Deprecation is not the same as depreciation

Today's musings are proudly (but humbly) brought to you be self-deprecation (I wanted to insert a link there to the Stuff White People Like page on Self-Deprecating Humour, but it turns out that it's a chapter in the book but not on the website). I was talking to someone recently who didn't seem to be entirely across the concept, and so I figured it might be rarer than I'd imagined? It always surprises me when this happens, but it's not as rare as I always seem to expect (I'm a slow learner that way).

It turns out, there's a part of the population who just genuinely don't seem to know what to do with self-deprecation, much like many more of us persistently mishandle compliments. Seriously, I am so bad at handling compliments you guys. When someone says "I like your hat" I always go "it's great, isn't it?!" before realising that you're supposed to be self-deprecating about it, even if it legitimately is a great hat, and you didn't make it, so you can hardly be all "nahhh", since then you're actually milliner-deprecating rather than self-deprecating. But if someone is like "you have nice eyes I go "Nonsense, shut up" even though actually I'm super pleased, because the habit of self-deprecation is too strong.

Even more than compliments, though, I don't know what to do with people who don't understand how self-deprecation works, who seem to think that "self-depreciating" (with an extra i) is what it is. Like saying "oh man, I couldn't run 100m to save my life!" actually reduces your value in some way, or like it's a big meaningful difficulty you're worried about. You know the ones, you say to them "Your writing is so neat! My notes always look like they were scratched by a chicken who's recently had a stroke!" and instead of going "pfft, only my good writing is like this!" or "you don't fool me, your writing's not at all bad!" or "heh, it's my superpower! Neatest running-writing in the west!", they offer to give you tips to get better, or explain that yes, their writing is so neat that it once singly handedly saved a child from drowning, and you should see how good their watercolours and use of a pencil is! Their chiaroscuro shading has been known to reduce grown men to tears. In fact, they were the only 4 year old in the state to be awarded a fully legal pen-licence, years ahead of their time! (For the record, I never actually got my pen licence, I've been using biros illegally since the start of year 5, when it was assumed we'd all managed to master basic handwriting in year 4. I hope Mr. Goodlet never finds out).

I know this is in a sense my fault for putting people in a situation where, if they take me entirely at my word, they will look (possibly just to me?) like a socially inept twit, but I do think that in general, this is something with which, critically low caffeine levels notwithstanding, you should be able to cope, unless you actually are a socially inept twit? It's not like it's reasonable for me to totally judge people on this (so I don't, many of my friends and acquaintances have their aspergesque days), but equally, it's not like this sort of thing should be as challenging as it apparently is.

I get particularly annoyed when people drop the ball on this and I know it's my own fault really. Meeting someone for the first time, or talking so someone you've seen around but never really spoken to, and who therefore doesn't know much about you is not, I should know by now, a good time to say things which might be misleading if misinterpreted. But my goodness. It drives me so up the wall when I tell an anecdote about the one time I stuffed up something I consider myself to be generally pretty good at (like the time I accidentally made the world's worst lasagne despite being a pretty fair cook generally, or any one of the numerous times I've totally failed to remember a crucial word despite generally being very chatty, for instance) and the person I'm talking to makes it clear that they now genuinely believe I can't cook a meal to save my life, or string a sentence together in company due to crippling shyness. I want to believe that the reason that this irks me so much is that I know it's really my own fault, so I get annoyed with myself, but I fear that maybe vanity is at work here, and maybe it just bugs me when people try to console me for being bad about something I'm actually smug about. I hope it isn't that, but I guess none of us is perfect, and all of us (me especially, perhaps), are a bit inclined to show off. I'm certainly guiltily aware that I do that more than I ought, which is unfair because I find it so infuriating in others.

This is particularly unfair of me in that sometimes I'm actually trying to mention (but make light of, so that the tone of voice etc is probably identical to the untrained ear) something that I actually am worried about being not very good at. I can see why "ha, I once burned a pudding so thoroughly that we had to have the curtains professionally cleaned after a fortnight of the smoky smell refusing to dissipate" and "gosh, I'm so bad at respiratory histories that I genuinely fear that I'll either fail the Long Case Exam or fluke it and then accidentally kill a patient through incompetence!" might seem like the same sort of thing, to someone who wasn't trained in the finer points of My Personal Conversational Peccadilloes. And that probably means I ought to do something about it (and also revise before my long case exam), but, much like me coming to a completely detailed understanding of the management pulmonary telangiectasia, it's not all that likely to happen.

Also, this makes me very bad at job interviews and presumably internet dating, and any other situation where you need to "sell yourself". I just have no idea how to say "I type pretty well" without feeling like I sound like a dick.

Worst of all (or reassuringly, depending on how you look at it?), I was talking to someone about this sort of thing today, someone who actually does a fair amount of job-interviewing, and he said that he's so used to self-deprecating-ness that when someone says something like "I have exceptional skills..." he's prejudiced against them, and less likely to hire because that does indeed sound like the statement of a complete dick. The problem with this is that I've always been taught that the solution to "I'm not sure how to sell myself" is "Don't think about it, just do it, just say 'I'm amazing' because how else will they know how amazingly right for this job you actually are?" so now I don't know what to think.

I'm totally sure I had another (doubtless excellent) point I was going to make about this, in another paragraph, but it's completely fallen out of my brain, possibly as a self-defence manouvre on the part of my subconscious, which knows I could happily blog for hours, but that I have to get up in less than 6 hours.

Hopefully whatever it was will come to me in the night, and I can tell you tomorrow, although if it does, the odds are good that it will turn out to have been oversold today, and may be an anti-climax (also I might never remember it!) so maybe don't hold your breath for that scintillating missing paragraph too vigourously?

Katoomba Winter Festival

Today has been a long day. It's my littlest sister Alex's birthday, and she had decreed that we were all going up to the Katoomba Winter Festival. About a week ago this decree was modified to "I'm going with my friends and you guys can come too if you like" which is the sort of thing where the person clearly has a preference for whether you go or not, but isn't going to tell you which. It always seems like a minefield, that sort of thing, since then you might be all up in their space when they'd actually rather just go out with their friends, or alternately it might be that if you don't go, it makes it seem like you don't really like them and want to see them etc. I know that sounds mad to you, reading it there, in the comfort of your own space, but I assure you that one of those if invariably the case, when it comes to (my?) sisters (possibly all sisters?). Sometimes, if you're very unlucky, the person who's organising is themselves ambivalent, so you can actually sometimes be wrong in both directions at once, which is something.

Anyway, my folks and I figured that it was best to err on the side of caution, and also thought it might be fun, so we all climbed into the car and wound our way up to Katoomba (which was 2 hours by car from Penrith, and allegedly between 4 and 5 hours by public transport from Coogee), dressed in all the warmest clothes we could layer onto ourselves whilst still retaining the ability to bend our arms and legs. (Also I made cheddar and apple scones for in-car breakfast, which was pretty great, although not an effective way of saving time in the morning. It always feels like somehow eating en route must be faster than breakfasting at home, no matter what, but given that making the scones took a good hour and a half longer than wolfing a bowl of muesli would have, it wasn't what you'd call hyper-efficient).

My sisters usually (and I say usually, because we end up going most years, because Alex is allowed to pick what we do on the weekend closest to her birthday, but since her birthday is just about exactly on the solstice, we seem to end up in Katoomba every year, even though it seems pretty much exactly the same to me every time) dress up in corsetry etc for this event. I did too, the first year, but first of all, all my costumery is still in storage at the moment during the Great Maroubra Renovation, secondly, the predicted maximum temperature in Katoomba today was between 0 & 8 degrees minus windchill, thirdly, I've reached that comfortable point in my life where I'll happily dress up if I feel like it, but I really don't feel any need to do so just to impress a bunch of chilled hippies and miscellaneous strangers etc. (And fourthly, seriously, it's cold up there. This is the same as the second point, but bears repeating. Plus, proper costumery involves high or otherwise interesting footwear, and wearing anything but sneakers or walking boots on a day when you'll be standing and walking about for hours on end is for suckers and people with more patience than me, and usually both at once).

There were lots of strange outfits mingling in among the otherwise fairly normally-Newtownish looking folk. Ladies in dinosaur suits, a dude dressed as Jack Sparrow, a red Power Ranger, and a good few middle aged folk in gowns and wigs looking sort of diffusely pagan god/goddess-y. And a higher than ordinary number of people in capes and cloaks or the long-unwashed-hair-and-long-leather-coat combination which is the infallible mark of a dude who's still bitter about people having been mean to him in highschool, and who genuinely thinks that George Lucas is a great storyteller, and has Opinions about dice.

It's a weird thing, the Winter festival. I'm never quite sure what it's trying to be, and I'm not at all convinced that the festival is, either. It's also very very crowded and jostly in the middle of the day. I don't know why, but it's just about the only event where I get that panicky trapped agoraphobic feeling of being absoltely unable to escape the jostlings of strangers. It's weird, I don't know why it should be so, since I have no problem with most crowded jostly places (although I think that live music venues are often a bit like that, and not as pleasant as they ought to be for how expensive they always seem to be). Maybe it's the fact that the crowd of jostlers on days like today is so much more self-absorbed than jostling crowds usually are? Like I said, there's a lot of that defiant sort of young man who tend to be faintly aggressive in that super defensive way familiar to anyone who's ever had to deal with larger groups of undergraduate geeks, and I think a lot of those folk tend to wear being-a-bit-inconsiderate as a badge of honour and a point of pride, having reacted too hard against that vague feeling of maybe being a bit of a doormat which niggles occasionally at everyone who isn't a complete saint or sociopath?

Anyway, for some reason, the Winter festival crowd always seems more than usually tiring, to me. I suppose this could also be because I often end up trying to navigate it with my family. I love my family dearly, but the only one of the 4 of them who is remotely easy to navigate a crowd with is my Mum. My Dad's progress through a crowd is sort of reminiscent of that scene in Beauty and the Beast where Belle walks through the village absorbed in a book, personally undisturbed, but somehow leaving something of a wake of chaos which makes her impossible to follow. My sisters are not quite so dramatically like this, but I'm confident that by the time they've had as many decades as he's had to perfect their technique, they'll be even more impressively difficult to follow through a crowd than he is.

Anyway, this evening, my uncle and aunt (Dad's brother and sister-in-law) came over for dinner, which was lovely (do I say 'lovely' too much? I feel like possibly I do). They're both really nice. My uncle is funny and fun in a jolly and avuncular way which is a lot like my Dad, and my aunt is quieter (I think maybe she's a bit shy in loud groups like my immediate family?) but also really interesting and nice to talk to. We had one of those evenings where everyone sort of hangs out in the kitchen for the whole preparation-eating-cleaning process and chats and jokes and laughs and holds forth about the state of the country and the global economy, the best route to drive tomorrow, and the difficulty of living in a world where whitegoods which break can never seem to be replaced by new ones which actually fit the space.

Also, for dessert, I made the first strudel I've ever made, and it went pretty well, I'd say, even though I forgot to make sure no-one had decided to freeze the filo pastry, which was nearly a disaster.

Sorry for this journal-style post. I went and saw "Snow White and The Huntsman" yesterday, and I might blog about that tomorrow, since I kept seeing things in it which I wanted to write about (not to say that it's deep and thought-provoking, more to say that there were strange inconsistencies and bits which seemed practically verbatim from other movies) while we watched it.

If there's anything in particular, by the way, you'd really like me to blog about, totally say so in the comments, and maybe I will! I mean I probably will. I'm so close to the bottom of the barrel here that I'm rounding off a post which is essentially "here is exactly what I did today with the enthralling enticement of maybe talking about a movie with Kristen Stewart in it. Obviously I could use help.

The Mystery Box contains a ringing phone: procrastination is calling!

I'm having some difficulty typing this because there is a cockatiel trying to snuggle into my thumbs, which is making is all a bit difficult. Also there are collies trying to lure me into patting them by putting their heads on my knee and looking soulful, which is frankly a bit melodramatic of them. It's pretty cute though. Just a heads up in case this post is full of typos.

I'm beginnning to think that this 'blog post every day' thing is not a very good idea, not because it's a chore to write (it's not: it doesn't take long, and as you can tell, it's not like there's what you'd call a lot of mental strain involved), but because it seems silly to insist on writing for its own sake without anything in particular that needs saying. I know that writers are always advising people to write all the time, write anything, just as... practice I guess? But in practice, it seems sort of self indulgent to suggest that you guys have nothing better to do than to read, every day, crap that I've written without any plan or anything much at all.

Like, you know how sometimes, you're talking to someone, and the phone rings in the middle of the conversation, and somehow it seems really urgent, like you really ought to answer it, even though you're already having a conversation, even though phone calls to say "oh, sorry, I was trying to call Anna and I've accidentally rung Angie! Ha, sorry for bothering you! How are you going, anyway?" happen much more commonly than phone calls to say "you have half an hour to do this urgent thing which is super important"? Even though the importance and quality of the conversation you're having is a known quantity, and the phone call could be anything, it's sort of like that thing in game shows where the host says to some sucker contestant "Do you want to take the $1000 and the car, or do you want to take.... The Mystery Box!?" and the studio audience is always like "Choose the Mystery Box!". This is sort of what I worry these blog posts might in some way imply. That the things I write at random (here represented by a ringing phone or a mysterious box containing either a slightly better car or a stale Scotch Finger biscuit) are in some way worth reading when you are presumably already engaged in leading meaningful lives (here represented by a conversation over coffee or a hatchback and a cheque) in which you do things of known value, like getting your work done, or spending quality time with your hypothetical kids, or reading the entire archive of ASofterWorld comics or whatever.

Does that make sense? Why suddenly saying "I will write every day and I expect you to read it, or at least consider doing so" might seem hugely self-indulgent?

That being said, I totally plan to keep doing it until the end of the month, because I may be a self-absorbed chatterbox, but damned if I'm not a stubborn one.

Grist to the mill

Yesterday, I wrote a post about how wacky it seemed to me to deliberately choose not to learn to cook, (or anything else). A couple of pals sort of scuffed one shoe sheepishly in the metaphorical dirt and admitted that they couldn't cook much, and that they reckoned that they were pretty helpless without their wives. So first up, better clarify: it's cool not to be real good at cooking (or anything else), and the division of labour in your household is totally up to you and your partner and none of anyone else's business. What I'd say was weird is if you've already decided on that division of labour before you've even met your partner or found out if they have any opinions on the matter, and what they do and don't like to do.

Plus, I resent any time someone decides that they shouldn't learn to do any task for themselves because some sucker will do it for them. That's across the line between "co-operative, mutually respectful and grateful" to "disrespectful and parasitic". So similarly, it's cool if you can't drive, but don't be all "Why should I ever learn? You don't need to, nowadays, it's useless! Can I have a lift?". (I don't object to giving people lifts, I object the people asking for a lift and calling me a schmuck for giving them one).

Thrillingly, though, either this wasn't clear to at least one person, or it was but they were still super annoyed by my metaphorically suggesting that they learn to make a sandwich. This poor hungry soul (not the guy who I had the conversation with yesterday, since both of us know where the other stands and are happy for the other to disagree so long as they don't try to make us change. Plus I checked with him before I blogged, and after) was helpful enough to leave a comment, which I haven't deleted or moderated because it's sort of bizarre and thus amusing:

"What a steaming pile of feminist bullshit" - Anonymous

My first response, of course, is a bemused "haha what" and my second is essentially a mildly scornful delight. Like I said on Tuesday, it's hard to come up with things to write about every single day, so this sort of thing is all grist to the mill, my friend.

It's funny, rather than distressing, since it could only be distressing if it were news to me that foolish trolls like this stalk the hallowed halls of the entire internet, complaining and attacking any ladies who dare to be out of the kitchen. It's pretty much like that time that woman screamed at me that I was a "dumb slut" for losing my carpark exit ticket. I know a lot of women cop that sort of crap all the time, and I feel sort of like King George being glad to have been bombed during the second world war; having been attacked for being part of a group (in this instance: females), I feel like I'm more a member of the group. Does that make sense? I live a pretty priveleged existence when it comes to this sort of crap, so it's good to be reminded what I'm missing out on.

For all it's not really surprising, what with the whole Sarkeesian thing and what have you, it's pretty weird that there are still people in the world who think that the word "feminist" is a term of abuse, or has negative connotations. I mean, Wisconsin revoked Equal Pay For Equal Work this year, something horrifying seems to be happening generally, obviously gender equality does not yet exist, so feminism's work isn't done. It seems like saying "you... you scientist you!" or something. How dare you seek to learn more about the world? How dare you hope for there to be equality one day? If it's not a postive term, it's surely just neutral.

I think maybe there are a lot of wildly misinformed wusses who confuse feminism with misandry? Dudes, feminism is not for bringing men down, it's for lifting everyone up to the same level. Obviously there are parts of life where men are discriminated against, and although there definitely are people who think you can't be sexist against men, or that discriminating against men on the basis of their gender either doesn't happen or doesn't matter, I don't happen to agree with that. I would pretty much like it if the contents of your underpants never lead anyone to be less likely to be hired, or more likely to be dismissed in any area of like, or to be not allowed to wear certain clothing, or to feel that the activities which are perceived as gendered are looked down upon as either brutish or twee. I just... I actually don't understand where people are having trouble with that.

Does our Anonymous interlocuter worry that if ladies stop doing all the housework and get jobs, he won't be employed? Or is he genuinely just annoyed that people aren't jumping up and own to bring him a sandwich? Because surely the corollary of "women stay home and cook, men earn money" is "men have to do all the breadwinning, and never get to enjoy household tasks"? I seriously don't see where anyone wins in that scenario, if it's complusory. If that's the compromise your family has worked out, fine, but I'd feel pretty ripped off if there was a social expectation that I'd be the only one doing paid work, just because of which chromosomes I had. I'm glad to live in a priveleged time where I have a lot of choices and can be my own individual, but frankly, when my alarm goes off at 5am, I can see a lot of appeal in staying home for the day and just making the place nice, and not commuting ever again. In seeking to bring about change, I've always assumed that the feminist movement, both male and female, was trying to make life better and fairer for everybody. Even tossers whose main goal in the day is to troll blogs anonymously.

It's a strange thing, this 'anonymity', since it's not necessarily hard to narrow down the list of suspects. Firstly, I can rule out just about everyone who I know in real life, since I know their opinions about these sorts of thing, mostly. Secondly, the comment appeared within a few hours of posting, and frankly my blog doesn't get that much traffic, so the odds are good that it's someone who either has my blog as an RSS or "follows" it. And there's only one guy who I've ever given the address of this blog to before I realised that he was the sort of person who really thought that feminism was a massive conspiracy.

It was years ago, when I had an okcupid profile (don't judge me), in that short window of time between the website introducing pop-up chat and me figuring out how to mute the damn chat widget so I was invisible all the time (I hate online chat with people who I don't know even more than online chat with people who I do know but who come online just as I realise I have to go to bed so I look super rude and shifty when we have a conversation that goes "Hi!" / "Hi! Actually I have to go now, bye!" and spend the next interminable period of time worrying that it looks like I'm just trying to avoid them). Anyway, it was pretty strange, this guy was all "I read your profile, and I thought you might be interested in this sort of think {link}, it's about men's rights." And I was all "oh, hi, random stranger, what gives you that idea?" (Because seriously what gave him that idea? My profile, as I recall, was mainly occupied with me making fun of the question "what 6 things could you not live without?") Only later did I get a chance to click the link (and I wish I could find it to show you, Dear Reader, really I do) and realised it was a particularly wacky conspiracy style forum for dudes complaining about how everyone was mean to them. All I remember specifically was this bit where the main article-writing dude was carrying on about some bit of classical mythology (Phaedra? Antigone? Harpies? Can't remember) and saying how savage and awful they were and said "how like a modern feminist!". It was puerile in all the available senses.

Do you reckon these people have never heard the aphorism that posting your opinion as an aggressive anonymous comment is a great way to show that you know you ought to be ashamed of holding that opinion, that your opinion doesn't matter? That not only is no-one else likely to agree, but that even you don't want to be seen or associated with that viewpoint? It mystifies me that you would even bother, given that the scorn for that sort of silliness is so universal.

Anyway, this is probably enough carry-on from me about one single dimwit comment, but frankly, I just sort of feel like you know you've really made it onto the internet when you can hum this great song to yourself and totally feel justified, because someone really did say something that dumb and pointless to you.

"Why should I learn to cook?"

So, talking to a dude in my class today, it became apparent that he can't cook anything. I mean, I sort of assume that he knows how to pour cereal into a bowl and toast a slice of bread, but frankly I'm not certain of that, since I got the impression that he'd be working from first principles and reverse engineering if he had to make a sandwich. (I mean, he definitely said that his Mum makes his lunch for him, so I'm going to go ahead and assume the worst here).

We all expressed some disbelief that you could consider yourself a functional adult, in your final year of a postgraduate degree, but also be in a position to starve to death of left alone for a fortnight in a kitchen containing only uncooked rice and raw meat, for instance. It turns out that he's not worried because his Mum will continue to look after him until he gets married, then his wife will. He's sure any potential fiancee whose cooking isn't up to scratch will be trained by his Mum, and notes that her cooking is great, since he can tell her what he wants, and she'll make whatever it is.

We were all a bit gobsmacked, because frankly, last time I came across opinions like that being openly expressed was an episode of Mad Men, and even then, surely there's the metatextual implication that that's less than ideal. When we were all like "what if you have kids but then your mum and wife and so on are all killed in a bus-crash or miscellaneous tragedy?" but no worries, because there is apparently no conceivable scenario in which there would not be some sister-in-law or female cousin or aunt on whom to depend for basic sustenance and complete childcare services. History did not relate what these ladies would think about suddenly having to do all the chores and kid-raising for all their surviving male relatives whilst also mourning for all the female relatives, but apparently they're likely to be unfazed? Presumably they'll be too busy making sandwiches and bathing distant cousins to have a moment to worry their pretty little heads about that sort of thing?

I guess making fun of the breathtaking sexism here is so easy and so obvious that it counts as a cheap shot, a cheap shot at a large fish in a small barrel, because, of course, and I say this as a woman and also as any other adult: fuck that noise. I mean, it's just so outrageous that there's really no point trying to argue against it; anyone reading this can either already see what's crazy about this "women's place is in the kitchen, men's place is at the dinner table waiting for his damn sandwich" approach, or else there's something so determinedly blinkered that nothing I'm going to say will change their mind. It's a bit like someone who just genuinely believes that eating green vegetables is wrong. You can show them all the evidence you like, you can offer all the salads you can think of, dude's still going to be like "No. I know what I know and the Lord scorns broccoli, yea and peas also" or whatever. There's none so blind as them that will not see and so on. Unless perhaps it's those who so persistenly refuse to see that in the end some woman, tired of all their shit, stabs them in the eye with a fork. I mean, they'd be even blinder then, but you just know they'd be all "See? Too flightly even to cope with the rigours of my intellectual superiority!" or whatever.

Anyway, I appeased my feelings by explaining that I didn't think that was likely to work out well in the long term, declaring & clarifying that I would never ever marry him (he pretended he was ok with this, or even relieved, but he's not fooling anyone), and proofreading his essay with a red pen and really going to town on his sentence structure. You can be as convinced as you like that a woman's place is in the home, but it's got to be hard to maintain your equanimity in the face of that many altered commas and crossed out instances of suprlus appearances of the word "whereas".

The thing that's left, then, is this: why would you do that to yourself? If we ignore the sexism, how do you get past the creepy Freudian-ness of "it'll be hard for my wife to live up to and compete with my mother"? That's the most Oedipal thing I reckon I've ever heard an actual person say.

Plus: cooking is often quite pleasant, I personally enjoy it a bunch (and not because of the flutterings of my ovaries, I'm pretty sure). I mean, you get to make something, and you can make it as functional or as artistic as you like, playing about with the aesthetic appeal to like a good 4 to 5 of the senses (although I grant you that I rarely pay that much attention to the way a cake sounds, the crunch of salad or crust or creme brulee is definitely a pan-sensory wossname), and then you get to eat it! Or share it with other people who trade you friendship for cookies, if necessary! It makes you happy and it makes them happy! You get to do something enjoyable which makes other people happy, and stops you being hungry! I mean, what's not to enjoy?

It seems to me to be equivalent to, like, deciding that music is redheads' work, and that therefore I would listen to the radio or CDs, but never buy them myself, and never ever sing along or hum or play an instrument of any kind. It just sounds like a weirdly barren way to live (and I mean barren in the desert-with-tumbleweeds sense, not the what-would-Gillard-know-about-families-she's-deliberately-barren-and-also-I'm-an-asshat sense).

Even leaving that aside, since I know that baking teacakes isn't everyone's cup of tea, doesn't it seem weird to you to deliberately avoid gaining an entire genre of life skill? What if something unexpected happens and you have to fend for yourself? (I asked him this, and he said that was what McDonald's was for. I kind of meant a larger scale emergency as well, but it didn't seem worth the effort to clarify). I mean, I have an NRMA membership, but I still made damn sure I know how to change a tyre, and check and change the oil levels, and jump-start a flat-battery and so on. Because who wants to be unable to do things for yourself, forced to rely on the convenience and amenability of other people for everything?

Plus, you never know what life will throw at you! What if there's some kind of apocalypse? You'll need to know how to start a fire, how to shoot a bow and arrow, and how to skin a rabbit! You never know when you'll be transported back in time and a smattering of latin will come in useful. You might unexpectedly need to ride a horse, or play tennis, or ski, or swim, or give first aid, or call for help in Morse code, or ride pillion on a motorcycle, or tell a German that you have a headache and also that that is your hamburger! You might need to hire a car and find that only manual ones are available, or you might ever talk to a person who has a different cultural background to yourself, so you could need to know what red packets are, or the difference between haram and halal, or which seat to sit in on a train in Japan! I'm not claiming to know all the things I want to know, or might ever need to know, but at least I'm sort of slightly prepared for some very specific emergencies, and I like to think that I use my internet procrastination time wisely, because I never know when I might need to unexpectedly infiltrate some kind of cult, and knowing that Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in blood transfusions and Pentecostal Christians do believe in glossolalia might just save me from discovery.

To be honest, this is one of the things that I'm really doing Medicine for. It's not because I have a burning desire to know which electrolytes are filtered by which kidney tubule, it's so if I'm ever on a plane and someone says "Oh my god she's giving birth! Is there a doctor on board?" I can help, or if I'm at the mall and some kid gets shot, I know what to do. Embarrassingly, this is also one of the main reasons I don't have any tattoos; what if I become a spy, or a fugitive from justice/injustice? I need to be able to disguise any potentially identifying marks!

This may sound stupid, but I assure you, after talking for 45 minutes to someone who's condescending to you about how their future wife will look after them and explaining how doing things is for suckers, the possibility that I might have to go on the run to escape a charge of aggravated assault occasioning grievous bodily harm and/or manslaughter (no jury in the country would call it murder, surely) didn't seem at all implausible.

Last minute

Another day, another 11:30 realisation that I said I would write something this evening and forgotten, even though all I actually did with the evening was edit my essay (which I will totally print and hand in tomorrow, this I solemnly swear) and make Char Siu Pork for the first time. And that was using a pre-made marinade out of a jar, so hardly labour intensive.

I guess the problem is having nothing much of interest to say. You can only get good and outraged (which is of course the easiest way to write or talk fluently, which is why breakfast radio hosts always seem, after a few years, to get some sort of chat-fatigue and only complain any more. Also their job requires them to get up at 4am every day and presumably be in bed by like 8 eery night) so many times in a week before you start to sound like you take everything just a little too seriously. Plus, you run out of scandalous things to go "and another thing!" about before you know it. All you can do is either risk offending people, repeat yourself, or wait for something new to happen.

I promise to do better tomorrow, honest!

Look, I know it sounds incredibly boring, but I was excited, all right?

So, I got almost all of my essay written this evening, on a considerably less inflammatory topic than I'd discussed the other day, as it happens, with the result that I very nearly forgot to write today's token post! This would hardly be a drama, but I'm stubborn that way.

Having managed to get the essay to the point where I'll definitely be able to fix it up tomorrow, and very possibly hand it in too, or at the very latest Wednesday, is pretty great (if only because it means I get to sleep in several hours longer on Friday, when it's due in the morning), but not as exciting as my possibly embarrassing triumph this evening.

You know sometimes someone tells you about a movie or a book and for whatever reason, you decide to look into it, but then you can't find it anywhere? Is this something that even happens to you guys? I mean, I guess it's possible that it's just me who takes sudden fancies like this and then gets all determined. (I'd make a good fictional detective, I reckon. Probably a crap real detective, but deinitely a good early 20th century fictional detective. Another missed calling!)

Anyway, decades ago, my mother mentioned in passing having long ago seen an old black and white movie where a group of people try to convince a girl she's crazy, by doing things like empty out her coffee cup when she's not looking, then claiming, when she said "where's my coffee?" that they'd all watched her drink it, didn't she remember? For some reaon, I decided to figure out what the movie was. I mean, very probably she said "I don't know what the film was" and I came over all smug teenager and was all "pfft, I'll just look it up on Yahoo [it may even have been so long ago that I said AltaVista], you old people are so bad at this newfangled internet, give me like 2 minutes, bam". Anyway, I couldn't find it, despite hunting intermittently for years. Ages later I came across the movie Gasslight and rather dismissively decided that that must've been what she meant, since the concept of trying to convince someone that they're mad is popularly attributed to that film (hence the term 'gaslighting'), although annoyingly there was no cup-emptying scene.

Frankly, I'm a bit OCD, and this always bugged me, but with that undergraduate contempt for one's elders which we've all been guilty of, and all resented in people younger than us, I just assumed that she had for some reason radically misremembered it.

But then, today, out of nowhere (well, technically in response to me saying that since he was obviously asleep I was going to drink his tea and tell him he'd done it himself), my Dad, half-asleep, referred to a scene where people do that to try to convince Jean Simmons she's mad.

Look, I know this sounds super dull, but it was really like one of those scenes in a whodunnit where the detective is all "what did you say Hastings? Of course!" and rushes out to board a train and solve the crime or whatever.

Anyway, long story very slightly shorter, I finally managed to find it. Turns out it's a movie called "So Long At The Fair". Infuriatingly, it's not available to download (perfectly legally or "perfectly legally") nor is available in JB Hi-Fi, who are essentially the only DVD retailers left in the country. But! Not only is in available on Amazon, but also the Amazon store who have it also sell a bunch of other old movies I haven't been able to find anywhere! Most notably Bachelor Mother, which I've been trying to get on DVD (only to be assured by the internet that it's never been released on anything but VHS) for maybe 7 years. It's a pretty great film, but I'll level with you, it's possible that part of this affection I have is based on the fact that the entire film has been playing hard to get this whole time.

Anyway, I also got a bunch of super cheap Margaret Lockwood, Ginger Rogers and early Hitchcock movies, as well as a CD I've been trying to get for my Grandmother for a year and a half. All in all, it's been a disproportionately satisfying sort of evening!

Maybe guns do kill people, but so does almost everything else

I'll be honest, I wrote that whole post yesterday about ethics and birth and what have you, and having just finally managed to upload it now, it does seem a bit pointless to write a whole new post for today, but I promised I'd write something every day this month, no matter how small, so here it is.

Actually, I was thinking earlier today about maybe writing something about the fact that people of both sexes feel done down because of their gender, and there's no denying that everyone's a bit right. Chicks get stiffed with regard to wages and respect and all that sort of stuff, but dudes lack a whole lot of our personal freedoms, which must suck. A girl can like girly things (sewing, baking, pretty things!) and you're not allowed to object, or she can say "I'm a tomboy" and like exclusively things which are seem as blokey (chainsaws, football, beer!) and barely raise an eyebrow, or any combination of the 2, but a guy can like dude stuff and people will call him a bogan dumbarse (fast cars, guns and sports are for yobs) or like girly stuff and have everyone laugh at him and assume he's gay (ever seen a dude just wearing something lovely and interesting and different because he wants to feel pretty, without having to go the whole drag queen hog?). That definitely sucks. I'm not saying it sucks more than womanhood does, but I reckon that it sucks a lot of the time no matter what you've got in your pants, and I really think that's a bit rubbish.

Speaking of which, for the record, I think that whole scandal because some of the Olympic swimming team posed perfectly legally and mildly amusingly with some guns was ridiculous and outrageous. I mean, seriously, what the hell? Shooting is an Olympic sport to suggest that it's simultaneously a font of criminal depravity it clearly hypocritical and stupid.

Seriously, what? I'm not saying guns can't be dagerous or misused, but cars kill more people in an average long weekend than have been killed by guns in the last 5 years, in Australia. Scandal! Ian Thorpe photographed in Holden Dealership! Thank heavens he's not representing our country! Heaven forbid any levity whatsoever should in any way creep into our national consciousness! No-one had better dare make any Zombie-Apocalpse preparedness jokes or pose like Charlie's Angels, those activities are also silly and involved guns at some level, and we can't have that!

Ehhh- ssay

I have an essay to write for uni this week (ideally this weekend) and it’s not difficult, it’s just outrageously fiddly, given that it’s only a pass/fail ethics essay on an Obstetric or Gynaecological thing we’ve seen during our term so far. I keep going “Right, now’s the time! Going to do this thing right now!” and then opening it, reading the guidelines and going “ugh… I seriously can’t be arsed with this”. (I mean, I will, but… ehhh…)

So! We need an “ethical dilemma” which we might plausibly have observed, for which 5 peer-reviewed references can be found. I wanted to write an essay on the ethics of midwives saying “you’re going really well, won’t be long now!” all the time to women who are pushing ineffectively, and in pain. I kind of feel like that’s unethical, inasmuch as if you’re in pain, and asking for help from a healthcare professional, the least they could do is say “I know you’re working really hard, but try doing it slightly differently and it will hurt less and work better.” When I say this, people tend to say “oh, but we want them to be supportive!” but I definitely think you can both help and be supportive. And if someone has a bunch of family members and only one qualified professional in the room, they pretty much have “unhelpful but optimistic” covered, and could really use actually meaningful assistance. A coach not a cheerleader, if you will. Especially since dragging the labour out is not terribly good for the baby, always.

So obviously I could easily write 800 to 1500 words about the ethics of that, no problem, but if you can find 5 scholarly references discussing that sort of thing you’re a better researcher than I.

I did manage to find a midwifery guideline from (I think?) the UK, which said that since one of the goals was to minimise interventions in birth, then we shouldn’t do things which increase the number of interventions. It listed some sensible things to do(you know, like letting women give birth in whatever damn posture and position they like, which we totally do these days), and some things we should avoid, such as checking that the baby is ok by listening to its heart rate or using what’s called a fetal heart rate trace or CTG, which is a sort of ultrasound thing they stick to the mother’s belly during riskier deliveries to make sure that the baby’s heart rate isn’t indicating that it’s in trouble. I just… I feel like I must be missing something. Right? Because to me, “Procedures that increase medical interventions to be avoided where possible e.g. continuous electronic fetal monitoring, epidural anaesthetic” inasmuch as a sentence that poorly constructed can convey anything, says “we are against interventions which are unnecessary [which is good] and therefore we shouldn’t do things which will cause us to intervene [wellll...] like check the baby and allow ourselves to find out that we need to do something[!!!]”. What? No! Fewer interventions is important because it is a step towards better wellbeing of mother & baby! It’s not an end in itself for which we should be sacrificing their wellbeing! Aaargh!

So maybe I can do an essay on whether it is ethical to perform or withhold CTG? I certainly feel like it wouldn’t be hard to find references saying that “if in doubt check” and “if the baby and mother need rescuing to save one or both of their lives then you can jolly well do it, and I don’t give a damn what your departmental target for 'natural' births is”, and obviously it wouldn’t be hard to hold forth about it to the tune of 1000 words. My only real concern is: is that even a dilemma? Like, it seems pretty obvious and clear-cut to me. I’m going to find it hard to present arguments against making sure the baby is ok in a non-invasive way, I’m thinking. Maybe if the birth was very hih risk and you needed to have the CTG on the whole time it would make it harder to have a water birth [which otherwise are totally do-able in the hospital Labour Ward, by the way]? I mean, if so, then there’s that. That would seriously be the first instance I’ve come across where “medicalization” meant that you couldn’t just give birth however you wanted in Hospital, if so. Can even I make a whole essay paragraph out of that? Implying that we should seriously weigh a lady’s right to aromatherapy and bath oils against the chance of her baby not surviving? I guess so?

Heh, maybe I should write an essay on the ethics of deciding you want to be listening to one particular song on really loud while you give birth, bringing that one 3 minute song on a CD, and then making the poor midwives listen to it on repeat for the whole 45 minutes you spend actively giving birth, because TV makes it look quicker? I guess that’s really more OH&S than ethics. The poor midwife spent the rest of the week with that song as an earworm. (I’d love to tell you which song it was, but by Thursday, when I was there, mentioning the name of the song was basically outlawed to prevent it getting stuck in everyone’s heads again).

The other thing of which is an option would be the lactation consultant who lectured us. She pretty much said that anyone who doesn’t breastfeed is a bad mother; that dads shouldn’t get to hug their babies because after conception, they’d done their bit and they should butt out of the sacred mother-child dyad and go, like, hunt or bread-win or something; that mothers should sleep with their babies despite the SIDS risk because if you aren’t going to breastfeed and everything properly then what’s even the point of your having a baby at all, it might as well get accidentally smothered; and that anyone experiencing problems with breastfeeding (low milk supply, baby bites chunk out of nipple [there was a picture of that, oh god], cracked nipples, mastitis etc.) only happen if you don’t breastfeed properly and are a bad mother, etc. Which was particularly awful because the lactation consultant / midwife / nurse (lady’s got herself all the qualifications remotely available, as you see) with whom I’ve worked in the past is eminently sane, and was all “what no” when I sanity-checked our lecture notes with her. So obviously I’m not suggesting that this whole bunch of people is inept, just that it seems like the only ones interested in giving us lectures are the ones with bees in their bonnet and occasionally also a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock, if you will.

I’m not sure that’d be a real essay topic either, though, especially since I have no idea who marks these. Plus; references? Although I bet there are papers weighing the benefits of breastfeeding with the harms of stigmatising bottle-feeding. Hmmm… maybe it’d be safer to fall back on old faithful well-researched things like pregnant women who smoke or take drugs, or indeed people who go up to strangers and abuse them for smoking while pregnant or with pram?

I wish we were allowed to submit ethics blog posts, rather than structured essays in which “Identification of Theme Objectives Addressed” is supposed to be its own subheading. That’s just embarrassing. I should just give them today’s post and say “see? I totally thought about it!”

"Someone with cancer just wants one thing"

You know those statuses people post on facebook, or email or whatever, which say things like "We all wish to have a new car...new phone...to lose weight...a person who has cancer only wants one thing...to fight their cancer...I know that 97% of you guys won't put this on your wall...but 3% of my friends will...Put it on your wall in honor of someone who died from cancer or who's fighting…"? Sure you do, you've seen them, or things like them, and to them I say: Bollocks.

So first of all, and this goes for ALL that sort of emoticionally manipulative stuff; shut up. Don't try to sucker people with a picture of an injured kid and "Like if she's BEAUTIFUL" or "Like if you love people" or "Like if you hate racism" (and I guess presumably that there must somewhere be ones which say "Like if racism seems like a sensible thing to you" or "Like if you think immigrants are ruining Australia and should be sent home in leaky boats" or whatever. I imagine hateful people are probably not any less annoying than the ones who mean well). I mean, it's all clearly stupid, no-one thinks that liking those things makes any difference, surely? They're like a virus (not a computer virus, I mean actual viruses) the only thing they can do is spread themselves, and maybe make people feel a bit manipulated on the way past.

Also, (and I'll get to the real problem eventually, honest); dude. You've got to learn to use some kind of punctuation other than ellipses (...), get some commas! Get a full stop occasionally! This makes me want to shake people.

Next up; what do you mean "post it on your wall in honor of someone who died from cancer or who's fighting" exactly? How is it an honour to be listed on the same page as all the "I've lost my phone, goddamn!" posts and the "LOL I was sooooo hungover this weekend" and the "Carn the blues" posts or whatever? It is seriously like the smallest honour you could possibly accord someone. Maybe if you are remembering someone, you could just remember them? Or write "I miss my Nan, she had cancer and also was great" (actually, mine did, and was, so there). Someone who's "fighting" (and I've written posts before about this thing where people have to be "fighters" if they get cancer, and only the "weak" die or whatever. This is what it means when you say "Kylie has been diagnosed with breast cancer but she'll be ok, she's strong, she's a fighter, she'll beat this") would maybe be more appreciative of a personal message, or a visit, or a cup of coffee, or you not constantly carrying on sanctimoniously about their disease when they're just trying to take their mind off it by looking at facebook?

It actually says "I know that 97% of you guys won't put this on your wall...but 3% of my friends will". Which is obviously made up, as far as the numbers go, but otherwise, what are they saying here? That most poeple are bad people who hate cancerous people, love disease, and refuse to do their bit to fight it by reposting? That most people won't, so that if you do you can feel even more virtuous? Or that they KNOW it's a ridiculous irritating thing that most people don't want to perpetuate? I mean honestly.

Mostly, though, speaking as someone who's pretty likely to have cancer at some point in my life: sod off. If I have cancer, that doesn't suddenly become the only thing in my life. Like, yes, it's big, but it doesn't stop me wanting a car that doesn't leak or a house that's big enough for my family. It might stop me wanting to lose weight, but doubtless only because I'll probably lose weight because of the cancer or the chemo, which will be a lot less pleasant than I'd've been hoping for weight-loss to be. If I have to go on steroids (and a lot of people do) then the side effects may well cause me to gain weight, and yes, in that case, I totally plan to resent it and want to lose weight. This is the sort of thing which people who have cancer actually say. They're annoyed by the fact that it messes with their life, so they might well want to lose weight, want a new car or house(especially if treatment is expensive, so suddenly they can't afford the one they were saving for), or phone, so they can play games and talk to people while they're stuck in hospital for hours and hours.

Cancer sucks, and it can probably take over your life in a big and horrible way, but that doesn't mean that that's suddenly the defining characteristic of you as a person. Just like people tend to assume that when someone is gay, or a member of an ethnic minority, or has a religious affiliation which is not the dominant one in our society, or is disabled in some way, or short-statured or whatever, are defined by that characteristic. You know, "I had lunch with my gay friend Jake" or "Bella, you know, the black girl" or being delighted that Peter Dinklage has finally gotten a good role despite his dwarfism but only ever thinking of him in terms of his height and smallness. It's outrageously small-minded to think that any one characteristic can totally define someone as a person, and dictate their every hope and dream.

And it must be especially bizarre if the thing which is your new entire personhood is cancer, because it's be totally new. If you tell someone you've got cancer, that suddenly becomes, apparently, the most important thing about you, which must be really unspeakably odd if you're used to people only narrowly categorising you because of being a woman, or being overweight, or being blonde, or whatever. This totally sucks. If you've been diagnosed with a nasty and scary disease, the last thing you need is to also have to contend with people being weirdly prejudiced about you all of a sudden, even if they're trying to be prejudiced for you, rather than against you. I bet it's pretty damn difficult to get a job, though, if your potential employers know you have cancer, I bet there's pleny of "against" too. I imagine it scares off the HR middle-management evn faster than announcing plans to get pregnant in the next year or so. Folk who've got cancer really don't need "that's all there is to you" from some dude they haven't seen since highschool, or a well-meaning aunt, or any other facebook friends, if they're also dealing with that sort of thing.

Lastly, this thing where, as a culture, we seem to believe that cancer is a death sentence, one that can be evaded by "strength" and "battling" but which will always become the most defining characteristic of your life is just wrong. Yes, a lot of people get these diseases, and die of it, but not because of being "weak". A lot of people also get cancer and then have a small procedure and are essentially cured. To imply that the only thing they could possibly want in their life is not to die of cancer is insulting to everyone involved.