Time and again, a player in seeming control of the ball was stripped of possession, or had his apparently clean pass cut off before it reached its target. Italy were the dominant team, and for most of the first half regularly pressed the Paraguayan goal, crossing looping balls from either flank into the teeth of the South Americans’ goal. But a combination of doughty defence by Paraguay and a small amount of fortune frustrated all of Italy’s efforts. The opening score, when it came in the 38th minute, surprised everyone: a rare Paraguayan thrust resulted in a beautifully delivered free-kick, the incoming ball slotted by a neat header into the back of the Italian net. Paraguay 1-0 at the break – who would have thought it? A tense struggle after the resumption resulted in unexploited goal scoring opportunities for both sides, until, in the 62nd minute, a perfectly delivered cross drew the Paraguayan keeper off his line, only for the ball to float into the path of an Italian striker who gleefully chipped the ball home. Thereafter, Italy continually pressed the Paraguayan goal, and after the 75th minute, launched repeated attacks, including an 82nd minute strike that required a brilliant diving save by Paraguay’s ‘keeper. But the South Americans remained calm under pressure, and manfully resisted every offensive. In the end, the 1-1 scoreline befitted a gripping contest in which one of the tournament favourites was forced to work hard in order to salvage equal points.

Cote D’Ivoire 0 vs Portugal 0

This match featured what is arguably Africa’s strongest team at this World Cup in the absence of African Cup holders Egypt, up against the enigmatic but hugely talented Portugal. Portugal dominated the opening stanzas, highlighted by a blistering 10th minute strike on goal the beat the Ivorian goalkeeper cold – but not, alas, the goal upright. A pointless free kick in the 13th minute gifted Cote D’Ivoire with its first scoring opportunity, while a deft 16th minute midfield steal provided a second; both opportunities were squandered. A bit of spite entered the game in the 20th minute, as both teams, seemingly frustrated by their inability to score, indulged in a series of ugly tackles, which in turn produced a flurry of dives, fouls, and bookings. The nadir came in the 28th minute: a crude Portuguese tackle inexplicably went unpunished by the referee, and play had to be halted so the unfortunate Ivorian player on the receiving end could be attended to by medical staff. Cote D’Ivoire started strongly in the second half, producing opportunities in the 47th minute (twice), 53rd minute, 58th and 59th minutes that failed to result in any change to the scoreline. In the midst of this barrage, a perfectly lofted 50th minute cross placed the Ivorian goal in severe danger, while a 57th minute ball from deep in Cote D’Ivoire’s defensive zone again had the defence scrambling. After the 65th minute, Portugal gained the upper hand, but were unable to convert several half-opportunities into anything more substantial; poor crossing from a number of corner kicks aided the Ivorian defence, while a long-range shot in the 78th minute and a free kick in the 79th flew high and wide. After the 80th minute, the match resembled and arm-wrestling contest between two equally matched and equally exhausted opponents, although an 83rd minute thrust by Cote D’Ivoire and an 88th minute counter by Portugal provided brief moments of excitement. The three minutes of penalty time were dominated by Cote D’Ivoire, with several desperate attacks repelled by an equally desperate defence. All in all, it was a slightly disappointing match, in which two teams rich in capacity produced very little of substance.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

The Cup From The Couch

2010-06-13T16:50:00.012+10:00

Since it is the World Cup, and since I am undeniably a fan of football at this level, I thought while the tournament was on, I'd periodically give you my thoughts as they occur to me from my perch on the Couch. I can't claim that my musings will constitute "expert" opinion, either on the game in general or on the tournament in particular (and anyway, who could possibly know more than Les Murray?); I can't even claim that the matches I comment on will in any sense be important or vital to the outcome of World Cup 2010. But they will be games I have actually watched, so my ignorance will at least be "informed" ignorance...

South Africa 1 vs Mexico 1

The stand out feature of this match was the amazing foot-speed of the South African players, and their ability to disorient the Mexican defence and charge forward into attack, either from the wings or through the centre. The Mexicans were clearly the more experienced and skillful team, a fact reflected by their near dominance of possession in the 1st half; indeed, South Africa can thank the amazing atheletic skills of their goal-keeper for the fact that they weren't 2-nil down after the first 40 minutes. But then a sea-change came over the match: for the last five minutes of the 1st half, and for the first 25 minutes of the 2nd half, the South Africans ran rings around their more fancied opponents, breaking from deep within their own defence to regularly harry the Mexican goal. It was an inevitability when the South Africans slotted home the first goal of the match (and tournament); what was less expected was the Mexican equaliser against the run of play (due almost entirely to sloppy South African defence) and the return of the game to a more even keel. The last stanza of the match was a thrilling battle of skill against elan, in which both teams squandered opportunities to score the winner. In the end, a 1-1 draw reflected a just result to what was a cracking start to the tournament.

South Korea 2 vs Greece 0

In this match, Greece was cut to pieces by the precision passing of the South Koreans, who frequently threaded the needle of two or three apparently immobile Greek players in order to find a team-mate and retain possession. While the Greeks opted for long-range aerial delivery into their forward zone, the South Koreans displayed a cohesive integration of defence, midfield, and offence to switch the ball from deep within their own zone into the teeth of the Greek goal, playing with a fluidity that made their opponents look sluggish and out of form. Despite the fact that the Greeks had the best opportunity to open the scoring, from the 5 minute mark onwards, South Korea dominated, patiently retaining possession before launching lightning attacks down and across both flanks. The Greeks frankly looked flat-footed and lacking in match fitness, while the South Koreans visibly gained in confidence as the game progressed. Greece did manage to salvage some pride in the last 20 minutes of the match by threatening the South Korean goal as their opponents tired; but their numerous assaults proved fruitless, while the South Koreans were only prevented from extending their lead by the vicissitudes of fortune. Like the South Africa-Mexico contest, this was a match in which the underdogs upstaged their more highly credentialed rivals.

Serbia 0 v Ghana 1

This was a gritty arm-wrestle of a match, occassionally illuminated by moments of excitement, in which the momentum swung between two seemingly equally matched teams. The Ghanaians controlled most of the first half without really threatening the Serbian goal; their opponents then grabbed the initiative in the latter stages of the half and troubled Ghana's defence with a series of set-pieces squandered by poor finishing. The Ghanaian offensives, while exciting at times, tended to have a quality of sameness, relying mostly on dashes down the wings finished by long-range crosses into the centre. After half time, the momentum once again swung in Ghana's favour, but they were unable to convert a series of opportunities, two of which went close to breaking the deadlock. Against the run of play, Serbia almost scored twice in moves that opened up Ghana's defence; but these chances likewise failed to result in a goal. Interest was injected into the game in the 73rd minute when a Serbian defender received a 2nd yellow card and thus earned a send off; Ghana now found themselves one player to the good over their opponents. Yet it was the Serbs who siezed the initiative, forcing two terrific saves from the Ghanaian goalkeeper in the most exciting passage of play in the match. The denoument, when it came, took everyone by surprise: a Serb defender was called for handball in the penalty box (which, despite protestations to the contrary, was a spot-on call by the ref), which in turn produced a faultless penalty kick that put Ghana in the lead. The Ghanaians almost scored again in injury time as Serbia appeared to give up the game for lost. In the end, it was victory for Ghana; but a nil-all draw would have been a more accurate reflection of a match that, while interesting at times, never really climbed the heights.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Under Review II

2010-06-02T11:09:00.002+10:00

As stated in an earlier post, I will from time to time publish on this blog reviews I've written and posted on my Facebook account. The reason being to make these reviews available to a wider audience than the select group of unfortunates who happen to be my Facebook "friends". Today's review concerns Walter M Miller's classic post-apocalyptic science fiction novel "A Canticle for Liebowitz".

A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M Miller

Walter M Miller Jr grew up in the between the wars American South, enlisting in the Army Air Corp in WWII and spending most of his time as a radio operator and gunner. One operation in which he participated was the infamous bombing of the ancient monastary of Monte Cassino in Italy; it was this experience, as well as his encounter with the horrors of war generally, that lead him to write "A Canticle for Leibowitz"

The novel covers a nearly 1800 year time span in which an order of monks adhering to the Rule of Benedict - called the Albertain Order of Leibowitz, named for the great medieval scholar Albertus Magnus, and a fictional scientist-martyr Leibowitz - struggle to preserve the relics of the "great civilisation" destroyed by nuclear war. Their task is rendered next to impossible by the fact that, after civilisation was destroyed, a further cataclysmic event called the Simplification resulted in the systematic annihilation of books, records, and technological implements of every kind. The Order was founded by a scientist named Leibowitz who was mob lynched during the Simplification; but not before he had managed to squirrel away a small collection of precious books and found the Order bearing his name.

The novel is constructed in three parts, the first ocurring approximately 600 years after the nuclear holocaust, the next about 500 years further on, and the final section another half milennium beyond that. In the first section, a rather absurd and hapless novice monk stumbles upon a fallout shelter which, among other things, contains a precious relic written by Leibowitz himself - a shopping list. In the second section, an abbot plagued by doubts and chronic ulcers debates whether to make available to the scientists of the newly emerging civilisations the technological secrets which the Order has preserved for so long. In the third section, a civilisation more advanced than the one destroyed by the nuclear holocaust advances inexoribably to its own horrible fate - but not without the Order managing to make sure a seed of hope survives.

This is a wonderfully told novel full of wit, sarcasm, humour, despair, compassion, and frustration. Having survived the horrors of WWII Miller was desperately concerned that human civilisation was advancing along a path of relentless self-annihilation, heedless of the warnings provided by the carnage of two global conflagrations. Haunting the novel is the unseen (and, from the point of view of the narrative, possibly fictional) personage of Leibowitz: the scientist-martyr who struggled to preserve what was best about civilisation - its accumulated knowledge - all the while knowing this was the very thing that had brought civilisation to ruin. Also haunting the novel is the figure of "the Jew", known as Benjamin bar Joshua, but quite conceivably Lazarus raised from the dead and unable to die. Is he an allegory for anti-Semitic persecution and the appropriation by Christians of Jewish sacred history and heritage? A symbol of human folly? Of sheer, bloody-minded determination? Of the human experience itself, its journey from savagery to civilisation, only to inflict upon itself more savagery?

Miller's placing of the struggle to preserve civilisation within the context of an enclosed monastic order reflects both the historical preservation of Western civilisation by Benedictine monastaries during the Dark Ages, as well as the perenniel tension between the truth of science and the truth of faith. This tension is emblematic of the tension between knowledge and wisdom; and Miller's seemingly gloomy conclusion is nonetheless punctured by the possibility of hope. Perhaps we are doomed to destroy ourselves; but even if we do, it just may be that something of ourselves - some of our greatness that transcends our shame - will survive beyond our annihilation, to be picked up and carried on by whoever comes after us.

A powerful, disturbing, thought-provoking novel, well worth reading and completely relevant in this day and age.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Midsommer Morons

2010-04-21T19:19:00.010+10:00

I know this post is going to annoy my Dearly Beloved, but the truth remains that we have very different tastes when it comes to television. I enjoy shows that are interesting and engaging, which entertain and/or inform.

My Dearly Beloved, on the other hand, enjoys crap.

Now, I appreciate that "crap" is not a definitive term; moreover, it's open to claims of subjectivity. So I intend to provide, for your information, a representative sample of my Dearly Beloved's preferred programing choices, just so you can see that I'm being neither imprecise nor biased.

Midsommer Murders

This is the show that defines the whole problem. Originally conceived as a formulaic detective show set in the depths of rural England, it has morphed into a seemingly endless procession of brain destroyingly dull episodes that are absolute clones of one another. The plot premise is essentially hacked out of the same cookie cutter: a series of grisly murders, usually having their origin in some long-suppressed secret/scandal/injustice or pointless rivalry going back centuries, and which can only be solved by the show's central character, Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby.

Fairly bog standard, you might think, and not much to complain about. Except for the following considerations:

Firstly, the action is entirely restricted to a small area centred on the fictional town of Causton, and taking in a series of villages with names like Midsommer Boghouse and Midsommer Flatulence. Now, given that each episode involves at least three murders, and the area of action is confined to about five square miles, this makes Causton and its environs the serial murder capital of the world. Forget Los Angeles; forget London; hell, forget Adelaide! The viewer is expected to believe that in this tiny patch of outback Blighty blood-thirsty psychopaths lurk behind every privet hedge and thatched cottage. And never mind Johannesburg, or Miami, or Rio - if you want to increase the odds of you ending up a toe-tagged corpse on the morgue slab, then the backwaters of the Old Country is where you need to be! Is it just me, or does anyone else find this premise just a tad difficult to believe?

Secondly, and as is de rigeur for formulaic detective shows, the sleuth - in this case, DCI Barnaby - always gets his man. In other words, this is a cop with a greater clearance rate than Sherlock Holmes! Now, making allowances for the genre's conventions, the fact that Barnaby manages to solve multiple murders every episode stretches convention to breaking point. Moreover, he does so in the time-honoured way of all mystery detectives: by using a chain of logic entirely - or mostly - unsupported by evidence; and certainly not the kind of evidence that would stand up in a court of law! But leaving aside that niggling technicality, what I want to know is: how come this guy isn't running Scotland Yard! I mean, really, if you had a country plod who was clearing every case of mass murder that comes his way, you'd make him Chief Commissioner of Something Really Important faster than you could say Fast-track Promotion Program! And don't give me any tosh about Barnbaby wanting to stay in the country, either; that might work for Hamish Macbeth, but that's only because nothing happens in Loch Dubh!

Thirdly, given that the residents are apparently living on the most dangerous patch of dirt on the planet, one has to wonder: why do they stay! I mean, if it was me (and, let's face it, you) who lived in a locale where people were showing up with axes buried in their backs, or as bait for the local fish, on an almost hourly basis, wouldn't you get the hell out? But, no, the stolid yofolks of the Midsommer region aren't going to be driven out of their homes by the fact that home also happens to be lethal! They've got more staying power than super glue. And since the population seems to never diminish despite the onoin slaughter, one can only surmise that it is being constantly replenished by the kind of people who think: oh, well, what's a few murders or the likelihood that our life expectancy will be cut in half really matter? We'll still buy this charming cottage - damn the corpses hanging from the rafters!

Now do you see why I call it Midsommer Morons?

The Bill

I admit that I used to like this program when it first aired on TV. But that was back in the day, when the characters and the storylines were as gritty as the production values, when individuals like Tosh (God rest his tired old soul) recalled the glory days of Bluey (aka Bargearse), and when in many ways the program itself was a commentary on the social decay and dislocation evident in Thatcher's Britain. In other words, it was a piece of telly that both entertained and informed.

And then it turned into a soap opera. Senior officers started shagging junior officers (or the civilian staff attached to the station), gormless vice cops got seduced by the dark side (and/or a sultry vamp) and turned bad, set-piece episodes turned into a never-ending, continuous storyline whose convolutions and contortions got more ridiculous and mind-boggling with every season. In other words, the emphasis switched from the genuinely dramatic to the purely melodramatic. I know cops shag one another (or civilians) and occasionally go bad; but what I am interested in is the humanity involved in and affected by these events, not the "shock-horror" value of the event itself. But that was the nature of the change: we went from examining impacts to being titillated by what the "guv'nor" did next.

Honestly, I was astonished the Minogue sisters didn't make a surprise appearance. And so something that had been good (in the way that only the British can make social drama good) turned into a banal parade of pointless inanity. It was as if the producers (I won't dignify them with the title creators) of Neighbours or Eastenders had taken over the franchise and decided to try and make a previously adult program appeal to people with the emotional depth of tweenies and/or who possessed an IQ of six. The result was the deadliest, dullest program on the box outside anything featuring Eddie McGuire or Sam Newman.

And, yes, I know: they've now gone back and tried to re-capture the spirit of the original by having discrete episodes and adding a bit of depth to the characters. But I'm afraid that it's a case of the mould having been broken and, like Humpty-Dumpty, being unable to be put back together again. Once you've tampered with what was once beautiful, no amount of plastic surgery is going to reconstruct the original. Better just to let the whole thing die a natural death and rest in peace (take note Darryl Somers!).

Rosemary and Thyme

Oooh, here's a tricky question for all those devotees of quality telly. What do you get if you take a pair of second rate actors well past their prime (and who were never much chop to begin with), add a plot premise about as likely as Richard Dawkins finding God, and mix in a series of admittedly picturesque locales designed to distract the viewer's attention from the fact that they're watching utter dross? You guessed it: a batch of Rosemary & Thyme.

And if you think I'm being unduly severe, let me explain the basic storyline to you. Two women (one of whom is supposed to be an ex-cop, but who is about as plausible as Julian Cleary impersonating Conan the Barbarian, and who seems to know sod all about police procedure into the bargain) are partners in a landscaping business that takes them all over the UK and even the Costa del Sol for a couple of episodes. And everywhere they go, every episode, they spend less time discussing geraniums and herbaceous borders (ha! I'll bet you didn't think I knew what they were, did you?) and more time catching the demented killer who has, just coincidentally, chosen to strike while they were in the neighbourhood.

I mean, PUH-LEEZE, how stupid do the clots whose dull minds dreamed up this crap think I am? Okay, I'm prepared to admit that, statistically speaking, it is within the bounds of possibility that a pair of itinerant gardeners could, by chance, happen to be in a certain location when a series of gristly murders takes place. And I'll even accept that those bounds of possibility might be stretched sufficiently to admit of the chance that said gardeners might have the wherewithal to detect and expose the nutbar responsible. But again and again and again - everywhere they go??? As our American cousins are wont to say: gimme a break!

Honestly, these two would have to be the most prolific indirect serial killers in criminal history. And you'd think that bodies appearing everywhere this green-thumbed duo turned up might be bad for business, wouldn't you? You'd expect that people would see them heaving into view over the horizon and, with one voice, would chorus: (expletive deleted) off! But not a bit of it! They're welcomed with open arms - almost as if folks had concluded that their snappy advertising slogan - we'll do your garden while you get done in - was the jolliest jape since Herr Hitler promised Neville Chamberlain that he had no more territorial ambitions in Europe. I've heard of blood and bone being good for the garden, but this is ridiculous!

And while I'm at it, could someone please, please, please explain why it is that all the supposedly diabolical killers this pair encounter never, ever try to kill the only two people who are trying to solve the crime!?! Hollywood aside, it is an established criminological fact that most criminals - even most serial offenders - are decidedly stupid. But this show puts homicidal idiocy in the Dumb and Dumber category! I think even the jerks who make the annual Darwin Award list for the most fatally stupid bonehead maneuver of the year would laugh at the imbecility of these clowns: Ah, duh, he shoulda killed the two chicks in the overalls before killing anyone else...

***

So there you have it, just a sampler of what I have to put up with for the sake of this marriage. Now, I know what you're going to say - because my Dearly Beloved has already said it. First, that taste is a subjective matter, and, anyway, my Dearly Beloved has to put up with the crap shows I like to watch. And second, that the programs in question involve the suspension of disbelief. I'll address each of these defences in turn.

Whilst I concede that taste is subjective (although having said that, it nonetheless remains true that my taste is impeccable while yours is suspect until proven otherwise), it is also true that I get to watch very few of the shows I like exclusively unless my Dearly Beloved is out of the house. On the other hand, when I stagger home at midnight from another punishing shift at the local convenience store where I hire myself out as the neighbourhood whipping-boy, I frequently have to endure the MM show in silence for ages before my Dearly Beloved goes to bed. And even the faintest suggestion by Yours Truly that perhaps we might watch something a little less aneurysm inducing is greeted by the kind of vigourous protest that, in public, would result in the riot squad being summoned. So it is not the case, in our marriage, that there are swings and roundabouts when it comes to enduring crappy TV imposed by ones life partner.

Second - and I wish I didn't have to keep explaining this - the suspension of disbelief only works when the underlying premise is sufficiently believable in order to facilitate the necessary suspicion of scepticism. In other words, if the audience is initially presented with a scenario so absurd as to be unbelievable, asking them to further suspend incredulity is just a waste of time - and an insult to their intelligence. And don't give me that it's just a story guff, either. As all great speculative fiction writers know, the world in which their characters move and the events occur have to be realistic in order for the speculative element to work. So if you're asking me to believe that a tiny patch of rural England produces more dead bodies per annum than your average Baghdad suburb, I'll be asking you to believe that I'm an alien called WaldkjfhcearubyfbUScfxlmkcn from the planet Aaliruhgfunvareygcfniashef.

The fact that so many people - alas, my Dearly Beloved among them - seem incapable of rasping this concept suggests to me that I might very well get away with my alien identity scam. In which case, have I got a ponzi scheme for you....

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Television - a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything. (Fred Allen)

Far From The Madding Tools

2010-02-16T22:40:00.007+11:00

I think even the most jaded observer of this irregular column will confess that I am nothing if not a sensitive and sympathetic chronicler of the infinite variety of human tools who walk through the door of the store where, a couple of nights a week, I engage in an elaborate charade of employment. I don't blame tools for being tools: I don't ascribe to them genetic defects, neither do I suggest their parents shared a degree of relationship closer than that which you'd typically find in, say, Arkansas or far north Queensland. No, I am conscientious and kind: tools are just tools, and I deal with them in a responsible and grown-up manner.

Until now, that is. I, dear reader, have had a gut full. And it's not just because I'm writing this at the end of a long and tiring day that has left me exhausted and cranky. On the contrary, I wake up exhausted and cranky, so that's no excuse. Neither have I lost my instincts toward the charitable and decided to become a born-again bastard; there are plenty of people out there who will suggest that I have been doing that my whole life long.

No, the plain old simple truth is that I'm fed up and I've had enough. The tools have worn me down; my patience is at an end, kaput, done, gone. I'm as mad as hell, and I've decided that attack is the best form of defence; so I'm going to name and shame. Well, I'm going to describe and shame, if you want to know the complete truth. I'm going to tell you all about the kinds of tools who walk into the store, and who blight my shifts with their ineffable toolishness.

So if you find yourself recognising yourself in the following descriptions, I have only one thing to say: shame on you! Well, okay, two things: shame on you; and sod off. I don't want to see your tool-benighted faces any more. I've only got nine or so months to go before I get out of having to do this job, and I'd like to pass it with an absolute minimum of frustration, annoyance, and general f*ing about caused by your toolish selves. And by absolute minimum, I mean none at all. So pay close attention to what follows; you may be in it. And if you are, you'd better stay far, far away from me!

No IDers

Naturally, being responsible corporate citizens, the multinational corporation by whom I am ultimately employed abides by Australian law and declines to sell cigarettes and smoking-related products to persons under the age of 18. Indeed, its sales staff are required to ask for ID when they have reason to believe the putative purchaser may be under the legal age. And so it comes as no surprise that Yours Truly has his fair share of annoyingly baby-faced adults from whom he must ask ID because they look under age; that, and the obvious under agers who are just trying it on because they think that wearing a shirt with a company logo embroidered in it automatically makes you a moron.

It is from both categories that the No IDers spring, and it's difficult to decide which of the two are more pathetic. From the legally-aged but disgustingly youthful brigade you often get protestations that they are over-age, and besides, they've always bought cigarettes here and they've never been asked for ID before. They might be right on both accounts; but the thing is, once ID has been asked for, it must be produced before the sale can proceed. Yes, sir, it might be bullshit, but it's the law. Yes, madam, I know you may be old enough to have children, but around here the age at which people start having kiddies is also somewhat below the legal age of consent. And anyhoo, you might have previously purchased your daily dose of throat cancer from this store, but you haven't purchased it from me. And I'm the one asking: so cough up or step off.

The under agers usually try to bluff their way out of the situation - yes, mate, I am for f*ing real - and then try and get one of their mates who happens to be above age to use their ID. Except that, once it is explained to aforesaid mate that since he/she is the one producing the ID, he/she is the one who'll have to pay for the cigarettes (and once again, yes mate, I am for f*ing real), they baulk at the near king's ransom it costs to indulge the nicotine habit these days and tell their under age mate to take a hike. Which usually results in a mouthful of deleted expletives heading my way from the frustrated law breaker; but hey, what the hell do I care?

But the thing that elevates (or should that be relegates?) No IDers from annoying inconveniences to outright tools is the little ritual they then perform in yet another attempt to get the cigarettes without having to show proof of age. Having been busted with no ID, they proceed to go out to their cars, where they make an unconvincing attempt to look as though they're going through their glove box, looking under the seats, and generally investigating every nook and cranny in search of the missing ID. How unconvincing is this display, you wonder? Put it this way: my attempts to look as though I give a toss about customer service are more convincing!

Anyhoo, having wasted another five minutes, the No IDer then returns to the store and explains that they must have left their ID at home. In other words, they expect me to say: Oh, that changes everything! Of course you can have some cigarettes! Except, of course, that I don't, much to their dismay and puzzlement. But here's the interesting point: having confessed that they don't have ID with which to buy cigarettes, the No IDer then confesses to being in possession of, and driving, a motor vehicle while not having their driver's licence on their person! And yes, folks, you're not mistaken: driving a car while without a driver's licence is illegal. These people are such tools they're willing to confess to one illegality in order to try and co-opt me into perpetrating another.

Excuse me, but I don't believe my name changed to Cletus, nor did I suddenly take to wearing blue overalls and a straw hat, or develop a liking for pork belly and Biblical literalism. Ergo, I'm not a moron, you moron! But, try as I may to dissuade the No IDer from their particular brand of Tom Toolery, they continue to try it on in the vain hope of feeding their nicotine addiction. The only question that remains is: did they take up smoking because they were born congenital tools to begin with; or did smoking, insidiously and by degrees, turn them into idiocy's equivalent of the Bride of Chuckie?

PIN Heads

The next category of tool to plague my life is the PIN Head. These are the people who step up to the counter, usually during a rush period, and, try as they might, can either not remember the PIN number to their cash/credit card, or who repeatedly get it wrong. The end result is a queue that started out long but grows to proportions so large passers-by join it because they think its the line to get into Sexpo, a surprise discount give-away, or both.

It used to be that I had some sympathy for PIN Heads. Afterall, who among us in this digital age of swipe cards, security access, and internet banking isn't plagued by an ever-expanding list of PIN numbers, personal ID codes, and passwords? Afterall, security experts tell us to never use the same PIN number or identification code twice, don't they? But what they don't tell us is how we're supposed to avoid the inevitable embolism that results from trying to keep track of all the numbers, letters, and combinations of same we're required to use in order to prevent ourselves from being ripped of or mistaken for someone we're not. Because we can't, not unless we write them all down - and we're not allowed to do that either, are we????

So, anyhoo, I used to sympathise. But not anymore! Because the thing I've noticed about the PIN Heads is that it's the same people every time! Whether it's the little old lady who isn't functioning properly because she hasn't had her recommended daily dose of G&T, or the party-too-hard twenty-something for whom life outside a rave, five cans of Red Bull, and a blister-pack of little yellow tabs resembles a permanent exercise in somnambulism, the PIN Head can be relied upon to turn up at the most inconvenient moment possible and turn what had been a typically mundane and mind-numbing shift into living hell.

Because, of course, the PIN will strike out twice and then come to the dilemma of trying to decide whether or not to risk a third attempt at getting their PIN number right (and potentially voiding their card) or else go to the ATM and get some cash with which to pay for their purchases. Except, of course, the ATM neds a PIN number in order to dispense the bucks, doesn't it? So that means the PIN Head will just dither in an ever-increasing welter of anxiety, not knowing what to do. Meanwhile, the other customers start getting impatient as the mood in the store deteriorates from bored indifference to hostile aggravation.

Oooooh, you can just feel the love. And you all know at whom it's directed, don't you? WRONG! Not at the PIN Head, but at Yours Truly. As if I had any say in the fact that our customers belong to various sub-species of tool! Believe me, I wish I could restrict our clientele to the members of MENSA. But I don't have that kind of power. I wonder who does...

Wrong Numbers

This particular tool used to be relatively rare, but has now grown to plague proportions. Indeed, so ubiquitous have they become that I'm thinking of calling in the exterminators to deal with the problem. Yes, I am aware that having this variety of tool eradicated will qualify - just - as mass murder; but I'm sure that, given the inestimable benefits to humanity to be derived from their elimination, any trial of Yours Truly would result in triumphant acquittal.

The variety of tool known as Wrong Numbers are characterised by a propensity to confuse the dollar amount on the bowser with the litres readout whenever they put fuel in their car. I know, I know: of course it's absolutely reasonable for anyone to confuse the spinning numbers next to the large "$" sign with the spinning numbers next to the large "litres" sign. I mean, what, afterall, is there to tell you that one indicates the amount of money you're spending, while the other details the amount of fuel you've pumped into the tank? It's not as if there's a large "$" sign for one and a large "lites" sign for the other! Oh, wait, yes, there is...

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr! It's bad enough when this happens once on a shift, because invariably the tool, having confused the cost indicator for the fuel indicator, has also completely ignored the fact that we're now in the 21st century and that a $20 purchase will not result in 33.24 litres of petrol. And so into the shop they blithely waltz, only to discover their error and the fact that they don't have enough money and that - surprise! surprise! - they've left their bloody credit card at home. Which means they then have to fill out a whole lot of paperwork giving their details, offering proof of identity (another occasion on which the No IDer makes an appearance), and committing to making repayment within 24 hours (in default of which they get a nasty phone call from the wallopers). Yours Truly then has to record the whole thing as a drive off, and fill in sundry other bits and pieces in order to assure my employer that I haven't actually recorded a false entry and bunked off with the cash myself.

So, as you can see, it's an administrative nightmare. But when it happens not once, or twice, but three times on the same shift (a shift, incidentally, made all the more wonderful by system failures and the usual procession of dweebs and delinquents who make my life the existential joyfest that it is) you'll appreciate the desperate need I experience to strangle the crap out of the next person who even speaks to me. And this need is made all the more urgent by the fact that the Wrong Numbers tool invariably argues with you, insisting instead that they were looking at the right indicator and that my computer screen must be wrong. Even when I walk them out to the bowser and show them that I'm not making a mistake (achieved by pointing out to them the "$" and "litres" signs and explaining the difference) some of them still insist that they were not mistaken and that the "computer" must have somehow "changed" the amounts!

And that, Your Honour, is when I went berserk and ripped their tonsils out through their nostrils...

Be Seeing You

In many respects, the Be Seeing You tool is the worst one of all, because you don't even get an inkling that you're in their presence until it's far too late. And that's because this variety of tool doesn't expose themself until after they've swiped their card in the reader and try to enter their PIN number. No, I know what you're thinking; but it's not No IDer syndrome again. These tools know their PIN numbers all too well - they just can't see the keypad in order to enter the wretched thing!

No kidding, this is the tool who drives to the store, fills up with petrol, and then can't enter their PIN number because they've left their glasses at home! Yes, let me say that again: these tools have driven their car without being able to see further than the distance between their face and the card reader which is right there in front of them on the counter! Which part of this proposition is the more frightening, I wonder: the fact that these tools get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle to begin with, already a dangerous thing in itself; or that they do so thinking that it's okay to drive said vehicle while possessing less visual capacity than Mr Magoo!

I jest not, ladies and gentlemen, watching these tools as they myopically fumble with the card reader and ask if they've pushed a 9 or entered their account type is more terrifying than the prospect of spending eternity locked in a room with Eddie Maguire, Kyle Sandilands, and Pauline Hanson while endless repeats of Buffy the Tool Slayer play in the background. Because you just know these visually challenged morons are going to repeat this behaviour over and over again. No, it's not just occasional forgetfulness or a "senior's moment" - they're judgementally deficient, permanently!

I'm just waiting for the day when a car comes sailing through the front door and, before I can think: shit! I'm being ram-raided and try and call the cops, some tool sticks his head out the drivers side window and asks if this is the car wash entrance. One certainly wonders what, in their befuddled state, they think traffic lights are: pretty, twinkly lights in the sky, maybe? I tell you, it gives me the shudders...

So there are, another run down of the weird and wonderful world of tools who walk into a convenience store on a regular basis. And it doesn't end there. But that's a rant for another day...

Talk to you soon,

BB

Thought for the Day: Hell is other people. (Jean-Paul Sartre)

There's a Moose Loose in the Hoose

2010-01-25T18:16:00.007+11:00

I have a confession to make: this week, I have been killing other living beings.

Now, before you reach for your mobile phones to start calling the police, let me clarify. The living beings I have been killing are mice.

This is the second infestation of mice we've had in the last six months. It's a matter of disagreement between my Dearly Beloved and I as to their origin: she insists that there's been a mice plague this year and the little buggers are sneaking into the house by the various devious ways known only to mice; whereas I am convinced that we've been transporting them to our house via the tons of stuff we've lugged from her mother's house now that her mum has moved into a retirement home. My conviction is sustained by the fact that mum-in-law lived on a semi-rural property with plenty of acreage and lots of long grass and sheds - in other words, all the things that mice love. And there has, in fact, been plenty of mouse-related activity at her house of late. Moreover, both appearances of mice in our humble abode have coincided with occasions when we have transported stuff from MIL's digs to ours. Until we started doing so, we had no trouble with mice at all; now we've had them twice in 12 months. QED.

But how, I hear you ask, have they ended up at casa nostra? Quite simply, the same way that mice stow away in ships' holds and planes' cargo bays and cars' luggage boots. On at least two occasions when we've carried things from MIL's place to ours, we've also carried mice, secreted away in whatever nooks and crannies mice can find in bags, containers, furnishings and fittings. And once at our place, they've fanned out to locate all the wall-spaces, skirting-board gaps, and hidden thoroughfares our little home has to offer.

So...we've had rodents in our nest, and it has fallen to Yours Truly to exterminate the unwelcome guests. Not that I volunteered for the job, you understand. It's just that my Dearly Beloved has been so catatonic with fear that I've simply had no choice.

Actually, catatonic is the wrong word. Hysterical would be a more accurate description. Except hysteria doesn't quite capture the paroxysms of screaming, jumping-on-the-furniture, climbing-up-the-walls frenzy that is evoked in my Dearly Beloved at even the hint of a suspicion that she's seen a mouse. Indeed, she doesn't need to actually see a mouse - just catching sight of a drift of dog hair wafting across the floor is enough to send her spiralling into a whirlpool of panic that makes an anxiety attack look like the acme of calm serenity.

No kidding, I always thought that old stereotype of women standing on the kitchen table and shrieking their lungs out at the first sign of a mouse was just a tired old sexist caricature from 50s TV shows. Little did I know that the spirit of Bewitched is alive and well in my life-partner!

Anyhoo, this little black duck has been stuck with the job of dealing with our unwelcome house guests. Not that I was anticipating much trouble. A few mouse traps, some bait, and WHAM! Dead mice, solved problem.

Not so fast, smart guy! No matter what I tried, I couldn't catch any mice. Which didn't mean the cunning little sods were staying away from the baits - they were stealing them without tripping the traps! Didn't matter what I tried - cheese, ham, peanut butter - the furry blighters were just waltzing up to the bait trays and swiping whatever was on offer. Smorgasbord for mice!

I was explaining all this to my brother and bemoaning the fate that had me encountering the world's first species of mice with an IQ, when he laughed and suggested I try Cheetos Cheese and Bacon Balls. I looked at him like he'd just turned into an alien who'd slipped through a crack in the space-time continuum and landed unexpectedly in my lounge-room; but he insisted that he'd had experience with the anti-rodent capacity of Cheetos and assured me of their efficacy.

Well, it's an understatement to say I was reluctant to try this proffered solution, especially since all my previous baits had been the result of "expert" advice from various people who assured me of the mouse-killing power of their favoured lure. But with the mice becoming so bold as to start making appearances while we were still awake, and with my Dearly Beloved's caterwauling becoming ever more ear-splitting as a consequence, I was desperate. So the next time I went within cooee of a store, I grabbed a bag of Cheetos and set my traps.

Well, shut my mouth and stuff me full of chitlins if they didn't work a treat! Within 48 hours, every last one was defunctus est. And this has happened twice now: both times the mice have appeared the Cheetos have cleaned them up faster than you could say bubonic plague. I'd be sitting in the lounge watching the TV and there would be this distant snap followed by a quiet and short-lived thrashing. I'd wander over to one of the traps to discover a mouse wedged by the trap arm in the cold embrace of rodent death. No mouse could resist the Cheetos; no mouse could escape the fate held in store for them.

I'll confess that I was delighted with the results, not least because it put my Dearly Beloved at ease. But I'll also admit that there was an aspect of me that was anything but elated to be killing mice. As mice go, these guys I was slaughtering were actually handsome little chaps, with soft light brown fur and small dark eyes. I could see why mice feature so often as positive characters in children's literature; there was nothing obviously nasty about these mice - as I say, they were handsome little chaps.

But perhaps the most poignant moment occurred on the occasion when I heard that sharp, significant snap! one day and went to investigate. On the kitchen floor lay a little mouse; instead of being pinned by the bar and having his spine broken, he'd tried to pull out of the way and been brained by the bar as its swung downward in its deathly arc. He lay on his side, a small halo of blood around his head - a sad, touching little sight. In that moment, the immediacy of death bore down on me; it occurred to me that we humans are just like mice, not knowing that we play within the jaws of a trap that could wipe us out in an instant. We have the power of death over mice; other things - sometimes even mice - have the power of death over us.

But now the second batch have been duly exterminated, the thing that puzzles me is the amount of mouse dirt these critters leave behind. I mean, they must be constantly shitting themselves to judge by the amount of crap they leave in their wake. Mind you, the sound of my Dearly Beloved's screaming would be enough to turn a commando's bowels to water; maybe the mice just copped an earful of her ear-splitting screeching and it had a permanent effect on their innards. In any event, clearing up the mess afterwards is a worse job than prising their bodies out of the traps and dumping the corpses in the garbage bin!

Anyhoo, we are mice-free for the time being - pending, that is, the transport of any more stuff from MIL's house to ours, no matter what my Dearly Beloved says! I just hope that's the last we see of them, too; I can think of much better uses to which to put Cheetos than feeding them to mice.

Talk to you soon,

Quote of the Day: Hunting - the most effective way of getting rid of vermin, provided a sufficient number of them fall off their horses and break their necks. (Hugh Leonard)

Under Review

2009-12-20T14:55:00.005+11:00

Since it's Christmas, and since Christmas is - allegedly - the season of giving, I thought I wouldn't be a total grouch and would join in the spirit of the season by giving you my thoughts on a few books I've read recently. These reviews have originally appeared on my Facebook page, but since I don't let any old riff-raff be my Facebook friend (you have to be special riff-raff indeed to be my Facebook buddy!), I thought I'd make them slightly more accessible and inflict them on the public at large.

The reviews I've written in recent times have been reasonably lengthy, but as a taster I thought I'd give you a couple of my shorter reviews for your delectation. So here goes...

The Shearer's Tale by Tom Molomby

Sydney lawyer Tom Molomby brings his precise forensic skills to bear on a case from the first half of 20th century rural Australia. When a shop keeper named Henry Lavers went missing near the NSW town of Forbes, an intensive manhunt failed to locate either his body or those responsible for his presumed murder. Ten years later, shearer Fred McDermott was tried and convicted for Lavers' murder. Thus began a struggle for justice which ended in a Royal Commission and McDermott's release - and yet, he was denied the justice that was his due. Molomby expertly dissects the case, revealing the failures in the system - and the questionable investigation - that resulted in McDermott's imprisonment, an experience that blighted the rest of his life. An engaging and disturbing read..

On. Off: A Novel by Colleen McCullough

Once you get past the somewhat melodramatic narrative style and the frankly absurd names attached to some of the characters, this is actually quite an engaging thriller set in provincial Connecticut in the late 1960s. A series of grusome murders centred on an elite medical research facility are uncovered - and the job of hunting down the perpetrator is given to police detective Carmine Delmonico (a man, despite the name). Thus begins an investigation into a group of frankly bizarre research scientists, one of whom hides a dark obssession. The pace is excellent, the characters well-drawn and multi-dimensional, the story told with sympathy, insight, and black humour. The identity of the killer is given away quite early (although you have to be paying attention to spot it) and the end carries a twist that is jolting if unconvincing; the minor sub-plot on race-relations is just padding and lets you now well in advance the killer's ultimate fate. But overall, an engaging, if not entirely satisfying, read.

Killer In The Rain by Raymond Chandler

What a delight! This superb collection of Chandler's shorter fiction introduces the characters Carmaday and John Dalmas - the prototypes for his much more famous creation, Phillip Marlowe. Nobody wrote noir fiction better than Chandler, and his prose is full of light and shadow, etching a wonderful portrait of the sleazy side of life in between-the-wars Los Angeles. Dalmas and Carmaday are tough, vulnerable, cynical, sentimental, wise-cracking smart-guys and occassionally bumbling saps with a taste for blondes and red-heads and a penchant for getting belted over the back of the head. Crackling beneath the surface tension and the headlong action of the plots is a profound sympathy for the down-and-outs, for those who've caught the bad breaks or just been worn down by the daily grind; Chandler's compassion for humanity combines with his clear-eyed understanding of the darker motivations of the human psyche to produce a body of work that found its ultimate expression in such classics as The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and The Long Goodbye. What is truly fascinating about this collection is the clearly visible genesis of many of these later works in the collection presented in this volume - fans of Chandler will experience a jolt of recognition as they read classic scenes from his novels that had their first outing in his early short fiction. Entertaining and fascinating from go to woe. My favourite quote: "She had the kind of eyes and figure that would make a bishop kick a hole in a stain-glass window".

Well, that's your lot for the moment...more reviews to come!

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Critics are merely failed writers - but then, so are most writers! (T S Eliot)

Tool Time

2009-12-13T23:08:00.007+11:00

At the convenience store where I pretend to work, it is a truism that we get all sorts walking through the door, especially on the night shift. But this truism is true only to the extent that it is incomplete: what we get walking through the door are all sorts of tools, twats, tossers, and morons of infinite variety.

Take, for example, the tool I encountered recently who just also happened to be a motorcyclist. Said tool and a number of other motorcyclists pulled up at the bowsers and attempted to fill up. However, I declined to authorise the pumps because said tool and his pals had not removed their crash helmets. It's a security policy at the store that motorcyclists attempting to use the pumps have to first take off their helmets - otherwise, what could be more useful for the purposes of a drive off than a face-enclosing helmet that completely masks the nascent felon's identity?

So, being the conscientious type, I promptly jumped on the PA and informed the gang of two-wheeled tools that they had to de-helmet first, after which time I would be happy to authorise the pumps. Well, they did as they were asked; but once they had finished filling up, it seems one of their number (the aforementioned tool) was deputed to not only pay their collective bill, but waste my time with a pre-eminent display of toolmanship.

To some extent, I blame myself: I really should have seen it coming. As the tool approached the store, he eye-balled me with that manic I've-got-a-bigger-dick-than-you-have glare that tells you you're in the presence of an A-grade eunuch with a chip on his shoulder. To tell you the truth, I felt a little shiver run down my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up; Spiderman ain't the only one whose senses tingle when danger's immanent. But it was busy and I had lots to do, so I suppressed my premonition and got on with my award-winning impersonation of customer service.

Which was dumb. Which was a mistake. Which serves me own right. Because when the tool finally arrived at the counter, and before I could even tote up the bill for him and his moto-tool mates, he said: "I see you're discriminating against motorcyclists now."

To which I replied with my usual tact: "You bet".

His next line: "So what if a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf comes along? Are you going to tell her to take it off?"

I'll be honest: my immediate impulse was to burst into laughter and offer to wrap his head in toilet paper, this latter being his crown for having won the Moron of the Year Award. But then I saw from the expression on his face that he was absolutely serious. In fact, he was outraged by the thought that he should be required to take off his helmet while some Muslim woman might be allowed to stroll into the place willy nilly and remain covered.

Suppressing my laughter, I explained that it was a security requirement; I even went to the lengths of explaining that the same requirement to take off his helmet would apply if, for example, he just wanted to enter the store to buy a carton of milk. It wasn't about petrol - it was about security.

"So you wouldn't make someone take off their religious headdress, but I have to take off my helmet?"

I will confess that by this stage I was dumb-struck; not because I couldn't think of anything to say, but because everything I wanted to say to him involved suggesting rather forcefully that he perform the kind of physical contortions that are either illegal, impossible, or both. But as I said, the store was busy, and I had no desire to insult other innocent customers simply because this tool had decided to exhibit his idiocy on my patch.

So instead I gently suggested that the instant Muslim women on motorbikes wearing hijabs started pulling drive-offs, that would be the instant we'd start discriminating against them, too.

You'll agree that, given the extremity of the provocation, I was the very embodiment of reason and sensitivity. But the tool, being a tool, took grave offence and demanded the right to make a complaint. I told him - rather casually, I'll admit, because by this time I was getting bored - that he should call the company's customer care line; they'd be glad to hear (indeed, would be fascinated by) his moral indignation at such harsh treatment. And, of course, I proffered this assurance with just enough of a hint of a smile, and with just the right inflection of voice, to suggest that he would be a) listened to; b) taken seriously; c) offered an apology and/or compensation; and, d) that the company policy would be changed forthwith.

Satisfied that I'd been put in my place, and that his penis had grown another three or four inches as a consequence, the tool departed - no doubt to tell his tool-brothers what a hero he'd been in the fight against the ongoing persecution of motorcyclists by the wicked petro-industrial complex. If there's anything that will warm the cockles of this old, cold heart, it's the sight of a self-satisfied tool riding triumphantly off into the sunset of his own delusions.

And what is the point of all this tool-bashing (if you'll pardon the expression)? Well, for one thing, it just goes to show you that the life of a convenience store console operator is rarely dull. On the contrary, it's very interesting - "interesting", that is, in the sense of the old Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times. And for another thing, you're all meant to be hugely impressed by my restraint in suppressing the impulse to introduce this tool to the art of cleaning convenience store toilets - head first! But more important than any of these is a simple and profound lesson: just because some bloke sits astride a machine that could break the sound barrier doesn't mean he's either a scientist at the Large Hadron Collider, or Chuck Connors. It just means he's a dickhead, pure and simple.

Or, if you prefer it in politer terms, a tool. A complete, total, twatting, tossing, tool!

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Moral indignation - that which, in most cases, is 2 per cent moral, 48 per cent indignation, and 50 per cent envy. (Vincent de Sica)

Mr (Coffee) Bean

2009-08-25T07:21:00.004+10:00

I'm afraid that, when it comes to coffee, I'm a bit of a snob. Actually, I'm a lot of a snob. Oh, alright, I'm a total snob.

The reason for this snobbery is quite simple: I like coffee, and I take my coffee seriously. No, don't bother telling me to get a life or a hobby. As far as I am concerned, coffee is part of the vocation of being, like reading a good book or sampling the finest single malt. I drink coffee, therefore I am: and therefore, don't even think about offering me instant - I'll take a cup of tea instead.

Ergo, I buy coffee in bean form in order to freshly grind said beans in the instant before they get immersed in hot water. I let the coffee brew, in order to bring out the rich flavour (and to bask in the luxuriant waft of coffee aroma). And then I gently stir and plunge said coffee in order to produce the perfect cuppa: rich, strong, and invigorating (a bit like me, really - except for the rich, strong, and invigorating bit).

Of course, if I had my druthers, I'd prefer to make coffee by brewing it in one of those dandy little pots where you put the coffee in the bottom before placing it on the stove and letting the combination of heat and steam from boiling water do their work. Now, that's coffee to die for - in fact, it's so strong it probably would kill you eventually. But what a way to go! But in the meantime, I'll content myself with the trusty old plunger, which really does work a treat.

And what I really love doing is mixing together beans of different coffee varieties before I grind them in order to produce a great blend. New Guinea highlands with Ethiopian arabica; East Timorese organic with Vietnamese mountain-grown; Costa Rican dark roasted with Kenyan mocha...yum! Blending coffee beans is the best!

Now, I know what you're thinking: you're thinking that I'm a coffee fanatic with no sense of perspective. Well, you're wrong. As it turns out, there is a lighter side to coffee, a lighter side that emerges by asking oneself what the type of coffee a person drinks says about their personality. Yes, yes, I know; this isn't a scientifically valid methodology for ascertaining individual personality traits. But then, neither is Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram, and yet people seem to have no trouble swooning over them and crying: "Oh, look, I'm an SIPD (Sad, Inadequate, Pathetic, Drip)!" Come to think of it, I reckon my coffee-personality index might have as much if not more validity than asking someone if they prefer parties to quiet nights in and extrapolating from the answer that they're an introvert (oooh, how insightful!).

And anyhoo, this is meant to be fun. So here goes - what drinking a particular type of coffee says about your personality:

Flat White. Well, the name says it all, really. You're dull, tedious, traditional (in the unoriginal, crushingly monotonous sense of the word), and about as straight-laced as an 80 year old virginal teetotling non-smoker whose idea of high times is crocheting and a cup of Horlicks before bedtime. The key words here are flat and white. In other words, you've got about as much personality as roadkill...in fact, to be fair to roadkill, they can be pretty interesting sometimes. You, on the other hand, are not; your idea of life is living a long time without actually engaging in any of the interesting bits (sex, hangovers, broken hearts, self-discovery, God, etc). So, you go on drinking your insipid brew; when future archaeologists discover your fossilised yet still-breathing remains 10,000 years from now, they won't actually realise you're alive - and neither will you. In fact, you never have. Drinkers of Caffe Latte also fall into this category.

Long Black. You have a serious personality disorder. Either you have delusions of grandeur and think you're some kind of stud-muffin gigolo before whom the babes can't wait to get on their knees and venerate, or you are beset by feelings of such deep insecurity that you think everyone is whispering about you and giggling behind your back. Of course, there's a third possibility: that people actually are whispering about you and giggling behind your back because they recognise you have delusions of grandeur about your babe-pulling capacity - and that, in point of fact, the only thing you pull is that which is the cause of your insecurity. Hence your pathetic attempt to "advertise" your self-proclaimed virility, or compensate for your perceived shortcomings, by drinking pints of super-strong, iron-floating coffee. But we're wise to you, buster; because us real men, who know we can pull the babes and understand everyone admires and envies us, drink straight black coffee for the sheer enjoyment of unadulterated caffeine. We don't need to pretend; we know...

Macchiato. Short or long, the only reason you drink this is because you're a procrastinator. Like most things in your life, you can't decide what you want and are too afraid to make a decision in case you realise later that what you chose isn't, afterall, your heart's desire, and you really want that which you chose not to have. And so you order a macchiato, because you can't decide if you want a long black or a flat white; so you get what is, in effect, a black coffee with a smidge of milk; or, looking at it another way, a short white coffee with extra caffeine. Naturally, your life is plagued with similar mind-bending problems like: should you get the 1.5kg bag of flour at $2 or the 1.25kg bag at $1.50; should you go with the blue jacket and white blouse or the black jacket and red blouse; should you get the car wash with the hot wax or the car wash with the cold wax? And, naturally, since you can't make up your own mind, you'll inflict your uncertainties on everyone within a million square kilometre radius and ask them to do it for you; but then you won't be able to decide whose opinion is more authoritative, and whose advice you should go with. In short, drinking macchiato says this about you: you need to make a f#!*^!*!g decision and live with it! And you need to do it quickly - before that lynchmob of frustrated acquaintances coming into view over the horizon hoists you on the petard of your own indecisiveness!

Espresso. Like the coffee itself, the message of espresso drinking is short, simple, and to the point: you are a pretentious git. You're the kind of knob who thinks drinking espresso (especially if done while seated at a roadside table in South Yarra or Carlton) makes you "European" or sophisticated. But unless you are actually European, or, failing that, unless you actually understand that the joy of espresso is the invigoration which a shot of the good stuff provides the drinker, imbibing this brew says one thing, and one thing only: you are a wanker. In fact, you're a self-abuser of such monumental proportions that blindness is an inevitability, if, indeed, it hasn't occurred already. Certainly, you are blind to what a total clot you are, sipping your espresso in its tiny cup, all the while serenely surveying the world and imagining that it is your oyster. You not only need to get a life, you need a reality check as well; because that babe who sauntered past your table just now wasn't checking you out, she was thinking what a tragic waste it was that such a good table should be occupied by such a bad joke.

Cappuchino. You really are the Kath and Kim of the caffeine world. In fact, it's probably not too much to say that you spend far too much time in shopping malls, sitting at those little coffee bars that occupy the middle of the cavernous avenues between stores, thinking you're having such a fun time simply because you're here watching all the other anodyne drips wandering aimlessly about, instead of being back home cooing over daytime TV and the latest "must have" offerings of Dickheads Direct. Any person who thinks froth and chocolate sprinklings over milky coffee constitutes a vibrant drinking experience really doesn't have much going for them; and it's probably just as well for the species as a whole that natural selection will inevitably ensure that you and your kind leave fewer surviving descendants than the rest of the general population. In the meantime, enjoy your simple "pleasures" - it's all you've got left while waiting for extinction to arrive.

Mocha. You're here for a good time, not a long time. Over-indulgence isn't a sin for you; it's your middle name. Your idea of restraint is not adding sugar to your already saccharine loaded blend of coffee and chocolate syrup. Like a pig in a mud pen, life for you is one long, glorious rollick as you wallow in your self-generated mire of hedonistic pleasure. Well, make that one short and glorious rollick - 'cause you ain't gonna be around for long. Even as you imbibe your latest orgiastic brew, your arteries are hardening, your cardio-vascular system is going south for the winter, and blood clots are forming and rushing with determined gait towards the sugar-coated embolism-to-be that passes for your brain. But what they hey? If you're going to go out, you're going to go doing what you love, right? Yeah, right - except for that one nagging micro-second just before you die when you realise that life is sweeter than all that sugar you've been ingesting, and you wish - you just wish - you had maybe not given the good things in life such a nudge. Oh, well, carpe diem and all that; and quite literally, too, because you don't have that many diems to carpe left...

Well, there you have it. If you find yourself identifying with any of the categories contained herein, you only have yourself to blame. And as for Yours Truly...well, naturally, none of the above applies to me. I just drink coffee for the hell of it.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Coffee - that which, in England, tastes like a chemical experiment. (Agatha Christie)

Vertically Challenged

2009-06-30T20:42:00.004+10:00

I've decided that, while it may not be proof-positive you're a moron, the fact that you do your shopping at a convenience store displays a tendency toward the moronic. Indeed, there seems to be a mathematical relationship: the more frequently you shop at a convenience store, the higher the likelihood that your personality is skewed toward the defective end of the scale.

Now, dear reader, I realise that this statement represents a rather sweeping generalisation, especially given most of the population have, at one time or another, shopped at a convenience store. Therefore, let me demonstrate the truth of my thesis by regaling you with examples from my own experience as a humble convenience store employee.

The first type of moron I call disabled parkers. Not, I hasten to add, because they happen to suffer the misfortune of being disabled; rather, because their brains seemingly cease to function as soon as they drive onto the forecourt in front of the store. And this brainlessness manifests itself in the way they park their cars; they are seemingly unable to park in anything like a logical and reasonable manner. Hence, disabled parkers. These are the people who park vertically in the horizontal parking bays; and who park horizontally across the vertical bays. These are the people who think its perfectly appropriate to park where there are no parking bays at all: in front on the security bollards near the front entrance, for example; or across the driveway providing access to the fuel pumps. These are the morons who take no account of the fact that parking bays are provided for a reason: to ensure that all stationary traffic not actually parked next to a fuel pump is safely out of the way! No kidding, I wish I had a buck for every time I've shaken my head in disbelief over their escapades: I'd be a rich man by now. Maybe even rich enough to compensate for the ulcers I'm developing as a consequence of contemplating their stupidity.

The next species of moron I call whingers. There are two types of whingers: those who complain about the prices; and those who moan because such-and-such a product isn't in stock. Both do so on a regular basis; indeed, so regularly that you could set your watch by them. The same day each week, the same time each day, in they trundle to complain about the same thing they've always complained about. You're much more expensive than the supermarket! Really? Well, then, f**k off to the supermarket! You don't have any widgets in stock! Really? Maybe that's because we've never had any f*****g widgets in stock! Lord forgive me, but I've almost succumbed more than once to the temptation to strangle the living crap outta these morons. Why can't they appreciate that a "convenience store" is "convenient" because it's local and open - not because it has the economies of scale to carry a wide stock range or the "cheaper" prices you'll find at the big chain stores?

A third variety of moron are the pullers. Now, I know what you're thinking; and while it may just be possible that these selfsame pullers also practice self-abuse in the store's public toilet, that's not why I've given them this particular epithet. No, these morons are so called because when they encounter the store's locked security door (it gets locked after a certain time at night in order to ensure the staff don't bunk off for a smoke behind the car wash) their midget-sized brains tell them: hey, that door's locked - better pull HARDER! No kidding, some of these prize fools have almost pulled the door off its hinges in their desperate attempts to get into the store (and complain about the prices and/or our pitiably small stock), all the while valiantly ignoring the clearly visible sign instructing them that, should the door be locked, they need only ring the bell in order to gain access. Of all the classifications of moron, the pullers exert a kind of compelling fascination: you can't help but wonder what passes through their pathetic excuse for a mind as they yank away - what, at any rate, compels them to persist in tugging at a door that clearly won't open. I don't think congenital stupidity - or even anything as mundane as plain, old drunkenness - resolves the conundrum; I think their idiocy approaches depths that are truly existential.

There are many, many more classifications of moron. For example, the jerks who think it's okay to jump-start their broken-down vehicle while it's still parked next to the fuel pump - clearly, heroically ignoring the fact that sparks and fuel vapour don't mix. Or the related delinquents who think it's okay to ignore the prohibitions against smoking or talking on their mobile phones while standing at the fuel pumps. Or the tools who, because the store is located on a relatively busy intersection controlled by traffic lights, are intent on saving a whole 2 seconds travelling time by tearing across the forecourt in order to avoid having to wait for the lights to change, somehow by the grace of God narrowly avoiding collisions with every other vehicle - and pedestrian - on the forecourt.

But I suspect you're starting to get the picture, right?

Anyhoo, while I'm prepared to concede that while not everyone who shops at a convenience store is in consequence a moron, there does seem to be something about the experience that insidiously, ruthlessly destroys the brain cells, rendering the victim a zombie disguised as a consumer. And for all I know, the malaise could be entirely localised: once they leave the store's bounds, maybe they revert to normal, intelligent, thinking human beings. Maybe - but maybe the effect is permanent. Forget swine flu - conveniencestore moroniosis could be the biggest thing to hit humanity since the Black Death.

And as for the effects on the people who work in convenience stores - well, I'll leave that to your over-active imaginations!

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: See the happy moron, he doesn't give a damn; I wish I was a moron - my God, perhaps I am! (Anonymous)

Bitter Sweet

2009-06-28T13:52:00.005+10:00

This old fart was - for one, brief, bright-shining moment - a happy old fart indeed.

The attentive among you will remember that Yours Truly works a couple of nights a week at the local servo in order to make some sort of contribution to the household finances. And it was in this capacity that I recently made a discovery that temporarily warmed the cockles of this old, cold heart.

Maybe it was due to the fact that it was late at night, it was near the end of my shift, and I was dog tired. But having completed my shift duties, and with not a customer in sight, I was drifting listlessly up and down the aisles pretending to check that the stock was correctly arrayed on the shelves when suddenly I spotted them. There, in the midst of the confectionery were three relics from my childhood that I had never thought to see again.

A Chokito bar. A Polly Waffle. And a Peppermint Crisp.

Now, in case you're wondering how it is that my life could be so empty as to result in my going all gooey over three chocolate bars from my childhood, you have to understand a couple of things. The first is that, given the modest economic circumstances in which I grew up, in which 20 cents could by you a positively ginormous bag of mixed lollies (and how could it fail to do so, given most of them were priced at half a cent each), these chocolate bars were the creme-de-la-creme of confectionery, a legendary and only-to-be-longed-for indulgence which only the super-rich could afford. The second is that, as a child, a Chokito bar or a Polly Waffle was an adult treat (the fact that they were mostly consumed by teenagers was a moot point; to get your hands on one was to be grown up), and so had an added prestige beyond their actual worth.

Of course, once I actually did grow up (and, yes, I'm aware of the body of opinion out there that suggests this is an event yet to be accomplished), these things lost their allure; and gradually, the products themselves seemed to disappear from the shelves, fading into the golden afterglow of my childhood memories. So you can imagine my surprised delight when late on this particular night, I saw them sitting once again like golden eggs amid the monochrome glow of confectionery wrappers.

Naturally, I grabbed a fistful of each and, as soon as my shift was over, transported them home in a rapture of joy. And that, alas, is when the dream died and reality shot home with maliciously gleeful vengeance.

The first thing I noticed was the size. Or, should I say, the distinct lack thereof. Size may not matter for other things (at least, that's what I've heard; I wouldn't know, personally), but I can tell you, when it comes to a Polly Waffle or a Chokito bar, size is everything. While still in their wrappers, nothing seemed amiss. But once my trembling fingers had removed the product from their glittering foil sheaths, an involuntary gasp of disappointment escaped my quivering lips. The emaciated excuses for chocolate bars I now beheld were positively tiny. Okay, I could still see them with the naked eye - but that was the extent of their extent. What had once been massive logs of chocolate and nuts and waffle and nougat and caramel were reduced to pathetic imitations of their former selves. These weren't chocolate bars, they were chocolate fingers - and skinny ones, at that!

I was devastated.

But what really killed off any lingering hopes for the revival of a treasured childhood memory was the taste. Again, though, this was a concept encountered in the negative. By taste I mean the distinct absence thereof. Where was the smooth texture of chocolate? The sweet bite of the fluffy nougat? The unique, only-vaguely-describable-as-caramel swirl of the Chokito's filling? The crunch of the nuts? I don't think I've tasted anything more anodyne since the last time I walked into a certain well-known fast food chain that begins with "M" and ends in "cDonalds" - and that was years ago! Sheesh, it wasn't even like I was eating plastic - plastic would have tasted much better!

So next time you want to know why I'm so bitter and twisted, this is it. Not only have precious childhood memories disappeared from the world - they've been resuscitated into a hideous, zombie-like corpse. It's bad enough that the world was robbed of Polly Waffles and Chokito bars and Peppermint Crisps in the first place; that they've been adulterated into bland shadows of their former selves is a crime against humanity.

Well, my humanity, at any rate. And once I've finished bashing out this post, I'm going to email the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague - I want to know who's responsible for this travesty. And I want them to spend the rest of their lives in solitary confinement, up to their nose in the refuse of my ruined dreams. And then I want the punishment to get really harsh.

Bamboo stalks under the fingernails should do the trick. And then something seriously vicious: I'm going to force the perp to consume their own product.

Or would that be going to far?

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Childhood: a series of happy delusions. (Sydney Smith)

Two Poems For Lucy

2009-03-27T00:52:00.002+11:00

Unable to sleep, I thought I'd share these two short poems about our dog, Lucy, that came to mind while I await the sandman's arrival.

I

The Puppy's warmth,
curled up in my lap,
puts me to sleep.
I'm not allowed to read a book
or simply sit; her long,
luxuriant warmth,
strecthed upon my chest,
or draped across my neck,
makes my eyes droop -
until I snore.

II

Why can't I sleep?
The Puppy's warmth,
snuggled next to me,
has no effect -
her delicious elixir of drowsiness
all spent up.
I toss and turn,
until,
divorced from rest,
I get up,
put my contact lenses in,
scratch my head
and begin to write.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of attention than history. (Aristotle)

Well, Autumn Is My Favourite Time of Year...

2009-03-22T22:14:00.003+11:00

You Are Low Key and Relaxed

You are a dynamic, vibrant person. You aren't afraid to pursue your passions.

When you are happiest, you are calm. You appreciate tradition and family. You enjoy feeling cozy.

You prefer change to come slowly. You need a long transition period when your life changes.

You find novelty to be the most comforting thing in the world. You love anything that's new or unusual.

Your ideal day is chill and uneventful. You prefer to kick back and take it easy.

You tend to live in the moment. You enjoy whatever is going on, and you don't obsess over the past or future.

The Autumn Test

I Make People Feel Good About Themselves?

2009-03-22T22:11:00.000+11:00

You Are Modest and Nurturing

When You Are Comfortable or in a Social Setting:

You are a shy, quiet person. Underneath your shell, you are compassionate and giving.

People find you to be friendly and welcoming. Your home is a place of comfort to them.

When You Are At Your Best:

You are quite quirky, and you enjoy doing things your own way. You are optimistic, and you've always got a good idea brewing.

People find you to be positive and uplifting. You make people feel good about themselves.

What Do Your Initials Say About You?

Well, People Always Say I Spend Too Much Time In My Head...

2009-03-22T22:07:00.000+11:00

You Are Mind

If you dream it, then you can do it. You are very mentally sharp and strong.

You enjoy challenging yourself both at work and with studies. You love mastering difficult tasks.

You thrive in new environments, even stressful ones. You are able to study everything objectively.

You have a upbeat attitude, and won't be deterred easily. You are open minded and optimistic about the future.

Are You Mind, Body, or Spirit?

More Flattery From Blog Things!

2009-03-22T22:00:00.000+11:00

You Are the Artist

You are unique and inspired. You aren't happy unless you are making art of some sort.

Almost anything can be a catalyst for your creativity. You find the whole world stimulating.

You have beautiful visions, and you're good at expressing them. You like people to see what you see.

You also have an inventor's spirit. You're always thinking up new ideas and concepts.

What's Your Life's Mission?

Okay, So Maybe Now They're Starting To Get A Bit Carried Away...

2009-03-04T17:43:00.001+11:00

You Are A Thoughtful Idealist

You have no problem diving into new experiences. You're so brave that you don't even notice how courageous you are.

You like to think that people see you as intellectual and wise. You consider yourself to be very smart.

You are a very romantic person. You can't help but see the world as it should be.

Right now, stress occasionally makes you feel trapped in your life. You usually have a clear perspective on things though!

Overall, your life is very peaceful - if not a little solitary. Much of what goes on goes on in your head.

You are extremely optimistic about the future. You feel like things are always getting better.

The Castle Personality Test

How Did They Know?

2009-03-04T17:31:00.001+11:00

Nuff said!

You Are a Playwright

You are a highly literate wordsmith. You love both reading and writing.

You are also a natural storyteller. You can turn a mediocre anecdote into a riveting tale.

You find people and all aspects of life fascinating. No topic is off limits for you.

In modern times, you would make a good filmmaker or novelist.

What's Your Medieval Profession?

And The Good News Just Keeps Rolling In...

2009-03-04T17:22:00.001+11:00

You Are Factual

You are highly intelligent, especially in areas that deal with concrete knowledge and facts.
You are amazingly analytical. You can make sense of chaos without involving your emotions.

If anything, you tend to be overly logical. It's sometimes hard for you to come to a decision, because you're too busy weighing all the options.
People turn to you in times of trouble. They know that they can trust you to give good, well thought out advice.

Are You Flirtatious, Fearless, Factual, or Friendly?

I Knew It Was True

2009-03-04T17:15:00.003+11:00

Faffing about on one of the Blog Quiz sites, I came across the quiz "Are You A Jerk?". Once I'd stopped laughing, I took the quiz and hey, presto! It told me what I already knew - I'm a great guy! And here's the proof:

You Are Not a Jerk

You treat everyone as fairly as possible. You think it's important to be good to people.

You may feel like being rude at times, but you hold back. You are civilized.

While you are considerate, you don't go overboard. You only show others the same respect you'd expect.

Those who want to take advantage of you may accuse you of being a jerk, but in truth, they're the real jerks!

Are You a Jerk?

Hey, it's not my fault. Read it and weep, jerk!

Talk to you soon,

Cracking Up

2009-03-04T15:02:00.003+11:00

Ever since God invented female comedians (and some say Eve was the first), women have been getting huge chuckles at men's expense over the phenomenon commonly known as "plumber's crack". This is the apparently natural law that states that any tradesman (especially plumbers and electricians) will inevitably expose the upper portions of their backside (and, in particular, the "crack" by which their "cheeks" are divided) whenever they bend over - such exposure usually occurring in the immediate vicinity of a woman, who is thereby justified in subsequently relating the experience of her exposure to masculine slobishness to all her girlfriends (accompanied, of course, by the requisite scornful sarcasm and sense of existential superiority).

This phenomenon, however, has developed a life of its own and extended its scope beyond tradesblokes to men in general - especially men of a particular girth who vainly or foolishly try to convince themselves they are still capable of wearing pants in their teenage size range, and who thus invariably expose more of themselves than the rest of the population cares to see. It's sad, I know, and painful to view: if some dude has to have a mid life crisis, why can't he get a comb-over or buy a Harley? Why does he have to parade in skin tight jeans, exposing all and sundry to the back of his front every time he bends down to tie his shoelaces?

And so it gives me no pleasure at all to tell you that women are well and truly in on the act. No doubt, many of you are already aware of this, but I can convey the news from a unique perspective: that of the petrol station console operator. Not only do we get to see more "plumbette's crack" than is good for us, we get to see it in its particular and varied species. Ever since Brittany Spears started poncing about in "hipster" jeans singing thinly disguised songs about sex while pretending she was still an annoyingly cute and innocent Mouseketeer (and really, did any of us believe that for a microsecond?), hordes of women and teenage girls have been brainlessly copying her bad taste and traumatising the general population as a result. And trust me, they come in all sorts, to wit:

The fashion tragic. These come in two sorts: the big (or even just average) sized girl who refuses to believe she looks bad wearing hipster jeans; and the masochists, the ones who are clearly in a good deal of physical pain from wearing tight-fitting pants, but who would be in even greater mental anguish if they thought for a minute they might wear something comfortable but unfashionable (or apparently "unsexy"). The former usually compound their error by wearing one of those body-hugging tops that only just manages to cover their midriff, leaving you wondering if the folks at Life. Be In It managed to clone a twin sister out of Norm's excess body fat. The latter usually have the fixed smile and glazed eyes of a person whom you just know is frantically telling herself I'm in pain but it's okay; I'm in pain but it's okay; I'm in pain but it's okay and who, in her more self-aware moments, is beginning to wonder why she's getting abdominal cramps even though it's not time for her period. The former are sad: you want to grab them and shake them until they understand that they can look good without the hipsters and the belly-overhang that is the preserve of pregnant women and truckies. The latter are potentially tragic and make you long for a government advertising campaign highlighting the damage to be done to spleen and kidney and other vital internal organs by inappropriately tight attire.

The wedgie. This appears to be a uniquely feminine variation on the "plumbette's crack": the woman who combines high-riding undies with low-riding jeans. The result is a strip of undie (sometimes quite a large strip of undie) peeking over the top of the pants waistband. No doubt, for knicker fetishists, this is a dream come true: no need to pinch undies off a woman's clothes line, she'll just parade them for you, risk free. And the other thing I've noticed is that the undies in question always seem to be pale blue. No kidding; just as it invariably appears that the butt framing the "plumber's crack" is pale, hairy, and heftily on the larger-than-life scale, so the wedgie variant of "plumbette's crack" invariably involves blue undies. Don't ask me why; I don't know. I figure it must be some sort of natural law, like gravity. And don't call me weird, either; you notice this sort of thing when you're a console operator. And besides, you should be asking these women why they feel it necessary to expose their undergarments in public!

The drunk. This individual is not only the bottom-feeder of the "plumbette's crack" universe, they're the saddest as well. This is usually the woman of a "certain age" who is also well past the first flowering of youthful beauty, and who turns up having spent most of the evening (and day) at a pokies bar, an "over 40s" nightclub, or other similarly salubrious establishment. Needless to say, they're well and truly lubricated, inclined to either quarrelsomeness or inappropriate familiarity, and attired in a fashion that in all charity can only be described as "Skanks R Us". Naturally, hipster jeans feature prominently in the assemblage, as do low-cut tops, bad plastic surgery, fake tans, too much make-up, and hair teased and coloured to within an inch of its life. The overall effect is pitiable, and perhaps the less said about them the better...

But what all these variations have in common is the phenomenon of "plumbette's crack". As soon as a woman representative of one of these categories leans over to take something off a shelf, or grab something from the fridge, you're exposed to a "crack" so prominent your instinctive reaction is to mistake it for a slot machine and start furiously inserting coins. And, yes, I blame "hipster" jeans for this blight of unwanted feminine butt cleavage. And, yes, I blame the fashion industry for putting self-indulgence and profit ahead of dignity and health. And, yes, I blame women for being so shallow and mediocre as to allow themselves to be enslaved to this kind of aesthetic and existential stupidity. And, yes, I blame men for encouraging women in the delusion that they look "sexy" in these jeans (when in truth the blokes probably just want to get them whipped off ASAP).

But, lest I'm accused of being entirely sexist (and the less charitable among you probably already think that I am), I must confess that I have started noticing a similar trend among young men. Except that in their case, it's not so much a case of hipster jeans causing "plumber's crack" as daggy pants causing "full crack exposure". By which I mean that young men seem to have taken to into their heads in the last couple of years that wearing ultra baggy pants represents an especially attractive look - not only this, but that wearing said baggy pants not around their hips but around their thighs is an indicator of their fashionability! More than once in recent times I've had to none-too-gently require some gangling youth to be so unfashionable as to wear his pants properly and spare the rest of the sight of his boxer shorts. I just dread the day when some fool decides it's even more fashionable to go au naturale under his wilting tweeds...

So, as you gather, I'm not a fan of current fashions, pants-wise. I just hope women start following Jessica Simpson's lead (and whoever thought I'd say that) and decide that wearing jeans around their waist can be equally sexy and fashionable - but, more importantly, more consonant with their dignity as human beings. And let's hope the blokes do, too!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Sure, deck your lower limbs in pants; yours are the limbs, my sweeting. You look divine as you advance - have you seen yourself retreating? (Ogden Nash)

Just In Case You Were Wondering....

2009-01-08T22:35:00.002+11:00

I know, I know, I've been neglecting this blog of late - well, alright, for about the last five months. But I've been busy! The thing is, it's not something I can sum up in a few words; nor is it anything that a few thousand words will explain (and who'd read that anyway?) So what I've done is reproduce a circular email I sent out recently to a few friends (who were as equally in the dark about my recent activities) to let them know that a) I was still alive, and b) what I've been doing.

So, with due apologies for ignoring you in recent months (and with a vague promise to not to so in future), my update for the last half year...

Dear Friends:

As it has been a while since I graced you with an account of my adventures, and since I know how much you all looooooove hearing from me, I thought I'd kick off the festive season with just the right spirit and bring you all up to date with what I've been getting up to (or away with, depending on your point of view!)

Ministry

This has been a very busy and challenging year, what with study, working a couple of nights a week at the local servo, and undertaking my first year of candidacy to the ordained ministry of the UCA. However, I am pleased to say that I have successfully completed Year One (as has my Dearly Beloved) and I am presently on placement over summer to the Black Rock/Beaumaris congregation.

Apart from being a very nice place to be over Summer, Black Rock / Beaumaris has two congregations (St Andrews Black Rock, and St Martin's Beaumaris) which mens two services every Sunday. The minister there is Rev Ian Ferguson, who is very gifted liturgically, and I am learning a lot from him in terms of making a service engage with people and drawing them into a space in which a service "speaks" to them. Ian goes on leave in January, so I'll be Johnny-on-the-spot for this congregation! Exciting but nerve wracking!

My Dearly Beloved and I have also done a fair bit of itinerant preaching and are both on the roster to be preaching regularly at the Hastings/Crib Point/Balnarring congregations - thank heavens for Eastlink! The formation process - that is what the official training program is called - has been very challenging and thought provoking. One of the interesting developments over the course of this year has been that when I first became a candidate, I assumed that I would be aiming for a congregational ministry once I was ordained; however, as a result of the formation process this year, I am now inclining myself more toward chaplaincy, and in particular, industrial chaplaincy. It seems to me (and this is an observation based on the many pastoral conversations I've had with many people over a number of years, including during my period of service in the union movement) that there is a great need for the church to be "present" in society in ways other than just congregations; and given that most of us spend most of our week at work, and given also how soulless and stressful many workplaces can be, a pastoral presence that meets people in their daily context is, it seems to me, a matter of some urgency. Still, the formation process is only one third over, and much thought and reflection and discernment still need to occur before the matter of where exactly I feel I am being called to is sorted out...hopefully, next year I will be able to access a placement in an industrial context that will enable me to reflect further on this notion.

Study

This year has been full on for study - I have effectively broken the back of my study load, meaning I'll be able to go back to two subjects a semester next year - but, boy, was it hard work! My academic results have been extremely pleasing - more than one High Distinction I'm delighted to say - but what has been truly rewarding have been the insights and sense of richness of faith and understanding that have flowed from my studies. In particular, the Old Testament studies I have undertaken this year have given me a completely new insight into the theological underpinnings of many of the prophetic and wisdom books of the OT, as well as the Book of Genesis. It seems to me that the ancients were not the primitives we often condescendingly imagine them to be - typified, for example, by the view that they heard thunder and imagined this to be God's anger - but that they were in fact sophisticated and subtle theological and philosophical thinkers whose portrait of God and faith is much richer and more complex than is revealed by our tendency to read sacred texts in literal terms. Indeed, the portrait of God and faith which the ancients who produced the OT paint is one that is subversive, dark, difficult, risky, ambiguous, and immensely powerful - but most of all, is one that undermines and overthrows the simplistic notions and presuppositions of both fundamentalist religiosity and fundamentalist atheism.

I have found this area of study so enriching that although I have completed the required subjects in this field for my BTheol degree - and next year I'm switching to Philosophy and Ethics - that I'll probably do a few more Biblical Studies subjects as electives.

Novel

I know you're probably all sick of hearing about this, but my novel Hunting the Shadows is now available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble - and for much cheaper than buying it direct from the publisher. So if you're looking for a gift for someone who's difficult to buy for (and loves crime fiction) or you are looking for a great read (even if I do say so myself!) you can purchase yourself a copy safely and securely online.

Benediction

I hope 2008 has been as rewarding and enriching for you as it has been for me - or, at least, that the prospects for 2009 will be as equally exciting or possibility-laden.

May your Christmas and New Year for you and yours be safe, happy, and refreshing and I look forward to maybe even catching up with one or two of you in 2009.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: News is merely that which someone who doesn't care much for anything wishes to read. (Evelyn Waugh)

Let The Phoney Sentimentality Begin!

2008-08-11T18:22:00.002+10:00

Yes, it's that time again. Once every four years, the world puts everything on hold and goes ape over the spectacle of the Olympic Games. Well, almost everything. The business of making money takes a holiday for no-one; indeed, during the Games, it probably even goes into overdrive.

And of course, the megacorps are pulling out all the stops in order to pull our patriotic heartstrings and bleed us dry of our hard-earned. All of a sudden, foreign multinationals are proudly Australian and propping every geriatric in a military uniform they kind find in front of a camera in order to assure us that they, too, share the ANZAC spirit. Naturally, this is all about celebrating the festival of the Games and supporting our guys and gals in Beijing; however, if you could see your way to buying one of their burgers, or patronising one of their shopping centres, or taking off in one of their planes, that would be nice, too.

Not that Australian companies are beyond this cynical artifice, either. Suddenly, every golden-haired glamour girl and pretty boy in a swim suit or track lycra is the quintessential Australian, representative of all our hopes and dreams - and, naturally, we're all behind them because sporting prowess is really the pinnacle of any nation's evolutionary index. So of course we'll buy all their sponsors' products, because doing less would hardly be patriotic, would it?

If you think I'm being overly cynical, watch the television broadcast of the Olympics for even a brief period, and you'll see what I mean. If the patently parochial (and frequently mindless) commentary isn't enough to do your head in, the mushy, saccharine blandishments of the commercials will have you gagging on your vomit even as you reach for the cyanide pills. No kidding, if I see one more ad about how these faceless, exploitative corporations really do care about all the Mums and Dads and kiddies out there, and how they are sooooooo grateful for all our support over the years, I'll throw myself off the top of my stack of large-print Das Kapital editions.

To be fair, it's not all bad. One of the two public broadcasters in Oz has somehow managed to snaffle secondary broadcasting rights to the Games - which is to say they've been assigned all the team and non-swimming, non-track events the commercial broadcaster thought too obscure or insufficiently ratings-friendly to cover. But I quite like this. It means you get to see stuff that otherwise would be ignored, and the level of patriotic hyperbole is kept to a bearable minimum. Except when they, too, have to cut to a commercial break so their "broadcast partners" can flog their overpriced - but eminently Australian - wares.

Oh well, it will be all over in a few days, and then we can get back to business as usual. In the meantime, if you listen very carefully, beneath the roar of the crowds and the screeching platitudes of the sports journalists, you'll notice another sound, a kind of background noise to the whole Games. It's the sound of cash registers ringing.

K'ching!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote of the Day: Capitalism - survival of the fattest. (Anonymous)

My Life As A Cartoon

2008-07-28T15:25:00.006+10:00

Another gem from Wiley... (click on the image to enlargen it)

'Nuff said!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: A satirist is someone who discovers unpleasant things about themselves and then says them about other people. (Peter McArthur)

It's All About Me

2008-07-20T16:08:00.003+10:00

I don't know if it's because I'm becoming old and grouchy, or - and this seems a much more likely reason - because in my charming naivety I've not previously noticed, but I can't get over how astonishingly inconsiderate and selfish people are in their behaviour toward one another. I don't mean the big picture stuff: oddly enough, as far as I can tell, when it comes to responding to an appeal, or helping people in serious trouble, most folks are generous to a fault. Nor do I want to suggest that people are becoming "more" selfish than they used to be, or that selfishness didn't happen in "my day" (whenever that was). Rather, it seems that it's in the arena of the daily that people just don't seem to give a toss, that they live in some kind of insular bubble that says: I'm the most important reality in the world, and screw anyone and anything that's an inconvenience or which stops me going about my day the way I see fit.

Let me give you some recent examples to illustrate my point.

Last week, my Dearly Beloved and I visited Canberra for a week, partly for pleasure and partly for a conference. We were taking a flight on one of those ultra-low-cost airlines, so, not sure if we'd get anything to eat on the flight itself, we decided to grab a bite before boarding the plane. Or, more accurately, my Dearly Beloved decided we'd have McDonalds as opposed to actually eating food. Being the controller of the family purse-strings, she stood in line to place our order and pay, while I found us a table in the cramped and overcrowded eating space. I eventually snaffled a corner table, and while idly awaiting my Dearly Beloved's arrival with our "food" (I always regard this a provisional term when it comes to McDonalds), I noticed a family of people sitting at the table next to me tucking into what seemed to be a ten course meal. There were bags and cartons and paper wrappings and plastic cups everywhere. Eventually, they completed their repast, and as one, got up and left.

Now, you'll notice I said "got up and left", NOT "tidied up their rubbish, put it in the bin, and left". Because I'm not kidding, they left their table strewn with the detritus of their meal; not merely the bags and wrappings and stuff, but half-eaten burgers, spillages of chips, and cups with congealing ice-cream products still clinging to the sides. And what made this laziness all the more astonishing was the fact that they were sitting right next to the rubbish bin! Seriously, they could have literally reached out and dumped their junk in the bin without having to stand. But no, instead of doing the right thing, they decided that either one of the staff or the next person who wanted to use a table could do their cleaning up for them; whatever they were doing, or wherever they were going, was more important than a simple act of courtesy.

This sort of thing really pisses me off. It's one of the reasons I hate eating in junk food restaurants and shopping centre food malls: the crappiness of the food aside, you have to hunt around endlessly for a table because too many lazy, thoughtless cretins have left it strewn with their garbage. Hell, the waiting staff can clean up after me; or, if the staff are too busy, then the next customer can get their hands dirty removing my leftovers. Me, I'm too busy and important to put my rubbish on a tray and take five steps out of my way to the bin.

Don't you just long to grab these people by the shirtfront and introduce them to the concept of extreme retributive violence? Just like the two women my Dearly Beloved and I encountered at the War Memorial in Canberra during our aforementioned visit to the nation's capital. We were on the alcove overlooking a vast hall filled with various fighters and bombers when the PA announced that a brief show about Australian bomber crews in WWII would be displayed on the wall opposite; the alcove on which we were standing was the viewing platform. So we settled down on some nearby seating to wait, accompanied by other people who likewise sat or stood behind the seats or to one side. There was plenty of viewing space, and two screens on the wall opposite: there would be plenty to see, I thought to myself in anticipation, especially given the alcove's safety barrier was made of thick but clear glass that enabled you to view the show.

And then along came these two women. And because they wanted the best view in the house, they came and stood right in front of us! Only two steps to the left, and they would have had a clear view of everything, and left our visual field unimpeded; but no, other people simply didn't enter into their calculations. They wanted to see the show, and screw anyone else inconvenienced in the process. Moreover, had my Dearly Beloved and I stood in order to see the show, we would have blocked the view of the people next to us, and thus set off a chain reaction of inconvenience. As a result, we were stuck with three quarters of one screen, with the other completly blocked.

I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill, but it's this kind of daily insensitivity and selfishness that I have begun to notice lately. And I've come to the conclusion that it's because it occurs in the realm of the day-to-day that people think that's it's not important, or can't adversely affect others, or that if it does, then the person on the receiving end should just "get over it". In other words, it's a direct consequence of the "whatever" culture in which self-absorption is a virtue and any objection to imposing upon others an unjustifiable assault on the individual's right to do as they please.

And yet this kind of stuff does matter, because it's precisely the kind of thing that can destroy a person's day, or at least annoy them to such an extent that they then become pre-occupied and do something thoughtless themselves, or have an accident, or get into a pointless argument. In other words, each act of selfishness, however trivial, is like a stone dropped into a pond: the ripples spread out from the event, affecting other aspects of life, and meeting and adding to the potency of other ripples from other events. What starts off as a careless, throw-away event come become something much more significant.

So my plea is simple: next time you're in a food court or fast food joint, please, please, please put your rubbish in the bin. Not only will you be making the environment for everyone more pleasant, you'll potentially be saving yourself from the the experience of having your shirtfront gathered up in angry fistfulls, followed shortly thereafter by a good nutting or a knee to the bollocks.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Laziness is riding a bike over cobblestones just to knock the ash off a cigarette. (Les Dawson)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-06-14T01:59:00.003+10:00

Look, it's 2am, I'm still wired from work, so maybe my responses to this quiz produced a warped outcome...

You Are a Comma

You are open minded and extremely optimistic.

You enjoy almost all facets of life. You can find the good in almost anything.

You keep yourself busy with tons of friends, activities, and interests.

You find it hard to turn down an opportunity, even if you are pressed for time.

Your friends find you fascinating, charming, and easy to talk to.

(But with so many competing interests, you friends do feel like you hardly have time for them.)

You excel in: Inspiring people

You get along best with: The Question Mark

What Punctuation Mark Are You?

Hey, don't ask me - decide for yourself!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Grammar - the grave of letters. (Elbert Hubbard)

And Just To Prove That I'm NOT Procrastinating...

2008-06-09T14:54:00.002+10:00

See, this is important and relevant...

Your Thinking is Abstract and Sequential

You like to do research and collect lots of information.

The more facts you have, the easier it is for you to learn.

You need to figure things out for yourself and consider all possibilities.

You tend to become an expert in the subjects that you study.

It's difficult for you to work with people who know less than you do.

You aren't a very patient teacher, and you don't like convincing people that you're right.

What Kind of Thinker Are You?

QED: I'm not stuffing about when I should be studying, I'm being abstract and sequential...

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Procrastination: putting off until tomorrow what you put off yesterday until today. (Laurence Peter)

The Analysis Continues Unabated....

2008-06-09T14:43:00.003+10:00

I told you I wasn't &*!@&!! negative!!!

You Are a Little Negative...

You can be negative from time to time, but you rarely go overboard.

You have a realistic view of the world, and most people appreciate your honest insights.

Like everyone else, you have your darker moods.

But when you're feeling super negative, you keep your feelings to yourself.

Are You Too Negative?

And anyway, apophatic theology is good for you!

Talk to you soon,

Quote for the Day: A pessimist is merely what an optimist calls a realist. (Anon)

And Just To Prove To You That I'm NOT A Nutbar...

2008-06-07T15:16:00.003+10:00

See, I told you so!

There's a 16% Chance You've Been Abducted By Aliens

There's virtually no chance you've been abducted by aliens.

But there's always hope for the future!

What Are the Chances that You've Been Abducted by Aliens?

Live long and prosper!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: I don't believe in aliens living on planets as such, but I do believe there's stuff going on in this room that none of us have any idea about. (Barry Sonnenfeld)

And Just To Show You All That It's A Load Of Bollocks....

2008-06-07T15:07:00.003+10:00

Index fingers, take note!

You Are a Ring Finger

You are romantic, expressive, and hopeful. You see the best in everything.

You are very artistic, and you see the world as your canvas. You are also drawn to the written word.

Inventive and unique, you are often away in your own inner world.

You get along well with: The Pinky

Stay away from: The Index Finger

What Finger Are You?

You get the point?

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: One finger in the throat and one finger in the rectum makes for a good diagnostician. (Sir William Osler)

No Oedipal Complexes Here!

2008-06-07T14:58:00.003+10:00

Having just taken the Ice Cream Personality Test, I couldn't resist letting ol' Sigmund having a go, either. And, I have to say, Doc Freud is pretty well on the mark!

You Are in the Genital Stage of Development

According to Dr. Freud, you've reached the genital stage of development.

Whatever issues you may have had in your childhood have been resolved.

You don't have any hang ups, and you are able to function as a stable adult.

You are the model of being well-adjusted, and you are able to balance your life beautifully.

What Freudian Stage Are You In?

Naturally, any objections will be noted and ignored in due course!

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: A psychiatrist is the only person who goes to a strip show in order to watch the audience. (Mervyn Stockwood)

The Rum n Raisin Personality Test...

2008-06-07T14:45:00.004+10:00

As I have just completed an outstanding task, I thought I'd reward myself by posting one of those blogthing quizzes (and besides, it's been a while since I indulged). And speaking of indulgence, I couldn't go past the Ice Cream Personality Test. And this is what resulted:

Your Ice Cream Personality:

You are a bit of a bragger. Your personality is larger than life - and you really enjoy showing off.

You are incredibly cautious. You rather miss out on something than make a mistake. No one would ever call you wild... but they would call you responsible.

You are a somewhat open minded person, but deep down you're fairly conservative. You don't like trying new things very much. And if you do find something new you like, you stick with it.

You tend to have a one track mind. You prefer not to multitask.

You can be a big dramatic and over the top sometimes. You are bold in every way

The Ice Cream Personality Test

Personally, I think it's a tad contradictory in parts. On the other hand, I suspect many of you who know me will think it's spot on!

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream. (Wallace Stevens)

Knock (Or At Least Ring The Bloody Bell) And Ye Shall Enter!

2008-05-29T20:20:00.002+10:00

What is it with people and locked doors?

At the service station where I put in an occasional appearance behind the counter, we have a security policy that requires the front door to be locked for the overnight shifts. This means that customers wishing to enter the store must be admitted by the console operator on duty; and if the operator isn't immediately available, there's a bell the customers can push to attract their attention.

So...picture the scene at night. The door is locked. A customer has just filled up with petrol and is approaching the store to make payment. The operator (Yours Truly) is out of sight stacking the shelves. The customer encounters the locked door. Do they ring the bell to get my attention? Do they read the sign on the door asking them to ring the bell if the door is locked?

I wish! No, upon encountering the locked door and realising that it's locked, customers decide that the best method of getting my attention is to yank harder on the door. And not only do they pull harder on the door in their attempts to open it, they also try to push it open with as much vigour. The result is that my attention is not attracted by the sound of the bell, it's drawn by the screeching of the shop door as its being yanked fairly off its hinges!

So I ask again: what is it with people and locked doors? Why don't they realise that if the door is locked, trying to force it open is not a viable option? And why do they never see the sign on the door asking them to ring the bell if the door is locked? Honestly, it's the architectural equivalent of thinking that speaking IN A SLOW AND LOUD VOICE will magically enable foreigners to understand English!

Mind you, I don't know why I am so surprised, as this is a familiar phenomenon to me. When I worked in the CBD, I was in an office which had locked front doors (partially as a consequence of the nature of the work; partially because of the not infrequent depredations of the local squatters). It also featured a sign (right next to the door handle) asking people to ring the bell to get the attention of staff. But did it make a blind bit of difference? Not likely! People still pushed and pulled the door with all their vim and vigour, as if their lives depended on it!

I sometimes wonder whether or not being in a public place makes the average citizen a complete bonehead. It's like another phenomenon I've observed, especially in cinemas and theatres and the like, wherein people insist on gathering in large, obstructive groups right in the middle of the doorway. Maybe it's some kind of environmental gene that switches on and renders the possessor thereof unable to do anything other than the one thing that will cause maximum inconvenience to others. Likewise with the locked door; maybe some malevolent DNA strand whispers in their biochemical ear and says: Okay, Joe: this is the bit where you leave your brains in the car. That's a locked door up ahead; just ignore the sign asking you to behave rationally, and instead yank on the damned thing like a demented idiot.

Sigh...maybe I should just resign myself to the proposition that it's an inevitable aspect of human psychology that, when confronted by the unexpected, people will insist on trying to make the expected occur, instead of rationally assessing the situation and responding to it on its own terms. Or maybe the simple, brutal fact is that people are idiots.

Except me, of course. Anyone who maintains a blog must have their head screwed on right...

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Logic is the art of getting it wrong with confidence. (Joseph Krutch)

I'm Now A (Self) Published Author!

2008-05-20T17:28:00.003+10:00

Yes, that's right - I've decided to self-publish my first novel!

Hunting the Shadows is a psycho-thriller set in contemporary Melbourne, pitched against a backdrop of political machinations and personal corruption. Two damaged police officers have to find a dangerous serial sex offender who is stalking vulnerable women - all the while battling their own demons and trying to avoid the fallout from internal police politics and individual ambition.

I've published the book through Lulu, a well-known self-publishing business. You can purchase your own copy by clicking on the little icon on the right hand side.

So, please - help this struggling author and get the benefit of a great read!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Authors are like uncaptured criminals: they're the only people free from routine. (Eric Linkletter)

Marvellous Manuscripts

2008-05-07T22:14:00.003+10:00

My Dearly Beloved and I recently went to the State Library of Victoria to view the Medieval Manuscripts exhibition.

The hall in which the exhibition is staged isn't quite ideal for the purpose - a tad cramped, inclined to be stuffy, and the information signs were frequently too small or badly placed to read - but these minor inconveniences were easily overshadowed by the treasures within.

And what marvels they were! Beautifully rendered manuscripts, many of them illuminated with extraordinary illustrations, and characterised by the most astonishing penmanship. There were breviaries, lectionaries, hymnals, bestiaries, editions of Ptolemy and Livy and the Augustan History...a wonderful variety of precious manuscripts, created with exquisite care and painstaking attention to detail.

But for me, the two most captivating aspects were:

The miniatures. These were pint-sized books that nonetheless were as embellished and beautiful as their larger counterparts. How extraordinary was the penmanship, line after line of tiny handwriting reproduced with disciplined and unwavering hands. The effort that creating these miniatures must have taken is almost incomprehensible - you can certainly understand how and why more than one scribe went blind creating these marvels.
The hymnals. What was most intriguing about these were the musical notations: they were different and yet vaguely familiar as well. Certainly, you could identify the origins of the modern musical system, given the notations were set against the familiar five line stave. But the notations themselves lacked stems, meaning they were identifiable through their different shapes and whether or not they were solid or hollow. Also, the elaborate script that accompanied the music must have been hard to read, especially by candle light!

So if you're looking for a diverting hour or so wondering at the industry that produced these manuscripts, and admiring their sheer beauty, get along to the State Library. It's well worth it!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: The library: a sort of harem. (Ralph Waldo Emmerson)

China Review: The Great Wall

2008-04-19T12:41:00.003+10:00

The Great Wall of China has to be seen to be believed.

Unlike other engineering projects of the ancient world, such as the Pyramids of Giza, the Great Wall was not entirely a single construction undertaken at a specific period of time. During the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods (8th-3rd centuries BC), China was divided into a number of petty kingdoms constantly at war with one another, and with surrounding peoples. Many of the northern kingdoms built local walls as a defensive measure against their nomadic tribal neighbours. However, after China was unified by the Emperor Qin Qi Huang in 222BC, he decided to create a single defensive wall to protect his northern border.

The result was the Great Wall, which linked the local walls together and created vast new stretches of wall. To be sure, later dynasties carried out their own works on the Wall, extending and strengthening the existing battlements (indeed, the Great Wall as it is seen by most tourists is the product of extensive Ming Dynasty construction); but the Great Wall as it essentially exists was the product of the Qin Dynasty.

It is reported that more than one million Chinese worked on the Wall, and for most of them, being drafted into the workforce was a death sentence - or, at the very least, a decree in effect that they were to be permanently relocated. It is estimated that thousands of labourers died during the Wall's construction from a variety of causes ranging from exposure to the elements, lack of food, construction accidents, and sheer neglect by imperial officials. When you consider that the population of China at this time is estimated to have been about 5 million people, the scale of the project - and the human suffering it engendered - becomes apparent. And simply beggars belief.

We went to the Wall near a place called Simatai, about two hours out of Beijing. Unfortunately, the smog from the city followed us all the way out to the countryside, although it was nowhere near as bad as Beijing itself, and in any event did not spoil the spectacle. The landscape appeared dead and barren, nothing more than dry, brown grass and rocky earth. This was a stark reminder that the land approaching Beijing is an upland plateau, where sparse rain and seasonal cold combine to produce what is essentially tundra. Indeed, the winters are so harsh that the grass is either burned off or falls dormant - which accounts for the brownness of the land.

Simatai itself is a remote valley nestled amid steep mountains. Relatively few tourists go there (which is precisely what attracted us to the location), but there were nevertheless the ubiquitous stalls at the entrance selling all sorts of nik-naks to the tourists. Up until this point, I had managed to avoid playing the tourist, but on this occasion I succumbed and bought a fur-lined army hat with ear flaps and a bright red star at the front. It made me look very silly (or sillier than I normally look, if you insist on absolute accuracy of reporting!); but I can assure you, I was extremely grateful for the ear flaps once we climbed up onto the Wall itself!

Our first glimpse of the Great Wall was both breath-taking and daunting. High above the valley floor, running along a line of razor-back ridges, the Wall lept from precipice to precipice almost like a living creature - no wonder it was often called the Great Dragon. At regular intervals, square towers jutted toward the sky like the remote eyries of some bird of prey. With a sense of foreboding and anticipation, we started the climb toward the Wall.

It was exhausting! The path to the Wall was smooth and well-made, but the land rose in sharp inclines that taxed our stamina - and as most of you will know, I have very little of that to begin with! Once we met the ruined turret where the path met the Wall, we were faced by long, seemingly endless banks of steps to the next watchtower. Needless to say, I only managed a modest amount of climbing before enough was enough. Others of our party, much fitter than Yours Truly, managed to climb to impressive heights. Indeed, Gary, the other adult on the trip, was virtually skipping up the inclines, with a smile on his dial and a song on his lips - much to my annoyance!

Even so, the view from the watchtower where I stopped to rest/have a coronary was extraordinary. The valley of Simatai lay before me, while to either side, the mountains rose to even greater heights. In the distance, the vista consisted of line after line of jagged peaks, much like the serried ranks of approaching warriors. A chill wind whippd across the Wall, forcing me to once more don the jacket I had stripped off during the climb - and making me glad of my furry hat!

It struck me that life for the soldiers garrisoning the Wall must have been pretty miserable; but for those troops stationed along this particular section, their existence must have been especially wretched. Each watchtower looked like it could house between 20 and 50 soldiers, and it would have been their lot to pace the Wall, keeping a lookout for incursions from the wild tribal lands beyond. The conditions in which they did so ranged from freezing cold to blistering heat, and like all frontier troops, they probably suffered from a combination of boredom, exposure, poor supply, and the depradations of a remote, indifferent officialdom.

And the reality is that, impressive an achievement though it undoubtedly is, the Great Wall was relatively ineffective. It was too static a defence to deal with the highly mobile tribal nations of the north, and the troops were spread far too thinly along its great length to be of any use to any particular section that was under attack. Certainly, the Great Wall proved entirely ineffective against Genghis Khan and his Mongols, as well as against the later Manchu invaders who established China's last dynasty, the Qing.

But all of this was of little moment as we contemplated the views, marvelled at the titanic scale of the construction, and pondered the enormous human cost that accompanied the Wall's completion and maintenance. Words do not do justice to the spectacle of the Wall, and pictures can only convey a partial image, at best. The Great Wall really has to be seen to be believed!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Let observation with extensive view, survey mankind, from China to Peru; remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, and watch the busy scenes of crowded life. (Samuel Jonson).

China Review: Beijing

2008-04-17T22:04:00.002+10:00

Those of you who follow this blog regularly may (or may not) have noticed that I've been a little quiescent of late. That's because I've only just come back from a three-week trip to China with my Dearly Beloved, Gary, a former colleague of my Dearly Beloved's, and 21 teenagers. (Well, okay, I've been back a week or so -details!).

The reason why this trip was undertaken lies in the fact that my Dearly Beloved teaches Chinese as a Second Language to high school students, as part of which, she has for many years now been taking groups of students on trips to China as part of their language and cultural development. She changed schools at the start of 2008, but this trip was her last task for the old employer; and Yours Truly and Gary were the other "responsible adults" (in my case, "responsible" was utilised in its broadest possible context) taken along to give her a hand.

I have to admit, I was slightly nervous at the prospect. I have never been to China, and despite the fact that I love Chinese history, I was vaguely aware that I was travelling to a country whose way of life and worldview would be entirely different to mine. So there was very much a sense of "the other". On the other hand, I was also quite excited; the prospect of seeing marvels such as the Great Wall and the entombed warriors of Xi'an was a history buff's dream come true. So it was with mixed feelings that I boarded the plane at Tullamarine Airport for the long haul to Beijing (via Sydney and Shanghai).

I won't bore you with the details of the flight. I had intended to keep a diary, and managed to do so for the first week and a bit; but then the constant travelling and the fatigue this induced mitigated against doing so. Thus, I have determined to break my recollection of events into bit-sized chunks following a basic format. Hopefully, this will give you an insight into my thoughts and feelings at the time, as well as the results of post-event processing in what passes for my mind.

Overview

Beijing is an astonishing megalopolis. Just imagine the high-density, built up CBD of an Australian city extending for square mile after square mile, and that is what Beijing looks like. Or, rather, that's what Beijing looks like when you can see through the smog. I kid you not, the smog has to be experienced to be understood; you know you're in a polluted city when you know there's a skyscraper 100 yards away, but it is completely obscured from view by a thick, yellow pall of smoke, dust, and fumes. On the other hand, there are days in Beijing when the sky is blue, the sun is bright, and the air is clear; on these days, you appreciate just how vast a city Beijing is. Beijing is a place of extraordinary contrasts: of extremes of wealth and poverty; of ancient monuments and ultra-modern construction; of hectic pace and serene, contemplative peace. You have to hit the ground running when you land in Beijing, otherwise it can mess with your head!

Highlights

Without a doubt, the historical monuments, many of which have undergone considerable preservation and renovation in recent years, were the highlight. The Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City, and the Yonghe Gong (Lama) Temple were all endlessly fascinating. The first three are monuments to the secluded splendour and majesty in which the Chinese Emperors lived, vast projects involving the construction of palaces and temples, lakes and artificial mountains. It is truly astonishing to think that these seemingly boundless reserves of material and human resources were all at the disposal, and deployed for the enjoyment of, a single individual. The fourth is a precinct of calm and serenity in the midst of Beijing's chaotic sprawl, an operating temple still reverently attended by Buddhist monks where people still come to pray and undertake their religious observances. A lovely complex of gardens and temples and courtyards, it culminates in a colossal (and yet oddly inconspicuous) carving of the Buddha, wrought from a single piece of white sandalwood and standing three stories high!

Beijing also has two lovely gardens, Beihei Park and Jingshan Park, which were once exclusive imperial domains, but are now open to the public. You can stroll through lovely gardens, sit in exquisite pagodas, or contemplate the scenery. On the weekends, the Chinese flock to the parks in droves, making their own entertainment in dance, music, public speaking, or having their photo taken with foreigners. (I declined.)

Lowlights

The smog, the general pushiness of the average Beijinger (precipitated, I suspect, by the fact that life for the average Joe in Beijing is pretty hard), and the presence of snooty ex-pats from all over the world presently resident in Beijing who tend to be arrogant and condescending to both tourists and the locals alike (largely because they're making a fortune from China's economic boom and enjoying a life denied to most Chinese - and even themselves, were they still living in their native country).

The Traffic

The first thing you notice about Beijing is the traffic. There's lots of it, and it is constantly moving. This makes being a pedestrian extremely dangerous, a hazardous condition not helped by the fact that it appears that cars have the right of way. And they come at you from every direction. And yet, oddly, the whole system seems to work, not least because everybody's doing the same thing; but also because the traffic seems to operate on the very Taoist notion of flow and movement - water moving around the rocks, as it were. People just change lanes at will (and are let in); merging traffic just merges on the (correct, as it turns out) assumption that others will make way for them; and pedestrians and bicycles just ease their way through the interstices between vehicles. It's frightening until you get used to it; but once you are, you can appreciate the internal logic. And the thing is, there are hardly any traffic snarls or backlogs in Beijing; by an ironic twist, the only traffic jams we encountered were in Shanghai, which seems to have replicated the West right down to the level of traffic gridlock!

Food

Generally speaking, the food was great. And the reason I enjoyed it was because it was completely unlike the "Chinese" food you get in Australia - this was the real deal! No sweet and sour, no lemon chicken, no banana fritters; just good, honest, north Chinese fare. Ironically, this was the very cause of the teenagers' discontent; they were used to the "Chinese" they'd grown up on in Australia, and couldn't get their heads (or their taste buds) around the genuine article. Sure, there were one or two dishes I wasn't keen on, and I haven't lost my preference for south Asian cuisine; but let me say right now, I discovered a new appreciation for authentic Chinese cooking. Yet the irony is that the culinary highlight wasn't Chinese but Tibetan; the roast yak steak we had at a Tibetan restaurant in Beijing was just sublime, like the best lamb shanks I've ever had - but even better! And the cumin spicing that went with it just added an extra dimension of flavoursomeness, none of which was spoiled by the smooth and hugely enjoyable Tibetan beer. Yum!

Well, that's a snapshot of Beijing. Next: the Great Wall! PS: Why are there no photos - long story, will tell you later!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: May you live in interesting times. (Chinese curse)

Redemption and Grace

2008-02-29T22:36:00.002+11:00

I recently watched a little film called My House In Umbria. It's a film I first saw at the flicks a couple of years ago, and then my Dearly Beloved bought the DVD, which we've both since re-watched a number of times.

The film stars Dame Maggie Smith, dear old Ronnie Barker (in the last film he made before he died), the noted English comedian Timothy Spall, and Italian actor Giancarlo Gianini (who looks very much like an Italian Ian Turpey!). The plot is simple enough: a group of strangers are travelling on a train in Italy, when a bomb in their carriage explodes, killing some and seriously wounding the others. The survivors end up convalescing at the Umbrian country home of Emma Delahunty (Smith), an English ex-pat with a checkered past who has made a living for herself writing romance novels. They include a retired English major (Barker), a young German political activist named Werner, and an American girl who retreats into silence as a result of being traumatised by the explosion. All three are mourning the loss of loved ones in the bombing; while their hostess, who lives alone (with the exception of her manager and groundsman, played by Spall) mourns a life of dashed hopes and ill-fated romances.

Slowly, the strange group begin to re-awaken a sense of purpose and meaning in life, primarily through a project involving the re-creation of an English cottage garden in Delahunty's sprawling, if ill-kept grounds. But their tranquility is threatened on two fronts: Inspector Giotto (Gianini) is determined to catch those responsible for the bombing, and makes frequent calls in which he asks uncomfortable questions; and the American girl's stiff-necked uncle has arrived to take custody of her, thereby breaking the bond of friendship the group has formed.

I won't tell you how these plot threads play themselves out. Needless to say, it's a simple story beautifully told through a combination of stunning cinematography and sympathetic performances. In particular, the scenes filmed around the small Umbrian hill-town near Delahunty's villa, and those shot in and around Sienna, are just breathtaking. Smith is superb as always, Ronnie Barker gives us a performance that reminds us he was a skilled character actor long before he achieved fame as a comedian, Spall is charming and ironic, and Gianini is urbane and graceful.

However, what most strikes the viewer about this film are the themes of grace and redemption that run like dual threads through the plot. All the characters (with the exception of the little girl, whose flaws are a consequence of her trauma) are broken people in one degree or another, burdened by loss, despair, and regret. But they are able to find redemption in the most unlikely of places: in one another's brokenness. The mutual encounter of their bruised and vulnerable humanity causes them to minister to one another; unconsciously at first, and then with a growing sense of warmth and intimacy as their shared sanctuary and desire to re-create the English cottage garden Delahunty longs for enables them to re-form the bonds of their common humanity. And with that humanity comes recognition of a shared need for human contact and engagement, irrespective of how many times that contact has hurt them in the past.

And herein lies their redemption: their capacity to find their way back to hope, to being able to see forward again, not in denial of the past, but in spite of it, even as they carry that past into the future. Their redemption is their capacity to re-affirm themselves, and one another, in the face of everything that negates their affirmation. It is the very weakness and vulnerability of their humanity, as a shared experience, that enables them to become more than the sum of who they are.

My House in Umbria is a modest film, simply made. It won't make anyone's Top Ten list. But it is an eminently worthwhile film to see, both for its own simple beauty, and because of the moving and affirming portrait of vulnerable humanity which it paints.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God. (Karl Barth)

What's In A Name?

2008-02-12T23:16:00.005+11:00

I know I've been a little silent of late, so, inspired by the recent example of my buddy Caro, I thought I'd browse the blogthings site to see if I could post something a little light-hearted to tide over anyone who might happen to be reading this blog on even a quasi-regular basis.

I came across the "quiz" "What's Your Name's Hidden Meaning?" I thought it sounded sufficiently innocuous to post on this blog. Here's the result:

What Brendan Means

You are full of energy. You are spirited and boisterous.You are bold and daring. You are willing to do some pretty outrageous things.Your high energy sometimes gets you in trouble. You can have a pretty bad temper at times.
You are wild, crazy, and a huge rebel. You're always up to something.You have a ton of energy, and most people can't handle you. You're very intense.You definitely are a handful, and you're likely to get in trouble. But your kind of trouble is a lot of fun.
You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone.You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together.At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together.
You are very intuitive and wise. You understand the world better than most people.You also have a very active imagination. You often get carried away with your thoughts.You are prone to a little paranoia and jealousy. You sometimes go overboard in interpreting signals.
You are balanced, orderly, and organized. You like your ducks in a row.You are powerful and competent, especially in the workplace.People can see you as stubborn and headstrong. You definitely have a dominant personality.
You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic "Type A" personality.

What's" Your Name's Hidden Meaning?

I must say, the results surprised me a little, so being the analysis junkie I am, I thought we could explore this outcome a little more. Line by line, as it were.

The first five statements of paragraph one demonstrate immediately that whoever compiled this little "secret hidden meaning" gizmo knows jack shite about Yours Truly. In the words of Edmund Blackadder, I'm about as energetic, spirited, and boisterous as an asthmatic ant with a load of heavy shopping. Who are they talking about? Me, the lumpen proletariat extraordinaire - or some git who exists only in the imagination of an adrenalin junkie hopped to the eyeballs on NoDoze and Red Bull? The only sentence in this para that bears any resemblance to moi is that, yes, on occasion I am wont to get a mite tetchy. Aside from that, however, it's like looking in the mirror and seeing not me but Bruce McAvaney (shudder).

For para two, read as per above, especially the drivel about having a ton of energy. I have about as much energy as a solar panel hidden down a mineshaft. Rebel? Cranky, maybe. Cantankerous, possibly. Curmudgeounly (a word employed often by my Dearly Beloved) probably. But rebellious? Benedict Arnold was more rebellious than I am. I do get into trouble - but that's probably a consequence of the manifold defects of my personality, not as a result of any spirit of rebelliousness. And as for the trouble being "fun" - well, it's clear to me that whoever wrote this blogquiz has the same sense of "fun" as the Maquis de Sade or the Spanish Inquisition...

Para three is interesting only because it largely contradicts the preceeding two paragraphs. I don't know anyone who bounces off walls and thinks parachuting off buildings is fun who is also friendly, charming and warm. From memory, Noel Coward got about in an evening gown, a pipe, and a pair of comfy slippers, not a backpack full of energy bars and a sketchy, second-hand map of the amazon jungle. Get along with anyone - who are they kidding? To me, the word "friend" denotes only two things: one, a word in Tarzan's severly limited vocabulary; and, two, the title of the most overrated show in television history. Sorry, three things: as the old saying goes, a friend in need is someone to be avoided. I try not to rock the boat? Um, doesn't that really contradict the stuff about me being a huge rebel? And my "easy going" attitude clears buildings quicker than you could say "Who's that guy in reception who looks like Osama bin Laden?" Flaky? Irresponsible? They've obviously have mistaken these words as similies for indifferent...

Para four was much closer to the truth. Yes, I am wise. Yes, I understand the world better than most people. That's exactly why most people don't like me. Pure, unrestrained jealousy. And, yes, I am very imaginative. I have imaginary friends. I see them all the time. They talk to me...But then they lost the plot. Paranoid? Me? Listen, buddy, it's true: they are out to get me, and everyone does hate me, okay? Just because I'm unpopular doesn't mean I'm paranoid. And, no, that guy in the pub the other night wasn't just ordering two drinks...he was making a secret signal to all his cohorts in the Ancient Grand Order of Woollen Vests and Sock Suspenders that the Great Day of Apotheosis is nigh...

The next para reckons I'm balanced, ordely, and organised...uh-huh, this is the guy they just described as over-imaginative and paranoid, right? The bloke who gets a tad too upset on occassion and usually needs to be tied into his chair he's so hyperactive? I could have told them if they'd only bothered to consult with me that the only reason I remotely resemble order is because I'm so static. Being able to occupy the same space for a geological age may present the illusion that I'm cool, calm, and collected, but once you look past the encrusting lichen you'll realise that motionlessness is simply - motionlessness. Powerful and competent - in the workplace? I'm not even powerful and competent in my wildest dreams! And can someone please explain to me what the hell work is? Stubborn, headstrong, powerful personality - see, I told you: I'm the literal immoveable object.

And finally, we come to the last para that tells me I'm strong and confident and like the best of everything - isn't perfectionist just a synonym for whinging git? - and that I exude more authority than a fully tooled-up battle group bristling with tactical nukes and a nasty hangover. Again, what happened to paranoid? Or is confidence just paranoia that doesn't recognise itself? And what the bejeezers is a "Type A" personality. I don't even know what my blood type is, let alone my personality "type". For all I know, "Type A" personalities could denote anyone who thinks "The A Team" was the pinnacle of 80s television and that mohawks on aging African-American he-men is an appealing look. And even I'm not that sad. Well, not completely...

Final diagnosis: this thing's a crock. But I guess we already knew that. It provided a laugh, and a forum for me to get a few things off my chest. So if you'll just excuse me, I'm off to talk to my imaginative friends about all the people who hate me. In a calm and authoritive manner, while planning my next crazy escapade around the Andes Mountains.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Mediocrites are people who are always at their best. (Somerset Maugham)

Holidays Schmolidays!

2008-02-01T16:38:00.000+11:00

I know, strictly speaking, this post is by definition a matter of faith, and therefore should be posted on my other blog, but I thought for general amusement purposes, it would be better suited here.

When my Dearly Beloved and I were affirmed as candidates to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church in 2007, all the current candidates told us we should enjoy the forthcoming Summer as our last "free" Summer, because every Summer from now on would be occupied with placements and, eventually, ministry.

I should have realised it at the time, but these injunctions to enjoy our last "free" Summer were a harbinger that the Universe's sense of humour was about to swing into action at our expense. For this Summer has been anything but "free", and my Dearly Beloved and I have been kept quite busy with matters ministerial.

This state of affairs has arisen because our much-loved local minister has fallen prey to a severe back condition that requires him to spend extended periods in enforced immobilisation. And that's before the necessary surgery occurs, which will entail further rest and recuperation. So, the church council decided that, given two of its congregation are candidates to the ministry (you know who I'm talking about, don't you?), it would be a terrific idea if they were temporarily appointed as ministerial locums.

Now, before I go any further, I have to say that my Dearly Beloved and I are counting ourselves as extremely fortunate that we are members of a congregation blessed, not only with a brilliant leadership group, but any number of gifted and capable people as well, which means that much of the burden that being a ministerial locum might otherwise involve has been taken off our shoulders. So it's not like we'd want you to believe that we were suddenly presented with the task of looking after a congregation all on our own. Still...

There's been enough to be getting on with. I won't go into all the boring details, except to say that this Summer past has been anything but restful! I can hear the Universe laughing its cosmic head off even as I type. And people keep assuring us that this has all been good experience - and they're right - but I can't avoid the sneaking suspicion that I'm owed a long, lazy Summer before such things vanish into the realms of past experience...

Ah, well, c'est la vie! And I have to admit, there have been some profound and thought-provoking moments in all of this, including some interesting personal insights and an apposite reminder about the need for personal humility. Most importantly, it has reminded me of the needs for grace and sensitivity when dealing with others, that everything we do in faith is an act of ministry - and that ministry exists for purposes that have nothing to do with our own desires and ends.

We're not sure how long the present interim arrangements will last; with the support of the church council and the congregation, we're taking this one day at a time. And most of all, we're praying our minister makes a full recovery and is back on deck as soon as the healing process allows.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

One has to accept life on the same terms as the public baths, or crowds, or travel. Things will get thrown at you and things will hit you. Life's no soft affair. (Seneca)

A Gentle Reminder...

2008-01-20T22:46:00.000+11:00

For those of you who missed my earlier posting on this matter, I now have two blogs. Confessions from a Comfortable Couch will continue to contain my musings and ramblings about life in general.

However, I now have a specific blog for matters of faith - reflections, sermons I've preached, prayers, etc - which now appear on my other blog The Still Circle.

Also, you should catch my Dearly Beloved's blog with some of her latest entries - a sermon she preached recently, as well as some Advent reflections. Great stuff, especially the beautiful pictures that accompany her posts.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Much Ado About Cricket

2008-01-08T19:29:00.000+11:00

When Michael Clarke captured Ishant Sharma's wicket to give Australia an unlikely victory in the Second Test in Sydney, I thought: India didn't deserve that. They had batted gallantly and fought hard to stave off defeat, and had come agonisingly close to succeeding. Then, in five remarkable balls, Clarke took three wickets and snatched victory from the jaws of a draw.

Since then it appears that all hell has broken loose. There are several issues involved, and in the present frenzy, it is difficult to separate them; but it is imperative that this separation occurs, otherwise the dispute will not be resolved, and the damage it is doing to cricket will not be healed.

First, there's the issue of umpiring. There is no question that, in this match, the Indians suffered a number of poor umpiring decisions, at least some of which adversely impacted upon their fortunes. They have a right to feel aggrieved. But it is also true that copping bad decisions is part and parcel of cricket: there isn't a person who has played the game, at whatever level, who hasn't suffered from a bad umpiring decision. But along with the disappointment that naturally results from such incidents, you also - hopefully - learn to accept that umpires are human; and that being human, they from time to time have bad games and make bad decisions. In other words, you learn to swallow your sense of moral outrage, knowing the odds are pretty good that you'll eventually benefit from a bad decision made in your favour.

With all due respect, it appears that the Indian team, and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) have forgotten this cricketing truism. Feeling aggrieved is one thing; accusing an umpire of incompetence (or is this really a coded accusation of bias?) and demanding the removal of that umpire is something else altogether. For starters, prior to the introduction of the international umpiring panel, touring the sub-continent was proverbial for suffering at the hands of sub-standard umpiring; the Indians are frankly the last people who should be pointing the finger on this score. More importantly, the last three wickets which Michael Clarke captured had nothing to do with bad umpiring; and plenty of Indian wickets fell as a consequence of poor shot selection. More than bad umpiring, the Indians contrived at their own demise.

If this weren't bad enough, the International Cricket Council's (ICC) craven submission to the BCCI's demands that one of the two umpires who officiated in the Syndey Test be removed has only made matters worse. Umpire Steve Bucknor has now been effectively tried and convicted of incompetence, without the benefit of either due process or an appeal - unlike the Indian player accused of racism (see below). For an umpire, who is supposed to be sacrosanct in the respect they are afforded, to be treated in such a shabby manner by the game's administrators, only reinforces the message that if you complain loud and long enough, and if you have the financial muscle to back your complaints, you'll get your way regardless. The ICC might call this pragmatic - I call it gutless.

Next, there is the issue of poor sportsmanship. On this point, the Indians are on much more substantial ground. Frankly, the conduct of the Australian players in the immediate aftermath of their victory was pretty deplorable. Sure, they had every right to be jubilant; but the essence of sportsmanship is being able, in the moment of your victory, to acknowledge the efforts of your opponents and pay them due regard for the competition they provided. The scenes of the Australian players carrying on like drunken teenagers and urging the crowd into transports of triumphalistic ecstasy was distasteful to say the least. If you were coach of a team of 10 year olds who behaved in this fashion, you'd bang their heads together and tell them to behave themselves - I don't see why adults should be exempt from this requirement. Compare this with the grace and dignity with which the English player Andrew Flintoff consoled the Australian players after their narrow loss in the Second Test of the 2005 Ashes series, and the response of the Australians in this latest match was, by contrast, shabby in the extreme.

Then there's the issue of sledging, which also comes under poor sportsmanship. The Australians are notorious sledgers; they are by no means the only ones who sledge, but they are the ones most closely associated with this practice. Let me be clear: sledging is not gamesmanship, the skill of gaining a psychological advantage over your opponent - it is personal abuse, pure and simple. And it seems to me that the Australians long ago forgot the difference between the two. Passing personal remarks and insulting comments is not the same using your skill as a player or adopting a personal approach that intimidates the opposition into surrendering the psychological initiative. Putting opponents off their game by abusing them takes neither skill nor intellect; it's just school-yard bullying transported to the cricket field.

I don't know if the Australians engaged in any sledging in this match (though it seems highly likely that they did), but it does appear that their past habit of doing so at least provided the fuel for the present explosion of indignation and accusation. And when it seemed as though, in their pursuit of victory, the Australians made dubious appeals and claimed wickets that were not theirs to claim, instances of past sledging ignited feelings of grievance and victimisation among the Indian players and officials. I believe that it was these past instances of bad behaviour by the Australians, as much as any instances of sledging in the recent match, which Indian captain Anil Kumble had in mind when he accused the Australians of not playing in the spirit of the game. And I think the Australians need to take a good, long hard look at themselves and realise that victories accomplished, to whatever degree, by sledging are hollow victories indeed.

Finally, there is the spectre of racism. I wasn't on the field when Indian player Harbhajan Singh allegedly called Andrew Symonds a "monkey". I wasn't at the hearing in which match referee Mike Proctor sustained the allegations against Singh and imposed a three match ban. I don't know what evidence was adduced, for and against, the allegation. But at least Singh has had the benefit of a hearing, and will be able to lodge an appeal - which is more courtesy than has been afforded to umpire Bucknor. If Harbhajan called Symonds a "monkey" - the taunt that Indian crowds yelled at him during Australia's recent tour of India -then he deserves to be banned. If he is innocent, the Australians must be examined as to why they lodged the complaint, and made to account accordingly.

Racism must be stamped out of all walks of life. In the past - and the last South African tour of Australia comes to mind - sections of the Australian public racially abused players from other countries. Fortunately, Australia's cricketing and civil authorities have taken steps to prevent this from reoccurring - more than the Indian authorities appear to have done with respect to the racists among their own spectators. And for the BCCI to demand that Harbhajan be cleared or else the present tour will be cancelled is a disgrace; this is a demand that undermines the integrity of the whole process. Granted, the Indians are to an extent entitled to feel miffed that it is one of their players who are among the first to be suspended under the ICC's racism code, especially given the history of racism which Indians, Pakistanis, West Indians, and others have had to endure. But in order for the code to be effective and to have integrity, it must apply to all without exception, regardless of historical injustices; as soon as conditions begin to be placed on the application of the code, it becomes a farce.

So, how does this get resolved? To begin, the captains must take the lead and set the example by their own behaviour. They must be seen to be engaging one another in a spirit of sportsmanship and mutual respect - and not just for show, but genuinely, as part of their integral approach to the game. And the players must follow the example set. And the cricketing boards of the various nations must respect the independence and sanctity of the umpires and disciplinary officials. The "talking" has to be done with bat and ball, and not at press conferences or through the issuing of threats and ultimatums. Any other course simply cheapens the game and makes a mockery of the values which it supposedly represents.

Talk to you soon,

BB

The Results Are In....

2007-12-07T17:25:00.000+11:00

Well, the waiting for the 2007 academic year is over, as the results for Second Semester dropped softly (but significantly) into my mailbox today.

All in all, I didn't do too badly. High Distinctions for Triune God and Gospel of Mark, and a Credit (which was only a couple of points off a Distinction) for Faith & Learning.

Must say I was rather pleased with these results for two reasons. Firstly, Semester One was a lot more difficult than I expected; my brain seemed annoyingly sluggish for some reason, and my overall results were solid, if a little disappointing. Secondly, Semester Two was complicated by another round of surgery on my left eye, coupled with the distraction of going through the selection process for applicants to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church.

I think the difference was that I actually managed to be prepared for a change. I chose my assignment topics early and got stuck into the necessary research without delay. Thus, even though I was laid up for a couple of weeks by the surgery, I had copious notes awaiting me once I was able to get back to work, and writing the essays turned out to be nothing like the nightmare I expected.

You know what - all that guff my teachers and lecturers have been telling me over the years about being disciplined and committed was actually true! Who would have thunk it?

Anyhoo, I reckon I've got bragging rights for this semester...let's just hope my newly found commitment to discipline doesn't disappear over the summer!

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: An intellectual is a man who takes more words than is necessary to say more than he knows. (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

An Electoral Reflection

2007-11-25T11:55:00.000+11:00

Last night I watched John Howard concede defeat in the Australian Federal election with more dignity and integrity than has characterised most of his time in office.

I have no desire to gloat over a fallen man, however, I am convinced that history will record Howard as the most mediocre individual ever to have been Prime Minister of this country. Which is not to say that his influence and impact on Australia have not been enormous; just that, in my view, Howard's influence on this nation has been almost entirely negative.

Howard's one, shining moment when he acted with genuine integrity occurred early in his Prime Ministership, when he introduced some sanity into the nation's firearms legislation in the wake of the dreadful Port Arthur shootings. Howard did so in the face of bitter protest and opposition from the right-wing of his own support base, and he is to be credited with standing up to the loony shooters fringe and acting in the national interest.

For the rest of his term in office, however, it was a steady downward decline.

Howard has always peddled the "honest John" label that attached itself to him early in his political career. And yet honesty was conspicuously and frequently absent when it came to Howard's decision-making; he much preferred a dissimulation or obfuscation that engendered political capital, as opposed to acting with true statesmanship. Granted, he is not the only politician who has done this, nor was he the only member of his Government who did this; but as the Prime Minister, he set the tone and established the pattern. The reasons for entering the Iraq War and the Howard Government's allegations that refugees threw their children overboard are just two of the more conspicuous examples of dishonesty; and yet in these and other cases, Howard has denied all responsibility, blaming others for supposedly providing defective information, or no information at all. And yet, while it was politically advantageous for him to do so, Howard readily latched onto these lies to entrench his own power.

Howard's dishonesty went further than this. There was, of course, the notorious "never, ever" GST; however, even worse than this was the glib "core and non-core promises" excuse bandied out to the electorate as to why he hadn't kept his election promises; apparently, some of Howard's promises ranked higher on the "I intend to keep" scale than others (not that the electorate was told this, or given the rankings, before an election). Now, Howard is not the only politician to have broken a promise; but the absurd and insulting justification he produced for his dishonesty pointed toward the sinister manipulation of language that would characterise both his government and his approach to realpolitik. This was the Government that changed "refugees" to "unlawful arrivals"; "soldiers" to "enemy combatants"; "dissenters" to "un-Australian". This was the Government that deemed a whole raft of workplace conditions and entitlements to be "non-allowable" in industrial awards, and then had the temerity to attach the phrase "Workchoices" to its punitive industrial legislation. This is the Government - and the Prime Minister - who routinely demonised select groups of people for its own purposes, while at the same time prattling on about "mateship" and "Australian values".

And it is this last that is the defining characteristic of the Howard Government, and of Howard's legacy to Australia: fear. For Howard has manipulated both the underlying racism within Australian society, as well as our habitual insularity and sense of superiority, to secure his own place in politics. When the Hansonite movement threatened to undermine Howard's power-base among conservative, racist whites, Howard not only didn't oppose Hanson directly, he appropriated most of Hanson's policies, especially with respect to Aboriginal Australians and refugees. Hanson's disappearance from politics was not due to any integrity on Howard's part, but was a consequence of Howard's cynical, blatant usurpation of Hanson's power-base. In the wake of 9/11 and the Bali bombings, instead of choosing to comfort the traumatised and offer a platform of hope and engagement, Howard chose to invoke "fortress Australia" and stoke up the fires of mistrust and suspicion. The Howard government's willingness to participate in the unlawful detention of Australian citizens by a foreign power, without trial and subject to every violation of due process imaginable, speaks to the depths to which it was prepared to descend in the pursuit of power.

Australia has been a dark place in the bit-over-a-decade in which Howard has been in power. We are a nation obsessed with material consumption and plunging further and further into personal debt in its pursuit. We claim to be an open and egalitarian society, yet we are suspicious of difference and demand that "others" conform to our "values" and norms. We claim to be fighting on the side of freedom and humanity, yet we have willingly acquiesced in the perpetration of an illegal war, with all the ghastly consequences - including the fostering of new generations of violent extremists - which doing so involves. We claim to be an optimistic and cheerful people, and yet we brood over threats from within and without, and scan the stock reports for signs of impending disaster. We claim to be a nation of anti-establishment larrikins who think for themselves; and yet we have cravenly kowtowed and grovelled to whoever we have thought might offer us security and a few dollars more.

And at the centre of this darkness has stood the figure of John Howard, Prime Minister. Not that I'm suggesting Howard has woven some sort of fiendishly clever web in which he has imposed a dystopic society without us realising the fact. Rather, Howard has been the quintessential expression of our collective weakness; when we needed leadership and statesmanship, we got politicking and manipulation. When we needed courage and hope, we got fear and loathing. When we needed genuine egalitarianism and compassion, we got demonising and finger-pointing. We are to blame for what we are; but Howard, as Prime Minister, is to blame for not trying to make us see what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature", for not trying to make us be bigger than the sum of who we are. Howard is to blame for allowing us to wallow in our self-absorption, instead of lifting our eyes to new lights.

What Australia needs now more than anything else is hope and vision. I hope this new government can at least be the starting point for this; otherwise, we're in a lot of trouble.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Of all lives, the political life always ends in failure. (Enoch Powell)

My Other Blog

2007-11-23T12:50:00.000+11:00

Now that my Dearly Beloved and I are formally candidates to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church in Australia, and because we are starting to get many more opportunities to preach sermons, lead worship services, and do other associated activities, I have decided to start another blog dedicated to sharing my sermons, prayers, and reflections on faith.

The new blog is called The Still Circle.

But don't worry! I won't be climbing off the Comfy Couch any time soon - I'll still be ranting about all sorts of stuff from the serious to the silly on these pages; it's just that matters of faith will now have their own dedicated site.

I'll begin the new blog with the most recent sermon I preached on Luke 21:5-19, and will also add a couple of recent reflections that have already appeared on this blog. However, as time goes on, I'll add more and more new stuff.

So, there you go - something new. Once you've had fun bouncing around on the Comfy Couch, you can pop over to the Still Circle for some calming down and spiritual centering.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

The Fall of Rome

2007-11-22T22:39:00.000+11:00

The chorus to the James Reyne song Fall of Rome concludes with the following couplet:

Everybody says I can't stay home
Still thinking about the Fall of Rome.

Well, everybody might say that I can't do so, but staying home and thinking about the Fall of Rome is exactly what I've been doing in recent times. And my thinking has been prompted by an excellent book, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History by Peter Heather (Pan Books, London, 2006).

Heather's book is subtitled A New History because he takes issue with the view, inherited from a long line of historians starting with Edward Gibbon, that the Roman state collapsed under the weight of moral and political corruption generated by over-prosperity arising from the Empire's conquests and sheer, over-weening power. While Heather does not deny that internal factors - the limitations of an agrarian, pre-modern economy; the constraints imposed by primitive communications; the tendency toward civil strife inherent in any change of leadership in an authoritarian state; and the inability of the imperial tax system to respond to increased fiscal demands beyond a certain limit - were weaknesses that made the Empire vulnerable to collapse, he argues that these factors alone, individually and severally, were not sufficient to cause the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. Afterall, Heather argues, the Roman Empire survived in the Eastern Mediterranean for another 1000 years, even though it suffered from the same internal weaknesses.

Indeed, according to Heather, the late Roman Empire, far from being an ungainly edifice perched precipitously on the edge of inevitable disintegration, was in robust good health, internal weaknesses notwithstanding. It had survived the military crises of the 3rd Century AD more or less intact, had contained the threat of the rising Persian (Sassanian) Empire in the East, and was firmly in control of the territories it had ruled since the days of Augustus. And yet, in a mere matter of a decade, from 468-475AD, the Roman Empire in the West completely collapsed. Why?

Heather places the blame squarely on external sources. He argues that these sources did not act in isolation from the aforementioned internal sources, but neither did they merely exacerbate or speed up those internal weaknesses. On the contrary, the external sources, reaching back centuries before the final collapse, were primarily responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. The internal factors only become critical in response to the external sources; had those external factors never developed, the internal causes would have remained dormant, or taken centuries longer to become meaningful.

And what were these external factors? Heather identifies two major culprits: the Huns; and the Romans themselves.

Concerning the Huns, Heather identifies the rise and collapse of the Hunnic Empire as setting in train a series of events that were ultimately to lead to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The emergence of the Huns as a new power north of the Danube in the period 350-375AD caused massive displacement among the peoples living in these regions, especially the Goths and other Germanic peoples such as the Vandals (who were also accompanied by smaller, allied and vassal groups, such as the Suevi and the Alans). But what made these displacements unique when compared to earlier population movements was that they generated a nascent sense of nationhood among the refugees; the hardships suffered at the hands of the Huns, as well as the necessity for a unified response in the face of their overwhelming military power, drove home the advantages of acting and existing en bloc as opposed to operating in tribal and clan units. Thus, gifted barbarian leaders, through a mixture of persuasion, conquest, and the ready submission of potential rival groups, forged coherent national groupings where had previously existed, at best, loose confederations.

The significance of this was that, unlike previous occasions when eastern invaders drove barbarian peoples up against the boundaries of the Roman Empire, the Romans were faced not with a few hundred or a few thousand refugees, but tens of thousands, a suitable proportion of whom were armed fighting men. In the short term, the Romans were able to prevail militarily over such groups; however, whereas previously they had been able to enslave or absorb the civilian population and draft the fighting men into the field army, the new national groupings were far too large to be facilitated by such tactics; and their new-found nationalism meant they would resist any attempt to scatter and absorb their numbers into the Empire's wider population. Thus, the Romans were effectively obliged to settle such groups within the Empire in autonomous or semi-autonomous enclaves, allowing them to live as unified communities in return for payments of tribute and military assistance.

To begin with, these settlements presented a benefit to the Empire. They solved the problem of migrating nations placing pressure on the frontier; they were a source of additional military manpower; they were confined to discrete regions and were thus militarily controllable; and they were a much need source of additional tax revenue. However, as more and more such groups sought entry to the Empire, the land resources available to satisfy the demands of these new groups grew ever scarcer, leading to an increase in conflict, both between the Romans and the newcomers, and between the different barbarian peoples themselves. This conflict resulted in some groups seeking to annexe parts of the Empire exclusively, while other groups sought to expand the size of their enclaves at the expense of others. For example, the Goths settled in south-western Gaul gradually began to increase their dominion, while the Vandals annexed the whole of Spain, eventually moving on to conquer the rich North African provinces. The net effect of this conflict was that vast areas of revenue-producing land were lost to the Roman Empire, undermining the tax base and the Empire's capacity to maintain its armies and resist further invasions.

However, what is most striking about Heather's book is that he sees the collapse of the Hunnic Empire as equally, if not more, significant than its emergence. At first glance this appears anti-intuitive, and yet further analysis reveals that it makes perfect sense. The powerful Hunnic military machine was based on a core of Hunnic fighters supplemented by the fighting-men of conquered peoples - much the same arrangement as that which the Mongols would use to such devastating effect a thousand years later. In order to maintain this machine, perpetual warfare and conquest was necessary, both in order to replace losses and to ensure the control of the Hunnic minority over their conquered subjects. The net effect of this was that the Hunnic Empire, while itself a threat to Rome, also helped contain the threat which the numerous other barbarian peoples also represented; their submission to the Huns neutralised their capacity to threaten the Empire.

However, when the Hunnic Empire collapsed after the death of Attila in 453AD, it released the bonds that tied the subject people to their Hunnic masters; the Huns were overthrown, and the newly-freed subject peoples began to struggle against one another for the resources previously controlled by the erstwhile Hunnic overlords. The inevitable result was that the losers of this brutal contest for survival inevitably sought refuge in the Empire, contributing to and exacerbating the tensions and difficulties created by the settlement of the earlier Germanic nation groups within the Empire. These later arrivals - Rugi, Herules, Burgundians, Sciri, Alemanni, and another group of Goths known as the Ostrogoths ("Eastern Goths") - all competed with one another for land within the Empire, and for positions of influence within the imperial administration that would ensure their success. The result was, after 454AD, a series of largely ineffectual Emperors who ruled at the behest of various barbarian warlords. Combined with the loss of revenue producing lands in Gaul, Spain and North Africa, the weakness of the central administration persuaded many of the rich provincial landowners to throw in their lot with the new barbarian kings, thus providing them with the nucleus of an effective bureaucracy, while further denuding the Empire of talent and sources of income.

The consequence was that the Roman Empire in the West did not so much "fall" as faded away. As central authority weakened and the flow of resources from the centre to the provinces failed, the infrastructure of Roman society gradually whithered away, reverting to village and small town based agrarianism. In the more central regions, barbarian kingdom replaced the Roman imperium; these new kingdoms continued to admire Roman systems of law and governance, resulting in the emergence of what would one day become the feudal bureaucracy of the medieval period, and also ensuring that Latin would transmute over time into the Romance languages of French, Spanish, Italian, Provencal, etc. Of course, the imperial authorities did attempt to fight back, and frequently gained short-term success; but their efforts were constrained by the inability of the Eastern Empire to provide sustained, large-scale support owing to its own military commitments on the ever-dangerous Persian frontier. And when the last attempt to recapture the rich provinces of North Africa in 468AD collapsed in ignominious failure, the writing was on the wall; the deposition of the last Roman Emperor in 475AD was not so much a coup as a formal acknowledgement of the prevailing state of affairs.

But what about that other external source, the Romans themselves? How is this possible? It is in arguing that the Romans themselves created the external sources of their own extinction that Heather provides his most original - and, given the state of affairs in the world today - his most perceptive analysis.

Heather's proposition is simple: through centuries of economic, political, and military contact, the Roman Empire demonstrated to the barbarian peoples along its frontiers the benefits of creating and preserving a unified national grouping. Centuries of trade between the tribes and the Empire lead to increased material wealth, creating economic and social elites among the barbarian nations that had not previously existed. Likewise, the coherent command and authority structure of the Empire's civil and military institutions was better able to respond to crises than the loose confederacy of the barbarians that was usually reliant on the individual charisma of a strong leader, and which was susceptible to being undermined by the rivalry and mutual hostility of the tribal and clan groupings. Further, the frequent punitive military expeditions that were part and parcel of the Empire's policy of dealing with, and ensuring the compliance of, the barbarian tribes ultimately resulted in those tribes developing both an intensified sense of their own identity (and the spirit of independence that goes with this) as well as a desire to create more coherent social and political structures that could better preserve the nation-group.

In other words, it was precisely because of the dangers - military raids, invasions, enslavement, and conscription into the Roman army - as well as the opportunities - enrichment, attainment of political legitimacy, access to material goods and weapons - which the proximity of the Empire afforded that set in motion, over a number of centuries, processes that were to transform the barbarian peoples of the Rhine-Danube frontier from loose tribal and clan confederations locked in ongoing rivalry and warfare to solidified national groupings conscious of their particular identity and prepared to act in its preservation. This process then "collided" with the shock caused by the rise of the Hunnic Empire: national identity was strenghtened as some groups sought to preserve themselves by fleeing into the Roman Empire and setting up enclaves, or as they watched for an opportunity to throw off Hunnic dominion at the least sign of the collapse of the Huns' power. The slow process of socio-political evolution created by Roman-barbarian contact was vastly accelerated by the intrusion of the Huns into Western Europe: and the consequence was a desire for political independence and control of resources that ultimately brought down the Roman state.

Heather demonstrates this thesis by comparing the fallout of the Hunnic invasion with that of the Sarmatian invasion of the 1st century AD. The Sarmatians, Iranian-speaking nomads from the central Asian steppes, overran much of Europe north of the Rhine-Danube frontier just as the Roman Empire was forming itself after the collapse of the Republic. The consequence was a tide of movement against the Empire's boundaries as various barbarian peoples sought refuge from the Sarmatian conquest. However, at this time, the barbarians were divided into many small tribes and clan groupings; their social structure was loose and undefined; their technological attainment had scarcely advanced beyond the early Iron Age; and they appeared at the various frontier posts in small groupings that were managed with relative - though not always complete - ease by the Romans. The upshot was a set of circumstances in which the Romans held all the power: in return for providing shelter, the tribesmen of fighting age had to agree to conscription into the Roman army, while the civilian population was settled in a manner convenient to the Romans. Consequently, the result was absorption of the population and neutralisation of any threat. By contrast, the Hunnic invasion, as we have seen, resulted in the migration of whole population groups conscious of the national identity and determined to preserve it; such groups were not able to be divided and absorbed, but were able to bargain from a position of power, forcing the Romans to allow settlement on generous - if initially controlled - terms. And when the circumstances allowed as the Roman state broke down under the pressure of the building external forces, these enclaves expanded into powerful successor kingdoms to the Roman state.

Thus, Heather skilfully weaves a dual narrative of the rise and fall of the Hunnic Empire, combined with the centuries-long consequence of Roman-barbarian contact, as the primary causes of the fall of the Roman Empire. But what is its relevance for today? Simply, this relevance is to be found in the very final paragraph of this fine, absorbing book: a paragraph that warns the American Empire may, like the Roman, be laying the groundwork for its own destruction. It reads:

There is, I suspect, an inbuilt tendency for the kind of dominance exercised by empires to generate an inverse reaction whereby the dominated, in the end, are able to throw off their chains. The Roman Empire had sown the seeds of its own destruction, therefore, not because of internal weaknesses that had evolved over the centuries, nor because of new ones evolved, but as a consequence of its relationship with the Germanic world. Just as the Sassanians were able to reorganise Near Eastern society so as to throw off Roman domination, Germanic society achieved the same in the west, when its collision with Hunnic power precipitated the process much more quickly than would otherwise have been the case. The west Roman state fell not because of the weight of its own "stupendous fabric", but because its Germanic neighbours had responded to its power in ways that the Romans could never have foreseen. There is in all this a pleasing denouement. By virtue of its unbounded aggression, Roman imperialism was responsible for its own destruction. (p.459)

It's an analysis that certainly gives you pause for thought.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Who does not learn from the past is doomed to repeat it. (George Santayana)

Mmmmmmmm, Nigella (incoherent Homeresque gurgling)...

2007-11-21T19:37:00.000+11:00

I've just watched the first installment of Nigella Lawson's latest cooking series, Nigella Feasts.

In the last week, I've read a few previews of this series, and I have to say they've focused on everything but the food. Comment has been made about Ms Lawson's physique, her manner in front of the camera, even the supposed hints of socio-economic elitism which her selection of ingredients and demeanor betray. These comments boil down to two basic categories: Nigella as porn and Nigella as snob.

The porn breaks down into two further sub-categories: gastronomic, and Nigella herself. Regarding the former, the observation seems to be that Lawson's use of food is somehow sexually suggestive. The way she kneads dough, for example, or the language she uses to describe ingredients, is said to be more about titillation than it is about cooking. Concerning the latter, Ms Lawson is routinely described as "buxom", "bosomy", "busty", "voluptuous", and so on and so forth. The suggestion seems to be that her body shape is somehow deliberate, a self-created pose whose sole function is to inflame passions and arouse lust.

Now, don't get me wrong. Nigella Lawson is indeed coquettish, and the way she glances strategically at the camera and employs double entendres does carry more than a hint of sexual suggestion. But let's face it: by the standards of most "reality" TV and what passes for "general" entertainment these days, Lawson is positively tame. Indeed, she seems to hark back to an earlier time of "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" that has its origins in the music hall tradition of Victorian England. Sure, I cringe at some aspects of Lawson's on-camera performance; sometimes the banter is a tad too obvious. But I can't help thinking that the reason why so many people seem to find her so captivating is that, if Lawson is indeed suggestive, it's precisely because she uses the power of suggestion to enthrall, as opposed to rubbing our faces in anything explicit. In other words, it's because she hints at something other than food creates the electric charge many react against; if she were to stand at her cooking station naked, she'd simply be dismissed - I doubt she'd raise an eyebrow (or anything else).

So, contrary to what most of the reviewers would have you believe, Ms Lawson isn't some gastro-nymphomaniac who overwhelms you with sexual electricity; on the contrary, it's precisely because she's so subtle (by relative standards) that she captures attention. It's because she stands in such stark contrast to the blatant exhibitionism of pop culture that she is noticed; quite apart from being one of the stew of "notice me" celebrities, she is, in fact, the (even if not complete) opposite.

Concerning the issue of snobbery, the allegation appears to be that Nigella is essentially a phoney: a silver-spooned private-school girl who is attempting to manufacture a "common person" identity which she patently lacks - indeed, which she would probably scorn in her private life. In other words, it's all a crock: Ms Lawson might appear on our TV screens, but she wouldn't be seen dead watching television with any one of us.

First, the disclaimer: I know next to nothing about Ms Lawson's life, background, and socio-economic circumstances. So I have no idea if she is actually a snob, or actually does possess what is called the "common touch". I have no doubt that she enjoys a more than financially secure lifestyle as a consequence of the success of her television series and their spin-off cookbooks. But I'm sure the same could be said of Jamie Oliver - and no-one seems to be suggesting that he's a phoney. Perhaps it's just Lawson's admittedly plummy accent that attracts the opprobrium; unlike Oliver, who says "pukka" a lot and speaks with an accent that, in my humble opinion, makes him sound like a severely mentally retarded five year old. Or maybe it's because Ms Lawson makes no attempt to be anything other than who she is that ticks people off; maybe she was expected to develop a "persona", a character that people could identify with (or which would make them feel less self-conscious).

So it could be that her "crime" is just to have exercised some integrity. I mean, she's no more plummy than the Two Fat Ladies, but nobody accused either of them of snobbery (possibly because they were old and eccentric, and therefore easily patronised). Mind you, if Lawson started saying "pukka" and ran programs for homeless kids who wanted to be chefs, I'm sure she'd also be accused of hypocrisy. Maybe this is just a "no-win" for her; damned if she does, damned if she doesn't.

So what's all this to me? Well, yes, it's because I am an unashamed fan of Ms Lawson. And no, it's not just because I think she's hot. My Dearly Beloved happens to think Ainslie Herriot is sex on a stick, but she'd bristle at any suggestion that was the only reason why she watches him. Hell, I like watching Ainslie myself - and for the same reason why I like Nigella. Because both have an unabashed enthusiasm for food. In this age of eating disorders and image consciousness, both have an almost visceral approach to food and eating that runs counter to the prevailing mood of pop culture. And it's because they're so counter-cultural that I like both Nigella and Ainslie: they like food, and they're not ashamed of the fact.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'll keep watching Nigella. I don't know about the porn, or about the snobbery; what keeps me coming back to Nigella is not the suggestive remarks or the raised eyebrows, but the fact that she enjoys food for it's own sake. She enjoys food because it looks good, tastes great, and sod the calories. That's good enough for me.

And besides - she's a babe...

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Sex is something that's allowed in Scotland only when Rangers beat Celtic. (Ronnie Barker)

The Heat Is On!

2007-11-19T14:38:00.000+11:00

Because I've been studying full-time this year, my Dearly Beloved has borne the brunt of maintaining the family finances. Accordingly, and in order to make my contribution to the co-nuptial coffers, I have just managed to score a job as a console operator at a local service station.

No, I'm not going to tell you the location, the name of the company, or what shifts I'll be working. It's not that I don't trust you, it's just that I don't trust you that much. So don't even ask!

Anyhoo, I've just completed a week's intensive training. Who would have thought there was so much to learn? But believe me, the information overload was phenomenal: Trade Practices Act, Occupational Health and Safety Act, Food Safety Act, as well as all the various safety procedures, money handling and security protocols, and company policies. It really was overwhelming. And then, of course, there's the console itself: authorising the petrol pumps and processing the sales transactions (and, just to make everything even more complicated, being aware of all the discounts, special offers, and product promotions that go with the job!).

Last Friday was my first day on the job. I was only on a shortened shift, but it was nerve-wracking, trying to process transactions without making too many mistakes, and all the while maintaining my professional cool. And, of course, there's always someone who asks you something you don't know or haven't learned yet, or who requires a transaction that you haven't been introduced to while you bed down the basics. Luckily, the manager and a more experienced staff member were on hand for most of the shift, so they were able to correct my stuff ups and give me plenty of useful pointers. Still, by the time I got home, my legs felt like jelly, and I was thinking: what have I let myself in for?

So it's with just a little trepidation that I'm approaching the summer of work lying ahead of me. Of course, I'm hoping this job survives longer than the Summer and continues into next year, but right now it all seems a little daunting. Afterall, when I stopped working full-time, I was leaving a job that was completely familiar to me, in an environment well within my comfort zone. This is all alien territory.

I'm just looking forward to the day when something in my head goes click and it all becomes second nature. But until then, prepare for more tales of woe...

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Employment: death without the dignity. (Brendan Behan)

My Dearly Beloved Speaks!

2007-11-05T19:43:00.000+11:00

On the weekend, my Dearly Beloved preaced the sermon at our local Uniting Church congregation. And what a fantastic job she did, too! Using multimedia, a sense of humour, and some pecant observations, she turned the familiar tale of Zacchaeus up his tree into a challenging and thoughtful exploration of friendship, and what the friendship of the divine means for humankind.

She's posted an account on her blog - I urge you to take a look, it will be well worth your while.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Where is God Taking Me?

2007-11-05T11:05:00.000+11:00

Last night, I watched the final installment of the wonderful television series The Abbey, which was featured on the ABC's Compass program.

One of the things I have found fascinating about the show is how the five women who were chosen to live in the Abbey and experience the daily life of the nuns - ordered according to the Rule of St Benedict - adjusted to the discipline of monastic life. Most people, I suspect, believe that living in a monastery is easy, that it involves little more than saying a few prayers, doing a few chores, and basically having a lot of leisure time to laze around and do very little. But the reality is quite different: as the nuns kept reminding the women (and the audience), the rhythm of daily life is governed by the seven daily prayer and worship sessions (which begin at 4:30am!), around which the various jobs of the self-sufficient abbey must be completed. In other words, the life of the nuns is one of work suffused with prayer and contemplation. It amounts to a very full day, seven days a week; and the women discovered for themselves how difficult it actually is.

Another interesting aspect was the amount of silence which the women had to keep - not only at night (the "Great Silence") but also during many parts of the day. This is something which the Rule insists upon in order that the individual might develop the capacity to really listen; listen to the secrets of their true self, to what their life experience is saying to them, to what God is saying to them. Some of the women were actively searching for God; others were either dubious about God, or didn't see God as relevant. But the silence forced them to be open to the possibility of God, and to the fact that God might actually be speaking to them. And that was very confronting for them, because they were used to a world of noise, to the sound of their own and others' voices. It was not simply the amount of silence that troubled them, but its depth, and what it was revealing.

But there is also another reason why this aspect of silence engaged me. This reason resides in the fact that silence, for me, has never been a troubling or confronting experience. On the contrary, I have always found silence deeply comforting and refreshing; it is in silence, and stillness, in the almost physical quietude of the "dark, sacred night" (to quote from the song What A Wonderful World) that I have most deeply and powerfully experienced the presence of God. So, unlike these women, silence for me has never been a problem; what I have flinched from is crowd and noise and the absence of quiet.

Which isn't to say that I'm anti-social. Rather, that I've never been very good at "working a room" or introducing myself to strangers, or just thrusting myself into a conversation. Nor am I very good at "small talk"; a conversation I can sustain until the cows come home, but ask me to talk about the weather, and I'm lost. You could also say that I'm not an "events" kind of person: my idea of a good night out is a sharing a meal and a drink and chatting with a couple of friends in a snug pub or nice restaurant. Likewise, I prefer entertaining a few friends at home and cooking them dinner than going to a club or a loud party.

Yes, there is an element of shyness involved, but it's also part of my nature to prefer calm and convivial events rather than a roisterous "bash". I was even like this as a teenager (much to my mother's exasperation!). But in light of The Abbey and observing the women's difficulty with silence, I am prompted to reflect on my difficulty with noise, especially in the context my candidacy to the ordained ministry.

Will my preference for silence, for small, quiet events, sometimes even solitude, interfere with my pastoral duties and responsibilities? Will my natural reserve, containing as it does an element of shyness, prevent me from being open and welcoming to people? Will my difficulty with "small talk" stop me from engaging with others?

I don't think so. Afterall, I've managed to make friends with many people, partly off my own bat and partly through association with others. Moreover, my work in the union movement was intensely pastoral, requiring me to engage with people and enter into their suffering. And when it comes to functions, I've always managed to find a way to break the ice, however awkwardly. So I don't think my natural inclinations will cripple my capacity to be sociable.

But it will be a struggle, and a struggle for my whole life. I am conscious of that fact, even as I am conscious of the difference between difficulty and debilitation. But the point is not so much how I will deal with situations I find confronting but the fact that God is seemingly taking me into places and situations in which will have to square up to these confrontations. You see, as I was watching The Abbey, it occurred to me how many times I have told people that, had I been born in another time and place, I would almost certainly have ended up in a religious community. Moreover, this is a prospect that I still find deeply compelling: the notion that, at the end of my life, when I have done all there is to do in the world, I could spend the last years of my existence with God.

But I dare say that will never eventuate, even as I know it will always remain an attractive possibility. Because I think the point is that my life is not meant to be comfortable, that faith is not about letting me escape from the world, but enter into it. Not that I think any of the sisters in the Benedictine monastery that was featured in The Abbey are inadequate types who cannot cope with the world; on the contrary, I think they are performing a profound service in which they offer a radical alternative to the materialism and self-absorption of the present cultural climate. What I mean is that I suspect, for me, entering a religious community would in many respects be the "easy option", it would represent a retreat from the life of the world I find so often confronting and challenging. And, for me, I think that is the point of the ordained ministry; it's about not letting me get away with the "easy option", with taking the line of least resistance.

Recently, in another post, I wrote this about myself:

I don't think God wants me to be happy; I think God wants me to be fully human, to be what I truly am. I think God wants to take me out of my comfort zone of complacency and familiarity, so that I can grow up, and love, and be loved. And in order to do that, I need to heed the call of vocation which God has been issuing to me my whole life long.

And I think therein lies the reason why God is leading me down this path. Jacob wrestled with God all night and ended up with a limp and a dislocated hip; he was renamed Israel, which apparently means "he struggles with God". And that is what faith is; not an easy assurance, but a struggle, a wrestling match from which we come away both bruised and blessed. It bruises us because it confronts and challenges us deeply, with the most powerful and painful aspects of our existence; but it also blesses us because from that suffering arises a richness and depth of being that would not otherwise be possible.

I suspect I will be both bruised and blessed along my journey. I don't look forward to the bruises; but I will try and see beyond them to the blessings.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Easy street never leads anywhere. (Anonymous)

Eureka Street Article

2007-10-31T23:09:00.000+11:00

A bit over a month ago, the editor of Eureka Street, an e-journal published by the Australian Jesuits, asked me to write an article about the union movement and the forthcoming election. The timing of the request wasn't exactly great, given I was struggling to get assignments submitted on time and still recovering from eye surgery, but since Eureka Street pay for articles and I really need the money, I agreed to the request. Also, my vanity in seeing my name attached to a published piece played its part!

So here is the link. Hope you enjoy!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Authors are people who are easy enough to get along with - if you're fond of children. (Michael Joseph)

A Taste of Things to Come

2007-10-27T10:03:00.001+10:00

Yesterday, my Dearly Beloved and I (along with Sue, our fellow newby candidate) went along to the Uniting Church Theological Hall in Melbourne for a "New Candidates Day" to get a taste of what life will be like once we commence our candidates' study and formation in 2008. It was also the last day of the teaching year for the existing candidates, so we were also able to get an insight into a day in the life of the Hall.

In a sense, we had already been welcomed to the Hall by the Uniting Church Candidates Association (which glories in the acronym UCCA). All the new candidates had been sent a lovely card welcoming us to the community of candidates and faculty, and each card featured a beautiful photograph taken by one of the existing candidates (another Sue) during her travels in the Holy Land.

It was nice to receive the warm and generous welcomes of the existing candidates. But it was also instructive to read the exhortations that we enjoy our last summer of freedom - a reminder that next summer we will be on our first field placement in another congregation, quite possibly in a rural area. So that was both exciting in the sense of having something to look forward to, but also slightly intimidating, in that the weight and seriousness of the vocation we are undertaking started to manifest itself.

So, feeling a little like children on their first day at school, my Dearly Beloved and I turned up at Hall - and were immediately greeted and made welcome by all. I was especially touched and humbled to see my friend Caro, whose father recently passed away, there to greet us and share the day. It was a powerful indicator of the grace and spirit that is required to undertake and sustain ordained ministry.

After a brief but moving morning prayer service, the new candidates spent the morning going through various items of "housework" - an introduction to the hall, the ordination requirements, the formation process, etc. Then we broke for morning tea, during which time we discovered how strong the sense of community is at the Hall, as candidates and faculty mingled and talked and shared a cuppa and some food. After morning tea, the new candidates joined the existing candidates and observed presentations that were being made as part of their assessment for a subject entitled "Mission and Evangelism". I don't know about my Dearly Beloved or Sue, but I was impressed with - and a little intimidated by! -the quality of the presentations, and the obvious amount of work that had gone into them. It was an indicator of the standards we will need to achieve as candidates in the future!

Lunch was again a communal affair, consisting of a delicious soup and savoury bread, followed by fresh fruit. During lunch, the new candidates were also given a briefing by the Candidates Association about life at Hall from the candidates' perspective, as well as some of the relevant issues which form the basis of ongoing dialogue with the faculty. We were also informed that there are a number of committees on which students sit that are integral to the life of the Hall and its relations with the United Faculty of Theology, of which it is a constituent member - and, later that afternoon, I was approached and asked if I would like to be a member of one such committee; UCCA works fast!

After lunch, an interesting forum on being an ordained minister and relating to the media was conducted by the Synod's media officer. This was followed by a wonderful Eucharist service, featuring sung responses and a powerful sermon delivered by a guest Lutheran pastor. Then the day concluded with drinks and nibbles, again involving the whole faculty and candidates.

So - an informative, intense, encouraging, uplifting, intimidating, compelling, engaging day. As my Dearly Beloved said later, it was a day that made you realise for the first time the fact that our vocation to ordained ministry is no longer somewhere in the future - it's now a present reality. And that reality is both filled with expectation and hope - and is also a little scary. But what impressed me most about the day was the intense atmosphere of community: the love and support and encouragement were almost palpable. Whatever the difficulties and struggles of the journey ahead, I know my Dearly Beloved and I won't be walking the road alone; we are part of a community now, and that precious gift is valuable beyond estimation.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Virtue shuns ease as a companion - it demands a rough and thorny road. (Michel de Montaigne)

How Do I Follow THAT?!?

2007-10-23T16:34:00.000+10:00

I have something of a dilemma.

I have now received back all my assignments for this semester, and although the mark for one was a little disappointing (high Credit), by some miracle of cosmic proportions I have managed to score High Distinctions for the other two.

Now, I know that HD's are every students dream and aspiration - the Everest, as it were, of the academic scale of achievement. And, believe me, it's not that I'm not grateful, it's just that...well, how do I follow a result like this?

Let me put it this way: over the course of a three year degree, one assumes one will gradually acquire more skills and knowledge, and, through the rigour of the academic process, lift one's work from a first year to a third year level of competence. Which means you expect to start with relatively modest scores and gradually build your way up to something more impressive.

I know, I know - there are always the favoured few who through talent and/or dedication, achieve top marks right from the off. But as Bruce Springsteen would say: get it straight now, mister - hey, buddy, that ain't me. I'm not an academic genius. My results are what you would call solid, not spectacular. So where in the heck do I come off achieving not one, but two HD results for my assignments?

Of course, this outcome doesn't mean that my final mark for the semester will be a HD in the two subjects concerned. I still have to get past the exams, and perform in said exams at a sufficient level to sustain the HD rating. And, in an ironic kind of way, that's the dilemma - because I can only go downhill from here!

Have I peaked too soon? Is the universe playing one of its cruel jokes, raising my hopes only to dash them on the rocks of the mediocrity I know are lurking beneath?

I know what you're thinking: I should be grateful and take the mark for what it is. And I do. It's just that...well, it's just that I now run the risk of every assignment I do being an anti-climax at best, a disappointment at worst! And, no, I'm not being paranoid or hypersensitive. I'm just feeling a little bit confronted at present...

It could be worse - I know it could be worse. But, gee, you know: two HDs...

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Failure is anyone seen on a bus after the age of thirty. (Nicholas Ray)

The Reason Why

2007-10-14T22:34:00.000+10:00

On the weekend, a friend asked me: "This ministry thing - it's a bit of a turnaround for you, isn't it? I mean, when I first met you, you were kinda anti the whole God thing."

I knew what she was saying - and I knew why she was saying it. It's the same question that many people have asked me - that I have asked myself. Why do I want to enter the ordained ministry? What's it about, this sense of vocation? Is it a sudden thing - or if not, why haven't we known about it? Why have you been keeping it a secret?

Well, let me state two things right at the beginning: one, I haven't been keeping anything a secret; and, two, I didn't receive a visitation: no lights in the sky, no heavenly choirs, no commands from above. What has been happening to me is a process, and for a long part of that process, I didn't know I had a call to ordained ministry; didn't know, or didn't want to know. A call from God is something you can suppress just as easily as an unpleasant memory; but part of the process of response, just as part of the process of confronting our inner demons, involves facing that which we would prefer to deny.

I'm not going to give you my life history: how I grew up in the Catholic church; how I became alienated from Catholicism in my late teens; how I spent my twenties convinced that there was no place inside a faith community for me, that I was, in effect, an exile; how I began the healing process firstly through my discovery of Stoic philosophy, and secondly through my work in the union movement; how I gradually came to realise the possibilities for faith and faith community and how this was realised through my relationship with my Dearly Beloved. All of that would take far too long, and quite a bit of it's not for public consumption, anyway. Suffice to say, it's the background.

The bottom line is that God has always been a presence in my life. When I say "presence", I don't mean physically - although I do mean it literally. I have always felt God particularly strongly in silence, in the still darkness of the night, and in the astonishing grandeur and complexity of the cosmos; perhaps that's why I've always felt drawn most strongly to the meditative and contemplative aspects of faith. Perhaps the best way I can describe it is that God has always stood at my left shoulder: not looking over my shoulder, checking up on what I was doing, or whispering in my ear; just there, sometimes a comfort, but more often than not a burden. Something I tried to shrug off, but it just wouldn't let me go.

And the key to understanding what I'm talking about lies in that word burden. Faith for me is not a release, it's not something that makes my life easier; but that's the point. Faith is not meant to be some glib, smug assurance of our rightness or our righteousness; it's not meant to confirm our prejudices or pander to our ego. It's meant to be something that challenges us, that we wrestle with and struggle for, that forces us to walk paths clouded by uncertainty and doubt and fear. Faith is something that's meant to take us out of our comfort zones, that drags us into the world and forces us to live, to have the wholeness and fullness of life in all its abundance: the good, the bad, the indifferent.

And it was all that struggling that I did in my teens and twenties and early thirties that has lead me to this place; because I think I was wrestling with God, with the presence of God that I didn't want to acknowledge, that I tried to buck or ignore, that I wanted so much to be gone so I could maintain my anger and hurt and disappointment at the church. And what pissed me off more than anything was God's sheer persistence, the fact that God wouldn't go away; not demanding, not cajoling, not judging - just standing there at my left shoulder, reminding me of God's presence. No matter how I rationalised or justified, or tried to have a bet either way, God just stayed put.

Way back when I started this blog, I wrote about C S Lewis and his book The Problem of Pain. What I didn't say at the time was that, powerful though this book was for me, even more striking was his "spiritual autobiography" Surprised By Joy. In it, Lewis describes his own difficult, conflicted, wrenching journey of faith; how he tried to be an atheist and couldn't convince himself; how he tried to equivocate and theoretically agree that while there might be a God, that God really didn't have much to do with being or existence; and how, having tried to avoid the issue and construct his own reality, he was left with no choice except to conclude that God not only existed, but as was an actually presence - a reality - in his life.

I know that some sections of the Christian community have tried to turn Lewis into some kind of evangelical hero: the atheist turned convert who became one of the most powerful apologists for Christianity. But the truth, it seems to me, is much simpler: Lewis was an intensely human person who struggled for much of his life with faith, and with the possibility of God, and whose faith was not a "road to Damascus" experience but a process in which the continual presence of God acted like a kind of slow wearing away, grinding down all his evasions and avoidances until he was unable to do anything other than face that truth by which he was confronted.

I don't want to put myself in the same class as C S Lewis, but the story he tells in Surprised By Joy is one that resonates to the core of my being. I was never an atheist, but I did go through the hurtful, damaging process of alienation; and for years afterwards, I did try to console myself with intellectualising my anger with God and the church. Until, ultimately, one day, I could no longer defend my prevarications, not even to myself. Much though I didn't want to, I had to submit; that is, I had to be honest with myself and face that calling I had tried to hide from for most of my life, but which had eventually uncovered my hiding place and exposed me to the light of day.

In the motion picture Shadowlands, C S Lewis (played brilliantly by Anthony Hopkins) asks the question: does God want us to suffer? And then he asks a second question: what if the answer to the first question is "yes"? Then he concludes by saying:

You see, I don't think God wants us to be happy. It's not that God wants us to be unhappy - it's just that our happiness has nothing to do with it. We imagine that our childish toys will bring us all the happiness there is, and that the walls of our nursery circumscribe the limits of the world. But something must drive us out of our nursery, and into the world of others - and that something is suffering. What God wants is for us to grow up, to leave the nursery, to love and to be loved. We are like blocks of stone, and the blosws from the sculptor's chisel that strikes us so hard that we can scarcely bear the pain, are nonetheless what make us perfect.

I don't think God wants me to be happy; I think God wants me to be fully human, to be what I truly am. I think God wants to take me out of my comfort zone of complacency and familiarity, so that I can grow up, and love, and be loved. And in order to do that, I need to heed the call of vocation which God has been issuing to me my whole life long.

When I first started telling people I knew about the fact that I would be following my vocation, someone jokingly asked me, "Does that mean we can't swear or tell dirty jokes around you?", to which I flippantly replied, "Shit, no!". Another person said: "Does this mean you've "found God"?", to which I again flippantly replied, "Hardly; if God's got any brains, I'll be the last person who finds him." And I was keen to tell people - only half jokingly - that I hadn't suddenly acquired a saintliness or a sanctity that I hadn't previously possessed. But beneath the flippancy was a desire to assure people that I hadn't changed; I was still me, it was just that I was going to be more fully me - more properly me - than I had been up until that time.

So there you have it: that's the reason why. Does God talk to me (ie: do I hear voices in my head?). No, I don't. And I don't have visions, either. Because when it comes to communication, God's dialogue with me has been one of proximity, not conversation. And at last - at long last - I've finally started to listen.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love", and look on things if man were the centre of them. Man is not the centre. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. (C S Lewis)

I Suppose It Had To Happen...

2007-10-14T17:17:00.000+10:00

Well, after a protracted "phoney campaign", the PM finally visited the Governor-General to inform His Excellency that he should dissolve the Parliament and call an election for November 24th.

Forgive me if I sound cynical, but once again we're going to be launched into a contest between a Liberal Party that's about as "liberal" as a Southern Baptist Convention, and a Labor Party that wouldn't recognise the expression "working class" if it bit them on their collective arse!

At least the media will be happy, gleefully press-ganging the political main-players every day for the next six weeks in their never-ending quest for the gaff-of-the-day. Meanwhile, Messrs Howard and Rudd will be insisting that they're as different from one another as chalk and cheese, while at the same time maintaining that the other lot are copying their ideas!

Lord preserve us, but this next little while is going to be a joy to live through. Don't get me wrong, I'm gagging for a change of government: as far as I'm concerned, John Howard will go down in history as the most mediocre person to have ever been Prime Minister of this country. Which tells you something about how abysmal the Opposition has been in the last ten years - and how short sighted the voting population of this nation. And, no, it's not because they've been voting conservative, it's the reasons why: fear, ignorance, bigotry, selfishness. I reckon Amos, Hosea, and Jeremiah would have been having something to say to us over this last decade or so...

Anyhoo, we might as well settle in for what's undoubtedly going to be a "fun" ride characterised by oodles of pork-barrelling, blithely delivered assurances about the costings on all those election promises, and accusations of bad faith, incompetence, inexperience, shady dealings and general character assassination. Ain't democracy wonderful???

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Of course democracy's no fair. And a good thing, too. Give the likes of Baldrick the vote and we'll be back to cavorting Druids, death by stoning, and dung for dinner. (Edmund Blackadder)

A Tight Squeeze!

2007-10-11T21:35:00.000+10:00

It has been a heck of a week here at Comfy Couch Central!

The cause of all this excitement has been the dreaded malaise known as assignment deadlineitis!

Every semester, I begin by saying that this time I'll be organised: I'll study properly, I'll get stuck into the research for the assignments early, I won't leave anything until the last moment.

And this semester, I did - I actually did! I had two of my three assignments properly researched, with oodles of notes. And I was on the verge of getting stuck into the third - when the retina in my left eye decided it was a great time to detach again. Which in turn necessitated surgery, which also necessitated a week lying immobilised on my left side, which finally necessitated getting used to reading and writing with one eye. And then, just as a semblance of normality was returning, I came down with a chest infection - the result of which was another three weeks out of action!

Which, of course, meant all my planning - and good intentions! - went down the drain. I had to swallow my pride and ask my lecturers for extensions - which they all gladly provided with ready grace and concern for my welfare. They even asked if I needed longer than I asked for! Stupidly, I decided not to take advantage of their generosity, confident that I could get the work done in time.

WRONG! Well, almost. The deadline was this week - Friday, to be precise. And I had two of the three assignments unfinished. Well, I managed to knock over one by Tuesday, and today I've (miracle!) managed to complete the second.

Phew! It was a stretch! But I can also tell you this much: I sure appreciate the generosity and understanding of my lecturers, and their readiness to give me every possible assistance. It makes one hell of a difference to your confidence!

So here's a vote of thanks to my lecturers - I hope what I've produced justifies their generosity!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Teachers open the door; you must enter by yourself. (Chinese proverb)

The True Power of Magic

2007-10-06T17:05:00.000+10:00

In the last few weeks, I have been reading Ursula Le Guin's wonderful Earthsea Trilogy (it's now a sextet, but that's another story). This has partly been as a result of my improving eye sight after my surgery, and partly as a means of taking my mind off assignments and deadlines. But mostly it was prompted by the fact that, as part of the Selection Conference weekend when my Dearly Beloved and I had to convince the Uniting Church's Victorian-Tasmanian Synod Committee of our call to ordained ministry, we had to give a presentation of something about which we were passionate (outside church and faith).

I gave a presentation on my passion for literature and reading, and in particular, my love of writing. I did this by tracing my earliest experience with books at the local library, through my expanding repertoire of fiction and non-fiction - until I read a novel that awoke in me my talent for writing. And that book was The Tombs of Atuan, second in the Earthsea trilogy.

So it was in a mood of sentimental reminiscence that I started reading the original trilogy all over again. And once more I recalled the characters whose stories had touched me when I first read them all those many years ago, and on every occasion since. Ged, the main character, powerful and willful, possessed of great talent and deep power; his master Ogion the Silent, grave and silent, compassionate and without anger; Estarriol, Ged's wise and humble friend; Tenar, once Priestess of the Old Powers of Atuan, bringer of the Rune of Peace; and Lebannen, Prince of Enlad, the long-lost King whose destiny it is to travel with Ged across the dark lands of death in order to heal the broken Kingdom of Earthsea.

And I also read again the many passages by which I had been moved and remembered across the years: Ged taking leave from his master Ogion; Ged learning harsh lessons about power and its limitations when he tames the dragon Yevaud but cannot save a dying child; Ged receiving his faithful boat Lookfar from a poor fisherman, and in return healing the fisherman of the cataracts that were blinding him; the companionship of Ged and Estarriol as they face what they believe is certain death; Tenar being taken from her parents to serve in the Tombs of Atuan; Tenar and Ged escaping from the Tombs; Ged and Lebannen as they journey together to stop a great evil that is consuming the earth.

As I said, it was The Tombs of Atuan that woke in me my talent of writing. But it was the first novel, A Wizard of Earthsea, that I always treasured as a young adult; partly because I identified strongly with the main character, Ged, but also because I loved the character Ogion. He seemed to me to be the model of what it was to be wise: grave, silent, compassionate, without anger or vanity, possessed of a wry sense of humour, someone who acted only out of necessity, never in haste, never for reasons of self-aggrandisement or promotion, but because it was needful and just. These are not characteristics which I possess: but they remain a goal toward which I strive.

Now, however, its is the final book in the trilogy, The Farthest Shore, which has captured my allegiance. That's because it's the most philosophical of the three, the most contemplative; it is a meditation in life and living, of the joys and sorrows of being, of the pleasures and consequences of existence. And in particular, it's an exposition on power, on the use and abuse of power; and on how power is rarely what we imagine it to be. And there are some truly amazing passages, thoughtful and powerful in their insight:

"When I was young I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are." (Chapter Three)

There is a certain bleakness in finding hope where one expected certainty. (Chapter Three)

"Only one thing can resist an evil-hearted man. And that is another man. In our shame is our glory. Only our spirit, which is capable of evil, is capable of overcoming it." (Chapter Three)

"Do you see...how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter, the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown the circuit of the stars responds, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done...But we, in so far as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility." (Chapter Four)

"This is. And thou art. There is no safety. There is no end. The word must be heard in silence, There must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss." (Chapter Eight)

"To refuse death is to refuse life." (Chapter Eight)

"The traitor, the self, the self that cries I want to live, let the world rot so long as I can live! The little traitor soul in us, in the dark, like the spider in the box. He talks to all of us. But only some understand him." (Chapter Nine)

"Only what is mortal bears life...Only in death is there rebirth. The Balance is not a stillness. It is a movement - an eternal becoming." (Chapter Nine)

"What is a good man? Is a good man one who would not do evil, who would not open a door to darkness, who has no darkness in him? Look again...Look a little farther." (Chapter Nine)

"You stand on the borders of possibility, in the shadowland, in the realm of dream, and you hear the voice saying Come. As I once did. But I am old. I have made my choices. I have done what I must do. I stand in daylight facing my own death. And I know that there is only one power worth having. And that is the power, not to take, but to accept. Not to have, but to give." (Chapter Nine)

"You fear them because you fear death, and rightly: for death is terrible, and must be feared...And life is also a terrible thing...and must be feared and praised." (Chapter Eleven)

"Look at the land; look about you. This is your kingdom, the kingdom of life. This is your immortality. Look at the hills, the mortal hills. They do not endure forever. The hills with the living grass on them, and the streams with water running...In all the world, in all the worlds, in all the immensity of time, there is no other like each of those streams, rising cold out of the earth where no eye sees it, running through the sunlight and the darkness to the sea. Deep are the springs of being, deeper than life, than death..." (Chapter Eleven)

"I have given my love to what is worthy of love. Is that not the kingdom, and the unperishing spring?" (Chapter Eleven)

"A living body suffers pain...a living body grows old; it dies. Death is the price we pay for our life, and for all life." (Chapter Twelve)

As one critic wrote of Le Guin's work: "If you've had enough of Harry Potter-style kid wizardry, Le Guin offers a powerful tonic. These tales are intense, moving, engaging, and best of all, character driven. Le Guin knows people, wizards or not."

I couldn't put it better myself. And that's why I'll always love this trilogy.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky. (Ursula Le Guin)

Time For Revenge?

2007-09-28T12:49:00.000+10:00

Thanks to Caro, I took the Nerd Test and have emerged as a self-revealed High Nerd!

This is how I scored...

Now, if only I can figure out who to wreck my nerdish vengence upon...

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Genius is the capacity for evading hard work. (Elbert Hubbard)

I Know I'm Bookish, But...

2007-09-20T21:36:00.000+10:00

You can blame this one on Caro...although I'm actually quite pleased with the result, as this is one of my favourite books of all time...

You're To Kill a Mockingbird!

by Harper Lee

Perceived as a revolutionary and groundbreaking person, you have
changed the minds of many people. While questioning the authority around you, you've
also taken a significant amount of flack. But you've had the admirable guts to
persevere. There's a weird guy in the neighborhood using dubious means to protect you,
but you're pretty sure it's worth it in the end. In the end, it remains unclear to you
whether finches and mockingbirds get along in real life.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

And Now For Something a Little Less Serious...

2007-09-20T09:58:00.000+10:00

You Are a Blue Crayon

Your world is colored in calm, understated, deep colors.
You are a loyal person, and the truest friend anyone could hope to find.
On the inside, you tend to be emotional and even a bit moody.
However, you know that people depend on you. So you put on a strong front.

Your color wheel opposite is orange. Orange people may be opinionated, but you feel they lack the depth to truly understand what they're saying.

What Color Crayon Are You?

You Are 72% Good

You are a good person. You do the best you can to be ethical, fair, and moral.
And as you know, being a good person means making hard decisions... and following them through.
If you're confronted with an ethical dilemma, you will usually do the right thing.
Of course you do slip up. No one's perfect. But you do your best to correct your missteps.

You are also probably: incredibly honest, especially with yourself

Right now you are on track to being: A respected leader

To be a better person: Be kind to someone who is not very kind to you

How Good Are You?

You Are a Haunted House

You are a deeply complicated and sometimes deeply disturbed person.
You can't help but be attracted to the dark side of life - even when it's pretty gruesome.
In relationships, you are honest and real. So real that it's definitely a little scary.
You don't fake it or play along just to get along. And people either respect this... or deeply resent it

Your life is thoughtful, deep, and even philosophical at times.
You see the world as it is. You don't sugar coat anything.
Facing and fighting your fears is important to you. You believe that too much of life is whitewashed.
You're not too morbid... you just believe that you can't enjoy life without exorcising a few demons first!

At your best, you are brave, intense, and fearless.
Not only do you face the abyss head on - you challenge your friends to do the same.
At your worst, you are depressed and morose.
If you're not careful, your thoughts take over your mind... and they aren't pretty!

What Carnival Ride Are You?

You Are Sunrise

You enjoy living a slow, fulfilling life. You enjoy living every moment, no matter how ordinary.
You are a person of reflection and meditation. You start and end every day by looking inward.
Caring and giving, you enjoy making people happy. You're often cooking for friends or buying them gifts.
All in all, you know how to love life for what it is - not for how it should be.

What Time Of Day Are You?

You Are a Centaur

In general, you are a very cautious and reserved person.
However, you are also warm hearted, and you enjoy helping others in practical ways.
You are a great teacher, and you are really good at helping people get their lives in order.
You are very intuitive, and you go with your gut. You make good decisions easily.

What Mythological Creature Are You?

A Question of Trust

2007-09-20T09:23:00.000+10:00

Who do you trust?”

With this slogan, John Howard propelled the Coalition to victory at the last election. When the Coalition also achieved the rare feat of gaining control of the Senate, Howard assured Australians that he would not abuse the power that had been placed in his hands.

But as another election approaches, it seems the Coalition has been hoisted on the petard of its own sloganeering. And the hoisting has come from a most unexpected direction: industrial relations.

The introduction, in 2006, of the Workchoices legislation - the Howard government’s blueprint for industrial reform - was always bound to be controversial. But instead of the anticipated campaign of industrial protest, which could be relied on to generate temporary attention before fading away, the union movement has responded with a clever media assault that has both resonated with the public and left the government wrong-footed. Not even big business’ deep pockets have been able to reverse the contribution which industrial relations has made to the Howard government’s slide in the polls.

Trust is at the heart of the industrial relations debate. When John Howard promised not to abuse his Senate majority, he was building on the covenant he had constructed with the Australian “mainstream” at earlier elections: loyalty at the ballot-box in exchange for protection of “mainstream” interests. Had he limited the scope of Workchoices to sidelining the union movement, he could arguably have escaped any perception of broken promises; but by enacting legislation that has so completely skewed the employment relationship in favour of employers, he has betrayed his own covenant.

The union movement has seized upon this breach to drive home the message that, under Workchoices, everyone is vulnerable. Their method is simple and effective: real-life case-histories narrated by the individuals concerned, chronicling the loss of conditions and jobs as employers take advantage of Workchoices to refashion the industrial landscape.

The government and business response has been expensive and ineffective. Lavishly produced commercials depicting mythologically happy workplaces cannot match the gritty realism of rural workers standing in the middle of arid landscape saying: “Out here, jobs aren’t that easy to find.” Unions know it is easier to play on fears than it is to build up hopes - this, afterall, is the same formula that has ensured John Howard’s repeated electoral success. But when a sense of betrayal is added to fear, slick commercialism serves only to reinforce the point the union movement has been making to anyone who‘ll listen: the Howard government cannot be trusted.

It is clear from the latest government-business offensive that the lessons of 2006 have not been learned. A new batch of commercials have been produced insisting employment conditions are protected as a matter of “fact”; that the effect of Workchoices has been an equal prosperity for employers and employees; and warning against thuggish union officials armed with industrial power. But what the Howard government and its business allies have failed to realise is that, in an atmosphere of distrust, such claims appear only as propaganda; by asserting so fervently that all is well under Workchoices, they in fact beg the question of whether or not this is actually the case.

Especially when every instance of workers having their conditions stripped or losing their jobs receives widespread media attention. And when studies by reputable academic institutions repeatedly demonstrate that the net effect of individual contracts is to cause a reduction in conditions, commercials insisting that the contrary is “fact” simply appear dishonest.

Had the Howard government been more discerning, it might have run commercials admitting its mistakes and pointing to initiatives such as the “fairness test” as proof it was committed to creating a balanced system. As a strategy, this involves some risk; but Howard’s hopes for re-election rest on re-establishing the trust of the “mainstream”. A display of humility might just have done so.

However, it’s unlikely such honesty will be forthcoming. John Howard’s determination to re-shape the Australian economy in the neo-liberal mould will admit of no mistakes. In the meantime, the “mainstream” on which Howard has built his political support has lost its trust in him - not least because the harsh reality of life under Workchoices belies the chimeral promises of the government’s media campaign.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: A politician is someone who believes you don't have to fool the people all the time - just during election campaigns. (Stanley Davis)

The Envelope Please...

2007-09-12T07:36:00.000+10:00

Yesterday afternoon, as I was coming home from another day at uni, I turned the corner into my street, and as I strolled toward home, saw the postie pulling away from my letterbox, having stuffed a fistful of mail into the box.

Now I wonder, I thought, could that be....?

I was expecting a letter. Indeed, I was expecting two letters, one for myself, the other for my Dearly Beloved. They were advices from the Uniting Church in Australia's Victorian-Tasmanian Synod telling us whether or not we had been affirmed as candidates to the ordained ministry.

I'll be honest with you here: I had been sweating on this letter. And the reason was that I frankly thought it would be bad news: the answer would be, well, if not no exactly, then not yet. I was expecting the Synod to say that while they recognised I had a genuine call to ministry, I needed to further develop the graces and giftings by which that call was accompanied, and re-apply for affirmation at a later date.

Why was I thinking this way? Not because I thought I'd had a particularly bad time at the Selection Conference, which had been held over the course of the weekend just passed. The questioning had been close and intensive, at times a little confronting, and the role-playing scenarios were conducted in the fish-bowl like atmosphere of constant scrutiny by the Selection Panel. But I thought I had more than held my own. Rather, as the weekend progressed, I developed the nagging suspicion that the Panel members thought that I needed more exposure to the wider Uniting Church, that as a prospective ministry candidate I was perhaps a little "under done"; there seemed a definite "theme" developing which underlay the questions I was being asked.

Mind you, I certainly understood why this might be the case. Compared to my Dearly Beloved, I have been a member of the Uniting Church for a relatively short period of time, having undergone my own journey of faith that involved growing up a Catholic, becoming alienated from Catholicism in my late teens, spending most of my twenties wrestling with matters of faith and church, before finally entering the Uniting Church in my thirties. Under these circumstances, the church were perfectly entitled to enquire about the depth of my faith and conviction, and whether or not I was truly responding to a call of God on my life, or if I was applying to candidate for other reasons.

And so I was given a good grilling by the Panel members. As I say, I was of the belief that I withstood the pressure and responded effectively; but whether this would be enough to overcome any misgivings was a completely open question. I came away from he conference completely unsure of what to think.

At least, that was the case in respect of myself; about my Dearly Beloved I had no doubts whatsoever. She performed brilliantly over the course the weekend, going from strength to strength. That she would be affirmed I had no doubts whatsoever.

So, as the postie zipped past me on his motorbike and I approached the letterbox, a small quiver of mingled hope and unease fluttered through my nervous system. Had I passed this final test of what had been a long and exhaustive process; or would I fall at the final hurdle? Or would I have to wait another 24 hours to learn my fate?

The letters from Synod were waiting in the letterbox. With fumbling fingers, I opened the envelope. Within the Express Post envelope was an ordinary mail envelope. I opened this second envelope and wrenched open the letter within.

It is with joy that we affirm your sense of call and acknowledge the gifts and graces you bring to ministry...

I had made it! The Synod had accepted my application! Woo-hoo!

I called my Dearly Beloved to convey the news to her, as well as the entirely expected result that she, too, had also been affirmed by the Selection Panel. Then a round of phone calls to family and friends, especially Jim and Ris who supported us through the weekend, and Ian and Margery who provided us with some much-needed time-out on Saturday night. And also to our local minister, Ian, who has been such a wonderful fount of support and grace through the application process.

Now that the euphoria has died, I realise that the hard work begins now. Three years (at least) of formation and training at Theological Hall, over and above my BTheol degree studies, as well as congregational placements and, ultimately, a year as an intern before I can be ordained. Moreover, I am deeply conscious of the trust and responsibility that has devolved upon me. But it will be wonderful having my Dearly Beloved with me at Hall; and with humility, hard work, and a little grace, this new beginning will lead to many wonderful and faith-affirming experiences.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: No man is so completely happy that something somewhere does not clash with his condition. It is the nature of human affairs to be fraught with anxiety; they never prosper perfectly, and they never remain constant. (Boethius)

What A Week!

2007-09-07T07:31:00.001+10:00

This has been the week from hell.

As you will recall from my last missive, I had to undergo surgery on my left eye last Friday due to the fact that the retina in said eye decided right now would be a good time to detach - again. I've always said that the universe has a sense of humour, and that while we mightn't always see the humour in the gag, at least we could draw consolation from being the butt of cosmic jokes beyond our control. But seriously, folks, this time I'm going to complain to the gag writer!

The surgery itself went fine: accompanied by my Dearly Beloved, we bowled up to the Royal Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne at the appointed time. My last conscious thought as they put me under was that the anesthetic nurse's gloves smelled; the next thing I know, I was being encouraged to wake up and tilt my head to the left as far as I could. The significance of that last instruction will shortly become obvious.

As with the last time, the staff were superb. The nurses were compassionate and attentive, the surgery team were calm and encouraging, and the catering and ancillary staff were cheerful and considerate. Just one more demonstration of how incredibly fortunate we are in Australia to have a functioning public health system; and how we must guard this precious resource from being dismantled into an American-style health-care for the wealthy dysfunction.

Of course, retinal surgery is a fairly significant procedure, so I wasn't expecting to come out of the surgery without some discomfort. But, as I knew from last year's experience, this would quickly wear off, leaving me to deal with the more gruelling rigours of the recovery process itself. And this is why that instruction, as I emerged from he anesthetic fug, to tilt my head to the left became significant. Because, unlike last year, when I had to lie on my stomach for a week to aid the healing process, this time I had to lie on my left side. All the time. For a week. I couldn't lie on my back or my right side or my stomach; only on my left side, with just ten or so minutes every hour for the purposes of getting up and stretching my limbs and obtaining some relief.

Well, it was sheer agony. Lying on my stomach last year put a lot of pressure on my lower back, but that could be countered by stuffing a few pillows under my hips to flex my spine. This time, however, there was no relief, and the pain was spread over a series of pressure points: face, neck, shoulder, and hip. And all on the left side.

By the third day, my whole body was throbbing with pain. My face ached, my neck ached, my shoulders and hips ached: even my bones ached, throbbing with a deep seated pain that made me wonder if this was what it was like having leukemia or being a bone marrow doner. It got to the point when the only comfortable condition was unconsciousness - but even that was an elusive bliss, because the pain completely destroyed my sleep patterns, necessitating my retreat first to the sofa bed in the spare room; then, when that became unendurable because of its metal frame, the couch in the living room.

And to top it all off, I was suffering from caffeine withdrawal, owing to the fact that I hadn't had any coffee since the Saturday after the operation. Not that I drink much coffee as it is, but even a lifetime of moderate usage was enough to provoke crippling headaches to go along with all the other malaises as a consequence of my not imbibing. A compelling cause for reflection on the power of addiction!

All of this would have been bad enough were it not for the addition of the hours that just dragged past in empty procession. I couldn't read, couldn't watch TV, couldn't do anything to occupy my mind except listen to the radio and mark off the passage of time via program changes and hourly news updates. I practically colonised the lounge-room, with pillow, doona, and radio, the latter my only weapon for combating the empty desolation of enforced idleness. Thank heaven for Radio National is all I can say!

Not that this week has been a walk in the park for my Dearly Beloved. She was unwell herself over the weekend and at the beginning of the week; and since she is a secondary school teacher, the year is rapidly approaching the business end of the calendar, with final exams and all the pressures and anxieties of stressed students. To make matters worse, my chronic insomnia has played havoc with her own need for regular sleep.

Sooooo - here we are at the end of a pretty awful week, both exhausted, both not exactly in tip-top shape, and both of us having to face the Uniting Church Victorian-Tasmanian Synod Selection Conference for people applying to candidate to the ordained ministry. This is the apogee of a long process for both of us: the final stage of the church's discernment of our sense of call to ordained ministry. After this weekend, which is an intense series of interviews, presentations, and role plays, the Church will decide whether or not it discerns our call to ministry, and whether or not as a consequence it will accept our applications to candidate.

You'd think all this would be enough to terminally depress a person and put them off the whole project altogether. Except for the fact that my Dearly Beloved and I have had the terrific pastoral support and care of our minister, Ian, and of the North Ringwood Uniting Church community; we've had lots of encouragement and best wishes from friends, family, and acquaintances; and, most importantly, we'll have the support of our friends Ris and Jim at the Selection Conference, and also of Ian and Margery by way of a dinner debrief on Saturday night. All of these examples of care and support have buoyed our spirits; but most of all, we are committed to our respective and shared sense of vocation to serve in God's ministry, and we trust that God's ineffable presence in Christ and the Holy Spirit will help the Church discern our call.

Talk to you soon,

BB

Quote for the Day: Fortune has not yet turned her hatred against all your blessings. The storm has not yet broken upon you with too much violence. Your anchors are holding firm, and they permit you both comfort in the present, and hope in the future. (Boethius)

A Brief Interlude

2007-08-30T17:00:00.000+10:00

I'm afraid I'm going to be off air for a short interlude.

Last weekend, the retina in my left eye decided it would be a good time to detach itself from the rest of the eye, necessitating my having to undergo surgery tomorrow. Mildly inconvenient, given my Dearly Beloved and I are scheduled to attend the Selection Conference of the Victorian-Tasmanian Synod of the Uniting Church in Australia the weekend after next - the final stage of our applications to candidate to the ordained ministry!

Who says the universe doesn't have a sense of humour?

While the operation itself is only a day procedure, I'll not only end up looking like I've gone ten rounds with Muhammad Ali, the restricted vision will militate against me being able to put up any posts for a while.

But fear not - normal service shall be resumed shortly. So I'll see you on the flip side once my own personal approximation of 20:20 vision has been restored.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. (Erasmus)

Language, please!

2007-08-27T07:33:00.000+10:00

This weekend just gone, my Dearly Beloved and I played host to Jason, a Chinese teacher presently in Australia on an exchange visit.

Jason teaches English at a school in central China; most young Chinese are keen to get ahead in life and live a more "luxurious" Western lifestyle, so having good English skills is seen as vital to getting the kind of employment that can facilitate this ambition. My Dearly Beloved, being amongst other things, an Australian who teaches Chinese to young Australians wanting to learn a second language, has taken a number of student groups over to China to provide some cultural context to the language. The school at which Jason teaches and my Dearly Beloved's school have a sister school relationship; and so, this weekend, we showed Jason some of the sights of Melbourne.

It has been an interesting experience meeting Jason. He English skills are very good, and he displays a quick-wittedness and sense of humour in English that can take you unawares because of his normally gentle and disarming manner. For example, Jason very kindly offered to cook us dinner on Saturday night, and whipped up a beautiful dish of stir-fried noodles, vegetables, and lamb. As I was watching him expertly stir the food in the wok with a pair of chopsticks, I decided to be a smart-arse and said:

"What is it with Chinese civilisation? You guys invented paper, and gunpowder, and government, and a whole heap of other stuff. How come you never invented the knife and fork?"

A slow smile spread across Jason's face, and without taking his eyes off the wok, he said quietly: "I don't know. How come you guys never learned to use chopsticks?"

I had to laugh. Not only was it a great comeback, it also made a cogent point: us Westerners have learned lot of things from Chinese civilisation, yet those aspects which we've never managed to make our own we have tended to adopt a rather superior attitude towards. Jason's riposte was a lovely little lesson in humility.

Mind you, it appears that the Australian idiom has been causing Jason some head-scratching moments. As we were eating the meal Jason had prepared, and were engaging in general conversation, he asked in his usual unassuming manner: "Can you tell me what wanker means?"

I nearly chocked on my noodles. Oh dear, I thought, some of the kids at school have been introducing Jason to the local colloquialisms...

Fortunately, my Dearly Beloved was able to explain the meaning using a compound Chinese term that meant "to use by hand" and "the airplane" (I'm sure you'll be able to work it out!). Don't ask me how she knew; I don't want to know! Jason considered my Dearly Beloved's explanation for a moment, then enquired: "So if we're driving somewhere, and someone in another car does something stupid, I should call him a wanker?"

We hastily assured him that he should not do so - not unless he wants to risk getting into trouble!

Jason has dubbed me Wenlong, which (very roughly) means "wise dragon". My Dearly Beloved is Li Shan, or "beautiful mountain". Jason is "Golden Monkey" - I'm still trying to get my head (and tongue) around the Chinese for that! But it was very pleasant hosting him for the weekend, and as he'll be here for a few more weeks, I'm sure there will be further opportunities to help each other around the traps and pitfalls of our respective languages!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: The instant a wise man understands that he is wise, he becomes a fool. (Confucius)

Agape Service

2007-08-20T11:23:00.000+10:00

Last night, my Dearly Beloved and I (aided and abetted by our trusty band of liturgical co-conspirators at Ringwood North Uniting Church) led an Agape Service. This service was part of a series of monthly services which we've titled "Pilgrimage Services" - both to reflect our individual and communal journey of faith, and to highlight the fact that these services have been a deliberate exploration of the rich tradition of Christian prayer and worship styles.

The agape (pronounced a-gah-pay, from the Koine Greek meaning love) is one of the most ancient traditions in Christianity, stretching back to the period of the early church community when there was no institutional church. Instead, Christians would gather at someone's home and celebrate their faith through a communal meal that commemorated both the Last Supper and the fellowship of their faith community.

For the purposes of this service, we borrowed heavily from the wonderful Iona Abbey Worship Book, which itself is a product of the Iona Community in Scotland. The Worship Book had lots of resources for Agape Services, including prayers and service structure, and we both drew on these and constructed the service in our own way with PowerPoint presentations, music, recordings, and periods of meditative silence. We also included a simple meal of soup (my Dearly Beloved made pumpkin, while Murray, one of our number, provided minestrone) and bread and water. We then followed with a communion that, instead of containing a formal liturgy, simply involved the group sharing delicious oatmeal cookies (thanks Nicola!) and grape juice; our minister, Ian, spoke a simple but powerful blessing, and we partook of the elements.

The group ate and drank in a deep, contemplative silence in which the bond of unity and sense of community were almost physical. There was a truly wonderful sense of spiritual presence, of the love and grace of God. I have always believed in the KISS principle, and last night helped reinforce my sense that the simple is so often the most profound and moving.

In lots of ways, it was an appropriate occasion. Earlier that day, my Dearly Beloved and I attended the wedding of our friends Bron and Fletch. It was a lovely service, elegant but uncomplicated, achieved with a real depth of emotion and occasion. And during the regular service that morning, my Dearly Beloved had cleverly used the classic Dr Seuss story, Horton Hatches an Egg, during the Children's Service to illustrate the themes of faith and commitment. So to finish off the day with an Agape Service felt like a more than germane bookend to the events of the day.

And it's always instructive what you can learn from others. One of the participants jokingly quipped that it was disappointing that we weren't reclining - a reminder of the fact that, during the early Christian period, such meals as the Agape would have been eaten while reclining, not sitting. And during a conversation with another participant, I learned that the Lindisfarne Community in northern England have also produced a Worship Book that contains lots of resources for community worship. I reckon the odds are pretty good my Dearly Beloved and I will be checking out - and making use of - this book in the near future!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: The greatest truths are the simplest; and so are the greatest men. (Julius & Augustus Hare)

By Any Other Name....

2007-08-16T15:54:00.000+10:00

I don't really pay much attention to these blog quiz thingies (you may have noticed!) but sometimes you have to wonder whether they're not actually on to something afterall...

You are a Lavender Rose

You represent love at first sight and enchantment.

Your vibe: intense and intriguing

Falling in love with you is: deep and meaningful

What Color Rose Are You?

And this...

You Are 85% Grown Up, 15% Kid

Your emotional maturity is fully developed, and you have an excellent grasp on your emotions.
In fact, you are so emotionally mature - you should consider being a therapist!

How Emotionally Mature Are You?

Or this...

What Your Favorite Color Purple Says About You:

Intuitive --- Seeking --- Creative
Kind --- Self-Sacrificing --- Growth Oriented
Strong --- Very Wise --- Rare

What Does Your Favorite Color Say About You?

And finally....

You Are Strawberries with Cream

Fresh and uncomplicated, you are always enjoyed but often overlooked.
You're confident in who you are. You don't need a facade to feel better about yourself.

What Dessert Are You Most Like?

I know, I know...it's hard being this good all the time! Thanks to Avril for most of these...

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Behind every successful man stands a surprised woman. (Maryon Pearson)

Orthodoxy and Freedom

2007-08-14T19:03:00.000+10:00

Way back in July, when my Dearly Beloved and I appeared before the Maroondah Presbytery as part of our ongoing application to candidate to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church, I was asked by one Presbytery member how I would deal with the issue of orthodoxy and the requirement to uphold the doctrinal teaching of the church.

I was asked this question because, in the course of my presentation to the Presbytery, I had articulated my conviction that Christianity was essentially a faith of freedom. In this respect, I had described the received tradition of the Church not as the be-all-and-end-all of faith, but as its starting point, the basis from which, in the light of new information and new understanding, Christians could make their faith relevant to the present and enable it to be open to the future. In my view, tradition is not - and cannot be - that which ties us to the past; rather, it is the foundation for the future, that which enables us to take new directions and move toward new horizons.

Thus, it seemed to me that the unasked question behind the question was, given my views about Christianity as a faith of freedom, how would I accept the authority of the Church and articulate its doctrinal position?

As far as I am concerned, this is a perfectly legitimate - indeed, a necessary - question, because it asks for a clarification of what is meant by "freedom". Is the "freedom" which I believe is the core of Christian faith an anarchic liberality, a free-for-all that gives permission to individuals to believe what they choose, and act accordingly? Or is this "freedom" one that exists within a context of a particular understanding of the nature of faith, and the nature of the relation between humankind and God?

And my answer, emphatically, is the latter. Christianity is a faith that embodies a particular understanding of freedom grounded in the ministry of Christ, and of Christ as God's self-revelation in the world. But what is this particularity?

Firstly, I think the freedom of Christian faith arises from the fact that Christ came to bring humanity life, and life in abundance. Not, however, the "abundance" of so-called prosperity theology, which is the mere subordination of Christianity to free-market capitalism; nor is it the "abundance" of leading a life of ease or unending happiness, which is the yoking of faith to our wish-fulfilment. On the contrary, the abundance which Christ offers is a life lived fully, a life in which we enter into the fullness of our human nature. Moreover, it is a life in which we engage with every dimension of experience - the good, the bad, the indifferent - on the basis of faith, instead of simply using faith as a consolation for hardship or suffering. It is, in short, the experience of life in which faith is a philosophy for being, and not merely the expressed assent to doctrinal statements.

Secondly, I believe this freedom exists in a context in which doctrine and credal statements form the framework that enables the expression of freedom, instead of restricting or curtailing its expression. Thus, doctrine becomes not a cage but a launching place for the freedom of Christian faith, the basis upon which people - both individually, and as members of a faith community - can explore, question, examine, debate, and enter into the depths of faith as a lived, interior experience, instead of a mere ritualistic or formulaic process. In other words, it is a context in which freedom arises from doctrine and credal statements liberating the individual rather than confine them to a particular viewpoint or understanding.

Thirdly, I believe that the combination of the first two points - faith as a philosophy of being, and as a context in which doctrine enables the expression of freedom - combine to produce a third context: the freedom to reinterpret the past in light of new knowledge and new understanding in order to attain a deeper and richer understanding. This is innovation not as breaking with the past - which is not really innovation at all - but as drawing on the past in collaboration with new insights in order to be relevant in present contexts and open to new futures. This is the freedom to engage in innovation that honours the past and reaches toward new horizons.

Thus it is that I answered the question that was put to me by saying that the issue of orthodoxy and authority and tradition was dependent on how one viewed these aspects of the faith experience: were they chains that tied us to a dead past, or were they the foundations that enabled us to have a living present reality and also entertain prospects for future development. If the former, then orthodoxy was an oppressive weight; if the latter, then it was a liberating, life-giving force.

My view is definitely the latter.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. (Cardinal Newman)

Idle MInds...

2007-08-08T07:41:00.000+10:00

Well, you know what they say about people with too much time on their hands! These are courtesy of Caro (she's not a good influence on me)!

You Are Rowlf the Dog

Mellow and serious, you enjoy time alone cultivating your talents.
You're a cool dog, and you always present a relaxed vibe.
A talented pianist, you can play almost anything - especially songs by Beethoven.
"My bark is worse than my bite, and my piano playing beats 'em both."

The Muppet Personality Test

Now that's seriously spooky, because I came up as Rolf (why have they spelled it Rowlf?) the Dog on another, similar Muppet Personality Test a few years ago...oh, well, onwards and downwards...

Your Vocabulary Score: A+

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary!
You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

You only scored an "A" Caro...what a shame! (Sorry, my evil slip is showing, isn't it!)

What Your Latte Says About You

You are very decadent in all aspects of your life. You never scale back, and you always live large.

You can be quite silly at times, but you know when to buckle down and be serious.

Intense and energetic, you aren't completely happy unless you are bouncing off the walls.

You're addicted to caffeine. There's no denying it.

You are responsible, mature, and truly an adult. You're occasionally playful, but you find it hard to be carefree.

You are deep and thoughtful, but you are never withdrawn.

What Does Your Latte Say About You?

This one is frankly confusing...it seems to me the "analysis" is a tad contradictory at points...And, finally, to prove I'm different (and not completely vain!)...

You Should Rule Saturn

Saturn is a mysterious planet that can rarely be seen with the naked eye.

You are perfect to rule Saturn because like its rings, you don't always follow the rules of nature.
And like Saturn, to really be able to understand you, someone must delve beyond your appearance.

You are not an easy person to befriend. However, once you enter a friendship, you'll be a friend for life.
You think slowly but deeply. You only gain great understanding after a situation has past.

What Planet Should You Rule?

The meaning of all this - who knows? Or is he on first...?

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Vanity is merely other people's pride. (Sacha Guitry)

Come the Revolution

2007-08-04T11:46:00.000+10:00

I think this one redresses the balance slightly...

You Are 12% Capitalist, 88% Socialist

You see a lot of injustice in the world, and you'd like to see it fixed.
As far as you're concerned, all the wrong people have the power.
You're strongly in favor of the redistribution of wealth - and more protection for the average person.

Are You a Socialist or Capitalist?

So there - I might be a slob, but I'm a slob with a conscience!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Your conscience is what your mother told you before you were six years old. (Brock Chisholm)

Oh Dear...

2007-08-04T11:35:00.000+10:00

Maybe I should have quit while I was ahead!

You Are Barney

You could have been an intellectual leader...

Instead, your whole life is an homage to beer

You will be remembered for: your beautiful singing voice and your burps

Your life philosophy: "There's nothing like beer to give you that inflated sense of self-esteem."

The Simpsons Personality Test

Maybe I should be getting in touch with my "inner Barney" instead of my "inner Homer"!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Behavioural psychology is the science of pulling habits out of rats. (Douglas Busch)

The Evil Within...

2007-08-04T11:18:00.000+10:00

Alright, so my promise that the last blog post quiz thingie would be the last one for today was a "non-core promise" - so make me Prime Minister of Australia, already!

However, given I told a porkie on that one, I just couldn't resist the How Evil Are You? blog quiz - and here's the result!

You Are 28% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well.
In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?

I'll bet the folks currently test reading the manuscript of my novel are thinking this right now, too!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Wickedness is simply a myth invented by good people to account for the attractiveness of ohers. (Oscar Wilde)

Blue Day

2007-08-04T11:13:00.000+10:00

Okay, okay, the last blog quiz post was meant to be a one off, but then my eye got caught by the following....Frankly, I'd say I'm doing pretty well today, wouldn't you?

Your Inner Color is Blue

Your Personality: Your natural warmth and intuition nurtures those around you. You are accepting and always follow your heart.

You in Love: Relationships are your top priority, and this includes love. You are most happy when you are serious with someone.

Your Career: You need to help others in your job to feel satistifed. You would be a great nurse, psychologist, or counselor.

What's Your Inner Color?

But this is the last one...promise!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: A diagnosis is simply the physician's activity of determining the state of your purse in order to decide how sick to make you. (Ambrose Bierce)

Stormy Weather

2007-08-04T10:57:00.000+10:00

I've got a few things I want to get off my chest on this blog in the upcoming weeks(s), but at the moment I'm a little pre-occupied with starting second semester (and still trying to get my head around the fact that I passed New Testament Greek!), so these posts of moment are confined to the back burner for the time being.

However, just to pass the time, I did another of those blog quiz thingies, this time on the question: What Type of Weather Are You? And, I have to say, they got it absolutely right!

You Are Lightning

Beautiful yet dangerous
People will stop and watch you when you appear
Even though you're capable of random violence

You are best known for: your power

Your dominant state: performing

What Type of Weather Are You?

Read it and weep, folks!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Greatness is a zigzag streak of lightning in the brain. (Herbert H Asquith)

The Substance of Faith

2007-07-26T21:42:00.000+10:00

Yesterday, I attended my first lecture in "The Triune God", one of the theology subjects I am studying this semester.

This subject is concerned both with Trinitarian theology and with the Christian understanding of God as a Triune being: that is, one Being with three Persons. The former concerns the specifically Christian doctrine of the Trinity; the latter is how Christians speak of God, how Christians understand the nature of the Godhead.

The focus of this lecture was the placement of Trinitarian theology and the Christian understanding of the Triune God at the centre of Christian faith. All the other teachings of the church - the Incarnation, the Resurrection, Salvation - are founded in and predicated upon the Christian teaching about the Triune nature of the Godhead. There are several reasons for this centrality, but one of the most important is that it goes to the identity of Christian faith.

The Trinity is the specific and particular claim about God made by Christian faith. Only Christianity understands the Godhead in Trinitarian terms: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is the creator, source, and basis of all life; the Son is the Father's decisive act in creation; the Holy Spirit is the Father's ongoing presence in and engagement with the world. God is one Being in which reside three Persons who exist in relation with one another and with the created order. The Son and Holy Spirit are not separate beings, or created beings, or subordinate beings; they are co-eternal and coeval with the Father, of one Being and "of one substance" as the Nicene Creed affirms.

But the other, often not considered point here is that this issue of Christian identity is important for interfaith dialogue. Too often, in my view, interfaith dialogue is predicated upon ignoring the differences between faiths and concentrating on the things held in common by different faiths. In other words, the differences between faiths is seen entirely in pejorative terms, it is seen as a negative; and to counter this "negative", it is necessary to focus on the "positive" of commonality.

I can understand why this attitude exists: partially, it is an attempt to counteract prejudice and ignorance; and, partially, it is deeply psychologically satisfying. However, I think it is misguided. I'm not suggesting that we ought not concentrate on the commonalities; what I think is that we should change our attitude to the differences. Indeed, I think we should celebrate them.

As an example, I look at the phenomenon of the so-called "interfaith minister". This is the subject of a documentary series currently running on the wonderful Compass program on the ABC. These "interfaith ministers" essentially conduct services that not only draw on the rituals and traditions of the major faiths, but also of movements such as neo-paganism and gaianism. I must confess that I viewed this development with considerable reservations, for three essential reasons.

Firstly, it seemed to me that this movement was based on wish-fulfilment: that is, the desire to "unify" the faiths so that people could have the comfort of a religion that pointed to a single, overriding truth that enabled them to avoid having to wrestle with the difficult questions posed by religious diversity. Again, while this may be psychologically satisfying, it strikes me as possibly the least appropriate basis upon which to found an approach to faith.

Secondly, it seemed that this movement was a process of manufacturing a "faith" that essentially doesn't stand for anything or amount to anything. You simply can't throw together a mish-mash of theologies and rituals and expect that it will amount to anything substantial or relevant. Yes, it might be satisfying from the perspective of making you "feel good" or enabling you to get away with not thinking deeply about faith, but there is a vast difference between a spirituality that is founded upon an understanding of God and God's relation to the universe (and which grapples with all the questions, doubts, and ambiguities which this entails), and a "spirituality" that is just a construction whose purpose is to facilitate the desires and inclinations of the individual.

Thirdly, and most importantly, I think this movement toward "interfaith ministers" can actually do a lot of harm, not least because it fails to honour the differences between faiths, and to acknowledge the beauty, power, truth, and poignancy that resides within, and is articulated by, these differences. In other words, the "interfaith minister" movement simply papers over the differences between faiths, as if dialogue could actually be facilitated by pretending these differences don't exist, and that the way forward is to just bung the symbols and rituals of different faiths together and essentially ignore their theologies. But this fails to understand that it is the differences between faiths that is the basis of individual faith conviction; that theological integrity resides, not in cobbling together some religious hodge-podge of beliefs and practices, but in simultaneously asserting the truth of faith claims while at the same time acknowledging and respecting the claims of others.

In other words, the "interfaith ministry" movement is a cop-out, just the latest manifestation of the infection of faith by self-helpism.

And this is why yesterday's lecture resonated so strongly for me: because it reinforced the necessity for me, as a Christian, to articulate the truth of the Christian faith; and, at the same time, to celebrate and see the majesty and beauty and legitimacy that exists between and across faiths because of their differences. It is not difference by which we should be frightened; it is the mediocrity of superficial "unity".

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: "There is very little difference between one man and another, but what there is is very important." (William James)

Time and Tide

2007-07-22T12:32:00.000+10:00

Yesterday, I was cleaning out the inbox from my email (that's the kind of exciting thing I get up to when my Dearly Beloved is not about), when I stumbled across my quiz results for the Select Smart Belief System Selector web quiz. I had taken this quiz in a moment of idle curiosity some years ago, and the results were sitting in my inbox, forgotten until I rediscovered them.

Now, I take these quiz thingies with more than a grain of salt, largely because, methodologically speaking, they are quite simplistic in their either/or format, and are thus open to manipulation. You can pretty much produce the result you want by thinking about the answers you need to provide in order to arrive at said results. Self-reporting is a notoriously unreliable process. (That's why, among a whole host of other reasons, I think the entire Myers-Briggs getup is a load of dangerous pop-psychological garbage - but that's an entire other issue!)

Anyhoo, these qualifications aside, I normally try and answer these quizzes as honestly as possible, even when I think the best answer I can give to the questions provided doesn't really reflect my point of view at all. I'm usually pretty sure of what the result will be notwithstanding, although, on occasion, I do manage to surprise myself - or is it that the quiz surprises me?

The point being that, last time I took this quiz, these are the top ten results (in percentage terms) that my quiz produced (the results go up to 26 rankings, but I'm not going to impose them all upon you):

#1: Humanist (100)
#2: Unitarian Universalist (92)
#3: Theravada Buddhist (85)
#4: Atheist/Agnostic (81)
#5: Liberal Quaker (76)
#6: Neo-Pagan (63)
#7: Taoism (60)
#8: Orthodox Quaker (54)
#9: Mainline Liberal Protestant (47)
#10: Mahayana Buddhist (46)

Now, there are a few interesting results here that require a bit of discussion in light of my present status as a Christian who is studying theology and hoping to candidate to the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church in Australia.

The Humanist rating doesn't surprise me much at all, given that, at the time, I was not a member of the church and still identified myself primarily in terms of the Stoic moral philosophy I had first encountered in my early 20s. Neither was I terribly surprised by the appearance of Theravadan and Mahayanan Buddhism in the top ten. Aside from the fact that Buddhism is a non-theist faith, thus aligning it somewhat with the humanist philosophical tradition, Theravadan Buddhism might be described as the "monastic" tradition of Buddhism, reflecting my own sense that had I been born in another era, I might have ended up as a member of a religious order; whereas Mahayanan Buddhism, whilst the more "popular" school of Buddhist practice, nevertheless preserves the traditions of meditation and contemplation toward which I am personally strongly inclined.

The atheistic/agnostic tag did surprise me somewhat. I have never been an atheist personally, despite all my struggles with coming to an understanding of faith over the course of my life. Moreover, the terms "atheist" and "agnostic" are not interchangeable; they are not similes, and do not represent the same thing; but this confusion between the two is not uncommon. I can only surmise that the appearance of this rating in my top ten reflects the level of scepticism I held at the time about matters of faith; and which, to an extent, I still hold today as a necessary part of faith. That is to say, my belief that faith, and the claims of faith, must be held with a certain humility in the understanding that God is not who we think God is, that God is wider than our thoughts and our capacity to comprehend, and is revealed as a transcendent mystery and not a mapped-out, pinned down, packaged in a box certainty.

The appearance of Universal Unitarian, Liberal Quaker, and Orthodox Quaker puzzled me, as I knew - and still know - next to nothing about these traditions and their theological perspectives. Perhaps I'm more ecumenical than I thought! The Taoism suggestion wasn't that much of a surprise, as I have read the Tao Te Ching (as well as the Analects of Confucius and the Book of Mencius) and found much within it that resonated with both Buddhist and Stoic moral philosophy. The Neo-Pagan rating had me frankly scratching my head; to be brutally honest, I think the "pagans" are a bunch of cultural-imperialist, cherry-picking from other traditions to suit themselves tossers! Especially the "druids" and all the others who carry on with "Celtic spiritual" practices, not least because the truth is almost next to nothing is now known of the ancient druidic traditions and beliefs, and what they actually stood for and practiced (the Romans did a very thorough job of wiping them out).

The interesting one is the appearance of Mainline Liberal Protestant. Although at number nine and less than 50%, it does, perhaps, reflect the fact that I was starting to drift toward a Protestant church as a possibility for re-connecting with a faith community. Indeed, I had certainly started to become increasingly aware of the Uniting Church in Australia, and was intrigued by its bringing together of three denominational traditions, and also impressed by its commitment to social justice. Now, I know the Uniting Church does not define itself as a "liberal" church - it is far too broad and diverse a community for any single label to do it justice. But perhaps what this quiz result reflected was that, although I still predominantly identified myself in humanist/Stoic terms, perhaps the possibilities of faith and a place in a Christian community were starting to make themselves apparent.

The upshot is that, stirred by curiosity as a result of stumbling across this quiz, I decided to do it again. And this time, the top ten results came out like this:

#1: Mainline Liberal Protestant (100)
#2: Liberal Quaker (88)
#3: Orthodox Quaker (84)
#4: Hinduism (82)
#5: Unitarian Universalism (81)
#6: Eastern Orthodox (74)
#7: Roman Catholic (74)
#8: Neo-Pagan (73)
#9: Seventh Day Adventist (71)
#10: Sikhism (66)

The most significant outcome of the quiz was that Mainline Liberal Protestant has shot up to the #1 position. Hardly surprising given the fact that I am now a practicing Christian and member of the Uniting Church (bearing in mind my caution about applying the term "liberal" exclusively to the UCA), and reflective also of the theological conclusions and resolutions to which my struggles with faith have arrived.

Interestingly, both the Buddhist and the Taoist influences seem to have declined, despite the ongoing reverence for, and resonances with, both traditions that I continue to feel to this day. I think this reflects two developments: firstly, that I have come to a particular and specific theological conviction in terms of faith practice and identity; and, second, that they have not so much disappeared from my life as moved from the psychological and philosophical foreground to the background. In this respect, they reflect the change which the influence of Stoic moral philosophy has undergone in my life; Stoicism now forms part of the philosophical bedrock of my Christian spirituality, but is no longer part of my up-front, "headline" theological thinking.

I was surprised by the Neo-Pagan rating still making it into the top-ten, especially given my views about "pagans", expressed above (it dropped from 6th to 8th position on the list, but actually increased in percentage terms). And I'm frankly astounded by the Seventh-Day Adventist aspect, especially since I regard Seventh Day Adventism as, at best, a kind of quasi-Christian sect inhabiting the extreme fringe of the Christian world (along with Mormonism, Christian Science, and other products of the so-called Second Great Awakening in 19th Century America). The relevance of the Liberal and Orthodox Quaker elements, and of the Universal Unitarianism, remains, as with the previous quiz result, a complete mystery to me.

The two developments which really grabbed my attention, however, were the appearance of Hinduism and Sikhism in the top ten, as well as Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Regarding the former, whilst I have a little knowledge of Hinduism, I am hardly an expert; and I have next to no knowledge of Sikhism other than that it is (I think) an offshoot from Hinduism. Given the affinities between Hinduism and Buddhism (although there are, obviously, critical differences), I would have thought that the disappearance of Buddhism from the top ten would have mitigated against both Hinduism and Sikhism making an appearance; but apparently not!

And as for the emergence of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy into the top ten, well, I think that can be explained in two ways. Firstly, it simply reflects the affinities between all denominations of the Christian community, the shared theological traditions, worship practices, liturgical resources, and doctrinal bases. My location with a mainline Protestant church necessarily involves my location within the wider Christian church, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy included. Secondly, I think my finding a place within a Christian faith community, and the theological and philosophical conclusions which doing so necessarily involves, combined with my theological studies at an ecumenical faculty, means I have re-engaged with the Catholic traditions in which I grew up, and from which I became alienated in my youth; and this necessarily precipitates an affinity for the traditions of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Catholic and Orthodox churches in many respects being mirror images of one another.

An example of this is sacred music: I have always loved the Western Church's tradition of sacred music, and in recent years have discovered the sublimely beautiful sacred music tradition of the Eastern Church. Partly because they are similar and serve similar purposes; but also because of the differences. For example, whereas in the Western church, the voices of the upper register tend to get emphasised, in the Orthodox tradition, the voices of the lower register tend to be more prominent. Rachmaninov's stunning All Night Vigil and Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom being ethereal, spell-binding examples.

So what can be made of these results? Probably not much. But I do think they reflect, however imperfectly, the philosophical, theological, and intellectual journey on which I've been engaged for much of my adult life, and the incredibly rich and diverse opportunities for growth and understanding that have been opened up to me as a result.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before. (Marcus Aurelius)

I Passed! I Passed! I Passed!

2007-07-19T19:17:00.000+10:00

Well, the mailman dropped my first semester results into the mailbox this afternoon, and even with one eye closed in expectation of the worst, I was able to see that I passed New Testament Greek! Indeed, I scored 63%, only a couple of percentage points off a Credit!

Now, you might not think that 63% is anything to get excited about - but that's not taking into account the fact that I would have been happy with 51%, largely due to the fact that Greek was a really hard struggle, and I discovered to a painful degree my ineptitude when it comes to languages. So 63% frankly looks like I really kicked arse!

As for my other results...oh, well, I scored 71% for Biblical Texts (a few agonising points short of a Distinction!) and 75% for Christology (bang on a Distinction). But that's not important - what's important is the fact that I passed New Testament Greek!

woo-hoo!

And I'm sure my Greek lecturer will be glad that I won't be back to clutter up the class next year!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Success is never having to admit that you're unhappy. (Robert Evans)

Spoke Too Soon...

2007-07-19T12:35:00.000+10:00

I really should have known better.

This morning, I received a call from the UFT to say that the Epistemology subject in which I had enrolled was cancelled due to lack of numbers. A quick scramble through the handbook revealed another subject I can undertake - Faith and the Learning Process - but I really should have realised that there was bound to be one last minute snafu in stall for me!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Experience is just the name that everyone gives to their mistakes. (Oscar Wilde)

Waiting, Waiting....

2007-07-19T07:59:00.000+10:00

Well, second semester of the academic year kicks off next week, and I'm still waiting for my first semester results (I think they get posted today). I'm particularly anxious about my New Testament Greek result: if I pass, I won't have to repeat this (compulsory) subject! Although I enjoyed many aspects of the subject, and found it quite revealing and interesting, I now have a full and thorough appreciation of the fact that languages just aren't part of my gifting! So the prospect of having to do it all over again is not a pleasant one...

Not that I'm griping about the delay. I appreciate the fact that the good folk at the United Faculty of Theology's administration office are overworked at the best of times. Just wish there was some way of getting the results sooner so that I would know. Maybe the UFT should explore setting up some sort of online system whereby each student is assigned an account that enables them to access their results (and only their own results)....

There's been a bit of fiddling around with my subjects for Semester Two. Partly my fault, partly the fact that sometimes subjects get cancelled for various reasons. But now they're all settled, and I'll be studying:

Epistemology: Theory of Knowledge and Knowing
The Triune God
Mark and the Synoptic Gospels

I'm confident that this lot should give me an interesting and thought-provoking mix! Now if only those results would arrive....

Talk to you soon,'

BB.

Quote for the Day: Success is merely delayed failure. (Graham Greene)

The Cold Curse

2007-07-12T03:43:00.001+10:00

You may recall my post about my first sermon, in which I lamented the fact that I spent the whole week beforehand struggling with a massive headcold.

Well, it's happened again. This Sunday, I am rostered to lead our local Uniting Church congregation in the "Prayers for the People" section of the service - and, yep, you guessed it, I am presently being ravaged by a magnitude 5000 headcold, replete with all the unpleasant features by which such maladies are accompanied.

Where the heck did this come from? Here I was, thinking that because I've already had a dose of the lurgy this year, I'd be pretty well immune to whatever the 'flu season could throw at me. But, noooo, the universe has decided that it hasn't quite finished tweaking my pride or pulling the rug out from under my feet.

So here I am, at some God-awful hour of the morning, lamenting yet again about the universe's particularly pernicious sense of humour - especially where Yours Truly and leading public worship is concerned! Some days I feel like asking for a refund...

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Some days, I say, some days it just don't pay to get outta bed.* (Foghorn Leghorn)

*Oh, if only I could go back to bed and get some SLEEP!

Another Step Forward

2007-07-05T11:18:00.000+10:00

Last night, my Dearly Beloved and I took another step forward in the application process to candidate for the ordained ministry of the Uniting Church. Along with another applicant, we presented ourselves before the full Maroondah Presbytery and made submissions as to why we should be affirmed in our application and go forward to the Selection Conference in September.

We had already met with and been interviewed by the Presbytery's Candidates Committee, which involved a detailed and in depth examination of our faith journey to this point in our lives, and our reasons for applying to candidate as ministers. The interview was very thorough, with lots of probing and thoughtful questions, and conducted in an atmosphere of respect and support for the interviewees. We already knew that the Candidates Committee were going to recommend to the full Presbytery meeting that we be affirmed in our application, but that, of course, didn't mean we still didn't have to present ourselves before the Presbytery and make our case.

This involved each of the applicants making a short speech to the Presbytery and then answering any questions from the floor. We had to keep our speeches short because, aside from not wanting to bore anyone to tears, the Presbytery had a very full agenda to get through - which made the task of providing the meeting with a reasonable insight into our lives, our faith journey, our spiritual gifts and passions, and our reasons for applying in a bite-sized presentation very tricky indeed!

But we managed it. After doing so, we went out of the meeting room with a number of support people to await the Presbytery's verdict. Naturally, we were slightly apprehensive, and very grateful for the presence of the support people by whom we were accompanied. And then we were called back - feeling, I have to admit, slightly like prisoners being called back to court to hear the verdict! - and were informed that the Presbytery was very enthusiastically affirming and supporting all the applications.

A break for supper was called. All the applicants were immediately flooded by the rest of the people present at the meeting with their warm congratulations and expressions of support. It was wonderfully affirming and heartening to be the subject of such generosity and kindness, especially given the nerves that had accompanied the process. Needless to say, we went away feeling both slightly exhausted and on quite a high!

So, we have successfully negotiated the congregational and Presbytery phases of the application process - we now have to prepare for the Selection Conference in September. I am sure this will be an equally nerve-racking event - although we were glad to hear from one of the candidates present at the meeting last night that she quite enjoyed the conference! - but I am sure with a little help from our friends, and a little grace, we will have as enriching and positive an experience as we did last night.

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4: 6-7)

Me Explained Finally (Sort Of)

2007-07-04T15:02:00.000+10:00

And now, just to make the whole picture complete....

You Are a Licorice Jelly Bean

You are an acquired taste. The less people fight your strange ways, the more they like them.

What Flavor Jelly Bean Are You?

There you go - wasn't that just fascinating?

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: An egotist is a person of low taste, more interested in themself than in me. (Ambrose Bierce)

Me Explained Once More (Sort Of)

2007-07-04T14:51:00.000+10:00

I think this one was a little closer to the truth....

You Are an Old Soul

You are an experienced soul who appreciates tradition.
Mellow and wise, you like to be with others but also to be alone.
Down to earth, you are sensible and impatient.
A creature of habit, it takes you a while to warm up to new people.

You hate injustice, and you're very protective of family and friends
A bit demanding, you expect proper behavior from others.
Extremely independent you don't mind living or being alone.
But when you find love, you tend to want marriage right away.

Souls you are most compatible with: Warrior Soul and Visionary Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Statistics are like bikinis: suggestive in what they reveal and vital in what they hide. (Aaron Levenstein)

Me Explained Again (Sort Of)

2007-07-04T12:48:00.000+10:00

As per the quiz below...not too sure about the outcomes for this one...would have thought I was a dark, mystrious espresso blend...

You Are an Irish Coffee

At your best, you are: wild, spontaneous, and outgoing

At your worst, you are: too extreme and reckless

You drink coffee when: you want to keep drinking booze

Your caffeine addiction level: low

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Coffee is something that, in England, tastes like a chemical experiment. (Agatha Christie)

Me Explained (Sort Of)

2007-07-04T12:15:00.000+10:00

I found this cute little quiz here and decided to risk it. Have to say I'm pretty chuffed with the result - I reckon they got me down pretty good!

You Are Somewhat Machiavellian

You're not going to mow over everyone to get ahead...
But you're also powerful enough to make things happen for yourself.
You understand how the world works, even when it's an ugly place.
You just don't get ugly yourself - unless you have to!

How Machiavellian Are You?

BTW, you should check out my Dearly Beloved's blog to see what kind of bra she is - and as for what kind I am...that's a secret!

Talk to you soon,

BB.

Quote for the Day: Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. (Samuel Butler)