I'm now officially not a teenager. This has not made me confront my own mortality but it has made me consider the "whatif" that my best years may be behind me.
My thoughts at the moment are with three people. A McDonalds worker with her own number plate. A girl who uses big words but not because she's pretentious, just because she likes the language. And a girl who represents to me the closest I've yet come to being happy, but who really, and I should eventually recognise this, isn't it.
People piss me off a lot. I get quite disillusioned with the world.
And then someone builds a difference engine out of Lego and I have no choice but to be happy again.
Fuckin' hell. Read about difference engines, there's a wikipedia link there. Read about the history of computation. Read about Rube-Goldberg machines. People are incredible and I love you all.
For the moment at least ;).
I played squash today for the first time since late 2003. It's also the most exercise I've done since late 2003. But it was invigorating! I enjoyed it greatly. We're going to play twice a week.
In other news a relatively tame post I made to the Asia Pacific Cities Summit youth online community was deleted. To quote the manager from Brisbane City Council who made the decision: "We have to be sensitive about posts that may offend delegates from other cultures, or might upset our managers, or might be too provocative or politically sensitive, or that are not relevant to the business of APCS07 - and unfortunately this particular post pushed the boundaries just a bit too much for this site." I think that is one of the funniest thing I have seen in weeks. But that's ok.
It's not ok for guys to just go and have a cry. I resent that. The gender equality debate isn't over and I doubt it ever will be, but there's no malism. Oh the irony of a name that literally means "badness". I'm not arguing that there needs to be a shift in the way men are treated in a number of areas - politics, pay and the like. But it is unfuckingdeniable that there is a social inequity which means that certain behaviours are unacceptable for men (I'm going to have to start calling myself a man soon; there are no twenty year old boys) but completely acceptable for women.
One such behaviour is crying. It's not ok for men to be weak. Fuck you all, maybe I'd be more sympathetic to feminism if I didn't (a) have no experience of gender discrimination; (b) have a poor knowledge of feminist theory (c) have no idea about the real world and (d) have to put up with everybody being uncomfortable every time I want to go off and have a cry. It just happens sometimes! Fucking get over it already! Not to mention the hair thing...
I had a panic attack today when I tried to go to the meeting I later described to my parents as "boring". I spent two and a half hours subsequently driving through Sandy Bay and sitting in shopping centres in Hobart desperately trying to avoid people. I stopped driving because I wanted art supplies (I wanted to draw - I saw three children walking along the street and I wanted to draw and I was so incredibly, insanely, unimaginably jealous of them) but of course all art shops assume that my raw creative talent (yes, that was a joke) only flows Monday - Fri 9-5 and Saturdays before 12.
Then I came home.
I saw that I'd made a difference. That didn't help, but it's nice to know that it's possible. Keep spouting aphorisms long enough and somebody will remember one of them.
I'm serious, spoilers, stay the hell away until you've read the book
And possibly also some fanfiction
So, my highlights?
There was the bit on page 81 where Ron uses the phrase "[i]n the name of Merlin's saggy left ..." - I think the appropriate synonym for testicle in this circumstance would be 'nut' personally, but I'm open to suggestion.
Then of course there's page 48, on which Hermione says "oh Harry, you look so much tastier than Crabbe or Goyle".
Overall I thought the book was good, if it started a little 'this is the last one so quick I have to use really nice writing and resolve all the sexual tension of the past seven years without destroying too much of the internet or drifting too far from the previous texts'.
Oh, and one other highlight. Me being right in every prediction I made. Specifically (and this is where the real SPOILER is): Snape, not evil; Harry, not dead. Michael: 2; Common Internet Belief: 0.
I've been browsing facebook recently - adding people to my list of friends. This poses a question - how well do you know someone before calling them a friend? Ben McKay has 215 friends as I type this. I have 62. My barrier has just been substantially reduced. I'll now facebook-friend anyone who has a name and face I recognise. So if I just know your name that's not enough, the same with just face. But if I know both - and preferably knew the match - then that's friendship as far as facebook is concerned.
That's really, really not what real friendship is. I'm still not sure what friendship proper is. At what point does someone go from acquaintance to friend? I used to think it was when you'd been to their house... but I have friends whose houses I've never been to. It's quite curious, as a whole.
Thoughts?
I often feel humiliated for doing things which are "adult" when I'm not. Like issuing press releases or trying to talk to a politician. Or applying for a job. I hate it. I just feel out of place, like I'm doing something I shouldn't be. Hence my long-standing aversion to it. Not to mention the fear of rejection thing.
Ok, so now a leaf from Annabel's book. A thought purge.
Biological purpose of humour? Ducks doing standup. Anne, Mack. Almost kissing. Being right. I didn't understand but now I do. Accidentally. I shouldn't though, she'd hate it. Placing on a pedestal v actually liking. The latter, please, please, please. ([it would be] the first time). But it'll never happen. Sitting in class is more intensely political than Senate seating. Can't talk. Nothing discussed. C'est fin. This is what "thoughts" was.
Sometimes I really wish I could draw. As I was driving today, through the rain, I saw a group of three middle-aged-to-old women sitting in a tiny area in front of a house, with two umbrellas, talking. It was wonderful. I wanted to draw. I couldn't - I can't. But it would've made for a great drawing, truly.
I am not being allowed to take a year off university per se. I'll be just doing the one subject this semester, therefore I will be doing criminal law. It had occurred to me earlier this afternoon that I wouldn't get to spend time with the people in law. Like law girl. Who I'll never meet anyway, but it's the principle, you know?
I have a note: "thoughts". I have no idea what that means.
Oh, and finally, if you want to keep reading this, email me on michael.cordover+blog@gmail.com. I'm going to be closing it down to make it private due to my running for council. You know how it is.
Thoughts.
There's a lot to say and I don't know where to start. This will end up being one of those things that never actually gets written about because there's too much. This entire Canberra trip.
There is one thing though. xkcd actually made me cry tonight because it was so beautiful. That happens occasionally. Check out alone and maybe you'll begin to understand me a bit more.
(embellished)
He's in bed. There's not much more he can do; he's been yawning and stretching. He definitely wants to be here. It's relatively comfortable too. No muscles needed at least. It's quiet. The only way he knows it's quiet is by the noises that stick out. The washing machine. The faint humm of... well, something electrical anyway. Every now and again the fridge deciding it's not quite cold enough. For the exposed limbs it is! One leg under covers, one out. It doesn't work like that of course - he now has one leg too cold and one too hot. But that's the only thing possible - an attempt to achieve balance. He's tired. His back aches. Not pain, an ache. Like the vertebrae know they should be somewhere else and aren't.
Curiously it's not really dark. The noises accentuate the silence but that fucking smoke detector just makes it light. How can you be expected to sleep with a light shining in your eyes? It's not possible. It's just a tiny little light though. And that would probably be ok; he can sleep in semi-lit environments. No, the real trouble is that every twelve seconds (or some equally stupid interval) there's a blink of the red light. Just to let him know he's protected. The smoke alarm is still there. Fire wouldn't wake him but that little red light will stop him from sleeping.
Time doesn't really move right now. If there were a clock he'd hear it tick but there isn't. There are just Moments. Each Moment starts with a thought: I'll never get to sleep. I'll be awake til morning. It lasts Forever - or at least it seems that way. After an insufferable eternity, a time of pure impatience, the Moment ends. A tick, maybe, of that non-existent clock, or a blink of the god-damned smoke detector or some other change in the environment. Another Moment begins.
"I'll never get to sleep if I keep thinking like this", he thinks. So he changes. He focuses on pretending to sleep. No more Moments. Now there's just heavy, slow breathing. Eyes are closed, ignoring the need to watch that bloody blinking. The ache is still there, but it's comforting now - it seems to squirm. He knows that in a little while it'll get used to the stillness and settle down as discomfort. Like a sat-upon leg or a fallen-asleep-on arm the discomfort will be somehow comforting. A reminder that everything is as it should be. His mind is empty now. Sleep should be spreading over him like light at dawn.
Shit.
Into the empty mind sidles a thought: boy this is taking a while. Fucking brain, just shut up for a bit. But isn't it interesting how thoughts just occur without impetus. And how you try to sleep and can't. I bet other people would love to hear about it - perhaps I should write this all down at let others know! I wonder how long this takes? How long has it been since this started? Since I dropped into bed.
He can't do it. Just a quick glance. Eyes screw up for a moment, the last protest of his brain. Then he rolls over, grabs his watch and has a look. Five minutes. Five stinking minutes? It's been at least an hour! More! I'll check my phone, maybe that has the right time. It's out of batteries.
At this point in reality he gets up and blogs. Because there's no way sleep will ever get a word in edgeways here. It's not that he won't give sleep a chance, it's that his mind is still active. All it's done today is make losing strategies for Age of Empires. But it can't provide dreams. It can't let him drift off to the clouds and give him thoughts of chases and murders, protections and loves, of all those imagined worlds that exist when you sleep. They're pretty complicated, and he often dreams things which are difficult ides. Not just that, the mind will develop concepts in detail - design and construction for the impossible machines, biology for the impossible beasts, reasoning for the impossible narratives. The Mind, rather. So having discharged his responsibility to show the rest of the world just how thoughtful he is, he goes to bed again. He knows he'll sleep at some stage. Everyone does. There's a time they stop thinking and sleep embraces them and there's nothing until groggy eyes and daylight sneaking under the curtain.
The mattress is soft. His sleeping bag has a strange smell - it should be aired tomorrow. I need a tissue. Why does the fucker need to blink?
He lies awake.
Just to add to the list of TV shows I like but probably shouldn't: Grey's Anatomy and (much more embarrassingly) Ugly Betty.
Oh come on, there's just a certain charm. Not to mention the whole losers-can-do-ok angle. It's worth watching.
No, really it's not.
I need to kiss someone on the roof of a car. That's been on my ToDo list since I watched Jeux d'enfants. Like, literally, on the list on the side of my computer. Despite it being there I am reliably informed that it's more uncomfortable than you'd think, and harder to get up there. I don't worry that I have friends who know that so much as I worry that I'm missing out on knowing that.
Oh, and despite everyone posting comments as anonymous it's surprisingly easy to tell who they are. Not just style, also who would think that in response, who would say what, all that sort of stuff. It amuses me to practice that.
The topic of this post is light bondage. Like, the sexual practice. It comes up because the bed I'm on has a metal frame which, it has occurred to me, could be used for handcuffing quite easily.
You're totally freaked out right now, you're like running for the door.
Let me explain.
I'm not into that stuff. But I understand it. I think it can be healthy. I am not aroused by the thought of handcuffs and all that stuff but... well, let me explain. I hold the belief - popular with some, unpopular with others - that sex is a "special" thing - a bond between to people. An expression of a feeling (this is traditionally called love but can, unlike the feeling most people associate with love, be transient; having sex with someone should involve, I feel, a strong attachment to them. This can fade but at the time it was still love). And this is where light bondage is relevant. Because it is about trust. Some people just get the arousal stuff from it, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the submissive side. In that position you are placing an absolute trust with another person. You are giving them complete and irrevocable control of your body. In one such scenario you're actually being chained up and the other person could do anything - anything - to you. That is true trust. And that's why most people aren't comfortable with it - because they don't get the arousal and they don't really truly trust their partner that much. To do so is pretty fucking hard. There aren't many - if any - people I would trust that much. Certainly those that come to mind for immediate consideration are part of my family.
I'm not sure what the point of this was. I just wanted to ramble about a fetish for a while. Next week, feet! I'm kidding, that's one I just don't get. Like, I don't mind feet, but there's nothing sexy there. Then again, I don't necessarily see being tied up as sexy, it's just... trusting. And that's why it's cool. I get that you'd want to show how much you trust someone. You'd let them do anything because you know they love you.
On a totally, totally unrelated point, once again Annabel's blog has said something I've often thought: "if i died it wouldn't matter, because i wouldn't really be dead". I tend to think like life is a computer game and I can just go back to a save point. Not all the time, but often enough to be worried by that. It's like I'm playing Deus Ex and I've only used quicksave, so I've only got one save point. And that was ages ago - like six missions - and I'm not sure I'm on the right track. I think I can make it through the game from my *current* position but I had more opportunities previously and I don't know that I've made the right decision. So just in case I want to keep the old save. And only when I get somewhere I know I want to be will I save again. Except that in life it's really hard to die so I just keep playing.
I think this post is perhaps the best demonstration yet that my mind is fucked up.